In the early decades after 1492, vast movements of people and cultures gave rise to an astonishing tapestry of human connections in the Americas. Europeans from Spain, Portugal, and beyond poured in, looking for wealth and fame. Enslaved Africans were shipped across the Atlantic by the hundreds of thousands.
Thousands more arrived from Asia, crossing the Pacific to settle in ports like Acapulco and eventually migrating inland. Indigenous nations, often reeling from epidemics and conflict, remained large in numbers and influence, trying to adjust to the newly arrived outsiders. Nowhere was this swirling mix more visible than in early colonial Mexico City.
The story of how all these worlds collided—and the unexpected alliances, families, and even entire social systems they created—offers a window into one of history’s most consequential transformations. Some historians have called it a “crazy soup,” a dramatic reshuffling of peoples and cultures. Below is how it took shape.
Johnny Good-Looking: An African Conquistador
In the 1520s, a small, whitewashed adobe chapel stood on the outskirts of Mexico City—likely the first Christian chapel in mainland America. Near it, a solitary man maintained the altar and cultivated nearby fields. His name was Juan Garrido, but he was of West African origin. “Garrido” in Spanish translates roughly to “good-looking,” so many scholars refer to him as “Johnny Good-Looking.”
Precisely how he arrived in Iberia remains debated; some historians suggest he went there as a free agent, but the more likely story holds that he arrived enslaved, reflecting the broader patterns of African bondage in 15th-century Portugal and Spain.
Whatever his path across the Atlantic, Garrido was determined to forge his own destiny. He reached the Caribbean early in the 16th century, following various Spanish conquistadors around the islands. He participated in military campaigns in Puerto Rico and joined Juan Ponce de León on his infamous hunt for the Fountain of Youth—an ultimately fruitless foray that made them some of the first Europeans (and Africans) to set foot in Florida.
Garrido’s big break came when Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico to conquer the Triple Alliance (often called the Aztec Empire, though that label is a 19th-century invention). Eager to secure his fortune, Garrido fought alongside Cortés in the 1521 fall of Tenochtitlan, a vast metropolis built on islands in a great lake.
After the city’s harrowing defeat, which had been aided by a catastrophic smallpox epidemic, Cortés asked Garrido to build the Chapel of the Martyrs just west of the ruined capital. Garrido took on many crucial tasks for the new Spanish regime: caring for roads, protecting aqueducts, announcing important decrees as town crier. He even grew the first successful wheat crop in Mexico—a vital step in transplanting European agriculture to the New World.
Despite these distinctions, and his many years of service, Garrido struggled to receive the honors he felt he deserved. Eventually, he disappeared from historical record, a dramatic figure overshadowed by more famous names like Cortés. Yet his life exemplified how African arrivals helped shape every dimension of colonial society, from cultivating new crops to fighting wars of conquest. Far from passive victims, African men and women like Garrido became central players in the story of early Spanish America.
The Rise of Sugar and the Spread of Slavery
Even before Juan Garrido reached Mexico City, the foundations of a global sugar economy were being laid on islands off West Africa. In places like Madeira, the Azores, São Tomé, and Príncipe, Portuguese settlers recognized the lucrative potential of sugarcane. But sugar cultivation requires huge amounts of labor—cutting cane, crushing stalks, boiling and crystallizing the juice in large mills. In Europe, slaves had existed since Roman times, yet they were not typically used in large-scale agricultural production. That changed with the Atlantic islands.
To maximize sugar output, planters needed a workforce. And because sugarcane spoils fast, everything had to happen quickly after harvest. On islands such as São Tomé, conditions proved lethal for Europeans, thanks to malaria and yellow fever. Consequently, enslaved Africans—often convicts, prisoners of war, or outright kidnap victims—were brought in to do the labor. By the mid-16th century, this experiment in “plantation slavery” had become a brutal reality on the Atlantic frontier.
When the Spanish, led by Cortés and others, saw the profits sugar could bring, they introduced plantation slavery to Mexico and the wider American mainland. Particularly around Veracruz, large estates sprang up with sugar mills fueled by captive labor. Decrees from the Spanish Crown had theoretically curtailed the enslavement of Indigenous people, but the demand for field workers did not vanish. Europeans thus turned to the African slave trade. From about 1550 to 1650, an estimated 650,000 enslaved Africans were brought to Spanish and Portuguese America, often to toil on sugar estates in Mexico or Brazil.
The short-term economic benefits were enormous. The longer-term social consequences reverberated across New Spain (as Mexico and nearby lands were called) and beyond. Africans soon began to outnumber Europeans in many locations, forming communities in port cities and silver-mining camps, and even working on cattle ranches as early cowboys. The central story of the 16th and 17th centuries, thus, was not simply “Spaniards vs. Indians.” Rather, it was a massive reshuffling in which African peoples were indispensable shapers of agriculture, labor, and urban culture in the newly conquered lands.
