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On the Cheap: The Baratillo Marketplace and the Shadow Economy of Eighteenth-Century Mexico City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2015

Andrew Konove
Andrew Konove*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at San Antonio San Antonio, Texasandrew.konove@utsa.edu
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Upon leaving office in 1716, the Duke of Linares, the viceroy of New Spain, warned his successor of a particularly vexing issue: the question of what to do about Mexico City's Baratillo marketplace. “There is in the Plaza of Mexico,” he wrote, “a traffic prohibited by law or decree that is so problematic that ending it has been a great challenge for me, being that what is stolen [in the city] is sold there, only disguised.” Hipólito Villarroel, writing his treatise about the decadence of Mexico City more than a half-century later, was no more sparing in his description of the market. He referred to it as the “cave or depository for the thieving committed by artisans, maids, and servants, and, in sum, all the plebeians—Indians, mulattos, and the other castas—that are permitted to inhabit this city.” The market was even the subject of a book-length satirical manuscript, written in 1754. Pedro Anselmo Chreslos Jache's unpublished “Ordenanzas del Baratillo” is a legal code for a world turned upside down, where the mixed-race castas reigned and Spaniards were ostracized, and where “four thousand vagabonds” congregated every day to be instructed by “doctors in the faculty of trickery.”

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Articles
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The Americas , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , pp. 249 - 278
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Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2015 

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References

1. de la Torre Villar, Ernesto, Instrucciones y memorias para los virreyes novohispanos, vol. 2 (Mexico: Porrúa, 1991), p. 776 Google Scholar. Spanish viceroys typically left a formal set of instructions or recommendations for their successors.

2. Villarroel, Hipólito, Enfermedades políticas que padece la capital de esta Nueva España (Mexico: Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 1999), pp. 211–215 Google Scholar.

3. Pedro Anselmo Chreslos Jache, “Ordenanzas del Baratillo,” Archivo Histórico del Museo Nacional de Antropología, Colección Antigua, MS 292, paragraphs 3, 52. A digitized version of the manuscript is available through the website of the Biblioteca Nacional de España. See also Katzew, Ilona, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 56 Google Scholar. Katzew argues that the “Ordenanzas” were likely the first work of satire written in New Spain.

4. On Tepito's oppositional culture, see Mantecón, Ana Rosas and Domínguez, Guadalupe Reyes, Los usos de la identidad barrial: una mirada antropológica a la lucha por la vivienda. Tepito 1970–1984 (Mexico: UAM Iztapalapa, 1993), p. 33 Google Scholar. See also Ayala, S. Héctor Rosales, Casco (Vibrencias en un barrio popular y la neta del Arte Acá) (Cuernavaca, Morelos: UNAM, 1989)Google Scholar, and Participación popular y reconstrucción urbana (Tepito: 1985–1989), (Mexico: UNAM, 1987). Well before these studies were published, Tepito became known to international audiences through Oscar Lewis's 1961 ethnography, The Children of Sanchez, a study of a Mexican family living in a vecindad in Tepito and the basis for the 1979 film of the same name.

5. De la Torre Villar, Instrucciones y memorias, p. 776.

6. Archivo Histórico del Distrito Federal [hereafter AHDF], Ayuntamiento, Rastros y Mercados, vol. 3728, exp. 2, fs. 4–5.

7. On the notion of a “customary tolerance” for the poor, see Arrom, Silvia Marina, Containing the Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774–1871 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 284 Google Scholar. In addition to Arrom, a number of historians have argued that the paternalistic sympathies of the Mexican elite for the poor helped shape urban politics and the application of the law in the late colonial and early national periods. See for example Michael Scardaville, “(Hapsburg) Law and (Bourbon) Order: State Authority, Popular Unrest, and the Criminal Justice System in Bourbon Mexico City,” The Americas 50:4 (April 1994), pp. 501–525, wherein Scardaville argues that royal officials at all levels were expected to show compassion for the poor. Juan Olvera Ramos traces the origins of the paternalistic relationship between market and street vendors and municipal officials in Mexico City to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when petty vendors in the Plaza Mayor began paying rent to the cabildo, rather than to the storeowners who had been their patrons. Ricardo Gamboa Ramírez has noted that municipal officials continued to express paternalistic sentiments toward poor vendors in the first half of the nineteenth century, and that these feelings influenced their enforcement of local market regulations. More recently, Ingrid Bleynat has argued that the specific combination of the ayuntamiento's fiscal needs and the elite's duty of compassion for the poor framed relations between market vendors, the elite, and the ayuntamiento in the last third of the nineteenth century. Ramírez, Gamboa, “Las finanzas municipales de la ciudad de México. 1800–1850,” in La ciudad de México en la primera mitado del siglo XIX, vol. 1, Franyuti, Regina Hernández, ed. (Mexico: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora [hereafter Instituto Mora], 1994), p. 35 Google Scholar; Ramos, Juan Olvera, Los mercados de la Plaza Mayor en la Ciudad de México (Mexico: Cal y Arena, 2007), p. 131 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ingrid Bleynat, “Trading with Power: Mexico City's Markets, 1867–1958” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2013).

