Table 3. Population Figures (millions) and Implied Rates of Decline (percent)
in the Indian Population of Mexico from 1519 to 1595
Author | 1519 (millions) | 1595 (millions) | percent decline (%) | "Mexico" |
Rosenblat | 4.5 | 3.5 | 22 |
Aguirre-Beltrán | 4.5 | 2.0 | 56 |
Zambardino | 5-10 | 1.1-1.7 | 64-89 |
Mendizabal | 8.2 | 2.4 | 71 |
Cook and Simpson | 10.5 | 2.1-3.0 | 71-80 |
Cook and Borah | 18-30 | 1.4 | 78-95 | Central Mexican | Symbiotic Region |
Sanders* | 2.6-3.1 | 0.4 | 85-87 | Valley of Mexico |
Whitmore | 1.3-2.7 | 0.1-0.4 | 69-96 |
Gibson | 1.5 | 0.2 | 87 | 128 towns |
Kubler | 0.2 | 0.1 | 50 |
George Kubler, "Population Movements in Mexico, 1520-1600," Hispanic American Historical Review, XXII (Nov. 1942), 606-643.
Angel Rosenblat, La población indígena y el mestizaje en América (Buenos Aires, 1954 [1935, rev. ed.]), 57-122.
Rudolph A. Zambardino, "Mexico's Population in the Sixteenth-century: Demographic Anomaly or Mathematical Illusion," Journal of Interdisciplinary History XI (Summer 1980), 1-27.
Thomas M. Whitmore, Disease and Death in Early Colonial Mexico: Simulating Amerindian Depopulation (Boulder, 1992), 154.
Woodrow Borah and Sherburne F. Cook, The Aboriginal Population of Central Mexico on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest (Berkeley, 1963), 88.
Woodrow Borah and Sherburne F. Cook, The Indian Population of Central Mexico 1531-1610 (Berkeley, 1960), 46-47 (as corrected).
Sherburne F. Cook and Lesley Bird Simpson, The Population of Central Mexico in the Sixteenth-century (Berkeley, 1948), 38, 43, 45.
Gonzalo Aguirre-Beltrán, La población negra de México (Mexico, 1972, 1st ed. 1946), 200-1, 212.
William T. Sanders, "The Population of the Central Mexican Symbiotic Region, the Basin of Mexico, and the Teotihuacan Valley in the Sixteenth-century," in William M. Denevan (ed.), The Native Population of the Americas in 1492 (Madison, 1976), 120.
Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519-1810 (Stanford, 1964), 137-138.