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The Economic Impact of the Bourbon Reforms and the Late Colonial Crisis of Empire at the Local Level: The Case of Saltillo, 1777-1817

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

José Cuello
José Cuello*
Affiliation:
Marquette University, Milwaukee Wisconsin
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Extract

The massive efforts of the Bourbon monarchs of the late colonial period to give their Spanish-American empire a modern state apparatus, extract more revenues from it, and defend it effectively from foreign interlopers involved an unprecedented assertion of royal authority at all levels of government, including the local one. Municipal government throughout the Americas became both an object of reform and one of the chief instruments of Bourbon reorganization at ground level. All the major activities and changes that required direct contact with the general population, from the taking of censuses and the establishment of militia units to the imposition of new taxes and the reorganization of the colonial financial structure, depended on municipal governments for their effective implementation. When the world wars for empires among Britain, France, and Spain reached a crisis stage for the Bourbons with Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808, the municipal governments became even more vital to the maintenance of the viceroyalties and the survival of the Spanish monarchy.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , January 1988 , pp. 301 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1988

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References

* I want to thank Susan Deeds and the anonymous reviewers of The Americas for their help in revising this essay for publication. Woodrow Borah and John Kicza read and commented on an earlier version.

1 This generalization applies to some very excellent studies. David Brading’s works, for example, which deal with both viceregal-level Bourbon reorganization and socioeconomic changes in Guanajuato and León, treat town government and town life in these two districts so peripherally that one would think they were hardly important. See Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763–1810 (Cambridge, 1971) and Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajío: León, 1700–1860 (London, 1978). Guadalajara figures primarily as a market, an all-important economic engine, for the surrounding countryside in Young’s study, Eric Van, Hacienda and Market in Eighteenth-Century Mexico: The Rural Economy of the Guadalajara Region, 1675–1820 (Berkeley, 1981)Google Scholar. A number of studies on colonial Oaxaca have bypassed almost completely Spanish Antequera and the surrounding Indian towns as integral municipal entities with functional governments worthy of study, except as part of one or two broader regional themes. See Taylor, William, Landlord and Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford, 1972)Google Scholar and Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford,1979); and Hamnett, Brian, Politics and Trade in Southern Mexico, 1750–1821 (Cambridge, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John K. Chance focuses on Antequera and its surrounding Indian suburbs in Race and Class in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford, 1978), and still leaves out any direct treatment of local government and its relations to the colonial superstructure. The absence of emphasis on the impact of the Bourbon reforms and crisis of empire on local government in some studies like that of Super, John, La vida en Querétaro durante la colonia: 1531–1810 (Mexico, 1983)Google Scholar, can be explained by the lack of surviving municipal records, or in studies like that of Martin, Cheryl, Rural Society in Colonial Morelos (Albuquerque, 1985)Google Scholar, by the absence of a Spanish town in the district. Sometimes, unexpected obstacles to archival access may force a researcher to leave aside themes that otherwise might have been treated. This may have been the case with a recent study that, nevertheless, does an excellent job of placing Saltillo in the 1790s within the thematic framework of mainstream colonial Mexican history. See Offutt, Leslie Scott, “Urban and Rural Society in the Mexican North: Saltillo in the Late Colonial Period,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, UCLA, 1982)Google Scholar. One recent study which does treat the role of the municipalities as part of a colony-wide focus is Archer, Christon I., The Army in Bourbon Mexico, 1760–1810 (Albuquerque, 1977), particularly pp. 136–167.Google Scholar

2 Most of this background section is extracted from my unpublished manuscript, José Cuello, “Saltillo in the Seventeenth Century: Local Society on the North Mexican Frontier, 1577–1700,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, UC-Berkeley, 1981).

3 See Lockhart, James and Schwartz, Stuart B., Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil (Cambridge, 1983), pp.78–80 Google Scholar. The silver of Zacatecas financed the wide-ranging explorations of Francisco de Ibarra, whose family dominated the early government of Nueva Vizcaya, the province he founded.

