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Evolution of the Textile Industry of Puebla 1544-1845 Author(s): Jan Bazant Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Oct., 1964), pp. 56-69 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/177824 . Accessed: 23/02/2014 15:00

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EVOLUTION OF THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY OF PUEBLA

1544-1845

This article deals with an important chapter in the economic history of Mexico. Throughout its history Puebla was an industrial center. Well into the 19th century it was the prime center of the country's chief manufacture - textiles. The city became the commercial and industrial capital of New

Spain within a few years of its foundation. I shall concentrate on the ways in which the several branches of the textile industry were organized, com-

paring their development with that of the textile industries of medieval and

early industrial Europe.

PUEBLA: AN ECCLESIASTICAL AND ARTISTIC CENTER, YET INDUSTRIAL CITY

At the start we are confronted with a paradox. Puebla is known as the Rome of Mexico, as a city whose churches and colonial houses are perhaps more beautiful than those of any other city in Mexico. How could it also have been the commercial and industrial capital of New Spain? A spirit of intense Catholicism may foster the arts but is ordinarily thought of as alien or hostile to industrial development. We expect a religious city to be beautiful, but we usually think of an industrial city, dedicated to work, as being ugly. Yet there are some exceptions to this seemingly obvious rule. Florence, Siena and Perugia in Italy, which stand among the few supremely beautiful cities in the world, were in their great days famous also for their industry, commerce and banking. Medieval Bruges and Ghent, in Flanders, were at the same time religious and industrial centers. Of course there are contrary examples: Venice and Salzburg are beautiful but not industrial, and there have been rich mercantile cities, like Genoa, whose architecture was undis-

tinguished. In Puebla the influence of the Church favored the development of a num-

ber of luxury industries: silk weaving, wrought iron work (the best Mexican

examples are those of the Cathedral of Puebla,' wood-carving of an ex-

1 Manuel Romero de Terreros, Las Artes Industriales en la Nueva Espana (Mexico City, P. Robredo, 1923), p. 47.

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TEXTILE INDUSTRY OF PUEBLA

tremely vigorous character,2 Talavera pottery, tiles, and furniture inlaid with

mother-of-pearl, ivory, silver and tortoise shell.3 There was also a flourishing batihojeria for gold engravings to adorn altar-pieces, retables, and picture- frames, a curtiduria that turned out silver-ornamented saddles, and work-

shops producing steel with inlays of silver and gold for spurs and bridles.4 The Church, being the main purchaser of art objects, nurtured all these industries. Once they were established, other artisans began making woollen

cloth, which had a wider demand. Finally we have the production of a cheap cotton fabric called manta that was bought by the people at large.

One may say that the aesthetic sense is inherent in Puebla, for she was born with it. As Echeverria y Veytia, a chronicler of the second half of the 18th century reports,

Before beginning construction of the City, the licentiate Salmeron was careful to have a plan and drawing of it drawn up, and this it seems was sent to the Real Audiencia which approved it and demanded that the division of lands should be made accordingly and that everyone should follow this plan, to which they gave the name traza...

The Sr. Virrey D. Antonio de Mendoza added this advice:

See that the lots which are assigned within the city limits are built upon, and if the persons to whom you have given them fail to build, insist that they do so within a certain time, and if they do not, give the lots to others, and watch the order lest the city get out of proportion.5

This sense of proportion with which Puebla was planned greatly impressed the English wife of the first Spanish ambassador, Calderon de la Barca, who came to Mexico in 1839, especially "the wide streets, well paved; large houses of two storeys, very solid and well constructed; magnificent churches." Of the Cathedral she wrote, "it is not as large as the Cathedral of Mexico

City, but it is more elegant, simpler, and more pleasing." 6 One could object that this was the opinion of a person who did not know the country well. But Father Francisco Javier Clavijero, a notable Mexican Jesuit of the 18th

century had written of Puebla, that,

in its form, in the arangement of its streets, in the magnificent decoration of churches it resembles Mexico City but surpasses it in the height and beauty of its bell towers and domes, in the multitude of fountains that are everywhere - in the squares, streets, monasteries, schools and houses.7 2 Ibid., p. 120. 3 Ibid., p. 137. 4 Miguel Angel Quintana, "Papel Hist6rico de Puebla en el progreso industrial de la Nueva Espafia y Mexico", Boletin de la SMGE, t. LXII, p. 347. 5 Mariano Fernandez de Echeverria y Veytia, Historia de la Fundacion de la ciudad de la Puebla de los Angeles, Libro 1 (Puebla, 1962), p. 125. Hereafter cited as Echeverria y Veytia. 6 Madame Calder6n de la Barca, La Vida en Mexico (Porrua, 1959), pp. 358-62. 7 Fr. J. Clavijero, "Breve Descripci6n de la Provincia de Mexico de la Cia. de Jesus", in Tesoros Documentales de Mexico, ed. P. Mariano Cuevas (1944), pp. 324 ff.

