The Complications of Assimilation

When the original Spaniards began to colonize their New World there was a clear distinction between the natives whom they encountered and their own colonial society. Yet, as Mexico City began to take form, Spanish attempts to create two wholly separate worlds between these groups reached almost instant failure as miscegenation spawned a plethora of new ethnicities. The intermingling of races became increasingly unavoidable, and the Spaniards were faced with the ensuing problem of maintaining their believed superiority. Throughout the centuries leading to their independence from Spain, the Mexican elite fought to control the assimilation of the plebians in a variety of manners. Ultimately though, each tactic shared the common goal of consistently ingraining the idea of divine rule by the elites, from the city council composed of Peninsulares to the distant Spanish monarch across the Atlantic.