Spanish Mexicans are citizens or residents of Mexico who identify as Spanish as a result of nationality or recent ancestry. Spanish immigration to Mexico began in the early 1500s and spans to the present day. The vast majority of Mexicans have at least partial Spanish ancestry; the Northern regions of Mexico have a higher prevalence of Spanish heritage. There are three recognized large-scale Spanish immigration waves to the territory which is now Mexico: the first arrived during the colonial period, the second during the Porfiriato and the third after the Spanish Civil War. The first Spanish settlement was established in February 1519 by Hernán Cortés in the Yucatan Peninsula, accompanied by about 11 ships, 500 men, 13 horses and a small number of cannons. In March 1519, Cortés formally claimed the land for the Spanish crown and by 1521 secured the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. Spanish colonization The social composition of late sixteenth century Spanish immigration included both common people and aristocrats, all of which dispersed across New Spain. The enslavement of native populations and Africans, along with the discovery of new deposits of various minerals in the central and northern areas (from present day Sonora to the southern provinces of Mexico) created enormous wealth for Spain, especially in the extraction of silver. The exploitation of mining wealth from the indigenous populations through the mechanism of colonialism allowed the Spanish to develop manufacturing and agriculture that turned the Bajío regions and the valleys of Mexico and Puebla into prosperous agricultural areas with incipient industrial activity for the colonists, but indigenous populations were decimated by European diseases and mistreatment from the Spanish as a direct result of this. In the 16th century, following the colonization of most of the new continents, perhaps 240,000 Spaniards entered ports in the Americas. They were joined by 450,000 in the next century. Since the conquest of the Aztec Empire, this region became the principal destination of Spanish colonial settlers in the 16th century. The first Spaniards who arrived in Mexico were soldiers and sailors from Extremadura, Andalucía and La Mancha after the conquest of the Americas. At the end of the 16th century both commoner and aristocrat from Spain were migrating to Mexico. Also, a few Canarian families colonized parts of Mexico in the 17th century (as in the case of the Azuaje families) and when the Spanish crown encouraged Canarian colonization of