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Two Country Stores in XVIIth Century Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Peter Boyd-Bowman
Peter Boyd-Bowman*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York
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Extract

On the morning of October 13, 1641, a Spanish shopkeeper by the name of Juan Agudo died quite suddenly in the silvermining community of San Joseph del Parral in northern Mexico. His death must not have been altogether unexpected, however, for in a will drawn up only three weeks before he had described himself as “andando en pie aun que con alguna falta de salud.” According to the provisions of that will, executed without delay, Agudo, a bachelor and a devout Catholic, was buried in the parish church in Parral amidst ceremonies that were to cost his estate well over 500 pesos.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , January 1972 , pp. 237 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1972

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References

1 Renamed, since Independence, Hidalgo del Parral, and located near the southern border of Chihuahua, this mining town began with the bonanza of 1631 in an area that was originally part of the kingdom of Nueva Vizcaya. For an economic study of the rise and decline of Parral’s mining industry from the beginnings to the present day, see West’s, Robert C. excellent study, The Parral Mining District, (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1949).Google Scholar Information both for the above study and for the present article was drawn from the copious archives of Hidalgo del Parral, microfilmed on 333 rolls by Micro Photo Inc. of Cleveland, and spanning the years 1631–1821, or a period of nearly 200 years. All the data examined here was transcribed from roll No. 18 (1641), frames 1433B–1436B–1438A, 1526–1533B and 1669B–1681B.

2 In addition, the will provided for no less than 100 low masses to be said in Parral, plus another 80 in the cathedral of Mexico City, for his own soul and those of his parents, both deceased, and for all the souls in Purgatory. We learn further that Juan Agudo was born in the village of Camarenas near Toledo in New Castile, the legitimate son of Juan Agudo and Catalina López, that he was single and had no living relatives, and that he wished to leave the bulk of his estate to two religious brotherhoods (cofradías) in Mexico City, that of Our Lady of the Rosary “questá en el conbento de señor Santo Domingo” and that of the Souls of Purgatory “que está en la santa yglesia catredal (sic).” It is reasonable to infer from this that Juan Agudo must for a time have lived in Mexico City prior to moving north. A bequest of 20 pesos to the cofradía of the Holy Sacrament in Parral itself suggests membership or least a minor interest in that brotherhood also. Agudo had two goddaughters in Parral, one the niece of his compadre Juan de Leyba, and the other the daughter of Pasquala, a mulatto woman. Both are mentioned for small amounts in his will. There is also a bequest of 100 pesos to Juan Flores (de Paredes) el Mozo (the younger), whose father of the same name held the rank of captain in the local garrison and had earlier been Parral’s chief notary public. These and other important associations point to the fact that Juan Agudo was a respected member of the community. We have no information regarding his formal education, if any. His clumsy signature on the will, our only actual sample of his handwriting, suggests a man who could barely sign his name, but this may have been due to a weak or feverish condition, for there are references elsewhere to several account books and receipts in Agudo’s own hand. (The will, dated September 25, 1641, may be found on Roll No. 18, frames 1526B–1533B).

3 The inventory, occupying frames 1676-A-1681B, is preceded by a bill for the funeral rites submitted by the two parish priests and by an itemized claim from the merchant Antonio de Robles, dated October 17 and supported by the testimony of four witnesses, that Juan Agudo had on or about October 3 (i. e., after making out his will and therefore presumably in better health) bought from Robles’ store, or credit, 403 ½ pesos worth of merchandise (frames 1670A–1672B). (The fact that most of these items were found intact, unsold, among Agudo’s effects is an indication of the suddenness of his relapse).

4 Named in the will as one of Agudo’s two executors (albaceas), Sebastián González declined, alleging “muchas causas suyas a que acudir,” but agreed to accept the job of inventorying the dead man’s belongings and holding them in deposit until they could be disposed of by the other executor, Pedro de Meras, vecino of the nearby mines of San Diego.

5 Our records show Parral to have had at this time a very quarrelsome, heterogeneous population composed of whites, mestizos, Negroes and mulattoes, with the two latter groups further divided between freedmen and slaves. Among those who specifically owed money at Juan Agudo’s store we noted two Indians, one of them a “vezino deste rreal que es cantor y toca chirimía en la iglesia,” a mestizo servant, and a free mulatto. There was also the mulata Pasquala, whose daughter Mariana is referred to in the will as Agudo’s own ahijada or goddaughter.

