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Black Mexico

TimesRace

University of New Mexico Press r Albuquerque

Edited by BEN VINSON III

and MATTHEW RESTALL

Colonial to Modernandsociety from

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DESIGN AND LAYOUT: MELISSA TANDYSH

Composed in 10/13.5 Janson Text Lt Std

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Black Mexico: race and society from colonial to modern times / edited by Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall.

p. cm. — (Dialogos) Includes bibliographical references and index.

is b n 978-0-8263-4701-5 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Blacks—Mexico—History. 2. Blacks—Mexico—Social conditions.

3. Blacks—Race identity—Mexico. 4. Mexico—Race relations. 5. Mexico—History—Spanish colony, 1540-1810.

6. Mexico—History—1810- I. Vinson, Ben, III. II. Restall, Matthew, 1964- F1392.B55B55 2009 972’.oo496—dc22

2009020457

Printed in the United States of America 19 18 17 16 15 14 345678

l ib r a r y o f CONGRESS CATALOGING-1N-PUBLICATION d a t a

BEN VINSON III

From

■J- ON APRIL 18, 1793, MEXICAN MILITARY INSPECTOR DON BENITO

Perez drafted a lengthy letter to the viceroy detailing the state of affairs among the free-colored communities and militiamen that he had spent several months reviewing. Contained within the pages of his report were opinions that were probably consistent with the views of many elites of the time. In his estimation, the colony’s interior was crowded with unem ployed blacks who congregated on the outskirts of major urban areas such as Mexico City. He wrote that the best way of dealing with this poten tially troublesome lot was to be zealous in charging tribute, which would have the effect of pushing blacks to the coasts as they sought to evade the heavy burden of unwanted taxation.1 On the one hand Perez’s comments revealed an interesting understanding of the black predicament: the quite sizeable free black population found itself struggling to survive financially in freedom. Any efforts to circumscribe their freedom even more (in this case, through exacting straining financial demands) produced visceral reactions. Black populations would move in order to defend their liberty. But while Perez’s letter offered some astute understandings of colonial

Dawn til Dusk Black Labor in Late Colonial Mexico

From Dawn 'til Dusk 91

black life, they were also a bit misguided. He ignored some of the com plex realities of black life with which even he must have been quite famil iar. The colonial archives are filled with evidence of gainful black labor and enterprise. Indeed, urban blacks in particular were probably found employed more often than not.

However, as evidenced in Perez’s dispatch, it was easy for free coloreds to be misunderstood by their society. Even when they worked a trade, sometimes for the government itself, innocent and industrious activity could be egregiously mistaken for criminality and deviancy. In October of 1785, Leberina Azevedo, the wife of Vicente Medina, wrote an impas sioned letter to the viceroy begging that her husband, a free-colored mili tiaman, not be incarcerated and shipped to Puerto Rico for being found on the streets of Mexico City carrying sharp scissors. He was not a vagabond toting an illegal weapon she pleaded, but a hired employee of the Royal tobacco factory where he had responsibilities in the cigar-making indus try. He had been found simply carrying a tool of his trade.2

Similarly, at 8:00 p.m. on the night of July 20, 1789, Lucio Antonio Rodriguez (another black soldier) was apprehended on the streets of Mex ico City for carrying a knife. According to his testimony, he had recently gotten off work from the Royal custom’s house where he held a job as an artisan. Like Medina, his knife was his occupational tool, and he had been using it that evening to cut wineskins and boots at the house of don Juan Maranon. Rather than being caught committing a crime, he had been apprehended while innocently going about his daily business. After sev eral rounds of testimony lasting for over a year, proof of his impeccable character and service record were provided and all charges were cleared. However, until then, he had to endure the humiliation of being dragged through the courts.3 In a world where stereotypes and laws inhibiting the black population lingered, distortions regarding black laborers and black employment persisted.

From the standpoint of scholars, labor has been one of the great top ics of study regarding black life in the colonial Americas. In many ways, research on slavery has captivated and monopolized historical scholarship, yielding tremendously important results that have greatly improved our understanding of the colonial and modern worlds. We now know more about how slavery contributed to the development of capitalism, global economies, world systems, Western notions of modernity, and colonial/ metropolitan relationships. We have sharper understandings of how slavery

98 BEN VINSON III

contributed to the structuring of social hierarchies and racial systems, as well as how it impacted independence movements and the mundane opera tion of everyday politics."* But while slavery certainly occupied a founda tional and prominent role in the colonial black experience, it is important to remember that it was only a part of black life. Particularly in the Latin American context, free coloreds such as Vicente Medina and Lucio Antonio Rodriguez, comprised a substantial workforce that also strongly influenced broader social, political, and economic processes.* Their activities in places such as Brazil, Venezuela, and Cuba are well known but, in other colo nial contexts, such as Mexico, Bolivia, and Guatemala, their worlds are less understood. At least for Mexico, this is not necessarily due to scholarly neglect. Over the past several decades, a number of important studies have been produced that have either featured free coloreds, or have included them in broader analyses of regional and local economies.6 However, few attempts at achieving a general synthesis of free-colored labor have been achieved.

This chapter is an initial attempt at expanding our knowledge of free- black Mexican labor, especially for the late eighteenth century. There may have been fewmoments in Mexican history that present better circumstances for evaluating free-colored labor. The 1790s marked the eve ofindependence and the close of the colonial era. If, as some have argued, the eighteenth century was a period of general prosperity in Mexico, where greater social mobility for blacks was possible due to a weakening caste system, a stron ger class system, and greater racial hybridity, then these years offer one of the richest opportunities to take the pulse of Afro-Mexican socioeconomic progress. Second, the production of an extraordinary colony-wide census, commissioned by viceroy Revillagigedo between 1790 and 1793, provides an unparalleled opportunity to examine free-colored occupational habits. Since the census was raised to identify potential recruits for military duty, detailed information on women (including their professions) was largely excluded, as was data on the native population. Nonetheless, combined with other sources, such as parish registers and tribute data, the late colonial period is one for which we may be able to know the Afro-Mexican popula tion intimately.

It is important to stress that for Afro-Mexicans, the eighteenth cen tury was in many ways a mulato and pardo century and that, at some level, blackness and the black experience should be evaluated on these terms. As a colony, Mexico experienced tremendous demographic growth, nearly

From Dawn ’til Dusk 99

doubling in size from four to seven million inhabitants between the 1650s and the late 1700s. The Afro-Mexican population grew, too, more than tripling from roughly 116,000 in the 1640s to almost 370,000 by the 1790s.7 But with the decline of the slave trade after the 1640s, much of the expansion of the Afro-Mexican population came not through substantial increases in the shipment of new slaves, or by large measures of endoga mous natural growth among free blacks (negros), but rather through the miscegenation of existing slaves and free blacks with mestizos, whites, natives and other groups.8 By the 1790s, the Revillagigedo census only identified a scant five hundred morenos, or “pure blacks,” throughout New Spain, along with another 6,100 black “Africans.”9

Apart from being a mulatto century, one might also argue that the 1700s were an era of Afro-Mexican success. Using the lens of “success” to discuss the black experience offers an important alternative to some traditional models of studying black life. Particularly in Latin American contexts, life after slavery is often processed within the framework of assimilation and mestizaje. Interpreting life after slavery through the “success” lens opens new opportunities for engaging blacks on different terms, notably ones that compel us to measure free-colored populations in light of their respective societies and that demand us to reckon with blacks as a group struggling for their own internal cultural, political, and social cohesion.

Two potential barometers for measuring black success rest in com paring the economic livelihood of blacks in the 1700s against benchmarks from the previous two centuries, as well as against the conditions of black life in the greater Atlantic world. In simplest form, an argument can be made that because so many of Mexico’s blacks were free in the eighteenth century, their liberty should be celebrated over the more pervasive slavery that governed a great deal of New Spain’s black life from the 1500s into the 1600s, and that shackled so much of the black population in slave regimes throughout the French and British Caribbean in the 1700s. Some might also be persuaded to argue that the very prevalence of black freedom in New Spain during the eighteenth century partially compensated for the many misfortunes that some blacks encountered when they took marginal and menial positions.

Of course, this vision of eighteenth-century black success in New Spain comes with some caveats. While most Afro-Mexicans were indeed free dur ing the 1700s, the truth is that slavery persisted as an institution until 1829.

BEN VINSON IIIIOO

In the years preceding emancipation, anywhere from three thousand to ten thousand slaves worked in a range of professions including mining, textiles, and sugar cultivation. Some of the regions where slaves continued working included the cane fields of Cordoba, the developing frontier areas of north ern Alexico (Sonora, Durango, and Sinaloa), the textile center of Queretaro, as well as select coastal regions including Tamiahua and Acapulco. As strict trade controls and monopolies were removed from ports throughout Mexico in the eighteenth century, a small, renewed slave trade appeared in tropical regions like Tabasco. Essentially, what these factors mean is that any dis cussion of eighteenth-century Afro-Alexican success must be situated in a context in which slavery continued to exist, even if only on a small scale. In some of the locations where slavery remained visible, the cultural impact of the system may have borne implications upon free-colored social relation ships, as well as their prospects for advancement in society.

The meaning of free-colored economic progress must also be situ ated in a society characterized by great inequality. In broad measure, the eighteenth century was generally one of economic growth for Mexico on the whole. The colony ranked first among the world’s silver producers and mining triggered the development of a variety of industries, includi ng agri cultural, ceramic, and textile production. Yet at the same time, the story of Mexican economic progress was greatly disjointed. Equal opportunities were not available for all, and while more millionaires were created in New Spain than anywhere else in the Spanish empire, the Alexican working masses saw a 25 percent drop in real earnings during the last half of the eighteenth century, thanks in part to inflation, crop failures, and epidem ics. While some free coloreds were absorbed into the middle class, others who occupied the lowest strata of the economy were exposed to extreme income volatility, squalid poverty, and exploitation by a supremely power ful elite class. Was this a fate better than slavery? Indeed, was this success? Arguably yes, arguably no. However, such observations only seem to beg the question: to what degree should black success be measured against the benchmark of slavery or against the material opportunities and livelihoods of others who were free?10

The following sections, essentially a series of economic narratives, do not pretend to fully answer the questions raised here, but they help pro vide a context for resolving them. By providing a broad understanding of the general contours of free-colored economic life, and highlighting the roles that blacks played in specific local and regional economies, we can

From Dnivn ’til Dusk io i

arrive at a better grasp of how free coloreds lived, articulated, and defined their freedom, as well as how they translated it into opportunities that intersected with the most powerful forces of the colonial economy.

