Eyeing Alameda Park: Topographies of Culture, Class, and Cleanliness in Bourbon Mexico City, 1700 - 1800

Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation

Authors Hamman, Amy Cathleen

Publisher The University of Arizona.

Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.

Download date 25/09/2021 11:10:01

Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/556702

EYEING ALAMEDA PARK: TOPOGRAPHIES OF CULTURE, CLASS, AND CLEANLINESS IN BOURBON MEXICO CITY, 1700 – 1800

Amy C. Hamman

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the

SCHOOL OF ART

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

WITH A MAJOR IN ART HISTORY AND EDUCATION

In the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

2015

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE

As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Amy C. Hamman, titled Eyeing Alameda Park: Topographies of Culture, Class, and Cleanliness in Bourbon Mexico City, 1700 – 1800 and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

______Date: April 22, 2015 Stacie G. Widdifield

______Date: April 22, 2015 Emily Umberger

______Date: April 22, 2015 Julie-Anne Plax

Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College.

I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement.

______Date: April 22, 2015 Dissertation Director: Stacie G. Widdifield

STATEMENT BY AUTHOR

This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library.

Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder.

SIGNED: Amy C. Hamman

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It takes a community to write a dissertation, and this project is proof. I am grateful for the support and encouragement provided by the faculty in the

Department of Art History at the University of Arizona. I give profound thanks to committee members Stacie G. Widdifield, Emily Umberger, and Julie-Anne Plax for sharing their brilliant minds and subject expertise. Professor Widdifield chaired this committee and served as my graduate advisor. I am eternally grateful for her tireless support of my research and her steadfast dedication to my academic development; with patience and persistence, she challenged me to become the best researcher, art history scholar, and instructor possible. I am deeply respectful of her professionally and personally. Thank you, as well, to my mentors and colleagues past and present across departments, programs, and schools for their friendship, laughter, and good food and wine served up for many long years.

A heartfelt note of thanks goes to Leslie Dupont at the University of Arizona

Writing Skills Improvement Program for delivering me from a very difficult stretch of self-doubt; Leslie helped me find my voice, or rather, my inner “Analagator.” I also owe a considerable debt to friend, scholar, and wicked wordsmith, Andrés

Fernández Pallares, for his mad language skills, which helped bring life to my

Spanish translations. The School of Art, the Graduate College, and the College of Fine

Arts Medici Scholars Program all provided monetary support for my research. In particular, thank you to Mrs. Mary Ann Stubbs for her patronage of the Medici

Program, which allowed me to conduct research in Mexico and Spain. At the Archivo

Histórico del Distrito Federal, thanks go to staff members Blanca Gaytán and

Ricardo Méndez Cantarel whose kindness and friendly demeanors made even a dusty day at the archives pleasant and fun. Also, this project assuredly would have faltered without the help of Kimberly Mast at the Visual Resource Center, the staff at the University of Arizona Libraries, and the Interlibrary Loan team. These persons searched high and low to provide me with access to far-flung images and texts.

Lastly, this achievement would never have been possible without the pillars of my life: mother Suzette McAfee, partner Joerg Hader, and four-legged partner

CIDney 2000. Each were there for every step of this journey, grounding me with warmth, humor, endless pep talks (the kind only a mother can give), Kleenex (“there is no crying in ‘hobby’”), and unleashed enthusiasm for the simple things in life like an afternoon run, ground squirrels, and unexpected treats. No words can ever express the depth of my love, respect, and appreciation… We did it, y’all!

DEDICATION

To the true and the dogged: SMRCM, Joerg, and CIDney 2000.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ...... 9

ABSTRACT ...... 10

INTRODUCTION ...... 11 Literature Review ...... 16 Chapter Organization ...... 24 Spanish Language Usage ...... 27 Notes to Introduction ...... 28

CHAPTER ONE: LOCATING VIEWS OF ALAMEDA PARK ...... 31 Problems in the Literature ...... 37 Makers of City Views: Artists and Engineers ...... 41 Views of Alameda Park ...... 45 Novelties of the Mexican Experience ...... 46 Emblem and Meaning ...... 49 A Body of Images ...... 52 Conclusion: Reflections of Park and City ...... 54 Notes to Chapter One ...... 56

CHAPTER TWO: FINDING CONTEXT: MEXICO CITY, 1700 – 1800 ...... 61 The Physical Environment ...... 66 Spanish Colonial Society ...... 73 Racial Heterogeneity ...... 74 Material Contrasts ...... 77 Reformism in the Eighteenth Century ...... 85 Social Reform in Mexico City ...... 88 Conclusion: The Cultural Landscape of Bourbon Mexico ...... 90 Notes to Chapter Two ...... 92

CHAPTER THREE: VOWS OF PURITY, CONQUEST, AND PATRIARCHY ...... 101 Founding the Amerindian Convent of Corpus Christi ...... 104 A Picture Fit For the King ...... 109 The Medics in Babylon ...... 114 Spanish Corruption ...... 115 Amerindian Purity ...... 118 Purity in Word and Image ...... 122 Conclusion: Utopian Visions of Kingdom and Conquest ...... 128 Notes to Chapter Three ...... 131

CHAPTER FOUR: THE DIRT POOR AND THE FILTHY RICH ...... 137 The Dirt on Paseo de la Alameda ...... 139 The Landscape of Poverty ...... 143 The “Offices of Lucifer” ...... 148

A Popular Pastime ...... 149 Idle Hands ...... 153 The Art of Incontinence ...... 157 Cleansing the Dirt Poor ...... 159 Conclusion: Smearing the Filthy Rich ...... 164 Notes to Chapter Four ...... 166

CHAPTER FIVE: super VISION: ABSTRACTING SPACE ...... 174 Out of Sight, Out of Mind ...... 177 Changing the Field of Perception ...... 183 Removing Underbrush ...... 189 Zoning Space ...... 193 Counting People ...... 195 Sanitizing Spaces ...... 198 Conclusion: Scotomas of super Vision ...... 201 Notes to Chapter Five ...... 204

CHAPTER SIX: super VISION: CLASSIFYING RACE ...... 209 Seeing Nature, Observing Diversity ...... 212 Bodies and the Diagnostic Gaze ...... 216 Quantifying Race/Qualifying Bodies ...... 219 Stain and Status ...... 225 The Perceived Stain of African Heritage ...... 226 The Royal Pragmatic on Marriages ...... 228 Passing as Spaniard ...... 233 Conclusion: Resistance to Systems of Legibility ...... 236 Notes to Chapter Six ...... 239

CONCLUSION: READING BETWEEN THE [TREE] LINES ...... 244

FIGURES ...... 251

WORKS CITED ...... 259

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1 Anonymous, Procesión de Santiago Apóstol en el barrio de Tlatelolco, mid-18th century, oil on canvas, 83.5 x 112 cm, Galerías la Granja, México, D.F.

Figure 1.2 Anonymous, View of the Alameda and the Viceregal Palace, Folding Screen, Biombo, ca. 1650, oil on canvas, 184 x 488 cm, Museo de América, Madrid, Spain.

Figure 2.1 Prometo Barragán Velázquez, Portrait of Juan Vicente de Güemes, Second Count of Revillagigedo, ca. 1790, oil on canvas, 239 x 176.5 cm, Museo de la Ciudad de México, México, D.F.

Figure 3.1 Anonymous, Mapa del Alameda Paseo de la Mui Noble Ciudad de Mexico, ca. 1719 – 1722, oil on wood, 210 x 148 cm, Colección Palacio Real de la Almudaina, Palma de Mayorca, Spain.

Figure 4.1 Anonymous, Paseo de la Alameda de Mexico, 1775, oil on metal sheet, 56 x 47 cm, Private Collection, México.

Figure 5.1 José María de la Bastida, Plan Ignográfico de la Alameda de la Nobilísima Ciudad de México [h]Echo en el Año de 1778, 1778, oil on canvas, 201 x 100 cm, Museo de la Ciudad de México, México, D.F.

Figure 6.1 Anonymous, De Alvina y Español, produce Negro torna atrás, ca. 1775, oil on canvas, 46 x 55 cm, Banco Nacional de México, México, D.F.

ABSTRACT

This study addresses eighteenth-century illustrations of Mexico City’s

Alameda Park. The study reads views of Alameda Park for information about the cultural, political, and economic topographies of the colonial city. Alameda Park offered a place of leisure that was free and open to all members of society. It is argued that as a popular, public setting the Alameda represented a discursive space where cultural opinions were shaped. These beliefs found expression in physical objects: views of Alameda Park. Despite the informational value of these expressions, views of Alameda Park remain an untapped resource on account of the ambiguity surrounding their classification as either an objective map or an artful landscape. This study takes a visual culture approach; it calls attention to the ways views of Alameda Park utilize the conventions of both map and landscape. The study analyzes four views of the park. Each view illustrates a moment in colonial history.

These include: the 1719 founding of a convent for Amerindian women—the first in two hundred years of colonial rule, the 1774 opening of the Hospicio de Pobres—a facility that incarcerated vagrants in order to rehabilitate them, the circa 1775 renovation of Alameda Park—a project joining citywide efforts to better police the population, and the 1778 promulgation of the Royal Pragmatic on Marriages—a bill designed to preserve Spanish hegemony in a racially-diverse context. Each view speaks a distinctive narrative; by reading the object, audiences gain detailed information about the shifting cultural landscape of eighteenth-century Mexico City.

INTRODUCTION

Illustrations of the land and people of colonial Spanish America generated an expansive body of visual materials. Views of Mexico City represent one category within this oeuvre. Throughout the history of New Spain (1519 – 1821), illustrators applied a diverse array of graphic and pictorial techniques in order to render selective interpretations of the physical and cultural topography of Mexico City.

Today, these efforts are manifested in an assortment of oil paintings, ink on paper drawings, wood block and copper-etched prints, watercolors, decorative arts, governmental documents, and other tangible objects. “City views,” a descriptive phrase employed throughout this study to refer to such objects, range in scope from full panoramic vistas and schematic city maps to partial scenes of specific locations and/or familiar landmarks. This study addresses city views of Alameda Park; it reads in them information about the cultural, political, and economic topographies of eighteenth-century Mexico City. As the first and principal park of the capital of

New Spain, the Alameda offered a place of leisure that was free and open to all members of the public. For this reason, the park provides an apt location to examine the policies, customs, and beliefs shared by colonial society.

In specific, this study analyzes four views of Alameda Park that were created to illustrate specific moments in the history of Mexico City. These moments include: the 1719 founding of a convent for Amerindian women, the 1774 opening of a hospice for the homeless, the completion of a park renovation in circa 1775, and the

1778 promulgation of the Royal Pragmatic on Marriages. It is argued that views of 12 the park stand proxy for a larger set of cultural values and social policies that affected colonial residents citywide. This set of cultural values and social policies is what the present study refers to as, “the cultural landscape.” Of city views, this study asks two primary questions. First, what subjects appear in views of Alameda Park?