4 Velázquez, Primo Feliciano, Colección de documentos para la historia de San Luis Potosí, 4 vols. (San Luis Potosí, 1897–1899), I, 204–210 Google Scholar; Adams, David B., “The Tlaxcalan Colonies of Spanish Coahuila and Nuevo León; An Aspect of the Settlement of Northern Mexico,” (Ph. D. Dissertation, Austin, 1971), pp. 53–55.Google Scholar

5 Cuello, , “Saltillo in the Seventeenth Century,” pp.31–42, 58–60, 350–354.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., pp. 103–168.

7 Ibid., pp. 74–102; de Lafora, Nicolás, “Viaje a los presidios internos septentrionales,” Viajes y viajeros; viajes por Norteamérica (Madrid, 1958), p. 299;Google Scholar Saltillo, Ayuntamiento del Archivo (hereafter cited as SAA), Ramo General (RG),leg. 31, exp. 2 (Oct. 27, 1777); leg 33, exp. 26 (Mar. 22, 1781); leg. 37, exp. 42 (n.d., 1785); leg. 30, exp. 64, item 17 (Mar. 13, 1786); leg. 42, exp. 1 (Mar. 13, 1786); leg. 39-2, exp. 72, item 2 (Dec. 31, 1787); leg. 40, exp. 39 (Dec. 31, 1788); leg. 43, exp. 1 (n.d., 1791); leg 60, exp. 47, item 1 (Oct. 12, 1813); Coahuila State Archive in Saltillo (CSA), RG, cabinet of miscellaneous documents, exp. of Aug. 18, 1828. Saltillo, like the rest of the colony, experi-enced a fairly high rate of population growth from the middle of the seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth century before reaching a plateau. A significant portion of the population increase between the 1790s and 1813 may have been accounted for by immigrants fleeing the violence of the Independence insurrections to the south.

8 Ibid.,SAA RG leg. 21, exp. 20.(Nov. 15, 1756); leg 32, exp. 3 (no mo. or day, 1779); leg 66, exp. 42 (May 17, 1820).

9 SAA RG, leg. 12, exp. 9 (Apr. 18, 1733); leg. 20, exp. 3 (Aug. 19, 1754-June 6, 1755); leg. 20, exp. 27 (July 12, 1755); leg. 25, exp. 13 (Aug. 16 and Dec. 31, 1764); leg. 25, exp. 66 (July 16, 1767); CSA RG, leg. 6, exp. 362 (Nov. 9, 1781-Aug. 3, 1782); leg. 7, exp. 450 (Jan. 10, 1781-Aug. 26, 1803). For brief histories of the colonial Mexican alcabala, see Smith, Robert S., “Sales Taxes in New Spain, 1575–1770,” HAHR, 28 (Feb., 1948), 2–37 Google Scholar; and Bobb, Bernard E., The Viceregency of Antonio María Bucareli in New Spain, 1771–1779 (Austin, 1962), pp. 244–253.Google Scholar

10 Ibid.

11 SAA RG, leg. 39, exp. 54, items 1-4 (Jan. 1-June 30, 1787); CSA RG, leg. 7, exp. 444 (Oct. 25, 1793–May 5, 1794); Thomas, Alfred Barnaby, ed., Teodoro de Croix and the Northern Frontier of New Spain, 1776–1783 (Norman, 1941)Google Scholar, passim; Fisher, Lillian Estelle, The Intendant System in Spanish America (New York, 1969)Google Scholar, passim; Robles, Vito Alessio, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 2nd ed. (Mexico, 1978), pp. 593–596.Google Scholar

12 SAA RG, leg. 32, exp. 3 (n.d., 1779); leg. 33, exp. 6 (June 28-July 30, 1781); leg. 33, exp. 26 (Dee. 4, 1780-March 22, 1781); leg. 35, exp. 15 (June 7-Oct. 6, 1783); leg. 35, exp. 33 (Mar. 11-June 23, 1783). See footnote seven for the sources of the demographic censuses.

