# Historical beginnings  
Blacks have inhabited Mexico since the 1500s. The highly celebrated Mexican anthropologist Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán established in his book La población negra de México 1519-1810 (1946) that the importation of blacks into Mexico began with Hernán Cortés in 1519, and Juan Cortés was the first African slave brought into Mexico by Hernán Cortés. Patrick Carroll later corroborated the long presence of blacks in Mexico in his assertion that 'they participated in virtually every major thrust into the colony' (Carroll, 2001, p. 26). As was the case in other Spanish-occupied territories, the large-scale importation of Africans was directly related to the decimation of the indigenous groups under the pressure of unaccustomed forced labour. The Spaniards' economic pursuits were being seriously compromised and so, after Bartolomé de Las Casas declared in 1511 that Africans were needed to 'replace the indio who was being exterminated at an alarming rate of four million within the first twelve years of the conquest' (Muhammad, 1995, p. 164), an alternative source of slave labour was sought, and Africans were seen as the natural choice.  
Blacks had come to be regarded as being stronger than 'Indians', able to endure the rigours of the mines and sugar plantations. They were imported into Mexico through the ports of Veracruz, Campeche and Acapulco and taken across the territory to work in the silver mines in places such as Taxco and Zacatecas, and on sugar plantations in Morelos and the Orizaba valley as well as in other enterprises in Puebla and Michoacán. It has been established that more than 15,000 Africans were imported into Mexico between 1530 and 1550, and more than 900 were imported after 1570 to work in Taxco in the silver mines. Overall, Mexico was reputed to have imported the largest number of African slaves, and according to Muhammad, 'Mexico was the most successful economy in colonial Spanish America because of black labour' (Muhammad, 1995, p. 178).