Mules, Quicksilver, and a 'Glorious Death': Bourbon Perú from The

Home , Bourbon Reforms, Lima District, Lupaca, Provinces of Peru, Upper Peru

Mules, Quicksilver, and a ‘Glorious Death’: Bourbon Perú from the Experience of

Tucumán’s (Ad)venture Merchants

THESIS

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

María Victoria Marquez

Graduate Program in History

The Ohio State University

2013

Master's Examination Committee:

Dr. Donna J. Guy “Advisor”

Dr. Kenneth J. Andrien

Maria Victoria Marquez

2013

Abstract

The study of wealthy merchants, the Mendiolaza family, from the city of

Córdoba, in the colonial district of Tucumán (present-day part of Argentina) during the eighteenth century, their social strategies, mercantile activities, and links to the Spanish colonial administration, shows how Tucumán families integrated in the regional socioeconomic space of Perú and Río de la Plata through their involvement in long-distance trade. Informed and shaped by scholarship on socio-economic history of Spanish Perú and Río de la Plata, and the indigenous rebellions in the Andes, this study poses two primary objectives: first, examining the disintegration of the Spanish American colonial economy in the eighteenth century from the perspective of Tucumán, a peripheral area of the Spanish Empire; second, tracing changes in Tucumán’s power structures up until the period of the South American independences in nineteenth century.

The Mendiolaza story begins around 1730, when they founded a mule-trade

company that circulated between Córdoba and Perú. From 1730 to 1780, the family’s

business expanded significantly thanks to investments in mercury—a resource extracted

from the mines of Huancavelica—and its subsequent distribution to a number of silver

mining centers including Potosí and Oruro. As the Peruvian economy improved in the

second half of the century, the Mendiolazas expanded their investments in other

ii merchandises that circulated in the Andes, such as low-quality regional textiles and

European manufactures. This family’s financial success resulted from their construction of complex social networks with colonial bureaucrats and mercantile elites from Lima,

Potosí, Buenos Aires, and Cádiz, based upon marriage alliances, kinship, and business partnership, which facilitated access to mercantile credit and information that became critical to the prosperity of the family. In addition, this thesis shows how the indigenous uprisings led by Túpac Amaru, Tupaj Katari and Tomas Katari in the Andes between

1780 and 1782 played a decisive role in the disruption of the traditional dynamics of

Tucumán’s economy. These rebellions cut off existing trade routes for several years and additionally forced the Bourbons to enact administrative reforms that transformed the mercantile dynamic in South America in detriment to families like the Mendiolazas, who ultimately opted to reorient their interests toward the flourishing trade market of the

Atlantic.

iii

Dedication

Dedicated to my parents, Antonio and María Ester, for their constant love and support

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Fulbright Foundation and the Institute of International

Education for the funding and logistic assistance they provided, which let me pursue my

graduate studies in the United States.

Since 2011, when I entered The Ohio State University several people provided essential support to successfully transit the program and complete my thesis. In

particular, I would like to thank my advisors Kenneth Andrien and Donna J. Guy for the

opportunity to take part of this program, their guidance and dedication through the thesis

process. Professor Stephanie Smith greatly contributed to develop my career and gave

me wise comments to improve this thesis.

Friends and colleagues at the Department of History played a crucial role

commenting on the text in progress and guiding me through the program. In this regard I

would like to particularly mention Dani Anthony, Cameron Jones, Spencer Tyce, and

Hideaki Kami. A special line goes to express my gratefulness to Nash Middleton who

read my drafts with patience and love, and always encouraged me to keep going despite

the drawbacks.

My interest in the colonial Latin American history began time ago in my alma mater, the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. In that university, I would like to thank the advice, brilliant criticism and support always received from Professor Ana Inés Punta.

Finally, I would like to thank my family in Argentina and my friends both in my hometown and here in Columbus whose enthusiasm and trust remind me always what really matters in life.

Vita

November 1998 ...... Colegio Secundario Laico San José

2007...... B. A. (Licenciatura) in History, Universidad

Nacional de Córdoba - Argentina

2008-2011 ...... Graduate Student Fellowship by CONICET,

Argentina

2011-to the present ...... Fulbright Graduate Fellowship

2011-to the present ...... Graduate Student, M.A. History, The Ohio

State University

Publications

“A través de los Andes: Estrategias sociales y redes de poder entre Córdoba y

Huancavelica en el siglo XVIII.” Andes. Antropología e Historia, n° 23, CEPIHA,

Universidad National de Salta, 2011.

vii

“Elite y redes sociales entre Córdoba y el Perú en el siglo XVIII. Un estudio de caso.”

Revista Síntesis, II, Secretaría de Ciencia y Técnica, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba,

2009.

Fields of Study

Major Field: History

Minor Fields: Latin American History, Atlantic History, Spanish and Portuguese

viii

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Dedication ...... iv

Acknowledgments...... v

Vita ...... vii

Publications ...... vii

Fields of Study...... viii

List of Maps ...... xi

Introduction ...... 1

The Bourbon Reforms in the Viceroyalty of Perú ...... 5

Organization of the Thesis ...... 11

Chapter 1 ...... 16

On Mules and Quicksilver. The Mendiolazas from Tucumán to Huancavelica ...... 16

Córdoba del Tucumán and the Andean Mercantile Circuits ...... 18

Basque Merchants and Córdoba’s Local Politics (1750-1785) ...... 25

The Mendiolaza Family and el Real Trajín de Azogues de Huancavelica ...... 30 ix

Gaspar Alejo and Nicolás de Mendiolaza: Asentistas ...... 35

The Mendiolazas and the Colonial Bureaucracy in Huancavelica ...... 40

Chapter 2 ...... 53

Geographic Expansion and Economic Diversification of the Family Businesses, 1760-

1780...... 53

Provincial Merchants and Social Networks. Kinship and Trade across the Andes ...... 61

Beyond Kinship: Representatives and Broker Agents of the Colonial Trade ...... 65

Tucumán Trade Reorients. From the Andes to the South Atlantic ...... 67

Chapter 3 ...... 80

The Andean Market and the Indigenous Rebellions at the Down of the Mendiolazas

(1775-1787)...... 80

The Repartos Forzosos de Mercancías and the Corregidor de Indios ...... 81

Nicolás de Mendiolaza and the Expansion of the Repartos Market ...... 85

The Great Andean Rebellion and the Bourbon Reforms (1780-1783) ...... 93

Family Network and Business Returns to Tucumán after the Great Rebellion ...... 98

Conclusions ...... 111

Bibliography ...... 122

Appendix A. The Mendiolazas Inheritance ...... 132

Appendix B. Merchants Correspondence ...... 136

List of Maps

Map 1. Locations where the Mendiolazas settled down or established commercial contact

(1730-1790)...... 63

Map 2. Provinces and corregimientos of the Viceroyalty of Perú...... 86

Introduction

Structural socioeconomic changes during the eighteenth century in Spanish

America altered colonial institutions, markets, and political cultures. The Bourbon monarchy played a central role in that development, since they attempted to recover political and commercial control over her Spanish colonies, which had become flooded with contraband goods from British, French, and Dutch mercantile interests in the

Atlantic world. Additionally, in order to centralize their empire, the crown had to reign in the relative autonomy of the prominent criollos—or creoles, descendants of Spaniard conquistadors and colonizers who were born in America. In the Viceroyalty of Perú, economic resurgence and increasing levels of social conflict shaped this process, especially during the second half of the eighteenth century. This work explores these issues using a case study of a family of mule traders, the Mendiolazas, who settled in the city of Córdoba (Gobernación of Tucumán) between the 1729 and 1811.1 In analyzing the family’s social strategies, mercantile activities, and interactions with the colonial administration, it will be shown how Tucumán’s families involved in long-distance trade participated in the regional socio-economic networks of Perú and the Río de la Plata.

Previous historiography has focused on colonial elites and the impact of the

Bourbon Reforms on diverse sectors of the Peruvian society. Scholars studied the

different experiences of the high bureaucracy, Lima’s merchants, Potosí miners, the

Jesuits and other Church-related sectors of colonial society. There is a large body of literature dedicated to the study of the colonial merchants in Spanish America.

Merchants and merchant networks in the eighteenth century have deserved great attention from scholars since these became one of the most active social actors of transatlantic

trade and key agents of the Bourbon colonial policy. In the decade of the 1970s, social

and economic historians produced seminal studies dedicated to great merchants in the

Bourbon Spanish America, mostly based on notarial records and, personal and business

correspondence. This scholarship studied peninsular merchants’ insertion in the social

structure of colonial society and their economic development both in trade and in other

areas of the colonial economy, specially mining. Most of this literature unveils how the

family of the merchant became a point of departure of his social strategies. In the case of

New Spain the best examples of this kind of studies are David Brading and John Kicza’s

books. In the case of Río de la Plata, Susan Socolow studied the mercantile world of

Buenos Aires after the legalization of trade in that port. This study included an excellent

case study about Basque merchant Gaspar de Santa Coloma and his articulation of

business, family and politics within the porteño mercantile world. Rooted in this

structural approach, Susan Socolow and Louisa Hoberman edited a volume on the social

history of Spanish America that included an overview of the colonial merchants as

central actors.2

In the late 1980s and the 1990s, historians sought to overcome limitations of the

structural analysis by relating this traditional approach to new methods and concepts from

the social sciences—particularly social network analysis and Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of

social and symbolic capital. Diana Balmori, Stuart Voss and Miles Wortman co-authored

book, published in 1984, represented a model of this kind of studies that historians

applied in the following decades. These tools provided flexibility to address the

experience of prominent colonial merchants who could hardly be defined as a narrow

group as they usually became part of a variety of social, economic and bureaucratic fields

throughout their lifetimes. Notions of social network, social capital and symbolic capital

allowed historians to understand colonial merchants’ articulations beyond the space of

the family, and also lent greater visibility to women’s roles in colonial mercantile life. In

addition to that, the new approach served to trace merchants’ historic trajectories through

the nineteenth century.3

This scholarship provides hints on how merchants from different regions crossed colonial jurisdictions connecting the pampas and the Atlantic with the Andes and the

Pacific coast economies. Yet, much of this research has taken a regional perspective, which limits the scope to a specific geographical area, while little work has been done utilizing an interregional perspective. This is especially the case of studies on Perú and

Río de la Plata.4 The present work seeks to fill this gap by examining the agents of the

intra-colonial trade and how they experienced and took part in the social, political and

economic changes occurring under Bourbon rule in the Viceroyalty of Perú. That is the

case of most long-distance merchants from or residing in Tucumán in the eighteenth

century, such as Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza and his family, whose commercial

activities connected disparate regions of the Viceroyalties of Perú and later the Río de la

Plata to develop and expand their business.

This study reconstructs the Mendiolazas’ mercantile activities beginning in 1729,

a time when the family’s merchants founded a mule-trade business that plied the trade

routes between Córdoba and Perú. From 1730 to 1770, their enterprise significantly

expanded thanks to investments in mercury production from the mines of Huancavelica

and its subsequent distribution to a number of silver mining centers including Potosí and

Oruro. Moreover, during the decade of 1770, the Mendiolazas profited from other

ventures such as supplying the Andean regions with low quality textiles produced in

Tucumán and importing manufactures from Europe. The turning point in this family’s

economic expansion occurred in the last fifteen years of the eighteenth century, when the

Bourbon reforms transformed the political and mercantile system in South America.

The argument of this thesis is that the financial success of the Mendiolazas

resulted from the construction of complex regional and transatlantic social networks that

included colonial bureaucrats and mercantile elites from Lima, Potosí, Buenos Aires and

Cádiz. Kinship relations and clientelism were the base of this social network, which facilitated the Mendiolazas’ access to mercantile credit and information that became critical to their prosperity. This thesis will also analyze how the indigenous uprisings of

Perú during the years 1780-1782 played a decisive role in the disruption of the

Mendiolazas’ political, social and economic networks in the Andes. These rebellions cut off existing inland trade routes for several years and additionally impelled the Bourbons to enact administrative reforms—two factors that ultimately weakened Tucumán’s

connections with the Andean region. Through the lens of this case study, it is possible to

assess the twofold reactions of the provincial merchant elites from Tucumán to this crisis.

While some attempted to reconstruct links to Peruvian internal market, others opted to

reorient their interests toward the flourishing transatlantic trade markets.

The reconstruction of the Mendiolazas story and their social strategies to develop

a commercial business and improve their social status will provide insight into how the

Bourbon reforms in Perú and the Río de la Plata had an impact on provincial markets and

their merchants and also what role colonial society and in particular Tucumán’s long

distance merchants played in the process of regional reorientation towards transatlantic

trade routes.

The Bourbon Reforms in the Viceroyalty of Perú

Joseph Joaquín and his younger brother Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza moved to

Perú as part of a large wave of Spaniards who emigrated from northern provinces of the

Iberian peninsula—Cantabria, La Rioja, Basque country—to the colonies. Although men

had traveled from these regions since the early years of the Spanish Conquest, their ties

with the Indies became especially active after the accession of the Bourbon monarch

Philip V (1700-1746) to the throne.

After the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1713) and throughout the eighteenth century, the Bourbons were aware of their need to build a political consensus in order to rule the Spanish Empire. Philip V expelled most of the old nobility who were hostile to the Bourbon succession in the government and installed new ministers in court and state

offices. While this policy was aimed at providing the crown with more efficient and

loyal functionaries willing to enforce controversial reforms, it also reshaped the social

configuration of the bureaucracy.5 In the second half of the eighteenth century, a more

determined Charles III (1759-1788), further withdrew most venal positions in the colonial

administration, reduced the participation of the criollos in most offices, and appointed

new functionaries who were generally loyal peninsular Spaniards.6 Using the perspective

of the Mendiolazas, this study explores the consequences of this process in which creole

elites struggled to preserve their power over the local political, social, and economic

spheres, while peninsular newcomers took advantage of these new opportunities to reach influential positions.

In addition to promoting changes in the social and professional configuration of

the imperial upper bureaucracy, the Bourbons strengthened ties to merchant networks in

Spain. As a result, while the crown attempted to regain control over colonial trade,

Spanish merchant communities gained strength and dynamism. Like the Mendiolaza

brothers, Spanish and particularly Basque merchants—many of whom had previous trade

experience in North Atlantic routes—capitalized upon these policies and accessed the

Spanish American markets. Basques penetrated merchant guilds or Consulados in Cádiz,

Mexico and Lima; they expanded their companies across the Atlantic through networks

in which commodities, information, and people circulated; and they settled in strategic

hubs of transatlantic and intra-colonial trade.7

Economic conditions that existed in Perú during this period also influenced the

Mendiolazas’ social strategies and businesses. Joseph Joaquín and Gaspar Alejo de

Mendiolaza arrived in Perú in the 1720s, a period when the region was in its last stages of

prolonged economic crisis going back to the mid-seventeenth century. This crisis manifested itself in different ways. Firstly, the problem of foreign contraband had

weakened the Spanish monopoly over colonial trade. Secondly, the penurious Royal

Exchequer could not defray the high costs of the viceroyalty’s administration and military

defense. Furthermore, the decline of Potosí and other traditional silver mining centers—

which constituted the major consumers of Peruvian goods and commodities—negatively

affected the functioning of Andean internal markets.8

The monopolistic Spanish convoy system (flotas y galeones) proved to be

dysfunctional as the empire evolved, and Spanish goods sold through the legal trading

system could not compete with the increasing French and British contraband, which

supplied the Indies with slaves and European goods in exchange for bullion. In Perú, the

fleets and galleon system—that connected Perú with the metropolis—had become

obsolete and inefficient. After the Treaty of Utrecht (1712-1715) that ended the War of

Spanish Succession, Spain could not preserve its dominance over transatlantic trade with

the Indies. This weak position forced Philip V to make concessions to France and

England that allowed them to participate in the colonial slave trade. Contraband

expanded as these nations’ had direct access to ports in Spanish America, including Perú.

Many colonial merchants and a corrupt bureaucracy profited from the illegal trade but for

the Royal Exchequer, contraband led to a reduction in tax revenues on legal trade with

the Indies.9

Bourbon Reforms sought to stimulate colonial trade in order to improve the fiscal

revenues.10 To accomplish this goal, during the first half of the century Spain replaced the galleons with register ships (navíos de registro) in 1736—a more flexible mechanism for shipping goods—and redefined its fiscal policy regarding transatlantic commerce.11

In the second half of the century, the Bourbons promoted a relative liberalization of the system culminating in 1778 with the edict proclaiming imperial free trade (Reglamento de Libre Comercio con las Indias) within the empire (except for New Spain and

Caracas). This not only legalized trade with more ports in Spain and in the Indies, but also introduced a greater variety of products into the colonies.12 As part of this policy,

the port of Buenos Aires was opened to receive registro ships since 1750 and became a

major entrepot for efectos de Castilla (manufactures from Europe) and slaves from Africa

destined for South Andean markets, such as Potosí. As a result, regions like Tucumán—

an area only indirectly involved in the maritime trade due to its inland location—built new and dynamic ties with the Atlantic World as a strategic hub connecting Buenos Aires with the Andean mining centers.13

Since the mid-seventeenth century, the long decay of the silver mining business

and a significant demographic drop in the indigenous population affected key mining

zones in South America. The reduction of the demand for goods such as Tucumán’s

mules or Paraguay’s yerba mate from the Andean markets drove the economic crisis to

the peripheries of the viceroyalty. As a result, until the 1740s, the economy of Córdoba

del Tucumán stagnated, primarily because of a decline in mule and cattle exports to

northern mining zones. This reduction in exports drained specie from the local economy

of Tucumán, which in turn, hindered its participation in different mercantile exchanges,

such as the import of textiles and other goods from Castile.14

In 1729, the year that Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza married Theresa de las

Casas, a young woman from a prominent Córdoba family, the local elite was

impoverished. Moreover, a series of pestes—a term which locals used to refer to

frequent epidemics of measles, smallpox, and fever—devastated the region between 1700

and the 1740s.15 Consequently many notable families chose to move to their rural

properties and leave the urban areas where diseases were spreading rapidly. Furthermore,

in the city of Córdoba, it had become too expensive for the elite to afford the lifestyle of

luxury that they had once enjoyed. This phenomenon of ruralization also caused many

prominent families of Córdoba del Tucumán to shift their businesses from long-distance

trading to simply providing pastures for mule wintering, gradually losing connections

with Andean mercantile networks.16 The tough economic conditions favored the

integration of newcomers into Tucumán’s society, where personal bankruptcies and

epidemics reduced the marriage market. Incoming Spaniards like Mendiolazas (and their

relatives, the Allende, Ascasubi, and Arrascaeta families) made advantageous marriage

alliances because they had accumulated wealth, and promised better prospects for making

profits from interregional trade.17 Though Tucumán’s Spanish and criollo elite was impoverished, marrying into it offered these peninsular newcomers higher social status in

the community and the hope of expanded their social networks and economic prosperity.

In the 1730s and 1740s economy began to recover. Increased mining production,

changes in the colonial trading policy and demographic growth helped reactivate

transatlantic and intra-colonial markets.18 Most of the diverse goods that the

Mendiolazas—especially Nicolás and his brothers—traded showed an improvement during the second half of the century as Córdoba increased its export of mules, Cuzco increased its production and trade of textiles and sugar, while, Moquegua and Arequipa rejuvenated their production of wine and brandy.19

Among the Bourbon reforms that stimulated the Peruvian economy was the

compulsory introduction of goods into the indigenous communities—a coercive system

of trade known as repartos de comercio. The colonial officials in charge of supervising

the indigenous communities throughout the Andes, the corregidores de indios, were in

charge of operating this mercantile system.20 The legalization of the repartos de

comercio throughout the Viceroyalty of Perú, by 1754 gave further impetus to the

regional trade. The repartos worked as a captive market which benefited various sectors.

The merchant elites were guaranteed an outlet for their products, which encouraged them

to support the system and endorse the careers of the corregidores who managed the

sales.21 Meanwhile the crown obtained fiscal revenues from the repartos, through the

sales tax (alcabala). Also, the corregidores and other minor officials who enforced the

law, earned significant incomes in addition to their regular salaries.22

Obviously the repartos meant significant indebtedness for the indigenous communities, beyond their already heavy burden as vassals of the Spanish Crown:

Andeans owed a labor tax called the mita and a separate tribute payment. Andeans

several times objected to these new economic pressures, especially after the legalization

of the repartos in 1754. Although the reparto was not the sole cause of social upheaval in

Perú, the rebels of the Great Andean Rebellion in 1780-1781 included the abolition of the

coercive mercantile system among their demands.23

The involvement of the Mendiolazas in sensitive markets like the repartos de

comercio exposed them, however, to these violent rebellions in Perú during the last

quarter of the century. The indigenous uprisings jeopardized trade patterns and stopped

regular mercantile traffic in the interior of the Andes until 1783. This situation was

especially harsh for the Tucumán mule traders. In Córdoba in 1781, for example, there

was not even one single legal contract for pack mule exports24 while the same year in

Salta there was only one official register for 200 pack mules destined for Potosí.25

Moreover, the rebellions accelerated the implementation of major reforms to the administration of the Viceroyalties of Perú and the Río de la Plata (created in 1776). The abolition of the repartos and the corregimientos de indios; the creation of new administrative jurisdictions such as the Intendencias (Intendancies) (1782); and the

establishment of the Audiencia (judicial tribunal) of Buenos Aires (1785) amongst other

measures, allowed Tucumán to develop stronger ties with the Atlantic rather than

Andean internal markets.

Organization of the Thesis

The study is organized in three sections that constitute chapters 1 through 3.

Chapter 1 analyzes the first generation of the family as Basque immigrants to Perú,

during the first half of the eighteenth century. It focuses in their involvement in the

Peruvian and Tucumán markets and their ability to integrate into the provincial elites,

11 which helps to understand how the first decades of Bourbon rule shaped the particular strategies of peninsular newcomers in the New World. A second part of the chapter focuses on the Mendiolazas and the lucrative business of Huancavelica mercury mines.

This section explores the Mendiolazas as asentistas, or crown contractors, and the role that they played in the mechanisms of negotiation between the colonial government and other historical actors.

Chapter 2 is about the integration of the second generation of the Mendiolaza family, between the 1750s and 1780s. Through this generation, this study traces the recovery of the Peruvian economy and the increasing influence of the Atlantic trade on

Tucumán and Río de la Plata markets. Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza’s children participated in the family’s mercantile practice and proved able to create links to diverse merchant networks, and they made profitable deals with corregidores de indios. Chapter

3 explores the period of the indigenous uprisings between 1770 and 1790 that decisively affected the story of the Mendiolazas. This chapter defines the repartos de comercio in the Andean corregimientos de indios and the integration of Tucumán merchants into the system. It aims to understand how profiting from this advantageous business eventually drew the family to support the colonial state militarily and financially in the campaigns of repression against the indigenous uprisings, hence suffering human, economic, and social losses.

Overall, through the case study of a merchant family and their social and entrepreneurial activities in the mercantile circuits of Perú and the Río de la Plata during the eighteenth century, this thesis shows how changes in the Viceroyalty of Perú under

12 the Bourbons influenced a particular branch of the colonial society, which historians have not studied thoroughly. Nonetheless, this study will open new questions and perspectives on better known aspects of the colonial history.

Notes to Introduction

1 The Gobernación of Tucumán was a colonial administrative jurisdiction. Tucumán depended on the Audiencia de Charcas (justice tribunals residing in the city of Chuquisaca, Upper Perú) from 1563 to 1785, and pertained to the Viceroyalty of Perú between 1549 and 1776. The jurisdiction of Tucumán included the towns of Jujuy, Salta, Tucumán, Santiago del Estero, Córdoba, Catamarca and La Rioja. In the eighteenth century, the Bourbons implemented several administrative changes. First, the Gobernación of Tucumán was subordinated to the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (created in 1776); then, this jurisdiction was divided in two (1782)—Intendancy of Salta and the Intendancy of Córdoba—; lastly, both intendancies became subordinated to the Audiencia de Buenos Aires (1785). 2 David Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763-1810 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); John E. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs, Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1983); Susan M. Socolow, The Merchants of Buenos Aires, 1778-1810: Family and Commerce (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Catherine Lugar, “Merchants,” in eds. Susan M. Socolow and Louisa S. Hoberman, Cities and Society in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), 47-75. 3 Diana Balmori, Stuart F. Voss, and Miles L. Wortman, Notable Family Networks in Latin America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 4 Cristina Mazzeo has dedicated several publications to the merchants’ guild of Lima, their members and their institutional articulations with the colonial state at the end of the eighteenth century. See: El comercio libre en el Perú: Las estrategias de un comerciante criollo, José Antonio de Lavalle y Cortés, Conde de Premio Real, 1777-1815 (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial, 1994); and Mazzeo’s edited volume: Los comerciantes limeños a fines del siglo XVIII: Capacidad y cohesión de un elite, 1750-1825 (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Dirección Académica de Investigación, 1999). More recently, Patricia Marks studied Lima’s merchants and their unsteady support to the colonial institutions during the last decades of Spanish domination in Perú: Deconstructing Legitimacy: Viceroys, Merchants, and the Military in Late Colonial Peru (University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007). In the case of Buenos Aires and the Río de la Plata Jorge Gelman follows Socolow’s study in De mercachifle a gran comerciante. Los caminos del ascenso en el Río de la Plata colonial (La Rábida, Spain: Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, Sede Iberoamericana de la Rábida, 1996). Zacarías Moutoukias authored representative studies on this topic using social network analysis: “Narración y análisis en la observación de vínculos y dinámicas sociales: El concepto de red personal en la historia social y económica,” in eds. María Bjerg and Hernán Otero, Inmigración y redes sociales en la Argentina

Moderna (Tandil, Arg.: CEMLA-IEHS, 1995), 221-241; in co-authorship with Annie Vignal-Ramos, “Réseaux personnels et autorité coloniale: les négociants de Buenos Aires au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 47, no. 4/5 (1992): 889-915. An excellent research that aimed to overcome geographic limitations: Gabriela Dalla Corte, Vida i mort d'una aventura al Riu de la Plata: Jaime Alsina i Verjés, 1770-1836 (Barcelona: Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat, 2000). 5 Under the first Bourbon kings, the high ranked bureaucrats in charge of Spanish American matters were José Patiño and his successors José del Campillo y Cossio and Marques de Ensenada—none of whom came from the higher aristocracy but had merit-based administrative careers. John Lynch, Bourbon Spain. 1700- 1808 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 90-98. In the Viceroyalty of Perú, men like the Navarrese José de Armendariz (1724-1736) or José Antonio Manso de Velasco (1745-1761) received appointments as viceroys. Both functionaries built their careers upon their participation in the War of Succession and other military conflicts of the Spanish Empire. Due to their loyalty and strong hand to administer this important colonial district, Armendariz and Manso were vital pieces within the early Bourbon reformism. Adrian Pearce, “Early Bourbon Government in the Viceroyalty of Perú, 1700-1759,” (Doctoral Diss. University of Liverpool, 1998), 15-20. 6 Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 329-370; John Fisher, Bourbon Perú. 1750-1824 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003), 29-31. 7 Scholarship on Basque and Navarre social networks in the Spanish Empire: José María Imízcoz Beunza, Redes familiares y patronazgo. Aproximación al entramado social del País Vasco y Navarra en el Antiguo Régimen (Siglos XV-XIX) (Bilbao, Spain: Universidad del País Vasco, Servicio Editorial, 2001). For the merchant communities of Bilbao in the eighteenth-century Atlantic trade, see Xabier Lamikiz, Trade and Trust in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Spanish Merchants and their Overseas Networks (Suffolk, Eng.-Woodbridge, VA: Royal Historical Society-The Boydell Press, 2010). The cluster of Basque merchants operating in the colonial trade from Cádiz has been studied by Paloma Fernandez Pérez, El rostro familiar de la metropolis. Redes de parentesco y lazos mercantiles en Cádiz, 1700-1812 (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1997). Another example, Socolow’s case study cited above in note no. 2 about Basque immigrant, Gaspar de Santa Coloma in the Río de la Plata, see: Socolow, The Merchants of Buenos Aires, 136-177. 8 The origins and process of crisis in the Viceroyalty of Perú are analyzed in Kenneth Andrien, Crisis and Decline: The Viceroyalty of Perú in the Seventeenth Century (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1985). The issues the Bourbons faced in Perú before 1750 are treated in Fisher, Bourbon Perú, 9-25. 9 Pearce, “Early Bourbon Government,” 30-35, 55-94. 10 According to John Fisher, the Bourbons did not provide with direct stimulus to the colonial economy; instead of that, Bourbon policies reacted to the actual revitalization of the transatlantic trade following the forces of the foreign mercantile activity and private initiatives from within the Spanish dominions. It was the latter forces that effectively fostered economic growth in the Indies. The vitality of the illegal trade was a manifestation of those structural trends. Fisher, Bourbon Perú, 27. 11 Pearce, “Early Bourbon Government,” 30-35, 55-94. 12 A discussion on how this policy, combined with the international scene and structural factors, affected in the Viceroyalty of Perú, in Fisher, Bourbon Perú, 51-63. Also, “Estructuras comerciales en el mundo hispánico y el reformismo borbónico”, in coord. Agustín Guimera, El reformismo borbónico: Una visión interdisciplinar (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1996), 109-122. 13 In the case of Córdoba del Tucumán and its articulation to the colonial trade since 1750s up until the republican period, see: Ana Inés Punta, Córdoba borbónica. Persistencias coloniales en tiempo de reformas (1750-1800) (Córdoba, Arg.: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 1997), 87-119; C. Sempat

Assadourian and Silvia Palomeque, “Las relaciones mercantiles de Córdoba (1800-1830). Desarticulación y desmonetización del mercado interno colonial en el nacimiento del espacio económico nacional,” in eds. Alejandra Irigoin and Roberto Schmit, La desintegración de la economía colonial. Comercio y moneda en el interior del espacio colonial (1800-1860) (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2003), 151-225. 14 Ceferino Garzón Maceda, Economía del Tucumán. Economía natural y economía monetaria. Siglos XVI-XVII-XVIII (Córdoba, Arg.: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Dirección General de Publicaciones, 1968). 15 Dora Celton, “La mortalidad de crisis en Córdoba entre los siglos XVI y XVIII,” in comps. Hernán Otero y Guillermo Velásquez, Poblaciones argentinas. Estudios de demografía diferencial (Tandil, Arg.: Instituto de Estudios Histórico Sociales, Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, 1997), 79-93. 16 Aníbal Arcondo, El ocaso de una sociedad estamental, Córdoba entre 1700 y 1760 (Córdoba, Arg.: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Dirección General de Publicaciones, 1992), 242-243. 17 Ibid., 197. 18 This time, the resurgence of the silver mining did not depend exclusively on Potosí, which main lodes were exhausted, but new mining centers developed in Lower Perú like Cerro de Pasco. John Fisher, Minas y mineros en el Perú colonial. 1777-1824 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1977); Peter Bakewell, “Mining in Colonial Spanish America,” The Cambridge History of Latin America, edited by Leslie Bethell, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 147-148. A review of the demographic cycles in Spanish America, see: Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, “The Population of Colonial Spanish America,” The Cambridge History of Latin America, edited by Leslie Bethell, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 15-38. 19 Punta, Córdoba borbónica, 53-107; Neus Escandell-Tur, Producción y comercio de tejidos coloniales. Los obrajes y chorrillos del Cuzco, 1570-1820 (Cuzco, Perú: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos “Bartolomé de las Casas,” 1997), 252-253, 280-325; Kendall W. Brown, Bourbons and Brandy. Imperial Reform in Eighteenth-Century Arequipa (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), 75- 88. 20 The corregidores de indios were representatives of the colonial state, heads of justice and administration at the indigenous communities. Alfredo Moreno Cebrián, El corregidor de indios y la economía peruana del siglo XVIII. (Los repartos forzosos de mercancías) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto G. Fernández de Oviedo, 1977), 19. 21 Ibid., 117, 165-166. 22 Ibid., 184-187. 23 In her study of the different indigenous and mestizo uprisings in Perú during the eighteenth century, Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy has defined different stages of the social conflict, starting in the period of Viceroy José de Armendariz (Marques de Castelfuerte) in 1724 and culminating with the Great Rebellion in 1780. Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales. Perú y Bolivia, 1700-1783 (Cuzco, Perú: Centro de Estudios Rurales Andinos “Bartolomé de las Casas,” 1988). 24 Punta, Córdoba borbónica, 57. 25 Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, “La saca de mulas de Salta al Perú, 1778-1808,” Anuario del Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, no. 8, (Rosario, Arg.: Imprenta de la Universidad Nacional del Litoral, 1965): 293.