6 At the time of his death these included some hose (calçones), a mantelet (capisayo) lined with green taffeta, a jacket (armador), two suits, a saddle and spurs, a silver platter, a silver saltshaker, a cuirass, a silver key-chain, and probably one or more of the broken guitars listed in the inventory.

7 Puebla’s ceramics industry, already over a century old at this time, was known all over New Spain.

8 At his death the miner Pedro Beltrán still owed him 315 pesos for charcoal, while Don Joseph Faras, an assayer, owed him for 80 sacks and his fellow-merchant Robles for 48.

9 Cf. BOYD-BOWMAN’ “Early Spanish Trade with Mexico: A Sixteenth Century Bill of Lading” in Buffalo Studies, IV (August 1968), pp. 43–56, and “Otro inventario de mercancías del siglo XVI,” in Hist. Mex., (Sept. 1970), pp. 92–118.

10 real. A minted silver coin worth ⅛ of a peso.

11 plata del diezmo: silver on which a tithe (10%) had been paid to the Church.

12 I marco = 8 onzas (of silver).

13 piata del quinto: refined silver on which the usual tax of one fifth (20%) had been paid to the Crown.

14 plata de rescate (or resgate): These were silver nuggets which traders bought or accepted in barter (rescate), usually at absurdly low prices, directly from the mine workers themselves. It was a more or less established custom to condone as an im-portant fringe benefit or working inducement the clandestine peddling of silver nuggets by miners who found them. Needless to say, such silver escaped payment of duty to the Crown since no quicksilver (a royal monopoly) had been used in refining it. Occasionally, mine owners would object and have the miners searched when they left the mines, but according to a Mexican mining engineer the miners in Guanajuato (and presumably elsewhere) used to smuggle out their nuggets anyway by secreting them in special small clay tubes (longanizas, lit. sausages) which were inserted in the rectum.

15 atado de higas de asavache. Apparently a bag of obsidian amulets in the shape of fists, though this seems an improbable item of merchandise for a devout Catholic mer-chant to have carried.

16 1 quintal = 100 lbs.

17 greta y cendrada = materials used in the process of extracting silver from ore by smelting (fundición). Cf. Bargalló, Modesto, La minería y la metalurgía en la América española durante la época colonial. (Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1955).Google Scholar

18 See Parral Archives, Roll No. 18, frames 1436B-1438A.

19 Campeche had ever since the Conquest been noted for its cotton mantas or lengths of fabric generally measuring 16 yards (varas).

20 The pierna was a measure used for Indian textiles. 1 pierna = 2 brazas = 4 varas.

21 decla: a type of case in which knives were kept. See BOYD-BOWMAN, Léxico hispanoamericano del siglo XVI. Editorial Tamesis, Madrid 1971. Variant: ]tecla.

22 More generally referred to, in other Parral documents of the period, as pisiete.

23 Numerous other documents of this period attest to the fact that Parral’s inhabitants consumed enormous amounts of hot chocolate. This traditional Mexican beverage, thick and nourishing (it used equal amounts of chocolate and sugar), was mixed and drunk in the equally traditional xícara or Mexican gourd. All three items were, therefore, essential merchandise in stores such as these.

24 For a history of early silk growing in this area, see Borah’s, Woodrow intriguing article “El origen de la sericultura en la Mixteca Alta” in Hist. Mex. 13 (1963), 1–17.Google Scholar

25 There are two towns in Mexico by that name, one in Jalisco some 50 Km. S.W. of Lake Chapala, the other in the region of Veracruz on the Gulf. Both are now centers of agriculture and ranching.

26 One item, the jubón de tarlinga or Tarlinga jacket, is somewhat of a mystery, as we have been unable to find the word tarlinga in any dictionary, old or new, nor any place by that name in Europe. However, a colleague at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Dr. Ray Janeway, reports that just north of Big Bend National Park, not too far from the New Mexican border, there is a creek called Terlingua (formerly also Terlingo or Tasolingo) near which lived a little-known tribe, the Jumano, noted for their deerskin jackets.