13 CSA RG, leg. 6, exp. 362 (Nov. 9, 1781-Aug. 3, 1782); leg. 6, exp. 384 (Mar. 27, 1787-Mar. 20, 1789).

14 SAA RG, leg. 32, exp. 35 (Apr. 28-Nov. 6, 1780); leg. 32, exp. 66, item 4 (Aug. 12-Nov. 2, 1780); leg. 33, exp. 10 (Sept. 13-Dec. 30, 1781).

15 SAA RG, leg. 33, exp. 29 (Aug. 17, 1780-Sept. 10, 1781); leg. 49, exp. 2 (Aug. 24, 1795-Sept. 18, 1797); leg. 57, exp. 18, item 3 (July 3, 1806); leg. 57, exp. 18, item 4 (Feb. 10, 1806); leg. 57, exp. 37 (May 9, 1807). The 1804 Law of Consolidation has been treated by Caballero, Romeo Flores, La contrarrevolución en la independencia (Mexico, 1969), pp. 28–65 Google Scholar; Hamnett, Brian, “The Appropriation of Mexican Wealth by the Spanish Bourbon Government: ‘The Consolidación de Vales Reales,’ 1805–809,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 1 (Nov., 1969), 85–113 Google Scholar; and Lavrin, Asunción, “The Execution of the Law of Consolidación in New Spain: Economic Aims and Results,” HAHR, 53 (Feb., 1973), 27–49.Google Scholar None of these sources mentions the royal decree of 1779.

16 SAA RG, leg. 35, exp. 33 (Mar. 11-June 25, 1783); CSA RG, leg. 6, exp. 384 (May 27, 1787-Mar. 20, 1789).

17 Cuello, , “Saltillo in the Seventeenth Century,” pp. 284–361 Google Scholar; SAA, Actas, leg. 1, libro 1 (Aug. 29, 1700-Jan. 1, 1726); libro 2 (Dec. 4, 1714-Jan. 1, 1732); libro 3 (Dec. 29, 1735-Jan. 1, 1763).

18 The other peninsular regidores in 1772 were Andrés de la Mata y Cos, who was operating as a merchant in Saltillo from at least 1767, and Melchor Joseph de Campuzano, who seems to have had less economic success than the others before his death in 1781. The lone creole regidor was José Melchor Lobo Guerrero, one of the two richest merchant-hacendados in the community at that time. When he died in 1783, his estate totaled 82,000 pesos. See SAA Actas, leg. 1, libro 3 (Dec. 29, 1735-Jan. 1, 1763); libro 4 (Sept. 1, 1763-Jan. 13, 1793); libro 5 (Mar. 3 1794-Jan. 7, 1813); libro 6 (July 23, 1810-June 28, 1820); leg. 2, libro 7 (Feb. 11, 1814-Feb. 3, 1820); SAA RG, leg. 24, exp. 46 (May 4, 1763); SAA Inventarios y Testamentos (I&T), leg. 11, exp. 19 (1781); leg. 12, exp. 5 (Dec. 9, 1783).

19 Ibid., In her study of Saltillo in the 1790s, “Urban and Rural Society in the Mexican North,” pp. 88–139, 140–183, Leslie Offutt found merchants tended to have the largest and most commercialized rural properties, were intimately linked by compadrazgo, and held 73.3 percent of the proprietary regidor offices and 55 percent of all cabildo offices that she was able to identify between 1780 and 1800. Agriculturalists held 26 percent of all offices, while the occupation of 19 percent of the officeholders could not be determined. Looking at her list, some of the merchants, probably all of the agriculturalists, and probably the great majority of those with unidentified occupations were creóles. This would give each group about equal quantitative representation in the cabildo. In some years, creóles held the majority. The lack of a clear political division among peninsulares and creóles in Saltillo reflects develop-ments elsewhere. For Guadalajara, Young, Van, Hacienda and Market, pp. 173–175 Google Scholar, found landowners dominated the cabildo until the 1760s when merchants took over the role. However, he could not discern any particular significance to this pattern, and concluded the peninsular-creole dichotomy among elites was insignificant in determining who owned land because of their kinship ties and diversified patterns of investment. Similarly, Brading, Miners and Merchants, pp. 319–328, could not make very much of the Montañés take-over of the most important institutions in Guanajuato from the Creoles of Basque descent.