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The foundation plans aimed also at the development of industry. Frangois Chevalier has described how the city was settled by poor Spanish farmers,8 and how the Audiencia intended it to be a city of workers.9 Indeed, as early as March 30, 1531, the magistrate Salmeron had written to the Concejo de Indias that colonists living on the revenues of encomiendas (which remind one of medieval fiefs) would not be permitted to settle in Puebla.10 Although some exceptions to this rule had to be allowed, Salmeron's aims, as set out in another letter to the Concejo de Indias of August 13, 1531, are very clear.

Deploring "the unbridled greed and great sloth of the conquistadores", he

presents the new community of Puebla de Los Angeles in the guise of a

practical experiment in moral reform: it will be "a help" (remedio) in showing "profligates and others who pass through these parts, that they should not take the road to perdition". Already, he says, the community has 50 in- habitants. He goes on to ask "that His Majesty make Puebla head of the

Bishopric and make it a city, because on account of its location and nature it could become the chief and largest town of this New Spain." T1

The location, both from the point of view of roads and resources, was excellent. The region lacked precious metals, but the land was fertile. Puebla

ground its wheat and converted its corn into pork and fine bacon, turning excess fat into soap. Silk worms were bred; cochineal was collected for dye. An abundance of streams served dye-works and water-powered mills for a

variety of purposes. Nearby forests furnished fuel, local limestone provided building materials; fullers' earth was found for the woollen industry; clays for both fine and coarse pottery were at hand, and some other raw materials.

The first settlers in Puebla were so poor, according to Fray Luis de

Fuensalida, that they had to be loaned corn in order to eat.12 The new city drew no revenue from encomiendas. For this reason it was granted immunity from all taxes for thirty years,13 a privilege that speeded the development of

industry. The circumstance that Puebla was settled by men who derived no income

from land calls to mind Henri Pirenne's hypothesis about the rise of European cities in the 10th and 11th centuries. In his view, the trade and industry of those cities was started by landless migrants who had to make a living in some new way, not by farming and not by war (which required landed

8 Frangois Chevalier, Formation des Grands Domaines au Mexique au XVle et XVlle Siecles (= Travaux et Memoires d'Institut d'Ethnologie No. 56) (Paris. 1952). 9 Frangois Chevalier, Significacion Social de la Fundacion de la Puebla de los Angeles (= Centro de Estudios Historicos de Puebla, Publ. No. 6) (Puebla, 1957). 10 Pueblo a traves de los Siglos (Ed. "El Sol de Puebla", Puebla, 1962), esp. p. 11. 11 Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, Epistolario de la Nueva Espana, t. XVI, pp. 5-21. Hereafter cited as Epistolario. 12 Puebla a traves de los Siglos, p. 14. 13 Chevalier, Significacion Social...

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TEXTILE INDUSTRY OF PUEBLA

wealth).14 Although Pirenne's supposition may not be entirely true of medie- val Europe, it finds an unexpected illustration in the case of Puebla, a city founded in America in the 16th century.

THE FIRST INDUSTRIES

The general immunity from taxes, decreed in 1532, attracted many people, especially artisan immigrants from Spain. In 1539 a settler named Francisco de Penafiel opened a factory in Puebla "to make cloths as in Segovia".15 This was the first textile factory in New Spain. Penafiel is a village close to the

city of Segovia, whose woollen textile industry was the most advanced in

Spain. In 1542 we meet the first Puebla silk mercer. There may have been others

even earlier, for although we have a list of all inhabitants who received

building lots between 1535 and the close of the century, their occupations are indicated in only a minority of cases.16 Since Mexico City at first had a

monopoly of silk-weaving, however, any manufacturing by the early silk mercers in Puebla must have been clandestine.

These beginnings of industry in Puebla were on a small scale. The silk mercers and clothiers assuredly arrived poor, their only capital consisting in their knowledge of their trades: they certainly could not, as Sombart argued of the origins of commercial capital in European cities in the middle ages, have drawn on accumulations of rent. Their capital must rather, in line with Pirenne's view of early medieval merchants, have been generated out of the

profits of modest beginnings.17 In this regard Puebla presents a clear contrast with other cities of New Spain, which were settled by encomenderos. The

capital cannot have come from land, but must have had an independent origin.