8. For example, in 1729, don Antonio Velasco, a member of the Real Audiencia, sold a relatively expensive cloak (12 pesos) to a vendor in the Baratillo. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Real Audiencia, Fiel Ejecutoría, Veedores, Gremios, vol. 3832, exp. 40. Contemporary published accounts also attest to the socioeconomic diversity of the Baratillo's customers. See for example de Viera, Juan, Breve y compendiosa narración de la ciudad de México (Mexico: Instituto Mora, 1992), pp. 32–36 Google Scholar.

9. The ayuntamiento owned all public markets in the city (though not always the land on which they stood) and charged rent to the vendors who sold there. In this article I use ‘cabildo’ to refer to the council of hereditary and elected officials charged with governing the municipality of Mexico, and ‘ayuntamiento’ for the institution of municipal government there.

10. Cope, R. Douglas, “The Marvelous and the Abominable: The Intersection of Formal and Informal Economies in Eighteenth-Century Mexico City,” Diacronie 13:1 (2013), pp. 1–20 Google Scholar.

11. Retail commerce in eighteenth-century Mexico City was a risky business; bankruptcies were common among merchants at all levels. See Kicza, John E., Colonial Entrepreneurs: Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), p. 108 Google Scholar.

12. Pamela Voekel, for example, writes of a “new antagonism between elite and popular cultures” that developed in the late eighteenth century, while Douglas Cope describes the formation of an oppositional, multiracial plebeian subculture in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán countered an earlier thesis that the eighteenth century saw a decline in propriety by showing that the supposed moral crisis stemmed from the Bourbon elite's attempt to fashion a new identity for itself through new regulations on popular behavior after 1750. In a more recent study, Sharon Bailey Glasco argues that Bourbon urban renewal projects in Mexico City in the late eighteenth century “served as a proxy for elite anxieties about . . . socioeconomic realities . . . and the desire to quell those anxieties through a reshaping of plebeian culture.” See Voekel, , “Peeing on the Palace: Bodily Resistance to Bourbon Reforms in Mexico City,” Journal of Historical Sociology 5:2 (June 1992), p. 202 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cope, R. Douglas, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), p. 163 Google Scholar; Albán, Juan Pedro Viqueira, Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, Lipsett-Rivera, Sonia and Ayala, Sergio Rivera, trans. (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1999)Google Scholar; and Glasco, Sharon Bailey, Constructing Mexico City: Colonial Conflicts over Culture, Space, and Authority (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. While Cope emphasizes the divergent views of petty commerce that existed within Mexico City's elite, he nonetheless hews to an interpretation of the Mexico City street as a site with two opposing camps—elite and popular—rather than a place where the poor, middling, and wealthy were connected by a dense web of cross-class alliances and rivalries, as I argue. See Cope, “Marvelous,” pp. 1–20.

14. Recent studies of the late colonial and early national periods by Marie Eileen Francois and Silvia Arrom have helped to challenge this binary. See Francois, , A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and Governance in Mexico City, 1750–1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), pp. 2–3 Google Scholar; and Arrom, Containing the Poor. On the subject of social mobility within Mexico's middle sectors, see von Mentz, Brígida's edited volume, Movilidad social de sectores medios en México: una retrospectiva histórica (siglos XVII al XX) (Mexico: CIESAS, 2003)Google Scholar.

15. On baratillos in colonial Peruvian cities, see Carvacho, René Millar, “Narrativas hagiográficas y representaciones demonológicas. El demonio en los claustros del Perú virreinal. Siglo XVII,” Historia (Santiago) 44:2 (2011), pp. 329–367 Google Scholar.

