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Cloth and Silver: Pawning and Material Life in Mexico City at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Marie Francois
Marie Francois*
Affiliation:
Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama
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Extract

For most residents of Mexico City at the turn of the nineteenth century, daily life was cash poor. Homemakers with servants or without, merchants and artisans, carpenters and domestic servants all turned to pawnshops to finance routine household, business and recreational needs, some on a daily basis. At the end of the colonial period and in the first decades of independent republican rule, residents from the lower and intermediate ranks of the city commonly raised cash by securing loans with possessions as collateral, leaving clothing, tools, and jewels temporarily with pawnbrokers. Based on more than 8,000 transactions culled from pawnshop records from the 1780s to the 1820s, this article argues that pawning material goods served to alleviate economic and other pressures at the household level.

It was mostly women managing households who provided for dependents and/or maintained class and ethnic identities through creative financing strategies that depended on regular use of petty credit mechanisms. Archival documents and literary sources suggest that there were fundamental continuities in this material history of Mexico City from the last decades of the colonial period well into the decades after Independence, which was achieved in 1821. Material goods continued to serve as collateral for small loans throughout the nineteenth century. Pawning was a regular strategy used by many urban residents to negotiate the colonial and post-colonial political economy as well as cultural hierarchies. Petty credit secured by women helped individuals and families steady their precarious foothold on the social ladder of hierarchy. While pawning could allow some to maintain their status or even ascend the ladder, for most people collateral credit cushioned (or simply prolonged) the slip down.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 60 , Issue 3: Special Issue on Material Culture , January 2004 , pp. 325 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2004

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References

1 This phenomenon was not restricted to urban areas, but rather was endemic throughout New Spain in the late colonial period. Stein, Stanley J., “Tending the Store: Trade and Silver at the Real de Huautla, 1778–1781,” Hispanic American Historical Review 77:3 (1977), pp. 377–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Romano, Ruggiero, Monedas, Submonedas y circulación monetaria en la economía de México (México: Fondo de Cultural Econòmica, Fideicomiso Historia de las Américas, 1998).Google Scholar

2 The database of 8,488 pawning transactions consists of two blocks. The smaller block, which consists of 3,093 transactions, is used most extensively in this article because the pawned item and loan value is known, with 1,057 transactions at the Monte de Piedad in the first quarter of 1802, and 2,036 transactions from 30 retail pawnshop inventories between 1787 and 1825. See Appendix A for a breakdown of the pawned goods in this block of data. The other block consists of the complete records of sales at the Monte de Piedad in 1824 and 1826, or 5,395 transactions, for which the pawned items are not identified. All the Monte de Piedad transactions in the database include the full name of the client, while the retail inventories might list only a first name, only a last name, only a nickname, or simply “duda” to identify the client. The 1802 Monte de Piedad transactions list the loan value, as well as the sale value for the less than one percent of the goods that were sold instead of being redeemed by their owners. The 1824 and 1826 Monte de Piedad transactions include the sale value, and identify how much of that amount was repaid to the institution, and how much was to be turned over to the good's owner.

3 For discussion of pawning as central to seventeenth-century daily life, see Cope, R. Douglas, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720 (Madison: Univere sity of Wisconsin Press, 1994), pp. 110–112.Google Scholar For the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see Francois, Marie, “Prendas and Pulperias: The Fabric of the Neighborhood Credit Business in Mexico City, 1780s–1830s,” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 20 (1999), pp. 67–106.Google Scholar On the meanings of material objects in Latin America, see Bauer, Arnold J., Goods, Power, History: Latin America's Material Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001),Google Scholar and Van Young, Eric, “Material Life,” in Hobermann, Louisa Schell and Socolow, Susan Migden, eds., The Countryside in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), pp. 49–74.Google Scholar For theoretical discussions, see Douglas, Mary and Isherwood, Baron, The World of Goods (New York, Basic Books, 1968)Google Scholar; and Dant, Tim, Material Culture in the Social World: Values, Activities, Lifestyles (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