Colonial Snapshots: A Portrait of New Spain's Free-Colored Labor Scene

Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century and up until the outbreak of the wars for independence, Afro-Mexicans comprised roughly io percent of New Spain’s population.” Table 5.1 provides occupational information on 11,730 free coloreds (mainly males) who came from twenty different provinces, districts, and urban centers throughout the viceroy alty (see Maps 5.1 and 5.2). Combined, these regions housed approximately 64,000 free coloreds, or roughly 17 percent of the nearly 370,000 Afro- Mexicans who lived in Mexico during the 1790s.”

In a predominantly agricultural society, it should not surprise us that agriculture was the largest arena of work for free coloreds.13 Entire prov inces, such as Igualapa, Guazacoalcos (Acayucan), and Tampico housed scores of labradores (farmers) and baqueros (cowboys), almost to the near exclusion of other professions. Indeed, the labrador may have been the most common black male occupation in colonial Mexico. Using census records alone, it is hard to distinguish among the labradores and baqueros who owned their own plots or flocks, and those who were sharecroppers, hacienda laborers, and ranch hands.14 Of those who worked as employees on the larger estates, differences in salary existed between seasonal work ers and year-round hacienda residents. While seasonal workers could gen erally benefit from high wages paid during harvest seasons, they did not always have access to adequate housing and their employment was irregu lar throughout the year. Meanwhile, laborers who lived permanently on an estate might have enjoyed better lodging facilities and more continual employment, yet at the same time they could incur greater debts there, where they also typically bought their goods and wares. All of the earnings of agriculturalists and ranchers were further subjected to market forces. Fluctuations in product value and levels of occupational experience also affected wage differentials?5

Some of the free-colored agricultural workforce was mobile. As evi denced in regions such as the Pacific coast as early as the sixteenth century, black populations both enslaved and free, moved from estate to estate, or

BEN VINSON III102

5.1. Free-Colored Labor in Late Colonial Mexico, 1780—1794TABLE

Economic Sector

982 8.4

17 .1

6,160 52.5

Number of Workers

170

1,961

101

306 230

11,730

1,113

133

261

119

1.4

16.7

2.0

2.6 .7

99.9

1.0

Percentage of Workforce (%)

9.5

1.1

2.2

Source: AGN, Padrones, vols. 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 21, 35, and 37; AGN, I.G., vol. 53-A; I.G., vol. 416-A, Acayucan, 1795, Biblioteca Nacional de Antropologia y Historia (BNAH) Archivo Judicial de Puebla, rollos 43-44, Tributes Expediente formado en virtud de las diligencias hechas por los alcaldes ordinarios al gobernador intendente Don Manuel de Flon, Puebla, 1795; Archivo Historico de la Ciudad de Mexico (AHCM), Ciudad de Mexico, vol. 1; Juan Andrade Torres, El comercio de esclavos en la provincia de Tabasco (Siglos XV1-XIX) (Villahermosa, Mexico: Universidad Juarez Autonoma de Tabasco, 1994), 60-61; Jorge Amos Martinez Ayala, Epa! Epa! Toro Prieto, Toro Prieto (Morelia: Institute Michaocano de Cultura, 2001), 67-69; Bruce Castleman, “Social Climbers in a Colonial Mexican City: Individual Mobility within the Sistema de Castas in Orizaba, 1777-1791,” Colonial Latin American Review (CLAR) 10, no. 2 (2001): 242-44; David A. Brading, “Grupos etnicos: Clases y estructura ocupacional en Guanajuato (1792),” in Historiay poblacidn en Mexico (Siglos XVI-XIX), ed. Thomas Calvo, 256 (Mexico City: El Colegio

Transport and services

Construction

Metal, wood, pottery

Textiles, dress, shoes, leatherworking

Arts and entertainment

Food and drink

Commerce Administrative, professional, church, military

Agricultural, fishing, and pastoral

Tobacco

Mining and refining

Mill workers3 Other industry13

Other

Unknown

Total

From Dawn ’til Dusk i°3

de Mexico, 1994); Wu, “The Population of the City of Queretaro in 1791 f Journal of Latin American Studies 16, no. 2 (1984): 293; Guillermina del Valle Pavon, “Transformaciones de la poblacion afromestiza de Orizaba segun los padrones de 1777 y 1791,” in Pardos, niulatos y libertos, Sexto encuentro de Afromexianistas, 88-93 (Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 2001); and Juan Carlos Reyes G., “Negros y afromestizos en Colima, siglos XVI-XIX,” in Prcsencia africana en Mexico, ed. Luz Maria Montiel Martinez, 301 (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y Artes, 1993).

Note: The study includes seven cities (Guanajuato, Valladolid, Queretaro. Orizaba, Mexico City, Puebla, and Oaxaca), and thirteen provinces/districts (Acayucan. Tabasco, Guamelula, Tixtla, Acapulco, Tlapa, Chilapa, Motines, Tampico, Colima, Igualapa, Sanjuan del Rio, and Irapuato).

3 These workers were all in the mining industry. 11 Includes thirty-eight workers in the sugar industry, some of whom were agriculturalists.

from village to village in search of better livelihoods.1*5 In some instances, black residential and occupational mobility even helped anchor the devel opment of certain townships, such as the village of Tonameca located in the Pacific province of Guamelula (see Map 5.1).17 By the second half of the eighteenth century, this town had come to possess the highest popula tion density of blacks in the district. Although market forces did produce important moments of opportunity that helped push and attract black agriculturalists to various parts of the colony, not everyone heeded the logic of the market. In the second half of the eighteenth century, as cotton and sugar production reinvigorated the Pacific basin’s economy, causing some free coloreds to move onto or near estates in areas such as Zacatula (see Map 5.1), others opted not to leave their homes or change their long established lifeways. In the province of Igualapa, also in the Pacific basin, as some blacks moved to take advantage of special economic opportuni ties, others solidified their roots in the orbit of the great estates, forming a number of black settlements in the Costa Chica whose cultural legacies remain felt even today.’8

New Spain’s black agricultural and pastoral workers included a num ber of individuals categorized as sirvientes (servants) and operarios (work ers) who labored on estates, small farms, and ranches. It was generally understood that many “servants” in rural areas did not always perform domestic labor, but also worked in the agricultural and ranching profes sions as assistants, peons, and farmhands. Their servant status probably signaled a lower position within the labor hierarchy. A few rural servants

BEN VINSON III104

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From Dawn 'til Dusk 105

were more specifically categorized as sirvientes de trapiches, meaning that they worked on sugar cane mills. Operarios, meanwhile, typically referred to unskilled industrial workers and manufacturers, particularly in urban settings. But in the rural world of New Spain, many operarios worked on plantations, haciendas, and cotton estates—sometimes as machinists, but not necessarily. This intriguing group of all-purpose black laborers prob ably resembled the indiscriminate category of rural “trabajadores" (work ers) found in regions like Tabasco.’9

After the agricultural and pastoral professions, the second largest employment arena for the free coloreds surveyed in this sample was min ing (see Table 5.1).20 It is almost certain that as future research allows us to acquire more data on New Spain’s free-colored labor force, mining’s role will diminish within the hierarchy of eighteenth-century Afro-Mexican professions. As with the labradores and baqueros, the particularities of the census make it hard to distinguish among miners. The category included refiners, pick and blast men (who extracted ore from its deposit), whim minders (who hoisted ore from shafts), smelters, amalgamators, foremen, and peons alike. Needless to say, the skill level and pay scale of these workers varied tremendously. Virtually all of the mining jobs in the data sample were located in Guanajuato, the premier silver center of the late colonial empire. In the 1790s, Guanajuato had a large black labor force, much of which was born in the city or its surrounding province, and that had ancestral roots stemming back into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.21 Despite the presence of black miners in other areas of the colony, such as Taxco and Sultepec, it is unlikely that any mining cen ter in the eighteenth century came close to matching Guanajuato’s black workforce. Consequently, the total number of blacks in the Mexican min ing industry must have assuredly been overtaken by other sectors of free- colored employment.