16. Sánchez, José Nieto, Historia del Rastro (Madrid: Vision Net, 2004), pp. 21, 25, 52Google Scholar. A traveler's account from the mid nineteenth century also mentions a baratillo in Seville—“a place for the sale of marine stores or stolen goods.” Ford, Richard, A hand-book for travellers in Spain and readers at home: describing the country and cities, the natives and their manners, the antiquities, religion, legends, fine arts, literature, sports, and gastronomy: with notices on Spanish history, vol. 1 (London: J. Murray, 1845), p. 282 Google Scholar.

17. Although it was not always capitalized in historical records, I capitalize the name “Baratillo” here to distinguish Mexico City's principal Baratillos, located in the Plaza Mayor, from baratillos in other cities or the smaller, ephemeral baratillos that existed elsewhere in Mexico City.

18. Nieto Sánchez, Historia del Rastro, p. 10. On London's rag fair see Ginsburg, Madeleine, “Rags to Riches: The Second-Hand Clothes Trade 1700–1978,” Costume 14 (1980), pp. 121–135 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Mott, Luiz, “Subsidios a história do pequeno comércio no Brasil,” Revista de História 105 (1976)Google Scholar.

19. Diccionario de gobierno y legislación de la Indias, Archivo Histórico Nacional de España, Consejo de Indias, Códices, L.728 (BAL-BUZ), Imagen 14 (16th–18th C.).

20. de Lizardi, José Joaquín Fernández, El periquillo sarniento (Mexico: Editorial Época, 1986), pp. 151, 248, 273Google Scholar.

21. The exceptions are Ramos, Jorge Olvera's work, including a chapter in his book, Los mercados de la Plaza Mayor en la Ciudad de México (Mexico: Cal y Arena, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his essay, “El Baratillo de la Plaza Mayor: la crítica ilustrada al comercio tradicional,” in El impacto de las reformas borbónicas en la estructura de las ciudades. Un enfoque, Sonia Lombardo de Ruíz, ed. (Mexico: Gobierno de la Ciudad de México, 2000), pp. 381–392. The Baratillo also receives brief attention in Katzew, Casta Painting, p. 56; Cope, Limits, pp. 37, 41, 141; and Haslip-Viera, Gabriel, Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 1692–1810 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999), pp. 40–41 Google Scholar.

22. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Hacienda, Propios y Acreedores, vol. 2230, exp. 12, fs. 74v-75. Chreslos Jache makes the same accusations in “Ordenanzas del Baratillo,” paragraphs 54 and 60.

23. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Rastros y Mercados, vol. 3728, exp. 4, fs. 115–116v. A 1722 dispute between a Spanish man and an Indian woman over the rights to a clothing stand provides further evidence of the Baratillo's racial diversity. Among the witnesses in the case were a Spanish widow, an Indian hatmaker, a Spanish minter, and the Indian cacique of the parcialidad (town section) San Jus, who was married to a woman with the surname Moctezuma. See AHDF, Hacienda, Propios y Acreedores, vol. 2230, exp. 10.

24. Although hard data on the trade is hard to come by, most references to fruit and vegetable sellers, as well as to vendors of prepared foods such as tortillas, atole, and chía, a popular drink, show that they were typically women. See Cope, “Marvelous,” pp. 14–15.

25. For a gendered analysis of street vending under the Porfiriato, see Porter, Susie S., “‘And That It Is Custom Makes It Law’: Class Conflict and Gender Ideology in the Public Sphere, 1880–1910,” Social Science History 24:1 (Spring 2000), pp. 111–148 Google Scholar. On women's role in the urban economy of colonial Potosí, see Mangan, Jane, Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy in Colonial Potosí (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs, p. 101.

27. Ibid., pp. 101–102, 107, 4.

28. Ibid., p. 112.

29. Francois, Culture of Everyday Credit, p. 49.

30. de Solórzano y Pereyra, Juan, Política indiana, Book 6, chapt. 14, (Madrid: Atlas, 1972), p. 63 Google Scholar, quoted in del Valle Pavón, Guillermina, “El régimen de privilegios de la Universidad de Mercaderes de la ciudad de México,” in Cuerpo político y pluralidad de derechos: los privilegios de las corporaciones novohispanas, Rojas, Beatriz, ed. (Mexico: CIDE, 2007), p. 165 Google Scholar.

31. Viera, Breve y compendiosa narración, pp. 32–35.

32. AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, caja 5979, exp. 72; AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, caja 1321, exp. 24. Owners of the cajones typically signed three-month leases for 50 pesos with the ayuntamiento.

33. Archivo General de Notarías del Distrito Federal, Acervo Histórico, Not. 136: Miguel de Castro Cid, vol. 842bis; AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, caja 4520, exp. 35.