And second, in these views, whose perspective is expressed and for what purpose is it articulated—in other words, who defines the dominant cultural viewpoint, what social groups are included and excluded from it, and how do park views both validate and resist dominant perspectives? In consideration of such questions, the present study reads views of Alameda Park and analyzes them within the local context of Mexico City and amid the climate generated by the Bourbon Reforms.

Particularly influential Bourbon-era administrators include viceroys Baltasar de

Zúñiga Guzmán Sotomayor y Mendoza, Duke of Arión and Marquis of Valero (vr.

1716 – 1722); Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, Marquis of Valleheroso and Count of Jerena (vr. 1771 – 1779); and Juan Vicente de Güemes Pacheco de Padilla y

Horcasitas, Second Count of Revillagigedo (vr. 1789 – 1794). The incumbency of these men, and the policies they implemented while serving the Crown, correspond to the spotlighted historical moments.

Located a little over one half mile from the main plaza, between the modern- day avenues of Juárez and Hidalgo, Alameda Park offers a vivid reminder of Mexico

City’s colonial legacy.1 The park was constructed in 1592, at that time, on the outskirts of town. By the eighteenth century, however, it was fully incorporated into the sprawling urban environment. Circa 1750, the park was bordered to the north by an aqueduct that brought fresh water to the city; to the south, by the Convent of 13

Corpus Christi and the Hospicio de Pobres; to the west, by the quemadero or burning stake of the Holy Office of the Inquisition; and to the east, by the convent of Santa

Isabel and the estate of the Marquis de Santa Fe de Guardiola. While the shape and character of the Alameda changed over the course of the colonial period, it remained a popular destination among city inhabitants of all social classes. Residents of colonial Mexico City frequented the park, taking respite from a crowded urban environment. Enveloped by shady enclaves, park-goers socialized with friends, napped, purchased refreshments, pursued romance, and took in the sights and sounds of a popular destination.

Yet in these activities, authorities perceived the threat of social disorder. This study defines “social disorder” as lawlessness or chaos. Authorities believed that unlawful, morally proscribed, and/or irregular behaviors led to social disorder. City officials, for example, regarded bosky avenues as screens that shielded vagrants, veils that obscured crimes, and curtains that hid forbidden trysts. Authorities’ attempts to protect “social order,” defined as lawful and disciplinary behaviors, are appreciable in the amount of legislation generated for this cause. Superintending the park intended to keep its patrons on the proverbial straight and narrow. The terms

“authorities” or “officials,” refer to individuals that served the Spanish Crown and/or the municipal government of Mexico City. Authorities include policeman, judges and magistrates, city council members, advisors, viceroys, etc. The term also applies to persons whose opinions influenced policy—in other words, “educated society” or the “educated elite.” 14

The “colonial elite,” “elites,” or the “upper class” is a modern-day expression also requiring clarification. This study uses the term to describe members of the propertied class, individuals generally of Spanish ancestry. To distinguish themselves from persons of non-noble ancestry, elites used the honorific titles of

“don” or “doña.” Many elites derived their fortunes from family dynasties amassed through the industries of agriculture, mining, and mercantilism. Elites typically shared in the interests of colonial authorities; many elite men in fact held high- ranking positions in the municipal and viceregal governments. Members of the elite also served in the upper echelons of the colonial clergy. This study calls attention to the social, cultural, and material contrasts between the standards of living enjoyed by elites and the standards of living endured by the urban poor.

The “urban poor,” “commoners,” “plebeians,” etc. are, as well, present-day terms that refer to lower order socioeconomic groups of colonial society.

Eighteenth-century audiences used similar words. Designations such as “la gente”

(the masses) and “plebe” (plebs) are found frequently in historical documentation.

The urban poor formed the largest segment of the population. Members of this

“esfera” (sphere) included everyone from entry-level bureaucrats and low-skilled workers down to the homeless. It is important to note that even Spaniards numbered among the urban poor, as did Amerindians, Africans, and mixed-raced persons. In theory, the social hierarchy was most profoundly affected by the state of limpieza de sangre or blood cleanliness. In Spain, this condition applied to family trees free of Islamic, Jewish, and heretical ancestors; put differently, an individual bearing limpieza de sangre could boast of his/her genealogical ties to Old World, 15

Christian Europe. In colonial New Spain, the traditional definition of limpieza de sangre adapted to accommodate the complex issue of social mobility among pureblood, Amerindians and social mobility among mixed-race persons possessing economic leverage. Among other themes, this study explores the shifts of limpieza de sangre that occurred during the eighteenth century.

City views portraying Alameda Park offer an excellent source of information about the ways historical audiences expressed paradigms of social order through metaphor. As historian Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán writes, “enlightened thinkers hoped to transform the entire [Spanish colonial] society into a French-style garden in which each person would remain in his appointed place.”2 Popularized in late seventeenth-century Europe, formal gardens embodied the fundamental tenets of enlightened thought.3 These gardens exhibited geometrical order, rational plans, and refined aesthetics. Educated society furthermore believed artful constructions of nature schooled patrons in the fruits of reason, the authority of science, and the enterprising spirit of mankind.4

In the context of colonial Mexico, garden planning and city planning were two subjects that united. The formal garden, like the city, demanded cleanliness and order. Garden paths as well as city streets called for alignment, leveling, and maintenance. And, displays of foliage shared with civic architecture, a need for uniformity and standardization. Colonial audiences couched their recognition of the parallelism between gardening and civic organization in the trope of the garden.

While discussing topiary, one historical commentator suggested that pruning was to young trees as laws were to the lower classes.5 A person may extrapolate from this 16 account that the Alameda operated as a symbolic space of discourse where ideas about discipline and social cultivation blossomed.

Literature Review

The content of this study is indebted to the research of many scholars who have skillfully addressed the geography, history, and art of colonial Mexico. The work of early twentieth-century historians, for example, helped this study gain a broad prospective on colonial urbanization and the spatial anatomy of Mexico City.

In addition to primary documents, this dissertation draws information from archival materials transcribed within the monographs of earlier authors; in particular, Luis

González Obregón, Jose María Marroqui, and Manuel Orozco y Berra.6 These authors provided foundational information about the history and physical spaces of colonial

Mexico City. Their work continues to be relevant and useful to scholars today.

Historiographer Manuel Carrera Stampa published one of the most essential analyses of Mexican geography.7 This mid-twentieth century study, Planos de la

Ciudad de México, presents a four-part discussion. Part One provides a commentary on the history of cartographic methodology and practice including projection, relief, scale, and documentation about the coordinates of Mexico City. Part Two follows with an exposition on the urban character, markets, and commercial goods of late colonial and early nineteenth-century Mexico. Part Three issues a bibliography of

(then-known) maps of Mexico City; here, Carrera indexed 530 examples. Part Four includes a list of the primary and secondary sources the author consulted in order to compile such a list; and lastly, Part Five contains 116 reproductions of select maps. 17

Art historian Manuel Toussaint and his contemporaries conducted a similar study on the maps, history, and urbanization of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Mexico

City.8 While enormously useful, the two editions of Planos nevertheless fall short since both consider only visual materials defined in the strictest sense as cartography. This omission is nevertheless revealing as it exemplifies a fundamental problem, which the present study aims to address.

Traditionally the field of cartography has been dominated by the belief that mapping is an objective science that uses measurements and equations to render topographical realities. Consequently, the history of cartography is told through benchmarks of linear progress tracked by ever more exacting methods of empirical practice. This mindset shapes the metanarrative of cartography. As author Matthew

H. Edney points out, “every member of modern, developed society is conditioned to accept this ideal as truth and to assume that maps are produced by neutral technologies derived from science and mathematics.”9 However, over the last thirty years the discipline of Geography has undergone revision. The community reevaluated its perspectives on the cartographic ideal or the point of view that maps are objective representations of reality. The field of cartographic history subsequently opened; today it embraces a wide range of forms and analytical practices.

Scholars such as David Woodward, J.B. Harley, and Denis Cosgrove, among others developed theoretical models that aimed to better address the broad cultural and artistic contexts of mapping.10 This study finds resonance in their writings, which treat geographical representation for what it is: a social practice. 18

Contemporary theorist Jeremy Black offers a cogent argument for the cultural subjectivity of mapping. As he explains, “map-makers have to choose what to show and how to show it, and by extension, what not to show.”11 His words underscore the art and artifice involved in all acts of representation.

Geographical studies of Mexico have profited from recent expansion in the discipline. Elías Trabulse and Sonia Lombardo de Ruiz in collaboration with Yolanda

Terrán Trillo and Mario de la Torre offer two excellent surveys that take into account a more robust assortment of visual materials.12 The latter contribution,

Atlas Histórico de la ciudad de México, is the first historical atlas devoted exclusively to depictions of Mexico City. The two-volume series features 732 illustrations reproduced in color, which are sorted by subject matter and then arranged chronologically to span the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. Its contribution to the present study has been manifold. For one, it calls attention to the diversity of forms and functions within the city view genre. Second, the atlas provides a meticulous bibliographic tool. And last, the quality of its reproductions and transcriptions have enabled the study of objects unavailable for firsthand viewing.

In addition to the atlases mentioned above, cartographic historian Héctor

Mendoza Vargas has published several important studies that follow suit with the shift in cartography. México a través de los mapas, for example, traces the history of

New World maps from fifteenth-century Europe to twentieth-century Mexico.13

Essays from its contributing authors on subjects such as—the development of

European cartography, local and regional maps of the cities of New Spain, and the territorial maps of the Viceroyalty—made this book an essential addition to the 19 canon of literature. Mendoza’s more recent, Historias de la Cartografía de

Iberoamérica: Nuevos caminos, viejos problemas, co-edited with scholar Carla Lois, offers an anthology of nineteen papers presented at the first two symposia on the history of Latin American cartography.14 Its essays circulate current research and practical applications of new, cartographic theory. This study gained a more nuanced understanding of the institutional mapping practices of eighteenth-century

Spain after reading the essay authored by María del Carmen León García.15

Self-criticism in the field of cartography has also led to its connection with visual cultural studies. Historian Richard Kagan, for example, situates maps of

Spanish American cities within a visual culture framework. Urban Images of the

Hispanic World: 1493 – 1793, offers an object-driven approach to the study of colonial city views.16 One strength of this survey is the author’s discussion of

European perspectives on urbanization. Kagan explores what the concept of city meant to sixteenth-century Europeans. He furthermore suggests how Spanish colonial city views communicated ideas of civility and civilization. The second strength of Urban Images is its overview of the development of early modern cartography. Kagan successfully shows how art and cartography joined in examples of early modern geographical representation.

The eighteenth century presents one of the most fruitful periods for studying

Mexico City views. One reason is because Bourbon Kings Charles III and his son

Charles IV mandated an extensive rehabilitation of the Spanish state during the latter half of the century. This overhaul aspired to modernize Spain and to consolidate its power. Legislation from the Bourbon Reform period involved 20 political and economic restructuring, as well as social and cultural rejuvenation. In

Mexico City, these projects generated a mass of visual materials that aimed to better organize the urban environment and superintend its inhabitants. As art historian

Barbara Mundy notes, “Bourbon-era projects of urban reform in Mexico City were the engine of urban cartography.”17 Geographical representation, in turn, enabled civic administrators to bring new physical and social realities to fruition.