Among these were the transport and service industries, which included porters, water carriers, muleteers, domestics, cooks, servants, laundresses, and coachmen (see Table 5.1). If complete employment information was available for women, we would also find more wet nurses, nannies, house keepers, and attendants.22 One surprise is that muleteers (arrieros), who have long been perceived as a niche profession for blacks, were relatively few among employed free-colored males in the transport industry. Their strongest representation came in the colony’s western highland regions (Tixtla, Tlapa, and Chilapa) and in Guanajuato, which possessed over 250

io6 BEN VINSON III

black arrieros. Elsewhere, and especially in the major regional market cities of Puebla, Oaxaca, Valladolid, and Orizaba, muleteers were almost absent. What this suggests is that except for a few instances, many free-colored muleteers tended to live in smaller towns along major thoroughfares that tied together the colony’s primary markets.2* Another trend, more notice able in the Pacific highlands than elsewhere, was evidence for the employ ment of free coloreds as muleteers’ assistants de arrieros). These workers were mainly responsible for helping pack and feed the animals, while also assisting with driving mule trains from various mountainous passageways down to the colony’s coastal and heartland zones

Artisans in the textile, dress, leatherworking, and shoemaking indus tries competed fiercely with the service and transport sector for third place within the free-colored occupational hierarchy (see Table 5.1). These professions included tailors, seamstresses, cobblers, textile mill workers, hatters, cloth cutters, needle makers, spinners, tanners, weavers, and rib bon makers, among others. Some of these trades, such as cloth cutters involved minimal expertise and were mainly considered to be manufac turing professions. Others demanded superior craftsmanship and even guild membership. During the colonial period, and especially during the eighteenth century, free coloreds were known to have access to the upper ranks of several guilds and many emerged as examined masters in their trades. However, in the census documents examined here, not a single free-colored master artisan was found among the 11,000-plus laborers.2*

When combined with workers in the metal, woodworking, and pot tery sector, as well as candlemakers, wax producers, and cigar makers, the total population of free-colored artisans actually outnumbered those employed in the service and transport industries. Of course, the lack of information on women complicates matters.2* Like their male counter parts, free-colored women were also employed as artisans, with perhaps their heaviest representation coming in the textile industry. There were probably significant numbers of black female confectioners and tobacco factory workers as well. All of this begs the question: what was the likely impact of females on the overall free-colored workforce? It is hard to say with certainty, but it is highly probable that the number of female artisans never overtook the number of female service workers.26 Consequently, women most likely affected the free-colored labor force by substantially increasing the representation of service and textile workers in the labor hierarchy. Moreover, it is likely that female representation increased the

From Dawn ’til Dusk 107

A Tale of Four Cities: Free-Colored Big City Labor No single colony in the Spanish empire had two urban centers that rivaled the size of Mexico City and Puebla in the late eighteenth century and, quite possibly, few could boast the economic diversity and complexity of Mexico’s four largest metropolises, including Guanajuato and Queretaro (see Map 5.2). All dominated the political and economic landscapes of their regions by buying goods and supplying manufactured wares, furnishing credit for business ventures, as well as administering the greater affairs of governance, justice, and military order. Collectively, these centers also offered opportunities that were simply unavailable in smaller towns and the rural countryside. Whereas one might be hard pressed to find a sil versmith, painter, or teacher in less populated zones, in New Spain’s first- order cities, such professions were more commonplace. Similarly, whereas only a handful of occupational options existed in smaller towns, in places like Mexico City there were well over six hundred different professions available between 1790 and 1842.28 Of course, the industrial and service functions of most cities meant that artisans and unskilled laborers com prised the lifeblood of urban economies. In a typical Latin American metropolis anywhere between 20 and 40 percent of the population worked as artisans, while another 30 to 40 percent were unskilled laborers?9 As might be expected, the status of these professions varied widely, and argu ments can be made that the social position of many artisans did not match their actual worth in the economy?0

By and large, free coloreds found themselves navigating the colonial urban world of honor, position, and status by maximizing and exploit ing whatever opportunities (big and small) their professions allowed. As a general rule, free blacks found some of their best access to jobs in the focal industries of the larger metropolises, in part because of the cities’ overwhelming need to furnish workers in these trades. These professions.

variety of trades to be found in the services, while raising the number of workers in both the food industry and petty commerce—women worked as waitresses, tortilla makers, street peddlers (selling stockings and combs), fruit vendors, and druggists, among other positions?7 With female help, the service industry probably surfaced as the second most important free- colored occupational arena (over mining), followed by the textile-related craft trades.

io8 BEN VINSON III

in turn, linked free coloreds professionally to large swathes of the urban populace, creating opportunities for important shared identities that were occupationally based and that could enable other forms of success. Like other urbanites, free coloreds also found an impressive range of job oppor tunities within the service and artisan sectors, but unique pressures shaped the degree to which they were able to enter certain professions. Studying the leading free-colored occupations among Mexico’s “big four” urban centers uncovers some of the mixed patterns of opportunity and restraint that structured these key sites of the Spanish colonial world.

Mexico City

With a population of between 100,000 and 200,000, Mexico City in the 1790s was by far the largest colonial capital under Iberian control and definitely one of the great world metropolises.3" Employing a workforce of over 38,000 people, the amount of available adult human capital alone was larger than most cities and, with steady flows of immigrants, Mexico City was a place whose productive capacity continued to rise. The city was also an important center of black life. At least seven thousand mulattos resided in the capital, and combined with other blacks of varying hues, the free and enslaved black population probably approached ten thou sand, making it one of the single greatest concentrations of blacks in New Spain.32 In studying the phenomenon of urban black labor, it makes sense to start here.

Although records have survived of approximately fifty thousand of the city’s residents in 1790, just three quadrants (cuarteles) will be analyzed (see Map 5-3)-33 Cuartel 1, located downtown, was situated within the principal site of commerce, government, and religious activity, being home to some of the wealthiest and most powerful magnates of the colony. It was also among the most homogenous and whitest parts of the city.34 Given that the town center was the oldest section of the capital, it tended to conser vatively replicate many staid and traditional social hierarchies. This was despite heavier immigrant settlement here than elsewhere in town.35 Most newcomers were rapidly channeled into domestic service, which worked to solidify the vertical hierarchical relationships that had operated in this part of the capital since early colonial times.

Moving toward the western periphery (cuartel 23), Mexico City became decidedly more working class. Despite housing the Alameda, a splendid

From Dawn 'til Dusk 109

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park that was an attraction for the elite, most residents lived modestly. They flocked into cramped quarters within large apartment complexes, they resided in larger artisan workshops and suites, or, toward the outer extremities (especially in the northwest), they dwelled in single house hold shacks (jacales') and multifamily corrales that had adjoining farming plots.36 Wage and day laborers abounded, some working in the numerous

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convents and churches, others for a variety of workshops and local busi nesses, and still others in the nearby tobacco factory, the largest of its kind in Mexico.37

Finally, near the southern periphery (cuartel 20) the city’s character shifted again. Many of the areas surrounding Mexico City were thickly populated with natives, especially regions that had been designated as Indian “barrios’ shortly after the conquest. Here, natives had access to their own governing officials and administrative structures, much like in the indigenous townships that dotted the colony’s landscape. By the end of the colonial period the more rigid boundaries had weakened, but native influences remained strong. The southeastern edge of the city enveloped some of the old Indian barrio of San Juan and, in cuartel 20, life was largely agricultural, with farms, jacales, and corrales being prominent residential structures.

When compared to the city as a whole, the black population in these three sections of town was small, numbering just around five hundred individuals. Nevertheless, their role in the urban labor scene is illuminat ing. Previous work on Mexico City has shown that by the middle of the eighteenth century, the urban workforce apparently adhered to a certain racial logic whereby different casta groups reflected, mimicked, and resem bled the employment patterns of their parent populations. In other words, natives, who had traditionally fulfilled roles as the colony’s primary low- skilled laborers, continued to occupy these posts in the eighteenth cen tury. In a similar vein, mestizos, who had partial native ancestry, could be found filling positions as laborers to higher degrees than others, although their partial white ancestry also opened opportunities in the artisan sec tor. Meanwhile, the legacy of slavery affected blacks and mulattos as freed men. Because slavery had been heavily associated with domestic labor in urban Mexico, it may have been more than a coincidence that overwhelm ing numbers of free negros were found working as servants in the 1753 census.38 On the other hand, mixed-race mulattos, like the racially mixed

mestizos, had large numbers of artisans at midcentury. Still, over half of mulatto males worked as servants or as members of the service sector.

Gender drew the boundaries between race and labor more starkly. Black and mulatto women, for instance, who joined the workforce in far greater proportions than did their white and mestiza counterparts, domi nated the realm of domestic service. In fact, in 1753, 45 percent of the city’s servants were mulatas. Few free-colored women found employment

From Davm ’til Dusk m

as seamstresses, spinners, or in other artisan trades. In interpreting the racial logic of Mexico City’s labor scene, it is important to stress that bloodlines alone did not simply “create” or “restrict” employment oppor tunities. Rather, it was the networks that the different races had access to and, quite possibly, the different socialization processes of these groups that, along with skin color, influenced the functioning of race in the urban employment arena.

Several of the basic labor market features found in 1753 continued to apply in 1790 (see Table 5.2). The artisan trades and domestic service con tinued to offer important employment options for mulattos. However, just 13 percent of the total mulatto population in the three cuarteles worked as artisans. Mulatto men enjoyed an advantage in accessing these profes sions, as roughly one-quarter were craftsmen, but these numbers paled in comparison to midcentury, when approximately half of the mulatto men surveyed were artisans. The substantially lower figure probably did not reflect broader, city-wide patterns in the 1790s, since it is unlikely that within a forty-year time span, the artisan professions would have closed so tightly to mulattos. In fact, there are indications otherwise. Among all races, roughly twenty thousand people were employed as artisans in the 1790s, corresponding to approximately half of the capital’s workforce.39 Moreover, as the artisan class grew in late eighteenth-century Mexico, guild membership dwindled. Being released from the corporate protec tions and protocols of guild membership meant that more artisans worked independently out of their homes or in the city’s emerging factories. Cor respondingly, access to the artisan trades should have been easier, opening up greater opportunities for the black population.

