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The Pulque Trade of Late Colonial Mexico City*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

John E. Kicza
John E. Kicza*
Affiliation:
Washington State University, Pullman, Washington
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Extract

Over the course of the colonial period the Spanish in Mexico, whether Creole or peninsular, not only created an economic and marketing structure based on their own practices and preferences but also penetrated and even came to dominate the marketing of certain Indian commodities, when these products were exchanged in a cash rather than a barter system and when involvement in the marketing appeared sufficiently lucrative. Cacao was probably the first item in the indegenous market economy whose distribution was taken over by Spaniards. Cacao had been a long-distance import item of high specific value even in the pre-Conquest world and the victorious Spanish quickly replaced the disappearing pochteca class of merchants which had controlled its distribution.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , October 1980 , pp. 193 - 221
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1980

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Footnotes

*

The author wishes to thank the Organization of American States for its financial support of his research in Mexico City and James Lockhart and Matt Meier for their valued commentaries.

References

1 Lewis, Leslie K., Colonial Texcoco: A Province in the Valley of Mexico, 1570–1630, Ph.D. Diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1977, p. 115–116.Google Scholar

2 Gibson, Charles, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule (Stanford, 1964), p. 324–328 Google Scholar offers an in-depth description of this transformation.

3 “Informe sobre pulquerías y tabernas el año de 1784,” Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación, primera serie, 18, N. 2, 1947, p. 189–236; 18, N. 3, 1947, p. 363–405. This informative document is valuable not only for its material on pulquerías and taverns, but also for its insights into the structure and operation of the urban police force, the preoccupation of the authorities with fiscal concerns, and the difference between legally prescribed behavior and actual behavior in this society.

4 de Sahagún, Bernardino, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (México, 1975), p. 197.Google Scholar

5 Soustelle, Jacques, The Daily Life of the Aztecs (London, 1964), p. 164.Google Scholar As stated infootnote#l, the possible disperity between prescribed and actual behavior should be born in mind.

6 Gibson, , Aztecs, p. 150.Google Scholar

7 Lockhart, James, “Capital and Province, Spaniard and Indian: The Example of Late Sixteenth-Century Toluca” in Altman, Ida and Lockhart, James, eds., Provinces of Early Mexico, (Los Angeles, 1976), p. 115–116.Google Scholar

8 Taylor, William B., “Town and Country in the Valley of Oaxaca, 1750–1812,” in Altman, and Lockhart, , eds., Provinces, p. 73–74.Google Scholar

9 “Jacal” is the Mexican-Spanish derivation of the Nahuatl word “xacalli”, meaning crude or temporary structure. See Cabrera, Luis, Diccionario de Aztequismos, (México, 1974), p. 84.Google Scholar

10 Archivo General de la Nación. México (Hereafter cited as AGN), Policía, leg. 15, exp. 1.

11 See Ricardo, Beller N. and de Beller, Patricia Cowan, Curso de Náhuatl moderno: Náhuatl de la Huasteca, 2 (México, 1979), p. 210,Google Scholar where a tangerine is called an otonlalax (“Otomi orange”).

12 The files of the notary Juan Manuel Pozo preserved in the Archivo de Notarías, Mexico City (hereafter cited as AN) contain a great number of these companies, as do those of other notaries of this period.

13 All the above information and the following figures are from the 1784 informe. Apparently, the figures were originally assembled by the customs service that manned collection points along each of the various commercial routes into the city.

l4 de Humboldt, Alejandro, Ensayo político sobre el reino de la Nueva España (México, 1973), p. 93.Google Scholar

l5 Given that trading in intoxicants has been associated for so long in history with people of low social status, it is somewhat ironic that every person mentioned by name in this paper was entitled as “don” or “dona” in the documentation. By the late colonial period, in general, any person with significant property, skill, or ascribed status was addressed as such, regardless of his or her ethnic origin. In the Spanish world this break between those who enjoyed the title and those who did not often occurred between the “maestro” (owner) and “oficial” (journeyman); in the Indian world between the noble of whatever rank and the commoner.