As a study of colonial visual and material culture, this dissertation profited from contributions since the 1990s to the field of art history. Various national and international exhibitions have whetted public appetite for Spanish colonial art and increased the accessibility of objects held in private collections or abroad. To this point, five spectacular examples must suffice. These include: Converging Cultures:

Art and Identity in Spanish America, 1996, put together by the Brooklyn Museum;

The Grandeur of Viceregal Mexico: Treasures from the Museo Franz Mayer, 2002;

Painting a New World: 1521 – 1821, 2004, coordinated by the Denver Art Museum;

The Arts in Latin America 1492 – 1820, 2006, organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, and the Los Angeles County Museum of

Art (LACMA); and Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World, 2011 – 2012, organized by LACMA and the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia in

Mexico. Accompanying catalogues from these shows contain essays that carefully contextualize objects so that they may be more fully understood and appreciated.18

The work of authors Michael Schreffler, Ilona Katzew, and Magali Carrera also call attention to the ways city views are manifested in colonial portraiture, biombos or

Asian-inspired room screen, and pinturas de castas or caste paintings.19 From these 21 studies, this dissertation derived an awareness of the questions driving current scholarship.

The recent publication of Buen Gusto and Classicism in the Visual Cultures of

Latin America, 1780 – 1910, a volume edited by Paul B. Niell and Stacie G. Widdifield, offers insights on how colonial expressions of neoclassicism—a style introduced to

New Spain during the late eighteenth century—relate to views of Alameda Park.20

Through a collection of essays that cover a span of one hundred and thirty years, the contributing authors of Buen Gusto explore the contradictions and paradoxes in the spread of neoclassicism. Collectively, these authors inspire one to see how colonial audiences selectively, and with varying intentions, adopted neoclassicism. Elite audiences in Mexico typically associated the new taste for austerity and geometrical order with progress and reform. Civic leaders and wealthy patrons, alike, espoused neoclassicism as an aesthetic expressive of social superiority. In a word,

Neoclassicism gave form to local interpretations of cultural refinement and ideas about suppressing the urban poor.

To achieve a balanced understanding of the social, political, and economic situations of eighteenth-century Mexico, this study consulted a variety of historical materials. In particular, the work of David Brading helped to contextualize the

Bourbon Reform period.21 The writings of Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán, Sonia

Lombardo de Ruiz, and Pamela Voekel brought insights into the conflicts over urban space during the latter part of the century.22 Sharon Bailey Glasco directed attention to the quality of life and living conditions in colonial Mexico City.23 Doris M. Ladd, R.

Douglas Cope, and María Elena Martínez provided nuanced information about the 22 contours of colonial society.24 And, Gabriel Haslip-Viera and Michael C. Scardaville delivered information about the criminal elements of Mexico City.25 In addition to these historical works, relevant are the anthropological writings of Setha M. Low.26

Her research on the meaning and function public space in Latin America called attention to the significance of place and its discursive qualities. Social theorists

Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre additionally provided conceptual theories about space to steer the analytical thrust of this project.27 James C. Scott’s discussion of synoptic vision in relation to scientific forestry in Prussia and Saxony proved useful for understanding how city views abstract disparate, environmental features.28 And, authors Ann Bermingham and W. J. T. Mitchell imparted an appreciation for the medium and ideology of landscape.29

The body of literature supporting this study is vast and has been helpful in many ways; however, on the topic of city views there is more to be done. Primarily, its inability to address the interstice of cartography and art presents a major oversight. Scholars treating city views have failed to debunk the “myth of the map,” the assumptions embodied in the “cartographic ideal” that separate maps from paintings, and the rigidity of labels such as “painting” and “map.” Consequently, the ways researchers approach the study of geographical representation in colonial

Mexico remains outmoded. What the literature lacks is the approach espoused by visual culture studies. Visual culture refers to the relationship between images and their audiences. It is based on analysis of three factors: object, field of production, and audience reception. The study of visual culture requires scholars to question a broad range of visual practices and objects. In regard to the study of city views, a 23 visual cultural model bypasses problems of taxonomy by eschewing labels and exploring objects within their particular social, political, and economic contexts.

Another need addressed by this dissertation is the consideration of the city view genre in relation to vision. As Cosgrove writes, “both landscape and map are strongly pictorial terms;” this connects them to visual practice.30 Vision entails more than simply the faculty of sight; it relates as well to processes of mental imagination.31 Hence, views of colonial Mexico City may be understood as: tangible object, mental image, and/or selective description of reality. As a selective index, views communicate eyewitness information; however, as mental image, they reinterpret the world and personalize it with cultural perspectives, social values, and political agendas. Lastly, as a tangible object, views of the city provide their audiences with concrete models to execute ideas. Author Jonathan Crary delivers a productive way to think about social and historical viewpoints. While no two individuals see the world exactly the same, he finds a connection between normative modes of vision and contemporary systems of knowledge.32 Visual perception, he writes, occurs within a prescribed set of possibilities, which are in turn embedded in convention and social practice.33 This study analyzes the social practice of seeing Alameda Park. It furthermore singles out moments in the history of Mexico City that demanded vision be systematically considered, conceptually manipulated, and physically actualized.

Chapter Organization

Chapters One, “Locating Views of Alameda Park” and Two, “Finding Context,

Mexico City, 1700 – 1800,” provide foundational information about the city view genre and the physical and cultural dimensions of eighteenth-century Mexico City.

Chapter One delves further into problems and omissions within the literature on city views. After exploring questions about the ontology, function, indexicality, and makers of views, the chapter narrows its focus to Alameda Park. In effect, it locates views of Alameda Park within the larger genre of urban, geographical representation. The chapter considers how emblem and meaning relate to the park view, suggesting that audiences perceived Alameda Park as a quintessential feature of Mexico City and of elite culture. Lastly Chapter One reviews the criteria this study applied to the selection of park views. Chapter Two is purely historical. By exploring the physical and cultural topography of colonial Mexico City, it brings context to the subsequent analyses of park views. This chapter also sets up a platform for discussing themes treated in later chapters. These themes include limpieza de sangre, wealth inequality, spatial organization, and the meaning race and class in colonial society.

Each of the subsequent chapters focuses on a singular view of Alameda Park.

Through the analysis of the painting Mapa del Alameda Paseo, Chapter Three—

“Vows of Purity, Conquest, and Patriarchy”—explores events surrounding the establishment of the first convent in New Spain to accept Amerindian women. It departs from past studies of the Convent of Corpus Christi by calling attention to the political agenda that lay at the heart of the convent. The chief supporter of this 25 initiative was Viceroy Valero, who in patronizing the convent replicated on a small scale the framework upon which Spanish governance rested, i.e., the king as a benevolent father figure whose paternal care ensured prosperity. A second thread woven into the discourse on the convent is the idea that Amerindian groups possessed limpieza de sangre. As this chapter suggests, recognition of Amerindian blood purity was elemental to the logic that persuaded Church leaders to accept high status Amerindian women; it was also a concept deftly employed by civic leaders to justify Spanish colonialism.

Chapter Four, “The Dirt Poor and the Filthy Rich,” examines the physical and symbolic topographies of poverty illustrated in the painting Paseo de la Alameda. It argues that the portrayal of the Poorhouse responds, first, to the introduction of this facility into the cultural landscape of reformist ideas; and second, to authorities’ attempts to rehabilitate social disorders believed endemic to the poor, i.e., alcoholism, idleness, and public incontinence. Like the Convent of Corpus Christi, the establishment of the Poorhouse marks a shift in the cultural landscape; this shift responds to attitudes about welfare assistance. As part of the Bourbon stimulus, the

Poorhouse aimed to upgrade the labor force, turning nonproductive idlers into contributing members of society. This study situates the establishment of the

Poorhouse within the material and cultural dimensions of poverty. It calls attention to the material contrasts between elites and commoners—in particular, the severe imbalance of wealth that arguably contributed to the physical and psychological manifestation of dirtiness among the poor. 26

Chapters Five and Six introduce the concept of supervision, with an emphasis on the prefix “super.” This study employs the phrase, “super vision” to refer to the pairing of vision and social management; it speaks to the ways colonial authorities used visual acumen in the attempt to better monitor and scrutinize colonial bodies.

Chapter Five, “super Vision: Abstracting Space,” analyzes the park view titled, Plano ignográfico. This view served the late-century renovation of Alameda Park. It calls attention to the techniques of representational abstraction that authorities used in order to gain a synoptic picture of Mexico City. In specific, the techniques of super vision addressed in this chapter include zoning ordinances, census counts, and sanitation laws. The chapter argues, broadly, that super vision was disproportionately directed at the urban poor; and more specifically, that policing the poor allowed elites to widen the cultural boundaries between themselves and the lower classes. Chapter Six, “super Vision: Classifying Race,” continues to explore vision as it relates to the exposition of race. The caste painting, De Alvina y Español provides an example of the ways historical audiences used the eye as an empirical tool—in this case, one that read physiognomy in order to assess the quality of an individual, i.e., his or her racial, social, and economic place within society. Assuredly, reading the body was a flawed science, especially among a racially-diverse population. This chapter calls attention to the perceived problem of marriage between socially unequal races; which is to say, the marriage law sought to protect

Spanish limpieza de sangre in a context where qualifications made by the eye were an insufficient measure of genealogical purity.

Spanish Language Usage

All English language translations of Spanish text are mine. Spanish language transcriptions appear in the endnotes; quoted passages preserve the language, spelling, capitalization, and accents found in source materials. When clarity of syntax necessitated, this study altered the original punctuation of Spanish language materials. All attempts were made to preserve the meaning of Spanish language passages, while updating the vocabulary for a modern readership.

Notes to Introduction

1 The name, “Alameda Park,” derives from the Spanish word álamo meaning poplar tree. Spaniards used the term to refer to leisure gardens because these spaces were typically planted with species of trees belonging to the Populus Genus. The term was introduced to the Americas by Spanish colonists in the sixteenth century and used in reference to Mexico’s first public park. The word “alameda” has since become a ubiquitous term signifying a public park or garden.

2 Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán, Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, trans. Sonya Lipsett- Rivera and Sergio Rivera Ayala (Wilmington, DE: A Scholarly Resources, Inc. 1999), 173.

3 Designed for the Sun King Louis XIV (r. 1643 – 1715) by landscape architect André Le Nôtre, the Gardens of Versailles offer perhaps the best known example. Le Nôtre’s keen interest in Cartesian rationalism and domesticated nature inspired a generation of garden architects. His designs are characterized by axial symmetry, geometrical order, regular patterns, and disciplined foliage.