It is hard to determine from the available information how wide these doors opened, but some patterns are clear. First, as in the mid-eighteenth century, access to artisan positions fluctuated for free coloreds according to skin color. In our three parts of town, negros were virtually excluded from the artisan ranks in 1790, with only one shoemaker among them. Even among mulattos, color mattered. Light-skinned mulattos, known as moriscos, enjoyed greater access to artisan posts than their brethren. A full 60 percent of moriscos (most of whom were men) were artisans (see Table 5.2).40

Second, one’s location in Mexico City partly determined access to the artisan trades. Certain professions were also clustered in specific neighbor hoods. While well over half of free-colored artisans were located in the

BEN VINSON IIIIII

Artisans Other TotalRace

Mulatos

Moriscos

Negros

Total

208 (82%)

5 (28%)

10(91%)

223 (79%)

Service Sector

33 (13%)

11 (61%)

1 (9%)

45 (16%)

4(2.0%)

1 (5.5%)

0 (0.0%)

5 (2.0%)

252 (100%)

18 (100%)

11 (100%)

281 (100%)

city center, in actuality seemingly better chances for entering the artisan ranks could be found away from downtown. In the two peripheral cuarte- les, although free coloreds were few in number, many were artisans. Over one-third of the employed mulattos and all working moriscos were artisans in cuartel 23. In the predominantly Indian environment of cuartel 20, every employed free colored was an artisan, except for a mulatto government official, a morisco bread merchant, and a lone, anomalous, morisco servant. Conversely, for free-colored women, opportunities for working in artisan crafts remained small. In fact, only one, a seamstress, emerged in the sam ple.41 It is telling that she was a light-skinned morisca who resided in the central part of the city, where employment rates for free-colored women ran highest and where the range of professions was greatest.42

By and large, domestic service predominated among free-colored laborers in the center of town, where opportunities for working in elite households abounded. In 1790, the four largest professions for mulatto men and women included cooks, coachmen, young male attendants (mozos) and female house cleaners {recanter er as). Combined, they accounted for well over half of the adult working population in the city center. Other domestic professions were also well represented. Between kitchen helpers, wet nurses, nannies, assistants (including female attendants called damns de campania), caretakers of the elderly, washerwomen, convent servants,

Source: The information from this table is drawn from a database compiled by Herbert S. Klein and Sonia Perez Toledo that analyzes the following census records: AHCM, Ciudad de Mexico, vol. 1, exp. 2; vol. 4, exp. 6; and vol. 4, exp. 9. These records were initially found by Manuel Mino Grijalva who coordinated the database entry and analysis effort.

t a b l e 5.2. Free-Colored Workforce in Three Cuarteles of Mexico City, 1790

Commerce and

Government

7 (3.0%)

1 (5.5%)

0 (0.0%) 8 (3.0%)

From Dawn 'til Dusk ii3

Puebla New Spain’s second largest city was Puebla, lying just eighty’ miles east of the capital. With a population of over fifty thousand in the late eigh teenth century, Puebla ranked third or fourth in size among all Latin American urban centers.46 But the city’s development had an uneven his tory, especially during the 1700s. From a peak of over 65,000 in the late seventeenth century, the eighteenth century witnessed considerable pop ulation decline that was both demographic and economic in nature. Prior to the 1650s, Puebla had been one of the principal suppliers of woolen goods in the Spanish kingdom, as well as a major grain and flour producer. Agricultural production was supplemented by products produced in the

male lackeys, porters and pages, roughly another quarter of the workforce was accounted for. The remaining mulatto workers in the downtown area were artisans, laborers, and petty merchants, including a street vendor and the owner of a small-time game of chance.

In Mexico City, household economies, and even the composition of families, mattered a great deal toward securing economic prosperity. Although relatively few free-colored women listed a profession in the outer regions of the city, it is highly unlikely that they did not work. Instead of laboring outside of the household, many worked at home for their families in tasks that included sewing, farming, and cooking. Some may have sold extra or leftover food to supplement their household’s income. Children, too, were important in a household’s economy, and although many did not formally declare a profession until age eighteen, it was customary to help around the house and even take small jobs requir ing little skill.43 Indicators further reveal that toward the end of the eigh teenth century, family arrangements became more complex in Mexico City as households expanded to incorporate friends, relatives, and strang ers. Appended household members (agregados) formed part of an urban strategy to pool and maximize resources for economic survival.44 Free coloreds certainly participated in this practice, albeit to varying degrees. In the three cuarteles, well over half (64 percent) of all households where free coloreds lived either included agregados or featured free coloreds as agregados themselves. Negros were more commonly encountered as agregados than any other group, while moriscos stood at the other end of the spectrum.45

BEN VINSON III114

region’s tanneries, particularly ham, soap, and lard. Trade also thrived and merchants took advantage of their relative proximity to the port of Veracruz. Puebla was so successful that rumors even circulated of relocat ing the viceregal capital there. But the eighteenth century brought dra matic change. Stiff competition in agriculture and industry saw other areas ofAlexico supplant Puebla’s dominion over the marketplace. Wheat and grain production moved into the Bajio and Guadalajara, and a surging Queretaro became a prime competitor in the textile industry. Eventually, residents began leaving Puebla for better opportunities elsewhere, gen erating a disturbing pattern of out-migration. Much like Boston during a comparable period, eighteenth-century Puebla became subject to spurts of growth and longer periods of decline.47 Agricultural expansion did help the economy recover between 1760 and 1780, but modest gains were tempered by epidemics and agricultural crises that hit hard between 1759 and 1773-48

Because of the rhythms of these economic cycles, Puebla found itself in a slightly different position than Mexico City in the 1790s. As the colo ny’s capital was experiencing the early stages of economic crisis that would magnify in the nineteenth century, Puebla was actually enjoying a growth spurt, albeit a short one.4^ European wars and their blew XA7orld theaters interrupted the normal pace of international market flows, enabling the city to export flour and foodstuffs to places like Havana at advantageous prices. Textile manufacturing also enjoyed prosperity, as cotton was woven on an unprecedented number of looms. But the cycle of war and peace upon which Puebla’s economy rested during the late eighteenth century was an acutely volatile one that would ultimately inhibit commercial mod ernization efforts and sustained economic growth.50 Yet at the same time, these forces brought nearly a decade of prosperity in the 1790s that helped condition the workforce, giving the city’s black working population a spe cific occupational profile.

Puebla’s free-colored population was smaller than Mexico City’s. Its urban core and surrounding district housed just 2,930 negros and mulattos in 1777 (4.1 percent of the total population), a number that was probably not greatly surpassed in the 1790s.51 Regardless, this group had become rather influential, producing important merchant and artisan families, as well as a host of high-ranking military officers.52 By the late eighteenth century, the free-colored population had seemingly acquired distinct niches in the marketplace.53

From Dawn ’til Dusk ii5

The city’s 1794 tributary census summarily described Puebla’s free- colored male workers as pardos54 who could primarily be subdivided into three main groups: (1) a poorly paid and semiskilled majority, (2) a more highly skilled middle stratum of artisans, and (3) a sizeable but variegated third group that included a wide range of social classes (see Table 5-3).55 The first and largest group of laborers, accounting for nearly half (44 percent) of the male free-colored workforce, incorporated just three professions—tejedores (weavers), tobacco factory workers, and cocheros (coachmen). Meanwhile, just six professions comprised the second group, which in turn accounted for roughly a quarter of the free-colored workforce. These included hat makers, bakers, blacksmiths, cobblers, and tailors. The final group was much harder to define. Consisting of almost one-third of the overall labor pool, these men included merchants, musi cians, businessmen, and artisans, as well as a smattering of peons, labor ers, construction workers, agriculturalists, muleteers, and so on. Many of the free coloreds working in the food industry, including confectioners and cooks, were located here, as well as nearly all woodworkers, especially carpenters and coach makers?6

Despite the variety of professions, this was not a very prosperous group. There was only one high-status merchant among them and two petty businessmen with small shops and street stands. A pardo coach maker did operate in the city. Within the artisan trades, coach makers commanded attention and respect, given that considerable expenditures were needed to buy the supplies and facilities to start a business. Coaches also tended to be bought by a well-to-do clientele, and prices climbed into the hundreds of pesos.57 However, it is unclear whether Puebla’s pardo coach-maker actually owned his business. This definitely would have impacted his wealth. Prosperity may have more reliably touched the city’s black tanners (tocineros'), an occupation that regularly drew sufficient earnings to qualify for solid middle class standing in Puebla during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries?8 Highly regulated through trade guilds, tocineros possessed a strong identity and political power that translated into key seats on the city council. Moreover, as a measure of their wealth, each tocinero was required by law to demonstrate the use of at least thirty pig carcasses per week. This steady and high volume of carnage was needed to display their financial solvency to the government, particularly their ability to provide certain municipal services, such as fur nishing horses to the militias.59

116 BEN VINSON III

TABLE

Occupation

91 19

66 14

52 11

Source-. BNAH, Archivo Judicial de Puebla, rollos 43-44, Tributes, Expediente fonnado en virtud de las diligencias hechas por los alcaldes ordinaries al gobernador intendente Don Manuel de Flon, Puebla, 1795.

139

484

Percentage of Workforce

100

While opportunities for wealth existed throughout the occupational spectrum, it is difficult to know which individual artisans were able to translate their craft trades into profitable business enterprises. By and large, it seems, the city’s free-colored workforce stood with Indians near the bottom of Puebla’s social order.60 This observation needs some expla nation. In many respects, the city’s male free-colored workers appeared to resemble other non-Indians. For starters, as with castizos,6’ mestizos, and whites, the proportion of artisans among free coloreds towered over the percentage of artisans in the native workforce and probably well outpaced the share of black artisans employed in Mexico City’s workforce during the 1790s. In fact, in 1794, over 80 percent of Puebla’s pardo males were craftsmen, being largely employed in the clothing and textile industry.62

But a closer inspection of Puebla’s pardo population yields other important details. Within the textile and clothing industry, free coloreds

Tejcdores (weavers)

Cigarreros (tobacco factory workers)

Cocberos (coachmen)

Sowbrereros (hatters) Herreros (blacksmiths)

Znpateros (cobblers) Panaderos (breadmakers)

Sastres (tailors)

Albaiiiles (masons)

Others

Total

5.3. Free-Colored Workforce in Puebla, 1794

Number of Workers

From Dawn 'til Dusk ”7

were more likely to find jobs as tejedores (weavers) than any other occu pation. Over half of all male, free-colored textile workers in the 1794 census were weavers, which corresponded to 19 percent of the total male free-colored workforce. No other occupation enjoyed such prominence. While access to the trade definitely contributed to the large number of free-colored artisans, on the other hand, a weaver’s earnings were among the lowest in the city. Although weavers had long enjoyed a strong and proud tradition in Puebla with a historically powerful guild, by the late eighteenth century the average tejedor was earning around two reales a day, approximately the pay of an agricultural peon and barely enough for subsistence/’3 Unfortunately, these wages would dip further during the early 1800s. Broadcloth weavers apparently earned more. Their greater skill commanded higher prices, but there were only two free-colored tejedores de ancho in the city during the early 1790s.