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6 For discussions about the immigrant men involved in the petty retail and pawning trade, see Kicza, John E., Colonial Entrepreneurs: Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983)Google Scholar; and Kinsbruner, Jay, Petty Capitalism in Spanish America: The Pulperos of Puebla, Mexico City, Caracas, and Buenos Aires (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987).Google Scholar Women owned only 10 percent of pulperías in 1781 and 1 percent of all large retail businesses in 1815. Women certainly ran many of the smallest retail businesses in Mexico City at the turn of the nineteenth century (in the 1840s 25 percent of small stores called tendajones were owned by women), and they probably engaged in pawning transactions with their customers; these women were not present in the documents I found, and there-fore are not captured by my sample. See Francois, , “Prendas and Pulperías,” pp. 103–105.Google Scholar

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10 Reglamento para el gobierno y dirección de las tiendas de pulpería (México: Mariano de Zuñiga y Ontiveros, 1810). Articulo 8. For the earlier regulations, see “Ordenanzas para el Regimen, y Goveirno de los Tenderos y Tiendas de Pulpería, dadas por la Muy Noble, Leal, Insigne, e Imperial Ciudad de Mexico, Cabeza de los Reynos, y Provincias de esta Nueva-Espana,” December 3, 1758; reproduced in Muñoz, Miguel L., Tlacos y Pilones: La Moneda del Pueblo de México (México: Fomento Cultural Banamex, A.C., 1976).Google Scholar For references to the needy poor, see AGN Bandos, vol. 7, exp. 51, f. 188. Viceroy Revillagigedo opens a bando regulating pawning practices in pulperías with, “Being that pawning goods is the means that the most miserable people use to alleviate their most needy moments. …” Bando, 19 enero, 1790.

11 Archivo General de la Nación, Consulado, vol., 292, exp. 4, no. 3, fs. 1-6v; CONDUMEX, Fondo CDLV-2, 1796; Archivo Histórico de la Nacional Monte de Piedad [hereafter AHNMP], Contaduria, Empeños en Contaduria, 1802.

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15 Scardaville has suggested that those with jobs were more likely to be working only three-day work weeks, earning insufficient income to meet basic needs. Scardaville, Michael, “Crime and the Urban Poor: Mexico City in the Late Colonial Period” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida, 1977), pp. 67–68.Google Scholar 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. Lopez Rosado, Diego G., Curso de historia económica de México (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1963), p. 243 Google Scholar

16 Scardaville, , “Crime and the Urban Poor,” p. 68.Google Scholar The royal cigar factory was the single largest employer in Mexico City, many of them women and girls, whose employment allowed the factory to reduce wages over time. In 1795, over 3,000 women represented 45 percent of the work force. In 1809, almost 4,000 women made up 71 percent of the work force. Deans-Smith, Susan, Bureaucrats Planters and Workers: The Making of the Tobacco Monopoly in Bourbon Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), pp. 176,Google Scholar 212.

17 Peña, García, “El impacto,” p. 97 Google Scholar; Anna, Timothy, The Fall of the Royal Government in Mexico City (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), pp. 23–24.Google Scholar

18 This large “catch-all” category of pawned goods is not included in the transaction database used for this study because there is no information available on the individual pawning client, the pawned good, or the exact amount loaned.

19 Peña, García, “El impacto,” p. 103.Google Scholar

20 See Francois, , “Prendas and Pulperías,” pp. 78–84 Google Scholar for discussion of gender identification through names and nicknames. Women in the retail pawning database were less likely to pawn at general stores (52 percent) and wine shops (26 percent). Francois, , “Prendas and Pulperías,” p. 81.Google Scholar

21 See Francois, “Prendas and Pulperías,” for further analysis of “La Robago” and the frequency of pawning generally. “La Robago” is listed in an inventory of pawned goods whose redemption time had passed and were up for sale. As such, this may be just a fraction of the goods over four reales that La Robogo pawned at this store. CONDUMEX, Fondo CDLV-2, 1796.

22 Arrom, , The Women, p. 65 Google Scholar; Arrom, Silvia, “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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Arrom, , The Women, pp. 186–198 Google Scholar; Tuñon, , El album, vol. 3, pp. 39–49 Google Scholar; Pescador, Juan Javier, “Vanishing Woman; Female Migration and Ethnic Identity in Late-Colonial Mexico City,” Ethnohistory 42:4 (1995), pp. 617–626.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Klein, Herbert J., “The Demographic Structure of Mexico City in 1811,” Journal of Urban History, 23, 1 (1996): 66–94 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kuznesof, Elizabeth Anne, “Gender Ideology, Race, and Female-Headed Households in Urban Mexico, 1750–1850,” pp. 149–170 Google Scholar in Uribe-Uran, Victor M., State and Society in Spanish America During the Age of Revolution (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2001)Google Scholar; Arrom, , The Women, p. 120,Google Scholar 132.

