The attitude of the first Viceroy who administered the new Intendant system was one of scepticism. Viceroy Flores, previously Viceroy of New Granada, where the system was never tried, questioned the practicability and usefulness of the reform. We have already seen his caution over Articles 127–40 of the Ordinance of Intendants, and his reluctance to attempt any of the changes prescribed by them. His fear of disturbing the traditional routine of affairs led him to veto a plan for the assignation of salaries to the Subdelegates. His reason was that the Royal Treasury was already sufficiently burdened with the salaries of the Intendants. Summarising his experience in the government of New Spain, Flores informed his successor, Revillagigedo the Younger, that, ‘so far from seeing up to now these beneficial effects (as a result of the establishment of the Intendancies), complaints are heard foretelling the final ruin of the Kingdom, and the forthcoming collapse of the Royal revenues, unless it is brought back to its previous system of government by its ancient laws, collections of regulations, and municipal statutes’.

Revillagigedo, however, tended to think that the reform should be allowed time to recover from its early difficulties. For, he believed that the Intendancies would eventually become one of the main instruments in resolving New Spain's most pressing administrative and economic problems. In that spirit, he issued two Superior Orders of 24 November 1790, requiring strict compliance with the prohibition of the repartimiento contained in article 12.

Until the political changes of 1810–21 ensured the triumph of the Creoles, the province of Oaxaca had traditionally been dominated by a small group of Spanish Peninsular merchants. For the most part, they undertook mutual financial obligations, and had close contacts with the merchants of the Mexico City Consulado. They were represented on the Ayuntamiento of Oaxaca, a closed body which left most of the work of governing the province to the Royal and episcopal authorities, where they held both elective and hereditary or purchased offices. They farmed many of the principal revenues of both Church and State, were owners or lessees of landed property, particularly in the fertile regions of the Valley of Oaxaca and Teposcolula. Many of them were commissioned officers in the Provincial Militia, established in the 1760s, and enjoyed the juridical privilege of the fuero militar under the Ordinance of 1768.

The local merchants and those of the Consulado of Mexico were particularly interested in Oaxaca's scarlet dye, extensively produced only by the Indian population, and in great demand in the textile factories of France, Holland, Britain, and Spain. The merchants traded with the great Spanish merchant houses, the Casa de Uztáriz and the Cinco Gremios Mayores de Madrid and others.

The insolvency of the Spanish régime, and its failure to pay its local administrators, the Alcaldes Mayores, a proper salary ensured that they would fall into the financial power of the merchants.