34. AGN, Intestados, vol. 32, exps. 10–11.

35. AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, caja 4520, exp. 35.

36. A man described only as “don Valentín” paid 13 reales per week for two puestos in the Baratillo in 1782. In New Spain, one peso was worth eight reales. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Hacienda, Propios: Parián, vol. 2237, exp. 28; AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Fincas: Mercados, vol. 1100, exps. 3, 9. Unfortunately, there do not appear to be any comprehensive lists of either rental prices or the values of individual businesses in the Baratillo during the colonial period.

37. AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, caja 5610, exp. 52.

38. Viera, Breve y compendiosa narración, pp. 32–33.

39. AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 5, exps. 1–2.

40. Medrano, Carlos Rubén Ruiz, El gremio de plateros en Nueva España (San Luis Potosí: El Colegio de San Luis, 2001), pp. 15–16 Google Scholar.

41. AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 5, exp. 1, f. 16. The tianguis was a rotating weekly market—a pre-Hispanic tradition that continues to this day in Mexico.

42. AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 5, exp. 2, f. 15v. The Monte de Piedad was established to reign in the excesses of private pawnshops. See Francois, Culture of Everyday Credit, p. 70. See also Siles, Esperanza Cabrera and Escandón, Patricia, Historia del Nacional Monte de Piedad, 1775–1993 (Mexico: Nacional Monte de Piedad, 1993)Google Scholar.

43. Ruiz Medrano, El gremio de plateros, pp. 19, 57–58.

44. It is important to note that there is no consensus on the definition of the “informal economy.” One interpretation, offered by Keith Hart, who coined the term, focuses on the nature of the firm and its source of labor—“whether or not labor is recruited on a permanent and regular basis for fixed rewards”—that is, wage versus non-wage labor. Other authors focus on the nature of regulation—whether the activities in question are subject to government oversight and tax collection. See Hart, Keith, “Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 11:1 (1973), pp. 61–89 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Guha-Khasnobis, Basudeb, Kanbur, Ravi, and Ostrom, Elinor, “Beyond Formality and Informality,” in Linking the Formal and Informal Economies: Concepts and Policies, Guha-Khasnobis, Kanbur, and Ostrom, eds. (Oxford Scholarship Online, September 2006), p. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. Bromley, Ray, “Introduction: The Urban Informal Sector: Why Is It Worth Discussing?” World Development 6:9/10 (1978), p. 1033 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. See Cope, “Marvelous,” p. 9.

47. On stolen clothing found in the Baratillo, see for example AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, caja 148, exp. 43 (1820). On the Baratillo's role in promoting dangerous ideas, see the 1768 Inquisition case against Pedro Joseph Velarde, a Spanish poet accused of writing and selling a “seditious and satirical” book that inquisitors claimed included libelous statements about the expulsion of the Jesuits. AGN, Inquisición, vol. 1043, exp. 10. On yet another category of crime, see the 1751 Inquisition case against María del Castillo, a mestiza vendor in the Baratillo Chico, for witchcraft. AGN, Inquisición, vol. 993, exp. 2.

48. de Soto, Hernando makes this distinction in The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World, Abbott, June, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 11 Google Scholar. Keith Hart differentiates between “illegitimacy” and “illegality.” See Hart, “Informal Income,” p. 69.

49. Of course, some scholars have been skeptical about the concept's utility for modern societies as well, and those doubts have existed ever since the terms “informal economy” and “informal sector” were coined in the 1970s. See for example Breman, Jan, “A Dualistic Labor System? A Critique of the ‘Informal Sector’ Concept: I: The Informal Sector,” Economic and Political Weekly 11:48 (November 1976), pp. 1870–1876 Google Scholar. In the past two decades, however, the concept and the term have enjoyed widespread adoption in both academic and trade literatures.

50. AGN, Cédulas, Duplicados, vol. D15, exp. 168, f. 127. The alcabala was a sales tax levied on a good each time it changed hands. Between 1644 and 1661 and between 1673 and 1753, the Mexico City Consulado collected the alcabala on behalf of the Crown. It generally did not collect the alcabala from petty merchants in the capital—probably because the expense involved outweighed the benefits, but also perhaps because it helped the guild engender goodwill amongst the occupants of the Plaza Mayor. See Smith, Robert Sidney, “Sales Tax in New Spain, 1575–1700,” Hispanic American Historical Review 28:1 (February 1948), pp. 23–24 Google Scholar. In general, the only fees baratilleros paid to the government, which they sometimes referred to as taxes, were the rents they paid to the ayuntamiento.