25 Kicza, John E., “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 VAM-A, 2(1981), pp. 39–59.Google Scholar

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27 Lavrin, Asunción, “Lo femenino: Women in Colonial Historical Sources,” in Cevallos-Candau, Francisco, Cole, Jeffrey A., Scott, Nina M. and Suárez-Araúz, Nicomedes, eds., Coded Encounters: Writing, Gender, and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), p. 61.Google Scholar On goods in dowries, see Aizpuru, Pilar Gonzalbo, Las mujeres en la nueva españa: Educación y vida cotidiana (México: El Colegio de México, 1987), p. 204 Google Scholar; de la Barca, Frances Calderón, Life in Mexico. 1843. Reprint (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1954), p. 179.Google Scholar Other dowry items that showed up in pawnshops were paintings, and, increasingly as the century progressed, “ajuares,” which generally were furniture. Villela, , El Monte, p. 26.Google Scholar

28 For a case of a mistress who received jewels from the priest who seduced her and then pawned them to sustain herself, see Armendares, Teresa Lonzano, “El gran seductor. O de cómo pueden disimularse los vicios de una comunidad doméstica,” Estudios de Historia Novohispana, 17 (1997), pp. 137–150.Google Scholar

29 Thompson, Waddy, Recollection of Mexico, 1846,Google Scholar cited in Tuñon, , El album, vol. 3, p. 235 Google Scholar; 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.

30 CONDUMEX, Fondo CDLV-2, 1796.

31 Viceroy Bucareli told Charles III that there would be changes made to the Madrid Monte de Piedad model used as a basis for the New Spain Monte de Piedad, “to account for the circumstances in New Spain and the customs of the ‘naturales.’” Bucareli expected that some of the loans would be for more than a thousand pesos, implying that part of the local circumstances was the impoverishment of elites. Manuel Romero de Terreros, El Conde de Regla: Creso de la Nueva España (México: Ediciones Xochitl, 1943), pp. 123-125. A major difference between the two Montes was that the Madrid institution set a maximum instead of a minimum loan amount, while the Mexico City Monte established a minimum loan of two pesos with no maximum. For the statutes of the Madrid Monte de Piedad, see Yepes, José Lopez, Historia de Los Montes de Piedad en España: El Monte de Piedad de Madrid en el Siglo XVIII, Tomo II: Documentación (Madrid: Confederacion Española de Cajas de Ahorros, 1971), pp. 160–180.Google Scholar The loan maximum of 100 doblones is in Statute 16.

32 The words in Spanish are “gente pobre y vulgar” and “pecaminosa y usuraria.” AGN Montepío, vol. 17, exp. 13, f. 254.

33 In Spanish, “los miserables socorridos.” AGN Montepío, vol. 17, exp. 13, fs. 243, 345.

34 In Spanish, “su lastimosa decadencia.” AGN Montepío, vol. 17, exp. 13, f. 281v. The government in the end approved a rate hike only for those clients whose goods were sold at auction.

35 The average monthly volume for 1802 was 2,419 transactions, while the volume of business for 1815 was estimated at over 4,000 pledges a month. AHNMP, Contaduria, Empeños en Contaduria, Caja 1, vols. 1–3; caja 2, vols. 4–6; caja 3, vols. 7-9, caja 4, vols. 10–12; AGN Montepíos, vol. 17, exp. 13, f. 2167v. There was no armed combat during the Independence wars that took place within Mexico City, perhaps contributing to the Monte de Piedad's continuous operation across the political watershed. There were some changes in governance, with it coming under the authority of the new ministry of Gobernación instead of the Real Hacienda.

36 The increase in the 1820s was not uniform. Using the 1821 figures as a baseline, the 1822 volume was 12 percent higher, the 1823 volume was 32 percent higher, the 1824 volume was 19 percent higher, and the 1825 volume was 26 percent higher. Though the connection between the two is not clear, it is interesting that the remarkable near doubling of the number of transactions from 1841 to 1842 occurred as the first law regulating casas de empeño was promulgated.