Chapter 1

On Mules and Quicksilver. The Mendiolazas from Tucumán to Huancavelica

After spending their first few years in Perú, brothers Joseph Joaquín and Gaspar

Alejo de Mendiolaza formulated the social and economic strategy that would organize their family life for more than five decades. They became part of the commercial engine that supplied the Andean region with essential products for the mining industry: mules and mercury. Between 1730 and 1785, when the Viceroyalty of Perú attained recovery after long-term economic crisis, the Mendiolazas managed to profit from both Tucumán’s long-distance mule trade and from controlling the shipment of mercury from the

Huancavelica mine to Andean silver mining centers. These two industries played a pivotal role in the economy of the viceroyalty and operated within different geographical spaces. The mule trade linked Río de la Plata, Tucumán and Upper Perú, while mercury trade followed trajectory from Huancavelica to Arica (currently north of Chile), Lower and Upper Perú. Members of the Mendiolaza family wisely settled down in locations that suited their business interests in relation to these industries—Córdoba, Salta,

Chucuito and Huancavelica.

Since their financial well-being ultimately depended upon the success of Peruvian mining economy, the family’s second generation attempted to diversify their economic

16 activities linking their primary activities to the trade of European goods, interregional products and even money-lending. Furthermore, they implemented a more complex spatial and political strategy starting around 1760. To this purpose, they sought to expand their social network upon their relationship to relatives, allies and mercantile brokers in Tucumán, Huancavelica and other Andean provinces. The Mendiolazas operated in accordance with the political and economic framings of Tucumán and

Huancavelica between 1730 and 1780, which were very different. Córdoba del Tucumán was a peripheral, borderland jurisdiction of Spanish America controlled by a small group of creole families whose finances were quite limited compared to those of more central areas such as Potosí or Cuzco, let alone the viceregal city of Lima. Huancavelica, on the other hand, was a mining region at the center of multiple political and economic interests including the crown, viceroys, and the wealthiest Peruvian miners.

In this chapter I analyze how the critical juncture of the decade of 1720 in the

Viceroyalty of Perú entailed a unique opportunity for these two Basque immigrants,

Joseph Joaquín and Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza, to establish themselves within the colonial society and developed a successful commercial enterprise. Also, this chapter will show how, as the eighteenth century progressed, the social and political skills of the

Mendiolazas led them to take advantage of the economic improvement of Peruvian economy and the political breaches opened by the enforcement of new Bourbon policies in the viceroyalty.

Córdoba del Tucumán and the Andean Mercantile Circuits

During the sixteenth century, the mining centers of Upper Perú generated a great demand for commodities such as textiles, coca leaves, brandy, and iron goods in order to sustain production in the arid and unfertile climate of the region. These products were fundamental not only to sustain the silver mining industry itself but also to provide sustenance for large numbers of seasonal workers and for the permanent inhabitants of the mining areas. Surrounding regions without mines were more suitable for agriculture and cattle-raising, and they engaged in trade with the major mining centers of Potosí and

Oruro. This complementary demand of products among regions consolidated inland trade circuits involving Upper Perú and Chile, Paraguay, Tucumán, Arequipa and

Cuzco.1

Beginning in the 1630s, Córdoba became part of this interregional articulation.

Its privileged geographic location within colonial Gobernación of Tucumán helped to transform the city into a vital commercial hub that linked the Litoral, Buenos Aires, Cuyo and Paraguay with the Andean mining area. Interregional trade encouraged local vecinos to seek profits partaking of different mercantile circuits oriented to Upper Perú. As a result of this influx of commercial activity, Spanish, creole, and Portuguese interests all converged into Córdoba, which served to channel African slaves and a wide range of merchandises—i.e. European manufactures and iron goods, besides sending local products as cloth, cattle and leather.2 Moreover, Córdoba established ties to the Andean markets as a major supplier of mules for draft, mule riding and most importantly for pack work.3 Jesuits and Spanish landowners bred and wintered stocks of mules in Córdoba

before exporting them to “the northern provinces,” and likewise imported stocks bred in

Buenos Aires and the Litoral area for winter pasturing.4 Soon, the economic actors

involved in the traffic of such goods obtained large profits, which led them to attain

significant political power and social status at the local level.5

In the second half of the seventeenth century, extending up into the eighteenth

century, the shrinking production in the mining areas of Upper Perú resulted in long-term

economic crisis that included a sharp decline in the aggregate demand for supplies.

Within the mule market, the aggregate exports from the province of Tucumán—all of which converged upon the Great Fair of Salta—fluctuated between 1660 and 1740 with an average of 2,000-7,000 head annually. Córdoba’s success in the market, however, dwindled during second half of the seventeenth century most likely because of an increased number of competing jurisdictions within Tucumán that also oriented their economies towards the breeding, fattening and wintering of mules. This decline in

Córdoba’s local economy continued throughout the following years and the volume and prices of the city’s exports decreased. As a result, the local market suffered from a shortage of specie, which limited its traders to import goods, a process that eventually led to the city’s economic stagnation during the period from 1700-1740.6

Up until 1740-1750, Córdoba’s major winterers were mostly large landowners

residing in the city. They inherited wealth and social status from their ancestors, who had

received mercedes de tierras (grants of land) and encomiendas de indios (indigenous

laborers) as compensation for their contributions to the conquest of the territories that

would became part of Tucumán in the sixteenth century.7 Other agents that controlled

the local economy were long-distance merchants who traded pack mules, cattle, and other

products in and out of Córdoba. 8 Social and economic change in the first half of the

eighteenth century, however, greatly affected the configuration of these two groups. The

contraction of Córdoba’s exports to the Andes gradually shrank the local productive

sector, leading to the gradual impoverishment of the region. Mule producers incurred

large amounts of debt to ecclesiastical organizations, especially the Convents of Santa

Catalina and Santa Teresa. In many cases large debts led to foreclosures and forced

landowners to move out of the city to the countryside where they focused their efforts

upon mule wintering rather than breeding, which required a greater amount of investment

in infrastructure and labor. As a consequence, by the mid-eighteenth century, mule

production was mostly carried out on Jesuit ranches and prominent landowners in other

jurisdictions such as Buenos Aires and the Litoral region.9

Despite this century-long downturn of the mining economy in Upper Perú, by

1720-1730 the negative economic trend reversed; and three decades later the production of silver began to boom.10 Along with the region’s population growth and the rising cost

of silver, due to higher demand of specie, this reignited the mining center’s peripheral

economies—throughout the Bourbon period until a new crisis arose following the wars of

independence in 1810-1820. Brothers Joseph Joaquín and Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza

emigrated from Basque country to arrive to Perú when this region experienced the last years of economic decline. Changing economic juncture within Andean markets shaped the Mendiolazas’ experience, since they were able to take advantage of the increasing dynamism of the interregional mercantile circuits and penetrate in the colonial society.

After spending an undetermined amount of time in Upper Perú (probably a few years),

the Mendiolaza brothers became interested in receiving a share in the mule trade—a

business that required relatively low initial investment. With that purpose in mind, they

established social links with the most prestigious, long-distance merchants and brokers

from Tucumán, particularly from Córdoba.

Why would the Mendiolazas establish links with a peripheral province such as

Córdoba that constituted the southern borderland of the Spanish Empire with

unsubjugated indigenous peoples? Investigating the dynamics of the social agents

involved in the mule trade sheds light upon this question. Throughout the expansion

phases of commercial activity—e.g. in the 1630s and 1730s—Peruvians usually moved to

Tucumán in order to buy mules, while traders from Salta and Córdoba tended to control

mule prices, trade mechanisms and provided loans to the Peruvians. Nonetheless, during

phases of retraction and lack of demand for internal products, Peruvian clients did not

travel southward to Tucumán, which resulted in the locals taking herds of mules out to

the highlands for trade, at their own financial risk.11 Therefore, in the 1730s—a time of increased demand of commodities from the silver mining centers—Peruvian buyers traveled to Salta’s Great Fair or even further south to Córdoba, where different economic agents still lacked the financial resources to export their mules out of the region. Young peninsular traders, ambitious to make a profit in Spanish America, were willing to take the risk of traveling to the edges of the Spanish Empire in order to obtain mules for later sale in Upper Perú—this was the case of the Mendiolazas and several other Basque

merchant allies, such as the Allendes, Ascasubi, and Arrascaeta. During the second half

21 of the eighteenth century, the renewed presence of these commercial agents in Córdoba, called at that time mercaderes tratantes, fostered economic growth and steadily expanded mercantile activity oriented toward the Andes and increasingly to the Atlantic too.12

As the eighteenth century progressed, new trading conditions fostered the arrival of Spaniard merchants to South America, many of whom became vecinos and took up residence in Córdoba. The poor economic conditions during the first half of the eighteenth century persuaded Córdoba’s most prominent families to integrate new members into their families. Many of these were Spaniards who had already accumulated wealth or had proven their worth as traders in the interregional market.13

While Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza resided in Salta, his brother Joseph Joaquín arrived in the city of Córdoba in the late 1720s after one of his business partners had already settled there: the Basque merchant Marcos Ascasubi. Ascasubi supported the Mendiolaza brothers with their business ventures through loans, investments and strategic social connections with local mule dealers and winterers. Both of these Basque merchants met and collaborated with a prominent vecino and mule trader who was intent upon reviving his business network, Don Ignacio de las Casas y Cevallos (1668-1741).14

As head of household, Ignacio de las Casas was a perfect example of how local prominent families utilized marriage strategies to uphold their finances and social status.

His daughters María de la Cruz, Susana and Ignacia entered the Convents of Santa

Catalina and Santa Teresa in Córdoba, which guaranteed him access to financial credit from these wealthy ecclesiastical institutions. In 1719, Gabriel, his only son, married

Inés de Oscaris y Peredo—an alliance which strengthened mutual ties among various

notable families such as Las Casas, Ponce de Leon, Peredo and Oscaris, all of whom

descended from traditional elites rooted in Córdoba at the outset of the seventeenth century.15 In 1725 and 1729 Ignacio de las Casas also arranged two potentially profitable

marriages for his daughters Rosalía and Theresa to Basque merchants Marcos Ascasubi

and Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza, respectively.

Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza married Theresa de las Casas y Ponce de Leon in

1729 while Ascasubi, already married to Rosalía, served as his best man.16 This union promised benefits for both parties since it allowed Ignacio de las Casas to increase his participation in the mule trade in the northern regions, where the Basque merchants had previously established business. Las Casas was a mercantile broker or intermediario involved in partnerships with his wealthier relatives, great landowners Olmos y Aguilera,

De la Camara and Moyano Oscaris—the latter would be the last family in possession of an encomienda de indios in the jurisdiction of Córdoba.17 Habitually, Las Casas purchased young mules of one or two years old in the countryside surrounding the city, especially in Río Segundo (sixty miles South East of Córdoba), where his relatives wintered these mules in their grazing lands. After a couple years, mules grew stronger

muscles and more resistant hoofs, thus being ready to be sold at the local fairs or at the

Great Fair of Salta. Las Casas typically raised stocks that varied from 30 to 600 head but

after forging a partnership with Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza and Marcos Ascasubi, his

operations increased to an average of more than 2,000 head.18

Once Mendiolaza and Ascasubi became a part of Córdoba’s elite, they soon

became influential agents within the social and political sphere of the region. Both

merchants bettered themselves and gained social recognition within the local community

thanks to their respective marriages. Their father-in-law mediated for them to receive social acceptance among Córdoba’s privileged sectors, especially fostering their close relationship with influential figures at the City Council. As Regidor Propietario

(permanent member of the City Council) and holder of various other positions in the local

office of the Royal Treasury, Ignacio de las Casas was active in local politics and

economy.19 The Basques Mendiolaza and Ascasubi exploited the social network that Las

Casas had previously established in Córdoba, including his privileged access to ecclesiastical credit and his connections with great landowners—an essential economic factor in order to negotiate agreements for mule wintering.

In spite of the social and economic advantages that Las Casas offered to his sons- in-law, Joseph Joaquín Mendiolaza was often absent from the city because of his frequent business travels to Buenos Aires, Salta and Upper Perú.20 Unlike Las Casas, Mendiolaza

was a traveling merchant who began gradually expanding his business out of Córdoba in

direction to the Litoral region of the Río de la Plata. Mendiolaza typically acquired mule

offspring in Areco and other areas of Buenos Aires countryside, then he had the animals

wintered in Córdoba’s rocky fields, and subsequently sold the herds in Salta or even

northern in Andean commercial hubs.21

Although Ignacio de las Casas saw that the northern provinces demanded greater

volume of mules than in previous decades, he did not get to see the dynamism of

Córdoba’s economy at its best because he died in 1741. His daughters and sons-in-law

were the ones to experience how, shortly after that year, exports of mules from Córdoba

began to increase significantly.22 Between the years 1744 and 1746, Joseph Joaquín de

Mendiolaza and his brother Gaspar Alejo also experienced the flourishing of their trade

business. During those years, Joseph Joaquín signed a series of contracts with great

landowners from Córdoba to winter between 4,000 and 8,000 head (per agreement) on

behalf of his brother, who was settled in Salta at that time.23 With financial assistance

from Marcos Ascasubi, the brothers’ success in Peruvian markets led them to accumulate

enough wealth in order to make a significant investment that would change the future of

their company: a contract with the crown to carry on the Real Trajín de Azogues de

Huancavelica or transportation of mercury throughout the Andean region (see details in

the following sections).24

Basque Merchants and Córdoba’s Local Politics (1750-1785)

Since the mid-eighteenth century, given the general recovery of Tucumán’s

economy and the financial improvement of the Mendiolaza family, Joseph Joaquín de

Mendiolaza ceased his business travels and settled down in the city together with his wife

Theresa de las Casas and his nine children: Joseph Ignacio, Nicolás, María de la Cruz,

Francisco de las Llagas, María Mercedes, Lorenzo, Francisco Xavier, Felipe and

Lorenza.25 The sons of Mendiolaza and Las Casas couple followed divergent life paths.

Joseph Ignacio became a Franciscan friar in Córdoba while his brothers—including

secular priest Francisco Xavier—took up residence in other locations of the Viceroyalty

of Perú in order to operate the family business from new locales. Thus, the sons of

Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza settled in towns that served as trading posts where mules

were sold throughout all of Andean Perú.

In Córdoba, Joseph Joaquín and his daughters established new links with the

Allendes, another prosperous family of Basque-origin, who became wealthy merchants and landowners after their ancestor Lucas de Allende first stepped foot into Córdoba in

1699.26 With the exception of Lorenza de Mendiolaza who died unmarried and childless, each of Joseph Joaquín’s daughters played an important role within the family network of social and business connections. The eldest, María de la Cruz, married Santiago de

Allende y Losa in 1754, a union that served to consolidate common business interests between both families. That same year, Santiago de Allende’s brother, Joseph, wedded

María Isidora Ascasubi, the daughter of Marcos Ascasubi and Rosalía de las Casas and cousin of the Mendiolaza children.27 In 1763, the youngest of Joseph Joaquín de

Mendiolaza’s daughters, María Mercedes, married a lawyer and friend of the Allendes,

Francisco Joseph de Uriarte.28 The latter served as a crucial link that provided the

Mendiolaza family with great political influence within the colonial state since Uriarte

occupied many positions within the City Council and the Audiencia de Charcas—such as

the Attorney General of the city and the Lieutenant Protector of the Indians.29

These marriage alliances not only granted the Mendiolazas greater control over the mule trade but also made their presence felt in Córdoba’s political scene. Between

1748 and 1756, Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza served as alcalde ordinario or justice major in the Cabildo and collector of the sisa tax, among other functions related to the administration of the city.30 Most importantly, he exerted great influence because of his

social connections. Since his arrival to Córdoba, Joseph Joaquín was able to engage with

the traditional local elites thanks to his wife’s lineage; in addition, after a few decades he

created new beneficial ties based on kinship and commercial partnership with other

families of Basque newcomers.

Scholars have indicated that during the first four decades of the eighteenth

century, peninsular immigrants to Córdoba, particularly those from the northern

provinces of Spain, transformed the social basis of the local elite.31 The case of the

Mendiolazas contributes to proving this thesis, given their involvement in a series of political conflicts that arose during the second half of the eighteenth century. The outcome of such conflicts provided evidence of a new structure of power at the local level, which would witness unprecedented historical events such as the creation of the

Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata and later the revolution of independence in 1810.

These political conflicts emerged in1764 and 1769 during the governorship of

Manuel Fernández Campero, the Spanish Royal Official who was responsible for the expulsion of the Jesuits throughout the whole Tucumán region. When social sectors that possessed shared interests with the Compañía de Jesus resisted the controversial royal mandate ordering the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish America, the Mendiolazas,

Allendes and their allies took advantage of this political instability and established close ties with Bourbon officers.32

These families supported the governor in two particular ways. First of all, since

the authorities of Tucumán were settled in the city of Salta, Joseph Joaquín de

Mendiolaza’s sons-in-law, Santiago and Joseph de Allende provided armed guards to

protect Governor Fernández Campero during his visits to Córdoba. Secondly, the

Allendes gave financial support to the governor, especially during his trial of

residencia—judicial and accountability report to the crown, which all colonial officials underwent at the end of their appointments. In exchange for such support, Governor

Fernández Campero gave the Allendes privileged access to positions in the City Council and protection against the local law enforcement that their enemies controlled.33

Furthermore, the governor granted them urban properties under the title of mercedes, a royal reward for their loyalty and service.34

Following the governorship of Fernández Campero, the Allende and Mendiolaza

families played a central role within Córdoba’s local administration. In particular, the

political ascent of the Allendes was a matter of great concern among the more traditional

sectors of the elite of Córdoba. The latter considered these Basque merchants as valuable

economic agents, yet conceded them limited political privileges for fear of losing their

own power. Creoles of long lineage in the region despised the newcomers for their

financial success, attaching insulting terms such as pelucones (literally “big wigs”) to

their family names.35 Despite creole complaints, the Allendes and their social network of

relatives and commercial partners gained a significant share of the local power which

they were able to retain until the first Governor Intendant of Córdoba Marques de

Sobremonte (arrived in 1785) reshaped the political arrangements between the city and

the crown; it was his mandate to curb the influence of local elites.36

Although the Mendiolazas engaged in these political strategies to obtain benefits

from the local and colonial administration, long-distance trade continued to be essential

factor in their financial success. Family and relatives all worked together to control every

aspect of the commercial circuit: they were traders, freightage agents, legal

representatives and contact agents who worked with different local elites and the colonial

bureaucracy itself. Analyzed in the following chapter, throughout the decades, even

though the second generation of the Mendiolazas was able to connect with more influential social networks of Lima and Cádiz merchants, they still maintained the original business focus that Joseph Joaquín and his brother had established back in the decade 1730-1740. Mule trade was the backbone of the entire family business and constituted their economic fallback should another business venture fail.

Córdoba’s mule exports continued to increase up until the first decade of the nineteenth century despite temporary, yet significant, interruptions in trade circulation.

For example, the impact of the Andean indigenous rebellions in 1781-1782 was detrimental to most Tucumán mule traders for a few years until 1785—the rebellions were devastating for the Mendiolazas as it will be studied in chapter 3.37 Córdoba’s

economic expansion since the mid-eighteenth century resulted in greater monetary liquidity, which provided a major incentive to major local traders to increase their

participation in other mercantile circuits. The main line of imports of Córdoba was that

of European goods destined for local consumption and redistribution to other provinces.

These goods comprised a wide range of manufactures, such as fine cloth, hats, iron and

steel goods, paper, and cod liver oil. Other significant imports were products from other

regions of Spanish America known as efectos de la tierra, destined for consumption in

the city and the surrounding countryside.38

Thus, in accordance with the expansion of the European and international trade

circuits, the fluctuation of Córdoba’s imports did not depend exclusively on the Andean

markets at the mining areas, as they did in the mule trade. It depended instead on the

variations of the Atlantic trade, in addition to a set of trade policies enacted by the

Bourbons. For example, upon the gradual legalization of commercial activities in and out

of Buenos Aires in 1765 and 1778, Córdoba saw an increase of legal imports of European

goods, which entered the interior from the port city. The pressure that the Atlantic trade

market applied to South America with respect to the introduction of European

manufactures and slaves in exchange for bullion and other products—such as leather— reoriented Tucumán’s trade towards Buenos Aires in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.39 The following chapter will show how the Mendiolazas formed part of this

change in the dynamic of the Tucumán economy.

The Mendiolaza Family and el Real Trajín de Azogues de Huancavelica

What made the expansion of Mendiolaza family business possible was their

access to money. The role of Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza was key, first as a mule trader

in the Andes and later, between 1746 and 1770, as part of the Peruvian mining complex

centered on Huancavelica and the transport of mercury.

Huancavelica’s mercury production was unmatched in all of the Indies. Once the

process of mercury amalgamation for the extraction of silver was discovered and

implemented, this center acquired an indisputable importance in the colonial economy

both in Perú as well as in New Spain. In 1579, Viceroy Toledo expropriated the mines in

the name of the crown and established an asiento, or contract, with the azogueros, miners

who agreed to extract the mercury, to sell all of it to the crown at pre-established prices,

and even pay quintos—the mining taxes. In return, the colonial state agreed to provide indigenous laborers for the miners through the mita system. Thus, the mercury miners recognized that the mines were crown property and organized a gremio or guild of mercury producers that represented them collectively before the crown.40

Huancavelica regularly supplied Peruvian mining with the necessary material for

silver amalgamation until the middle of the seventeenth century. The colonial

government regulated the buying and selling prices of mercury in Perú, which always

tended to depreciate, because of pressure from the mercury miners and silver producers.

For the better part of the colonial period, nonetheless, Peruvian miners obtained

quicksilver at higher prices than their Mexican colleagues, possibly because of the high

costs of transportation through the mountainous terrain of the Andes.41 Beginning in the final decades of the seventeenth century, the volume of quicksilver production in

Huancavelica became unstable due not only to the technical difficulties that the extraction of this metal entailed, but also to the tax-evasion practices of the mining company owners, who sent part of the mercury produced in their mines to the black market. When the official volume of mercury production reached its lowest levels at the turn of the eighteenth century, the crown looked to other sources, such as Almadén in Spain and

Idrija in present day Slovenia, in order to guarantee regularity in silver production.42 In

the middle of the eighteenth century, there was a significant rebound in the output of

Huancavelica, which easily covered the quicksilver demand in Perú. New Bourbon

31 policies generated this positive cycle of mining activity by reducing the quinto tax on mercury production and providing more indigenous mita workers.43 The efforts of the crown managed to stabilize the necessary quicksilver supply for the Peruvian economy until the 1770s, when Huancavelica experienced another decline in production from which it would never again recover.44

The habitual scarcity of money and credit to sustain mining activity contributed to the Mining Guild’s dependence on the so-called aviadores, usurers specializing in the mining market that tended to be traders from the interior of the Andes who had great liquidity of funds. The aviadores financed the miners not only with specie, but also with consumer products because the province of Angaraes, where Huancavelica was located, was so arid that it had very few sources of food and water. In return, the miners gave the aviadores mercury, which they sold to them at prices below official market value. Later, the aviadores would resell the same mercury to the crown at the officially stipulated price, or they would smuggle it to silver miners. Such practices made for a highly corrupt system in which smuggling was a routine way to sell mercury —one in which the various sectors of its production as well as the colonial bureaucracy were involved.45

From the middle of the eighteenth century, the irrational, unsystematic, and illegal exploitation of the resources of Huancavelica carried out by the unscrupulous members of the Mining Guild put the physical structure of the mine at risk and led mercury production nearly to collapse on several occasions. The colonial bureaucracy, especially governors and officials of the Royal Treasury who were dependent on mercury distribution, were complicit in these abuses by allowing the illegal extraction and sale of

the mineral for the equally clandestine amalgamation of silver in other mining zones.

These officials also contributed to the corruption of the system by purchasing black

market mercury from the aviadores, a process which facilitated its legalization.46

Faced with the infrastructural problems of mercury mining in Perú, such as corruption and a lack of credit, colonial officials loyal to the Bourbon plan promoted new policies. Their aim was to restore efficiency to the extraction and distribution of this indispensable mineral. In the early decades of Bourbon rule, such reforms generated serious political tensions that involved successive local governments, Lima’s elite under viceregal protection, and the Mining Guild of Huancavelica.

Between 1720 and 1760, the crown opted to designate the superintendent general of mercury as the principal political authority of Huancavelica and also gave him jurisdiction over the mercury-related branch of local fiscal collection (ramo de azogues) and autonomy with respect to the Viceroy of Perú. Until then, the viceroys and their political allies generally favored Lima’s mercantile capital interests in Huancavelica. For this reason, the attempts to limit viceregal influence over the mercury economy were poorly received in Lima. The economic elite of the City of the Kings profited off the mines of Angaraes by loansharking to local miners, evading taxes and exploiting indigenous laborers. Rich Limeños were, in effect, beneficiaries of the mitayos

(indigenous subject to mita) who worked in the mercury mines, which led them to reject any attempt to reform or suppress the mita system in that region. Even more conflict erupted when the crown demanded that the miners reside in the Villa of Huancavelica

itself in order to do away with “ausentistas,” absentee impresarios who were generally

Limeños themselves.47

The most notable administrators from this period were the Marques de Casa

Concha (1723-1726) and Jerónimo de Sola y Fuente (1736-1748). One of the principal

challenges for these officials was that of regularizing the sizeable debt that the Mining

Guild had accumulated with the Royal Exchequer. Casa Concha and Jerónimo de Sola y

Fuente reactivated credit lines and tax holidays for the miners with the aim of

diminishing their dependence on the aviadores. This aid included direct colonial subsidy of the miners in the winters when production on a grand scale was not possible as well as the reduction of taxes—from 20% over the production value to 10%.48 The debt of the

mercury miners with royal tax agency eventually proved to be uncollectable despite the different plans that were implemented.

The principal objective of Bourbon officials in the first half of the eighteenth century, however, was to develop and implement a system of direct exploitation of the mercury mines that allowed the crown to do away with the old asiento policy with the

Mining Guild, since this had turned into a monopolist power that effectively controlled the production and distribution of mercury in Perú. Such plans for direct control over the mines of Huancavelica on the part of the colonial state were not implemented until the end of the eighteenth century. On the contrary, between 1736 and 1744, Jerónimo de

Sola y Fuente signed new contracts of authorization, renewing the licenses of the Mining

Guild and also awarding permits for carrying out the transportation or trajín of mercury from Huancavelica to various other silver mining areas. Furthermore, during Sola y

Fuente’s reign, the mining corporation of Huancavelica increased its earnings and even

expanded its ranks.49

Beginning in the middle of the eighteenth century, the royal bureaucracy had to

face a strengthened guild following the new asiento of 1744 and renewed its ties with

Lima because of the lack of support of the crown. Some of the superintendents, among them Gaspar de la Cerda y Leiva (1748-1754) and Antonio de Ulloa (1758-1764), tried to control smuggling and revive pending state initiatives to directly exploit the mine, but they were not successful and only managed to bring tension to local political relations.

The history of the Mendiolazas was influenced at this level by Bourbon bureaucrats’ economic agenda in Huancavelica. Against this particular framework of corruption and political discord, the family concentrated its strategy on maintaining good relations with the Bourbon administration. Its members obtained advantageous licenses relating to the transportation of mercury, as well as strategic positions in the Royal

Exchequer and in the administration of royal estancos (state monopolies). These conditions did not prevent the Mendiolaza family from taking advantage of the market for mercury smuggling. Their close ties to the Bourbon bureaucracy, especially under the management of Antonio de Ulloa, brought political disadvantages with the Mining Guild and other groups in power from Lima.