4 The literature on formal gardens is rich; in particular, this study consulted: Kenneth Woodbridge, Princely Gardens: The Origins and Development of the French Formal Style (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986) and John Dixon Hunt, Michel Conan, and Claire Goldstein, Tradition and Innovation in French Garden Art: Chapters of a New History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

5 Baltasar Ladrón de Guevara, “Discurso sobre la policía de México, 1788” in Antología de Textos sobre la Ciudad de México en el Periodo de la Ilustración (1788 – 1792) ed. Sonia Lombardo de Ruíz (México: Colección Científica Fuentes Historia Social, 1982), 76. Also cited in Viqueira Albán, Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, 173.

6 Luis González Obregón, México viejo; noticias históricas, tradiciones, leyendas y costumbres del periodo de 1521 a 1821 (México: Tip. De la Escuela correccional de artes y oficios, ex-colegio de San Pedro y San Pablo, 1891) and Las calles de México, vida y costumbres de otros tiempos, 4th ed., 2 vols. (México: Botas S.A., 1936); José María Marroqui, La ciudad de México contiene: el origen de los nombres de muchas de sus calles y plazas, del de varios establecimientos públicos y privados, y no pocas noticias curiosas y entretenidas (México: Tip. y Lit. de J. Aguilar Vera y Ca., 1900 – 03; and Manuel Orozco y Berra, Apuntes para la historia de la geografía en México (México: Impr. de F. Díaz de León, 1881).

7 Manuel Carrera Stampa, Planos de la ciudad de México (México, D.F.: Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística, 1949).

8 Manuel Toussaint, Federico Goméz de Orozco, and Justino Fernández, Planos de la ciudad de México, siglos XVI y XVII: estudio histórico, urbanístico y bibliográfico (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1990).

9 Matthew H. Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765 – 1843 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 12.

10 On new directions in cartographic theory see the foundational J.B. Harley and David Woodward, eds. The History of Cartography vols. 1-6 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987 – 2003); J.B. Harley and Paul Laxton, The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography (Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University Press, 2001); and Denis Cosgrove, Geography and Vision: Seeing Imaging, and Representing the World (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2008).

11 Jeremy Black, Maps and Politics (London: Reaktion Books, 1997), 11.

12 Elías Trabulse, Cartografía mexicana: tesoros de la Nación, siglos XVI a XIX (México, D.F.: Archivo General de la Nación, 1983) and Sonia Lombardo de Ruiz, Yolanda Terán Trillo, and Mario de la Torre, Atlas histórico de la ciudad de México (México: Smurfit Cartón y Papel de México, 1996 – 1997).

13 Héctor Mendoza Vargas and Michel Antochiw, México a través de los mapas (Ciudad Universitaria, Del. Coyoacán, México, D.F.; Col. San Rafael, México, D.F.: Instituto de Geografía, UNAM; Plaza y Valdés Editores, 2000).

14 Mendoza and Carla Lois, Historias de la cartografía de Iberoamérica: nuevos caminos, viejos problemas, (México, D.F.: Instituto de Geografía, UNAM; INEGI, 2009).

15 María del Carmen León García, “Cartografía de los ingenieros militares” in Historias de la cartografía de Iberoamérica: nuevos caminos, viejos problemas, Héctor Mendoza Vargas and Carla Louis eds., (México, D.F.: Instituto de Geografía, UNAM; INEGI, 2009), 441 – 466.

16 Richard L. Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 1493 – 1793 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000).

17 Barbara Mundy, “The Images of Eighteenth-Century Urban Reform in Mexico City and the Plan of José Antonio Alzate,” Colonial Latin American Review 20, no. 1 (April 2012): 49.

18 Ilona Katzew et al., Contested visions in the Spanish Colonial World, (Los Angeles; New Haven Conn.: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Distributed by Yale University Press, 2011); Joseph J. Rishel et al., The Arts in Latin America, 1492 – 1820, (Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Museum of Art; Mexico City: Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso; Los Angeles; New Haven: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Yale University Press, 2006); Donna Pierce et al., Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521 – 1821, (Denver: Frederick and Jan Mayer Center for Pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial Art, Denver Art Museum, 2004); Héctor Rivero Borrell M. et al., La grandeza del México virreinal: tesoros del Museo Franz Mayer, (Houston, Tex.; Mexico: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museo Franz Mayer, 2002); and Diana Fane et al., Converging Cultures: Art & Identity in Spanish America, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996).

19 Michael Schreffler, The Art of Allegiance: Visual Culture and Imperial Power in Baroque New Spain (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007); Katzew, New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America, (New York: Americas Society, 1996) and Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); and Magali M. Carrera, "Locating Race in Late Colonial Mexico," Art Journal 57, no. 3 (1998): 36-45 and Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003).

20 Buen Gusto and Classicism in the Visual Cultures of Latin America, 1780 – 1910, eds. Paul Niell and Stacie Widdifield (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013). See also, Clasicismo en México, ed. Clara Bargellini and Elizabeth Fuentes (México, D.F.: Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporáneo, 1990).

21 David A. Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763 – 1810 (Cambridge: University Press, 1971).

22 Viqueira Albán, Propriety and Permissiveness, 1999; Sonia Lombardo de Ruiz, “Ideas y proyectos urbanísticos de la Ciudad de México, 1788 – 1850,” Ciudad de México: Ensayo de Construcción de Una Historia, ed. Alexandra Morena Toscana (México, D.F.: Secretaria de Educación Pública, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1978), 169 – 188; and Pamela Voekel, “Peeing on the Palace: Bodily Resistance to Bourbon Reforms in Mexico City,” Journal of Historical Sociology 4, no. 2 (1992): 183 – 208. 30

23 Sharon Bailey Glasco, Constructing Mexico City: Colonial Conflicts Over Culture, Space, and Authority (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

24 Doris M. Ladd, The Mexican Nobility at Independence, 1780 – 1826 (Austin: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas, 1976); R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660 – 1720 (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994); and María Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Relgion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008).

25 Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 1692 – 1810 (Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press, 1999) and Michael C. Scardaville, “Alcohol Abuse and Tavern Reform in Late Colonial Mexico” Hispanic American Historical Review 60:4 (1980), 643 – 671.

26 Setha M. Low, On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000).

27 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995) and Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1991).

28 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998).

29 W. J. T. Mitchell, Landscape and Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) and Ann Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic Tradition, 1740-1860 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

30 Cosgrove, Geography and Vision, 1.

31 Ibid., 15.

32 Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press, 1990).

33 Ibid., 6.

CHAPTER ONE

LOCATING VIEWS OF ALAMEDA PARK

Views of Mexico City portray individual interpretations of the physical, social, and cultural topographies of the urban environment; this study finds that past audiences felt compelled to create such objects and circulate them at particular moments in history. The category of city view constitutes one of three secular genres—along with casta painting and portraiture—that mainstreamed in urban

Mexico during the eighteenth century.1 Increased production of city views may be attributed to the fact that many of these objects fulfilled functions related to urban planning; they helped to visualize, and therefore concretize city beautification.2 A second reason for the popularity of the genre may be attributed to the fact that city views often communicate the idea of community; historian Richard Kagan refers to this aspect of the city view as its expression of civitas.3 A third reason accounting for upward trends in the production of city views during the eighteenth century may be the concurrent rise of Creole self-validation.4 The art historian Ilona Katzew has convincingly argued that casta paintings reflect a growing sense of Creole pride; similarly, city views provide satisfying pictures of managed diversity.5

Whatever combination of reasons sparked their popularity during the eighteenth century, city views of Mexico City arguably provide a unique window onto the social, political, and economic climate of New Spain at that time. Beginning around the year 1700, several factors coalesced to shift the cultural landscape of this region. Adoption of free trade policies helped to generate more opportunities for 32 social mobility; society’s espousal of enlightened rationalism meant greater recognition of individual achievement; and the expansion of patriarchal government under the Bourbon Kings brought with it substantial intervention into the lives of colonial subjects. These situations were interpreted through city views—objects that present multiple and sometimes divergent viewpoints.

In addition to their value as cultural expressions, city views offer a compelling subject for several other reasons. City views demonstrate the marriage of two disciplines now perceived as separate: art and cartography. Cartographic historians have noted the evolution of this disjuncture, drawing attention to mapping practices that began in the sixteenth century with pictorial illustrations and those that ended in the eighteenth century with graphic diagrams.6 Today, the common viewpoint is that one reads a map, but one contemplates an artwork. The assumption is that cartography merely systematizes geographical information, making data legible but expressing little else. Likewise, taken at face value, landscapes are assumed to illustrate fictitious subjects; these objects are therefore seldom mined for concrete, factual information. This is problematic and so the present study refutes both sets of assumptions. It calls attention, instead, to the ways that city views function discursively—to the manner in which these objects take on dual qualities of both map and landscape for expressive purposes, and to situations wherein historical audiences used them to articulate objective truths and subjective feelings.

A close examination of Mexico City views shows that these objects exhibit an extensive array of cartographic as well as artistic qualities. Typically rendered in 33 oblique projection (a forty-five degree angle, also known as the bird’s eye view or aerial view), these hybrids of map and landscape indiscriminately apply mathematics and pictorial invention. As said earlier, individual interpretations of the environment undoubtedly served multiple purposes. The use typographic notations, i.e., the cartographic key, structure ideal viewing experiences. Most city views additionally insert humans and even animals into the landscape. These pictorial elements inhabit space and in doing so convey the lively relationships that bound a community to its land and resources.

The city views in question bring eighteenth-century social issues into focus, providing vivid information about the contours of society. Populated with figures that represent social stereotypes, city views join the customary portraits of the social elite with depictions of the non-elite, i.e., water carriers (aguadores), porters

(porteros), fruit sellers (fruteras), corn grinders (molenderas), and many others. The multifocal worlds expressed through the medium of the city view communicate nuances of gender and employment, class and economy, power and privilege, and the unspoken challenges of quotidian life. Informed by knowledge of contemporary social policies, reading city views potentially advances a more comprehensive picture of the diverse histories of colonial Mexico.

Because city views portray social stereotypes staged within constructed settings, the genre is furthermore associable to casta painting.7 The term casta painting refers to a type of ethnographic illustration originating in the viceroyalties

(most extant examples originated in New Spain) sometime around the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries. Ostensibly, the paintings trace the racial 34 mixing or mestizaje that occurred as colonial Spaniards, Amerindians, and Africans intermarried. The racial profile of Western Europe was still, at this time, largely homogenous. As a result, the miscegenation occurring in Spanish America piqued curiosity. This may have prompted Europeans, as well as colonial patrons, to collect casta paintings. The works themselves diagram genealogical mixtures expressed through the family unit. For example, series begin with the paring of two pureblood parents, usually a Spanish father and an Amerindian mother. Their offspring is identified as a mestizo child. Africans are introduced in the fourth succession with the pairing of a Spaniard and African to produce a mulato. The series typically feature sixteen sequences.