Multiethnic Families: Conquistadors, Caste, and Confusion
One common myth of early America portrays colonizers as a monolithic band of European males imposing their will on unwilling “others.” In reality, families and children of mixed backgrounds appeared right from the start, as war, alliances, and personal desires led to unions across every ethnic line.
Conquistadors often married or formed relationships with high-ranking Indigenous women to cement political ties. Cortés himself had multiple children with Indigenous partners—most famously Martín Cortés (whose mother, Malinche, served as guide and interpreter during the conquest of Tenochtitlan) and Leonor Cortés Moctezuma (daughter of a Mexica princess). Further south, Francisco Pizarro replicated the pattern with women of the Inka royal family.
Such alliances weren’t limited to Spaniards and Indigenous elites. Enslaved Africans sometimes formed relationships with local Indians; many also married people of European descent. Indeed, the demand for labor meant far more enslaved African men arrived than women, encouraging unions with both Indian and mixed-descent women. The result was an ever-growing population of mestizos (Indo-European), mulattos (Afro-European), zambos (Afro-Indian), and myriad other categories. This constantly shifting tapestry so unsettled Spanish elites that authorities tried to codify identity through the so-called “casta system”: an elaborate taxonomy that labeled each variety of ancestral combination.
In official practice, casta regulations determined taxes, clothing restrictions, and access to trades. Thus, a Spaniard caught cheating customers might receive a light fine, while a mixed-blood artisan who did the same could face whipping. “Moorish Woman and Spaniard produce Albino,” or “Negro and Indian produce Lobo (wolf),” read some of the bizarre classification charts. Yet lived reality always outpaced these rigid attempts to sort people by ancestry. Individuals deftly negotiated or “purchased” new identities, often dropping or adopting labels to climb social ladders or skirt taxes. A person with one Spanish grandparent and one Indian grandparent might be recorded as Indian in one city, but show up as Spaniard after moving elsewhere.
As Mexico grew in complexity, authorities found themselves in an endless chase to control identities. The two-republics idea—separate polities for Indians and Spaniards—was quickly thwarted by reality. Africans, Asians, and people of every mix spilled into towns, worked in shops, and performed in religious processions. By the 17th century, these multiethnic societies had made a fluid culture far removed from the purely “Spanish” model that Iberian administrators had imagined.
Mexico City: The First Global Megalopolis
While sugar estates were popping up in Veracruz, Mexico City—with its layered history atop the ruins of Tenochtitlan—morphed into a polyglot metropolis. Europeans mingled with Africans, Indigenous, and a group rarely discussed in many history books: Asians. From the 1560s onward, Spanish galleons transported goods and people across the Pacific between Manila and Acapulco, known as the Manila Galleon Trade. Asian sailors, craftsmen, and even enslaved laborers landed in New Spain by the thousands. By the late 16th century, Acapulco’s docks teemed with cargo from the Philippines and China, and many Asians never returned across the ocean.
Hence, Mexico City came to have an entire district with Chinese tailors, Indian porters, Spanish bureaucrats, African barbers, and others forming a vibrant urban stew. It wasn’t uncommon to find Japanese samurai employed in policing silver shipments. Diverse fraternities and guilds staged public festivals, sometimes devolving into brawls over who would march at the head of the line. Some individuals, like the revered Catarina de San Juan (an enslaved woman from India or perhaps Pakistan), became local legends. Known for mystical visions and acts of Christian devotion, she died in 1688 surrounded by near-saintly fame. When worshippers tried to cut off pieces of her body as relics, armed guards were needed to protect her remains.
The city’s artisans produced ceramics mimicking Ming porcelain—crafts that may well have been guided by real Chinese potters. The famed talavera pottery from Puebla shows how thoroughly Asia’s influence was woven into colonial markets. Meanwhile, Spanish barbers found themselves overrun by Filipino or Chinese barbers, who offered advanced dental procedures drawn from Asian medical traditions.
Seeking to regain their livelihoods, the Spaniards petitioned the city council for protectionist rules. Over time, new regulations on where foreigners could operate barbershops only fueled more conflict. In short, Mexico City was a buzzing, cosmopolitan port of call, arguably the most globally connected city of its era, far ahead of many Old World capitals in the sheer variety of its population.
Crazy Soup: The Layered Convergence of Peoples and Cultures
To describe 16th- and 17th-century Mexico City as a “crazy soup” is apt not only for its swirling demography but also its contradictory and occasionally dystopian nature. On the one hand, the city boasted tapestries, gilded cathedrals, universities, and enormous wealth gleaned from silver mines. On the other, it repeatedly flooded because the Spanish had damaged Tenochtitlan’s elaborate network of dikes and canals.