The second most common employment for Puebla’s pardos may have been more lucrative. Along with Mexico City, Puebla was one of a few locations in the colony with tobacco factories/4 These factories employed about one thousand workers, almost equally balanced between men and women. Puebla’s pardos comprised around 13 percent of the overall male workforce in the industry, a figure that well exceeded their representa tion in the general population. Most were bachelors, meaning that, by and large, their earnings did not support wives and children, although some may have given financial assistance to their relatives, illegitimate children, and girlfriends. There was a wide variety of specialization among tobacco workers, including a limited number of relatively well-paid “masters of the table” and foremen who could earn in excess of one peso per day. Yet there were also large numbers of low-skilled workers, such as rollers, who earned as little as one peso per month/5

The third largest profession for Puebla’s free coloreds was cocheros, who regularly served as chauffeurs for the wealthy. At least 11 percent of Puebla’s pardo males were coachmen in the early 1790s, who in turn com prised over half of all free-colored men working in the service and trans portsector. As with weavers, compensation for this line of work was meager, with the average coachman struggling to earn a paltry two reales per day.

Turning to the middle tier of Puebla’s workforce, panaderos (breadmak ers) probably lived some of the most challenging lives. Historically, their profession enjoyed a notorious reputation, with employees being chained and locked in bakeries, sweating profusely under the heat of sweltering

118 BEN VINSON III

ovens. But by the second half of the eighteenth century working con ditions had improved substantially. Prisoners were not to be impressed into bakeries, hours were standardized, wages were to be paid daily (with no unfair deductions), workers were allowed to live offsite, and earnings could reach up to two reales per oven load of bread. Under these circum stances, no less than half of Puebla’s free-colored panaderos were married and lived with their families in the community. However, opportunities in the profession were limited. No free-colored overseers were recorded as managing the city s bakeries, and it is unlikely that any were entrepre neurs, owning their own panaderuts.66

Other members of the middle tier of Puebla’s free-colored male workforce enjoyed greater material well-being. Once they landed steady employment, they worked long hours in stores and shops typically owned by others, or in small operations they owned themselves. The most pros perous could afford to hire managers and assistants, who, working along side them, added to profit margins and enabled commercial expansion. Success was never assured. Of the middle strata, hat makers, who were the most numerous, probably also possessed the greatest range in earning potential. Depending upon their skill, clientele, the quantity' of produc tion, and the quality of their materials, hat makers could earn anywhere between one and four reales per day, with master hatters faring even better. A steady daily income of four reales was not quite middle-class income, but it definitely distanced someone from the urban underclass. The most accomplished hat makers in the city could easily break through the middle-class ranks and into the elite. In the 1820s, some elite master hatters earned in excess of twenty-five reales per day, which exceeded the earnings of many merchants.67

The city’s free-colored hatters were in small but good company in the 1790s. Blacksmithing, shoemaking, and tailoring provided staple employ ment opportunities for the city’s free-colored population, as elsewhere in urban New Spain. Within the textile industry, tailors probably fared bet ter than the more numerous weavers and may have enjoyed more prestige. Being one of the occupations furthest removed from the actual process of cloth production, and with its employees having direct contact with the consumer market, tailors enjoyed a certain cachet, although from the elite perspective they remained the subject of ridicule.68 Overall, the number of pardo tailors in Puebla was small, especially when compared to places like Mexico City where, in the 1750s and possibly into the 1780s, tailoring

From Damn ’til Dusk 119

Guanajuato anti Queretaro

North of Mexico City, in a low-lying plain called the Bajio, rested one of the most fertile and productive regions in the colony. Staple crops, includ ing maize, wheat, beans, chilies, and fruit, grew abundantly here and silver mining prospered, specifically in Guanajuato, which by the early 1800s was generating more than five million pesos annually.69 Unsurprisingly, the Bajio would become home to some of the largest population densities in Mexico. By 1803, the province of Guanajuato alone boasted half a million inhabitants.70 In its vicinity were other important centers, including Celaya, Leon, and Queretaro. Of these, Queretaro had gained a well-earned repu tation as a textile center in the eighteenth century. Easy access to the mar kets of the north, which both supplied wool to the city’s factories and served as consumers of woolen products, greatly facilitated the city’s prominence. Combined with a tobacco factory and a leatherworking industry7, Queretaro had much to offer prospective settlers.71 Despite hard years (smallpox epi demics erupted nearly every eighteen years after 1750), agricultural fail ures, and testy politics (Guanajuato’s residents vociferously protested unfair monopolies, policies, and taxes), the Bajio region grew.72 Queretaro and Guanajuato, in fact, became the third and fourth largest cities in Mexico, with populations of approximately thirty thousand in the 1790s. In their hinterlands were secondary townships that anchored growth.73

Overall, the late colonial Bajio was an atypical region of Mexico. Natives did not comprise a majority of the population, and most individu als (including natives) lived in racially mixed townships, cities, or rural estates. In this sense, the Bajio represented a prototype of what Mexico would eventually become—a landscape where mestizos thrived as the pre dominant racial type. But in the 1790s, the region had not quite achieved this state and free coloreds were part of the reason. Of the 400,000 persons counted in Guanajuato’s 1792 provincial census, over 72,000 (18 percent)

may have been the most accessible artisan trade. Tailors, like cobblers, had fairly low overhead costs in starting their businesses. This made both pro fessions attractive to a wide range of individuals. However, between the two occupations, cobblers enjoyed a lower status. Status differences were reflected in earnings. By the 1820s, a typical tailor in Puebla might earn between one and eight reales per day, whereas cobblers more consistently earned wages hovering at the one real mark.

BEN VINSON HI120

were mulattos. In the city proper, mulattos numbered as many as seven thousand individuals, or 22 percent of the urban population.74 Queretaro offered a slightly different scenario. The province’s free colored popu lation in 1791 was remarkably low, numbering just over three thousand persons, or barely 4 percent of the regional population. Over half was located in the city of Queretaro itself.75 Free coloreds had historically been more numerous; just eighteen years earlier the 1778 census had recorded as many as seven thousand living in the city alone. The disappearance of the black population may have been a harbinger of future events to come throughout Mexico. Although smallpox wreaked havoc between the censuses of 1778 and 1790, the rapid and almost wholesale decline of Queretaro’s free-colored population probably had little to do with disease. Instead, black losses were most likely attributable to their being rapidly absorbed by other racial groups—at least in the official record. In other words, changes in the racial criteria used by government census takers may have been the real reason why, almost overnight, individuals who were once deemed mulattos were now reclassified as mestizos.76

Given the centrality of mining and textiles to the economies of Guanajuato and Queretaro, it is unsurprising that both would appear as major areas of free-colored employment. What is surprising, however, is the degree to which blacks occupied them. In Guanajuato, between 1791 and 1797’ n0 fewer than 4,659 individuals were employed in this sector, comprising approximately 49 percent of the male, non-Indian workforce.77 Remarkably, mulattos, with over 1,800 workers, represented a full 40 per cent of the mining industry, and six out of every ten working mulatto males were miners. The related charcoal makers and refining industries also employed large numbers of blacks (30 percent). No other racial group had larger numbers in the mining sector.

Similarly, in Queretaro, free coloreds formed nearly 20 percent of the non-Indian, male textile workforce. As in Guanajuato’s mining sec tor, these figures significantly exceeded their representation in the city’s population, with nearly four out of every ten black males working in tex tiles. In the larger factories, free coloreds worked in almost every aspect of the industry, although mainly as weavers, workers, and spinners. A few labored in the finishing processes, that is, generating coarse cotton cloth and making fine shawls. However, there were no black administrators and dyers, although admittedly there were just a small number of these posi tions available in the city. A handful of Queretaro’s mulatto textile workers

From Dawn ’til Dusk 121

operated cottage industries of their own. There were seven recorded trapicberos, who, in all likelihood, ran small family-style operations con sisting of one or two looms.78

While the Queretaro census offers only a glimpse of an industry that may have employed well over three thousand men and women during the late colonial period, it is nevertheless a compelling view. Combined with the data from Guanajuato, we clearly see that two of the most important industrial fields in each city generously employed free people of color. This suggests that as the Mexican economy expanded in these areas, material opportunities arose for blacks. While their occupations may not have been the most coveted or lucrative positions, they were opportunities nonetheless, and ones that placed free coloreds directly in the mainstream workforce.

When Guanajuato’s and Queretaro’s free-colored occupations are ranked according to the number of blacks they employed, a slightly dif ferent picture emerges. In Queretaro, the four positions in which free col oreds were occupied the most were split between the artisan and service industries, with weavers and cobblers outpacing coachmen and servants. In Guanajuato, the top six positions were divided between the mining, farming, transport, and service industries (see Tables 5.4 and 5.5). These differences most likely reflect the unique economic orientation of a min ing center, as opposed to an industrial/manufacturing center. Queretaro resembled Puebla in many ways and, to some extent, Mexico City. The major difference was that in Queretaro there may have been greater occu pational diversity among the top half of black laborers. In other words, the four most commonly cited free-colored professions only represented 28 percent of the male workforce in Queretaro, whereas in Mexico City and Puebla, roughly half of all male laborers fell into the top four trades.79

Guanajuato stood at the other end of the spectrum. Its top six posi tions employed over three-quarters of the male workforce. Such extreme lack of differentiation among free-colored workers may have been the way of life in the largest mining towns, where the preponderance of mining jobs was complemented with significant employment in the agricultural and transportation sectors. In Guanajuato, however, as in many of the urban areas examined in this chapter, blacks could not escape the pull of the service economy. But in Guanajuato, service positions did not fall as heavily on free-colored males as in the major manufacturing cities. In fact, Spaniards actually composed the largest number of servants, with mulat tos emerging as one of the least likely groups to be employed in this task.