SILK

Puebla could not allow Mexico City to enjoy its official monopoly of silk manufacture for long. In 1544 Sebastian Rodrigues petitioned the authori- ties in Spain, on Puebla's behalf, as follows:

... as in Mexico City the silk trade is beneficial and many people inhabitants of the said city of Los Angeles... have wanted to come to live and benefit from the

14 Henri Pirenne, Histoire Economique de L'Occident Medieval (Desclee de Brouwer, Bruges, 1951), p. 198. 15 Hugo Leicht, Las Calles de Puebla (Puebla, 1934), pp. 276-279; P. Lopez de Villa- sefior, Cartilla Vieja de la Nobilisima ciudad de Puebla (1781) (UNAM, 1961). 16 P. Lopez de Villasefior, op. cit. 17 Cf. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. III (Cambridge, 1963), p. 17.

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said silk trade in this city of Los Angeles because it lies in the region where (raw) silk is being produced and where the water is the best for dyes and since (raw silk) is more plentiful and cheaper than in Mexico City and whereas the distin- guished Viceroy has not been willing to grant us license for this... it is requested that his Majesty favor this city and grant it licence to profit from the trade of silk ...

He adds that there are in Puebla "many inhabitants and upright widows" who could work in this trade.18

In 1548 - a relatively short delay for those times - the petition was granted:

We hereby grant licence and authority to the city of Los Angeles of New Spain and to any inhabitants and dwellers in it that they may freely have and keep looms for silk in said city, and that in respect to this there should be no obstacle nor impediment.19

In my opinion the words "any inhabitants and dwellers" and "freely" signify that Puebla was not to be subject to the gild regulations issued by Mendoza for the capital of New Spain in 1542, and that there was to be no silk gild in Puebla but instead free enterprise. This interpretation will be challenged by those who believe that all industry prior to the period of the French Revo- lution was organized in gilds. However, research has shown that this was by no means universally the case. Gild organization spread in medieval towns partly as a means of limiting production when the market was no longer expanding, and partly for political reasons.20 It is true that in urban woollen industry gilds became dominant. In Spain this occurred in Barcelona,21 which had in all 71 gilds in the 15th century and 94 in the 16th century. But in Castile the situation was different.22 Here Moorish artisans predominated, and Christian gilds were less developed than in Catalonia. For example, Seville had only 60 gilds in all and Granada only 40. I believe that this relative weakness of gilds in Castile favored its industrial expansion in the 16th century.

Again, Spain's apparent generosity in permitting her new colony to make silks need not surprise us. It was not really a question of generosity, but of the economic circumstances of the age. The conquest and colonization of America stimulated production and commerce by creating new demand.23 Spain, far from restricting or trying to prevent the development of industry in New Spain, clearly encouraged it. The prospects of the silk industry in 18 Epistolario, t. IV, pp. 123-128. 19 Echeverria y Veytia, op. cit., pp. 299-300. 20 See Sylvia L. Thrupp, "The Gilds", in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. III (1963), pp. 230-280. 21 John James, History of the Worsted Manufacturer in England (London, Longman and Roberts, 1857), pp. 29-32. 22 Harold Livermore, A History of Spain (New York, Farrar, Strauss Cudahy, 1958), pp. 186ff. 23 Ibid.

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TEXTILE INDUSTRY OF PUEBLA

New Spain were promising, and there was great optimism about it. Crist6bal de Benavente, reporting to the king on the state of New Spain wrote that,

There is a manifest enthusiasm among those who possess Indians, and also among the Indians, for producing more silk here than in Castile, or Calabria, or Italy, or Venice; and there are splendid dyestuffs, especially for making carmesies (red silks), and tornasoles (shot silks) of very high quality.24

Puebla at first mainly produced raw silk, from mulberry plantations,25 and cochineal. Mexico City had the head start in the manufacturing processes. Among the 200 men whose occupations are given, in a long list "of married

subjects away from their wives in the diocese of Mexico City" in the year 1533, there were 20 silk weavers, four silk mercers and two spinners of silk.26 In the capital the industry was at first free, but free enterprise did not last

long. In 1542, in conformity with the general Spanish policy of protecting the native, the council of Mexico City prohibited the use of Indian slaves as

spinners in the Spanish mercers' workshops.27 The motive may have been fiscal as well as humanitarian, but there was certainly no idea of favoring Spanish imports. In any case, the slaves were replaced by free Indian spin- ners. These had their own gild, while weaving and dyeing were in the hands of Spanish gilds.