16 Tutino, John M., “Provincial Spaniards, Indian Towns, and Haciendas: Interrelated Agrarian Sectors in the Valleys of Mexico and Toluca, 1750–1810,” in Altman, and Lockhart, , eds., Provinces, p. 180.Google Scholar

17 Tutino, John M., Creole Mexico: Spanish Elites, Haciendas, and Indian Towns, 1750–1810, Ph.D. Diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1976, p. 138, Table 3.5.Google Scholar

18 Ladd, Doris M., The Mexican Nobility at Independence 1780–l826 (Austin, 1976), p. 199–200.Google Scholar No other single source is as valuable as Ladd’s book for reliable information on the patterns of descent and marriage of the Mexican nobility; however, limitation inherent in her sources, did not permit discovery of all of the economic aspects of these patterns.

19 AN, Juan Manuel Pozo, June 4, 1787.

20 John M. Tutino, Creole Mexico.

21 AN, José Antonio Burillo, Feb. 12, 1806.

22 AN, Burillo, Aug. 27, 1784.

23 AN, José María de Torija, June 4, 1782, Oct. 22, 1783, July 28, 1787.

It was not uncommong in late colonial Mexico City for successful businessmen to become clerics after being widowed and to continue in business as actively as before.

24 AN, Torija, July 28, 1787.

25 AN, Burillo, Jan. 9, 1787.

26 AN, Burillo, Oct. 4, 1793.

27 AN, Torija, June 4, 1782, July 17, 1782, October 12, 1783, November 8, 1783, Joaquín Barrientos, July 10, 1809.

28 AGN, Protomedicato, leg. 2, exp. 3, p. 2v, July 18, 1787.

29 AGN, Padrones, leg. 52, Dec. 1811; Burillo, Jan. 5, 1799 and June 23, 1810.

30 AN, Burillo, July 1, 1782.

31 AN, Torija, Nov. 8, 1783, Dec. 4, 1783; AGN, Padrones, leg. 80, 1796.

32 AGN, Padrones, leg. 80, 1796.

33 Ibid.

34 AN, Burillo, Aug. 27, 1784.

35 AN, Pozo, Dec. 20, 1785.

36 AN, Burillo, May 23, 1800, Nov. 15, 1800.

37 AN, Burillo, Jan. 11, 1798, Jan. 24, 1799.

38 AN, Burillo, July 1, 1782.

39 AN, Burillo, Aug. 27, 1784.

40 AN, Pozo, March 6, 1786.

41 AN, Burillo, Jan. 24, 1797.

42 AN, Burillo, Dec. 29, 1797.

43 AN, Burillo, Jan. 4, 1798.

44 AN, Torija, Nov. 8, 1793, Dec. 4, 1783.

45 AN, Burillo, Jan. 2, 1805.

46 AN, Pozo, June 4, 1787.

47 AN, Burillo, May 6, 1796.

48 AN, Burillo, Jan. 28, 1808.

As has been manifested here in the case of the notary José Antonio Burillo and the Regla family, individuals and families regularly patronized the same notary or firm, sometimes over generations. This greatly facilitates the study of families or individual career patterns over time.

49 AN, Burillo, Jan. 2, 1805, Sept. 17, 1807.

50 AN, Pozo, June 6, 1800, Feb. 15, 1800, Feb. 6, 1801, July 28, 1801 In 1799 Isita was renting five pulquerías and was subrenting them to yet another person. In 1808 he was the individual who rented the two pulquerías belonging to one of the Romero de Terreros sisters.

51 AN, Torija, June 7, 1783, Jan. 18, 1785.

52 AN, Burillo, Nov. 5, 1782.

53 AN, Burillo, July 14, 1784, Pozo, July 20, 1786, Oct. 12, 1787.

54 AN, Pozo, Jan. 10, 1809, Feb. 20, 1809.

55 AN, Pozo, May 25, 1810.

56 AN, Pozo, Nov. 5, 1784.

57 AN, Pozo, June 6, 1800, Feb. 15, 1800, Feb. 6, 1801.

58 AN, Pozo, Feb. 28, 1805.

59 AN, Francisco Javier Benítez, March 27, 1819.