37 In 1802, less than 1 percent of the goods pawned were left beyond their pledge term and sold at auction. AHNMP, Contaduria, Empeños en Contaduria, Caja 1, vols. 1–3; caja 2, vols. 4–6; caja 3, vols. 7–9, caja 4, vols. 10–12.

38 For example, José Camacho, who owned a store on the Plazuela de San Juan, pawned a linen rebozo and petticoats at the Monte de Piedad in 1802 for two pesos each. María Velasco, the owner of a Salto de Agua store, pawned four silver plates for 370 pesos, 12 plates and 12 fruit cups for 260 pesos, a new rebozo for two pesos, a petticoat for three pesos, and an overcoat and lapel for six pesos, all in the first three months of 1802. AHNMP, Contaduria, Empeños en Contaduria, Caja 1, vol. 1–3; AHCM Panaderías y Pulperías, leg. 2, exp. 7, f. 4; AGN Consulados, vol. 2, exp. 8.

39 CONDUMEX, Fondo CDLV-2, 1796; AHNMP, Contaduria, Empeños en Contaduria, 1802; AGN Montepío, vol. 27, exp. 12; AGN Montepío, vol. 28, exp. 2.

40 The Monte de Piedad sample consists of 1,057 transactions taken from the ledger books for January, February and March of 1802, compiled with data from every fifth page of the ledgers. The total number of transactions for those three months from which the sample is taken was 7,682. AHNMP, Contaduria, Empeños en Contaduria, Caja 1, vol. 1–3.

41 Because the closest available census for city residents is 1811, nine years after the 1802 ledgers examined at the Monte de Piedad, the identity of Mariana Ruiz is difficult to determine, as she may have moved. From my sample of the 1811 census, this woman could be the Maria Ana Ruiz that lived on Mesones (noted as her address in the 1802 ledgers), who was a single creole seamstress living with 2 others. Or she could be the Doña Maria Ruiz, a 43-year-old creole widow, who lived in a room on the stair landing at Coliseo Viejo no. 8 with her 14-year-old son and another widow with three children.

42 Chandler, , Social Assistance, p. 108.Google Scholar

43 Mesones is listed as Doña Juana Olivares’ address in both the 1802 Monte ledger and the 1811 census. AGN Padrones, vol. 55, f. 314; AHNMP, Contaduria, Empeños en Contaduria, 1802. María de Jesús Peralta lived on Parque del Conde street. Not all widows were creole. María Anzurez, a 41-year-old casta widow living on Calle de Nahuatlato, and Margarita López, a 31-year old castiza widow who worked as a servant, also frequented the Monte de Piedad. AGN Padrones, vol. 57. f. 122; vol. 55, f. 84; AHNMP, Contaduria, Empeños en Contaduria, 1802. AGN Padrones, vol. 57, f. 114; AHNMP, Contaduria, Empeños en Contaduria, 1802.

44 Arrom, Silvia, The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), pp. 199–201.Google Scholar For a useful discussion of the vagaries of widowhood, see McCaa, Robert, “La viuda viva del México Borbónico: sus voces, variedades y vejanciones,” in Aizpuru, Pilar Gonzalbo, ed., Familias novohispanas. Siglos XVI al XIX (México: El Colegio de México, 1991), pp. 299–324.Google Scholar

45 For further discussion of the role of housekeeping in the political economy and culture of Mexico City in the nineteenth century, see my forthcoming book, A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and Governance in Mexico City, 1750–1920.

46 The Monte de Piedad is arguably the Bourbon institution with the widest reach into the city's households. The Monte de Piedad loaned money to over 20,000 people a year, more than 2,000 people daily, while the Montepíos provided pensions to only 200 individuals (paid out four times a year), and the Hospicio de Pobres housed and fed about 200 people at a time. For its part, the tobacco factory employed from 5,000 to 9,000 people between 1771 and 1809. See Chandler, Social Assistance; Arrom, Containing the Poor; and Deans-Smith, Bureaucrats, Planters and Workers.