Gaspar Alejo and Nicolás de Mendiolaza: Asentistas

The relation between the Mendiolaza family and Huancavelica revolved around the Real Trajín de Azogues. Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza signed the grant from the

crown that licensed him to distribute all the mercury produced in Huancavelica plus that

which arrived in the viceroyalty coming from Almadén. Furthermore, the

aforementioned license committed Gaspar Alejo to transporting sums deposited in

various Royal Treasury Houses of the Andean region that belonged to the crown.50

To analyze how this activity related closely with the other business ventures of the

Mendiolaza family, it is necessary to understand how mercury transportation worked in

Perú. During the entire colonial period, quicksilver from Huancavelica to Potosí and other mining centers was conveyed in leather sacks carried on the back of mules or llamas along 750 miles of mountain trails at altitudes of 16,000 feet above sea level. An alternate route went from Huancavelica by land to the port of Chincha and from there by boat to Arica. Then, from Arica, the sacks of mercury were hauled to Potosí, once again by mule or llama caravans.51 Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza described this journey with a certain dramatic quality while commenting on the risks and responsibilities of the Real

Trajín:

The contractor is a stout muleteer who, with 4,000 well-loaded mules circulates

among all of the Royal Treasuries on high, travelling between 400 and 500

leagues to deliver four or five thousand hundredweights of quicksilver with which

metals can be extracted. . . .in much the same way, the contractor serves His

Majesty making deliveries for free and without any reward from the Royal

Treasury Houses of Chucuito and Potosí and the others in which all of the Royal

Treasury, exceeding two million each year, is gathered. He runs the risk of losing

many mules and having loads of silver bars or mercury fall over a cliff, something

he must learn quickly without any responsibility other than his freight.52

This fragment shows that in order to haul mercury, it was necessary to make large

investments: in hiring muleteers, in tools, and most of all in mules. The market for pack

animals was what connected Joseph Joaquín and Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza with the

mining economy, and particularly with Huancavelica. In the decade of 1740, when both

brothers resided in cities within Tucumán, they supplied the miners and mule drivers of

Huancavelica with mules. In 1746, during the period of highest demand for quicksilver,

Gaspar Alejo obtained license from the state to carry out the Real Trajín of mercury and

established himself in the Villa of Huancavelica. Consequently, from Córdoba del

Tucumán, Joseph Joaquín became the provider of mules for his brother and thus the

economic interests of the two were directly linked.53

In a few years, the Maestre de Campo Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza became the principal mercury contractor of Huancavelica investing, as it relates to the Real Trajín, around 236,000 pesos. There are other indicators of his economic success. Gaspar Alejo manifested capacity to lend money and held the position of síndico of the Convent of San

Francisco in Huancavelica, an office that carried an additional set of powers: control over the administration of the goods and finances of this Church institution. No less important, Gaspar Alejo was the owner of an enormous mansion located in the center of the Villa of Huancavelica, a tangible exhibition of his power. There he resided with his wife, María Rita de Zubizarreta, from a rich mining family whose Basque origins surely

served to strengthen the economic and matrimonial bonds with Mendiolaza, himself from

Guipuzcoa.54

In the mid-eighteenth century, Francisco and Nicolás de Mendiolaza, sons of

Joseph Joaquín and Theresa de las Casas, started working with their uncle in activities

related to the Real Trajín de Azogues. Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza and his nephews

worked together, as he reports in his testament, “the final asiento of the Real Trajín was celebrated in me mancomún e in solidum with my nephews don Nicolás, resident of

Chucuito, and don Francisco, resident of Huancavelica.”55 The property—from mules to tools and all of the real estate linked to the practice of this activity—belonged to Gaspar

Alejo, while Nicolás and Francisco distributed the mercury to the Royal Treasury Houses where they obtained payment for their services. In 1784, the Royal Treasury House of

Potosí still owed the family 35,000 silver pesos for the mercury they transported there.56

Nonetheless, the title holder of the Real Trajín was exclusively Gaspar Alejo and

therefore his nephews had no right of succession to the contract. The matter of the

appointment of a principal mercury contractor remained a source of conflict even after

the deaths of Gaspar Alejo, Nicolás and Francisco, when in 1786 a nephew-in-law of the

former made a legal claim to the inheritance that the Mendiolaza heirs were accumulating

in Córdoba del Tucumán.57 The resulting case showed that Nicolás had officiated as a figurehead for his uncle when signing contracts with the crown, assuming the role of investment partner in the Real Trajín de Azogues.58

Nicolás de Mendiolaza resided for a time in Huancavelica and joined the Mining

Guild with the financial and political support of his uncle Gaspar Alejo, proving to be

skilled as a miner. Although Nicolás moved to Chucuito around 1763, he continued to

belong to the guild as an important mercury producer. For example, between 1763 and

1764, Nicolás distilled 922 hundredweights of mercury along with the thirty six other

operators who produced a total of 9,703 hundredweights in that period. This put him

among the top five miners, who together generated more than half of all the mercury

produced during those years.59

The actions of Nicolás de Mendiolaza in Chucuito also had a direct relation to the interests of his uncle and relatives in Huancavelica. From at least 1770, Nicolás occupied the offices of balanzario, fundidor and ensayador de azogues (weighmaster, smelter, and assayer of mercury) of the Royal Treasury of Chucuito, which apparently he received from his father-in-law, the former-Governor of Chucuito, Pedro Miguel de Meneses.60

The weighmaster was the official in charge of weighing the quantities of mercury that

arrived at the Royal Treasury Houses associated with mining so that they could then be

resold to silver miners. It is possible that the position of weighmaster was not well-paid.

According to the inventory of goods accumulated between 1782 and 1784 after the death

of Nicolás, he would receive one silver bar (without information about its value in pesos)

as a salary for his position in the Royal Treasury of Chucuito.61 Nonetheless, the weighmaster played a crucial role in the supervision of legal mercury circulation as well as in the regulation of royal taxes on silver production—the calculation of which was based on the quantity of mercury a silver miner acquired from a Royal Treasury House.

As such, a corruptible weighmaster could facilitate the illegal trafficking of mercury, which simultaneously benefitted mercury miners, aviadores, and silver producers.62

Archival sources are not clear on what role Nicolás de Mendiolaza played in the black

market for mercury, however, this may have been a factor that benefitted the Mendiolaza

family both politically and economically.

The Mendiolazas and the Colonial Bureaucracy in Huancavelica

Social contrasts in eighteenth-century Huancavelica were very pronounced. There,

the strategic management of connections was indispensable to a family’s economic

prosperity. The most profitable social networks centered on the Mercury

Superintendence, the Royal Treasury, the Audiencia de Lima—upon which Huancavelica

depended—and the viceregal court. These frameworks of power were put in play on

decisive occasions, for example, when the crown’s concessions for the exploitation and

transport of mercury were renewed, and also in order to avoid state controls against

illegal practices.

Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza and his nephews created important ties with Bourbon

officials stationed in Huancavelica, especially under the command of Antonio de Ulloa

(1758-1764)—who was also a scientist and explorer for the Spanish Empire. Relations between the new Bourbon officials, the Viceroy of Perú and his political sphere were very tense even before the arrival of Ulloa. The Bourbons had tried to control the influence of Lima on the mercury economy but under intervention of Viceroy Amat, beginning in 1761, command of Huancavelica returned to the jurisdiction of the Viceroy of Perú. This political blow occurred under Ulloa’s administration, who was then removed from office by the crown and sent to Havana.

During Antonio de Ulloa’s administration, the nephew and associate of Gaspar

Alejo de Mendiolaza, Juan de Alasta, kept the governor’s books at the same time that he worked as an attorney for the Mining Guild. Following the dismissal of Ulloa and his expected transfer to Havana, Juan de Alasta was his guarantor in his residencia that had been left pending and would be completed, as an exception, after Ulloa had left the region. Shortly thereafter, a faction of the guild that shared common interests with

Viceroy Amat accused Alasta of having been complicit in Ulloa’s illegitimate use of

300,000 silver pesos that belonged to the guild.63

According to historian Kendall Brown, the key to understanding the accusations against Alasta is the figure of his uncle Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza, “one of the richest men in Huancavelica,” who was the real target of those attacks for being a strong opponent of Lima’s interests in the region’s mines.64 Between 1758 and 1764, Ulloa and

Mendiolaza maintained a bond of political solidarity at the local and viceregal levels.

Mendiolaza, for example, was a legal representative of the governor in his disputes with

the Mining Guild brought before the Audiencia de Lima. In these instances, the

prosecutor for the Audiencia was Diego Holgado de Guzmán, with whom Gaspar Alejo

de Mendiolaza carried on an extensive lawsuit for damages related to the signing of a

renewal contract for the Real Trajín de Azogues.65 Ulloa, meanwhile, demonstrated his

support for Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza through a special means of influence that he had

over the Huancavelican elite. Ulloa solicited the admission of new members (among

whom were the nephews of Mendiolaza) to the so-called Compañía de Voluntarios

(Company of Volunteers), a corps of militias considered to be the maximum expression

of status among the dominant sectors of the Villa. The Compañía vehemently refused the

application of Mendiolaza’s nephews for membership, demonstrating their rejection of the authority of the governor.66

The relationship between the Mendiolazas and Governor Ulloa reveals how around

1760 Gaspar Alejo and his nephews had managed to accumulate riches, prestige, and political influence. During the following decade, Francisco de Mendiolaza would manifest the strength his family had achieved in Huancavelica. Francisco did not become rich like his brother Nicolás, yet he played a strategic role by connecting his family network to the colonial government in this very economically important region.67

Besides collaborating with the company of Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza, Francisco broadened his interests in the arena of colonial bureaucracy, working as Administrator of the Real Estanco de Huancavelica.68 Francisco was also manager of Temporalidades in the province of Angaraes, the colonial institution created to intervened in the administration and later sale of properties seized from the Jesuits.69 In effect, the participation of the Mendiolazas in the expulsion and expropriation of the Jesuits was a common thread between the branches of the Mendiolaza family residing in Córdoba and

Huancavelica. In the latter, the political relatives of Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza headed military operations carrying out the eviction of the religious order.70 Moreover, in 1773,

Gaspar Alejo repossessed the Jesuit ranch San Jesús de Pauranga in Castrovirreyna

province, which he then put up for rent.71 Clearly, the political and financial power of the Mendiolaza family in Huancavelica had many facets.

Their inclination toward favoring Bourbon policies and officials in the face of the

interests of Lima and the Mining Guild brought about a significant obstacle to the

consolidation of political power by their rivals in Huancavelica. The limit to the

expansion of the family’s economic and political influence was finally reached when in

1775 Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza died without heir, and his nephews from Córdoba lost

all claim to the asiento of the Real Trajín de Azogues. Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza left

his widow a sum of approximately 100,000 silver pesos, which were mostly debts to that

needed to be collected, including some owed by Nicolás de Mendiolaza.72 Between 1775

and 1778, Gaspar Alejo’s widow and Nicolás de Mendiolaza were in charge of carrying

out mercury transport to the silver mines. María Rita de Zubizarreta then withdrew to her

ranch of Mantacra in the adjacent mountains and delegated the control of her finances to

Juan de Alasta.73 In 1778 their contract with the crown expired, and the family was not

able to renew it because Visitador José Antonio de Areche had imposed a series of

reforms that directly affected the administration of Huancavelica. These measures

included a reduction in the price of mercury to foment silver production and the

reorganization of mining activity permanently removing the Mining Guild.74 Such policy

changes discouraged the Mendiolazas from continuing in the mercury transportation

under a regime that was vastly different from the one to which they were accustomed.

In 1779, Francisco de Mendiolaza also died without heirs in Huancavelica.75 His death, four years after that of his uncle Gaspar Alejo, was a setback to the family’s socioeconomic network because it meant the loss of direct contact with Huancavelica, which broke the internal solidarity of the Mendiolazas.76 These events distanced the

family from the power and decision-making about the production and distribution of mercury in the Andes, which came at a particularly difficult time for politics on the local

level. After 1781, the death of Nicolás de Mendiolaza marked the definitive split

between the family and power over the mercury trade.

The nature of eighteenth-century Huancavelican society was very different from the

society of Córdoba in that same era. Huancavelica was the only mercury mine in all of

the Indies. As such, it was of strategic importance to the Spanish Empire and had a large

number of state representatives. Furthermore, the economic and political power of

nearby Lima gravitated heavily toward the mercury-producing region. The perennial

conflicts that involved the Mining Guild from the viceregal capital city reflected the tensions among local, viceregal and imperial powers relating to the control of the mercury trade. Quicksilver production was highly unstable. The relative lack of investment in the infrastructure of the mines, along with geological properties of the territory, caused sporadic cave-ins in the mines and many workers died. Moreover,

smuggling and tax evasion were central factors influencing the local economy. Given

these circumstances, and as the case of the Mendiolazas shows, initiating a mining operation in Huancavelica could have been a source of riches and a means to ascend the social ladder, but it also a trap, leading to the bankruptcy of the investor or his social decline.

Notes to Chapter 1

1 The richest mining centers throughout the viceroyalty were Castrovirreyna, Cailloma, Chachapoyas, Bombón, Pasco, San Antonio de Esquilache, Carangas, Laicocota, Oruro and Potosí. 2 In the early seventeenth century Córdoba’s economy changed under influx of Peruvian silver that circulated out towards the European Atlantic. Thence, Córdoba became a relevant hub for Potosí-Brazil exchanges even more than Buenos Aires. Ceferino Garzón Maceda, Economía del Tucumán: Economía natural y economía monetaria siglos XVI, XVII, XVIII (Córdoba, Arg.: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Dirección General de Publicaciones, 1968), 5. With regard to the Portuguese interests in Córdoba, Charles Boxer studied the network and circulation of Portuguese from Brazil through Tucumán to reach the silver production of Upper Perú. Salvador de Saá and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola, 1602 -1686 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1952), 72-82, 98-102. Córdoba exported most of its livestock to Upper Perú and then in the second half of the eighteenth century to Mendoza and Chile. Noteworthy, during the decade of 1760, the province already registered legal shipments of cow leather to Buenos Aires to meet the demand of such product from the Atlantic trade. Domestic textile manufactures and cotton also supplied Buenos Aires increasing local demand during the last decades of Spanish colonial rule. Córdoba’s merchants sold the aforementioned goods in San Juan, Chile and other provinces, as well. Finally, goat-leather domestic manufactures integrated the whole export trade of Córdoba. C. Sempat Assadourian, El sistema de la economía colonial: el mercado interior, regiones y espacio económico (México, D.F.: Editorial Nueva Imagen, 1983), 19-63, 185, 222-276; C. Sempat Assadourian and Silvia Palomeque, “Las relaciones mercantiles de Córdoba (1800-1830). Desarticulación y desmonetización del mercado interno colonial en el nacimiento del espacio económico nacional,” in eds. Alejandra Irigoin and Roberto Schmit, La desintegración de la economía colonial: comercio y moneda en el interior del espacio colonial, 1800-1860 (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2003), 159-160; Ana Inés Punta, “El comercio de Córdoba a finales del siglo XVIII. Un análisis cuantitativo de las exportaciones legales,” Anuario de la Escuela de Historia III, no. 3 (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 2003): 131-159. 3 Exchanges between Córdoba and Upper Perú began at the end of the sixteenth century, when the former submitted rough cloth that local encomenderos produced in textile-mills (obrajes) operated with Indian forced labour. By 1630, Córdoba’s Indian population had dramatically decreased; therefore obrajes economy decayed and mule trade became the region’s main source of income. Assadourian, El sistema de la economía colonial, 22-27. 4 Nicholas Cushner, Jesuit Ranches and the Agrarian Development of Colonial Argentina (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1983), 52-65. Usually, the beasts of burden wintered for a second time in Salta until they were apt to survive and work in arid Andean highlands. 5 The colonial state sought to intervene in Peruvian inland markets in order to secure revenues from it by imposing alcabala tax, which charged two to six pesos for each interregional transaction within the viceroyalty. Thorough explanations of the fiscal structure of the Viceroyalty of Perú during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, in: Assadourian, El sistema de la economía colonial, 129; Kenneth Andrien, Crisis and Decline: The Viceroyalty of Peru in the Seventeenth Century (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1985), 44-51. 6 Instead of metallic money it became very common for residents in Córdoba to use goods bestowed with exchange value for their transactions, usually rough cloth called bayeta. Garzón Maceda, Economía del Tucumán, 3-31, Assadourian, El sistema de la economía colonial, 42-49, 53-55.

7 Córdoba was officially founded in 1573 by Andalusian Conquistador Jerónimo Luis de Cabrera. Spanish Conquerors founded most of the cities of Tucumán jurisdiction between 1570 and 1585. Settlements were strategically located to create a route linking Potosí and Buenos Aires. 8 Garzón Maceda, Economía del Tucumán, 3-31; Assadourian, El sistema de la economía colonial, 40-41. 9 Aníbal Arcondo, El ocaso de una sociedad estamental: Córdoba entre 1700 y 1760 (Córdoba, Arg.: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Dirección General de Publicaciones, 1992), 178-188, 242-243; Ana Inés Punta, Córdoba borbónica. Persistencias coloniales en tiempo de reformas (1750-1800) (Córdoba, Arg.: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 1997), 68-72. 10 This cycle reached its peak in 1780 when Potosí registered three times the volume of silver production registered in the decade of 1710. This positive cycle of Peruvian’s mining industry was related to different sources of stimulus. The demographic recovery of the Andean population released the demand of mitayos and free workers. Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, “The Population of Colonial Spanish America,” The Cambridge History of Latin America, edited by Leslie Bethell, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 3-35. In addition to that, diverse Bourbon policies since the 1720s reinforced silver production in the viceroyalty. Bourbon functionaries reorganized the decadent quicksilver extraction in Huancavelica and reduced the fiscal pressure by cutting the traditional tax over mining, the quinto real, to the 50%. Moreover, European demand of bullion increased with contraband and stimulated further investments in the Peruvian mining sector. Enrique Tandeter, Coacción y mercado: La minería de la plata en el Potosí colonial, 1692-1826 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1992), 13-29; Peter Bakewell, “Mining in Colonial Spanish America,” The Cambridge History of Latin America, edited by Leslie Bethell, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 105-51; Adrian Pearce, “Early Bourbon Government in the Viceroyalty of Perú, 1700-1759” (Doctoral Diss., University of Liverpool, 1998), 149- 159. After the creation of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata in 1776, which included the territories of the Audiencia de Charcas where the most important mining centers were located (i.e. Oruro and Potosí), Lima’s wealthy elites reoriented their mining investments to Lower Perú areas such as Cerro de Pasco. John Fisher, Minas y mineros en el Perú colonial. 1777-1824 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1977). 11 Sara Mata, Tierra y poder en Salta. El noroeste argentino en vísperas de la independencia (Sevilla: Diputación de Sevilla, 2000), 223-224. 12 Arcondo, El ocaso de una sociedad estamental, 84-85, 242-243. 13 An example of this emerges from the nuptial contract (arras) record signed by Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza. This document shows that by 1729 he had no assets but mules wintering in Salta lands. So Mendiolaza offered to entered the marriage “1,500 pesos or the profits he would gain after selling that livestock” to his future wife. In other words, Joseph Joaquín promised to be a worthwhile trader in exchange of the 12,000 pesos dowry from her father-in-law, which was a relevant amount within the local society. Archivo Histórico de la Provincia de Córdoba (Hereinafter: AHPC), Registro 1, 1729-1730, Libro 116, ff. 92 v-96 r. [All translations in this thesis are mine unless otherwise indicated]. 14 AHPC, Registro 1, 1730-1732, f. 188; 1744, ff. 27- 29. Archivo del Arzobispado de Córdoba (Hereinafter: AAC), Libro de Matrimonios de Españoles de la Catedral de Córdoba I, f. 205. 15 Gabriel de las Casas, who is also referred in the sources as Gabriel Ponce de León according to his mother’s family name, married Inés de Oscaris y Peredo in 1719. The Church records show that Gabriel’s cousin Bernardo Ponce de Leon married Inés’ sister, Josepha, during the same wedding ceremony. AAC, Matrimonios de Españoles I, f. 192. For a well studied example of elite endogamy in Jujuy, another city of the province of Tucumán, see Juan Pablo Ferreiro, “El poder del matrimonio. Estrategias matrimoniales seguidas por la elite jujeña del siglo XVII,” Memoria Americana. Cuadernos de Etnohistoria, no. 5 (1996): 33-52.

16 AAC, Matrimonios de Españoles I, f. 198, 205; AHPC, Registro 1, 1723, Libro 111, f. 233; Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 6 v. Useful genealogy studies on colonial Córdoba: Arturo Lazcano Colodrero, Linajes de la Gobernación del Tucumán. Los de Córdoba (Córdoba, Arg.: Establecimientos Gráficos Suc. A. Biffignandi, 1936); Alejandro Moyano Aliaga, Don Jerónimo Luis de Cabrera, 1528-1574. Origen y descendencia (Córdoba, Arg.: Alción, 2003). 17 AHPC, Registro 1, 1723, Libro 111, f. 143; Registro 1, 1724, Libro 112, ff. 78, 97, 113; Registro 1, 1730, ff. 148 y 407. 18 AHPC, Escribanía I, 1744, Leg. 296, exp. 10, ff. 8r y 27v. 19 Ignacio de las Casas integrated the Cabildo of Córdoba as regidor propietario (1715-1735), regidor decano (1736-1737), alcalde de primer voto (1721), procurador general of the city (1722-1723), official measurer of lands (1724, 1731, 1735). He was also lieutenant of the Royal Treasury of Córdoba. AHPC, Escribania I, 1744, Leg. 296, exp. 10. Prudencio Bustos Argañaraz, “El patriciado de Córdoba. Contribución a su génesis,” Boletín del Centro de Estudios Genealógicos de Córdoba, no. 27 (1998): 13- 73. 20 For example, in 1734, José Francisco de Amarante conferred power of attorney that authorize Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza, “who was heading to Salta,” to collect his debts of 3,003 pesos 5 reales from merchants linked to the Great Fair of mules. AHPC, Registro 1, 1734, 19 dec., f. s/d. Another reference to Joseph Joaquín business travels in AHPC, Registro 1, 1729, Libro 116, f. 106. 21 AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5. 22 While shipping and wintering costs remained stable as in previous decades, the volume of local stocks of mules, the volume of mercantile transactions and selling prices, increased. In the 1760s, for example, prices within the countryside of Córdoba varied from two pesos the baby mule to four to five pesos the adult mule. A decade later, baby mules cost eight to eight and a half pesos. Transportation costs depended on the number of mules, which average price oscillated between six and nine pesos. Landowners charged annually three to five pesos per mule for wintering services. Punta, Córdoba borbónica, 58-67; Assadourian and Palomeque, “Las relaciones mercantiles,” 153-155. Regarding Tucumán’s mule trade in the second half of the eighteenth century, from the perspective of Salta, see: Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, “La saca de mulas de Salta al Perú, 1778-1808,” Anuario del Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, no. 8 (Universidad Nacional de Rosario, 1965): 261-312. 23 One of those contracts obliged Francisco Losa Bravo to winter more than 8,000 mule head in his pastures and ship them to Salta within two years. In 1745, another agreement obliged Francisco Loza Bravo to ship to Guachipas (in Salta) 6,800 mule head, property of Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza. This agreement established three reales payment each mule. AHPC, Registro 1, 1745, Libro s/d, f. 171. More references to Gaspar Alejo as resident if Salta: AHPC, Escribanía I, 1748, Leg. 303, exp. 3. Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza signed another contract with José Clemente de Olmos y Aguilera to freight 4,000 mules to Salta, which belonged to both Mendiolazas brothers. AHPC, Registro 1, 1744, Libro 127, f. 138. 24 In 1746 Marcos Ascasubi lent 7,500 silver pesos to Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza, via Joseph Joaquín, at 8% annual interest rate. This is a high interest rate compared to the 5% accustomed in Tucumán that indicates Gaspar Alejo pretended to invest this money in a risky though potentially profitable venture. AHPC, Registro 1, 1744, Libro s/d, ff. 27- 29. 25 According to vital records from the Cathedral of Córdoba, the couple had other children who died in childhood. AAC, Libro de Bautismos de Españoles de la Catedral de Córdoba I, 1715-1748. 26 Historians have studied the Allendes as a “clan”. Eduardo Saguier, “Esplendor y derrumbe de una élite contrarrevolucionaria: el clan de los Allende y su ajusticiamiento en Cabeza de Tigre,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos XLVIII (Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla, 1991): 349-389; Lilians B.

Romero Cabrera, La ‘Casa de los Allende’ y la clase dirigente (1750-1810) (Córdoba, Arg.: Junta Provincial de Historia, 13, 1993). 27 Years later, when Joseph de Allende widowed, he married Polonia Ascasubi who had been his sister-in- law. AAC, Matrimonios de Españoles I, f. 242; AHPC, Escribanía I, 1772, Leg. 375, exp.2; 1758, Leg. 333, exp. 8; Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 462 v y ss. 28 The Uriartes came from Buenos Aires where they had social links with wealthy merchants like Juan Antonio Lezica and Domingo Belgrano. Romero Cabrera, La ‘Casa de los Allende’, 68-69. 29 Francisco Joseph de Uriarte was teniente tesorero juez oficial real of Córdoba (1762); collector and trustee of sisa tax in Córdoba under direct appointment of Governor Fernández Campero (1766); regidor de numero at the Cabildo of Córdoba since 1766; alcalde ordinario de primer voto (1767) and general attorney of the city (1768 and 1783). The Royal Audience of La Plata appointed him as teniente del protector fiscal de naturales at Córdoba, which meant he was legal representative of the indigenous of Córdoba at any judicial court of the colonial state; Uriarte held this office through more than twenty years until the creation of new Audience of Buenos Aires in 1785. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from Córdoba, Uriarte acted as officer of the organism destined for the administration of the order’s assets, the Junta de Temporalidades. Since 1790, he held the honorific title of Alferez Real. Carlos A. Luque Colombres, “Abogados de Córdoba del Tucumán,” Cuadernos de Historia V, (Instituto de Estudios Americanistas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 1943): 34-35. 30 The sisa tax was a local sales tax destined for sustenance of Córdoba’s frontier forts. Different bureaucratic functions that Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza performed in Córdoba are mentioned in Punta, Córdoba borbónica, 96, 142. 31 Arcondo, El ocaso de una sociedad colonial, 176, 264-266. 32 Edberto O. Acevedo, La rebelión de 1767 en el Tucumán (Mendoza, Arg.: Instituto de Historia, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, 1969); Ana María Lorandi, “La guerra de las palabras. Córdoba contra el gobernador Fernández Campero,” Cuadernos de Historia, no. 7, (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 2005): 97-128; and Poder central, poder local: Funcionarios borbónicos en el Tucumán colonial. Un estudio de antropología política (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2008). 33 Through different auctions between 1762 and 1764, Santiago de Allende, José Antonio de Allende and Joseph Prudencio Xigena Santisteban obtained offices of Regidores Propietarios at the City Council of Córdoba. Their opponents contested these auctions thus brothers Allende and Xigena Santisteban were not able to hold back their offices until 1772. Fondo Documental Monseñor Pablo Cabrera (Hereinafter: FDPC), no. 3209 (1768), no. 3153 (1772); no. 3154 (1773). Lorandi, “La guerra de las palabras,” 111-115. 34 In 1768, Fernández Campero rewarded Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza’s son-in-law Francisco Joseph de Uriarte with land property in the outskirts of Córdoba (ejidos). AHPC, Escribanía II, 1791, Leg. 76, exp. 22. 35 Alfredo Furlani, “Un intento pacificador de los jesuitas en el siglo XVIII,” Jesuitas 400 años en Córdoba IV (Córdoba, Arg.: Junta Provincial de Historia, 2000), 242-244. In the eighteenth century, the term pelucón (plural pelucones), which literally means “big wig,” commonly served to call someone that was esteemed pretentious and ostentatious. “Llaman comúnmente assi al que la trahe con phantasía y ostentación.” Diccionario de Autoridades Vol. 5 (RAE A) (Madrid: Imprenta de la Real Academia Española, 1737), 199. 36 Edgardo Dainotto, “Cooptación y formas de control social en Córdoba del Tucumán. Intendencia de Sobremonte, 1783-1797” (Bachelor Thesis, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 2006). 37 About economic expansion of Córdoba and the indigenous uprisings, see: Assadourian, El sistema de la economía colonial, 230-232; Punta, Córdoba borbónica, 53-60. Other factors stressed the normal

development of Córdoba’s exports, such as severe draughts in 1773 and between 1800 and 1805. Enrique Tandeter, “Crisis in Upper Perú, 1800-1805,” Hispanic American Historical Review 71, no. 1 (February 1991): 35-71. After 1785 mule traders from different parts of Tucumán resumed control over the market dynamics at the Great Fair of Salta imposing prices and credit mechanisms to Upper Peruvian purchasers. Assadourian and Palomeque, “Las relaciones mercantiles,” 153-154. 38 The adjacent jurisdictions submitted to Córdoba great variety of products: wine, brandy, oranges, dry grapes, olives, sulphur, potatoes, yerba mate, honey, woods, chili, cotton, cloth and copper. Punta, Córdoba borbónica, 89; “Las importaciones de Córdoba entre 1783-1800, según los registros de alcabalas,” Andes. Antropología e Historia, no. 12 (Universidad Nacional de Salta, 2001), 249. Silvia Palomeque, “La circulación mercantil en la provincias del interior, 1800-1810,” Anuario del IEHS, no. 4 (Tandil, Arg.: Universidad Nacional del Centro, 1989): 131-210. 39 Scholar Ana Inés Punta states that such increase of legal mercantile transactions between Buenos Aires and Córdoba was a consequence of Bourbon policy on the Atlantic trade, which in order to improve fiscal revenues contributed to legalize exchanges that usually went through contraband. Punta, Córdoba borbónica, 84-88. Similar thesis from the perspective of Buenos Aires developed in Zacarías Moutoukias, Contrabando y control colonial en el siglo XVII: Buenos Aires, el Atlántico y el espacio peruano (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1988). 40 Arthur P. Whitaker, The Huancavelica Mercury Mine. A Contribution to the History of the Bourbon Renaissance in the Spanish Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941), 9-16; Kendall Brown, “La crisis financiera peruana al comienzo del siglo XVIII, la minería de plata y la mina de azogues de Huancavelica,” Revista de Indias XLVIII, no. 182-183, (1988): 355. 41 Bakewell, “Mining in Colonial Spanish America,” 122. 42 In the framework of the Habsburg Empire, the most important mercury mining center was Almadén, located in the southern Iberian Peninsula, which from then on was the principal supplier of mining operations in New Spain. During the most critical period of Huancavelica, the colonial state purchased mercury from Idrija—situated in Central Europe, in Habsburg territory. Ibid., 120-122. 43 The forced labor of Huancavelica, instituted between 1579 and 1786, was not numerically as significant as that of Potosí, but crueler due to the high toxicity of the mercury and the structural instability of the tunnels—constructed without prior engineering on soft rock and prone to cave-ins. Whitaker, The Huancavelica Mercury Mine, 18-20; Scarlett, O’Phelan Godoy, “‘Señor de sus cédulas’. Los indios capitanes de las mitas de Huancavelica y Potosí, siglo XVIII,” in eds. E. França Paiva and C. Junho Anastasia, O trabalho mestiço: Maneiras de pensar e formas de viver, séculos XVI a XIX (Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Universida de Federal de Minas Gerais, 2002), 231. 44 “[S]ince the closing years of the seventeenth century these fluctuations had shown a constant and pronounced downward trend such as had never occurred before. The average annual production was about 5,200 quintals from 1660 to 1679. Dropping to 4,110 in the decade 1679-1689, it was brought back up to 4,544 in the years 1689-1701; but from 1701 to 1709 it fell to the alarmingly low level of 3,059 and remained about the same point during the next two following decades.” Whitaker, The Huancavelica Mercury Mine, 18. 45Scholars have studied this topic for the first half of the eighteenth century: Adrian Pearce, “Huancavelica 1700-1759. Administrative Reform of the Mercury Industry in Early Bourbon Peru,” Hispanic American Historical Review 79, no. 4, (November 1999): 669-702. Aviadores and credit demand in the last decades of Spanish rule: Fisher, Minas y mineros, 46-47, 71-113. 46 Whitaker, 16, 41-43; Pearce, “Huancavelica 1700-1759,” 672, 689; Brown, “La crisis financiera peruana,” 370.