20 SAA Actas, leg. 1, libro 4, ff. 224–229 (Jan. 1, 1784); ff. 267–268 (Dec. 3, 1787); f.269 (Jan. 1, 1788); ff. 276-277 (Jan. 1, 1789); f. 281 (Jan. 1, 1790); f. 286 (Jan. 1, 1791); libro 5, ff. 27-30 (Dec. 4, 1795); ff. 67-75, 82 (Dec. 31, 1799); ff. 137-140 (June 27-July 27, 1803).

21 SAA Actas, leg. 1, libro 4, f. 115 (Jan. 1, 1768); libro 5, ff. 4-7 (Dec. 13, 1793).

22 Spanish immigrants were not the only ones who found economic opportunity in Saltillo in the late colonial period. One of the richest merchants when he died in 1817, leaving an estate of 138,000 pesos, was Theodoro Carrillo, who had emigrated from the pueblo of Teocaltiche el Grande (SAA Protocolos, leg. 12, Testament and Inventory of Theodoro Carrillo, June 20, 1817-Sept. 4, 1818). When Mauricio de Alcoser acquired full ownership of the Hacienda de Santa María from his partner, José Antonio Gómez de Rada, in 1799, the hacienda was worth 39,000 pesos. Gómez de Rada was a merchant-vecino of the Real de Catorce. Merchant-hacendado Alcoser's origins are unknown. When he “emancipated” his seven children in 1824, he gave each an inheritance of 20,000 pesos. At that time, Santa María had a net worth of 140,000 pesos (SAA Protocolos, leg. 10, exp. of July 20, 1799; leg. 13, exp. of July 8, 1824).

23 CSA RG, leg. 5, exp. 299 (Oct. 19, 1779-Aug. 22, 1783); leg. 5, exp. 331 (Aug. 8, 1778); leg. 6, exp. 362 (Nov. 9, 1781-Aug. 3, 1782); leg. 6, exp. 363 (Jan. 24, 1782-Aug. 22, 1783); leg. 6, exp. 416 (Feb. 6, 1792); leg. 7, exp. 450 (Jan. 10, 1781-Aug. 26, 1803).

24 The related expedientes, dating mostly from 1780-1782, are too numerous to list. The most important are SAA RG, leg. 32, exp. 35 (Apr. 28-Nov. 6, 1780). Also leg. 32, exp. 37 (Aug. 9-Nov. 6, 1780); leg. 32, exp. 62 (Sept. 26, 1780); leg. 32, exp. 66, item 5 (May 5, 1780); leg. 33, exp. 14 (Aug. 12, 1781-Aug. 5, 1782); leg. 33, exp. 25 (Sept. 1, 1781); leg. 33, exp. 30 (Mar. 6, 1781); leg. 33, exp. 55 (May 27-Dec. 31, 1781); leg. 34, exp. 21 (May 16, 1782); and leg. 34, exp. 25 (Jan. 4-Dec. 31, 1782). The problems encountered by the viceregal authorities in establishing militias in other localities are discussed by Archer, The Army in Bourbon Mexico. See especially pp. 136-167 on the responses of local elites through the cabildos.