BEN VINSON III122

TABLE

Occupation

Source: Wu, “The Population of the City of Queretaro in 1791,” 293.

Tejedores (weavers)

Zapateros (cobblers)

Cigarreros (tobacco factory workers)

Cocheros (coachmen)

Criados (manservants)

Others

Total

Source: Brading, “Grupos etnicos,” 256. “Represents the total of only the seven most numerous professions.

Mineros (miners)

Sirvientes (servants)

Labradorcs (farmers)

Arrieros (muleteers)

Molineros (millworkers)

Rescatadores (petty refiners)

Zapateros (cobblers)

Tratantcs (dealers)

Carboneros (charcoal-makers)

Sastrcs (tailors)

Albaiiilcs (masons)

Panaderos (breadmakers)

Herreros (blacksmiths)

Tocineros (tanners)

Carpinteros (carpenters)

Total’

66 100

Number of Workers

375

567

Number of Workers

1,881

143

139

108

101

3,132

Percentage of Workforce

6 5

t a b l e 5.5. Free-Colored Workforce in Queretaro, 1790

5.4. Free-Colored Workforce in Guanajuato, 1792

Percentage of Workforce

60 4

3 2 2

From Dawn 'til Dusk 123

Conclusion

In no uncertain terms, by the end of the eighteenth century, Afro-Mexicans were deeply embedded within the major occupational arenas available to most colonists. In the hinterlands and countryside, free coloreds partici pated in the cotton boom of the Pacific. They worked on estates and smaller farms that generated key foodstuffs in the Mexican heartland; they toiled in cane fields; and they labored tirelessly as fishermen, ranchers, and shep herds. The evidence reveals that blacks contributed to the larger export economies of their regions while also supplying local markets; free coloreds even joined the legions of subsistence farmers throughout New Spain. Of course, niche industries emerged, and some were partly determined by racial status. Interestingly, this pattern was found to some degree in the colony’s two great urban centers, as service labor soared within the down town quarters of Mexico City and low-paying weavers disproportionately occupied large numbers of Puebla’s free coloreds. While historians have often cited cities as being the vanguard of class transformation and change, as well as sites where a plebian (rather than a racial) consciousness came into being, at the same time we have seen here how cities could preserve elements of caste hierarchy. Ironically, this was expressed precisely -within class mobility. In other words, as class mobility happened, and as it touched those members of colonial society who belonged to subordinate castes, the social hierarchies of race and caste were not necessarily ruptured (although in some instances they could be). Instead, these social hierarchies could be reworked and restructured to accommodate the occupational mobility of groups such as free coloreds. Therefore, as broader economic oppor tunities opened in certain urban areas, caste hierarch}' could correspond ingly shift to accommodate the changes to a city’s economic structure. As a result, seeming advancements in job status could actually represent stasis in social standing. Mexico City and Puebla, two of the colony’s oldest cit ies with some of the longest-serving elites, were natural places where one might find such trends. On the other hand, some of the great bastions of the new economy—Guanajuato and Queretaro—offered other possibili ties. In both centers, mining and textiles generated seemingly wholesale opportunities for all. But even here, black advancement to many of the best positions tended to be restricted, thereby presenting a limited win dow of economic opportunity for the free-colored population. When step ping back and looking at the overall portrait of black labor in the colony, without a doubt we can say that free coloreds were very much a part of

BEN VINSON III124

* NOTES

the economic life of New Spain, and quite possibly in ways that both mir rored and rivaled the participation of mestizos and other caste groups. But it is still unclear whether, as blacks lived their freedom, they were as fully vested in all the opportunities that the colonial economy had to offer and, more importantly, what such a shortcoming may have meant on an indi vidual and collective basis for free-colored life.

1. Archivo General de la Nacion (AGN), Tributes, vol. 34, exp. 7, don Benito Perez to Revillagigedo, April 18, 1793, fols. 163-73.

2. AGN, Indiferentes de Guerra (LG.), vol. 307-B, Leberina Azebedo para que no se remita a presidio a su marido, Vicente Medina, soldado del batallona de pardos de Mexico.

3. AGN, I.G., vol. 307-B, exp. 5, Causa formada por el tribunal de la Acordada contra Lucio Antonio Rodriguez, soldado del batallon de pardos de Mexico por portador de arma corta.

4. Some classic works include: Eric Wiliams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944); Walter Rodney, Hotv Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Dar-Es-Salaam: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, London and Tanzanian Publishing House, 1973); Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas (New York: Vintage Books, 1946); Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) especially chap. 2; Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Developtnent of Brazilian Civilization, trans. Samuel Putnam (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946); and Carl N. Degler, Neither Black Nor White (New York: Macmillan, 1971)- See also: David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Aline Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Aline Helg, Liberty and Equality in Colombia, 1770-1877 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

5. Throughout this chapter the term “free colored” is used to refer to a variety of black populations, including racially mixed pardos (black/native mixture), mulattos (black/white mixture), and moriscos (light skinned mulattos).

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Morenos and negros were synonymous terms referring to blacks who were not racially mixed.

6. Some examples can be found in the following edited collections: Luz Maria Martinez Montiel and Juan Carlos Reyes G., eds., Memoria del HI Encuentro National de Afromexicanistas (Colima, Mexico: Gobiemo del Estado de Colima y Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1993); Adriana Naveda Chavez-Hita, ed., Pardos, mulatosy libertos, Sexto encuentro de afromexicanistas (Xalapa, Mexico: Universidad Veracruzana, 2001); and Luz Maria Martinez Montiel, ed., Prcsenda africana en Mexico (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994).

7. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, La poblacion negra de Mexico: Estudio etnohistdrico, 3rd ed. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1989), 219, 230.

8. For more on the period from the 1640s into the eighteenth century, see: Dennis N. Valdes, “The Decline of Slavery in Mexico,” The Atnericas 44, no. 2 (1987): 167-94; Frank Proctor III, “Slavery, Identity, and Culture: An Afro-Mexican Counterpoint, 1640-1763,” Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 2003; Flerman L. Bennett, Colonial Blackness, Sin, Sex, and Emergent Private Lives in New Spain, 1622-1778 (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2009). For good material on miscegenation see: Patrick J. Carroll, “Los mexicanos negros, el mestizaje y los fundamentos olvidados de la ‘raza cosmica,’ una perspective regional,” Historia Mexicana XLIV, no. 3 (1995): 403-48; and Monica Leticia Galvez Jimenez, Celaya: sus raices africanas (Guanajuato, Ediciones la Rana, 1995).

9. The number of five hundred morenos is most likely a low figure since not all of the colony’s provinces are accounted for in the archives. The number of “Africans” most likely corresponds to blacks who were not racially mixed, but there is no way to completely confirm this.

10. Some interpretations of Mexican slavery show how the system offered a variety of challenges to the power of masters and perhaps even a few material advantages over Mexico’s underclass. For good examples of scholarship on the autonomy that slaves were able to acquire, see: Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-creole Consciousnsess, 1570-1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003); Javier Villa- Flores, ‘“To Lose One’s Soul’: Blasphemy and Slaveiy in New Spain, 1596-1669,” The Hispanic American Historical Review (HA HR) LXXXII, no. 3 (2002): 435-69; Joan Cameron Bristol, “Negotiating Authority in New Spain: Blacks, Mulattos, and Religious Practice in Seventeenth Century Mexico,” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2001; and Proctor, “Slaveiy, Identity, and Culture.”

126 BEN VINSON III

11. Aguirre Beltran, La poblacion negro, 223-30. There has been a great deal of guesswork involved with understanding the dimensions of Afro-Mexican demography; however, the figures provided by Aguirre Beltran still remain fairly reliable.

12. These are estimates. Unfortunately, we may never be able to get a complete portrait of free-colored demography during these years. For all of its strengths, the surviving documents of the Revillagigedo census only allow us to closely examine some of the free-colored population. Note that the sampling technique I have used to obtain occupational information in the west coast provinces results in an undercount of the male population. To obtain information for these areas, I used the military census summary sheets of the Revillagigedo census. These records yield information on the most active segment of the male population, generally men between the ages of eighteen and forty-two who were in good physical condition and were not exempted from duty. Exemptions included men with disabilities or who were “demented” and unable to work. However, men already serving in the militias were also exempted. Only eight provinces were affected by these sampling techniques, resulting in the exclusion of 1,141 individuals from the occupational survey.

13. When all of the various agricultural and pastoral professions are accounted for, Mexico’s black population was still less agriculturally centered than in the neighboring United States. Over 74 percent of all Americans were agriculturalists in 1800, and even more blacks (mainly slaves) as opposed to just over half of free Afro-Mexicans. See: Thomas Weiss, “U.S. Labor Force Estimates and Economic Growth,” in American Economic Growth and Standards of Living before the Civil War, ed/ Robert E. Gallman and John Joseph Wallis, 22 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

14. Those who have wrestled with such questions include Brigida von Mentz, Pueblos de indios, mulatos y mestizos, 1770-1870. Los catnpesinos y las transformaciones protoindustriales en el poniente de Morelos (Mexico City: CIESAS, 1988), 130-37; and Cheryl English Martin, Rural Society in Colonial Morelos (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985).

15. Isabel Gonzalez Sanchez, “Sistemas de trabajo, salarios y situacion de los trabajadores agricoloas, 1750-181 o,” in La Clase Obrera en la Historia de Mexico, ed. Enrique Florescano, Isabel Gonzalez Sanchez, Jorge Gonzalez Angulo, Roberto Sandoval Zarauz, Cuauhtemoc Velasco A., and Alejandra Moreno Toscazo, 157 (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1980). For full treatment on rural workers’ lives and conditions see 125-72. Note also that good distinctions between dependent and independent labor are made in Matthew Restall,

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more defined in larger : operarios who worked

The Black Middle (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). See especially Chapter 4, entitled “Ways of Work.”