47 M. del Carmen Navarro Abriles, “La mina de mercurio de Huancavelica (Perú): entre los intentos de reforma de Antonio de Ulloa y el continuismo de Carlos de Beranger (1758-1767),” Scripta Nova. Revista Electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales, no. 4, (June 1997). Internet available http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn-4.htm 48 These incentives were not sufficient and decades later, under the administration of Antonio de Ulloa, quintos and tithes were cut completely. Kendall Brown, “The Curious Insanity of Juan de Alasta and Antonio de Ulloa's Governorship of Huancavelica,” Colonial Latin American Review 13, no. 2, (December 2004): 199-211. 49 Pearce, “Huancavelica 1700-1759,” 689- 693. 50 The only Royal Treasury Houses dependent on the distribution of mercury were those in Lima, Pasco, Jauja, Chucuito, Oruro, Potosí, Cailloma, La Paz and Carangas. Vicente Palacio Atard, “El asiento de la mina de Huancavelica, en 1779,” Revista de Indias, no. 18 (1944): 611-630. 51 Fisher, Minas y mineros, 25. Croix, Viceroy of Perú from 1784 to 1790, relates in some detail how said trade was carried out: “From the warehouses of Guancavelica mercury is wrapped up, tied, and taken by land on the backs of rams to an Indian village they call San Gerónimo. From there it is carried by mule to the port of Chincha where it is loaded on a ship and it goes to the port of Arica. When it arrives, it is loaded again and walked over land to Oruro and Potosí, where the silver bars are acquired for the return voyage. On the first leg of the journey, which goes to Chincha, there is an asiento with an individual. The trip over sea tends to be made by one of His Majesty’s galleons, as long as it is not needed by the Armada, and when it is, a boat is chartered. These dispatches comprised the main shipments of silver brought by galleons each year, and much is lost by not properly measuring the time so that the mercury arrives at the necessary time so it can be used to treat metals. If late, one can see [that the mercury is no longer useful]; if early—of this I have had the experience—finding itself with an abundance of mercury, the envoy of the Armada goes too far with the desire to sell and undersell their cargo, even though they have a deposit from those who would come later. Thus they and their very cause are ruined. . . .Shipping from Arica to Potosí, was, when I arrived in this kingdom, on the backs of rams and my predecessors, the viceroys had made an asiento for it. This ended in my time.” Colección de las memorias o relaciones que escribieron los virreyes del Perú acerca del estado en que dejaban las cosas generales del reino, edited by Ricardo Beltrán y Rózpide, Vol. 1 (Madrid: Imp. del Asilo de Huérfanos del SC de Jesús, 1921), 182-183. 52 Original: “El asentista es un arriero grueso que con 4.000 mulas bien pertrechadas sircula por todas las Cajas reales de arriba alejándose 400 y 500 leguas para entregar en ellas quatro o sinco mil quintales de azogues con que en los minerales se benefician metales . . . .Del mismo modo el asentista sirve a su Magestad trayendo de balde y sin premio alguno de las Caxas de Chucuito y Potosí y las demás que en estas se juntan toda la Hacienda real que pasara de dos millones cada año, corriendo el riesgo de quantas mulas se perdiesen o despeñasen cargadas de plata barras o azogue, que promptamente ha de enterar sin otra responsabilidad que su caudal.” Archivo Histórico Nacional de Madrid (Herinafter: AHN), Consejos, 1767, 20331, exp.1, ff. 1/4 r/v. 53 In the middle of the eighteenth century, the mercury trade fell on hard times, and according to statements made by Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza, some shipments of mercury were made to New Spain. AHN, Consejos, 1767, 20331, exp.1, ff. 1/4 r/v. 54 Alejandro Reyes Flores, “Huancavelica, ‘Alhaja de la Corona’: 1740-1790,” Ensayos en Ciencias Sociales (Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2004), 46. Internet available http://sisbib.unmsm.edu.pe/bibvirtualdata/libros/CSociales/ensayos_ciencias/v1n1/a03.pdf

55 Original: “[E]l último asiento del real trajín se celebró en mi de mancomún e insolidum con mis sobrinos Don Nicolás vecino de Chucuyto y Don Francisco vecino de Huancavelica.” AHPC, Escribanía I, 1788, Leg. 407, exp. 8, f. 6 r. 56 AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 383 v. 57 The claimant and self-proclaimed nephew of Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza was Juan de Alasta. Originally from Navarra, in 1753 he began living in Huancavelica, where he married Agustina Zorilla, a possible relative of the wife of Francisco de Mendiolaza, María Josefa Zorilla. 58 To settle this dispute, the claimant, Juan de Alasta, consulted the Gobernador Intendente of Potosí, who was familiar with the prior negotiations of the Mendiolazas relating to Peruvian mining. This authority declared, “Despite the fact that he perished [Nicolás] as contractor in the last run of the mercury trade from Huancavelica to Potosí and the remaining cargo in his contract, it is found that he was only a supplier, working in a confidential and secret legal capacity for his uncle, Gaspar according to the context of their letters, in which he confessed to not having any interest in the business beyond serving him, and repeatedly requested to be excused from all responsibility to the King.” AHPC, Escribanía I, 1788, Leg. 407, exp. 8, f. 6 r, 14 r. 59 “Libro Real General de Cargo y Data del Ramo de Azogues,” January 11 of 1763 to August 5 of 1764. Archivo General de la Nación (Perú), Real Hacienda, Real Caja de Huancavelica, Legajo 9. Source cited in Brown, “The Curious Insanity,” 209. Reyes Flores mentions the presence of Nicolás de Mendiolaza among the members of the Mining Guild who signed a collective document in 1775 accepting the incorporation of a new contractor, already named by the political authority. Reyes Flores, “Huancavelica, ‘Alhaja de la Corona’,” 47. 60 Sources are not consistent in this regard; sometimes this position appears as “weighmaster and assayer of mercury.” 61 AHN, Consejos, 1787, 20396, exp. 1, f. 1/115 r. 62 In this sense, it is valid to compare the Andes with New Spain. During the application of reforms to the Real Hacienda, the colonial state did away with the corrupt positions that had given way to tax evasion. One of the offices that was cut was that of the assayers of the Royal Treasury Houses. “[I]n 1773, a stop was put to the privilege of the assayers, an old idea of Galvez, and a new corps of officials was created to take charge of overseeing metal laws. When the sale of the assayers’ cargos had only reached just under 100,000 pesos from 1700 to 1783, in 1784, the first year of the new administration meant an increase of almost 40,000 pesos for the crown.” Bernard Lavallé, La América española, 1763-1898: Economía (Madrid: Editorial Síntesis, 2002), 106. 63 Juan de Alasta was arrested in Lima after viceregal order. During his long detention there, Alasta manifested symptoms of dementia, which Brown affirms were the result of the unhealthy environments of the mercury mines. Brown studied the files of the Audiencia de Lima reporting the case of Alasta in “The Curious Insanity,” 199-211. 64 Ibid., 202. In 1766, the asiento of the Real Trajín of Huancavelica was to be renegotiated, which generated a serious political conflict reflected in a dense court case between Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza and the prosecutor of the Audiencia of Lima, Diego Holgado de Guzmán. An individual backed by Holgado de Guzmán applied to obtain the asiento in competition with Mendiolaza, who expected to continue being contractor for the crown. Mendiolaza had to increase his economic offer to the state reaching the amount of 50,000 pesos in order to win the bid. The third party, however, resulted to be fraudulent because he had no capital to back his application and had previous criminal files pending in Potosí. Mendiolaza filled a file to claim this

fraud before the Audiencia of Lima but he died during the judicial process. Years later, this court case wouldn’t be mentioned in the residencia judgment of Holgado de Guzmán. AHN, Consejos, 1767, 20331, exp. 1. 66 Brown, “The Curious Insanity,” 203-204. 67 Francisco stated in his last will that “at the time when I married [María Josefa Zorrilla], we were poor and had no possession whatsoever, except for our clothes and our decency which were provisioned by the Maestre de Campo Gaspar Alexo de Mendiolaza and Doña María Rita de Zubizarreta, our uncle and aunt.” AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 523 v. 68 This estanco possibly refers to the monopoly on tobacco as Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza had been its manager (Administrador de las Rentas y Real Estanco de Tabaco) in the Bishopric of Huamanga. AHPC, Escribanía I, 1788, Leg. 407, exp. 8, f. 6 r. 69 AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 523 v. 70 According to Kendall Brown, Juan de Alasta was military chief responsible for the campaign of expulsion of the Jesuits from the province of Angaraes. “The Curious Insanity,” 207. 71 Reyes Flores, “Huancavelica, ‘Alhaja de la Corona’,” 48. 72 In Nicolás de Mendiolaza’s codicil of 1774, he requested that “20,000 pesos be delivered to Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza, vecino of Villa de Huancavelica, my uncle, as a donation and separately from any other pending accounts we have. . . .This amount should count, justly rated, for the value of all the stock of mules and other implements related to the trajín and transportation of quicksilver that I possess today.” AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 470 v - 471 r. 73 AHPC, Escribanía I, 1788, Leg. 407, exp. 8, f. 49 r/v. 74 Fisher, Minas y mineros, 52-55. Palacio Atard, “El asiento de la mina de Huancavelica,” 611-630. 75 AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 528 v. 76 Francisco’s widow, María Josefa Zorrilla and Juan de Alasta separately sued the inheritors of Nicolás de Mendiolaza before the Audiencia of Buenos Aires for they claimed Nicolás retained funds belonging to Gaspar Alejo’s company, in which Francisco de Mendiolaza and Alasta were included. AHPC, Escribanía II, 1787, Leg. 68, exp. 6, ff. 220 v. y ss; Escribanía I, 1788, Leg. 407, exp. 4 y exp. 8.

Chapter 2

Geographic Expansion and Economic Diversification of the Family Businesses,

1760-1780

The Mendiolazas were shrewd enough to benefit from imperial changes

happening in the middle of the eighteenth century as the Bourbon monarchs attempted to

secure their colonial dominions. The family framed their mercantile ventures within the

economic context of the Bourbon reforms, which affected the interior of the Viceroyalty of Perú. Accordingly, in the period from 1750 to 1780, they sought to strengthen their position in the mule trade and in the mercury transportation business and diversify their commercial activities in different sections of the Andean markets. By delving into

Nicolás de Mendiolaza’s activities and social connections, this chapter will analyze how this family took advantage of Bourbon attempts to shape the Peruvian economy.

Despite Philip V’s attempts to reshape the relationship between Spain and its colonial possessions, an integral Bourbon program of modernization at the imperial level only emerged after the War of Jenkin’s Ear (1739-1748)–the first international conflict begun by England to gain control over the Atlantic trade. Reform reached its apex after the Spanish defeat in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) during the reign of Charles III

(1759-1788). A key figure in the reform period was the Conde de Floridablanca, whose

policy aimed to reinstate Spain to exert control over the Indies, and curtail both foreign

interests and the power of creole elites.1

Reviving the colonial mining production and securing an increase in mining tax revenues became the first goal of the Bourbon government. To that end, the crown imposed a number of measures, including reducing mining taxes to stimulate production, introducing technological improvements, and reorganizing the work force. These policies produced uneven results in Perú. Since the period 1720-1730, the increase in the viceroyalty’s silver and mercury exports invigorated other economic sectors, such as agriculture, cattle-ranching, textile manufacturing, and internal trade. This economic growth, in turn, encouraged the colonial state to become extremely active in securing revenues by regulating and taxing regional markets.2 These new rules affected one of the most dynamic sectors of Perú’s mercantile life, namely the repartos forzosos de mercancías (forced deliveries of goods to indigenous and peasants). The reparto had become a common practice since the seventeenth century, and it was enforced by the corregidores de indios in association with Limeño and provincial merchants. The repartos became increasingly lucrative as the Andean economy began its revival. To secure revenues from the domestic market, the Bourbons legalized and institutionalized the repartos by dictating an arancel, enacted in 1751 and put in force by 1754, which regulated the type, amounts and prices of the available merchandise for delivery in each participating region. This royal decree charged these transactions with a sales tax

(alcabala) tax of 4% on the official price of the products subject to reparto. As a result,

Spain could obtain extra revenues from the Peruvian domestic trade through this tax on

the repartos, which supplied indigenous communities with a wide range of goods,

particularly mules from Tucumán and cloth from Cuzco.3

At imperial level, liberalization of trade proved to be the most significant change

in the Bourbon political economy during the reign of Charles III and Charles IV. Even

before the reign of Charles III, the crown had liberalized trade by sending register ships

around Cape Horn into the Pacific from Cádiz, replacing the cumbersome and outdated

convoy system and the inefficient trade fair at Portobelo. A 1765 decree authorizing free

trade between the Spanish Caribbean and several ports on the Iberian Peninsula was the

first substantial attempt to challenge the elites that most benefited from the fleet and

galleon system—the merchants’ guilds of Cádiz, Veracruz and Lima. The most influential reform on commerce, however, was the Reglamento de Libre Comercio of

1778, a series of decrees that allowed free maritime trade between several ports in Spain, such as Almería, Tortosa, Palma de Mallorca, and Tenerife, and twenty-four ports in the

Indies, including Buenos Aires. Despite the apparent liberalization of colonial trade, the decrees of 1778 and the subsequent reforms of 1789 maintained restrictions on direct exchanges between American and non-Spanish ports. The exclusion of New Spain from the free trade until 1789 was an attempt to develop the imperial peripheries, preventing the more stable markets of Mexico to capture most of commerce with Spain to the detriment of the southern regions.4 Moreover, these regulations maintained the

prohibition on importing goods from the colonies that could compete with Spanish productions, such as wine and oil. On the fiscal level, the ordinance of 1778 clearly

aimed to support the development of peninsular manufactures, reducing the burdens imposed upon Spanish products that entered the Indies.5

In Perú, apart from the predominance of the bullion remittances (which in 1782-

1796 constituted 78% of the region’s exports) the new market structure allowed other

colonial commodities to enter into Spain legally, including tobacco, sugar, cacao,

cascarilla, vicuña wool, leather and dyes. The legalization of the importation of such

goods to the metropolis aimed at developing Spain’s economy, in particular its

manufacturing sector. This project was unsuccessful, however, because the precarious

Spanish industry was never able to compete with lower-priced manufactures that British,

French and Portuguese smuggled into the Indies. In Spanish America, the increased

exportation of commodities, besides bullion, led to the economic development of

previously marginal areas, such as Venezuela, Chile and the Río de la Plata.6

Although the Bourbon reforms did not involve a radical change in the regional

economies, they did stimulate the rise of alternative business networks. In the last quarter

of the century, the wealthiest merchants from Lima—represented by their guild, the

Consulado de Comercio—retained control of most of Perú’s overseas mercantile

commerce despite the development of Valparaíso and Buenos Aires. In the internal

market, the influence of Lima’s merchants came into competition with regional

merchants who usually acted as representatives or associates of peninsular merchants

through permits obtained after the institution of the free trade ordinance of 1778.

Therefore, provincial merchants were able to provide lower-priced supplies for the

repartos and trade goods and slaves for the mining centers, which primarily entered

inland from Chile and the Río de la Plata.7

Imperial reforms had their maximum impact in Perú during the period from 1777 to 1785, during the visitas of José Antonio de Areche and his successor, Jorge Escobedo.

The visita was a traditional tool of the Habsburg administration, which sent the visitadores, high functionaries who were entrusted with auditing colonial administration.

The Crown appointed these functionaries and furnished them with clear instructions to assess the status of the Peruvian government and provide practical solutions for the regular functioning of the viceroyalty, towards a reinforcement of imperial rule. José

Antonio de Areche was followed by Jorge Escobedo, who occupied this position after the indigenous rebellions of Tomás Katari, Túpac Amaru, and Tupaj Katari in the Andes from 1780-1782. In pursuit of a more effective and efficient colonial state, both functionaries worked on two main aspects of imperial apparatus, a reform of the administrative structure of the viceroyalty and the reorganization of the colonial exchequer.

The visitadores in 1776 split Perú into two main territories, one of which became the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, which included the mining areas of Upper Perú. While the main objective of this policy was to reinforce military defenses of the Southern

Atlantic because of Portuguese and British pressure, this decision resulted from the increasing economic importance of the Río de la Plata within the Spanish Empire. In

1783, another jurisdictional reform aimed to limit the autonomy of the colonial elites.

After the indigenous and peasant uprisings in the Andes, the agents of Spanish reform

instituted the “intendant system,” a new structure that would replace the Toledan division of provinces and corregimientos that favored the established political and economic interests of Lima’s most influential merchants. Excluding the territories of the Río de la

Plata, Bourbon reforms divided the Viceroyalty of Perú into seven intendancies:

Arequipa, Cuzco, Huamanga, Huancavelica, Tarma, Trujillo and Lima.8

The colonial state was able to introduce new regulations of the Peruvian economy

by taking advantage of relationships with different social groups, namely landowners,

merchants, priests, and militia officers, which allowed the Bourbon officials policies to

influence the operation of internal Peruvian markets. The colonial state depended upon

its connections to these local and provincial groups, because outside Lima and other main

cities of the viceroyalty imperial government was weak.9 Scholars such as Alberto Flores

Galindo have demonstrated that during the eighteenth century, the mercantile elite established in Lima actually re-built the domestic Peruvian market. Lima’s great merchants controlled Peruvian political and economic links overseas and, at the same time, expanded throughout the internal economy by relying on a social network of mercantile brokers.10 For their part, colonial elites took advantage of the monopoly

system, as contractors of the crown (asentistas), aiding in tax collections, supplying

goods for the repartos, as freight agents responsible of the transportation of royal bullion

or other strategic materials such as mercury. Merchants from Lima, Buenos Aires, and

the interior provinces –like the Mendiolazas—made agreements with the colonial state,

and played a vital role as links between the government and the trade circuits throughout

South America.11

The Mendiolazas aspired to gain a foothold in the colonial internal economy by

setting up advantageous, profitable relationships with the Bourbon state. The key to such

negotiations was Nicolás de Mendiolaza. In accordance with the Basque pre-modern

tradition in which the father appointed the most talented of his children (and not

necessarily his first son) as the head of the family, Nicolás de Mendiolaza became the

principal heir to his father, Joseph Joaquín and to the mayorazgo the family possessed

back in the Basque country. 12 Nicolás became the formal head of the family once his

elder brother Joseph Ignacio entered the Franciscan Order, which obliged Nicolás to

preserve the financial stability and social status of his siblings and relatives. This practice ultimately helped the Mendiolazas further their mercantile activities, based on an

extensive and cohesive family network organized under Nicolás’ command.13

Between 1755 and 1760, when Nicolás was in his twenties, he moved to

Huancavelica, where he established a strong bond with his uncle Gaspar Alejo de

Mendiolaza and participated in his relative’s business affairs. In particular, he became involved in the production and distribution of mercury destined for different mining centers in the Andes. Later in 1763, Nicolás took up residence in Chucuito near Lake

Chucuito (currently named Titicaca) within the jurisdiction of the Archbishopric of La

Paz, where he continued to be involved in mining and mercantile affairs. In this way, the second generation of Mendiolazas established a new business center in the north highlands at the crossroads between Lower to Upper Perú and the coastal valleys of

Arequipa to Cuzco. The most dynamic economic agents in this area were those related to the transportation business, including arrieros (mule and cattle drivers), trajinantes

(conveyors of various merchandises), and mule traders.14 From this strategic geographic

area, Nicolás de Mendiolaza triangulated his father’s mule business in Tucumán with his

uncle’s asiento of the Real Trajín de Azogues in Huancavelica and linked them to a new set of investments associated with cloth, European goods, sugar and other products.

An excerpt from one of Nicolás’ letters to his uncle Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza illustrates the mechanisms this family employed to run their businesses during the second half of the century:

I acknowledge your messages regarding the consignments your grace received in

Guamanga and Cangallo to register in our account, which worth 37,230 pesos.

This amount consists of 8,040 pesos from Don Fernando Cosio including in them

2,000 pesos from Don Martin del Molino that he received according to your order

from Don Manuel de Donestebi, to whom Lorenzo [Nicolás’ brother] had handed

the money; and 29,190 pesos from Perez Buelta [vecino of Córdoba], an amount

that consists of 7,397 pesos 4 reales, the sum of 6,480 pesos given to Allende

[Nicolás brother-in-law], 797 pesos 4 reales taken by Phelipe [Nicolás’ brother]

and 120 pesos to pay alcabala due to 1,946 mules delivered in Cangallo.15

This fragment provides an example of the intricate network through which the

Mendiolazas carried out their mercantile interests based upon family linkages and social

connections from different provinces, including Córdoba. Commercial credit, informal

chains of depositors and money-lenders allowed them to ply markets over long distances

and gain access to information necessary for making successful business decisions.

Provincial Merchants and Social Networks. Kinship and Trade across the Andes

Soon after moving into Chucuito in 1764, Nicolás de Mendiolaza married

Madrid-born Manuela Meneses, daughter of former Governor of Chucuito Don Pedro

Miguel de Meneses Montalvo Bravo y Saravia. This marriage alliance contributed significantly to Nicolás’ consolidation of social and political capital, since his father-in- law had been part of the colonial state bureaucracy and, moreover, who owned several properties in the province, including a ranch and two trapiches or mills to process mineral silver.16 Nicolás and his father-in-law invested in lands and silver mills in

Chucuito in a period when the mining sector was revitalizing, and there was a high demand for renting infrastructure related to the silver production.17 A year after his

marriage, however, Pedro Miguel de Meneses died, while Nicolás’ wife, Manuela, died

ten years later after having several miscarriages and leaving no surviving children.18

From Chucuito, Nicolás de Mendiolaza channeled the circulation of information,

funds and goods within the family’s businesses. As it was analyzed in chapter 1, Nicolás

received an appointment at the local Royal Treasury House as assayer and weighmaster

of the metallic bars destined for minting. Moreover, he administered shares and accounts

of his uncle, parents and brothers, receiving their clients’ payments and directing that

income for new investments or to support his relatives. For example, Nicolás covered his

father’s mortgage of 4,000 pesos—a censo obligation to Córdoba’s Convent of Santa

Catalina.19 He also provided financial support to his siblings, bestowing a house in

Córdoba on his sister María Mercedes,20 settling large ecclesiastical expenses to import

clothing and books from Spain destined for his brothers Joseph Ignacio and Francisco

Xavier.21 He also provided financial assistance to his in-laws in Madrid,22 and, ultimately, supported his brothers’ mercantile investments.23

Nicolás de Mendiolaza’s brothers actively participated in the family businesses

from distant geographical locations while also taking charge of different responsibilities, mostly regarding trade throughout the Andean region. As it was presented in the previous chapter, Sergeant Major Francisco de Mendiolaza settled down in Huancavelica until his death in 1779, where he married a woman from the local elite. Thanks to the help of his uncle Gaspar Alejo, he built up a bureaucratic career, achieving politically rewarding positions as Administrador del Real Estanco de Huancavelica (Chief of the

Royal Monopoly of Tobacco in Huancavelica) and Administrador de Temporalidades managing the former assets of the expelled Jesuit order.24 Phelipe and Lorenzo de

Mendiolaza, the younger sons of Joseph Joaquín played a central role in the complex strategy that coordinated financial matters and kinship relationships. To assist the family business in the Tucumán mule trade, Phelipe and Lorenzo conducted mule trains to active hubs in the Andean region.

In the early 1770s, Phelipe Neri de Mendiolaza (1747-1795) established himself in Salta and married Francisca de Aguirre, who came from a prominent but impoverished local family.25 He was one of several merchants from Córdoba who moved to Salta during the second half of the eighteenth century, and benefitted from its strategic location

within the mule trade. Other notable examples were Antonio de Figueroa and Gaspar

Saenz Bravo, who both amassed large fortunes as merchants, freight agents and

moneylenders, later becoming large landowners, whose estates provided winter grazing

for mules.26 In the case of Phelipe, although he possessed a chacra (small farm) in the outskirts of Salta, together with a few slaves that his father had donated to him, he worked mainly in the commercial businesses of his family.27 According to one of

Nicolás’ agents in the city of La Paz, Phelipe was the right-hand man of the Mendiolazas’ head of household; between 1775 and 1781, he gained influence over the family’s investments, especially those on the mule trade.28 He typically herded thousands of

mules belonging to his family, or to third parties that hired his transportation services,

from Salta’s fair to Potosí, Oruro, La Paz, Chucuito, Arequipa and Moquegua.

Nonetheless, Phelipe was the legal and financial representative of his father, his uncle

and his brothers in the northern Tucumán region, where no institutions for mercantile

credit were available to facilitate their transactions.

Map 1. Locations where the Mendiolazas settled down or established commercial contact (1730-1790)

The Captain of a division of Dragons, Lorenzo de Mendiolaza, became a vecino

of Tarma, a town in the Lima district, where he oversaw the mercantile activities of the family with the viceregal capital and coastal Perú. Located near the silver mines of Cerro

de Pasco, Tarma became a profitable venture for Lima’s wealthy elite since the mid-

century when Potosí’s mining production diminished in importance and Upper Perú’s

bullion exports now went through Buenos Aires.29 Lorenzo covered long distances to

deliver mules and mercury to different clients in Arica, Tacna, Jauja, Huancavelica, and

other destinations.30

In 1775, the expansion of the Mendiolazas’ interests in the Andean region led to

the integration of a member of the third generation, Santiago Alejo de Allende, son of

María de la Cruz de Mendiolaza and Santiago Allende. Santiago Alejo pursued a

military career and asked his uncle Nicolás de Mendiolaza to support him politically and

financially to fulfill these ambitions. Santiago Alejo settled down in Cuzco and became

part of the family’s affairs following his uncle’s instructions.31 Thanks to significant amounts of specie that Nicolás had invested, Santiago Alejo and his cousin from

Córdoba, Pedro Lucas de Allende, operated a profitable mule and sugar trade between

Cuzco and Salta.32 A few years later, the indigenous rebellions in years 1780-1781

unleashed social conflict and political instability in the region that thus disturbed the

regular functioning of the long-distance trade, and affected the participation of the

Mendiolazas and the Allendes in the sugar market. During that time, the commercial

routes between Cuzco and La Paz suffered interruptions, and the three merchants

(Nicolás de Mendiolaza, Santiago Alejo and Pedro Lucas de Allende) became involved in

the colonial state’s repression of the uprisings in their role as militia officers.

Drawing a line in a map of South America linking up every place the Mendiolazas resided provides a clear picture of their social and economic strategy, which encouraged members to spread out geographically to support their business. The Mendiolazas’ commercial ventures were successful, particularly in the period 1770-1780, so long as they were able to maintain connections within the key points of the internal economy.

They formed an intricate social network through marriage alliances to mercantile and

bureaucratic elites in Tucumán and the Andean provinces, trading partnerships with

brothers and in-laws, and a chain of agents and representatives. Although the mule trade

and the contract to freight mercury in the viceroyalty both remained the foundations of

the Mendiolazas’ economic endeavors, the expansion of the internal market in Lower and

Upper Perú led them to diversify their investments.

Beyond Kinship: Representatives and Broker Agents of the Colonial Trade

In locations where the family had a significant mercantile share and none of their

members were able to settle down, they secured an agent to take care of local affairs.

Business partners and legal representatives of the Mendiolazas became crucial in

facilitating the circulation of their goods, credit and information.

In the case of Potosí, the Mendiolazas sold mules to miners and corregidores since

1754.33 Potosí turned out to be even more relevant to the family affairs twenty years later, when Nicolás achieved a volume of business that allowed him to be flexible with

his clients and debtors, but also to speculate with the price fluctuations of colonial specie.