25 SAA RG, leg. 32 exp. 35 (Apr 28.-Nov. 6, 1780); CSA RG, leg. 6, exp. 362 (Nov. 9, 1781-Aug. 3, 1782).

26 SAA RG, leg. 32, exp. 3 (n.d., 1779). Since only commercial wealth was expressed in monetary terms, it is difficult to reach a precise worth for individuals. Four of the five leading merchants were peninsular. The wealthiest, Juan Landin, with 30,000 pesos in commercial capital, also had a tannery, four and one-half houses, and extensive rural holdings. The other three peninsulares did not declare rural property. The lone creole, Melchor Lobo Guerrero, in addition to 18,000 pesos in commercial capital, had four houses and extensive rural holdings. As noted above, his estate was worth 82,000 pesos when he died in 1783. This indicates that, at least, at the upper level, where it was most important, the property census underreported wealth. The difference, however, does not fundamentally change the image that the cabildo drew of Saltillo.

27 SAA RG, leg. 34, exp. 9 (Mar. 3, 1782); leg. 34, exp. 25, item 3 (Mar. 3, 1782); leg. 34, exp. 26 (Mar. 3, 1782).

28 Cuello, , “Saltillo in the Seventeenth Century,” pp. 169–227.Google Scholar

29 SAA RG, leg. 32, exp. 3 (n.d., 1779).

30 SAA RG, leg. 33, exp. 26 (Dec. 4, 1780-March 22, 1781). The occupation of the adult male Tlaxcalan population of San Esteban was overwhelmingly that of peasant agriculturalist. The town supported thirty to forty craftsmen, mostly shoemakers, carpenters, and tailors according to the two censuses of the Tlaxcalan pueblo in SAA RG leg. 42 exp. 1 (Mar. 13, 1786) and leg. 43, exp. 1 (n.d., 1791).

31 SAA RG, leg. 33, exp. 42 (July 5, 1781).

32 SAA RG, leg. 33, exp. 32 (Aug. 23-Sept. 2, 1781).

33 SAA RG, leg. 32, exp. 37 (Aug. 9-Nov. 6, 1780).

34 SAA RG, leg. 34, exp. 25 (Jan. 4-Dec. 31, 1782);

35 CSA RG, leg. 6, exp. 416 (June 12, 1784-Feb. 6, 1792).

36 CSA RG, leg. 7, exp. 450 (Jan. 10, 1781-Aug. 26, 1803); CSA RG, leg. 7, exp. 435 (June 27, 1795).

37 Ibid.

38 SAA RG, leg. 55, exp. 2 (June 2-Aug. 20, 1804).

39 SAA RG, leg. 60, exp. 36 (Dec. 30, 1812); leg. 60, exp. 47, item 1 (May 17, 1816); leg. 63, exp. 2 (Mar. 27, 1817).

40 Ibid., SAA Actas de Cabildo, leg. 1, libro 5, ff. 256-261 (Sept. 21, 1811); leg. 1, libro 6, ff. 12-17 (Sept. 29-Dec. 4, 1810). ff. 21-23 (Jan. 5, 1811); Robles, Alessio, Coahuila y Texas, pp. 627–649.Google Scholar

41 SAA RG, leg. 63, exp. 2 (Mar. 27, 1817); Actas de Cabildo, leg. 1, libro 6, ff. 23–24 (Jan. 1, 1815).

42 For example, a one-percent tax on liquid capital in 1816 touched six members of the cabildo, five royal employees, twenty-six merchants, thirty-nine “gente de mediana proporción,” 116 “gente pobre y artesanía,” as well as 117 farmers in the surrounding countryside. SAA RG, leg. 62, exp. 9 (Apr. 24, 1816).