47 de Arrangoiz, Francisco de Paula, Mexico desde 1808 hasta 1867 (Madrid, 1871). Reprint (México: Editorial Porrua, 1968), pp. 25–26.Google Scholar

48 For tables listing salaries of the various colonial governmental departments from 1771, 1781, 1794 and 1825, see Arnold, Linda, Bureaucracy and Bureaucrats in Mexico City, 1742–1835 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988), pp. 131–149.Google Scholar For discussion of deductions from salaries to support war efforts, see pp. 21, 6365, 100.

49 For discussion of how the richest creole families maintained their status through economic and social strategies, see Kicza, John K., “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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Chandler, , Social Assistance, p. 165.Google Scholar

51 AGN, Bandos, vol. 20, exp. 100, f. 209.

52 While we do not have details for a lower-middle class household budget at hand, Linda Arnold presents the budget of José de Rosas, an unmarried mounted guardsman on the royal payroll, in 1812. His salary was 500 pesos per year, or 39 pesos 6 reales a month. He listed his monthly expenses as exceeding his salary by 10 pesos: housing with stable, 8 pesos; meals including a cook and charcoal, 18 pesos; a servant, including board, 5 pesos; candles 2 pesos; maintenance of a horse, 7 pesos; barber, 4 reales; boots and shoes, 2 pesos; refreshment (drink), 2 pesos; and clothing 4 pesos. This salary would have been inadequate for a budget that had to account for a wife and children. Arnold, , Bureaucracy and Bureaucrats, p. 101.Google Scholar

53 The earliest reference to casas de empeño in the documentation used for this study was in 1831. AGN, Gobernación, leg. 2187(1), exp. 2, no. 18, f. 3. For the 1842 empeño law, see AGN Gobernación, leg. 2187(1), exp. 2, no 20 (9), f. 1-3v.

54 Many colonial pulpería locations turned into casas de empeños in the national period, while other empeño locations were new. See Francois, , “Prendas and Pulperias,” pp. 90–105 Google Scholar for analysis of the pawnshop trade from the 1780s to the 1840s which draws on commercial censuses.

55 I have not encountered inventories of pawned goods from casas de empeños for the 1830s-50s; the earliest available are from 1867. Given the steady volume of business at the Monte de Piedad after the 1820s, there is no reason to believe that the poorer sectors of the city do not also steadily visit the private pawnshops, which were proliferating in the 1840s-60s. For an analysis of late nineteenth century pawnshop inventories, see Marie Francois, “Vivir de prestado. El empeño en la ciudad de México,” in Staples, Anne, compiladora y editora, Bienes y Vivencias. El Siglo xix mexicano. Vol. 5 of Historia de la Vida Cotidiana, Gonzalbo, Pilar, editora, (México: El Colegio de México),Google Scholar forthcoming.

56 See footnote 2 above for explanation of the database. See Appendix A for the distribution of pawned cloth and silver goods in the database by year and business establishment.

57 Half of the pawned goods in the database are articles of clothing. Of the Monte de Piedad sample for January-March 1802, 15 percent of the transactions involved bundles of goods that included articles of cloth or clothing, but because the value for each good in the bundle is not listed individually, the bundled goods are not counted in this tally.

58 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. 13.

59 For example, mulatas were not to wear silk or pearls. For sumptuary laws, AGN Ordenanzas, tomo I, f. 73, no. 75 (1582); tomo II, f. 158, no. 168–169 (1604); tomo I, f. 147, no. 167 (1612). See also Sempere, Juan y Guarinos, , Historia del luxo, y de las leyes suntuarias de España (Madrid: La Imprenta Real, 1788).Google Scholar Braudel, Fernand, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400–1800, translated by Kochan, Miriam (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 226.Google Scholar

60 AGN Gobernación, no section, caja 414, exp. 1, f. 1. See also Lipsett-Rivera, “Clothes in Late-Colonial Mexico.”

61 For discussion of recycled clothing among the popular classes in the mid nineteenth century, see de Dios Arias, Juan, et al., Los mexicanos pintados por sí mismos. Tipos y costumbres nacionales por varios autores. 1854. Reprint (México: Centro de Estudios de Historia de México CONDUMEX, 1989), pp. 229, 241.Google Scholar See also Braudel, , Capitalism, pp. 226, 235Google Scholar; Appadurai, Arjun, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 Stein, , “Tending the Store,” pp. 380–390.Google Scholar