He then became rescatador, the person who received payments in silver and gold bars to

sell to the Royal Mint of Potosí in exchange for better priced coins to be circulated.34 For

that reason, Nicolás appointed Don Joseph Antonio Rico, an individual who later played

a central role in reconstructing the Mendiolazas’ inheritance, as his representative in the

Villa Imperial.35

The Mendiolazas maintained correspondence with a plethora of agents, who

appear in the succession records written from 1782 to 1786 and shed light on the real

extent of this mercantile network throughout the viceroyalty. In the succession files, the executor of Nicolás’ will, the priest Francisco Xavier de Mendiolaza, mentioned that there were family assets or pending credits in Tapacarí, Aullagas, Oruro, Cochabamba,

Cuzco y Lampa (besides previously mentioned locations) , where they traded mules, sugar and fabric for burden-bags (costales fanegueros), ropa de la tierra, and tobacco

(known as polvillo).36 According to the executor, the provinces of Moquegua and

Arequipa were among the most significant markets for Nicolás.37 In these provinces,

Nicolás dealt with agents such as Pedro Severino de San Martín, who helped him selling costales,38 and Vicente de la Torre, who was in charge of distributing efectos de Castilla in Moquegua and negotiating tobacco supplies with the royal monopoly established in the same area.39

In Arequipa, the family’s most valuable partner was Spanish militia Lieutenant

Don Mateo Cossio, a merchant from Cantabria who established himself in coastal Perú

and prospered sufficiently to become deputy at the merchants’ guild of Lima in 1790.40

Earlier in 1775, Cossio acted as an essential social link and mercantile broker for the

Mendiolazas. Their partnership allowed Nicolás and his brothers access to the Arequipa

market and to meet corregidores de indios involved in the repartos forzosos.

Furthermore, Cossio mediated between the Mendiolazas and Lima’s prominent

merchants, the Elizaldes, to deal with inland distribution of overseas imports.41 Indeed, the Mendiolazas participated in the traffic of European goods as part of the engine that distributed Lima’s imports inland throughout the Peruvian provinces, supplying the corregidores de indios for their repartos. Trading imported products helped them also to defray part of the costs of the mule trade—for example, to pay temporary workers.

After 1780, the relationships, locations and mechanism of the family’s trade, which had been developed over three decades, faced serious challenges they could not successfully overcome. Kinship and partnership interconnections nurtured their economic, political and status improvement, especially after 1770, but this ended abruptly in the years of the indigenous uprisings. Furthermore, changes in the Atlantic trade dynamics, which became more intense in the last quarter of the century, created a framework in which the Mendiolazas reoriented their economic enterprise towards the mercantile circuits existing between Buenos Aires and Tucumán.

Tucumán Trade Reorients. From the Andes to the South Atlantic

The most prosperous period of the Mendiolazas’ finances began with the participation of Nicolás de Mendiolaza and his brothers in the business, which they were able to expand with their social networks and their mercantile investments. A series of

incidents, however, affected both their experience in the Andean region and their

commercial strategies. In 1774, Nicolás’ wife died, and he remained alone in Chucuito

with neither legitimate nor illegitimate descendants. Later, in 1775 and 1779

respectively, Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza and his nephew Francisco died, exactly when

the asiento of the Real Trajín of Azogues for the delivery of mercury ended and new rules

for the administration of Huancavelica mines were enforced. These events seriously

weakened the family’s social, political and economic business in Huancavelica.

Nonetheless, with the growth and legalization of trade between the Iberian Peninsula and

the port of Buenos Aires, the Mendiolazas turned their attention to the Atlantic trade and

gradually reoriented their investments into that direction, which caused the family’s

financial needs to change, requiring Nicolás de Mendiolaza, as head of household, to

abandon Chucuito and settle down in his hometown. Córdoba was a more peaceful area

in comparison to the Andean provinces, neither rebellions nor riots had arisen in the

previous decade. Moreover, the Mendiolazas were well established in the social and political local arena.

Beginning in 1775, Nicolás transferred part of his wealth to Córdoba in order to cover debts and mortgages there, as well as to make investments in the trade of European goods. Nicolás submitted silver bars, silverware, specie, gold, jewelry, diamonds, and personal documents from Chucuito along with his brother Phelipe as his situadista (an agent dedicated to the transportation of bullion and pesos on behalf of the government or private individuals). The main addressees of Nicolás consignments were his father and

his brother-in-law, Joseph de Allende. In a letter that Nicolás wrote to Joseph Joaquín, he explained the reasons for his decision:

I hope you will receive this year the last pesos that I have left in Potosí because it

is my desire to terminate my affairs in these regions. You can save the money for

my future residence there or, if I die in the meantime, you can handle that at your

convenience. In this way, I will avoid any confusion regarding my assets as it

usually happens, in detriment to the legitimate heirs.42

When the indigenous rebellions broke out in 1780, Nicolás sent his last shipments

in petacas, trunks, and boxes that evidently contained the bulk remainder of capital from

Chucuito. An atmosphere of social unrest affected the plans of the Mendiolazas as the

indigenous insurrections hindered the normal commercial traffic from Potosí to Cuzco.

A state of confusion and great violence characterized routes and towns in the Andean

provinces, which eventually led to the loss of great part of the family’s funds. According

to Martín Zavala, Nicolás representative in La Paz, the family lost more than 600,000

silver pesos when the situadista hired to take the assets to Córdoba passed by Oruro, then

racked by a violent upheaval that killed most of the Europeans in the village. Zavala

probably referred to the attempt to take control of Oruro by a multiethnic alliance of

criollos, indigenous and mestizos who claimed loyalty to Túpac Amaru’s leadership. The

Oruro rebellion of February 1781 was central to the indigenous plans for a pan-Andean

revolution, especially after the death of Tomás Katari, which radicalized his followers.

These events occurred at the same time when La Paz leadership passed to the more radical Tupaj Katari.43

Besides fearing the loss of his riches and his life, Nicolás de Mendiolaza’s plans

to go back to Córdoba were motivated by the family’s economic strategy to deepen their

relationships with the Southern Atlantic mercantile circuits. Archival sources refer to the

Mendiolazas’ connections with the Atlantic trade via Buenos Aires as far back as the

decade of 1740, when Joseph Joaquín and Gaspar Alejo acquired efectos de Castilla for

thousands of pesos.44 In the following decades, the family focused their efforts in the

Andean provinces while they preserved their links to the Atlantic trade through the intermediation of their relatives in Córdoba, the Allendes, Ascasubi, Uriarte and other members of their social network in Córdoba. Beginning around 1750, the Allendes and their brother-in-law, Gregorio Arrascaeta, acquired goods on credit in Buenos Aires that they paid later with their earnings from the mule trade, which was the standard procedure for Córdoba’s greater merchants.45 They negotiated the best prices for their mules in the

mining areas of Perú and invested their revenues in European goods that they had

obtained at lower prices in Buenos Aires –usually smuggled by British and Portuguese ships.46

As the Mendiolazas’ finances prospered in the decade of 1770, they created links through intermediary agents in the Spanish Atlantic trade in the Iberian Peninsula. By the time Nicolás de Mendiolaza was arranging his departure from Chucuito, his father

Joseph Joaquín reached an agreement with a Basque agent from Cádiz, Simón Babil de

Uriz, to buy goods directly in Spain. Uriz was a prominent merchant dedicated to supplying his partners in South America through Buenos Aires, Valparaíso, Callao and other minor ports in the Pacific.47 Thanks to Uriz’s services, the Mendiolazas introduced

assorted European goods that Uriz shipped from Cádiz to Montevideo and Buenos

Aires.48 The operation began when Joseph Joaquín –occasionally on behalf of his son

Nicolás—consigned the payment of an average of 5,000 pesos in silver bars to Uriz for

acquiring merchandise from wholesalers in Cádiz and shipping them to the Río de la

Plata. Once in Buenos Aires, the prominent local merchant Manuel Basabilbazo

forwarded the imported goods to Mendiolaza. Furthermore, Basabilbazo played a pivotal

role in the Mendiolazas mercantile network as a reliable provider of credit and link with

Spain regarding different family affairs back there.49 Sent from Buenos Aires, goods arrived in Córdoba where the Mendiolazas supplied petty-traders and other

intermediaries, such as young Spaniard merchants Antonio Muxica and Hipólito Garcia

Posse who, in turn, distributed the articles in the countryside—a business upon which the

latter would amass great fortunes in Córdoba at the verge of the nineteenth century.50

The written correspondence that Simón Babil de Uriz exchanged with Nicolás de

Mendiolaza and his father included updates on the status of local markets and relevant

information regarding the political situation of Spain, Perú and the Río de la Plata, all of

which affected the process of overseas-trade investment and decision-making at the

time.51 At the end of 1781, in a letter to Simón Babil de Uriz, Joseph Joaquín stated:

[B]ecause of the war and the postponement of loans I couldn’t write you as

frequently as I used to do before, although I wrote you in two occasions in which

I advised you not to risk my stakes but under the required terms to travel to

Buenos Aires, depending on the season and general state of affairs. . . .Your grace

should make arrangements to group goods in various loads and invoices of equal

worth as I requested in my previous one [letter] to be shipped in different boats,

thus not venturing it all in only one shipment until more peaceful times come.52

Joseph Joaquín’s words expressed his concerns regarding the success of his investments because Spanish involvement in the Anglo-French wars proved an obstacle for regular mercantile activity. These conflicts prevented the regular functioning of transatlantic trade affecting different areas. Also, great merchants in Lima expressed their worries regarding the political instability of the empire and the continuous military conflicts taking place between the 1780s and the first quarter of the nineteenth century.53

Blockades of Buenos Aires paralyzed the remissions of regional exports, while the royal

permission to trade given to neutral nations (Portugal) flooded the port with European

goods, reducing prices. In addition to that, a new declining trend in Potosí’s silver

production contributed to diminishing the cash flow in the mercantile cities of the

Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata.54 At the same time, however, this scenario created an

advantage for the wiser businessmen as this information allowed the Mendiolazas to

speculate with price fluctuations of products, as well as reduce costs and risks.

The relationship between the family and Uriz served other purposes beyond trade,

when he represented Nicolás de Mendiolaza’s petition to the Court for a royal favor. In

addition to strengthening and stabilizing the family’s finances, Nicolás aspired to

consolidate his symbolic status. He was eager to become part of the Bourbon nobility;

hence he sought to gain the title of Caballero de la Real y Distinguida Orden de Carlos

III (Knight of the Royal and Distinguished Spanish Order of Charles III). The Bourbons

had created this Order in 1771 as a mechanism to reward their loyal subjects according to

their merits and services to the crown, which in turn was a convenient tool to enhance

wealthy but non-traditional sectors of the colonial elites.55 Unfortunately, when Nicolás

died in Chucuito, Simón de Uriz was still awaiting formal response to the petition he

presented at the Court in Madrid on behalf of Nicolás, for the knighthood of the order.

Soon after, as the sole heir to Nicolás, Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza decided to reinvest

the 12,000 silver pesos his son had assigned to defray the costs of his petition to import a

new shipment of European manufactures.

The growing relevance of Atlantic trade was visible in the experience of other

members of the Mendiolaza’s social network even after Nicolás and Joseph Joaquín died.

For example, María Mercedes de Mendiolaza’s husband, Francisco Joseph de Uriarte,

was a native of Buenos Aires and had several contacts there. Since the 1770s, he had

dedicated himself to exporting leather, cloth and wool produced in Córdoba’s hinterland to Buenos Aires, and in the years from 1784 to 1790 he invested 45,000 pesos from his wife’s inheritance to import overseas goods to resell in his region.56

In the period from 1760 to 1775, the second generation of the Mendiolazas was able to expand their businesses in the Andean region linking the foundational enterprises that Joseph Joaquín and Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza had created with the mule trade from Tucumán and the contract to distribute mercury from Huancavelica. The positive economic cycle that emerged in Perú during the second half of the century, fostered by the recovery of the silver mining industry and the Bourbon’s policies to stimulate internal markets, played a central role in facilitating the diversification of investments for provincial merchants like the Mendiolazas. The internal organization of the family

73 around Nicolás as head of household allowed them to coordinate a wide mercantile network that included relatives and partners throughout the Andes. Beginning in the

1770s, the family business continued to be based on the mule trade but included different shares of the cloth, tobacco, sugar and efectos de Castilla markets. When the areas nearby Cuzco and La Paz started showing signs of an increasing social and political crisis, the family changed their strategy and began to reorient their investments on the flourishing Atlantic trade.

In 1780, when Túpac Amaru rebellion exploded, the deaths of Gaspar Alejo and

Francisco de Mendiolaza put an end to the family’s connections with Huancavelica.

Nicolás died in 1781 before he could return to Córdoba and consolidate his participation in the commercial circuits between Buenos Aires and Tucumán. Up until the outbreak of the indigenous rebellions, however, the family’s economic strategy was quite successful, partly because of their ability to obtain profits from the system of the repartos forzosos, which will be studied in the next chapter.

Notes to Chapter 2

1 John Fisher, Bourbon Perú, 1750-1824 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003), 54. 2 Kenneth J. Andrien and Lyman L. Johnson, The Political Economy of Spanish America in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1850 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1994), 3-16.

3 Alfredo Moreno Cebrián, El corregidor de indios y la economía peruana del siglo XVIII. (Los repartos forzosos de mercancías) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto G. Fernández de Oviedo, 1977), 279-295, 370-373. 4 Andrien and Johnson, The Political Economy of Spanish America, 246-247. 5 John Fisher, “Estructuras comerciales en el mundo hispánico y el reformismo borbónico,” in ed. Agustín Guimera, El reformismo borbónico: Una visión interdisciplinar (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1996), 111- 113. 6 Fisher, Bourbon Perú, 62-63; Andrien and Johnson, The Political Economy of Spanish America, 243-248. 7 Fisher, “Estructuras comerciales,” 113-117; Bourbon Perú, 64-65; Patricia H. Marks, Deconstructing Legitimacy: Viceroys, Merchants, and the Military in Late Colonial Perú (University Park, Pa.: Penn State Press, 2007), 55-105. 8 Fisher, Bourbon Perú, 26-34; John Lynch, Spanish Colonial Administration, 1782-1810. The Intendant System in the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata (London: The Athlon Press, University of London, 1958). 9 Fisher, Bourbon Perú, 34-35. 10 Flores Galindo premise states that since the seventeenth century Potosí and other relevant silver mining areas of the viceroyalty were not anymore the exclusive neither the major focus of attraction—and source of stimulus—to the domestic Peruvian market. Alberto Flores Galindo, Aristocracia y plebe. Lima, 1760- 1830 (Estructura de clases y sociedad colonial) (Lima: Mosca Azul Editores, 1984), 62-72. 11 Regarding the wealty merchants from Lima, see the studies by Marks, Deconstructing Legitimacy; and Cristina Mazzeo, Los comerciantes limeños a fines del siglo XVIII: Capacidad y cohesión de una elite, 1750-1825 (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Dirección Académica de Investigación, 1999). On the merchants from Buenos Aires: Susan Socolow, The Merchants of Buenos Aires, 1778-1810: Family and Commerce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). 12 The Mendiolazas possessed a mayorazgo, an entailed state transmitted through the generations according to the primogeniture system. This mayorazgo, settled in Guipuzcoa, is mentioned primarily in Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza’s will. Other references to this asset are present in personal letters exchanged between Nicolás and one of his uncles, the priest Pedro Antonio de Mendiolaza, who was taking care of the mayorazgo in the Basque country. AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, ff. 19 r, 220 r. 13 Sandra Ott explains that according to the Basque notions of sexual equality, both men and women possessed rights of inheritance. Ideally, the head of household was succeeded by the child they considered was (socially, morally and physically) better prepared to fulfill his duties with the family. “Indarra: Some Reflections on a Basque Concept,” eds. Julian Pitt-Rivers and J. G. Peristiany, Honor and Grace in Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 193-214. In Basque families the principal inheritor of the head of household, who usually took the position of head of the family himself acquired the obligation to provide host and feed his siblings. Jean-Philippe Priotti, “Uso material e inmaterial del dinero. Un análisis social para el estudio de los patrimonios mercantiles en España y América (siglos XVI-XVII),” in coords. Hilario Casado Alonso and Ricardo Robledo Hernández, Fortuna y negocios: Formación y gestión de los grandes patrimonios (siglos XVI-XX) (Valladolid, Spain: Universidad de Valladolid, Secretariado de Publicaciones e Intercambio Editorial, 2002), 51. 14 Miguel Glave, Trajinantes. Caminos indígenas en la sociedad colonial, siglos XVI-XVII (Lima: Instituto de Apoyo Agrario, 1989); Ward Stavig, The World of Túpac Amaru: Conflict, Community, and Identity in Colonial Perú (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 74-83, 153-157. The Bourbons created the new districts of the Audiencia of Cuzco (1787) and the Intendancy of Puno (1796); the latter would be separated from its historical jurisdiction to be included in the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata. This generated great social tension and meant an obstacle for the regular mechanisms of trade and circulation in that area

as those provinces constituted a truly unit at multiple levels (social, economic, cultural, geographic). Niels Jacobsen, Mirages of Transition. The Peruvian Altiplano, 1780-1930 (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993), 38-48. 15 Original: “Quedo enterado de las partidas que ha percivido usted en Guamanga y Cangallo para sentar en nuestra cuenta, que son treinta y siete mil doscientos treinta [37.230] pesos, los ocho mil quarenta [8.040] de Don Fernando Cosio incluso los dos mil [2.000] del contado que recivio de orden de usted Don Martin del Molino de Don Manuel de Donestebi en cuio poder los tubo dejados Lorenzo [de Mendiolaza], y veintinueve mil ciento noventa pesos [29.190] de Perez Buelta [verbatim = Pérez Bulnes] de cuia cantidad se deducen siete mil trescientos noventa y siete [7.397] quatro reales, los seis mil cuatroscientos ochenta [6.480] dados a Allende, setecientos noventa y siete [797] quatro reales que tomó Phelipe [de Mendiolaza], y ciento veinte [120] pesos de la paga de Alcavala de las mil novecientas quarenta y seis [1.946] mulas entregadas a Cangallo.” AHPC, Escribanía I, 1788, Leg.407, exp.4, f.30 v. 16 Meneses and his wife Doña Antonia Hipólita Rapillon acquired a house in Chucuito that formerly belonged to the Bishop Diego Antonio de Parada. Later, they purchased from Pedro Fernández de Loa “un trapiche con sus respectivas minas” (a small silver mill together with a mine) in Puno, in which Meneses invested to make improvements. Finally, Meneses and Rapillon owned a ranch near Chucuito, called Senta. AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, ff. 544 v y s. 17 Bernard Lavallé, La América española (1763-1898) (Madrid: Editorial Síntesis, 2002), 29. 18 AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, ff. 544 r -545 v. 19 “Declaro que en las casas en que vibo tube un censo impuesto de cantidad de cuatro mil pesos, la misma que tengo redimida y libre, por aver pagado al síndico y monjas del Monasterio de Santa Catalina de Sena de esta ciudad con dinero en la misma cantidad de su principal, y redictos que me dio mi hijo Nicolás para este fin.” AHN, Consejos, 1787, 20396, exp. 1, f. 1/4 v [emphasis mine]. In this fragment, Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza provides details of this censo in his last will. The year of origin of this debt is unknown. Joseph Joaquín borrowed 4,000 pesos from the nuns of the Convent of Saint Catherine from the city of Córdoba. He agreed to place his house in Córdoba as a physical guarantee of the secure payment of the amount of money he requested. 20 “Declaro que por carta del expresado mi hijo Nicolás en Oruro, y Octubre catorce de mil setecientos sesenta y nueve donó a mi hija María Mercedes una tienda y trastienda que compró a Don Ventura Melgarejo, para que ensanchase su cassa dicha mi hija, y por otra desde La Paz en Julio treinta de mil setecientos sesenta y ocho le embió el testimonio de escriptura de compra, que debe parar en poder de su marido mi yerno Don Francisco Joseph de Uriarte.” Ibid., f. 1/5 r [emphasis mine]. According to Joseph Joaquín, through letters sent from La Paz and Oruro in 1768 and 1769 respectively, Nicolás donated to his sister María Mercedes a two-room store he had purchased from Córdoba’s vecino and merchant Don Ventura Melgarejo. 21 “[D]e los pesos que me tiene el citado Don Simon Babil de Uris, le escribí que separe lo correspondiente al valor y costos de los libros que constan de la minuta que le embié, para mis hijos el Padre Fray Joseph Ignacio y el Doctor Francisco Xavier con mas el de los ornamentos, y Albas con sus encages galones y aderentes, por ser donación que le hizo al referido mi hijo el Doctor, su hermano Nicolás y es mi voluntad assí se cumpla”; “Declaro que mi Hijo Nicolás me dio horden para que embiasse yo a Cádiz a poder de Don Simon Babil de Uriz, mil pesos fuertes, destinados para la pretensión de mi Hijo el Doctor Francisco Xavier, y así mismo franquea sin limitación de la plata que tenía en Cádiz, los pesos que fuesen necesarios, para dicha pretensa.” Ibid., f. 1/3 v. [emphasis mine]

In these fragments, Joseph Joaquín manifests the plans of his son Nicolás to invest in clothing, ornaments and other expenses related to his religious brothers, Friar Joseph Ignacio and Doctor of the Church Francisco Xavier de Mendiolaza. 22 AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, ff. 34 r – 35 v. 23 For example, for a major sale of mules organized by Francisco, Lorenzo and Phelipe de Mendiolaza in partnership with their brother-in-law Francisco Josef de Uriarte, Nicolás lent the funds to pay for freightage, wintering and taxes without charging his brothers any interest rate. “[L]os ha de satisfacer mi hermano Don Nicolás o sus vienes, sin más interés que volver a persivir el importe de lo que se gastare por tenerlo así dispuesto en vida. . . .Y las utilidades partibles entre los quatro nominados. Y por quanto Don Francisco de Uriarte cedió su parte a los demás interesados: deberán estos partirsse entre los tres y por falta de alguno, a sus herederos. Sin que por esto se le exima al contenido Uriarte, de dar las quentas arregladas a la voluntad de mi hermano Don Nicolás.” Ibíd, ff. 477 v- 478 r. 24 AHPC, Escribanía I, 1788, Leg. 407, exp. 8, f. 6 r.; Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 523 v. 25 Francisca de Aguirre was the daughter of Francisco Javier de Aguirre and Josefa Ruiz de Llanos y Castellanos, who was a major landowner in the jurisdiction of Salta. Sara Mata, Tierra y poder en Salta: El noroeste argentino en vísperas de la independencia (Sevilla: Diputación de Sevilla, 2000), 180-182. 26 Ibid., 184-190. 27 AHPC, Escribanía II, 1787, Leg. 68, exp. 6, f. 184 r. 28 For example, before heading as militiaman to suffocate the indigenous uprisings in the countryside, Nicolás asked Phelipe to leave Moquegua and stay at his house in Chucuito to assume control of the family business. According to the succession records, Phelipe was in charge of depositing money to the Royal Exchequer, as well as submitting money to Córdoba and Salta. Phelipe’s wife Francisca de Aguirre played a role in the administration of the family funds as she usually appears signing payments (libranzas) on behalf of Nicolás de Mendiolza. AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 42 v, ff. 582 r y 604 v. 29 AHN, Consejos, 1787, 20396, exp. 1, f. 1/16 v. Regarding Cerro de Pasco in the last decades of colonial rule, see: John Fisher, Minas y mineros en el Perú colonial. 1777-1824 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1977). 30 On behalf of his brother Nicolás, Lorenzo usually took packs of mules from Tarma to Tacna. Then, the burden beasts were taken to the Pacific port of Arica in order to carry the loads of mercury arriving from Callao port and destined for Oruro. AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 385 r; 506 r-507 v. AHN, Consejos, 1787, 20396, exp. 1, f. 1/116 v. 31 Archivo General de Simancas (hereinafter AGS-SGU), 6803, 1789, exp. 25, ff. 154-156. 32 In 1778, Santiago Alejo sent a payment for 14,000 pesos to Salta’s great merchant Gabriel de Torres, amount that the former obtained from Nicolás’ account in Potosí. The next year, Nicolás shipped fourteen mule-loads of sugar to Salta on behalf of his nephew. AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, ff. 348 v.588 r, 589 r., 591 v, 603 r. 33 In 1754, Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza asked the corregidor of Potosí to act as his guarantor in order for him to enter back to Tucumán with 10,000 pesos obtained from Potosí’s Royal Treasury House. AHPC, Crimen Capital, Leg. 8, 1754, exp. 16. 34 Josef Antonio Rico provided details of practices that he performed on behalf of Nicolás de Mendiolaza in Potosí, which point the latter as a rescatador. For example, Rico received silver bars from wealthy merchants from Salta (Sinforoso Josef de Rioxa) to sell to the Minting House in Potosí. Rico mentioned Nicolás de Mendiolaza did other submissions of silver and gold bars for minting; however I do not possess information of the origin of that metall. “[C]cuatro barras de plata que percibí de su quenta de Don

Sinforoso Josef de Rioxa, las que introduje en esta Real Caxa de Moneda. . . .tuvieron 856 marcos que importaron 7.398 pesos de los que rebajados seis pesos siete reales que me hicieron de cargo por la refinación de dichas barras, quedan líquidos 7.396 pesos”; “16.392 pesos 4 reales importe de doze barras de plata que [Nicolás de Mendiolaza] remitió y fueron vendidas en la Real Casa de Moneda. . . .1.084 pesos 1 real líquido que queda en mi poder de 3 texos de oro que me remitió para reducir a moneda.” Ibid., ff. 598 v, 603 r. 35 AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 58 r. The documents that Josef Antonio Rico from Potosí provided to the executor of Nicolás’ heritage give a fine picture of the family’s accounts from 1775 to 1781, including the average volume of their transactions, the specific markets and circuits they got involved in, as well as the structure of their investments. 36 AHN, Consejos, 1787, 20396, exp. 1, ff. 1/123 v-1/126 v. 37 The executor of late Nicolás’ assets, his brother Francisco Xavier, made this clear: Nicolás developed the most significant portion of his business in Chucuito, La Paz and Arequipa. This generated an issue to collect his documents and properties during the course of the rebellions that interrupted communications across these provinces. AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 41 r. 38 AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, ff. 601 r/v. 39 “[E]l Coronel Don Nicolás de Mendiolaza con quien mantuve [Vicente de la Torre] amistosa correspondencia, en virtud de esta tubo a bien al tiempo, y quando resolbió retirarse a la Provincia de Chucuyto dejar en mi poder confidencialmente dos cuñas de terciopelo, una de lisso, y la otra fondo, con mas una piesa de granilla, y un retazo de un género de lana, sin determinarme al destino de estos efectos, ni el precio a que pudiessen vendersse llegado el casso, de hazerlo.” “[P]or lo que hace a las libras de tabaco en polbo que se encontraron en barias cuñas entre los dichos vienes al tiempo del imbentario, pareze haversse dado quenta dellas al Administrador de la Real Renta de Tavaco de dicha villa.” AHN, Consejos, 1787, 20396, exp. 1, ff. 1/54r, 1/56 v [emphasis mine] This fragment illustrated how Vicente de la Torre vecino of Moquegua knew Nicolás de Mendiolaza and exchanged friendly correspondence with him. When Nicolás decided to move to Chucuito he left assorted European textiles and an undetermined amount of powdered tobacco under De la Torre’s custody. 40 Cristina Mazzeo, “Empresarios coloniales a fines del siglo XVIII. El caso de los comerciantes peruanos frente a la competencia extranjera,” paper presented in the conference: Empresarios y empresas en la Historia Argentina, Universidad Argentina de la Empresa, Buenos Aires, Noviembre 2001. Internet available: http://www.palacio.org/DeLavalle/1erCondeDePremioReal/000000aa.htm 41 AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 380 v.; Escribanía II, 1787, Leg. 68, exp. 6, ff. 47 v, 53 r, 186 r; Registro 1, Leg. 164, f. 299 v. The trajectory of the Navarre merchants based at Lima, José Matías and Antonio Elizalde, and their ties to Arequipa through intermediation of Mateo Cossio is well documented in: Mercedes Villa Esteves, “Liderazgo y poder: La elite commercial limeña entre el comercio libro y la guerra de la independencia (El caso de Antonio de Elizalde), en ed. Cristina Mazzeo, Los comerciantes limeños a fines del siglo XVIII. Capacidad y coesión de una elite, 1750-1825 (Lima: Pontífica Universidad Católica de Perú, 1999), 133-169. 42 Original: “[E]spero reciba Vmd este año algunos otros pesos que me sobran en Potosí siendo mi fin el desembarasarme de estas partes ya sea teniendolos alla para mi establecimiento o ya para que sirban a Vmd si en su pronto intermedio fallezco por acá, y quitar la ocación de que se confundan todos mis bienes, como ordinariamente acontese sin serbir a quien corresponde.” AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 401 r. 43 Martín Zavala declared as follows: “[I went to the] village of Oruro to try and figure out where the silver and the already mentioned bars were located. All of which, I’m convinced, got lost on January fifteenth,

when all the Europeans present in that town were murdered. And I think that is the reason why more than 600,000 pesos disappeared.” Ibid., f. 45 r. The raid against Spaniards in Oruro at the beginning of 1781 in relation to the expansion of Túpac Amaru rebellion and the failure of the criollo-indigenous alliance are analyzed in: Sinclair Thomson, We Alone Will Rule: Native Andean Politics in the Age of Insurgency (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 171-179. The connections between the Oruro rebellion and the radicalization of the anticolonial movement in Chayanta (Potosí) in: Sergio Serulnikov, Conflictos sociales e insurrección en el mundo colonial andino. El norte de Potosí en el siglo XVIII (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006), 391-393. 44 In 1744, Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza bought textiles and other European goods on credit for the amount of 15,000 pesos to a merchant in Buenos Aires. Data from the Archivo General de la Nación, Argentina, cited in Eduardo Saguier, “Deudores residentes en Potosí de operaciones de fiado otorgadas en Buenos Aires (1713-1748),” Un debate histórico inconcluso en la América Latina (1600-2000) XI, Chapter 4, Apendix B-1 Internet available: http://www.er-saguier.org/obras/udhielal/pdfs/Tomo_11/AP-B-1-Pot.pdf. 45 Ana Inés Punta, Córdoba borbónica: persistencias coloniales en tiempo de reformas (1750-1800) (Córdoba, Arg.: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 1997), 98. 46 Aníbal Arcondo, El ocaso de una sociedad estamental: Córdoba entre 1700 y 1760 (Córdoba, Arg.: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Dirección General de Publicaciones, 1992), 21. 47 Simon Babil de Uriz was an active broker within the mercantile networks that connected Cádiz and the Cape Horn route. Eduardo Cavieres, “Del crédito tradicional colonial al crédito moderno. Perspectivas y fuentes. Chile: el crédito en la periferia,” América Latina en la Historia Económica, no. 6, 1996: 25. 48 AHPC, Escribanía I, 1780, Leg. 394, exp. 5, ff. 380 r/v. 49 AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, ff. 586 v-587v. 50 Ibid., ff. 96 r, 282 r. 51 Ibid., f. 92 r/v. 52 Original: “Es verdad que con el motibo de la guerra y la postergación de avíos no he podido escribir a Vmd con aquella frequencia que antes no obstante de haberlo echo en dos ocaciones y en ellas le he prebenido no se me arriesgasen mis intereses sino en los terminos que lo hiciesse el concurrir a Buenos Ayres segun lo que proporcionasse la estación del tiempo y estado de cosas. . . .dispondrá Vmd que los efectos reducidos a barias facturas de ygual cantidad y especies de la pasada [carta] que le remití bengan en diferentes barcos, para no abenturarlo todo en uno solo hasta que el tiempo nos proporcione la paz.” Ibid., ff. 381 r-380 v. 53 Xabier Lamikiz, Trade and Trust in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Spanish Merchants and their Overseas Networks (Rochester, NY: The Royal Historical Society – The Boydell Press, 2010), 85, 156-157. 54 Socolow, The Merchants of Buenos Aires, 161-164. 55 As Frédérique Langue analyzed it, Spain strategically used the Order of Charles III to endorse and contribute to improve the social status of non-traditional segments of the colonial elites, such as the wealthy miners of Zacatecas in New Spain, in order to strengthen ties with Spanish America in detriment of the old, creole elites. “¿Estrategas o patriarcas? La aristocracia empresarial zacatecana a fines del siglo XVIII- principios del siglo XIX,” in eds. B. Schröter, and C. Büschges, Beneméritos, aristócratas y empresarios. Identidades y estructuras sociales de las capas altas urbanas en América hispánica (Madrid-Frankfurt: Verbuert-Iberoamericana, 1999), 277-295. 56 Archivo General de la Nación (hereinafter: AGN), XI – 9 – 1 – Libro 9, 1784-1785; XI – 9 – 2 – Libro 13, 1787; XI – 9 – 4 – Libro 9, 1790.