Elite clerics preached about the moral threat of mixing with “heretical” blood, even as some of them fathered children with Indigenous or African mothers. Meanwhile, the monarchy tried to define who belonged where, but the unstoppable mixture of backgrounds foiled any fixed, purely European model.
Despite pockets of wealth, massive inequality and exploitation reigned. Indigenous communities, reeling from disease and forced labor, fought to preserve cultural identity. African slaves, forced onto plantations, resisted in subtle but constant ways—feigning illness, stealing produce, burning fields, or escaping to form armed communities in remote forests. Asians seized opportunities in commerce and crafts, while some, like Catarina de San Juan, arrived through the grim channel of enslavement. All the while, the city’s streets thronged with hawkers selling products from four continents. In a kaleidoscope of languages, travelers gawked at flamboyant Easter processions featuring imported images and statues. The city was at once terrifying and thrilling.
The Unexpected Legacy
Much as we now praise “globalization,” it can be easy to forget how long globalization has been underway. From African cowboys rustling cattle on South American pampas, to Chinese silks sold in the markets of Puebla, to Moorish styling in Spanish architecture transplanted to Mexico, the cultural crosscurrents were endless. This “crazy soup” set the template for generations: multiethnic communities, fluid social boundaries, and an insatiable quest for profit that often collided with moral and spiritual dilemmas.
Today, Mexicans celebrate the “mestizaje,” or blending of cultures, as part of national identity. Yet that blending was never purely about Indians and Spaniards. Africans and Asians figured decisively in the mix, especially during the 16th and 17th centuries, even though later historical narratives often minimized or ignored their roles. When historians look beyond official archives, they find figures like Juan Garrido—an African who sowed Europe’s first wheat in Mexico—and Catarina de San Juan, possibly of imperial Mughal lineage, shaping Catholic piety in Puebla. They also see entire neighborhoods in Mexico City churning with Afro-Indian-Spanish-Asian foot traffic, forging new ways of life that were neither wholly Old World nor fully Indigenous.
The genealogical record can be equally surprising. Conquistadors from the Extremadura region of Spain regularly married or took as partners women from Aztec (Mexica), Maya, or Inka nobility. Their children, like Cortés’s daughter Leonor, often inherited vast estates and maneuvered for power in the colony, eventually intermarrying yet again. The result was a genealogical web that defies simplistic “two cultures meet” narratives. By the end of the 17th century, it was more accurate to say “multiple worlds collided” to form a polyglot, multiethnic society.
What emerges from this richly layered early Mexico is a picture of humanity at a crossroads, where power and wealth were pursued with shocking brutality—but also where individuals displayed courage, resilience, and ingenuity across ethnic and social boundaries. A teenage Mughal girl uprooted into slavery becomes a local saint; a West African captive reinvents himself as a conquistador; a Taino woman marries a lowborn Spaniard and helps him gain standing among Indigenous elites. Each story signals that the history of colonial Latin America is far larger and more varied than the old textbooks implied.
Conclusion: Global Lessons from Mexico’s “Crazy Soup”
The early decades of Spanish rule in Mexico created an unprecedented coming-together of peoples from every corner of the known world. This swirling mix yielded families that encompassed African, Native, European, and sometimes Asian ancestry—children who would mature into priests, merchants, ranchers, governors, laborers, and revolutionaries. Out of necessity and opportunity, these men and women improvised new political alliances, worship practices, languages, and forms of art.
The “crazy soup” in the streets of Mexico City was modern long before the term existed. Residents daily navigated foreign goods, struggled with conflicting laws, and found themselves in a near-constant process of cultural reinvention. Every marketplace bustled with goods from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, while shipping routes linked the city not only to Spain but to Manila, Lima, and even beyond. Meanwhile, the city’s immediate environment reeled under floodwaters, deforestation, and new diseases—reminders that ecological disruption went hand in hand with social transformation.
Despite the violence and injustice that accompanied conquest, these centuries also saw a remarkable demonstration of human adaptability. Millions of enslaved Africans and Indians resisted or reworked oppressive systems, forging new forms of solidarity. Clusters of free or escaped slaves fought for autonomy in remote mountain communities.
Asian immigrants, whether voluntary or coerced, formed tight-knit enclaves in colonial towns, carving out a foothold in an empire that had barely heard of them a generation before. The children of conquistadors, Indian noblewomen, and African arrivals eventually grew up to demand rights, offices, or business ventures that no one in 1521 could have foreseen.
In short, the story of this era is neither a straightforward saga of triumphant Europeans nor a simple tragedy of Indigenous collapse. Instead, it’s a meeting of worlds so vast and varied that it permanently altered everyone involved. Mexico’s earliest colonial period, particularly Mexico City, stands as an epicenter of one of humanity’s greatest cultural convergences.
If anything, it previewed our own era of global interconnections—just centuries earlier than most realize. That is the profound legacy of this “crazy soup,” a testament to the resilience and complexity of human societies in the face of whirlwind change.