43 SAA RG, leg. 63, exp. 2 (Mar. 27, 1817); Actas de Cabildo, leg. 1, Libro 6, f.61 (Feb. 29, 1816); Ladd, Doris M., The Mexican Nobility at Independence, 1780–1826 (Austin, 1976), pp. 89–104, 113–114, 133–161.Google Scholar

44 SAA RG, leg. 60, exp. 38 (Dec. 6–29, 1813).

45 For creole reactions to the Bourbon Reforms and their accompanying taxes see the various essays in Humphreys, R.A. and Lynch, John, eds., The Origins of the Latin American Revolutions, 1808–1826 (New York, 1965)Google Scholar, especially Sergio, Villalobos R., “Opposition to Imperial Taxation,” pp. 124–137 Google Scholar. For a more recent analysis of the Bourbon Reforms and the crisis of empire as causes of wholesale disaffection among the various classes of the colonies, see Andrews, George Reid, “Spanish American Independence: A Structural Analysis,” Latin American Perspectives, Issue 44, Vol.12, No.l (Winter, 1985), 105–132.Google Scholar

46 SAA Actas, leg. 1, libro 5. ff. 115–118 (June 16, 1802).

47 SAA RG, leg. 40, exp. 25 (Apr. 23, 1788); leg. 48, exp. 53, item 3 (1796); leg. 52, exp. 34, item 5 (Oct. 7, 1800); leg. 54, exp. 54, item 2 (Mar. 22-28, 1803); leg 57, exp. 18, item 16 (Mar. 19-21, 1806); leg. 58, exp. 5 (Mar. 29-Sept. 16, 1808); leg. 62, exp. 23, item 4 (July 9, 1816); SAA Protocolos, leg. 7, Testament of Melchor Lobo Guerrero (Sept. 7, 1782); leg. 7, Calzado stewardship (Dec. 6, 1784); leg. 7, Testament of Juan González de Paredes (Mar. 7, 1789); leg. 10, Testament of Br. Dn. Acencio de Lisarraras y Cullar (May 12, 1804); leg. 12, Testament of Jose Ramon Gonz lez (Mar. 18, 1818).

48 SAA RG, leg. 42, exp. 28 (June 22, 1790); leg. 48, exp. 53, item 4 (June 23-Aug. 4, 1796); leg. 49, exp. 46 (Oct. 30, 1797-Nov. 28, 1801); leg. 51, exp. 7 (Mar. 30-Oct. 15, 1799); leg. 51, exp. 42, items 5 & 6 (May 24-Sept. 12, 1799); leg. 49, exp. 46 (Nov. 28, 1801); leg. 54, exp. 31, item 2 (n.d., 1802) ; leg. 57, exp. 18, item 2 (Aug. 28, 1806); leg 63, exp. 32 (1817). SAA Actas, leg. 1, libro 5, ff. 32-33 (June 16, 1796); ff. 96–97 (Sept. 10, 1801); ff. 114–115 (June 10, 1802); ff. 131–134 (Feb. 23, 1803) ; f. 163 (July 20, 1805); ff. 167–169 (Sept. 30, 1805); ff. 169-171 (Nov. 7, 1805); ff. 197–201 (Oct. 29, 1807-Apr. 7, 1808); ff. 246–249 (Aug. 1-Nov. 2, 1809); ff. 254 255 (Mar. 7, 1810).

49 Brading, Hacienda and Ranchos, p. 199 notes a decline in real wages for the laboring classes of Mexico in the years preceding 1810. Hamnett, Brian, Roots of Insurgency: Mexican Regions, 1750–1820 (Cambridge, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, concludes the lower class standard of living had been deteriorating for half a century prior to the outbreak of Hidalgo’s insurrection. He attributes a widespread social dissatisfaction to the penetration of commercial capital in the provinces. Andrews, , ‘Spanish American Independence,” pp. 116–118 Google Scholar, finds conditions worsening for the lower classes throughout Spanish America, leading to growing vagabondage, proletarianization, violence, and rebellion.

50 Robles, Alessio, Coahuila y Texas, pp.664–665 Google Scholar. Ladd, Doris, The Mexican Nobility, p.89,Google Scholar concludes the financial burden imposed on Mexicans as a result of the imperial crisis produced an increasing turn of sentiment in favor of Independence among all classes, including the elites.