These ordinances were in force only in the capital; they did not apply to Puebla. It is not unlikely that some mercers of Mexico City moved to Puebla in order to continue using slave labor. Naturally, Mexico City could not tolerate this competition indefinitely. Capitalist use of slave spinners in Puebla was finally suppressed, Mendoza's ordinances of 1542 being extended to Puebla in 1569.28

The Mexican silk industry declined abruptly about 1600, as a result of

competition from imported Oriental silks. The Crown delivered the death blow in 1634, when the industry was just a century old, by prohibiting export of Mexican textiles to Peru.29 In the 18th century, Puebla chroniclers believed this measure to have been the main cause of the city's decline.

WOOLLENS

When Spanish techniques in woollen manufacture were brought to Puebla,30 were Spanish methods of work organization also introduced? What were these

24 Epistolario, t. IV, pp. 94-102. 25 Woodrow Borah, Silk Raising in Colonial Mexico (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1943), p. 43. 26 Epistolario, t. XV, pp. 141-155. 27 A. S. Aiton, Antonio de Mendoza, First Viceroy of New Spain (Durham, Duke University Press, 1927), pp. 28 ff. 28 Borah, op. cit., pp. 36-37. 29 Ibid., p. 35. 30 Ibid., p. 97.

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methods? Martin S. Hume has well described the rapid advance of industrial

capitalism in Spain in the second quarter of the 16th century; with large- scale employment superseding the small master artisan.31 According to Diego de Colmenares' Historia de Segovia, some woollen manufacturers in that city had employed up to 200 or 300 workers each.32 It was this tendency to

enlarge the scale of employment that was imported into New Spain. Signifi- cantly, some immigrants came from regions of Spain that were famous for their textile industries. Bermuidez de Castro, a chronicler who wrote in the 18th century, says specifically:

When Puebla was founded, some of the many settlers who came were from the Villa de Viruega, and from Alcarria in the bishopric of Toledo, very illustrious people of notable quality... these settlers from Villa de Viruega founded several workshops, which they later called obrajes (factories), in order to manufacture coarse and fine cloths, linings, sack cloth and other woollen fabrics, for the reason that not enough ... were imported from Castile.33

The Puebla textile manufacturers continued to prosper throughout the latter half of the 16th century. As Bermuidez de Castro goes on to say,

And because of the care that was taken over the work, buyers came from different parts of the kingdom and even... from Peru,... the cloth being well finished because of the abundance of fuller's earth. Consequently the owners of the fac- tories became affluent and were able to maintain premises (oficinas) on the out- skirts of the city that were very convenient for their workers.

We may note here that the introduction of new techniques that were not native to Mexico probably made it necessary to group Indians, who resisted work for Spaniards, under one roof for training and supervision. There is no clear evidence of early introduction of a putting-out system. This circum- stance differentiates the Mexican woollen industry from the European. Again, whereas the European industry often spilled out into the countryside, the Mexican remained wholly urban, except in the North where large haciendas and monasteries manufactured their own cloth.

The prosperity of the factory owners was moreover based in part on the

shocking abuse of enslavement of Indian workers. Faithful to its policy of

protecting the Indians, the Viceroy's government decided to regulate condi- tions of work in the factories. Legislation of this kind became particularly forceful in the late 16th century. Mexican opinion is inclined to ascribe it to a desire to block the development of Mexican industry in order to provide a market in New Spain for Spanish industry. Yet I believe it to have been

31 Martin A. S. Hume, Spain: Its Greatness and Decay 1479-1788 (Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1940), pp. 83-84. 32 Cited in J. Carrera Pujol, Historia de la Economia Espanola (Barcelona, 1943), Vol. I, p. 529. 33 D. Antonio Bermudez de Castro, Theatro Angelopolitano (1746), cited in N. Le6n, Bibliografia Mexicana del Siglo XVIII, Va. Parte A-Z (Mexico City, 1908), pp. 121-354.

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motivated chiefly by the well-known Spanish aristocratic disdain for the

bourgeoisie. I believe that this same disdain is evident in industrial legislation in Spain.34

Towards the end of the 16th century another change occurred, the issue of the gild ordinances of 1592 for Mexico City:

that in as much as there has been in this city and kingdom a great excess in weaving and working of sack cloth and coarse frieze since these are not made in the proper width and manner, by which the republic and its inhabitants have been and are much wronged and defrauded, it is fitting that this be remedied.. .35

Measures of this kind are a sign of overproduction: clearly the gild was

organized in order to restrict production by eliminating fabrics of poor quality.