51. Ibid.; AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Rastros y Mercados, vol. 3728, exps. 2, 4. The 1635 decree does not appear to have survived but is referenced in AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Rastros y Mercados, vol. 3728, exp. 2 (1688).

52. Aguirre, Jorge González Angulo, Artesanado y ciudad a finales del siglo XVIII (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1983), pp. 45–46 Google Scholar.

53. Of particular concern to colonial authorities was that Spanish, mestizo, and African middlemen would intercept Indian producers on their way to market, seizing their goods. Beginning as early as the 1520s, Spaniards were also forbidden to buy from Indians for the purpose of reselling. See Gibson, Charles, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1810 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), p. 360 Google Scholar. See also R. Douglas Cope, “The Underground Economy in Eighteenth-Century Mexico City,” presented at the Boston Area Latin American History Workshop, David Rockefeller Center, Harvard University, March 2006, for an expanded discussion of regatonería.

54. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs, p. 209.

55. Cope, “Underground Economy,” and Limits, pp. 108–109; Aguirre, Jorge González Angulo, “Los gremios de artesanos y la estructura urbana,” in Ciudad de México: Ensayo de construcción de una historia, Toscana, Alejandra Moreno, ed. (Mexico: SEP and INAH, 1978), pp. 25–36 Google Scholar. In the late eighteenth century, skilled workers made between four reales and one peso per day, while unskilled workers made two to four reales. Francois, Culture of Everyday Credit, p. 24.

56. Most guilds had two veedores, who were chosen by the masters of that guild. Those elections were overseen by the cabildo. Angulo Aguirre, Artesanado y ciudad, p. 36.

57. The tribunal of the Fiel Ejecutoría served as the municipal consumer protection authority, setting prices for basic staples and investigating accusations of fraud. The tribunal was comprised by Mexico City's corregidor, or local magistrate, and two elected regidores, members of the Cabildo. In the case of conviction, the corregidor determined the sentence, while the regidores were responsible for visiting commercial establishments and determining whether they were conforming to the regulations. Appeals of fiel ejecutoría verdicts went first to the procurador general, the link between the municipal and viceregal governments, and then to either the cabildo or the Real Audiencia, depending on the value of the merchandise involved. One of the regidores was named juez de gremios and was responsible for maintaining contact with the veedores. See Martha Leticia Espinoza Peregrino's exhaustively researched undergraduate thesis, “El Tribunal de Fiel Ejecutoría de la Ciudad de México, 1724–1790. El control del Cabildo en el comercio urbano,” (Lic. thesis, Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2002), pp. 64–65, 122.

58. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Real Audiencia, Fiel Ejecutoría, Veedores, Gremios, vol. 3832, exp. 3, f. 6.

59. AGN, Indios, vol. 12, exp. 72, f. 201.

60. See Martin, Norman F., “La desnudez en la Nueva España del siglo XVIII,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 29 (1972), p. 275 Google Scholar.

61. AGN, Reales Cédulas Duplicadas, vol. D45, exp. 159, fs. 302–302v.

62. Cabildos consisted of alcaldes and regidores, both of which were responsible for municipal administration. Alcaldes, however, also served as judges in local civil and criminal courts, and thus had greater authority (and prestige) than regidores. The corregidor was the local magistrate, a royal employee.

63. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Real Audiencia, Fiel Ejecutoría, Veedores, Gremios, vol. 3832, exp. 6, f. 1.

64. Ibid., fs. 1–1v.

65. Ibid., f. 1v. The tension between tailors and clothing vendors appears to have been a largely internecine struggle that took place within the tailor guild. Juan Hernández Chapas, caught selling new clothing in the Plaza del Volador, adjacent to the Plaza Mayor, in 1707, was a master in the guild, as was Miguel Samudio, at least by the end of his appeal. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Real Audiencia, Fiel Ejecutoría, Veedores, Gremios, vol. 3832, exps. 3, 4.

66. The trope of el bien común, designated alternatively as la causa pública, or el bien público, appears throughout colonial and national-era sources involving petty commerce, and was employed by street vendors, merchants, and government officials with great frequency. This rhetoric speaks to the perseverance of traditional Hispanic understandings of justice, compassion for the poor, and consensus politics. For a deeper examination of this topic, see R. Douglas Cope, “Between Liberty and Constraint: Government Regulation of Petty Commerce in Mexico City, 1700–1780,” presented at the Latin American Studies Association Meeting, Washington, D.C., September 2001.

67. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Real Audiencia, Fiel Ejecutoría, Veedores, Gremios, vol. 3832, exp. 3, fs. 4, 14v.

68. Ibid., fs. 22–23.

69. Yale University, Sterling Memorial Library, Mexico Collection HM 248, Part II, 1:35:36. Here the word sangrada appears to refer to the process by which two pieces that had been sewn together are separated—in short, another means of illegally altering clothing from its original state. See Real Academia Española, Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, 1803), pp. 774, 2Google Scholar.

70. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Real Audiencia, Fiel Ejecutoría, Veedores, Gremios, vol. 3832, exp. 42.

71. Lizardi, El periquillo sarniento, p. 274.

72. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Real Audiencia, Fiel Ejecutoría, Veedores, Gremios, vol. 3832, exp. 42.

73. Ibid., exp. 14.

74. Ibid., exp. 50.

75. Ibid., exp. 42.

76. Ibid., exp. 3, fs. 5–5v.

77. On vendors’ use of public health discourse, see AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Rastros y Mercados, vol. 3730, exp. 161 (1842).

78. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Real Audiencia, Fiel Ejecutoría, Veedores, Gremios, vol. 3832, exp. 3, f. 26.

79. See ibid., exp. 5, for another case in which Núñez Villavicencio ruled in favor of a ropero. Ramírez, the co-author of the baratilleros’ petition to change the ordinances regarding new clothing sales, had his merchandise confiscated again in 1710 for not bearing the sello, or stamp of authenticity, that the guild gave to new clothes. Nuñez Villavicencio again sided with the ropero, forcing the overseer to return the clothes to Ramírez. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Real Audiencia, Fiel Ejecutoría, Veedores, Gremios, vol. 3832, exp. 9.

80. Sonia Pérez Toledo, for example, begins her study of artisan guilds’ transformations in 1780. Felipe Castro Gutiérrez argues that the guild system entered into crisis following the 1774 publication of Pedro Rodríguez, Conde de Campomanes's Discurso sobre el fomento de la industria popular, though he finds that structural problems in the guilds began slightly earlier. See Toledo, Pérez, Los hijos del trabajo: los artesanos de la ciudad de México, 1780–1853 (Mexico: Colegio de México; UAM Iztapalapa, 1996)Google Scholar; and Gutiérrez, Castro, La extinción de la artesanía gremial (Mexico: UNAM, 1986), p. 126 Google Scholar.

81. Pérez Toledo, Los hijos del trabajo, pp. 53–54. Iñigo García-Bryce argues that artisans in Lima held onto their middling status well into the nineteenth century, occupying a largely overlooked middle strata of society that included lawyers, doctors, shopkeepers, and notaries. See García-Bryce, , Crafting the Republic: Lima's Artisans and Nation Building in Peru, 1821–1879 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004), p. 11 Google Scholar.

82. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Hacienda, Propios y Acreedores, vol. 2230, exp. 7, fs. 3–3v.

83. Ibid., exp. 12, f. 1.

84. Dios Anzures echoes Bacilio de Ribera in insisting that baratilleros had no right to sell these goods, but I have not found any laws explicitly prohibiting them from doing so.

85. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Hacienda, Propios y Acreedores, vol. 2230, exp. 12, fs. 1–3v.

86. Ibid., f. 75.

87. Ibid., f. 74.

88. Ibid., fs. 3–5.

89. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Hacienda, Propios y Acreedores, vol. 2230, exp. 12, fs. 12–18v contains examples of such licenses. On the Consulado's administration of the alcabala, see Brading, David, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico 1763–1810 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 113 Google Scholar. At one time, the Crown required all merchants, regardless of stature, to obtain permits to sell in public plazas. For petty vendors, this practice came to an end in 1609 when the king granted the Mexico City ayuntamiento the right to assign specific spaces for vendors to sell and to charge them rent for that privilege. For examples of the permits given to indigenous vendors, see AGN, General de Parte, vol. 1, exp. 479, f. 108v (1579); Gen. de Parte, vol. 2, exp. 287, f. 61v (1579); and Gen. de Parte, vol. 6, exp. 327, f. 125v (1602). On the discontinuation of permits for petty vending, see AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Cédulas y Reales Órdenes, vol. 2977, exp. 10. The practice continued, however, for ambulatory vendors. See for example AGN, Reales Cédulas Duplicadas, vol. D35, exp. 238 (1644), and vol. D30, exp. 360 (1675).