Fundamentally, Mexican casta paintings and city views are alike in the sense that both impose a way of seeing—or, a way of abstracting a variegated environment and people into an intelligible system. Similar to how city views are invested with typographic elements and notations, casta paintings also use labels and taxonomic inscriptions. Like a cartographic key, these inscriptions guide the viewer and color his or her interpretation of the scene. Evidence that colonial audiences perceived a likeness between the two genres comes from probate inventories and ship manifests; in these documents, casta paintings and city views are often itemized side-by-side. Furthermore, in certain examples, when casta paintings present a recognizable location, such objects may be dual classified as city view and as casta painting.

On the whole, Mexican city views exhibit substantial variation in size, medium, composition, orientation, ornamentation, and subject matter. Many of the 35 makers of these objects remain anonymous. The few signed works are often attributable to men who served in the Spanish Royal Corps of Military Engineers. It was their job to create designs on paper for translation to the physical environment.

Additionally, some city views appeared in book illustrations; others were individually printed. Individually printed city views enjoyed collectible popularity.

Patrons often purchased first run copies via advance subscription.8

A good example of a city view, and the liberties illustrators sometimes took in rendering an ideal environment, can be seen in an eighteenth-century view of the district of Santiago de Tlatelolco. Procesión de Santiago Apóstol en el barrio de

Tlatelolco presents the main square of Tlatelolco (Figure 1.1). Located north of the city center, this neighborhood was best known as an Amerindian residential area.

The view of its plaza is framed, on the right, by a parish church; and on the upper left, by other buildings around the plaza. Peering out from the balconies and windows are figures representing the urban poor—persons that typically lived in tenement properties. The onlookers observe the procession of Saint James that exits from the church. Distinguishable from Spaniards by the tilmas they wear and their dark skin; Amerindian musicians, baldachin-bearers, and other parishioners participate in a devotional procession. At the bottom of the canvas, two women sit beneath straw canopies vending foodstuffs. The textual inscription indicates the women offer cherimoyas and mamey sapote fruits and avocados and apricots. The inscription also identifies a pulque stand and a person selling mole; both are located left of a fountain that appears to course with water. 36

Procesión de Santiago Apóstol exemplifies the city view genre, first, because it portrays a real location in Mexico City and because it uses cartographic techniques to do so, e.g., the aerial viewpoint and typographic inscription. Second, in the manner of many city views, this painting renders what one may call a picturesque scene—in other words, it shows a handsome environment populated with fictive actors. The pictorial embellishments depart from objective reality; the view furthermore falsifies actual, physical and materials conditions of life in Tlatelolco.

For example, the fountain seen to deliver a sufficient amount of water is a trivialization. A late colonial report on the public water system shows that the district of Tlatelolco was not even serviced; it received “not a drop of water,” according to the report.9 And since Tlatelolco was also not equipped with subterranean sewers or regularly scheduled garbage collection, refuse littered the environment.10 For one reason or another, the illustrator responsible for constructing this view chose to overlook the less desirable characteristics of

Tlatelolco.

Of course, arguments aimed to prove or disprove the indexicality city views are in many ways immaterial to the discussion. All forms of geographical representation must be understood as mediated expressions of one or more individuals, institutions, and situations. In the apt words of geographer Denis

Cosgrove, city views communicate, along with eyewitness knowledge and geographical realities, “the forms and ideas, and the hopes and the fears that constitute imagined geographies.”11 Procesión de Santiago Apóstol is no exception. 37

To recognize this city view as an expression of reality’s limitations enables modern audiences to connect to the real problems and issues faced by historical persons.

Problems in the Literature

Despite offering a tremendous source of primary information to scholars of art, history, geography, anthropology, and other disciplines—views of Mexico City have not attracted significant attention. Current scholarship situates the study of these objects within an evolutionary narrative of cartography, which moves from pictorial illustration to objective map.12 Continued reliance on this framework perpetuates reductionist approaches to the study of city views, which in turn disallows awareness of the breadth and variety of this genre. The root of the problem is ontological; it derives from the ways researchers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries categorized city views, i.e., this is a map; and, that is a landscape.

By drawing a firm line between the terms map and landscape—a division that did not exist when these objects were created—researchers have arbitrarily fit the city view into current configurations of knowledge. Today, the genre remains theoretically ambiguous. Its ambiguities affect the questions researchers ask; and as a consequence, the study of maps and landscapes remains separate and stifled by predictability and contrivance.

Foundational scholar of Mexican art history, Manuel Toussaint points out the challenge involved in classifying city views. He states that when views do not appear in a biombo, or other pictorial art form, they are termed maps.13 Toussaint’s observations respond to the categorical uncertainties of this genre and to the 38 inconsistencies of terminology. To confuse matters, some city views do in fact appear as large-scale, oil paintings, yet they are labeled map (mapa) or plan

(plano).14 In the end, Toussaint steps away from this disciplinary conundrum and simply classifies city views as genre scenes.15 His research on the maps and mappings of Mexico City therefore do not include the painted city views analyzed in this study.16

From the mid-twentieth century onward, scholars have remained largely ambivalent to the study of Mexico City views. Researchers who have successfully addressed this genre tend to approach it from a visual culture perspective.17 The present study finds resonance in visual culture models; it eschews the labels map and landscape, calling attention to the ways historical audiences interacted with such objects. The city view presents a way of comprehending the world—or rather, as Cosgrove proposes, a discrete world.18 Moreover, the terms map and landscape belong to a shared vocabulary, which means that both words connect to the focus of this dissertation: the ways colonial audiences visually interpreted the physical, social, and cultural topographies of Mexico City. Of course, the first step in any process of interpretation is perception or vision. Vision refers to thoughts and actions beyond retinal mechanics. Vision is the force behind physically seeing, mentally imagining, and materially actuating plans or agendas. It is the ability to create mental images for physical execution; and it draws on graphic, pictorial, and textual strategies with zero regard for nomenclature.19

Another problem in the literature on Mexico City views is function. How were city views received, who received them, and for what purposes? While this study 39 focuses on views of Alameda Park, which arguably offer insight into situations affecting all of Mexico City, other city views do the same by portraying different urban areas. Landmarks such as the plaza mayor, the Basilica of Guadalupe, the

Royal Canal, and other locations comprise this oeuvre, which suggests that the production of city views connected to sentimentality and popular demand. These economies encompass a great many unknown variables. Immense variations in materials and graphic and pictorial handling—even in the same place—furthermore assure that no singular, overarching purpose may be ascribed to this genre. Kagan also sees questions about function as problematic. Unable to assign an umbrella purpose to the genre, Kagan reverses the question, analyzing visual properties (e.g., scale, projection, perceived verisimilitude) in order to speculate on intended function.20

This dissertation challenges the usefulness of assigning one particular purpose to an assorted, disparate body of work. It operates under the assumption that each city view fulfilled a distinct function and communicated its own discrete narrative. Put differently, this study finds that individual city views capture a unique snapshot of social conditions taken at a singular moment in history. This snapshot offers a glimpse of the ways dominant society interpreted its physical, social, and cultural realties. Unless individual records of commission can be located, and the proposed path of an object confirmed (e.g., who made it, who bought it, and where and how it was displayed), even educated guesswork remains speculative. As

Katzew reminds us, the goal is not to explain what purpose an object served; but rather, to interpret the object within its historical and stylistic contexts.21 40

In addition to uncertainties about classification and unresolved questions about function, the most serious issue affecting the historiography of city views is the assumption that these objects are truthful. General belief is that maps present an index or an objective reflection of reality. And, because maps are intrinsically imbued with a kind of documentary presence, researchers often treat city views as fact-driven evidence. They look upon city views as markers, objects useful in assessing where a particular building stood or as a tool for measuring urban growth.

A recent example can be found in Alameda: visión histórica y estética de la Alameda de la ciudad de México; where Efraín Castro Morales draws attention to the veracious qualities within a series of park views, which are said to evidence the development of the Alameda.22 While city views do offer a primary source of information, they are not neutral nor can they be assumed truthful. City views impose sight, color perspective, systematize information, and manage hierarchies.

With regard to geographical representation, questions about objectivity and subjectivity are not new. Researchers from social sciences as well as those from the humanities have engaged this issue from a variety of temporal and geographical localities.23 As one example, the geographer Jeremy Black describes the interpretative act of geographical representation as follows: “Mapmakers must choose what attributes of territory to show, how to show it, and by extension, what not to show.”24 His repetition of the word “show,” is powerful; it responds to acts of art and artifice found at the pith of all representational strategies. The illustrator is a creator of a world, not a reflector, whose labors privilege certain aspects over others. While literature on the development of cartography, and the pictorial and 41 graphic strategies of representation, is abundant—city views of colonial Mexico have not been linked to the polemic. As it stands today, only a few scholars have addressed the constructed nature of Mexico City views.25

Makers of City Views: Artists and Engineers

Because the Church was the largest patron of the arts, studies have traditionally concentrated on the religious art and architecture of Spanish America.

Recent attention to secular objects such as casta painting has begun to reverse this historiographical bias. Nevertheless, a conclusive history of the visual cultures of eighteenth-century Mexico remains to be written.26 And while the study of secular objects has boomed in the last twenty years, city views have not attracted a significant amount of that attention. Current studies do not address questions about the makers of these objects. How were illustrators trained; for example, what methods did they employ; and in what ways did artists and draftsmen connect to one another and the works they created? Another deficiency in the literature centers on problems related to patronage: how were these objects displayed and circulated, and what roles did city views play in the construction of the colonial imaginary?

Compounding uncertainty is the fact that many city views, especially ones painted on canvas or tin, are unsigned. Without documented authorship, crucial information about the careers, oeuvres, and clientele of individual illustrators may never come to light. Researchers must be careful, however, to avoid making the assumption that anonymity speaks of low quality. Many unsigned city views offer 42 extraordinary works of art, which have made their way into distinguished art collections. Alternatively, city views created by draftsmen serving the Royal Corps of

Military Engineers are often traceable to specific persons and urban development projects. In this case, caution applies not to perceptions of quality, but to beliefs about indexicality. Scholars cannot assume that drawings on paper translated seamlessly to the physical world. Questions of authorship aside, some general facts regarding the development of the genre and its practitioners can be extrapolated.

