Cloth and silver: Pawning and material life in Mexico City at the turn of the nineteenth century

Americas

Volumn 60, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 325-362

  Francois, Marie ^a  

^a AUBURN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949868692     PISSN: 00031615     EISSN: 15336247     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/tam.2004.0011     Document Type: Review

References (79)

1. This phenomenon was not restricted to urban areas, but rather was endemic throughout New Spain in the late colonial period. Stanley J. Stein, "Tending the Store: Trade and Silver at the Real de Huautla, 1778-1781," Hispanic American Historical Review 77:3 (1977), pp. 377-407
2. See also Ruggiero Romano, Monedas, Submonedas y circulación monetaria en la economía de México (México: Fondo de Cultural Económica, Fideicomiso Historia de las Américas, 1998)
3. For discussion of pawning as central to seventeenth-century daily life, see R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), pp. 110-112
4. For the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see Marie Francois, "Prendas and Pulperias: The Fabric of the Neighborhood Credit Business in Mexico City, 1780s-1830s," Estudios de Historia Novohispana 20 (1999), pp. 67-106
5. On the meanings of material objects in Latin America, see Arnold J. Bauer, Goods, Power, History: Latin America's Material Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)
6. and Eric Van Young, "Material Life," in Louisa Schell Hobermann and Susan Migden Socolow, eds., The Countryside in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), pp. 49-74
7. For theoretical discussions, see Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods (New York, Basic Books, 1968)
8. and Tim Dant, Material Culture in the Social World: Values, Activities, Lifestyles (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999)
9. For a recent study of material culture that emphasizes change instead of continuity in the transition from colonial to republican rule, see Bauer, Goods, Power, History
10. The debate about whether or not Independence constitutes a watershed of change in Latin America has been going on for decades. For a recent review of the literature, see Victor M. Uribe-Uran, "Introduction-Beating a Dead Horse," in State and Society in Spanish America during the Age of Revolution (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2001)
11. For discussions about the immigrant men involved in the petty retail and pawning hade, see John E. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs: Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983)
12. and Jay Kinsbruner, Petty Capitalism in Spanish America: The Pulperos of Puebla, Mexico City, Caracas, and Buenos Aires (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987)
13. For the institutional history of the Monte de Piedad, see Edith Couturier, "The Philanthropic Activities of Pedro Romero de Terreros: First Count of Regia (1753-1781)," The Americas 32 (July 1975), pp. 13-30
14. Esperanza Carrera Siles y Patricia Escandón, Historia del National Monte de Piedad, 1775-1993 (México: Nacional Monte de Piedad, 1993)
15. and Marie Francois, "When Pawnshops Talk: Popular Credit and Material Culture in Mexico City, 1775-1916." (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Arizona, 1998), especially Chapter 3
16. D. S. Chandler, Social Assistance and Bureaucratic Politics: The Montepios of Colonial Mexico, 1767-1821 (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1991)
17. Reglamento para el gobierno y dirección de las tiendas de pulpería (México: Mariano de Zuñiga y Ontiveros, 1810)
18. Juan Javier Pescador, "Immigración femenina, empleo y familia en una parroquia de la ciudad de México: Santa Catarina, 1775-1790," in Pilar Gonzalbo, ed., Historia de la Familia (Mexico: Instituto Mora/UAM, 1993), pp. 171-198
19. John E. Kizca, Colonial Entrepreneurs: Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), p. 3
20. Alexandro de Humbolt, Ensayo politico sobre el reino de la Nueva España, ed. Juan Ortega y Median, 4th Edition (Mexico: Ponua, 1984), p. 129
21. Silvia Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790-185 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), pp. 5-7
22. Timothy Anna, The Fall of the Royal Government in Mexico City, (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, 1978), pp. 5-6