90. Ibid., fs. 64v-65.

91. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Hacienda, Propios y Acreedores, vol. 2230, exp. 12, fs. 22–25. Dios Anzures also noted that “selling by hand” was illegal in Castille (f. 4).

92. Ibid., f. 71.

93. Ibid., f. 78v.

94. Ibid., fs. 78–78v.

95. AHDF, Cédulas y Reales Órdenes, vol. 2977, exp. 13, fs. 2–2v. The term zaramullo was a pejorative synonym for baratillero.

96. Unfortunately, no register of the Consulado membership exists for the 1720s. Kicza writes that membership in the Consulado hovered around 200; Del Valle finds the average to be lower, around 130 merchants, though it fluctuated over time. For the Consulado's membership requirements, see Ordenanzas del Consulado de México. Universidad de mercaderes de la Nueva España, confirmadas por el Rey en el año de 1607, impresas, por tercera vez en 1816. México, located in AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, caja 5059, exp. 74; Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs, pp. 51, 107–108; and Del Valle Pavón, “El régimen de privilegios,” p. 163.

97. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs, pp. 107–108.

98. Louisa Schell Hoberman found that merchants were unable to ascend to the highest ranks of government in New Spain, as laws prohibiting public officeholders from operating businesses and traditional Hispanic biases against merchants limited mercantile elites to the purchasable mid- and lower-level positions. Nonetheless, because of their extensive financial dealings with the colonial government—including their long-term control over the alcabala tax farm and their loans to the Crown—merchants did expect to have a say in any legislation that affected their economic interests, and enjoyed the right to an official solicitor who represented them before royal authorities. See Hoberman, , Mexico's Merchant Elite, 1590–1660: Silver, State, and Society (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), pp. 156 Google Scholar; and Del Valle Pavón, “El regimen de privilegios,” p. 168.

99. We will recall that the tailor Miguel Samudio sold 80 pesos of clothing—a hefty sum— to an itinerant merchant in a single transaction and that Fianca's two stands were worth about 25,000 pesos. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Real Audiencia, Fiel Ejecutoría, Veedores, Gremios, vol. 3832, exp. 3; AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, caja 4520, exp. 35.

100. See for example AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Hacienda, Propios y Acreedores, vol. 2230, exp. 7; and AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Real Audiencia, Fiel Ejecutoría, Veedores, Gremios, vol. 3832, exp. 50. Kicza notes that by the late colonial period as much as one third of the adult male population in Mexico City had adopted the term “don” and many mixed-race and indigenous women used its feminine equivalent. Sarah Chambers observes a similar trend in late colonial Arequipa, Peru, which she argues was indicative of wider equalizing tendencies in the late colonial and early national periods. See Kicza, , “The Great Families of Mexico: Elite Maintenance and Business Practices in Late Colonial Mexico City,” Hispanic American Historical Review 62:3 (August 1982), p. 431 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chambers, Sarah, From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender, and Politics in Arequipa, Peru (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), pp. 163–164 Google Scholar. Still, not every stand owner is referred to as ‘don,’ suggesting that the title was not meaningless, and that some of these men possessed a higher social status than others.

101. Francois, Culture of Everyday Credit, p. 25.

102. Brading, Miners and Merchants, p. 211. On the role of risk in Spanish overseas trade, see Baskes, Jeremy, Staying Afloat: Risk and Uncertainty in Spanish Atlantic World Trade, 1760–1820 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Baskes argues that a number of institutions—among them the fleet system and insurance—existed in the late eighteenth century to minimize risk for merchants.

103. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs, pp. 107–108.

104. See Cope, Limits, chapt. 6; and Mangan, Trading Roles, chapt. 5.

105. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs, p. 265; Grijalva, Manuel Miño, Censo de población de la Ciudad de México, 1790 (Mexico: Colegio de México, 2003)Google Scholar.

106. Francois, Culture of Everyday Credit, pp. 52–53.

107. AGN, Cédulas, vol. 22, exp. 73, f. 2.

108. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Hacienda, Propios y Acreedores, vol. 2230, exp. 12.

109. Ibid.

110. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Rastros y Mercados, vol. 3728, exp. 2, f. 19.

111. Ibid., f. 20.

112. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Hacienda, Propios y Acreedores, vol. 2230, exp. 7. The vendors of the Baratillo also operated a credit system among themselves. In the 1730 case against don Santiago Roque, who administered a stand that sold paño, a course woolen cloth, several witnesses testified that the clothing sellers of the Plaza Mayor, when they did not have enough money to buy the cloth they needed, would pawn their clothes to Roque in exchange for fabric. Once they sold the clothes they had made from that cloth, they would buy back the clothes they had left as collateral. See AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Real Audiencia, Fiel Ejecutoría, Veedores, Gremios, vol. 3832, exp. 46.

