The current and 15th Marquess is Álvaro de Llanza y Figueroa, a private equity fund manager and former Citigroup investment banker.

Cortés gained the royal favor, and was created Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca, being formally confirmed in his land holdings and vassals.

[11][12] The encomiendas could only be inherited up to two generations, and the encomenderos had no political or judiciary power in their lands, depending on the pertinent Royal Audience and Captaincy General or Intendance.

[14] Although the crown had granted the title and privileges, the "royal authorities made continual efforts to prevent the Marquesado from fully acquiring the political and juridical power required in the classic feudal model.".

[15] The Marquessate granted to Cortés was not a geographically unified estate, but consisted of separate, fertile, populous, and often strategic areas in different parts of Mexico but with economic potential.

1535 in the Nahuatl language are extant for the Cuernavaca region, which give important information about the social and economic structure of indigenous communities held by Cortés.

The censuses also give important information about the extent to which Christian evangelization was effective at the local level, since each member of a household was identified as baptized or unbaptized.

[21] The Royal Audience of Mexico, on 23 November 1563, fixed a perpetual annual reward of 1,527 pesos of gold and 3,442 fanegas of maize paid by the villages of Tenango del Valle and Chimalhuacán.

It included the city of Cuernavaca, head of the Marquessate; 80 villages, 8 haciendas and 3 sugar ingenios, situated in Tlaltenango (the first one in New Spain), Amatitlán and Atlacomulco.

Up to 1567, the Marquess assigned the general supervision of the Estate affairs to the High Steward (Mayordomo Mayor), an official directly below him whose work consisted of routine collection and disbursement of funds and materials, as well as the conduct of lawsuits.

[23] The King ordered the sequestration of the Marquessate, which meant the Crown seized control of the Estate and withdrew all its incomes; the leaders being expelled from New Spain and forbidden to return.

Although the sequestration was lifted in 1593, the Marchionesses lost direct control of the administration of the Estate, as they had to retain the structure through which the Crown had worked, which relinquished the governing autonomy they used to exercise.

[22] The Marquesado del Valle Codex, written in the second half of the 16th century, includes 28 petitions filed by local landowners in the Nahuatl language requesting return of their seized lands.

[24] Don Martín, the 2nd Marquess, obtained royal pardon in 1574, returning from his exile in Oran and recovering part of his sequestered lands in Mexico.

[25] He died in Madrid in 1589 and was succeeded in the title by his eldest son, Don Hernando Cortés, 3rd Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca, who was reinstated the rest of his Estate in 1593, with the help of his brother-in-law, Diego Fernández de Cabrera, 3rd Count of Chinchón, close adviser to the King.