First, the Painters’ and Gilders’ Guild of Mexico had an unintentional affect on the production and exchange of city views. Just as in Europe, the painters’ guild of

Mexico was one of several professional organizations that governed the affairs of artists and craftsmen. Guilds regulated practices, took charge of training and promotion, and protected fellow members from uncertified competition. The guild did this by issuing rules or ordinances. Critically, the last ordinances for painters and guilders promulgated in 1686 prohibited non-Spaniards from accepting contracts to create religious artworks without first undergoing a skills assessment test.27

In contrast to restrictions on the manufacture of devotional objects, the ordinances placed no constraints on the production of secular objects. Unexamined persons were free to paint “landscapes on panel, flowers, fruits, animals and birds and Greco-Roman decorative designs, and anything else, so long as they are not holy images.”28 Theoretically, this meant that any person of any skill level could create and sell city views. The guild’s indifference toward secular art production helps to explain: one, the lack of standardization in the city view genre; and two, the 43 variations in illustrators’ proficiencies. Having said this, it is unfair to assume that only untrained painters created city views. There are many excellent examples of skillful work that suggest otherwise.29

Highly trained military draftsmen also created city views. Established in

1711, the function of the Royal Corps of Military Engineers (RCIM) was to rebuild civic infrastructure, conduct reconnaissance, and create maps in an effort to modernize Spain.30 The formation of the RCIM correlated with the rise of the Age of

Enlightenment. It shared with the philosophical movement the fundamental objective to extend applications of scientific and mathematical learning. The 1720 institution of the Royal Military Academy of Mathematics in Barcelona additionally served the Corps by stepping up the educational training of cadets. The academy provided candidates with three-years of instruction that focused on applied mathematics. Student supplies included instruments of triangulation and measurement, papers, pens, and ink. In addition to mastering advanced mathematics and learning how to use tools required for topographical survey, cadets were schooled in the diverse uses of cartographic science.31

Fundamental to the program was its arts curriculum. According to cartographic historian María del Carmen León García, draftsmanship constituted the cornerstone of instruction since a student’s entire professional future depended on his ability to visualize and represent plans. The 1718 ordinances of the RCIM give an indication of the minutia of information engineers were required to describe through illustration. As outlined by the ordinances, maps must include:

. . . a detailed description of the position and elements of fortification in a given area, that shows its strengths and weaknesses, artfully expressed when 44

possible, as for the nature of the terrain . . . whether or not the surrounding country is abundant in fodder, firewood, and water, if these are available year-round, or if they dry off, or become seasonally depleted; of which types of supplies abound in each Province, or parts of each, particularly those in the perimeter of each plaza and which ones are the ones that are notably missing . . . its population, jurisdiction, commerce, ecclesiastical state; if the situation is healthy or unhealthy, if there is a lagoon, marsh, or other circumscribed waters nearby, or perhaps other situations that could be improved; and generally any other advantages and disadvantages that may present themselves.32

As this passage indicates, the task of the engineer required a diverse skillset that hinged on the ability to convincingly or “artfully” (así del arte) interpret and articulate sensory information.

The excerpt also calls attention to the gainful marriage between scientific procedure and artistic virtuoso. This mindset appears to have been common; it was echoed, for example, in a short news article printed in the Gazeta de Mexico. Amid coverage of the Napoleonic Wars, the newspaper reported on an academy of drawing located in Querétaro (northwest of Mexico City). On August 30, 1806, the academy held a public exhibition. The write-up of the event reveals the connection contemporary audiences made between art and its applications to civic projects. As the Gazeta reported, Dean of the Academy, Josef Marta Gastañeta, proclaimed to the assembly:

Yes, Gentlemen: the Noble Art of Painting, recognized in this moment, will broadcast to the future the products of human ingenuity as guided by the rules of art . . . These Young People, watched over by us, and directed by their Teachers, will in time present to you works that will beautify life . . . may it also be known that in our era the great works of entrepreneurial spirit have not declined, and while they fertilize our soil, they additionally remind the Traveler of the Bridges of Segovia and the Reservoirs of Constantinople.33

Gastañeta’s speech draws a comparison between the similarities of Querétaro’s future infrastructure and ancient engineering feats. His words suggest that 45 historical audiences understood the importance of Fine Art and vision to engineering and urban development.

In colonial New Spain, and in communities elsewhere, artistic visualization and urban planning went hand in hand. Where reality fell short, illustrations rendered potential. Maps, plans, diagrams, landscapes, etc., rearticulate physical realities. Applied to the environment, they furnish a blueprint for the future. The work produced by draftsmen serving the RCIM, or those trained in drawing academies like the one in Querétaro, produced models enabling administrators to contemplate, plan, and transform reality.34 Like the adage: a picture is worth a thousand words, visualizations of the urban environment delivered a means to transform a mental image into a material reality.

Views of Alameda Park

Up until this point, the discussion has aggregated a diverse assortment of

Mexican city views and treated them collectively. This study now narrows its focus to views of Alameda Park. On a fundamental level, park views idealize an environment where residents spent their free time. Less straightforward is the way these images simultaneously describe the trappings of culture and socioeconomic class, as well as how they assisted the reification of colonial identities. Expressed differently, park views assign value to civic space, and by extension, the social actors found within it. The geographer J. B. Harley explains this phenomenon writing:

“Maps always represent more than a physical image of place. A town plan or a bird’s-eye view is a legible emblem or icon of community.”35 In the same way 46 colonists used portraiture to construct their public personas, views of Alameda Park articulate specific information about religion, customs and traditions, social relationships, political power, and economic conditions.

While the gritty details of the early modern city are typically downplayed by the park view, to describe these objects as picturesque or to claim they represent a slice of life, denies the fabrication and invention underlying the act of representation. It may furthermore be said that views of Alameda Park present a classist point of view. These objects provided the colonial elite with pictures of what they desired to see—that is, the condemnation of the urban poor and the celebration of the upper class. In short, colonial audiences used the park view as a means to ideate power and privilege. In turn, these illustrations provided a rhetorical tool that helped to define social relationships, sustain cultural norms, and solidify values shared by the dominant culture.36

Novelties of the Mexican Experience

During a twelve-year tour through Mexico and Guatemala carried out during the years 1625 through 1637, Englishman Thomas Gage recorded his impressions of everyday life in Spanish America. His travelogue stands as one of the earliest descriptions of Alameda Park. Published in 1648, the account introduced European readers to the etiquette of colonial leisure. According to Gage,

The gallants of this city shew themselves, some on horseback, and most in coaches, daily about four of the clock in the afternoon in a pleasant shady field called la Alameda, full of trees and walks, somewhat like unto our Moorfields, where do meet . . . about two thousand coaches, full of gallants, ladies, and citizens, to see and to be seen, to court and to be courted. The gentleman have their train of blackamoor slaves, some a dozen, some half a 47

dozen, waiting on them, in brave and gallant liveries, heavy with gold and silver lace, with silk stockings on their black legs, and roses on their feet, and swords by their sides. The ladies also carry their train by their coach’s side of such jet-like damsels as before have been mentioned for their light apparel, who with their bravery and mantles over them seem to be, as the Spaniard saith, ‘mosca en leche,’ a fly in milk.37

The fetishizing of the skin color and dress, casual association of elites with practices of seeing and being seen, and references to the Alameda as place of consumption and desire reflect the classist viewpoint from which Gage wrote. Based on this description, one learns that daily promenades in the Alameda constituted a competitive hobby that put the wealth and pedigree of elites on full display.

The account is additionally compelling for at least two other reasons. First, despite the fact that the park was open to the public and therefore visited by all members of the population, Gage failed to note the presence of the poor or the middle-class. One may conclude that while elites appear to have had eyes for one another, their collective gaze cropped out all other social groups. In colonial Mexico, this brand of classist myopia was common; it especially affected the design of the urban environment and the distribution of its resources. In regard to Alameda Park, classist myopia is manifested in the desire to aestheticize the land and to privatize its use among upper class park patrons. Indeed, the long history of the Alameda gives a record of how elites repeatedly endeavored to turn the park into an object of beauty rather than allowing the land to remain useful.38

Secondly, while Gage produced one of the earliest descriptions of the

Alameda, he was not alone in singling out this location as special. Over the course of the colonial period, numerous observers put pen to paper and recorded their impressions of the park.39 The sum of these accounts suggests that the Alameda was 48 a fashionable place to gather and that it constituted one of the quintessential landmarks of Mexico City. An example of its significance to the cultural landscape is demonstrated in verse. Composed for the swearing in ceremonies of Hapsburg

Monarch Philip IV (r. 1621 – 1665), cabildo member Arias de Villalobos eulogized the park accordingly: “Though the Alameda of Seville is a sight par excellence, with its fountains of alabaster and lovely channels, rumor of its beauty cannot not diminish love of ours, She that was born yesterday of tender years.”40 This stanza demonstrates esteem for the park; it also suggests that popular opinion found the

Alameda of Mexico City to possess a certain nonpareil quality.

With ample evidence to indicate the popularity of the park, it comes as little surprise that illustrations of this gathering spot circulated on both sides of the

Atlantic. Patrons displayed views of the Alameda alongside other novelties of the

New Spain experience—items like casta paintings, gold and silver objects, jewelry and natural history specimens. Two examples verify patronage of the park view among even royal officials. One is found in the 1792 probate record of the

Superintendent of the Royal Custom House Don Miguel Páez de la Cadena; the second is found in 1779 probate record of Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli y

Ursúa (vr. 1771 – 1779). A catalog of Páez’s art collection lists two paintings related to the Alameda: one was described as a view of the “old Alameda” and the other as a view of the “Little Alameda,” which was a tavern located south of the park.41

Alternatively, the 1779 death inventory of Viceroy Bucareli lists two silver trays engraved with scenes of the Alameda and the Paseo Nuevo. Other items in his collection included paintings of the Baratillo, the Plaza del Volador, and the Parián, 49 several images of the Virgin of Guadalupe (some painted others constructed from colored beads), lacquer trays made in Michoacán (a region touching the Pacific coast), and regional textiles.42 The fact that park scenes circulated among the highest status members of colonial society suggests that elites looked favorably on

Alameda Park and considered it an ideal environment for the expression of culture and social refinement. Bucareli’s collection additionally evidences his interest in collecting commodities indigenous to Mexico—ones that may have been intended to evoke memories of his time there. This prompts the question, why Alameda Park? In the eyes of historical audiences, what qualities made this particular site definitive of

Mexico, and in what ways did audiences interpret site-specific images of leisure?

Emblem and Meaning

The built environment is a transcript of human endeavor; its physical parameters provide a stage where relics of society are concretized and interpreted.

Anthropologist Setha Low has convincingly argued that public space in Latin

America is embedded with cultural and political values.43 Basing her study on a particular kind of space, the plaza, Low shows how routine behaviors ascribe meaning to public space.44 In other words, inhabitants conceptualize space according to the ways it is used and the ways it structures their social interactions.

These expectations are rendered legible in the physical environment; hence, patterns of use reveal structures of hierarchy. Spatial meaning may likewise be represented in images where experience and vision mutually inform one another to shape cultural perspectives. Alameda Park offers an excellent vantage point from 50 which to examine the production of cultural attitudes. As a site claimed by the colonial elite for recreational enjoyment, the Alameda provided an ideal stage for the endless performance of power and privilege, class and hierarchy.

Examining views of Alameda Park also furnishes a key for exploring the social and political forces that informed the colonial narrative. This study works from the assumption that at the root of aesthetic choice, lies political, economic, and/or sociocultural motives. One way to think about real and representational spaces of eighteenth-century Mexico is through the work of theorists Michel

Foucault and Henri Lefebvre. Foucault’s contribution to the subject examines how architecture is used to control people.45 Encoding architectural space with unequal relationships of power allows authorities to supervise and regulate citizens.

Alternatively, Henri Lefebvre distinguishes between representations of space and spaces of representation, i.e., conceptual space versus lived space.46 His work calls attention to the ways space reproduces social, political, and economic contests.