63 For the distinction in shawl garments, see de la Barca, Calderón, Life in Mexico, p. 60,Google Scholar 84; Tuñon, , El album, pp. 217–220.Google Scholar For a description of the enaguas and shawl of a female servant who was a pawning customer in a wine store in 1807, see AGN Criminal, vol. 84, exp. 16, f. 255v. For descriptions of enaguas and rebozos in the middle of the nineteenth century, see de la Barca, Calderón, Life in Mexico, pp. 51, 53, 81Google Scholar; and Prieto, Guillermo, Memorias de mis tiempos. 1948. Reprint (México: n.p., 1964), pp. 65,Google Scholar 126. For discussions of men's attire, see de la Barca, Calderón, Life in Mexico, p. 50 Google Scholar; and Shaw, Frederick John Jr., “Poverty and Politics in Mexico City, 1824–1854.” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida, 1975), p. 103.Google Scholar

64 Included in the 27 non-rebozo shawls are mantillas, mantos, and mantónes.

65 In November of 1800, Don Marselino Xaime classified the pawned goods in his Xochimilco pulquería as “ropa de indios” and “ropa de españoles.” AGN Criminal, vol. 49, exp. 25, fs. 326–340. I have not found this distinction in the pulpería records.

66 Clothing articles worn by both men and women (such as shirts, blouses, vests, and scarves) are not included in Table 6.

67 Arrom, , The Women, pp. 66–68.Google Scholar

68 In the case of stolen goods, of course, the owner received no benefit at all. And in El periquillo Sarniento, characters took the clothes off of dead bodies, remarking “all of this is silver,” referring to the money they could make with the skirts, cape, silk belt, satin handkerchief and rosary found on one body. de Lizardi, José Joaquín Fernández, El Periquillo Sarmento. 1816. Reprint (México: Editorial Porrúa, 1987), p. 303.Google Scholar

69 Bourbon laws prohibited tavern owners from accepting pawns from customers to deter vice-driven credit practices. During a crackdown on taverns in the late 1760s, more than 150,000 pawned goods were found. Scardaville, , “Crime and the Urban Poor,” p. 71.Google Scholar

70 Lipsett-Rivera, Sonya, “Marriage and Family Relations in Mexico During the Transition from Colony to Nation,” in Uribe-Uran, Victor M. ed., State and Society in Spanish America during the Age of Revolution (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2001), p. 126.Google Scholar For an example of the latter, in the 1820s the company formed by Don Juan Compis and his partners pawned the jewels of his wife, Doña Francisca Cepeda, for capital to expand their retail wine business. AGN Consulado, vol. 20, exp. 3, f. 235–238V.

71 Archivo Histórico de la Ciudad de México [hereafter AHCM] Justicia, Juzgados Criminales, tomo 2., exp. 2; de la Barca, Calderón, Life in Mexico, p. 186.Google Scholar

72 See the case of pawnbroker José Berdeja in 1830. AGN Gobernación, leg. 2187(1), exp. 1, no. 9, f. 4.

73 Included among Doña María's effects, and to be recoverable by the heirs, was a wool cape in pawn at the Luna tienda for six reales, and gold cufflinks pawned at another shop for two pesos. Don Antonio Diaz, whose relationship to the testator is not known, was to receive her gold reliquary. Archivo General de Notarías de la Ciudad de México [hereafter AGNCM], vol. 3566, fs. 49–60. See f. 164 for other examples of women leaving servants their clothes and other possessions.

74 de Lizardi, José Joaquín Fernández, Don Catrín de la Fachenda y Noches tristes y dia alegre. 1832. Reprint (México: Editorial Porrúa, 1978), p. 55.Google Scholar

75 AGN Gobernación, leg. 2187(1), exp. 1, no. 9, fs. 4-6. The record of patrons at a provincial Monte de Piedad in the 1870s show a “list of pseudonyms such as Carlos III, Fernando VII, Agustín de Itur-bide.” Villela, J.M., El Monte de Piedad 1775–1877 (México: Imprenta de Jens y Zapiain, 1877), p. 25.Google Scholar

76 See AGN Criminal, vol. 84, exp. 16, f. 255 for a case where a female servant was accused of pawning a watch stolen from her employer for 12 pesos, and the pawnbroker's defense that it was “customary” to accept goods from servants serving as proxies for their employers.