Chapter 3

The Andean Market and the Indigenous Rebellions at the Down of the Mendiolazas

(1775-1787)

This chapter deals with the connections between the Mendiolazas and one of the principal markets for the products they sold as part of the infamous repartos forzosos de mercancías. Nicolás de Mendiolaza’s familiarity with the corregidores de indios and the tenientes de corregidores of the Archbishopric of La Paz proved to be a key factor in the family’s prosperity in the Andean provinces. By supplying these functionaries with mules for the repartos, the Mendiolazas obtained direct benefits from the systemic exploitation of the Indian peasantry and subsequently made investments in the Atlantic trade or, more often, transferred their earnings to Tucumán in silver and cash, thus contributing to this region’s financial liquidity.

After the Great Andean Rebellion or the Great Rebellion, which deeply affected the Chucuito area, the colonial state prohibited the mercantile practice of the repartos and abolished the position of corregidor de indios. Although the Mendiolazas proved their loyalty to the Spanish Crown by financially supporting the suppression of the popular uprisings of 1780 and 1781, the colonial state did not provide any assistance to them when their business enterprise suffered a major drawback from the loss of the repartos

80 market. This chapter will also analyze how changes in the Bourbon’s political economy and their new policies of colonial administration affected the business operations of

Mendiolazas. The main argument of this chapter is that following the social conflict in the Andes, the Bourbon government’s new policy sought to regain political power in the region from the colonial elites, while promoting Buenos Aires as the new hub for the

Spanish trade overseas, shifting the economic focus away from Andean commerce.

Consequently, the family was discouraged from pursuing businesses in the Andes and constrained to strengthen their ties with the Atlantic trade, an activity that they had initiated shortly before the crisis of 1780. Lastly, the change in the political environment compelled the descendants of Joseph Joaquín, Gaspar Alejo and Nicolás to shift the focal point of their business back to Córdoba del Tucumán, where they were well connected at the economic, social and political levels.

The Repartos Forzosos de Mercancías and the Corregidor de Indios

The revitalization of Peruvian domestic trade in the second half of the eighteenth century was partly tied to the legalization of the repartos forzosos de mercancías, an abusive mechanism of trade that obliged the indigenous peasantry to purchase goods, livestock and other products from the corregidor de indios. When Nicolás de Mendiolaza moved to Chucuito in 1763, the repartos or repartimientos were not a novelty in the

Viceroyalty of Perú. A widely-known practice since the seventeenth century correlated repartos and manufacture of ropa de la tierra, which depended on both mita labor and coerced indigenous workers who were compelled to attend to the mills to pay their

repartos debts. This practice was carried out in the coastal and Andean provinces,

especially in Cuzco, where most of the cloth mills were located. Until 1754 the repartos

constituted an illegal, non-regulated modus operandi that was highly profitable for

landowners and farmers, priests, and other colonial agents. A crucial link in the repartos

was to the functionaries of the bureaucracy who received illicit economic benefits from

these activities.1

In the mid-eighteenth century, the Bourbons implemented substantial changes to

this system of forced trade which turned the repartos into a central gear of the Peruvian

economy. In 1754, the viceroy issued an official value or arancel that organized the

preexisting practice into a legal system, extended the mechanism throughout the

Viceroyalty of Perú and included a broader range of products that the Indians had to

purchase. This regulation provided a list of prices in which the cost of each product

varied according to the demographic and economic characteristics of the corregimiento,

while also imposing a sales tax (alcabala) of 4% over the charged prices. Soon,

however, the participating functionaries implemented illegal surcharges on the prices

listed in the arancel of 1754, which remained in force to assure the alcabala was

collected.2 The Royal Order was ultimately successful in providing a legal framework

for the repartimientos practice until 1780, when the Andean uprisings eventually

motivated the crown and its officers in the colonies to revoke it definitively.

Through the sanction of the arancel, the crown aimed to secure a share of the lucrative business of the repartos, stimulate the expansion of the Peruvian domestic market, and encourage the engagement of the Indian communities into market

relationships within the colonial economy. The arancel of 1754 restricted the

administration of the repartos to the corregidores de indios, and established the Real

Hacienda as the primary organism to control revenues from this source. Nonetheless,

this policy did not prevent other socioeconomic agents, such as cloth producers,

landowners, wealthy merchants, and provincial traders from taking part of this mercantile

practice, which levied a heavy economic burden on the indigenous population. In the

districts affected by the arancel, the corregidores de indios administered this trade and partnered with private entrepreneurs who supplied them with goods and commodities needed for the repartos.3

Since the introduction of the corregimientos in the Viceroyalty of Perú, in 1565, up until the office was abolished in 1781, the corregidores served as local representatives of the colonial state, mediating between the Spanish and indigenous populations.4 The corregidor was head of justice and administrator within a given district, supervising the reducciones or pueblos de indios.5 Therefore, the ability to appoint the individuals who

would occupy the corregimientos became a matter of jurisdictional dispute between the

crown and the viceregal government. As occurred with other aspects of the regulatory

system of the colonial state, loopholes in the law commonly allowed infringements and

corrupt practices in regard to the designation and prerogatives of the corregidores. Even

though the King theoretically retained the right to nominate corregidores de indios since

1678 through supervision of the Consejo de Indias, this rule faced clear limitations in

practice as Peruvian viceroys had long lasting contentions with the crown over this issue.

On one hand, viceroys possessed the right to nominate twelve corregidores to reward

their allies and clients, but after the sale of these appointments in 1678, the crown usually appointed candidates from Spain to the offices, despite the Peruvian authorities’ bitter

claims. On the other hand, viceroys abused their rights to designate and charge for ad-

interim appointments in vacant corregimientos, which ultimately hindered the crown’s

revenues and its political influence in the colonies. Nonetheless, the corregidores

propietarios, those individuals who already possessed the appointment, could directly

confer their acquired office to a third party through donation or purchasing contract.6

These practices led overlapping jurisdictions, in which several individuals claimed revenues from a single corregimiento. Since the corregidor de indios was a venal office after 1678, candidates needed to purchase a royal license to receive the appointment, and secure a list of fiadores (guarantors) who would guarantee against malfeasance in office or any fines levied for misconduct. Moreover, in the cases of highly sought-after corregimientos, more prestigious offices with higher earnings, the applicants had to bid on the offices at a public auction (remate) which increased costs and required more powerful guarantors.7 In order to defray the costs of purchasing a corregimiento—

together with related expenses, such as special payments to the viceroy and other high-

rank functionaries—the candidate needed to partner with certain individuals who would

be willing to finance his career as an investment. Most of the sponsors were wealthy

merchants from Cádiz and Lima, who aspired to provide goods to the repartos market by

backing the candidates for the office of corregidor. Once their candidates procured a

corregimiento, these wealthy colonial businessmen supplied their protégés with assorted

goods to be delivered to indigenous and peasants in their jurisdictions.8

The relationship between the corregidores de indios and the prosperous merchants

involved in the overseas trade of the Spanish Empire has been addressed by scholars

extensively. Less is known, however, regarding the provincial merchants’ interests in the

repartimientos, in particular those coming from non-Andean regions such as Tucumán

and the Río de la Plata. In the next section, the reconstruction and study of this issue through the lens of the case of the Mendiolaza family will help understand what kind of links these intermediary merchants from Tucumán established with the corregidores de indios, and how their specific activities contributed to the expansion of mercantile

relationships between the colonial economy and the Andean communities.

Nicolás de Mendiolaza and the Expansion of the Repartos Market

As the arancel reinforced and expanded the repartos in the Andes, it also operated

as a legal tool for the colonial state and the Spanish elites to undermine the economy of

the indigenous communities by forcing them to defray the costs of the deliveries with

farm products, money and work services, which the communities had to extract from

their remnants of production—and after payment of several other colonial charges.

According to some scholars, the repartos especially allowed the social networks involved

in the great Lima’s commerce to penetrate the Andean market, thereby forging a new market which remained subordinated to the viceregal capital city. According to this view, the expansion of the repartos system was a consequence of the pressure that

Peruvian mercantile groups applied to overcome restrictions that the resilience of traditional economic systems under colonial rule inflicted on their financial growth.9

Along the same lines, Jürgen Golte explained how this pressure was exerted by the

arancel, when the corregidores, brokers between merchants and indigenous communities,

sought to collect the repartos charges in specie instead of goods or work services. Golte

concludes that the constant expansion of this practice was only possible in the regions of

Perú where communities had enough economic reserves to allow the indigenous

communities to pay their colonial duties (tributes, mitas, tithes, and other charges), then

use their surplus product and their reserves on labor force to participate in the colonial

market, and yet subsist.10 These regions included Puno and the corregimientos surrounding the former Lake Chucuito, where the Mendiolazas took up residence and traded in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Historians Enrique Tandeter and later Scarlett O’Phelan also maintained that the legalization of the repartos system in the mid-eighteenth century was an attempt by the state and major business groups of the viceroyalty not only from Lima, but also from

Cuzco and Potosí, to drive the Indians into the colonial mercantile economy. Through the repartos, the corregidores forced the indigenous communities into indebtedness, which in turn encouraged the Andeans to send workers to the silver mines, either to pay their debts or to procure specie in a form of a salary. However, O’Phelan differed from

Golte and other authors to affirm that the Indians paid most of their reparto charges in services and goods, not in specie. According to O’Phelan, the corregidores de indios struggled to access specie from the repartos, which these officers needed for various purposes, such as to pay the alcabala to the Royal Treasury, to settle their debts with their suppliers, and to secure their personal incomes. Therefore, the corregidores usually

sought to reintroduce into the open market goods they received as payments for the repartos, in order to exchange these for specie. An advantageous strategy for the corregidores to achieve this goal was establishing partnership with provincial merchants, who facilitated their access to specie.11

Through establishing strong links with corregidores and other local functionaries

related to pueblos de indios, merchants from the provinces of the viceroyalty retained

profits from the repartos. The variety of products authorized by the arancel to be

delivered in the repartos proves that this mechanism benefited several regional economies

besides those of Lima and the overseas trade—predominantly regional textiles and mules

but also coca, chili, flour and sugar. Such was the case of Tucumán whose traders

formed part of the social network of the corregidores whether as suppliers of mules, cloth

and overseas goods, or as retailers of the products that the corregidores de indios

collected from the repartos. Other scholars acknowledged this phenomenon and traced

mercantile trajectories of companies from Tucumán whose earnings from the repartos in

the Andean region led them to invest in lands and other properties in their region of

origin.12

One can study how Tucumán mule benefited from the repartos through the case of

the Mendiolazas. They counted on beneficial links at the political and economic level in

different regions of the viceroyalty, including Huancavelica, Córdoba and Chucuito. The

family’s participation in the repartos of the Corregimiento of Chucuito and adjacent

Map 2. Provinces and corregimientos of the Viceroyalty of Perú. Source: Golte, 1977

jurisdictions depended upon Nicolás de Mendiolaza’s skills to gain the corregidores’

trust. In effect, while Nicolás lived in Chucuito, he represented more than a simple

vecino after being named an officer of the local Royal Treasury House in addition to marrying a daughter of a former governor of the province.

As a merchant and supplier of mules from Tucumán, the most beneficial relationships that Nicolás de Mendiolaza developed were his partnerships with governors of Chucuito and corregidores of different areas. Archival sources provide detailed information regarding the joint businesses between the Mendiolazas and the governors of

Chucuito, who performed the functions of corregidor de indios in that district as well, especially Benito Vial and Ramón de Moya y Villarreal.13 Other interactions of the

family prove they supplied merchandise to corregidores from Puno, Paucarcolla, Lampa,

Moquegua, and Arequipa. Noteworthy, these districts were among the most lucrative

corregimientos for the repartos system, which ultimately reveals the magnitude and

profitability of the family’s deals in that area.14

According to the official regulation, mules were one of the most important merchandise in the list of authorized products in the repartos, which explains why this trading mechanism represented an important factor to the expansion of the economy of

Tucumán. Thus, it was no accident that the Mendiolazas supplied mules for the repartos, together with other items, such as cloth, imported goods from Europe and smaller quantities of tobacco and sugar. The arancel listed mule prices according to the distance between the area where these beasts of burden were raised and the location of their delivery. Even though the same criterion of price was used in the open market, the

89 average prices for mules were usually inflated in the case of the repartos. For example, in the corregimientos of Huánuco and Huamalíes, a mule from Tucumán was valued around sixty pesos in the reparto while the same mule cost forty pesos in the open market.15 For this reason, the Mendiolazas, who supplied the repartos in provinces such as Chucuito that was nearer Tucumán than the aforementioned corregimientos, were still able to obtain high profits charging an average of 3,000 pesos for every pack of one hundred mules delivered in this region—equivalent to thirty pesos per mule.

Credit practices formed part of the colonial mercantile system and became a central component to the Mendiolazas business dynamic. Loans, deferred payments, warrants, promissory notes, and other credit functions facilitated the family’s connections with the corregidores. According to the family’s accounts of the period 1775-1780,

Nicolás and his brother Phelipe supplied mules to bureaucrats such as Governor Moya y

Villarreal, who sold them throughout Chucuito as part of their assigned quota of repartos.

These Tucumán merchants usually sold the mules on credit, which the corregidor agreed to compensate, in specie, silver or goods, once he collected the payments from the indigenous communities under his jurisdiction. Furthermore, the same family’s accounts show that Nicolás usually loaned money to other traders and functionaries, which represents substantial liquidity of his capital and his high investments margins. To give a few examples, the Corregidor of Paucarcolla pawned more than 10,000 pesos in diamonds and braided silver, although there is no further information regarding the reasons and destination of the funds. In 1781, the Corregidor of Moquegua, General

Mariano Oribe owed 20,000 silver pesos to the Mendiolazas for assorted goods that he

delivered in his last round of repartos. Several other officers had businesses based on

credit mechanisms controlled by the Mendiolazas, including the Governor of Chucuito

Benito Vial, the Corregidor of Puno, Joaquín Antonio de Orellana, and the Governor of

Tucumán Antonio de Arriaga—later Corregidor of Tinta, who was executed by Túpac

Amaru at the beginning of the Great Rebellion.16

Exchanges between corregidores and provincial merchants went beyond the world of merchandise. In the interior provinces of Perú and Upper Perú, tradesmen enjoyed a proximity to the local colonial bureaucracy that gave them a significant business advantage. The testimonials gathered in the extensive file that contains the lawsuit, which the priest Francisco Xavier de Mendiolaza pursued against the former Corregidor of Chucuito provide insight in this regard:

[Moya y Villarreal] saved without yielding or providing any explanation

whatsoever. . . . more than 400 pesos insisting that Don Nicolás de Mendiolaza

owed that amount to him as compensation for the food that he supplied to the

latter; plus, [Moya kept] more than twenty four pieces of Bretaña1 although the

deponent proved to the corregidor that according to Nicolás’ bookkeeping record,

the latter was the creditor for up to seven pieces of that cloth. Moya y Villarreal

answered that his verbal statement was worthier; moreover, the corregidor never

presented any receipt because it was his will that any written account of this

1 Linen cloth of medium quality, originally imported from England.

particular transaction with Nicolás de Mendiolaza appeared as an exchange

exclusively on efectos de Castilla.17

This indicates that Nicolás de Mendiolaza and his business partner, the corregidor, developed a multifaceted relationship which combined financial and social issues. This fragment demonstrates how this merchant and functionary regularly used verbal contracts

(trato de palabra) not sanctioned by law, which in turn, allowed them to manipulate the legal registry of their transactions. In other words, the mutual trust that was established between Nicolás de Mendiolaza and the Corregidor of Chucuito apparently fostered a complicity to evade taxes and maximize profits.

In terms of the social interactions that linked Nicolás de Mendiolaza to Moya y

Villarreal, various individuals acquainted with the Mendiolazas indicated further references to this partnership, which were notarized in the files of the family. The notion and practice of commensality recurrently described Nicolás’ interactions with colonial functionaries.18 When Moya y Villarreal resided in Chucuito from 1778-1781, he often received Mendiolaza and other members of the Royal Treasury House for dinner or other social entertainments.19 Moya himself testified that “these royal officials were my guests since they frequently favored me sitting at my table.”20 Furthermore, during the military campaigns to suppress the indigenous uprisings in the Andes, this corregidor participated in joint actions with Nicolás de Mendiolaza while he also covered the latter’s “gastos de rancho” (allowances for lodging and food) throughout the geographic area where they fought.21 These references illustrate the everyday interactions that constituted hidden but

nonetheless essential aspects of the provincial merchants’ strategy to coopt

representatives of the colonial state.

The case of the Mendiolazas and their links to the repartos sheds light on the

comprehensive set of relationships that provincial merchants were able to develop with

local functionaries. In this regard, there was a sense of familiarity amongst the

Mendiolazas, the corregidor, and the Royal Treasury officials, which complemented their

economic ties as mercantile agents in the interior of Perú. This particular social dynamic,

which fueled the repartos system, involving merchants and the colonial bureaucrats in

mutually beneficial businesses, reached its end in 1780. In the following sections, this

chapter will address the issue of the indigenous rebellions and their impact on the social

networks of corregidores and provincial merchants who expanded their area of economic

influence due to the legalization of the repartos forzosos in the Andes.

The Great Andean Rebellion and the Bourbon Reforms (1780-1783)

Studying the relationship between the colonial state and the indigenous societies of the Andean region during the eighteenth century is essential to understanding the background of the Great Rebellion of 1780-1781. By the time the Mendiolazas took up residence in the Andes, Indians ethnic, economic and political structures had suffered historical transformations and differed from that of their predecessors, whom Viceroy

Toledo had forced into pueblos de indios at the end of the sixteenth century.22 In the

course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, two fundamental socio-ethnic

phenomena transformed the Andean human landscape. One of these trends was the rise

of forasterismo, migrants who left their home communities and relocated elsewhere often

to avoid the labor burdens and taxations imposed upon them by the colonial state.23 The other relevant phenomenon was mestizaje, the process of miscegenation of the native population and their assimilation into colonial society.24 In the second half of the

eighteenth century, in accordance with these trends new socio-ethnic categories emerged

which played a key role in the different popular movements of the period.

Over time, Spanish domination led to the exploitation of Andean societies, which

overloaded the communities with exactions to benefit not only the crown, but also the

Spanish bureaucracy and elites. During the second half of the eighteenth century, the

upward economic trajectory of the Viceroyalty of Perú had limited or even negative

impact on the Andeans. For example, quantitative studies conducted on eighteenth- century Upper Perú’s indigenous communities showed these sectors underwent a sharp decline in their standard of living, the loss of communal lands, and lower rates of population growth than mestizos and españoles (Spaniards and creoles).25

The reform of fiscal policies for the Indians was one of the root causes of social conflict that occurred during this time period.26 The 1754 legalization of the repartos

forzosos added an external source of economic pressure to the indigenous communities,

which led to the proliferation of legal claims and acts of resistance by the Indians against the colonial government and its representatives. Nonetheless, in 1770, as part of his duties as Visitador of Perú, José Antonio de Areche ordered the retasa general—a new

general census of the indigenous population—in order to adjust the tribute payment rates

according to the population structure at that time.27 The reassessment of tributary

population allowed the Bourbons to introduce a major fiscal change assigning non-Indian

sectors, including mestizos and forasteros, to the category of tributario (indigenous tax

payer). This set of reforms also sought to suppress tax payments in products by

demanding specie instead, thus intensifying the participation of indigenous and peasant

communities in colonial market relationships. As a result of all these reforms, Andean

communities showed escalating signs of resistance and political mobilization. Local and

regional functionaries, in turn, resorted to more coercive methods in order to collect taxes

and secure the provision of workers to the mining companies, while gradually

undermining mechanisms of negotiation, which were traditionally used to engage the

Andeans into the colonial system.28

In the second half of the eighteenth century, popular revolts by various rural and

urban social groups broke out throughout the Viceroyalty of Perú. The period 1742-

1782, named by scholars as the Age of Andean Insurrections, included a series of

challenges to the colonial system, ranging from instances of local resistance to general

uprisings by predominantly indigenous groups.29 Scholars who studied this period have

used different approaches to determine causes and consequences of these outbursts of

violence. Traditional explanations describe this period of social stress as a direct reaction

to the increased fiscal pressure imposed by the Bourbon state and the exhaustion of the

resources of indigenous society due to direct abuse from colonial functionaries—

especially the injustices related to the repartos system. Jürgen Golte elaborated a

chronology of the Great Rebellion by tracing early eighteenth-century local mutinies and

legal claims against abusive colonial officers at the time of the collection of tributes,

repartos, alcabalas and other taxes. Gradually, local rebellions led to a greater

mobilization of indigenous groups, demanding the prohibition of the repartos and the

concession of more political autonomy to the Indian communities.30

Historians and ethnohistorians in previous decades problematized the connection

between rebellions and colonial economic pressures visited on indigenous society in the

Andes. There was much debate among scholars surrounding the political meanings and

common patterns of such rebellions, in which not only Indians but also mestizos and

criollos participated. This literature pointed to the ethnic cleavages to examine the

interethnic solidarity that characterized the first stages of the Great Rebellion and the

subsequent concentration of the insurgents’ political demands into more specific

indigenous issues, particularly during the high point of the Túpac Amaru rebellion. Some

authors associated the rebel’s demands with proto-nationalist aspirations and millenaristic

imaginaries that envisioned the return of Incan leadership and the end of the European

domination in the Andes. Although this scholarship was not widely accepted, most

authors agreed to address insurgencies as “anticolonial” movements in pursue of political

autonomy.31

Scholars have recently directed the study of the Andean conflict during the

Bourbon period away from the pressures of the colonial government on the peasantry and away from the metanarratives that describe the ideological content of the uprisings.

Instead, historians have studied the rebellions led by Túpac Amaru, Tupaj Katari and

Tomás Catari from its roots at the local level. In this perspective, the causes of the Great

Rebellion are traced to changes occurring within the indigenous communities regarding,

96 firstly, the expansion of the colonial system’s control over the local economy, and secondly, the undermining of the authority of traditional ethnic leaders, the curacas, and the rise of popular leaders. Sergio Serulnikov maintains this perspective after analyzing the sociopolitical components of the rebellions in the region of Chayanta (north of Potosí,

Upper Perú), between 1740 and 1780, where the Tomás Catari movement emerged. In this case, the issue that led to the revolt was the contradictory nature of the indigenous and Spanish’s perceptions of authority within the colonial state. Serulnikov argues that

Indians in Upper Perú assessed their relationship with the Spanish institutions in their own terms of legitimacy, which supposed specific rules of interaction between the communities, as subjects, and the colonial rulers. From the indigenous perspective, the legitimacy of the colonial rule depended on a pact of reciprocity between the Andeans and the higher Spanish authority, the King. The indigenous communities made use of the colonial institutions, such as the judicial system, to present their claims—for example, regarding land use and ownership, against the abuses of the repartos and the mita. When the colonial institutions denied Indians’ privileges, the logic of the reciprocity disappeared and the indigenous litigants resorted to informal mechanisms to restore justice. These mechanisms ranged from isolated instances of resistance to open revolt, including the legitimation of new, anti-systemic forms of political and military leadership with solid communitarian support, which pursued autonomist agendas based on interethnic solidarities (Túpac Amaru) or Inca millenarism (Tupaj Katari).32

By studying the case of the Mendiolazas, it is clear that the criollo and Spanish society saw any form of indigenous political agency as illegitimate practices that

threatened to undermine the hegemonic social order. The relationship between the

Bourbons and the provincial elites weakened after the Great Rebellion, when the crown

developed and enforced the most radical set of reforms to the administration of their

overseas possessions. In this context, the families of the peninsular newcomers, who had

developed their businesses in the Indies with consent, and even support by the Bourbon

authorities, became caught among multiple historical forces: a more vigilant and

centralist colonial administration; an Atlantic-oriented political economy that tended to

privilege overseas exchanges via the South American ports instead of the Andean

mercantile circuits; and a colonial society that was going through a process of

transformation towards political and ethnic self-awareness. The Mendiolazas and their

relatives witnessed the changes leading to the Great Rebellion and, afterwards, they

experienced the resulting structural transformations, which led the family to rearrange

their economy developing a new set of social strategies during the last decades of Spanish

rule in Tucumán.

Family Network and Business Returns to Tucumán after the Great Rebellion

Since the Mendiolazas business became integrated into the colonial economy, the family had to face the context of social unrest that surrounded them and cope with grave personal consequences, such as the death of Nicolás de Mendiolaza at rebel hands.

Through an analysis of the Mendiolazas’ story it is possible to visualize how the effects of the Indian uprisings were complex and devastating for the provincial merchants related to the repartos, in particular for those from Tucumán. A great part of the Mendiolazas'

98 earnings came from their dealings in the provinces of Arequipa, Moquegua, the Lake

Titicaca Basin and Cuzco—where they began to expand their enterprise shortly before the Indian revolts. In essence, from the mid-eighteenth century, the Mendiolazas had been making a profit in an area which three decades later would become the nerve center of major social conflict between the colonial state and popular sectors. When the uprisings exploded, the family was forced to cease their participation in the mule trade along with many other long-distance merchants from Córdoba, who collectively experienced serious difficulties in their efforts to trade in the Andean region after 1780.

One of the most emblematic events related to the Great Rebellion was the arrest and execution of the Corregidor in the province of Tinta, José Antonio de Arriaga, at the orders of José Gabriel Túpac Amaru. Through the execution of Arriaga, the indigenous authority aimed at symbolically reestablishing justice after the abuses that the corregidor had perpetrated on the peasant communities. Spaniards and creoles, however, interpreted this as an act of subversion against a Spanish colonial officer and read Túpac Amaru’s figure as that of a defiant Indian leader. Similarly, the Mendiolazas expressed concern upon Arriaga’s hanging. The Corregidor of Tinta had maintained commercial links with them while he was Governor of Tucumán. The province of Tinta kept historical commercial links to Tucumán as it hosted the major mule and cattle fair of the viceroyalty in the tablada of Coporaque. From this hub, mules were distributed to

Huancavelica and Cerro de Pasco.33

Shortly after the execution in 1780, Nicolás wrote a letter to his father, Joseph

Joaquín, recounting the news that circulated throughout the neighboring provinces of

Cuzco:

[The province] of Tinta is under great disturbance due to the rebellion of one of the

local caciques [Indian chief], who after having captured and murdered his

Corregidor Don Antonio Arriaga (former Governor of Tucumán) stirred up an

insurrection. . . .These events occurred the tenth of the current month, as people is

rumoring, when the cacique made an attempt on Don Antonio Arriaga’s life,

sticking to the same steps and formalities used to execute the criminals.34

This presentation of events surrounding the beginnings of Túpac Amaru’s rebellion that

Nicolás compiled in his letter manifests the latter’s personal concern with the development of the conflict. From Nicolás’ perspective as an español and a member of the provincial elites, the indigenous uprisings threatened to subvert social hierarchies and to undermine the colonial political order. Furthermore, from a financial standpoint,

Nicolás was also concerned about the future of his businesses in face of the atmosphere of social unrest in the provinces where he had settled his commercial activities. As he recounted the events to his father regarding the need to postpone any ongoing negotiations to sell mules in Perú: “so many reboluciones [uprisings] arise daily in the provinces [of Perú] that, until they cease, we should not undertake new businesses, for it is just to be afraid of grave consequences.”35

The indigenous uprisings provoked anxieties among the españoles that transcended specific political and economic concerns. In the case of the Mendiolazas, the evidence of

100

such fears materialized not only in the family letters but also in their direct participation fighting against the insurgents. Nicolás and his nephew, Santiago Alejo de Allende y

Mendiolaza, held the titles of Cavalry Colonel and Sergeant Major respectively, which situated them in leading positions within the Peruvian official militias.

