The conquest of the Americas produced a radical transformation of pre-colonial Empires and City States. Europeans established a new institution, the Encomienda, which “entrusted” indigenous communities to individual conquistadores, which resulted in the dismemberment and fragmentation of prior political authority. Using a simple model of temporal horizons and rent extraction, I explore demographic change and epidemic disease after the conquest of Mexico. Data is drawn from the legal and census records of Tepetlaoztoc, a polity within the Acolhua Kingdom, one of the three parts of the Aztec Empire. This rich dataset allows for the reconstruction of demographic change and the calculation of individual and household level epidemiological models. The analysis suggests that the dramatic demographic decline of the 16th century in Mexico, rather than an inevitable result of exposure to unknown pathogens or epidemic diseases beyond human control, was a consequence of colonial rent extraction and the loss of political autonomy and sovereignty.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Alberto Díaz-Cayeros joined the FSI faculty in 2013 after serving for five years as the director of the Center for US-Mexico Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his Ph.D at Duke University in 1997. He was an assistant professor of political science at Stanford from 2001-2008, before which he served as an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Diaz-Cayeros has also served as a researcher at Centro de Investigacion Para el Desarrollo, A.C., in Mexico from 1997-1999. His work has focused on federalism, poverty, and violence in Latin America and Mexico in particular. He has published widely in Spanish and English. His book Federalism, Fiscal Authority and Centralization in Latin America was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007 (reprinted in 2016). His latest book (with Federico Estevez and Beatriz Magaloni) is The Political Logic of Poverty Relief Electoral Strategies and Social Policy in Mexico. His work has primarily focused on federalism, poverty and economic reform in Latin America, and Mexico in particular, with more recent work addressing crime and violence, youth-at-risk, and police professionalization.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Willliam J. Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person.