16. For an interesting interpretation of black labor mobility in the Pacific region see: Jose Arturo Motta Sanchez, “Derrota a la Mar del Sur; trazas de una senda de afrosucesores libres y cautivos en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII,” in Diaspora, Nation y Diferencia: Poblaciones de origen Africano en Mexico y Centro America, CD ROM (Mexico, Universidad de Guanajuato, 2008). For additional analysis of free-colored labor in the Pacific basin, see Ben Vinson III, “West Side Story: Free-Black Labor in tire Mexican Pacific during the Late Colonial Period as Seen Through tire Revillagigedo Census,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial Histmy 10, no. 3 (2009), available at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history.

17. Peter Gerhard, A Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 124-26.

18. Daniele Dehouve, Entre el caiman y el jaguar: Los pueblos indios de Guerrero (Mexico City: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia Social, 1994), 104-7, 11 L ar*d 114; Jesus Hernandez Jaimes, “El comercio de algodon en las cordilleras y costas de la mar del sur de Nueva Espana en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII,” in Mercaderes, comercio y consulados de Nueva Espana en elsiglo XVIII, ed. Guillermina del Valle Pavon, 237-44 (Mexico City: Institute Mora, 2003); Ben Vinson IH, “The Racial Profile of a Rural Mexican Province in the ‘Costa Chica:’ Igualapa in 1791,” The Americas (JAM) 57, no. 2 (2000): 269-82.

19. The specific tasks performed by operarios could be 1 urban areas. In Mexico City, for instance, there were specifically in bakeries and others who toiled in the treasury. But in large cities like Guadalajara and Guanajuato, operarios could equally remain part of an amorphous and anonymous mass of low-wage laborers. For more, consult: Rodney D. Anderson, “Race and Social Stratification: A Comparison of Working-Class Spaniards, Indians and Castas in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1821,” HAHR 68, no. 2 (1988): 209-43; Cuauhtemoc Velasco Avila, "Los trabajadores mineros en la Nueva Espana, 1750-1810,” in La Close Obreru, 291-99; and Sonia Perez Toledo and Herbert S. Klein, Poblacidn y cstructura social de la Ciudad de Mexico, 1790-1842 (Mexico Citv: Universidad Autonoma Metropoloitana Unidad Iztapalapa (UAMI), 2004), 295.

20. Slaves continued to have a presence in mining as well, see Brigida von Mentz, “Esclavitud en centres mineros y azucareros novohispanos. Algunas propuestas para el estudio de la multietnicidad en el centre de Mexico," in Poblacionesy culturas de origen africano en Mexico, ed. Maria Elisa Velasquez and

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/

128 BEN VINSON III

Ethel Correa, 259-67 (Mexico City: Institute Nacional de Antropologfa e Historia (INAH), 2005).

21. David A. Brading, “Grupos etnicos; Clases y estructura ocupacional en Guanajuato (1792),” in Historiay poblacion en Mexico (Siglos XVI-XIX) (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1994), 244; and Colin A. Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1550-1650 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976). Note that in Guanajuato, as in other Mexican mining regions, many of the sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century black miners were slaves. As slavery subsided, the offspring of the unions between slaves and freedmen generated an appreciable free-colored population. Many of them also became miners, but migrator}' flows brought new infusions of black workers. Again, the phenomenon was not unique to Guanajuato. In Sultepec, for instance, a local priest recounted diat “mining attracted many ‘foreigners, the whitest of which look black.’” See Von A'lentz, “Esclavitud en centres mineros,” 264.

22. Some excellent occupational information for women in Mexico City can be found in Maria Elisa Velazquez, Mujeres de origen africano en la capital novohispana, sigios XVIIy XVIII (Mexico City: INAH, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), 2006), 161-228; and Elisa Velazquez, “Amas de leche, cocineras y vendedoras: Mujeres de origen africano, trabajo y culture en la ciudad de Mexico durante la epoca colonial,” in Poblaciones y culturas africano, 335-56.

23. Matthew Restall finds this trend in a rural Yucatecan census from 1700 where all three free-colored muleteers lived in the transportation hub of Maxcanu; see Restall, The Black Middle, chap. 4.

24. A wonderful survey of Mexico’s artisan trades remains: Manuel Carrera Stampa, Los gremios Mexicanos: La organization gremial en Nueva Espana, 1521-1861 (Mexico City: EDIAPSA, 1954). For information on blacks in the gold and silversmithing trade see: John E. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs: Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983). For discussion of the career of Juan Correa, a famous free-colored artist and guild overseer, see: Elisa Vargas Lugo, Juan Correa. Su vidaysu obra, 4 vols. (Mexico City: UNAM, 1985-1994). Norah Andrews has also found a handful of black guild masters in Puebla in 1800. They included furniture makers, cobblers, blacksmiths, hatters, and tailors. See Norah Andrews, ‘“I Could not Determine the Truth’: Ambiguity and Afromexican Royal Tribute,” Master’s thesis, Johns Hopkins University, 2009, 23.

25. Evaluating the role of women in the colonial period’s labor force has posed a particular challenge in places such as the United States, but in Latin

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America, more data is available. Although richer, problems persist given the inconsistent and spotty reporting of female occupations. This situation can be found in late colonial Mexico’s census records, especially the Revillagigedo census.

26. This is speculative, but also fits with observations found in Mexico City by Silvia Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790-1857 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), 158-66; Patricia Seed, “The Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City 1753,” HAHR LXII, no. 4 (1982): 569-606; and Maria Elisa Velazquez, “Juntos y revueltos: Oficios, espacios y comunidades domesticas de origen africano en la capital novohispana segun el censo de 1753,” in Pautasde convivencia etnica en la America Latina colonial (Indios, negros, mulatos, pardos y esclavos), ed. Juan Manuel de la Serna Herrera, 331-46 (Mexico City: UNAM, 2005). Note, however, that there is only limited utility in making colony-wide generalizations from the Mexico City case.

27. Again, for excellent treatment see Arrom, Women of Mexico City, 154-205.

28. PerezToledo and Klein, Poblaciony estructurasocial, 285-99.

29. Susan M. Socolow, “Introduction,” in Cities and Society in Colonial Latin America, ed. Louisa Schell Hoberman and Susan M. Socolow, 15-16 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986).

30. Lyman Johnson, “Artisans,” in Cities and Society in Colonial Latin America, 234-36.

31. Note that population figures for Mexico City are a matter of debate for the 1790s. Viceroy Revillagigedo ascertained that the population stood at 112,000. Other contemporaries argued larger numbers and recent research has shown that the city may have possibly held up to 300,000 individuals. See Manuel Mino Grijalva, “La poblacion de la ciudad de Mexico en 1790. Variables economicas y demograficas de una controversy,” in La poblacion de la ciudad de Mexico en 1790: Estructura social, alimentationy vrvienda, ed. Manuel Mino Grijalva and Sonia Perez Toledo, 21-74 (Mexico City: UAMI, 2004). Sonia Perez Toledo has weighed into the argument, calculating the number closer to 117,000. See Perez Toledo and Klein, Poblacion y estructura social, 64. Keith Davies’s pioneering study calculates die population at 130,000. See Keith Davies, “Tendencias demograficas urbanas durante el siglo XIX en Mexico,” in Historiay poblacion, 281-82. Whatever the actual number, the city was extremely large by contemporary standards in die Western world.

32. The figures for mulattos are derived from Alexander von Humbolt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, 2 vols., trans. John Black (New York: I. Riley, 1811), 1:192.

BEN VINSON IIII3O

33. These quadrants are cuarteles 1, 20, and 23, and had a total population of over thirteen thousand individuals. The database for these cuarteles has been generously provided by Herbert S. Klein. Note that these quarters have also been studied in depth by members of the urban history' seminar run by the Colegio de Mexico.

34. For an excellent graphic representation of the ethnic composition of Mexico City at the outset of the nineteenth century see: Lourdes Marquez Morfin, “La desigualdad ante la muerte: Epidemias, poblacion y sociedad en la ciudad de Mexico (1800-1850),” Ph.D. diss., El Colegio de Mexico, 1991,59.

35. Perez Toledo and Klein, Poblaciony estructura social, 94.

36. A good study of the use of residential and public space in the center and western parts of Mexico City' can be found in Diana Birrichaga Gardida, “Distribution del espacio urbano en la ciudad de Mexico en 1790,” in La poblacion de la ciudad de Mexico, 311-41.

37. In the late colonial period, the tobacco factory' was responsible for employ'ing up to 11 percent of Mexico City’s population. Many' employ'ees were women who were paid competitive wages. Some incomes even rivaled several artisan trades. For more, see Amparo Ros, La production tigarrera a finales de la Colonia. La fdbrica en Mexico (Mexico City': INAH, 1984). For more on the industry, see Susan Deans-Smith, Bureaucrats, Planters, and Workers: The Making of the Tobacco Monopoly in Bourbon Mexico (Austin: University' of Texas Press, 1992).

38. Patricia Seed records that 81.5 percent of free black males were servants. Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race,” 582.

39. Concentrated mostly' in the textile, food, leatherworking, metal, and barbering industries, many' of these staple arenas of the workforce had long been important niches for free coloreds, particularly the professions of zapateros (shoemakers) and sastres (tailors). See Perez Toledo, Los hijos del trabajo. Los artesanos de la ciudad de Mexico, 1780-1853 (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, UAMI, 1996), 78; Mino Grijalva, “Estructura social y ocupacion de la poblacion en la ciudad de Mexico, 1790,” in La poblacion en la ciudad de Mexico, 160; and Felipe Castro Gutierrez, La extintion de la artesania gremial (Mexico City': UNAM, 1986), 97, 172-80.

40. There were only' seventeen employed morisco men in the sample. Of these, ten were artisans and one was a foreman.

41. There was also a bolero, a professional shoe polisher. I would categorize her as being employed in the service sector, but Perez Toledo and Klein’s categorization of professions in Poblacion y estructura social, 287, listed her as an artisan. If this person was considered by contemporaries to be an artisan, it is telling that this lower status trade (when compared to the seamstress) was

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held by a midata (phenotypically darker than the morisca seamstress), and that she also worked in die city center.