Nicolás fought together with Governor of Chucuito, Moya y Villarreal, until 1781

when Indian rebels killed the merchant in the plaza de armas (main square) of Chucuito

when he was a member of the Spanish militias that attempted to defend the village from

the Túpac Amaru’s troops.36 Several years later Santiago Alejo de Allende left evidence

of this event in a petition he sent to the Consejo de Indias, the highest court within the

Spanish Empire’s legal system:

[M]y uncle Don Nicolás de Mendiolaza came to Puno, where your grace is the

corregidor [Don Orellana], in his role of Colonel at the command of the Regiment

of the Spanish militia of the province of Chucuito; he directed the militia and

executed all your wise mandates to control and subjugate the insurgent Indians

within the rebellion that still persists in some parts. . . .It was also my uncle’s luck

to meet his death gloriously during the indigenous invasion of the city of Chucuito.

. . .after a great number of rebels gathered together in order to overpower that town

and to remove every single Spaniard who resided there by stabbing them to death.37

Nicolás de Mendiolaza’s tragic death in Chucuito was the decisive factor that destabilized the family business. Since he was the Mendiolazas’ head of household, he mediated between the family and the mercantile networks of the Andean region. His

101

death destabilized the economic strategy of the family and damaged their internal

cohesion.

During this time, Santiago Alejo de Allende fought in the city of Cuzco, his place

of residence since 1775, in order to collaborate in his relatives’ commercial affairs; in particular within the sugar market. In 1780, Santiago Alejo “formed, together with the fugitives of the province of Chumbivilcas, the Cavalry Regiment of ‘de Allende’ Militia, thus bearing his own family name, paid for uniforms and supplied his regiment with most of the mules which the troops mounted.”38 Ten years later, in a petition requesting a military pension and recognition from the crown, Santiago Alejo wrote a detailed account that described his own contribution to the Spanish cause during the Andean uprisings.

His individual actions, as well as those of his uncle Nicolás, served to illustrate the scope of their family loyalty to the King and their unwavering defense of the interests of the colonial state amid social crisis. According to Santiago Alejo’s words, he exhausted his financial resources covering the expenses to maintain his regiment, and his uncle’s death signified the total bankruptcy of their joint businesses in Cuzco. In 1790 the crown compensated the Mendiolazas’ demonstrations of loyalty during the indigenous rebellions by promoting Santiago Alejo de Allende to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel with a life-long pension.39

The immediate effects of the Peruvian social crisis of the 1780s and subsequent dismantling of the repartos market signified major economic loss for the Mendiolazas. In order for the Bourbons to maintain control over the Andean space after the rebellions, between 1782 and 1784 the Visitador of Perú José Antonio de Areche and his successor,

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Jorge Escobedo, restructured the colonial administration significantly. These high-

ranking officers revoked the arancel of repartimientos, abolished the office of corregidor

de indios, and banned former corregidores from collecting pending debts from Indians

and peasants who were subjected to the repartos system. The transformation of the

corregimientos and the repartos was an issue that greatly affected the mercantile agents

who had previous business partnership with former corregidores. It is a fact that, despite

the banning, the reparto continued to exist as an illegal practice in many Andean

provinces, principally in Cuzco.40 In addition, the providers of goods for the last legal rounds of the repartimientos, made during the years 1779 and 1780, sought to secure the recovery of their mercantile investments. The situation was different, however, in the provinces of the Titicaca Basin, where the Mendiolazas profited from repartos, since most of the merchant creditors had to assign their rights in favor of the indebted corregidores in face of the widespread fear of a new revolt. This state of affairs was discussed throughout the documents of Nicolás de Mendiolaza’s succession:

[A]s an aftermath of the rebellion and Royal Order. . . .the corregidores from the

provinces of Azángaro, Caravaya, Larecaja, Sica Sica, Yungas could not collect the

Indians’ payments for their repartos, and this happened in general to all the

corregidores from the provinces of the Archbishopric of La Paz and Cuzco that rose

up, which is the reason why this corregidores were not able to pay back their own

debts; and if any corregidor e. g. Don Vicente Hore from Lampa could honor his

debts it was only because his creditors granted him significant deductions.41

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Moya y Villarreal decided to be cautious in regard to the indigenous subject to his

repartos and stated this position when giving testimony in the suit the Mendiolazas

pursued against him. The former governor explained that after the rebellions receded in

Chucuito “a great number of Indians gathered in the town of Ilave to request the president

[referring to that of the respective Audiencia] to allow them to pay the mules of the

repartos at twenty pesos but not at the regular price established by the arancel, and your

honor [the president] immediately consented to such plea in order to avoid upsetting the

Indians, for that was the most judicious thing to do under that circumstance.”42 Moya

warned of the potential of future Indian upheavals, as evidenced by his consent to the

suspension of the regular collection of charges due from the last repartos of his

corregimiento. Furthermore, in the same lawsuit, Moya’s defendant’s lawyer explained

the circumstances that prevented the former governor to pay his dues:

[I]n the province of Chucuyto [sic] several people continued owing him [Moya y

Villarreal] lots of money, either because as a consequence of the rebellion many of

his debtors died and others went bankrupt, or because he sought to be fair with the

survivors that stayed in the jurisdiction, especially with the Spanish vecinos from

Chucuyto, Acora, and San Antonio, giving them a respite and postponing their due

dates; upon that circumstances the Royal Order arrived to the region, in virtue of

which, it was forbidden for the corregidores to charge for the unpaid repartos,

therefore [Moya y Villarreal] could not proceed to make the respective collection.43

Although the Mendiolazas experienced a major economic setback after the rebellions and the subsequent political reforms of the colonial state, other Tucumán

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traders who did business in the same area achieved more effective agreements with the

colonial authorities so as to keep their share in the Andean market. For example, as

historian Gustavo Paz noted, the company of Thomas Martiarena and Juan Francisco

Leanis successfully recovered and continued trading in Upper Perú during the last

decades of Spanish rule.44

As for the Mendiolazas, following the death of Nicolás, none of his relatives were able to continue to conduct the family business in Perú. His brothers departed to areas where they would be safer if new conflicts with Indians were to break out, which most of

Spaniards and creoles certainly feared. Phelipe and Francisco Xavier Eusebio de

Mendiolaza fled to the city of Salta while Santiago Alejo de Allende returned to Córdoba.

Consequently, after 1781 the family couldn't reestablish its strategic social networks outside Tucumán in spite of their apparent success in recovering a great part of the capital that Joseph Joaquín and Nicolás de Mendiolaza accumulated in the Andes, in the form of metals, mules and other products.

In contrast to the drawbacks that the family suffered in Perú, their branch in

Córdoba was able to transform their social and economic strategy after Nicolás de

Mendiolazas’ death. The family then settled in Córdoba in order to recover their relative’s assets and to collect as many of the debts owed to Nicolás as possible—owed by business associates in Tucumán, Potosí, La Paz, Cuzco, Arequipa and other northern provinces in the Viceroyalty of Perú. Seeking to shed light on the Mendiolazas’ agreements with different corregidores to exempt them from paying back their pending credits with the late Nicolás, Moya’s lawyer asked “how much they managed to receive

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in payment from the total amount that the Corregidor of Moquegua and Don Mateo

Cossio from Arequipa owe them, how much was the family able to secure from Potosí

and La Paz, and what they think about many other bad debts from that region [the Andes]

in favor to the late Nicolás, which originated from different categories of businesses than

the repartos that suffered the worse bankruptcies.”45 This statement shows that, in order

to gather the assets of their inheritance, the Mendiolazas felt constrained to offer their creditors substantial discounts and reduction of debts. In addition, the sources illustrate the magnitude of the existing debts owed to Nicolás.

The former Corregidor Moya was one of the great debtors mentioned in

Mendiolaza's will. Moya refused to settle his debt even though the Mendiolazas had granted him a one-third discount on it—the original debt of 36,197 pesos, reducing it to nearly 27,000 pesos. Moya, however, was forced to pass through the city of Córdoba after leaving his position in Chucuito, when returning to Spain via the port of Buenos

Aires. The Mendiolazas took advantage of this, and deliberately retained Moya in

Córdoba in order to take him to court requesting the payment of the total amount of the original debt.46 The executor of the family’s inheritance, the priest Francisco Xavier

Eusebio de Mendiolaza, filed this lawsuit in 1785 before the judicial authority of the first

Governor Intendente of Córdoba, Marques de Sobremonte, who decided to pass the case

to upper level tribunals. Despite the Mendiolazas’ insistence in pursuing the case in the

Audiencia of Buenos Aires, judicial authorities at this court rejected the family’s demand.

In 1793 Francisco Xavier Eusebio made another judicial attempt against Moya by filing

the case before the Consejo de Indias. Playing the role of the Supreme Court of the

106 colonial state, this institution also rejected, this time definitively, the family’s legal claim against the former corregidor and closed the case in 1797.

The fruitless judicial attempts of the Mendiolazas to collect from their creditors from the repartimientos demonstrates how the Bourbon policy eventually neglected the provincial elites in the Andes, Tucumán and the Río de la Plata in the aftermath of the

Andean revolts—the same social sectors that the crown had politically and financially endorsed in previous decades. Colonial authorities who had stimulated the mercantile development of Spaniards and criollos throughout the Andes since the mid-eighteenth century decided to limit their expansion after 1780. On the one hand, the crown denied the family any legitimacy to charge the former corregidor the significant amounts of silver pesos the latter owed them for the supply of mules to the repartos. On the other hand, the crown refused to grant the Knighthood of the Order of Charles III that Nicolás de Mendiolaza had attempted to obtain through his representative in Spain, Simon Babil de Uriz. Nicolás’s relatives sought to achieve, then, an honorary compensation to acknowledge his heroic action as colonel of the Chucuito militia in 1780. Nonetheless, the crown was only favorable to Santiago Alejo de Allende who received financial help under the form of a military pension.

This chapter served to analyze the involvement of mule suppliers from Tucumán, like the Mendiolazas, in the repartos system. For Tucumán traders, profiting from the repartos was a crucial business that allowed them to expand their investments in different circuits of the Andean markets as well as contribute to providing liquidity to their own province’s economy. Links to corregidores and governors in the Andean provinces were

107 essential to provincial merchants to gain a share in the captive market of the repartos.

This relationship to the colonial administration changed under the context of the Great

Andean Rebellions. Through exploring this issue, this chapter showed the weaknesses of the family economic structure that were revealed by external circumstances, namely the social and political conflict in the Andes, which altered the colonial framing of the

Peruvian internal markets. After Nicolás death, his image became an essential source of symbolic capital for his heirs. Between 1781 and 1810, the Mendiolazas and their close relatives in Córdoba, the Allendes, focused on the collection and distribution of Nicolás legacy. Furthermore, they endeavored to exploit the symbolic meaning of the

“courageous service” and “glorious death” their rich relative had served against the enemies of the colonial state, the indigenous rebels. Unfortunately for the Mendiolazas, this heroic death could not compensate for the fact that Nicolás played a central role in the family’s social and economic strategy, and his absence demonstrated the fragility of their entrepreneurial network. At the end of the eighteenth century, the social and family network was forced to redirect its strategy and objectives towards their links in Buenos

Aires and Spain, while having Córdoba once again as its epicenter.

Notes to Chapter 3

1 Alfredo Moreno Cebrián, El corregidor de indios y la economía peruana del siglo XVIII. (Los repartos forzosos de mercancías) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto G. Fernández

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de Oviedo, 1977), 224. Prior to the arancel, in 1720, the Spanish authority attempted to abolish part of the tributes and the repartos payments due in labour services that constrained the indigenous communities to serve in textile mills (mita obrajera) and farms (mita chakra). This efforts to control exploitation of the indigenous peoples pushed local dominant sectors to promote alternative strategies to retain Indians and mestizos under former working regime. Then, the repartos helped the cloth producers and landowners to secure the labour force they needed, since it coerced Indians through indebtedness. Scarlett O'Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales: Perú y Bolivia 1700-1783 (Cuzco, Perú: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos “Bartolomé de Las Casas,” 1988 [1985]), 86,117-118. 2 For example, in the province of Arica, where the arancel of 1754 prescribed repartos of 88,920 pesos, in 1774 a priest estimated the real value of the repartos in 300,000 pesos. Jürgen Golte, Repartos y rebeliones: Túpac Amaru y las contradicciones de la economía colonial (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1980), 118. 3 Moreno Cebrián, El corregidor de indios, 172. 4 High functionaries of the colonial state created and established the jurisdiction of the corregimiento de indios in the late sixteenth century along with other fundamental institutions for the enforcement of the Spanish rule in South America. Ibid., 19. 5 The Viceroy Toledo (1569-1581) founded the pueblos de indios, Indian settlement towns, in the final quarter of the sixteenth century as part of an extensive institutional reform which, included the establishment of the mita, the organization of tribute collection, and the creation of the corregimientos de indios. In the seventeenth century, functionaries and elites developed further abusive practices out of the legal frame—such as the repartos, the confiscation of indigenous lands, and the illegal exploitation of the indigenous working force out of the mita system. Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, Indios y tributos en el Alto Perú (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1978), 95-99. 6 Moreno Cebrián, El corregidor de indios, 73, 111. 7 The corregidores received a salary from the Real Hacienda, which amounts varied according to the location. These wages remained relatively steady all through the colonial period, however, the real financial attraction of this office resided in the administration of the lucrative repartos. Therefore, the characteristics of the local economy and the differing circumstances that surrounded the repartos in each jurisdiction were essential variables to rate any corregimiento’s profitability—this included local population size, probability to collect the repartos, and the kind of goods the corregidor received as payments being those easily exchangeable for specie the most lucrative ones. Ibid., 78, 96. 8 Ibid., 117, 165-166. 9 Alberto Flores Galindo, Aristocracia y plebe. Lima, 1760-1830 (Estructura de clases y sociedad colonial) (Lima: Mosca Azul Editores, 1984), 62-72. 10 Golte, Repartos y rebeliones, 109-114. 11 Enrique Tandeter, “Los trabajadores mineros y el mercado,” in eds. Carlos Sempat Assadourian, Margarita Menegus Bornemann, Dos décadas de investigación en historia económica comparada en América Latina: Homenaje a Carlos Sempat Assadourian (México, D.F.: Colegio de México-Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Instituto Doctor José María Luis Mora- Centro de Estudios sobre la Universidad/UNAM, 1999), 373-377; O’Phelan Godoy, Rebeliones anticoloniales, 118-120. 12 Gustavo Paz analyzed the case of the trading company of Juan Francisco de Leanis and Thomas Martiarena, who invested their earnings from the repartos in lands and real estate in Jujuy. “A la sombra del Perú: Mulas, repartos y negocios en el norte argentino a fines de la colonia,” Boletín del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana Dr. Emilio Ravignani 20 (1999): 60.

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13 The province of Chucuito represented a special case in terms of jurisdiction. After the Conquista of Perú, the lupaca nation that lived in the area fell under direct control of the crown instead of private encomenderos, as it happened in most of the Andean regions. Categorized as a corregimiento in the mid- sixteenth century, Chucuito became a gobernación with the Toledan reforms between 1575 and 1580. Thus provincial authorities acted as governors and corregidores de indios altogether. 14 To give an example, the arancel classified the repartos of the province of Chucuito as “first class” because of the great monetary value of the authorized reparto that reached up to 117,000 pesos annually. When compared to other corregimientos within Upper Perú, in 1781, only Cochabamba and Lampa exceeded the amounts yielded by Chucuito, as evidenced by the reparto volume being 186,675 and 160,000 silver pesos respectively. AGN, Intendencia de La Paz, IX-5-5-3, “Razón de las cantidades permitidas repartir a los corregidores que tienen concesión en las provincias que comprende este Virreinato del Río de la Plata o Buenos Aires, según consta por la Secretaría del de Lima, 1781.” Source citation in Daniel J. Santamaría, “Intercambios comerciales internos en el Alto Perú colonial tardío,” Revista Complutense de Historia de América 22 (Madrid, 1996): 250. 15 Golte, Repartos y rebeliones, 86-87. 16 AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, ff. 384 r/v, 584 r-585 r, 602 v.; AHN, Consejos, 1787, 20396, exp. 1, ff. 1/114 r, 1/132 v. 17 The citation corresponds to the statement of Córdoba’s lawyer Dr. Arredondo y Ascasubi. A relative and intimate friend of the Mendiolazas, he acted as legal representative of the executor of Nicolás and Josef de Mendiolazas’ wills. Original quote: “[Moya] reserbó sin entregar. . . .la cantidad de quatrocientos y más pesos asegurando deberselos Don Nicolás de Mendiolaza por alimentos que le había dado, y mas de veinte y quatro piezas de Bretaña, y que aunque el declarante le hizo constar con la Partida del Libro que no eran mas de siete piezas, le dixo que en esa parte balía mas el dicho de Don Ramon, sin que hasta el dia le haia dado el respectivo resivo expresando dichas circunstancias por que solo quiso Don Ramon que en el rezivo se expresase que dicha Dependencia era producida de efectos.” AHN, Consejos, 1787, 20396, exp. 1, ff. 1/ 48r/v. [emphasis mine] 18 Commensality is a sociological concept often used in the social network analysis, which refers to a specific type of interaction and social link, i.e. the fellowship at table or “the practice of eating together (from Latin, “together” and “table”). Social rules often govern who eats with whom, who sits where, and other points of etiquette, depending on factors such as relative status.” Mike Morris, Concise Dictionary of Social and Cultural Anthropology (Malden, Mass: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781118329351. 19 Moya y Villarreal was Tenant of Corregidor in previous years, with residence in the town of Achacachi, located at the northeast shore of Lake Titicaca. Paz, “A la sombra del Perú,” 58. 20 Original: “estos oficiales reales eran mis comensales, porque algunas veces me hacían favor de sentarse a mi mesa.” AHN, 1787, Consejos, 20396, exp. 1, f. 1/188 v. 21 Original: “[R]azón del importe del rancho o víveres que de común acuerdo y gastos de camino, iba yo supliendo en las expediciones en que fuimos juntos de Lampa, Puno y viaje a Moquegua. Cobré esta cantidad y seguidamente di recibo.” AHN, 1787, Consejos, 20396, exp. 1, f. 1/190 r. 22 Sánchez-Albornoz, Indios y tributos en el Alto Perú, 95-99. 23 Ibid., 35-64. 24 James Lockhart, “Social Organization and Social Change in Colonial Spanish America,” The Cambridge History of Latin America, edited by Leslie Bethell, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1984), 286-287.

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25 Historian Enrique Tandeter pointed that indigenous communities, which were gradually losing their lands, struggled to meet the minimum level of production required for the subsistence of an increasing population. Therefore, the intensification of the colonial state exactions drove the former to critical conditions. “Los trabajadores mineros y el mercado,” 376. See also by Enrique Tandeter, “Población y economía en los Andes (siglo XVIII),” Revista Andina 13, no. 1 (July 1995): 7-22. 26 The indigenous tribute was cause of conflict before and after the Great Rebellion. The suppression of tributes was a central claim in minor indigenous revolts in Perú up until the national period. Nuria Sala i Vila, Y se armó el tole tole: Tributo indígena y movimientos sociales en el Virreinato del Perú, 1790-1814 (Ayacucho, Perú: Instituto de Estudios Regionales José María Arguedas, 1996). 27 Functionaries of the Contaduría de Retasas (tax reappraisal office) headquartered in the capital city of the viceroyalty carried out the census. 28 Charles Walker, De Túpac Amaru a Gamarra, Cusco y la formación del Perú republicano, 1780-1840 (Cuzco, Perú: Centro de Estudios Andinos “Bartolomé de las Casas,” 2004 [1999]), 41. 29 Steve J. Stern, “The Age of Andean Insurrection, 1742-1782. A Reappraisal,” ed. Steve Stern, Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries (Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 34-93. In this article, Stern coined that expression and proposed a chronology of the social conflict in colonial Perú, in which the rebellion of Juan Santos Atahualpa (1742) marked a turning point from previous episodes of isolated focus of resistance to specific policies/functionaries to organized mobilization around a set of political demands to the colonial state. This stage ended with the repression of the Great Rebellion (1780-1782). Several scholars have adhered to Stern’s chronology and conceptualization, such as Sinclair Thomson, We Alone Will Rule: Native Andean Politics in the Age of Insurgency (Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002). 30 Golte, Repartos y rebeliones, 134-135. 31 Scartlett O’Phelan Godoy synthetized diverse scholarly approaches to this topic and argued in favor of the “anticolonial” status of the indigenous political program, however, being skeptical regarding the cohesive function of the protonationalist and millenaristic imaginaries. See “Rebeliones andinas anticoloniales. Nueva Granada, Perú y Charcas entre el siglo XVIII y el XIX,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos XLIX (Sevilla, 1992): 395-440; La Gran Rebelión en los Andes: De Túpac Amaru a Túpac Catari (Cuzco, Perú: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos “Bartolomé de las Casas,” 1995), 13-45. Studies drawing on the thesis of an ideology of proto-nationalism and Inca millenarism in eighteenth- century Perú: Stern, Resistance, Rebellion and Consciousness; Alberto Flores Galindo, In Search of an Inca: Identity and Utopia in the Andes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010 [1987]). 32 Ward Stavig presented a new interpretation of the most studied of the indigenous rebellions in eighteenth-century Perú, the Túpac Amaru movement. Ward Stavig, The World of Túpac Amaru: Conflict, Community, and Identity in Colonial Perú (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999). In “We Alone Will Rule” (2002), Sinclair Thomson departed from a similar perspective to analyze the Tupaj Katari leadership and its regional origins nearby La Paz. He argues that the uprisings were the outcome of a long- term process of erosion of the internal hierarchies that structured the indigenous communities at social and political levels, since the consolidation of the colonial state in the region. Hereditary authorities (curacas) lost their local preeminence as they sought to strengthen their privileges within the colonial system. Gradually, new forms of hierarchy emerged in the local communities, while sui generis leaderships gained interregional support. Sergio Serulnikov, “Su verdad y su justicia. Tomás Catari y la insurrección aymara de Chayanta, 1777-1780,” in comp. Charles Walker, Entre la retórica y la insurgencia: Las ideas y los movimientos sociales en los Andes, siglo XVIII (Cuzco, Perú: Centro de Estudios Andinos “Bartolomé de Las Casas,” 1996), 205-243. Also, Serulnikov’s Conflictos sociales e insurrección en el mundo colonial andino: El norte de Potosí en el siglo XVIII (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006).

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33 O'Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales, 232-233. 34 Original: “[L]a [provincia] de Tinta, que se halla envuelta en confusiones por la rebelión de uno de sus casiques que habiendo preso y muerto a su corregidor Don Antonio Arriaga (gobernador que fue de esta del Tucumán) se ha sublevado… el 10 del presente, en que cometió el atentado de ahorcar según se asegura al citado Don Antonio Arriaga con los mismos pasos, y formalidades con que se lleban al suplicio los malhechores.” AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 32 r. 35 Original: “[A]ún acá en el Perú, resaltan todos los días tantas reboluciones en las provincias, que hasta que ellas cesen, no podemos resolbernos a emprehender negocio alguno por el justo temor de malas consecuencias.” Ibid., f. 31 v. 36 “Tomorrow I’m coming from Chucuito to aid to the Province of Lampa at the border of Tinta, together with the Provincial militia and the Gobernador Don Ramon de Moya” [“Mañana salgo de este Chucuito con las milicias de la Probincia, ausiliar en compañía de el [sic] Gobernador Don Ramón de Moya, la Probincia de Lampa confinante con la de Tinta.”], Ibíd, f. 32 r. 37 Original: “[C]oncurrió mi tío Don Nicolás de Mendiolaza al frente del Regimiento de milicias de la provincia de Chucuito de que era Coronel, a la de Puno, de donde es Vm [Orellana] corregidor, y todas las direcciones militares que formó su acertada dirección para contener y subyugar a los indios insurgentes en el revelion que aun subsiste parte. . . .le tocó tambien la suerte de morir gloriosamente en la invasion executada en la ciudad de Chucuito. . . .por crecido numero de reveldes reunidos con el obgeto de rendir aquel pueblo, y executar el extrago que causaron de pasar a cuchillo a todos los españoles.” AGS-SGU, 1789, 6803, 25, f. 155. 38 Ibid., f. 157. 39 These payments went through the Royal Treasury in Buenos Aires. Ibid., f. 159. Santiago Alejo de Allende continued his military career in Córdoba, where he served as comandante de armas. He also collaborated with the Captain and future Viceroy of Río de la Plata, Santiago Liniers, against the first British invasions to Buenos Aires, in1807. In this occasion, Allende commanded troops from Córdoba that he stationed in the Banda Oriental (currently, Uruguay) during the military confrontation. Santiago Alejo was a prominent figure from Córdoba’s local political faction aligned to the Governor Intendant Marques de Sobremonte—“the sobremontistas”—which reacted against the May Revolution and the Buenos Aires leadership after 1810. That year, the autonomous government from Buenos Aires seized and executed by firearm Santiago Alejo de Allende together with other well-known member of the counterrevolutionary movement in the Río de la Plata, including Liniers and the lawyer Victorino Rodriguez. Eduardo Saguier, “Esplendor y derrumbe de una elite contra-revolucionaria: el clan de los Allende y el ajusticiamiento de Cabeza de Tigre,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos XLVIII (Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla, 1991): 349-389. 40 Moreno Cebrián, El corregidor de indios, 697-735; O’Phelan Godoy, La Gran Rebelión en los Andes, 69-103; Sala i Vila, Y se armó el tole tole, 77-78. 41 Original: “[D]e resultas de la rebelión y orden del Rey. . . .no pudieron los corregidores de Azángaro, Caravaya, Larecaja, Sica Sica, los Yungas y generalmente todos los de las provincias sublevadas en el Obispado de La Paz y en el del Cuzco cobrar sus repartos y por lo mismo no han podido pagar a sus acreedores; y si algun corregidor como verbigracia el de Lampa Don Vicente Hore ha satisfecho a sus acreedores ha sido haciendole estos revajas muy considerables.” AHN, Consejos, 1787, 20396, exp. 1, f. 1/312 v. 42 Original: “[E]n el pueblo de Ilave se juntó crecido número de indios pidiendo al Sr. Presidente [de la Audiencia de La Plata] que sólo se les cobrase las mulas repartidas a razón de 20 pesos y no al precio de la tarifa, y Vm [Moya y Villarreal] inmediatamente condescendió a esta súplica procurando evitar todo género de disgusto a los indios como así lo pedía la prudencia.” AHN, Consejos, 1787, 20396, exp. 1, 1/165 r/v.

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43 Original: “[E]n la provincia de Chucuyto le han quedado a dever muchas cantidades de pesos, ya porque de resultas de la rebelión murieron muchos de los deudores, y otros quedaron insolventes; ya porque por mirar con equidad a los que quedaron especialmente a los vecinos Españoles de Chucuyto, Acora, San Antonio en dándoles treguas y esperas, llegó en este tiempo la orden del Rey para que los Corregidores no cobrasen los Repartos con lo que no pudo entender ya en la recaudación.” Ibíd, f. 1/312 v. 44 Martiarena and Leanis were from Jujuy and between 1775 and 1780 they supplied the corregidores of Lampa, Carabaya and nearby jurisdictions with mules for the reparto. After the uprisings and the abrogation of the arancel, this company went bankrupt because of insufficient financial reserves and lack of access to alternative markets to distribute their livestock. Nevertheless, Martiarena, Leanis and their successors continued working in the region during the following ten years no longer as suppliers of mules but as dealers of agricultural products and manufactures from Tucumán. Paz, “A la sombra del Perú,” 60- 67. 45 “Los mismos Mendiolazas digan cuánto han cobrado de lo que les debe el Corregidor de Moquegua, de lo que debe en Arequipa Don Mateo Cosio y qué cantidades son las que han recaudado en Potosí y La Paz, y con qué semblante se miran muchas otras que por aquellas partes le quedaron debiendo a su difunto hermano, y esto es que nacían de ramos distintos del de Reparto que el que ha sufrido tantos quebrantos.” AHN, Consejos, 1787, 20396, exp. 1, f. 1/186 v. 46 Ibid., f. 1, 1/16 r/v.

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Conclusions

By 1781, the Basque Mendiolaza family lost three of their most influential

members: Joseph Joaquín, Gaspar Alejo and Nicolás Mendiolaza. Until their deaths, they

created a social network around interprovincial trade and connected different commercial

centers throughout the Viceroyalty of Perú (and later the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata) from their base at Tucumán. During the 1720s and 1730s, brothers Joseph Joaquín and

Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza journeyed around Lima, the Andean provinces, Tucumán, and the Río de la Plata establishing themselves in the mule trade. This successful enterprise allowed Gaspar Alejo access to the Asiento del Real Trajín de Azogues, a profitable contract with the colonial state to carry mercury provisions to Peruvian mining centers. The Mendiolazas had this opportunity partly because of the Bourbon policy of reorganizing the Peruvian quicksilver administration, which included signing new

contracts with private entrepreneurs to produce and distribute the mineral. In order to

assume his duties as state contractor in Perú’s principal mercury mine, Gaspar Alejo settled in Huancavelica and helped his brother tie the mule trade to the mining sector.

Notwithstanding, when Gaspar Alejo died in 1775 his relatives’ connections with the lucrative asiento in Huancavelica ended.

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Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza became a “vecino y del comercio” in Córdoba del

Tucumán, which means he was a prominent merchant with political privileges represented in the City Council of one of the main mule breeder centers in South

America. In 1781 when his son Nicolás died childless in Chucuito while participating in the military suppression of the Túpac Amaru rebellion (1780-1781), Joseph Joaquín became his son’s sole heir according to the succession laws of Spanish America. That same year, however, Joseph Joaquín died at his residence in the city of Córdoba, far from his Basque homeland, at the age of seventy six. On the whole, these deaths ended the

Mendiolazas prominence in Tucumán and blocked their chances for upward mobility within the colonial society, which they had developed over the course of more than fifty years.

The story of the Mendiolazas sheds light on two central aspects of the Bourbon imperial rule in Spanish America in the eighteenth century: the new royal dynasty’s construction of a basis of power within the colonial society, and the crown attempts to reinvigorate the economy of inner and peripheral areas of the Viceroyalty of Perú.

After the War of Spanish Succession, which ended in 1714, the Bourbons needed to neutralize traditional and influential sectors rooted in Spain and the Indies creating a new political balance of power at the imperial level. To accomplish this objective, Philip

V aligned with social actors who acknowledged his sovereignty and endorsed the crown’s new policies. The Bourbons negotiated this political support with the northern provinces of the Iberian Peninsula, particularly Navarra and the Basque country, regions that contributed substantial part of the new immigration to America as well as the

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administrative and military bureaucracy that would enforce the imperial reforms. During the first decades of the eighteenth century, this transformation manifested itself in Perú,

Tucumán and the Río de la Plata with the arrival of a new bureaucracy together with

Basque migrants usually dedicated to commerce.