77 This reputation persevered throughout the nineteenth century. For a typical editorial comment, see El siglo xix, March 13, 1887.

78 AGN Judicial, vol. 58, exp. 10, fs. 149-148; See Scardaville, , “Crime and the Urban Poor,” p. 115.Google Scholar

79 AGN Judicial, vol. 68, exp. 13, fs. 251–272.

80 AHCM Justicia, Juzgados Criminales, tomo 1, exp. 1; AGN Criminal, voi. 86, exp. 10, fs. 264–285v. Goods were also stolen from the Church, and despite being doubly forbidden in the pawnshops, chalices and even baptismal fonts yielded cash loans. Church possessions were expressly forbidden as loan pledges, along with other goods such as anything believed not to belong to the customer (i.e. stolen), single silver service items, weapons, work tools, and horse and carriage accessories. See AGN Bandos, Vol. 11, exp. 101, f 297; AGN Bandos, vol. 15, exp. 58, f. 162. For cases of stolen church goods being pawned, see AGN Criminal, Vol. 87, exp. 10, fs. 375–280. See also AGN Gobernación, no section, caja 291, exp. 291, fs. 1–2, for an example from the national era.

81 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; de Lizardi, Fernández, El Periquillo Sarniento, p. 197.Google Scholar

82 AGN Criminal, vol. 87, exp. 2, fs. 60–69v. For an 1809 case of clothing including a jacket, pants, petticoats, and shirt that were pawned by Spanish thieves, see AGN Criminal, vol. 89, exp. 3, f. 99.

83 de la Barca, Calderón, Life in Mexico, pp. 139–40.Google Scholar

84 This was the view of Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli 1778. See AGN, Padrones, vol. 52, f. 283. For Viceroy Miguel Joseph de Azanza's 1799 commentary on the “nudity” that prevailed in the streets, where people were not “decently covering their flesh according to their class,” and were instead dressing in “tablecloths, sheets, blankets, jergas” and other “similar rags,” see AGN, Bandos, vol. 20, exp. 25, f. 122. For discussion of the colonial discourse on “nudity” and the republican discourse on “lepers,” see Arrom, , Containing the Poor, pp. 18–20,Google Scholar 32–39.

85 Tuñon, , El album, vol. 3, pp. 30–31, p. 136.Google Scholar 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.”

86 To be fully outfitted with silver service for the necessary entertaining at the elite level was quite expensive. For example, Independence heroine Doña Leona Vicario paid 420 pesos to the silversmith Don Mariano de la Torre in January 1808 for two dozen spoons, two dozen forks, one dozen knives, one bracerito, 3 candle holders, a salt shaker, a vinegar bottle, and two crystal decanters. “Cuenta de mi Sobrina Da. María Leona Martin Vicario, desde el dia de la muerte de su Madre Da. Camila Fernandez de San Salvador acaecida la noche del 9 de Septiembre de 1807,” in Documentos Históricos Mexicanos, Tomo V, García, Genaro ed., (México: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, 1985), pp. 112–113.Google Scholar

87 AGN Criminal, vol. 86, exp. 10, fs. 264–285v.

88 For discussion of the mestizaje of cuisine, see Pilcher, Jeffrey M., !Que vivan los tamales!: Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998).Google Scholar

89 Davis, Mary L. and Pack, Greta, Mexican Jewelry (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1963), p. 60.Google Scholar

90 For examples of male jewelry, see Payno, Manuel, Bandidos del Río Frio (México: Ediciones México Moderno, 1919), pp. 77, 93, 97, p. 126Google Scholar; Davis, and Pack, , Mexican Jewelry, p. 58.Google Scholar For descriptions of women in jewels, see de la Barca, Calderón, Life in Mexico, pp. 32,Google Scholar 53, 80, 85, 113, 178, 196.