A Mexican would tend to interpret this policy as dictated by Spanish interests, the government deciding to limit Mexican production in order to

give Spanish goods a larger share of the market. This may well be correct. There may not have been overproduction in Mexico. But there certainly was

overproduction in Spain, and in Europe generally, obliging European industry to look for markets first in Spain and then in America. For it was just at this time that a general crisis of the European economy was becoming apparent. In Spain it led to prolonged depression, with fatal consequences. It is well known that the first victim of the Castilian economic decline was the textile

industry. According to Hamilton,36 the number of woollen manufacturers in Toledo diminished by three-fourths between 1600 and 1666, and the popu- lation of Vallodolid, Segovia, and Toledo - three centers of wool production - declined by one half between 1594 and 1694. He sees the decline as

aggravated by unwise fiscal policies, while Damiain de Oliveres stresses the

competition of foreign imports produced at lower labor cost.37

Although there was considerable delay in adopting gild organization in the Puebla woollen industry, its factories were of course subject to govern- ment inspection. There were twelve such inspections in the year 1621 alone.38 The number of factories appears to have been dwindling. In 1603 there were

34 For a short account of economic conditions and policy in Spain at this time see Earl J. Hamilton, "The Decline of Spain", Economic History Review, VIII (1938), reproduced in E. M. Carus-Wilson, ed., Essays in Economic History, I (1954). See also discussion of the internal peace of New Spain in, Luis Chavez Orozco, Conflicto de Trabajo con los Mineros del Real del Monte, Ano de 1766 (Instituto Nacional de Estudios Hist6ricos de la Revoluci6n Mexicana, Mexico City, 1960), p. 10. 35 Silvio Zavala, Ordenanzas del Trabajo, Siglos XVI y XVII (Mexico City, Edit. Eleda, 1947), p. 202. 36 Hamilton, op. cit. For a recent and very able discussion of the problem, see John H. Elliott, "The Decline of Spain", in Past and Present, no. 20 (November 1961); also a book by the same author, Imperial Spain 1469-1716 (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1963), pp. 172-91 and 279-95. 37 Carrera Pujol, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 417. s8 Archivo del Ayuntamiento de Puebla, t. 221 (1583-1621), t. 224 (1621-1807). Cited

hereafter as AAP.

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33, in 1622 only 22 are cited,39 and according to Bermudez de Castro,40 in that year only 10 had government licences. The discrepancy between the last two figures suggests that some were able to operate without licences.

The Puebla manufacturers adopted the gild ordinances of Mexico City in 1676. Besides the interest in maintaining quality, these show the members of the gild as also united against pressure from their creditors.41 The ordi- nances provided for the inspection of all looms and workshops. It must have been difficult to enforce inspection of the premises of capitalists; the gild in 1691 begged the mayor and the inspectors of the "trade of weaving wool in wide and narrow widths" to carry out this duty.42 If they really did so, the

policy probably contributed to the decline of the industry. By the early 18th century the decline was quite evident. Bermudez de

Castro, writing in 1746, states that fewer cloths are made now in Puebla because of competition from nearby Cholula, from the city of Queretaro and from Castilian imports:

with those who are working there is enough... for the clothing of servants and the poor people... as well as for the ordinary needs of the haciendas because in this city only the very poor or indigent wear local cloth and the officials of any gild can buy imported fabrics.43

Puebla could not withstand all this competition. Over-supply had obliged her to give up the making of the finer qualities altogether. Writing in the same

year as Bermudez de Castro, a French traveler comments:

this lack of taste... is the cause that the cloth-making in the same city (Puebla) is extremely coarse... The above-mentioned cloths sell well because they last a long time; they are preferred to European stuffs, undoubtedly because they are very heavy.44

Once Mexico began to import European cloth, and also lost its South Ameri- can market, Puebla was doomed. Queretaro was less affected because of its favorable location - further from the coast, and closer both to the market of the northern mining region and to the sources of wool supply, which in the 17th and 18th centuries came largely from the huge flocks pastured in the northern plains.45

Puebla retained only the manufacture of the coarsest type of woollens. However, early in the 19th century this, too, died out. This cannot have been due to European competition since, as we have seen, the imported cloth was

39 Hugo Leicht, op. cit., pp. 276-79. 40 Bermudez de Castro, op. cit., p. 189. 41 Zavala, Ordenanzas, p. 207. 42 AAP, t. 234, Expediente 2. 43 Bermfidez de Castro, op. cit., p. 190. 44 Cited in Herbert Ingram Priestly, Jose de Gdlvez, Visitor-General of New Spain, 1765-1771 (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1916), p. 18. 45 Chevalier, Formation des Grands Domaines au Mexique.