The Mendiolazas and their associates, who came from Guipuzcoa and Vizcaya, followed this trajectory as they arrived in Tucumán during the first three decades of the century, soon achieving a central position within mule trade. At that time, an economic crisis following the decay of mules exports to Potosí had profoundly affected the small group of families of españoles that governed cities of peripheral province of Tucumán.

Local conditions favored the integration and empowerment of peninsular newcomers over the creole traditional (petty) elites, who were retiring from long-distance mercantile circuits. Therefore, at the southern borderlands of Spanish America, the weakening of the economic integration with Andean markets set the context for the gradual renewal of the leading Spanish social actors in the district. This produced a situation that was quite different from the experience of elites in the most populated and economically active centers of Peruvian economy, such as Lima or Charcas. In these areas, the Bourbon government needed to resort to direct intervention to foster a more favorable structure of power, by reforming the bureaucracy and making it possible for greater upward mobility for non-traditional Spanish actors.

Since the mid-eighteenth century, the Mendiolazas were able to spread out their family members and their business throughout the central and southern provinces of the

Viceroyalty of Perú. This strategy allowed them to take advantage of the opportunities

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opened to peninsular immigrants to gain a foothold in the colonial bureaucracy and profit from state-controlled monopolies in the Andean region. This family was not wealthy enough to belong to the Merchants Guild of Lima, which based its business on the imperial monopoly over overseas trade, nor could it obtain an asiento to introduce

African slaves through Buenos Aires. In spite of that, the Mendiolazas signed a contract related to the monopoly over Huancavelica’s mercury, the Real Trajín de Azogues, a legal privileged that benefited them economically between 1746 and 1778.

Bourbon strategy to support Spanish immigrants to the Indies efficiently fostered the loyalty of these men to the crown, which they proved in critical historical junctures.

Close ties with the Bourbon bureaucracy led the family to endorse both controversial functionaries and policy in Córdoba del Tucumán and Huancavelica, the geographic spots where they had established and consolidated their business. In the 1760s, Gaspar Alejo de Mendiolaza and his relatives backed the unpopular governorship of Antonio de Ulloa in Huancavelica enduring detrimental political consequences at the regional level. The crown’s scientist sought to execute long-postponed reforms at the mercury mine, thus earning the enmity of the viceroy and the Mining Guild—institutions inclined toward preserving ingrained practices, such as smuggling and careless mining techniques.

Concurrently, in Córdoba, Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza and his allies, the Allendes, supported the expulsion of the Jesuits after which they gained greater influence in the local Cabildo. They also obtained lands and slaves that eventually boosted the family finances. Lastly, the second generation under the command of Nicolás de Mendiolaza pursued symbolic recognition of their improved social status, and their political

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ascendancy in Tucumán and the Andean provinces. As several other Spaniards that prospered in the Indies during the second half of the eighteenth century, Nicolás applied to a member of the Royal Order of Charles III. This title never came through because

Mendiolaza claimed it at the time a new political turn, the Great Rebellions, would contribute to weaken the family’s advantageous links to the colonial state.

From an economic perspective, this study has shown the regional scope of

interactions between colonial state and provincial merchants in Perú and Tucumán. The

expansion of Peruvian economy together with increasing intervention of the colonial state

in the domestic market characterized the period from 1760 to 1780. Imperial economic

policy primarily aimed at increasing bullion extraction from the Indies, which the state

attained through stimulating silver and mercury mining. In turn, the new vitality of

Upper Perú’s mining areas as well as the emergence of new centers like Pasco fostered

interregional market integration. Accordingly, the resurgence of Córdoba’s economy in

the decade of 1740 saw the expansion of mule exports to Andean mining centers, which

corresponded to this dynamism within internal Andean markets. Merchants from the

different cities of Tucumán began expanding their business to the “northern provinces,”

as they called Upper and Lower Perú, taking their mules to the major hubs for cattle

trade, i.e. Salta, Coporaque (near Cuzco), and Jauja (near Huancavelica and Pasco). The

Mendiolazas proceeded the same way and took advantage of this cycle of economic

growth, consolidating their position in Córdoba’s mule trade and then expanding business

to Huancavelica and Chucuito during the second half of the century. By the decade of

1760s, the family was firmly established in critical sectors of the Peruvian economy:

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mining, freightage and provision of beasts of burden. Upon these foundations, these

skillful provincial merchants were able to diversify their investments over other sources

of regional trade, which involved cloth, tobacco and sugar.

European mercantile activity in the Atlantic represented another focus of vitality

of the southern margins of the Indies. After the Seven Years’ War in 1763, when Spain

lost its predominance in the Atlantic, the crown developed a series of reforms destined to

update the inefficient monopoly over colonial trade and counteract British, French, and

Portuguese influence. The Bourbons shift toward free trade affected colonial economic agents who benefited from strong market controls, such as Lima’s wealthy merchants.

The legalization of traffic via the port of Buenos Aires and the route of Cape Horn, however, opened an opportunity for provincial merchants to diversify their economic foundations trading at competitive prices with European goods, which they could introduce through the Río de la Plata.

The Mendiolazas also sought to diversify their business in the Atlantic trade to reduce the risks involved in the domestic commerce. By 1775, the family profited from a wide variety of markets; furthermore, they had accumulated rich capital reserves, giving significant liquidity, which led them to add moneylending to their other financial investments. The Mendiolazas’ wealth heavily relied on mining markets and interregional trade, which was lucrative yet, remained unstable throughout the colonial period. When the indigenous rebellions hindered the regular functioning of communications and exchanges across the Andes, Nicolás de Mendiolaza opted to leave the area of conflicts and withdraw to his hometown, Córdoba. This strategy depended on

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the family’s role as local brokers for Cádiz, Buenos Aires and Tucumán merchants. This possibility encouraged them to contract with metropolitan traders, to solidify their role in the importation of European manufactures. In a nutshell, the Bourbon’s efforts to revive

Andean mining and foster integration of their South American possessions into the

Atlantic trade redirected the economic plans of Basque Mendiolaza brothers and their children in colonies.

Pressure from Spanish and European mercantile capital to penetrate the colonial consumer market operated as decisive force behind the Bourbons legalization of the repartos forzosos de mercancías in 1754. Spanish and colonial merchants embraced this measure and prepared to become suppliers of a lucrative, although coercive, market in the

Andes. The repartos yielded significant revenues that benefited Lima and Cádiz merchants, improved the crown’s fiscal income from interregional trade, and served to defray salaries of corregidores de indios. Nonetheless, provincial merchants procured a significant share from the repartos thanks to their proximity to corregidores and governors in charge of this market, with whom they created partnerships and even affective links. Tucumán’s long-distance traders were examples of this since they participated of the repartos as suppliers of pack mules, one of the most common products delivered to the indigenous communities. The legal functioning of this forced trading mechanism had lasted near twenty years before it became too oppressive for the indigenous peasantry compelled to subsidize the system.

The Great Rebellions of 1780 and 1781 set up an atmosphere of agitated social and political conflict between the indigenous population and the colonial state in central

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and southern Andes. Revolts shook the entire colonial society and forced different social

actors to compromise with their political positions. As this study showed, the social and

political conflict in the Andes, which altered the colonial framing of the Peruvian internal

markets, revealed the weaknesses of the Mendiolazas’ business model and internal cohesion. A large part of mercantile elites, especially those from the Peninsula, aligned themselves with the government. These sectors sought to defend their multiple privileges within the colonial social structure, which the political agenda of Túpac Amaru and other indigenous leaders threatened to eradicate from the Andes. The Mendiolazas, who came from the Peninsula and had been profiting from Peruvian economy for at least fifty decades, sided with royal forces enrolling in the Spanish militia and supplying financial resources to cope with insurgents. The crown, however, did not necessarily reward these

expressions of loyalty and, moreover, it exploited the context to reshape colonial bonds in

order to promote strict metropolitan control.

This historical juncture framed the changing relationship between Mendiolaza family and colonial state in the last decades of the century. After quashing the Great

Andean Rebellions, the appointment of general visitadores to Perú, who acted in representation of Bourbon interests in the region, resulted in a rationalization of the administration—e.g. prohibition of the repartos, suppression of corregimientos de indios, implementation of the Intendances system, and creation of new Audiencia districts. The character of the reforms implied new limits to the influence of different segments of colonial society, including north-peninsular immigrants to whom the state had favored during previous decades. In the case of the Mendiolazas, they spent decades to forge

118

strong ties with the colonial administration, which yielded divergent outcomes according

to the local conditions. In Córdoba, the Mendiolazas achieved greater political and

economic ascendance as they were partners and relatives of the Allende, the most

prominent group of Basque merchants in the Tucumán mule trade. Both families arrived

in this district between 1700 and 1725, and soon became part of the new Spanish elite

replacing traditional creole groups, who were not able to adjust to the economic

conditions of the first half of the eighteenth century and to ally with the Bourbon

functionaries. But the government limited the influence of new provincial elites to the

local sphere. At the regional level of Tucumán and the Andean provinces, the Bourbon

government, through the Consejo de Indias together with the Audiencias of Charcas and

Buenos Aires, blocked any legal claims the family filed after 1781 for official recognition

of their military services, as well as to recover their lost investments in the repartos

system. This undermined the family’s strategies of upward mobility and eroded the

fundamental links that constituted the Mendiolazas social networks in the Andes.

Available documentation regarding the Mendiolazas, located in different

historical archives of Spain and South America, would help go in depth over further

issues that this thesis does not include. This case can open new paths of inquiry on the

relationship between Tucumán merchants, the colonial state and the markets. For example, a merchant family from Córdoba can enlighten scholars about the mechanisms used by provincial elites at the southern borderland of the Spanish Empire with important institutions such as the Catholic Church. The Mendiolazas and their close relatives in

Córdoba, for example, had various members of their family join the Franciscan Order and

119

the secular clergy. Furthermore, the family’s kinship connections to nuns consecrated in

the Convents of Santa Catalina and Santa Teresa in Córdoba constitute an opportunity for

scholars to analyze the female role in the family’s financial strategy, taking into account

that Convents were usually a secure source of credit for merchants and landowners from

Tucumán. A religious member of a merchant family like the Mendiolazas could play a

significant role in the development of rich social networks that sustained interregional

entrepreneurship. For traders, the chance of establishing fluid communication with the

Church was probably quite desirable as this religious institution was able to provide

political, symbolic and financial support. In other words, provincial elites in colonial

South America probably generated other sources of power, besides trade, kinship and social links, all of which might have been at the core their strategies of foundation and consolidation of a prominent socioeconomic position within the region. Ultimately, this study of Tucumán mercantile elite and their interactions with the Bourbon state throughout the Andean provinces does not exhaust the topic, which deserves further attention from scholars.

Through the experience of the mercantile families rooted in the internal, interregional commercial circuits, this research examined the political economy of the

Spanish Empire in the Viceroyalty of Perú and the Southern provinces of Tucumán and its interactions with provincial elites. This case study was an efficient methodological approach to analyze the social and economic history of colonial South America. The

Mendiolazas provided an exemplary and well documented story through which is possible to study the interregional linkages between Tucumán and the Andes.

120

Furthermore, this family is a representative example of the provincial merchants’ experience during the course of the eighteenth century before the most visible Bourbon reforms, a period that has not received sufficient attention by scholars. Thus, this work opens new research paths to reflect on the transition from the Habsburgs colonial regime to the Bourbon state, in a context of global imperial transformations embodied not only by the long-lasting military conflicts in the Atlantic but also in the emerging socioeconomic structures within the Southern Andes. In other words, this research contributes to understand the impact of the Bourbon Reforms on the social, political economic and spatial dynamics of creoles and Spaniards who profited from the internal colonial markets in South America.

121

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Appendix A. The Mendiolazas Inheritance

By way of an epilogue it is worth presenting a summary of the events in the story

of the Mendiolazas after the Great Andean Rebellions. One of nine siblings of the late

Nicolás Mendiolaza, canon of the Cathedral of Córdob a Dr. Francisco Xavier Eusebio

de Mendiolaza, was the executor of his father Joseph’s will. Between 1782 and 1785,

Francisco Xavier dedicated himself to collecting goods, cash and properties that had

belonged to his father and his brother Nicolás, dispatching legal brokers to different

provinces throughout the Viceroyalties of Perú and Río de la Plata. According to the

accounts, Nicolás had managed to amass more than 900,000 silver pesos worth of

property and specie, a figure several times greater than the nearest most wealthy family in

Córdoba at that time.1 For example, another prominent merchant and commercial ally of

the Mendiolazas, Thomas de Allende, in his will signed in 1785, only could boast

100,000 pesos including his daughters’ dowries.2

Dr. Francisco Xavier Eusebio de Mendiolaza could never collect the full

inheritance since between 1780 and 1782 much of it was lost in the Great Andean

Revolts.3 For example, he could not collect the debt incurred by Lieutenant Coronel

Ramón de Moya and Villarreal, governador of Chucuito during the indigenous

rebellions, who owed Nicolás de Mendiolaza around 36,000 pesos for goods used in the

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reparto de comercio. Other large amounts of money –the executor acknowledged a loss

of 100,000 pesos- were lost in different circumstances. Some of late Nicolás’

commercial brokers and partners did not return goods they had in their custody

particularly in La Paz and Arequipa.4 Also, the colonial state withdrew undetermined

amounts of silver and texos de oro (gold bars) from their accounts for military

expenditures to quell the indigenous rebellion.5 Thus, the outcome of the Andean rebellions and the political response of the colonial state to the conflict could easily undermine the profits accrued from earlier, more peaceful years.

The bequest that Joseph Joaquín and Nicolás de Mendiolaza left to their relatives consisted of cash, gold and silver bars, silverware, jewelry, precious stones, mules, goods from Castile, a house in the city of Córdoba, and a few slaves. By 1786, the executor finally consolidated an amount to divide among the heirs that consisted of 387,659 pesos,

2 ¾ reales, less than 50% of the entire estate.6 In spite of the large reductions of the family’s assets, what remained was still significant. In light of the new economic and political realities during the following decades, the family’s focus shifted from entrepreneurial strategies to legal disputes over their lost wealth.

The heirs to the family fortune were dispersed throughout the Spanish empire, and each claimed for a portion of the inheritance from their locations. The majority lived in

Córdoba; the executor, his brother Fr. Joseph Ignacio, a Franciscan Friar, and their two sisters María de la Cruz and María Mercedes Mendiolaza, were represented by their respective husbands, Santiago Allende and Francisco Joseph de Uriarte. Another three sons of Joseph Joaquín Mendiolaza, Francisco, Lorenzo and Phelipe lived in

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Huancavelica, Lima and Salta del Tucumán respectively. In addition, the late Nicolás de

Mendiolaza’s in-laws in Madrid petitioned for part of the wealth and created another factor affecting the distribution of the remaining assets. The relatives in Madrid finally obtained a small compensation of 12,000 pesos in 1787 in contrast to most inheritors who received an average of 42,800 pesos.

In the 1790s, other members of the family died, and the Mendiolaza name began to fade even in Córdoba. The third generation had lost all their commercial contacts with the Andean region and had become subsumed by the great mule trading Allende family, then one of the most important merchant families in the whole Tucumán region. The

Mendiolazas and Allendes bound their families together over several decades during the eighteenth century through business and marriage alliances. Well into the nineteenth century, Mendiolazas’ legacy was large enough to inspire succeeding generations to keep struggling to recover lost portions from the Andean region, despite the family’s fall from prominence.7 Then, the social, economic and political context of Córdoba—and the Río

de la Plata in general—in the nineteenth century was radically different from the one

Joseph Joaquín had encountered in the 1730s. The process of Independence in the Río de

la Plata region struck a decisive blow to the family in 1811. One of Joseph Joaquín

grandsons, Coronel Santiago Alejo de Allende—who had been closed to Nicolás de

Mendiolaza and his business in Perú decades before—was executed by the new

revolutionary government of Buenos Aires due to his attempt to organize a

counterrevolution aimed at returning to Spanish colonial rule.8

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Notes to Appendix A

1 AHN, Consejos, 1787, 20396, exp. 1, ff. 1/12 r – 15 v. The 900,000 pesos reflects Mendiolaza family accumulated wealth as for 1775-1780, according to the Potosí-resident manager of the family, Josef Antonio Rico. AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 604 v. 2 AHPC, Reg. 1, 1785, Leg. 170, ff. 458-472 3 AHN, Consejos, 1787, 20396, exp. 1, ff. 1/51 v, 178 v. 4 AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, ff. 47 r, 396 r/v; AHN, Consejos, 1787, 20396, exp. 1, ff.1/60 r-62 v. 5 AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, f. 397 v. 6 FDPC, no. 3068, 1790. AHPC, Escribanía II, 1787, Leg. 68, exp. 6. f. 171 r. 7 FDPC, no. 4398, 1819; no. 9315, 1824; no. 681, 1837. 8 Eduardo Saguier, “Esplendor y derrumbe de una élite contrarrevolucionaria: el clan de los Allende y su ajusticiamiento en Cabeza de Tigre,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos XLVIII (Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla, 1991): 349-389.

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Appendix B. Merchants Correspondence

What follows is a series of three personal letters exchanged by members of the

Mendiolaza family. Lamentably, there is no original copy of these documents that I am

able to reproduce here from contemporaneous transcriptions, which appeared included in

the legal suits filed by the family after the deceases of Nicolás and his father Joseph

Joaquín de Mendiolaza. In every case, I present my own transcription in the original

Spanish language and eighteenth century grammar.

1. Letter from Nicolás de Mendiolaza to his Father Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza

(Chucuito to Córdoba, 1780)

In this document, Nicolás explains to his father events and widespread rumors about Túpac Amaru sedition, and he also provides advising on business.

Muy venerado padre; y señor: por la que recibo de Vmd de 22 de octubre pasado con el aprecio que corresponde quedo instruido en el grande peligro a que hoy se halla expuesto en essas partes el comercio de

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mulas a causa de las continuas imbaciones de los Indios bárbaros que según acá tenemos entendido han cometido muchas maldades, y causado grandes perjuicios sin que hasta la fecha se hayan tomado probidencias de concideración que puedan remediar este daño. En cuya concideracion combengo en la resolución, que Vmd me advierte de que se suspenda esta negociación hasta que los asumptos tomen otro semblante para libertanos de cuidados, y fatigas que indispensablemente dimanan, en iguales circunstancias; mayormente quando aún acá en el Perú, resaltan todos los días tantas reboluciones en las provincias, que hasta que ellas cesen, no podemos resolbernos a emprehender negocio alguno por el Justo temor de malas consequencias; por cuya causa, aun las mulas que hay en Salta, no se si convendrá destinarlas luego o que se suspenda el remitirlas hasta mejor ocasión. Mañana salgo de este Chucuito con las milicias de la

Probincia, ausiliar en compañía de el Gobernador Don Ramón de Moya, la Probincia de

Lampa confinante con la de Tinta, que se halla envuelta en confusiones por la rebelión de uno de sus casiques que habiendo preso y muerto a su corregidor Don Antonio

Arriaga (Gobernador que fue de esta del Tucumán) se ha sublevado y según las primeras noticias, se temía invadiesse con sus Indios las Provincias comarcanas aun que oy sabemos; que no lo ha echo con el sobrado tiempo que ha tenido para ello, desde el 10 del presente, en que cometió el atentado de ahorcar según se asegura al citado Don

Antonio Arriaga con los mismos pasos, y formalidades con que se lleban al suplicio los mal hechores. Y aunque debe sospecharse que el Indio no desconfía de sus fuerzas para arrojarse a un delito tan henorme como el referido no obstante no deve causar mayor recelo la resolución de sugetarle procediendo de concierto tantas Provincias como las

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que se han combocado para atacarle por todas partes, si fuesse necesario o si antes no se haya rendido a las fuerzas que se preparaban a salir del Cuzco, contra este rebelde.

Por lo que concibo que no podrá retardar mi buelta este incidente; pero por si no fuesse tan brebe como yo pienzo, ya embie mulas a Moquegua, para que benga mi hermano

Felipe, a cuidar de mi cassa, que dexo abandonada por la prissa con que es precisso marchar de cuyas.

Resultas abisare a Vmd con puntualidad. En el correo venidero. Incluyo a Vmd. una razón firmada de mi puño del número, Ley y peso de las 90 barras que tengo en Potosí en poder de Don Josef Rico mi Apoderado, con orden de darlas el destino que expreso al principio y cabeza de dicha razón, y los 15.000 pesos en moneda que las acompaña.

Al tiempo de concluir esta, se a dibulgado por barias cartas que se han recibido de la

Provincia de Lampa, que los 300 hombres que salieron del Cuzco, de gente la mayor parte Chapetona, y entre ellos tres corregidores y principales de aquella ciudad a 14 leguas de distancia en el pueblo de Yanaloca Provincia de Tinta, fueron sorprendidos por el Casique Alzado Josef Tupac Amaru a las 3 de la mañana, con 6000 indios que coxiendolos dormidos fue fácil derrotarlos matando 150 de ellos y el resto que ganó la

Iglesia fueron quemados en ella de modo que parese escaparon solamente cosa de 20 hombres quedando abastecido este rebelado con sus armas y unos pedreros de a quatro con cuyo infausto contratiempo debemos creer estará la ciudad del Cusco en la mayor consternación esperando Aucilio para defenderse, y debemos benga con prontitud parte de la tropa arreglada del Callao, que sin ella nada se podrá conseguir porque las milicias de Probincia, no tienen instrucción ni armas como tampoco espíritu alguno por

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ser la mayor parte cholos y mestizos, de quienes tendremos que guardarnos tanto como de los declarados amotinados. Dios ponga remedio a tantos males y guarde a Vmd muchos años,

Chucuito y Noviembre 28 de 1780.

Beso los pies de Vmd su más rendido hijo.

Nicolás de Mendiolaza

AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, ff. 31 r-34 r.

2. Letter from Don Simón Babil de Uriz to Don Joseph Joaquín de Mendiolaza

(Cádiz to Córdoba, 1782)

Simón Babil de Uriz answers back previous correspondence from his partners in

Córdoba including comments on the issues that suffered Cádiz market and the overseas trade.

Señor Don José Joaquín de Mendiolaza. Ausente a su poder. Córdoba del Tucumán.

Muy Señor mío, la de arriba con fecha de 3 de agosto del año pasado es copia de mi última Escripta a

Vmd, y sin alguna de sus faborecidas a que responder; sirbe esta para decirle que

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deseando hacerle alguna remessa de los efectos que menciona la memoria de Vmd he recorrido los almasenes de esta ciudad, y biendo que de los géneros que se encontraban para esse consumo piden unos precios tan excesibos como son el de las bretañas contra hechas que en tiempo de paz han solido valer de 18 a 20 reales pretenden hoy 23 y 24 y al respectibe [sic] los demas géneros, y sin poder hacer los surtimientos arreglados a dicha nota de Vmd Especialmente en los generos Yngleses cuya introducción está prohibida y por cuya razon solo se encuentran rezagos mal surtidos pretendiendo los vendedores (que los mas de ellos son Irlandeses) se les compre los que tienen, y como están por unos precios tan bárbaros; en estas circunstancias, y en la de no poder [sic] de vista la moral seguridad, que Vmd desea como yo en la remisión de sus intereses deseara, que las ordenes de Vmd fuessen terminantes por que ignorando como Vmd ignoran el estado de esta plaza, creen que en ella se encuentre todo según hoy se necesita, y no puedo combinar mi genio demasiado reparado para asentir a la compra de los géneros que se encuentren por precios tan excecibos como los que hoy corren sin tener la anuencia de Vmd por se cierto que si tocamos en breve la feliz noticia de la paz a 2, 4 o 6 meses tendremos los géneros con 20 o 25% mas baratos; estas reflexiones me retrahen a hacer la compra de dichos generos. Además que las embarcaciones, que se ponen a la carga, para Buenos Ayres no tienen la seguridad de ser comboyadaz y si la en que ba esta le tubiere es una casualidad de dos Nabios de guerra franseses destinados para la China, que dicen se lo daran hasta la Linea, y desde allí correrá su riesgo hasta dicho destino para esto era bueno haberlo sabido desde los principios para caminar con

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alguna mas seguridad, y con arreglo a las ordenes de la última carta de Vmd de 8 de febrero del año passado.

Al Señor Don Nicolás hijo de Vmd le tengo escripto con fechas de 16 de febrero y 25 de junio del año pasado dandole razon de sus intereses y como me tiene escripto, anteriormente que los retenga en mi poder hasta que disponga de ellos sobre que le tengo contextado, no ha ocurrido motibo de escribirle por no haber tenido carta alguna suya; es berdad que sospechamos que muchas de las cartas de essos Reynos las retienen en Madrid sin poderlas pedir, y quiza sera esta la causa de que carescamos de ellas.

Sobre las pertenecientes del Señor su hijo de Vmd el Dr Don Francisco Xabier Eusebio de Mendiolaza en la colocación de una de las dos sillas, que proponía al Rey, esse Señor

Ilustrisimo para su Cathedral se le escribió tiempos hasse a Don Santiago Saenz de

Azopa pero no habra resultado nada sin embargo de que me respondio estaría a la mira.

Que es quanto debo manifestar a Vmd cuya salud deseo sea muy cumplida, y que en ella me lo guarde nuestro señor por muchos años.

Cádiz 2 de enero de 1782

Simon Babil de Uriz

AHPC, Escribanía II, 1784, Leg. 62, exp. 5, ff. 92 v-94 v.

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3. Letter from Don Antonio de Figueroa to Dr. Don Francisco Xavier Eusebio de

Mendiolaza (Salta, 1784)

Antonio de Figueroa, native from Córdoba who became vecino and prominent merchant of Salta, notifies the priest Mendiolaza on the status of pending debts and credits related to Joseph Joaquín and Nicolás de Mendiolaza’s business in Salta.

Señor Dr. Don Francisco Xabier Eusebio.

Paysano y mui señor mío, a la que recibo de Buessamerzed, con fecha nueve de junio del correo próximo passado digo; que he hecho precente a los herederos del finado Don Gabriel de Torres el capítulo de ella y me dizen ser la quenta la que me dio el dicho finado, y remití a Buessamerzed, que en ella consta la cuenta de Don Domingo Patron, y el pagaré a fabor del finado hermano de Buessamerzed y con tenerlo yo nada hago, por no tener dicho Patron como satisfazer, y los demas vales mantengo en mi poder, por que no han satisfecho hasta el día: y la viuda del finado Don Josseph Domingo Saravia no quiere pagar los mil pesos que tiene a réditos, por dezir le debe mas cantidad Don Felipe su hermano de

Buessamerzed, y assy con estos henredos todo se entorpeze. Buessamerzed me recombiene le remita la plata que en mi poder haia entrada pertheneciente a

Buessamerzed, digo: que yo no tengo ninguna, por lo que ya tengo a Buessamerzed adbertido, que los dos mil trescientos pesos…, que debía entregarme Don Pedro

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Elejalde, los ha tomado su hermano y tengo su resguardo y no quiero tener pleito

ninguno con él, y ya le tengo adbertido a Buessamerzed en mis anthecedentes renueba su

poder a otra persona. De las novecientas noventa y seis mulas que se vendieron a Don

Apolinar Arias, se recibieron dos mil quatrosientos noventa pesos, y mayor cantidad me

haze cargo Don Gregorio Zegada de la hibernada de las tropas de mulas, yo al principio

entregue mil pesos por habermelos pedido, y me diputa le entregue el resto del total de la

hibernada y en esto estamos, el que yo le he de pagar por haberle escrito entregase las

mulas, que yo quedaba responsable a su ibernada, y yo le respondo que con

Buessamerzed se entienda, por dimanar la contrata por los dos, y aquí me esta sofocando con libranzas.

También pagué la Alcabala que importó ciento diecinueve pesos…, como también treinta pesos a Don Francisco de Aguirre; con que Buessamerzed de estas partidas se hará cargo y verá que ninguna plata tiene en mi poder, solo si ciento cincuenta y siete pesos que tengo cobrados de Don Juan Josseph Moreno y Don Feliz Sanchez, parte de lo que le deben de las mulas de dessecho que a estos se les vendió el año de ochenta y dos, y me falta de essta partida cincuenta pesos… que cobrar; y Buessamerzed se haga cargo mis ocupaciones las que no me permiten acudir a tiempo a todo lo que ocurre, sin embargo de haberme esforzado. Escribiré a Don Agustín Lopez me remita las mulas que tiene pertenecientes a Buessamerzed, y tengo propuesto sobre la permuta de su curato, y algunos dan essperanzas de lo que responderá a su tiempo.

He hecho llamar al Capatas Bernave Castellanos, a quien le he pedido cuentas y

quaderno de la tropa de mulas, que de cuenta de Buessamerzed caminaron a Perú, y me

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dize que todo lo recibió su hermano de Buessamerzed Don Lorenzo, pues estubieron en la Carzel juntos, por no se que cuento que tubo el dicho Lorenzo, y que esto le consta al

Dr. Arredondo, con lo que no he tenido mas que haserle cargo. A Don Felipe su hermano de balde es recombenirle con las de Buessamerzed, porque le dentra por un oydo y por otro le sale. Yo le dezeo su salud cumplida y que me mande como assu afecto.

Don Manuel Salbador Fernandez quedó en meses pasados en entregar la plata pertheneciente a Don Vicente Candioti a la que estaban reatadas dos mil mulas que en el

Rosario estaban en hibernada, y en este tiempo me fui al Bañado a mis recogidas, y había caminado para abajo el dicho Fernandez, y no se me entregó la plata y parte de dichas mulas hizo caminar el y lo esspero para que me de cumplimiento, que no dudo assí lo verifique. Dios le guarde muchos años.

Salta, julio beinticinco de ochenta y quatro

Su afecto servidor y paisano verdadero.

Antonio de Figueroa

AHPC, Escribanía II, 1787, Leg. 68, exp. 6, ff. 41 r – 43 r.

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