Spatial discourse continues carries over into objects of visual and material culture. Agents within ever-changing historical and cultural contexts interpret and manipulate these artifacts. A good example of the ways cultural meaning and vision converged on Alameda Park is found in a seventeenth-century biombo titled, View of the Alameda and the Viceregal Palace (Figure 1.2). The screen juxtaposes two views: the interior of the Alameda and the main square of Mexico City. These locations are geographically separate. By setting them side-by-side, the illustrator implores viewers to make comparisons between them. The view of the Alameda shows a scene of leisure. Men donning suits of conservative Hapsburg fashion and women 51 wearing elegant, hoop-skirt gowns populate the park. Fair skin and sophisticated attire sets these individuals apart from the attendants who serve them. At the hub of the scene, is a decorative fountain with benches on either side.

Alternatively, the view of the plaza mayor stages men and women of light and dark skin tones in front of the viceregal palace. Commercial activities dominate the scene. Amerindian woman, for example, sit on straw mats vending foodstuff and

Spanish merchants conduct their affairs from more permanent structures. While the portion of the biombo portraying the Alameda depicts leisure and culture, the portion of the biombo portraying the plaza mayor depicts labor and government.

Central to both settings is a fountain. Park-goers appear to sit and appreciate the hydraulic display, but figures in the main plaza use the fountain. They allow livestock to drink from it and replenish their own canteens from it. Although influencing cultural opinion about the aesthetic value of Alameda Park was not uniformly successful, this example pictures dominant ideals, which sought to aestheticize the park.

As art theorist Mitchell explains: “Landscape is a natural scene mediated by culture. It is both a represented and presented space, both a signifier and a signified, both a frame and what a frame contains, both a real place and its simulacrum, both a package and the commodity inside the package.”47 Mitchell notes that landscape painting is closely associated with modern ways of seeing space and constituting society.48 Art historian Ann Birmingham has additionally proposed an ideology of landscape that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries embodied social and economic values to which the painted image gave expression.49 As she argues, “art 52 collection and gardening helped to normalize a series of attitudes and values by inscribing them within representational operations. They functioned as mediums through which social dispositions toward order, power, and meaning found expression in techniques for rendering nature.”50 Mitchell and Birmingham offer this study a way of thinking about landscape as a medium—one that articulates a vast network of cultural attitudes.

Lastly, as one of its most important tasks, this dissertation investigates ways that historical audiences interpreted views of Alameda Park. This process is fundamentally linked to both mnemonic and interpretive functions—in other words, it is a process that responds to the ways in which artists manufacture images and how viewers draw upon past experiences to invest objects with meaning. One word of caution, although this dissertation applies a contextual approach to the study of park views, it does not assume that each person perceived the same message in these objects. How a person decodes information depends on one’s experiences and background.

A Body of Images

This project is not a survey of the city view genre, nor is it a comprehensive inventory of views of Alameda Park. The examples selected for analysis in this study have been picked from a larger body of visual objects that spans three centuries, encompass a variety of media, and feature a diverse range of subjects. Images were chosen with regard to their ability to communicate social, political, and economic policy. This study also took into account questions about vision and representation. 53

In what ways, for example, did a view systematize social knowledge and/or engage analogy and metaphor to communicate information about pivotal, historical moments in Mexico? Undoubtedly, these questions cast a large net, and so the final selection of objects came down to three criteria: field of vision, date of origination, and medium.

To qualify for this study an object had to be a partial city view in which

Alameda Park could be clearly identified. Limiting the study in this manner narrowed its scope. It also enabled the study to correlate fact with fiction—to hone in on the history of specific landmarks and certain institutions while at the same time maintain an awareness of how invention and fabrication inflected the visual representation of Alameda Park. Case in point, there are many city views that depict park-like settings. If the view does not include verifiable landmarks, it cannot be tied to the history of a specific place. Prioritizing views of Alameda Park is one way this study bridges the gulf between map and landscape, or representational and symbolic spaces.

The second criterion was date of completion. Each object treated by this study responds to a particular moment in the trajectory of eighteenth-century

Mexican history. As its central premise, this study claims that key historical events engendered the occasion to paint a picture of Alameda Park and the cultural landscape communicated by a healthful environment and cultured society. These historical moments and the views that arguably commemorate them are the subjects of Chapters Three through Six. The themes they address include evolving 54 ideas about Amerindian blood purity and the politics of colonialism, conditions of class inequality, new ways of regulating the environment, and racial ideology.

The third and final criterion was medium. To distance this project from other studies that have embraced the scientific aspects of cartography, this study treated oil paintings on wood, canvas, and metal supports. The artistic qualities of these objects have largely inhibited study of them. Painted city views are situated in an ambiguous theoretical space between the disciplines of art and geography. This study offers a visual culture approach to breakdown such barriers and to gain a nuanced reading of what are: highly informative objects. An alternative term for the painted city view might be “cartographic painting,” since such objects are best described as hybrids between map and painting.

Conclusion: Reflections of Park and City

Views of Alameda Park offer mediated reflections of contemporary social situations. As it stands today, these objects are understudied; the cause being their theoretical ambiguity or the ways they simultaneously associate to both maps and landscapes. The study of visual cultural opens new avenues for interpretations of colonial city views by expanding the field of inquiry to diverse objects and varied modes of production and circulation. In the following chapters, this study argues that views of Alameda Park visualize issues affecting the entire colonial city. Hence, eyeing Alameda Park is a title suggesting that the park view serves as a metonym for colonial Mexico City. The Alameda provided a discursive space where ideas about society were codified and reproduced. Despite being free and open to the public, the 55 park maintained an elite profile and the right to enjoy this space caused conflict between the upper and lower classes. Told through the park view, this study examines the history of colonial Mexico’s cultural landscape.

Notes to Chapter One

1 Unlike casta painting and portraiture, city views are not recognized as a distinct genre of eighteenth-century art. Setting these objects apart as a separate category in their own right is one of the major contributions of this project.

2 In particular, see the discussion in: Barbara Mundy, “The Images of Eighteenth-Century Urban Reform in Mexico City and the Plan of José Antonio Alzate,” Colonial Latin American Review 20, no. 1 (April 2012): 45 – 75.

3 Kagan defines civitas as the the human aspects of a city, or the idea of the city as an interrelated community. Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 1493 – 1793 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 9.

4 An example of Creole self-validation is found in Parayso Occidental. Seventeenth-century author Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora expressed deep admiration for pre-Hispanic cultures and celebrated the distinctive qualities of its heirs: Creole society. See, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, Parayso Occidental, Plantado y Cultivado por la liberal benefica mano de los muy Católicas y poderosos Reyes de España nuestros señores en su magnifico Real Convento de Jesús María de México, (México: Juan de Ribera, 1684).

5 Ilona Katzew, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004).

6 The essential starting point for inquiry into this subject is, J.B. Harley and David Woodward, eds. The History of Cartography vols. 1-6 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987 – 2003).

7 Research on casta painting has proliferated in recent years; the exceptional work of the following researchers stands out: Magali Carrera, “Locating Race in Colonial Mexico.” Art Journal 57, no. 3 (1998): 36 – 45; Carrera, Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003); María Concepción García Sáiz, Las Pintura Colonial en el Museo de América (Madrid: Patronato Nacional de Museos, 1980); García Sáiz, Las castas mexicanos: Un género pictórico americano (Milan: Olivetti, 1989); Katzew, New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America, (New York: Americas Society, 1996); Katzew, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico; and Katzew, Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World (Los Angeles; New Haven Conn.: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Distributed by Yale University Press), 2011.

8 One case involving advance subscription is the sale of Plano general de la Ciudad de México, drawn by military draftsman, Diego García Conde in 1793, printed in 1807. The protracted time (14 years) between completion of this drawing and its print run was atypical. In this particular instance, the setback was due to the residency trial of Viceroy Revillagigedo. For more information about subscription and advertisement of this print, cost of the project, García’s working methods, and litigation concerning the print date, see: AHDF, Planos de la Ciudad, vol. 3616, exp. 1. See also, Elías Trabulse and Alejandra Moreno Toscano, Una visión científica y artística de la ciudad de México: El plano de la capital virreinal, 1793 – 1807 de Diego García Conde (México: Grupo Carso: Centro de Estudios de Historia de México Condumex, 2002).

9 In 1790, respected man of science José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez was assigned to conduct a report on the public water system. In the report, Alzate expressed grave consternation over the lack of access to potable water in remote barrios. He states that Tlatelolco sheltered a large population, which subsisted “without a drop of water” (sin una gota de agua). Alzate furthermore found it unconscionable that so many suffered for lack of this resource, and were additionally burdened by 57

the inflated prices of the aguadores. AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Aguas: Arquerías y Acueductos; Cañerías, vol. 19, exp. 52, fols. 1 – 3v.

10 In reality, Tlatelolco was one of several locations where colonial authorities dumped trash; the central portions of Mexico were kept comparatively free of refuse by locating landfills in satellite barrios. See, Marcela Dávalos, De basuras inmundicias y moviemiento (México: Cien fuegos, 1989).

11 Denis Cosgrove, Geography and Vision: Seeing, Imagining, and Representing the World (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2008), 3.

12 The most prolific researcher of cartographic technologies in colonial Mexico is Elías Trabulse. See, Trabulse, El círculo roto: estudios históricos sobre la ciencia en México vol. 37 (México: Fondo Cultural Económica, 1982); Cartografía Mexicana: Tesoros de la nación, siglos XVI a XIX (México, Archivo General de la Nación, 1983); Historia de la siencia en México (México: Conacyt, 1983); and Trabulse and Alejandra Moreno Toscano, Una visión cartografía mexicana, 2002.

13 Manuel Toussaint, Pintura Colonial en México (México: Imprenta Universitaria, 1965), 198.

14 Often the words are painted/penned onto the support, and they are original to the object.

15 Ibid., 196 – 197.

16 See, for example, Manuel Toussaint, Federico Goméz de Orozco, and Justino Fernández, Planos de la ciudad de México, siglos XVI y XVII: estudio histórico, urbanístico y bibliográfico (México: Impreso en los Talleres de la Editorial “Cultura,” 1938).

17 Two successful visual culture approaches to city views are found in: Magali Carrera, Traveling from New Spain to Mexico: Mapping Practices of Nineteenth-Century Mexico (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2011) and Michael Schreffler, The Art of Allegiance: Visual Culture and Imperial Power in Baroque New Spain (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007). In thinking about historical audiences and ways of seeing, this study was influenced by Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990).

18 Cosgrove, Geography and Vision, 2.

19 Ibid., 1 – 8.

20 Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 8 – 9. Kagan’s analysis remains heavily tied to the history of cartographic development. As a result, his analyses do not fully take into account the artful qualities of Mexico City views, nor to they respond to the specific contexts in which these specialized objects originated.

21 Katzew, Casta Painting, 8.

22 Efraín Castro Morales, “Alameda Mexicana, Breve Crónica de un Viejo Paseo,” in Alameda: Visión histórica y estética de la Alameda de la ciudad de México eds. Nadia Ugalde, Américo Sánchez, María Estela Duarte, eds. (México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes and Landucci Editores, S.A. de C.V., 2001), 15 – 121.