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not of the heavy type that the poor were buying. I believe that labor troubles were responsible.

Apparently the Puebla manufacturers had continued to rely at least in

part on slave labor, compelled to live inside the factory premises. In 1767 the Marques de Croix issued a set of humanitarian decrees intended to put an end to factory slavery.46 The text of the decrees alludes also to apprentice- ship and to working hours, and makes clear that not all factory workers were under coercion. These same ordinances were reprinted in 1781 for Viceroy Martin de Mayorga de Alcantara, for the reason that the Queretaro manu- facturers were systematically violating them. One gets the impression that in Puebla the rules had been really obeyed. Indeed, the employers now had

grievances against the workers. The Puebla factory owners complained in 1800 that the workers systematically celebrated "Holy Monday", some also

Tuesday and Wednesday.47 Clearly these workers are not slaves and do not live in the factories. There are manufacturers able to lend money to workers in debt, in other factories. There are references to disputes between factory owners and their workers. Again, the latter are said to be continually stealing wool "in order to sell it in second-hand stores and in houses hidden in back

alleys for the weaving of narrow strips of frieze, cordoncillos, and blankets." On such grounds the factory owners petitioned that they be allowed to return to the system of confining their workers within factory premises, and that

they be authorized to compel vagabonds to work. They also wanted it made

illegal for a competitor to lend any worker the money to get out of debt.48 As Humboldt's well-known description of the Queretaro factories shows,

slavery had persisted there in spite of the renewal of the decrees against it.

Possibly the same was true also of Cholula. By 1803, according to Flon, the

governor of Puebla, the city had only two woollen workshops.49 The market was supplied partly by independent artisans, outside the gild. A "searcher of the gild of weavers of wide cloths" in 1807 petitioned to have these out-

siders, especially spinners, suppressed, but the authorities refused to take any action.50

COTTON

Both silk and wool were introduced from the Old World. The art of weaving 46 Archivo General de la Naci6n (hereafter cited as AGN), Seccion de bandos. 47 AGN, reproduced in Luis Chavez Orozco, ed., Documentos para la Historia Eco- nomico de Mexico, Vol. VII (published by Secretario de la Economia Nacional, 1935), pp. 25-33. Absenteeism from work on Monday is still common in some parts of Mexico. 48 The easiest way of solving labor shortage in New Spain consisted in lending small amounts of money to Indians who could then be forced to work to pay off their debt. 49 Manuel de Flon, Noticias Estadisticas de la Intendencia de Puebla, 1804, in Rela- ciones estadisticas de Nueva Espana de principios del S. XIX (Secretaria de Hacienda y Credito Puiblico, 1944), p. 54. This report refers to conditions in 1803. 50 AAP, t. 224, Exp. 26, ff. 226-235.

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cotton, however, early attained a far higher level in Mexico than in Europe. In medieval Europe cotton was usually mixed either with wool or with flax, and though purely cotton cloth was made, in Italy and in Spain, it was not much esteemed.51 The conquistadores, who had a sharp eye for quality, were amazed at the excellence of Mexican cottons. Herman Cortes reports: "More- over, Moctezuma gave me many of his clothes, which were so fine, con-

sidering that everything was of cotton without any silk, that nothing anywhere in the world could match their texture... there was bedding incomparably softer than silk. .." 2 Even the cottons the ordinary people used were sur-

prisingly fine. The poor, it seems, wore a coarser cloth made from agave fiber.

An astonishing amount of cotton was produced in pre-Conquest times. The weavers were women, working with an extremely primitive suspended or waist loom on which they could turn out only rather short lengths. Their tilmatli were of one brazada, four square varas in size (1 vara = about 1 yard). Now the Aztecs collected an annual tribute of nearly 3,000,000 (2,896,261) pieces of about this length. If we double this amount to allow for production for use and trade, apart from tribute, it equals Mexico's

production for 1843, achieved with modern machinery.53 After the conquest, both the quality and quantity of cotton woven declined. Like all things indigenous, the art was looked on with contempt. But, at least, once tribute in kind was converted into money payments, the Indians were permitted to make and sell cloth among themselves tax free.54 However, cotton-weaving continued to languish in the countryside.

