Mexican Scientists and Learned Individuals

[Joseph Puentes <makas@...>]

So during the colonial times were there any learned indivduals in 
Mexico? Scientists? Inventors? Musicians? Doctors? Architects? Poets? etc?
I guess I'm looking for that time period from the Conquest to the 
1800's. I realize that the closer you get to current times you will have 
a much larger selection of examples of the above, but I'm wondering what 
was going on during the 400 years between 1500-1899?
just curious,

joseph

ps: didn't Spain open up a handful of Universities in these early times? 
I wonder what the graduates of these Universities were doing?