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Erosion of Traditional Transportation Systems

Changing demographics brought about further erosion of traditional transportation systems and presented yet another obstacle to the introduction of Spanish methods. By 1600, native depopulation meant the collapse of the tlameme system and the loss of the laborers who could have built the Spanish roads had they done so in the early colonial period. While early colonial Mexico was well linked, with trade goods of all types spanning the settled areas, the same was not true of the later period. With depopulation and the demise of the tlameme system, only wagons and pack trains could continue the links. However, this was a much costlier form of transport, especially since the roads needed to maintain the economic linkage of Mexico had not been constructed. Unable to absorb the sharply higher cost of transport, Mexico descended into a period of economic balkanization. Very expensive waresimported silks and china and exported silver—could still be shipped at these higher costs, but more mundane items, such as soap and candies, could not. Thus, the relatively inefficient tlameme system did not give way to the more efficient Spanish transportation system that could have economically linked larger areas and created economies of scale to enrich Mexico. Rather, Spanish short-term interests deferred infrastructural development while wealth and manpower were still available, and when the indigenous system collapsed along with overall population, the result was the forced adoption of wheel animal transport that Mexico still was unprepared to support. Consequently, Mexico's economy shattered, a national industrial-artisan base could not develop, and the country devolved into a series of semi-self-sufficient regions linked only by the elite modes of trade and transportation.