At some time in the 17th century Puebla became the scene of a new cotton industry. The weavers were men, presumably mestizos, used a European type of loom on which they produced 30-vara lengths, and were organized in a gild. We can only conjecture how this came about. I believe the key factors to be two. On the demand side it is likely that as half-naked Indians moved into the towns they had to cover themselves better, and found the village cottons woven in small pieces inconvenient. On the production side the key lies in the evident dominance of the silk gild over the cotton gild. The latter may indeed have been an offshoot of the former, silk weavers having turned to cotton as their silk business fell off. It is in any case a fact that the officers of the silk gild had authority over the cotton weavers. In an ordinance of

51 The best study is Franco Borlandi's, "Futainiers et Futaines dans l'Italie du Moyen Age", in Eventail de l'Histoire Vivante. Hommage a Lucien Febvre (Paris, Armand Colin, 1953). 52 See also the luxurious list of cloth and jewels which Cortes sent to Spain in 1519, printed in Lucas Alaman, Disertaciones (Ed. Jus, 1942), t. I, pp. 395 ff. 53 Variations in the size of pieces made before the Conquest are described in Oth6n de Mendizabal, Las Artes Textiles Indigenas y la Industria Textil Mexicana (Vol. VI of his Obras Completas), pp. 257-496. 54 A. Carrillo y Gariel, El Traje en la Nueva Espafa (Instituto Nacional de Antro- pologia e Historia, 1959), p. 24.

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TEXTILE INDUSTRY OF PUEBLA

1686-1687 they assume the authority to penalize any cotton weaver who cannot show an examination card.55

Puebla chroniclers begin to notice the cotton industry in the 1740's, when it was already well established. By that time it is likely that some of the woollen drapers had moved into cotton, as happened in Tlaxcala. They did not, however, group workers into factories. Possibly owing both to the

persistence of Indian tradition and to the influence of the silk gild, the small

workshop predominated. At first the artisans used thread spun by rural Indians who brought it to the open city market. When itinerant merchants tried to buy it up in the country, this was forbidden by law. But as demand

grew, Spanish merchants brought the raw cotton directly from Veracruz, the chief producing region. Since labor was cheaper in Puebla than on the coast, the cotton was transported with its seed, which triples the freight, the seed

being removed in Puebla. The entire industry thus became urban. Echeverria

y Veytia describes it as the only employment left in Puebla for poor women, who "almost all occupy themselves with spinning cotton for sale to the

weavers, in which they get little profit." 56 The weaver in turn sold his cloth to a habilitador (aviador), a trader

usually a Spaniard - who advanced him cash. According to our chroni-

cler, most of the profit went to "the fat merchants who give credit in order to sell these goods in their shops." 57 As a recent writer has pointed out, the Puebla industry must by 1810 be regarded as capitalistic: the weavers became

dependent on mercantile capital as soon as the market widened.58 There is however no proof that these merchants had generally taken over the supplying of weavers with cotton or thread. In other words, weavers may still, in the 18th century, have been operating as independent artisans, at least so far as

they sold their cloth locally. The prosperity of Puebla's cotton industry at the end of the 18th century

was based on war. It soon collapsed. A report of Flon's written in 1803 indicates that a crisis had already set in.59 Half the population of the city, he says, was spinning cotton, by which trade they could barely eke out a

55 AAP, t. 231, L. 2695, Exp. 2. 56 Echeverria y Veytia, op. cit., p. 301. Fray Juan Villa Sanchez, in his important chronicle, Puebla Sagrada y Profana, edited by Fr. Javier de la Pena in 1835, also states that weavers in 1746 bought thread from the spinners. See the facsimile edition of 1962, pp. 39-40. Some weavers may have employed spinners for wages: see refer- ences to "the good old times" for weavers in Clamores del tejedor (1820), reproduced in Jose Miguel Quintana, ed., Las Artes Grdficas en Puebla (Mexico City, 1960), pp. 109-11, and in Antunano, Ampliacion, Aclaracion y Correccion a los principales puntos del Manifiesto sobre el Algodon manufacturado y en greia, edited by Luis Chavez Orozco (Parrua, 1955), pp. 63, 74. 57 Echeverria y Veytia, op. cit., p. 301. 58 Robert A. Potash, El Banco de Avio de Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Economica (Mexico City, 1959), pp. 20-23. (Translation of an unpublished dissertation, Harvard University, 1953.) 59 Flon, op. cit., p. 54. See above, n. 48.