23. Frederick John Shaw, Jr., "Poverty and Politics in Mexico City, 1824-1854" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida, 1975), pp. 373-376
24. and Richard A. Warren, Vagrants and Citizens: Politics and the Masses in Mexico City from Colony to Republic (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2001), p. 11
25. See also Marcella M. Litle, "Sales Taxes and Internal Commerce in Bourbon Mexico, 1754-1821," (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1985)
26. For studies that emphasize the social impact of the reforms, see Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574-1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988)
27. Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790-1857
28. and Juan Pedro Viqueira Alba, Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, Trans, by Sonya Lipsett-Rivera and Sergio Rivera Ayala (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1987)
29. For Peru, see Sarah C. Chambers, From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender, and Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1780-1854 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 1999)
30. See Richard Garner, "Rice Trends in Eighteenth Century Mexico," Hispanic American Historical Review 65:2 (1985), pp. 279-326
31. and Enrique Florescano, Precios de maiz y crisis agrícolas en México, 1708-1810. Ensayo sobre el movimiento de los precios y sus consecuencias económicas y sociales (México: El Colegio de México, 1969)
32. The colonial monetary system was based on an octovate system, with eight reales equaling one peso. After independence, the system remained the same until 1861, when the metric decimal system was adopted, with ten centavos equaling one peso. Diego G. Lopez Rosado, Curso de historia económica de México (México: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, 1963), p. 243
33. Scardaville, "Crime and the Urban Poor," p. 68
34. García Peña, "El impacto," p. 97
35. Timothy Anna, The Fall of the Royal Government in Mexico City (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), pp. 23-24
36. Arrom, The Women, p. 65
37. Silvia Arrom, "Changes in Mexican Family Law in the XIX Century: The Civil Codes of 1870 and 1884," Journal of Family History 10 (Fall 1985): 309-22, p. 314
38. Tuñon, El album, vol. III, pp. 39-49
39. Juan Javier Pescador, "Vanishing Woman: Female Migration and Ethnic Identity in Late-Colonial Mexico City," Ethnohistory 42:4 (1995), pp. 617-626
40. Herbert J. Klein, "The Demographic Structure of Mexico City in 1811," Journal of Urban History, 23, 1 (1996): 66-94
41. Elizabeth Anne Kuznesof, "Gender Ideology, Race, and Female-Headed Households in Urban Mexico, 1750-1850," pp. 149-170 in Victor M. Uribe-Uran, State and Society in Spanish America During the Age of Revolution (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2001); Arrom, The Women, p. 120, 132
42. John E. Kicza, "La mujer y la vida commercial en la ciudad de México a finales de la colonia," A (Analisis histórico y sociedad Mexicana) Revista de la División de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades UAM-A, 2 (1981), pp. 39-59
43. Asunción Lavrin, "Lo femenino: Women in Colonial Historical Sources," in Francisco Cevallos-Candau, Jeffrey A. Cole, Nina M. Scott and Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz, eds., Coded Encounters: Writing, Gender, and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), p. 61
44. On goods in dowries, see Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Las mujeres en la nueva españa: Educatión y vida cotidiana (México: El Colegio de Mexico, 1987), p. 204
45. Frances Calderon de la Barca, Life in Mexico. 1843
46. For a case of a mistress who received jewels from the priest who seduced her and then pawned them to sustain herself, see Teresa Lonzano Armendares, "El gran seductor. O de cómo pueden disimularse los vicios de una comunidad doméstica," Estudios de Historia Novohispana, 17 (1997), pp. 137-150
47. Waddy Thompson, Recollection of Mexico, 1846
48. See also Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, "Clothes in Late-Colonial Mexico: A Most Anxious Topic." Paper presented to the Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Studies, Santa Fe, February 1996, p. 20
49. The words in Spanish are "gente pobre y vulgar" and "pecaminosa y usuraria." AGN Montepío, vol. 17, exp. 13, f. 254