42. For an excellent study of the range of professions open to men and women in Mexico City in the late colonial and early national period, see Perez Toledo and Klein, Poblacion y estructura social, 285-99. The definitional description of many professions can be found in Perez Toledo, Loshijosdel trabajo, 55-56 and 269-74. Note that nearly half of the forty-four professions listed for mulattos in cuartel 1 incorporated women, whereas in the other two parts of town, just four out of seventeen professions included them. Also, over half of all free- colored females were listed as being employed downtown, whereas almost none were recorded as working in the southern and western peripheries. Of course, this statistic is somewhat misleading since, in actuality, labor was a daily reality for most free-colored women.

43. In the literature on North America, age ten has been identified as a typical age for children entering the workforce in pre-industrial and early industrial societies. A similar case might be made for Latin America. Of course, some exceptions exist. See John E. Murray and Ruth Wallis Herndon, “Markets for Children in Early America: A Political Economy of Pauper Apprenticeship,” Journal of Economic History 62, no. 2 (June 2002): 356-82.

44. Indeed, the importance of family as an economic survival mechanism may have been more pronounced in Mexico than in Europe. Michael C. Scardaville, “Trabajadores, grupo domestico y supervivencia durante el periodo colonial tardio en la ciudad de Mexico, o ‘la familia pequena no vive mejor,’” in La poblacion de la ciudad de Mexico, 227-79.

45. Eighty percent of households with negros had agregados (or featured negros as agregados) as opposed to less than 50 percent for moriscos. Note that free-colored households with agregados in Mexico City were harder to find outside of the city center, with barely one-third of free-colored households in the urban periphery possessing them. Surprisingly, morisco families were almost twice as likely to have agregados in die city as mulattos. Although more research is needed, suffice it to say that in the outskirts of town, members of the working classes, including free coloreds, probably lived in smaller family units than in the urban core, although one frequently encountered multiple families living together in the same household. Moreover, unlike elite families of the era, with their large number of retainers and domestic staff, free- colored working-class households in the periphery probably did not regularly incorporate individuals who were not their relatives. Consequently, although household living arrangements generally grew more complex over time in Mexico City'-, among the black working classes, unrelated agregados did not comprise a large part of their expanding households. For a slightly different

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interpretation of the circumstances in Mexico City, see Velazquez, “Juntos y revueltos,” 331-46. She contradicts notions that many laborers in the central part of town lived with coworkers, and so on.

46. Socolow, “Introduction,” 5.

47. Carlos Contreras Cruz, Francisco Tellez Guerrero, Claudia Pardo Hernandez, Meliton Mirto Tlalpa, “La poblacion parroquial en la Puebla de los Angeles hacia 1777. El caso del Sagrario, San Marcos, y San Jose, analisis preliminar,” in Poblacion y estructura urbana en Mexico, siglos XVIII y XIX Carmen Blazquez Dominguez, ed. Carlos Contreras Cruz, and Sonia Perez Toledo, 21-23 (Xalapa, Veracruz: Universidad Veracruzana, 1996); Guy P. C. Thomson, Puebla de los Angeles: Industry and Society in a Mexican City, 1700-1850 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), xx.

48. Miguel Marin Bosch, Puebla neocolonial, 1777-1851. Casta, ocupacion y matrimonio en la segunda ciudad de Nucva Espana (Zapopan, Jalisco: El Colegio de Jalisco, 1999), 65.

49. Grijalva, “Estructura social y ocupacion,” 158-59.

50. Thomson, Puebla, 14-26 and 42-46.

51. Ibid., 63. Note that the total district population was 71,366.

52. Ben Vinson III, Bearing Anns for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 60-61.

53. The 1790 census is limited in that it provides information on only four parishes, corresponding to roughly a third of the population, all of whom lived in the eastern and western peripheries of the city. Downtown elite households were excluded, meaning that many individuals working in the service sector were probably not accounted for. The 1794 census, which was actually initiated in 1791, is more comprehensive and may cover all free-colored residents in the city. But given that this census was raised to count tributaries and followed a different format than parish or even military censuses, it is not possible to carefully reconstruct where residents lived in the city (Subdireccion de Documentation de la Biblioteca Nacional de Historia (BNAH), Archivo Judicial de Puebla, rollos 43-44, Tributes, Expedience formado en virtud de las exigencies hechas por los alcaldes ordinaries al gobernador intendente don iManuel de Flon con el fin de cobrar tributos de negros y mulatos, Puebla, 1795).

54. In this census, the term pardo is considered synonymous with mulatto and referred to racially mixed individuals, but was not specific as to whether the black admixture was with native, white, or other mixtures. It is unlikely that

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can be found in Marin Bosch, Puebla

the entire population was pardo—but for uniformity, this was die designation used. Also note that the 1794 tributary census excluded female professions.

55. Professions qualifying for the first group employed 10 percent or more of the free-colored population. For group 2, professions employing 5 percent or more of the free-colored population were considered.

56. By 1800 the black labor force experienced some minor shifts in focus. Cobblers surpassed weavers as the leading black profession and hatters rose to claim the third most prominent role. Combined, these three professions claimed about 35 percent of the black labor pool. Cigar factory workers virtually disappeared, while coachmen slipped into a tertiary position. This reshuffling of occupational rankings probably reflected change in Puebla’s broader economy; but at its core, the main occupational opportunities remained, although their emphases altered slighdy. One could argue that in some ways, by 1800, there were slightly better financial opportunities open to free coloreds, given the way in which occupations were realigned and the number of master artisans found in the census record. See Andrews, “I Could not Determine the Truth,” 23.

57. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs, 218-19.

58. Tanners included both curtidores and tocineros—but the tocineros were the higher status of the two. There were ten free-colored curtidores and six tocineros in Puebla in 1794.

59. Thomson, Puebla, 85.

60. An interesting examination of this neocolonial, 147-68.

61. A castizo was a light skinned mestizo—technically the mixture of a white and a mestizo.

62. Anywhere between 20 and 30 percent of Puebla’s urban workforce was employed in textiles. But more significantly, over 40 percent of non-Indians worked in these trades during the early 1790s, a trend closely mirrored by free coloreds. Natives, by contrast, tended to be more heavily concentrated in the agricultural, food, and construction professions, where blacks were only minimally involved. See Thomson, Puebla, 69; and Marin Bosch, Puebla neocolonial, 147-50. Marin Bosch’s numbers tend to be lower than those of Thomson’s, favoring the 20 percent overall figure. His analysis covers more time and includes parish data. Note that the large proportion of artisans found among the pardos was probably similar to the city’s mestizo and castizo workforce. It is hard to accurately gauge the number of artisans among these populations using available sources, but it is possible that, as with free coloreds, they may have comprised between 60 and 80 percent of mestizo.

BEN VINSON III134

castizo, and even white laborers. The number of artisans is roughly calculated by totaling the number of white, mestizo, and castizo workers in the textile, dress, metal, leather, wood, and “other” industries (data from Thomson, Puebla, 69). Because this is incomplete data for the entire city in 1790, there are gaps in our knowledge, but the information still provides us with a loose guide for understanding what may have been the overall employment situation.

63. Gonzalez Sanchez, “Sistemas de trabajo,” 150-72. For more explanation of the cloth manufacturing process see: Manuel Mino Grijalva, La tnanufactura colonial. La constitution tecnica del obraje (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1993)-

64. Other locations included Queretaro, Oaxaca, Guadalajara, and Orizaba.

65. Ros, La production tigarrera, 58.

66. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs, 187-96.

67. Salary figures for hatters and coachmen come from 1823 estimates. See Thomson, Puebla, 83.

68. AGN, Alcaldes Mayores, vol. 2, exp. 254, Joseph Enereno to Bucareli, December 21,1771, Puebla.

69. A still relevant, perceptive, and classic study of mining in Guanajuato is David Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763—1810 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).

70. Humbolt, Political Essay, II: 129.

71. Celia Wu, “The Population of the City of Queretaro in 1791,” Journal of Latin American Studies 16, no. 2 (1984): 277; and Humbolt, Political Essay, L129-31.

72. Angela T. Thompson, “To Save the Children: Smallpox Inoculation, Vaccination and Public Health in Guanajuato, Mexico, 1797-1840,” TAM 29, no. 4 (1993): 435.

73. Humboldt, Political Essay, IL131; Gerhard, Historical Geography of New Spain, 123.

74. Information on the racial dynamics of the Bajfo is well covered in Brading, Miners and Merchants, 227-30. For Guanajuato census information, see pages 227 and 247-60. Note that there are two differing census figures for Guanajuato. One is based upon a summary sheet and estimates the urban population at over 32,000. Another, based upon a military census that excludes many Indians, places the population at over 21,000. In the second census record, the number of mulattos is lower (3,481). The figure of seven thousand mulattos is based on the summary sheet.

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75. Statistics are from Wu, “Queretaro,” 278-79. Note that free coloreds may have comprised up to 7 percent of Queretaro’s population in 1791. The figure of 7 percent for the free-colored population in Queretaro is my estimate based upon blending figures from summary sheets and the military census. I calculate the 1,755 mulattos in Queretaro, against the 27,000 figure for the city, as opposed to the 14,847 found in the Revillagigedo census, which leaves out many of the natives.

76. These arguments are put forth by Wu, “Queretaro,” 279. It is unclear if the enumerators were primarily responsible for the change, or if individuals declared themselves to be of a different casta from one census to another. Another possibility is that the quality of census taking changed over time.

77. Grading, Miners and Merchants, 258. Note that Indians were largely excluded from this military census and their numbers cannot be fully determined in the workforce. Female professions were also excluded.

78. Wu, “Queretaro,” 294-95. 79. Of course, more work needs to be done to support this conclusion. The

greater diversity of Mexico City’s economy, for instance, probably yielded greater potential for increasing free-colored occupational options.