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"scanty subsistence". He refers to the lamentations of the traders, who for the most part can make sales only on credit. Gild complaints of the same

year throw further light on the situation. The trade is in "disorder", for

unqualified people, "protected and encouraged" by gild masters or by mer- chants, have been setting up more and more looms, and turning out very bad cloth.60 The crisis has been attributed to the Spanish decree of December, 1804, by which United States merchants were allowed to import goods through Vera Cruz,61 but clearly a state of over-production existed in 1803.

The general abolition of gilds in 1814, inaugurating the regime of free

enterprise, did not immediately alter the structure of the cotton industry. Independent artisan weavers struggled on.62 They were complaining in 1820, not of capitalist intervention, but only of shady hucksters who bought up defective cloth for resale.63 Impoverished weavers were still selling cloth to merchants as late as 1833.64

Capital was slow to enter the industry for the simple reason that it was for some time unprofitable. English imports had depressed the price of cotton cloth while at the same time war devastation had raised the price of the Mexican raw cotton. The War of Independence reduced the yield of the Vera Cruz region from between 85,000 and 90,000 tercios in a good year (2 tercios = 1 mule-load) to between 6,000 and 8,000.65 Naturally the price rose.

Puebla's first cotton industrialist was Esteban de Antufiano, who in his

youth had seen and admired the thriving mills of England. Encouraged by protective legislation prohibiting the import of thread, enacted in 1821, he set up a small spinning mill with imported machines and child labor. He called the mill "The House of Training for Children".66 It was not a success- ful enterprise, as imported textiles continued to be cheaper than those made in Mexico.

The stronger protective measures of 1829 and 1830, prohibiting the im-

port of cloth, altered the situation. In 1835 Antufano set up a new spinning mill with better machines, putting the thread out to be woven by hand, and

offering the cloth for sale in his own shop. The business still did not succeed, for consumers had come to prefer mechanically woven English cottons. Antuiiano therefore shortly added power looms to his factory. Yet production statistics for 1843 show the hand weavers still able to compete, less than half the thread used in that year being woven mechanically. But the Industrial Revolution was under way.

60 AAP, t. 234, L. 2700, Folios 268-284. 61 Potash, op. cit., p. 24. 62 They were selling cloth to merchants in 1813. Pueblo Sagrada y Profana, p. 105. 63 J. M. Quintana, op. cit. 64 Antuiiano, Ampliacin ..., p. 73. 65 Ibid., p. 17. 66 Leicht, op. cit.

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TEXTILE INDUSTRY OF PUEBLA

CONCLUSIONS

I draw three conclusions from my study. In the first place, the industrial life of Puebla, and of Mexico City, reflected over these centuries the same general trends that are evident in Europe. The 16th century saw industries developing, the 17th century saw long depression, the 18th century saw recovery leading to industrial revolution.

Second, the textile manufactures of New Spain were clearly the daughter of Spanish industry. The silk gild of Mexico City essentially followed the Granada ordinances of 1526, and these determined the structure of the in-

dustry. In the woollen industry, just as in Spain, there was relative liberty, permitting the development of capitalism. The marvelous pre-Cortesian cotton

industry is destroyed, giving way to urban manufacture controlled by gilds. Later, we have growing concentration of power in the hands of merchants, until finally, all processes in the cotton industry can be controlled by one

person or one firm. Seen in perspective, the evolution of the cotton industry in Mexico is very reminiscient of its European counterpart, constituting only a variation on the theme of the formation of capitalist production.

My third conclusion is that in spite of the differences between metropolis and colony both reveal the same unity of purpose to which the universal

monarchy held. This unity of purpose crystallized in a certain conception of life in general, dictating the way in which society and the economy should be

organized. It is a unity that explains the differences between the Spanish- speaking world and the rest of the Western European world. Differences

emerged even in industrial organization, for example in the silk industry. While in Lyons this was developing capitalist tendencies, Spain hampered these through hostility to luxury. Thus sumptuary laws became so strict as

materially to contribute to the decline of the Spanish silk industry. Woollen manufacturers were subject to far more restrictive controls in the Spanish world than in England, whose government sought to aid economic develop- ment. As regards cotton it is noteworthy that New Spain maintained gild control over production. It was only after Independence that the Mexican cotton industry became fully capitalistic. The speed with which the Industrial Revolution spread after Independence is due in part to the disappearance of the restraints inherent in Spanish rule.

JAN BAZANT

El Colegio de Mexico Mexico City

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