Poverty and the politics of colonialism: "Poor Spaniards," their petitions, and the erosion of privilege in late colonial Quito

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 85, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 595-626

  Milton, Cynthia E ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 67649510110     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: 15271900     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-85-4-595     Document Type: Review

References (45)

1. In Europe, miserables was a legal category applied to widows, orphans, and other weak and needy individuals who received special protections from the church and courts. This legal distinction as "wards of the court" was later extended to include indigenous litigants in the Indies. The term "wretched" applied more broadly to designate all economically vulnerable groups without providing legal benefits to mestizos and blacks. Woodrow Borah, Justice by Insurance: The General Indian Court of Colonial Mexico and the Legal Aides of the Half-Real (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1983), 11-13, 81-83
2. Diana Bonnett, El protector de naturales en la Audiencia de Quito, siglos XVII y XVIII (Quito: FLACSO / Abya-Yala, 1992), 17-19, 35-36
3. Bianca Premo notes the different punishment meted out by Lima's courts to children according to racial backgrounds; Premo, "Minor Offenses: Youth, Crime, and Law in Eighteenth-Century Lima," in Minor Omissions: Children in Latin American History and Society, ed. Tobias Hecht (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, 2002)
4. D. S. Chandler, Social Assistance and Bureaucratic Politics: The Montepíos of Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1995)
5. Marie Francois, A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and Governance in Mexico City, 1750-1920, (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, forthcoming)
6. Marie Francois, "Cloth and Silver: Pawning and Material Life in Mexico City at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century," The Americas 60, no. 3 (2004): 325-62
7. and Silvia Arrom, Containing the Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774-1871 (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2000)
8. For a discussion of Christian obligation and poor relief, see Brian Tierney, Medieval Poor Law: A Sketch of Canonical Theory and Its Application in England (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1959)
9. and Geremek Bronislaw, Poverty: A History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 18-36
10. Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1999), 289-314
11. D. S. Chandler, Social Assistance
12. Marie Francois, A Culture of Everyday Credit
13. Susan Deans-Smith, "The Working Poor and the Eighteenth-Century Colonial State: Gender, Public Order, and Work Discipline," in Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico, ed. William H. Beezley, Cheryl English Martin, and William E. French (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1994), 47-75
14. Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 1692-1810 (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1999)
15. Michael Scardaville, "Crime and the Urban Poor: Mexico City in the Late Colonial Period" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Florida, 1977)
16. Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán, Relajados o reprimidos? Diversions públicas y vida social en la Ciudad de México durante el Siglo de las Luces; Seccion de obras de historia (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987)
17. Alberto Flores Galindo, Aristocracia y plebe: Lima, 1760-1830 (Estructura de clases y sociedad colonial) (Lima: Mosca Azul, 1984)
18. Bernal Díaz, The Conquest of New Spain, trans. J. M. Cohen (New York: Penguin, 1963)
19. Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets
20. Kenneth Andrien, The Kingdom of Quito, 1690-1830: The State and Regional Development (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995), 45, 150-56
21. Javier Ortiz de la Tabla, "Panorama económica y social del corregimiento de Quito (1768-1775)," Revista de Indias, 145-47 (1976): 83-98
22. Robson Tyrer, Historia demográfica y económica de la Audiencia de Quito: Población indígena e industria textil, 1600-1800 (Quito: Banco Central del Ecuador, 1988), 237-42
23. Kenneth Andrien, "Economic Crisis, Taxes, and the Quito Insurrection of 1765," Past and Present 129 (1990): 111-12, n. 30
24. Quoted in Tyrer, Historia demográfica y económica, 238
25. Minchom, The People of Quito, 222-32
26. and Anthony McFarlane, "The Rebellion of the Barrios: Urban Insurrection in Bourbon Quito," Hispanic American Historical Review 49 (1989): 283-330
27. Real Academia Española, Diccionario de autoridades (1737; Madrid: Gredos, 1963)
28. Borah, Justice by Insurance, 11-16
29. Luis Martin, Daughters of the Conquistadores (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1983)
30. Popular groups adapted and used elite concepts of honor in their social relations; Richard Boyer, "Honor among Plebeians," in The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America, ed. Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1998), 179-200
31. Steve J. Stern, The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1995)
32. Richard Boyer, Lives of the Bigamists: Marriage, Family, and Community in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1995)
33. and Sarah Chambers, From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender, and Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1780-1854 (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1999)
34. "Pobresa de Vitorio Arujo," 11 Jan. 1791, AN/Q, Pobreza, caja 12
35. Many scholars have addressed this caste versus class debate, among them Patricia Seed, "The Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753," Hispanic American Historical Review 62, no. 4 (1982): 569-606
36. R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1994)
37. and Bruce Castleman, "Social Climbers in a Colonial Mexican City: Individual Mobility within the Sistema de Castas in Orizaba, 1777-1791," Colonial Latin American Review 10, no. 2 (2001): 229-49
38. Frank Salomon, personal communication, 14 Sept. 2000
39. As Sarah Chambers observes for late colonial and early republican Arequipa, subaltern appropriation of honor and merit changed the dominant meaning and use of citizenship, a similar process to that of poverty discussed here. Non-Spanish groups co-opted honor to forward their own claims as respectable vassal/citizens in Arequipa. The self-description of "hombre de bien" was central to plebeians' claims to honor based not on lineage but on social conduct as "good men"; Sarah Chambers, From Subjects to Citizens, 172-77
40. Cynthia Milton and Ben Vinson III, "Counting Heads: Race and Non-Native Tribute Policy in Colonial Spanish America," Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History (Dec. 2002)
41. Stuart B. Schwartz, "Colonial Identities and the Sociedad de Castas," Colonial Latin American Review 4, no. 1 (1995): 185-201
42. Chambers, From Subject to Citizen
43. "Autos de Manuel Selorio vesino de Perucho sobre declaratoria de pobresa," 14 Dec. 1786, AN/Q, Pobreza, caja 8
44. "Expediente de Alejo Mera vecino de Hambato en que pretende declararse de pobre de solemnidad," 25 Jan. 1788, AN/Q, Pobreza, caja 9
45. "Expediente de Antonio Navarro de color pardo en que solicita declaratoria de pobresa," 16 Oct. 1789, AN/Q, Pobreza, caja 10