The Revillagigedo enumeration, 1790-1794: the first general count of New Spain

Before 1794 the archives of the viceroyalty of Mexico held no enumeration — the 1742 operation had estimated families, not persons. The count ordered by the second Count of Revillagigedo returned 3,865,529 souls in the jurisdictions finished by 1793 and about 4,483,529 with the three unfinished ones estimated. It was also an undercount, for a reason its own critic states: households shrank their lists for fear of a new tax.