91 Rabiela, Hira de Gortari y Franyuti, Regina Hernández, compilers, Memoria y encuentros: La Ciudad de México y el Distrito Federal (1824–1918). Vol. 3 (México: Departamento del Distrito Federal, Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora, 1988), p. 322–323.Google Scholar

92 Calderón, , La vida en México, cited in Tuñon, El album, vol. 3, p. 234.Google Scholar See also pp. 43, 233–34 for other accounts of non-elites in jewelry.

93 Prieto, , Memoria, p. 258 Google Scholar; see also Davis, and Pack, , Mexican Jewelry, pp. 50–53.Google Scholar

94 Tuñon, , El album, p. 214.Google Scholar

95 For the sample of transactions from the Monte de Piedad from January-March of 1802, 6 percent of the transactions involved two or more jewels bundled together, and another 2 percent were in mixed bundles of jewelry and cloth.

96 Davis, and Pack, , Mexican Jewelry, p. 53.Google Scholar

97 AGN Gobernación, no section, caja 168, exp. 10, f 4; Shaw, , “Poverty and Politics,” p. 273 Google Scholar; Payno, , Bandidos, p. 33,Google Scholar 59, 64.

98 AGN Gobernación, no section, caja 115, exp. 16, f. 9. On the Parián riot, see Arrom, Silvia, “Popular Politics in Mexico City: the Parián Riot 1828,” Hispanic American Historical Review 68 (1988), pp. 245–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

99 AGN Gobernación, leg. 2187(1), exp. 1, no. 9, f. 5.

100 The description is of the Santa Catarina parish of Mexico City in the 1790s. Pescador, , “Vanishing Woman,” p. 621.Google Scholar

101 An April 1781 decree prohibited pulperías from accepting goods that pertained to any church; artisans’ tools; illegal weapons; keys and locks (“because … renters pull them out when they move out clandestinely, leaving their owners without the ability to rent”); uniforms; bridles, stirrups, buckles and other horse and carriage adornments; anything known not to belong to the person who tried to pawn it; any jewel in pieces, and clothing worth more than two pesos which can be pawned in the Monte de Piedad. AGN Bandos, Vol. 11, exp. 101, f 297.

102 For clothing trades, 21 transactions; metal trades, 12; woodworking, 9; shoe-making, 4; fireworks manufacture, 3; and other (molds, fierros, agricultural tools, etc.), 23. Only a handful of mandolins and guitars, tools of musician trade, appear in the sample.

103 Francois, , “Prendas and Pulperías,” pp. 78–83.Google Scholar

104 For discussion of the timing and patterns of women's participation in artisan groups, see Tuñón, , El albúm, vol. 3, pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

105 AGN Consulado, vol. 53, exp. 12, fs. 365–371.

106 For examples, see AGN Consulado vol. 56, exp. 1, fs. 27–70v,1787; vol. 292, exp. 7, fs. 2–6, 1792; vol. 38, exp. 3, fs. 46–51, 1805; AGN Gobernación, leg.l517(l), exp. 1, no. 5, fs.1–12.

107 Bauer, , Goods, Power, History, pp. 118–119.Google Scholar See also Kicza, John E., “Life Patterns and Social Differentiation Among Common People in Late Colonial Mexico City,” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 12 (1992), p. 194.Google Scholar

108 Of the 50, 18 were pawned by women, 11 by men, and 21 by persons of unknown gender.

109 Quote from El museo mexicano in the 1840s, in Shaw, , “Poverty and Politics,” p. 102.Google Scholar

110 Other studies of pawning and popular economic relations have found women playing the broker role as often as the client. For a Latin American contrast, Jane Mangan has found in Potosí in the seventeenth century that Indian women regularly owned stores and engaged in pawning with neighborhood clients. Mangan, Jane Erin, “Enterprise in the Shadow of Silver: Colonial Andeans and the Culture of Trade in Potosi, 1570–1700” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Duke University, 1999).Google Scholar In the Scandinavian city of Malrno in the sixteenth century, women outnumbered men 5 to 1 in retail-pawning trade. See Jacobsen, Grethe, “Women's Work and Women's Role: Ideology and Reality in Danish Urban Society, 1300–1550,” The Scandinavian Economic History Review and Economy and History, 30 (1983), pp. 3–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar 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. Tebbutt, Melanie, Making Ends Meet: Pawnbroking and Working-Class Credit (New York: Leicester University Press/St. Martin's Press, 1986).Google Scholar