113. De la Torre Villar, Instrucciones, p. 776.

114. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Hacienda, Propios y Acreedores, vol. 2230, exp. 12, fs. 74–74v.

115. Recall that in the period during which the Consulado operated the tax farm in Mexico (1644–1661 and 1673–1753), it generally did not collect the alcabala from petty merchants in the capital. Smith, “Sales Tax in New Spain.”

116. AGN, Archivo Histórico de Hacienda [hereafter AHH], vol. 550, exp. 53, no pagination. For additional discussion of this episode, see Cope, “Underground Economy.”

117. AGN, AHH, vol. 550, exp. 54, fs. 1v-2.

118. Ibid., exp. 53.

119. The Consulado does not appear to have taken issue with the Baratillo until the passage of new legislation in 1773 granting fueros (specific corporate privileges), to all members of the Regimiento Urbano del Comercio, a militia funded in part by the Consulado and charged with protecting urban businesses,. The fuero conferred an elevated social status to those who held it, and meant that its officers would be tried in military, rather than civil or criminal courts. The import merchants, who had previously paid their employees to serve in their place (any person who self-identified as a “comerciante” in the capital was required to serve), were infuriated by the possibility that pulperos or even baratilleros would receive military privileges that they did not enjoy themselves. See AGN, Indiferente de Guerra, vol. 60B; and Archer, Christon I., El ejército en el México borbónico (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1983), pp. 218–219 Google Scholar. The fuero was revoked in 1798. AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, caja 4130, exp. 24

120. Pazos, María Luisa Pazos, El Ayuntamiento de la ciudad de México en el siglo XVII: continuidad institucional y cambio social (Seville: Diputación Provincial de Sevilla, 1999), pp. 186–187 Google Scholar. See also Anna, Timothy E., “The Finances of Mexico City during the War of Independence,” Journal of Latin American Studies 4:1 (May 1972), pp. 57–59 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

121. The city's total income in 1791 was 148,058 pesos. The Parián contributed 25,448 pesos, or slightly more than 17 percent. Colonial-era governments reported income from the Plaza Mayor markets using different methods, so it is difficult to plot the Baratillo's fiscal contributions over time. The line in the 1791 budget that includes the Baratillo reads “Puestos del centro del Baratillo y Plaza Mayor.” In 1791, Viceroy Revillagigedo II had begun the process of removing the market stands from the Plaza Mayor, so the 7,146 pesos would have come almost entirely from the Baratillo Grande. The figure thus likely underreports the total rent the city was collecting from the two Baratillos in this era. See AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, caja 629, exp. 3.

122. Pazos writes that the viceroy Duke of Albuquerque struck a deal with Mexico City's cabildo in 1658 to provide it with a small percentage of sales from the royal pulque monopoly in exchange for eliminating the Baratillo, but the arrangement lasted for only a decade. See Pazos, El Ayuntamiento, p. 175.

123. AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, Caja 5093, exp. 2, fs. 32–32v.

124. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Rastros y Mercados, vol. 3728, exp. 11.

125. See Voekel, “Peeing on the Palace”; Viqueira Albán, Propriety and Permissiveness; and Glasco, Constructing Mexico City. Sites of popular sociability that received increased scrutiny and restrictions under the Bourbons included pulquerías, ball games, and festivals. Public works projects included installing cobblestones, sidewalks, street lights, and drainage systems.

126. For example, in 1792, the Crown demanded that Revillagigedo immediately cease his ambitious street-paving project because it had run so over budget. See de Tagle, Ernesto Sánchez, “La remodelación urbana de la ciudad de México en el siglo XVIII: una crítica de los supuestos,” Tiempos de América, 5–6 (2000), pp. 12–14 Google Scholar.

127. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Historia: Juicio de Residencia del Virrey Revillagigedo, vol. 2289, exp. 1, fs. 115, 147.

128. Initially, the stands of the Baratillo Grande were allowed to remain in the patio of the Parián, but by 1795, all petty vendors had been removed from that area as well. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Rastros y Mercados, vol. 3728, exp. 34; AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Rastros y Mercados, vol. 3728, exp. 25.

129. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Historia: Juicio de Residencia del Virrey Revillagigedo, vol. 2289, exp. 1, fs. 73, 115, 147.

130. AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, caja 5093, exp. 2.