50. In Spanish, "los miserables socorridos." AGN Montepío, vol. 17, exp. 13, fs. 243, 345
51. Chandler, Social Assistance, p. 108
52. Silvia Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790-1857 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), pp. 199-201
53. For a useful discussion of the vagaries of widowhood, see Robert McCaa, "La viuda viva del Mexico Borbonico: sus voces, variedades y vejanciones," in Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru, ed., Familias novohispanas. Siglos XVI al XIX (México: El Colegio de México, 1991), pp. 299-324
54. Francisco de Paula de Arrangoiz, Mexico desde 1808 hasta 1867 (Madrid, 1871). Reprint (México: Editorial Porrua, 1968), pp. 25-26
55. For tables listing salaries of the various colonial governmental departments from 1771, 1781, 1794 and 1825, see Linda Arnold, Bureaucracy and Bureaucrats in Mexico City, 1742-1835 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988), pp. 131-149. For discussion of deductions from salaries to support war efforts, see pp. 21, 63-65, 100
56. For discussion of how the richest creole families maintained their status through economic and social strategies, see John K. Kicza, "The Great Families of Mexico: Elite Maintenance and Business Practices in Late Colonial Mexico City," Hispanic American Historical Review 62:3 (1982), pp. 429-457
57. Many colonial pulperia locations turned into casas de empeños in the national period, while other empeño locations were new. See Francois, "Prendas and Pulperias," pp. 90-105 for analysis of the pawnshop trade from the 1780s to the 1840s which draws on commercial censuses
58. Fernand Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800, translated by Miriam Kochan (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 226
59. AGN Gobemación, no section, caja 414, exp. 1, f. 1. See also Lipsett-Rivera, "Clothes in Late-Colonial Mexico."
60. Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)
61. Stein, "Tending the Store," pp. 380-390
62. For the distinction in shawl garments, see Calderón de la Barca, Life in Mexico, p. 60, 84
63. Tuñon, El album, pp. 217-220
64. and Guillermo Prieto, Memorias de mis tiempos. 1948
65. AGN Judicial, vol. 68, exp. 13, fs. 251-272
66. Repawning goods may have been what Don Ramon Garrido planned to do before he was arrested in March, 1787 for stealing goods from the pawnshop that he ran for Don Cristóval Rodríguez. AGN Consulado, vol. 56, exp. 1, f. 5-9v. For other examples, see AGN Consulado, vol. 56, exp. 1, f. 5-9v; AGN Criminal, vol. 87, exp. 2, fs. 60-69v; Fernández de Lizardi, El Periquillo Sarniento, p. 197
67. Tuñon, El album, vol. III, pp. 30-31, p. 136. For discussion of the continuance of the pawning of housekeeping goods through the end of the nineteenth century (at least a quarter of more than 3,000 pawned goods from 1818-1903 fit this category), see Francois, "Vivir de prestado."
68. AGN Criminal, vol. 86, exp. 10, fs. 264-285v
69. For discussion of the mestizaje of cuisine, see Jeffrey M. Pilcher, !Que vivan los tamales!: Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998)
70. Mary L. Davis and Greta Pack, Mexican Jewelry (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1963), p. 60
71. For examples of male jewelry, see Manuel Payno, Bandidos del Río Frio (México: Ediciones México Modemo, 1919), pp. 77, 93, 97, p. 126
72. Hira de Gortari Rabiela y Regina Hernández Franyuti, compilers, Memoria y encuentros: La Ciudad de México y el Distrito Federal (1824-1918). Vol. III (México: Departamento del Distrito Federal, Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora, 1988), p. 322-323
73. Prieto, Memoria, p. 258
74. see also Davis and Pack, Mexican Jewelry, pp. 50-53
75. Francois, "Prendas and Pulperías," pp. 78-83
76. For discussion of the timing and patterns of women's participation in artisan groups, see Tuñón, El albúm, vol. III, pp. 35-36
77. AGN Consulado, vol. 53, exp. 12, fs. 365-371
78. See also John E. Kicza, "Life Patterns and Social Differentiation Among Common People in Late Colonial Mexico City," Estudios de Historia Novohispana 12 (1992), p. 194
79. In the English context in the nineteenth century 45 percent of shopkeepers and over half the total members of the family employed in small businesses-including pawnbroking-in Mereside were women. Melanie Tebbutt, Making Ends Meet: Pawnbroking and Working-Class Credit (New York: Leicester University Press/St. Martin's Press, 1986)