Table 1

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

Note:
The nadir of the demographic disaster is usually placed in the seventeenth-century. I chose 1595 for an end-point, not because I believe this to be the nadir of the native population, but to be able to interpolate, rather than extrapolate, comparable figures for the largest number of authors.
*Nevertheless, the figure for Sanders is extrapolated from 1568.
Sources:
Miguel Othón de Mendizábal, "Demografía mexicana. Epoca colonial 1519-1810. Demografía colonial del siglo XVI. 1519-1599," in Obras Completas (Mexico: 1946; first published 1939), III, 309-338.

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.