23 The literature on this topic is vast; the following citations are the publications that most influenced this study. Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Ann Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic Tradition, 1740-1860 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); David Buisseret, Monarchs, 58

Ministers, and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of Government in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) and Envisioning the City: Six Studies in Urban Cartography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); W. J. T. Mitchell, Landscape and Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Matthew H. Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843 (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1997); James Corner, "The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique, and Invention." In Mappings, edited by Denis E. Cosgrove, 213 – 252 (London: Reaktion, 1999); J. B. Harley and Paul Laxton, The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography (Baltimore, Md.; London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Edward S. Casey, Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); John Pickles, A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping, and the Geo-Coded World (London; New York: Routledge, 2004); and Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, The Power of Projections: How Maps Reflect Global Politics and History (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2006).

24 Jeremy Black, Maps and Politics (London: Reaktion Books, 1997), 11.

25 Notable exceptions to this statement include: Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World; Héctor Mendoza Vargas and Michel Antochiw, México a través de los mapas (Ciudad Universitaria, Del. Coyoacán, México, D.F.; Col. San Rafael, México, D.F.: Instituto de Geografía, UNAM; Plaza y Valdés Editores, 2000); Raymond B. Craib, Cartographic Mexico: A History of State Fixations and Fugitive Landscapes (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004); Francisco de la Maza, Luis Ortiz Macedo, and Elisa Vargas Lugo de Bosch, Plano de la ciudad de México de Pedro de Arrieta, 1737 (México, D.F.: IIE, UNAM, 2008); Mendoza and Carla Lois, Historias de la cartografía de Iberoamérica: nuevos caminos, viejos problemas, (México, D.F.: Instituto de Geografía, UNAM; INEGI, 2009); Carrera, Traveling from New Spain to Mexico; and Mundy, “The Images of Eighteenth-Century Urban Reform.”

26 Katzew, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 9. The phrase “visual cultures” responds to a recent, valuable addition to the body of literature. This collection of essays explores the idea of multiple visual cultures of Latin America, i.e., constructions of artistic expression and cultural practice that coalesced to communicate ideas about good taste in Spanish America. See, Paul B. Niell and Stacie G. Widdifield, eds., Buen Gusto and Classicism in the Visual Cultures of Latin America, 1780 – 1910 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013).

27 The Nuevas Ordenanzas de 1686 are transcribed and reproduced in Toussaint, Pintura Colonial en México, 223 – 226.

28 “se les permite, sin ser examinados, que pinten países (paisajes) en tablas, de flores, frutas, animales y pájaros y romanos y otras cualesquiera cosas no sean imágenes de santos . . .” Ibid., 224.

29 One of the best examples of an established artist believed to have created a city view is a painting signed by prolific artist of the seventeenth century, Cristóbal de Villalpando. The artwork bearing his signature is: View of the Plaza Mayor, ca. 1695, oil on canvas, 180 cm x 200 cm. The painting is owned by the estate of Corsham Court in Wiltshire, England; it is not on public display.

30 Horacio Capel Sáez, Los Ingenieros militares en España, siglo XVIII: repertorio biográfico e inventario de su labor científica y especial (Barcelona: Cátedra de Geografía Humana, Universidad de Barcelona, 1983), 6 – 7. See also, Capel, “Construcción del estado y creación de cuerpos profesionales científico- técnicos: los ingenieros de la monarquía español en el siglo XVIII.” Scripta Vetera, 2003 and Janet R. Fireman, The Spanish Royal Corps of Engineers in the Western Borderlands: Instrument of Bourbon Reform, 1764 – 1815 (Glendale, Calif.: A. H. Clark Co., 1977).

31 María del Carmen León García, “Cartografía de los ingenieros militares en Nueva España, segunda mitad del siglo XVIII.” In Historias de la cartografía de Iberoamérica: nuevos caminos, viejos problemas, 59

447 – 448. For more information on the formation of the Academy and the training of students see Horacio Capel, Joan-Eugeni Sánchez, and Omar Moncada, De Palas a Minerva. La formación científica y la estructura institucional de los ingenieros militares en el siglo XVIII, (Barcelona: Serbal/CSIC, 1988).

32 “. . . una descripción puntual de su situación y fortificación particular de cada plaza, en que se expresen sus defectos, y ventajas, precedidas así del arte, como de la naturaleza del terreno […] si el país circunvecino es abundante en forrajes, leñas y aguas, si estas son permanentes todo el año, o si se secan, o agotan en alguna estación de él; de qué género de víveres abunda en cada Provincia . . . su población, jurisdicción, comercio, estado eclesiástico; si el temple es saludable y siendo malsano, si procede de alguna laguna, pantano u otras aguas detenidas, o de otras causas manifiestas que con alguna diligencia se puedan corregir; y generalmente cualquiera otras ventajas y defectos que ofrezcan.” Quoted in, Capel, Los Ingenieros militares en España, siglo XVIIII, 7.

33 “Si, Señores: el Noble Arte de la Pintura, premiado en este momento, trasmitirá á lo futuro los efectos de que es capaz el ingenio dirigido por las reglas del arte . . . ‘Esta Juventud, protegida por nosotros, y dirigida por sus Maestros, presentará con el tiempo, á mas de las obras que hermosean la vida . . . publicarán asimismo que en nuestra época no ha decaido aquel espiritu emprendedor de obras grandes, que al par fertilizar nuestra suelo, hacen recordar al Viajero lo Puentes de Segovia, las Cisternas de Asparis, Mocicia, y rio Hidraulis . . .” Gazeta de México, vol. 80, 1 October 1806, 657.

34 See discussion of the agency of mapping itself in Mundy, “The Images of Eighteenth-Century Urban Reform,” 49 – 50.

35 J. B. Harley, The New Nature of Maps, 48."

36 Ibid., 158.

37 Thomas Gage, Thomas Gage’s Travels in the New World, ed. Eric S. Thompson (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), 73.

38 The most complete history of Alameda Park is found in José María Marroqui, La Ciudad de México, Contiene: El origen de los nombres de muchas de sus calles y plazas, del de varios establecimientos públicos y privados, y no pocas noticias curiosas y entretenidas (México: Jesus Medina Editor, 1969), 224 – 277. As one example of the aestheticizing of Alameda Park, on August 26, 1594, the cabildo ruled against citizen Luis Villanueva Zapata who had requested to use land adjacent to the Alameda for chinampas farming on account of its good soil. This piece of legislation implies that officials wished to divorce the Alameda from any association to agrarian utility. See also, María Estela Duarte, Américo Sánchez, and Nadia Ugalde, Alameda: Visión Histórica y Estética De La Alameda De La Ciudad De México (México, D.F.: Inst. Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2001), 259 – 265.

39 Many historical descriptions of the Alameda exist. See, for instance, Joaquín Antonio de Basarás and Ilona Katzew, Una Visión Del México Del Siglo De Las Luces: La Codificación De Joaquín Antonio De Basarás: Origen, Costumbres y Estado Presente De Mexicanos y Filipinos. Descripción Acompañada De 106 Estampas En Colores [Origen, costumbres y estado presente de mexicanos y filipinos], 1763 (México, D. F.: Landucci, 2006), 172 – 175; Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri, Viaje a La Nueva España, trans. José María de Agreda y Sánchez (México: Sociedad de bibliófilos mexicanos, 1927), 182 and 184 – 185; and Juan de Viera, Breve y Compendiosa Narración De La Ciudad De México 1777, Facsimile (México, D.F.: Instituto Mora, 1992), 75 – 76.

40 “Aunque Sevilla encumbre su alameda, sus fuentes de alabastro y ricos caños, no implica que alabar la nuestra pueda, Niña que ayer nació, de pocos años.” Arias de Villalobos, “Obediencia que México, cabeza de la Nueva España, dio a la Majestad Católica del Rey D. Felipe de Austria, ….1623,” en Documentos inéditos o muy raros para la historia de México, publicados por Genaro García, vol. 60 60

(Biblioteca Porrúa, México: Editorial Porrúa, S.A., 1975), 376. Quoted by, Castro in“Alameda Mexicana, Breve Crónica de un Viejo Paseo,” 33.

41 “Alameda antigua” and “Pulquería Alamedita,” quoted in Katzew, Casta Painting, 180. See also, AGN Intesados, 151, exp. E. fol. 34v. The two paintings in Péaz’s collection were valued at 10 reales each or just a little over one peso each. Based on the valuation of these artworks, one may assumed that secondary, less-skilled artists created them. For comparative purposes, Bucareli’s probate inventory lists six casta paintings valued at seventy-two pesos or 576 reales. See Katzew, Casta Painting, 147.

42 Quoted in Katzew, Casta Painting, 148. Katzew additionally notes that this inventory of Mexico City views corresponds to a collection of paintings attributed to New Spanish artist Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz. The San Anton Palace in Malta holds these works along with others created by the artist. For more information on the collection, see Óscar Reyes Retana Márquez, “Las pinturas de Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz en Malta,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, no. 68 (1996): 113 – 125. Morlete Ruiz was a contemporary and friend of well-known painter Miguel Cabrera. Morlete Ruiz is most famous for a signed set of casta paintings dated 1761, which were published for the first time in Katzew, Casta Painting, Figures 103 and 104. The oeuvre of Morlete Ruiz includes both casta paintings and city views; importantly, this fact may be used to address the void of information regarding the background and training of illustrators responsible for creating city views.

43 Setha M. Low, On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2000).

44 This approach is decidedly based on the work of twentieth century French theorist Henri Lefebvre. See, Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1991).

45 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).

46 Lefebvre, The Production of Space.

47 Mitchell, Landscape and Power, 5.

48 Ibid., 7.

49 Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology, 3.

50 Bermingham, “English Landscape Drawing around 1795.” In Landscape and Power, 78. 61

CHAPTER TWO

FINDING CONTEXT: MEXICO CITY, 1700 – 1800

Housed in the collection of the Museo de la Ciudad de México is a portrait of former Viceroy of New Spain, Juan Vicente de Güemes the Second Count of

Revillagigedo (vr. 1789 – 1794, Figure 2.1). The painting portrays Revillagigedo amid opulent furnishings and a rich library. Admired by contemporaries for his well-groomed appearance, the viceroy wears a velvet coat trimmed in ribbon, a shirt with lace details visible at the neck and cuffs, and buckle shoes.1 A billowing, red curtain hems the background and directs attention to a writing table found in the center of the composition. Items situated atop the desk include an inkpot, quill pen, bell, and a large map. Together, these articles reference the bureaucratic responsibilities of Viceroy Revillagigedo.

Portrait of Viceroy Revillagigedo speaks to the power and influence of the viceroy. In total, ninety-four civil servants held this position. In the colonial chain of command, the viceroys of New Spain sat at the top, representing the highest level of secular authority in the Western Hemisphere. In Portrait of Viceroy Revillagigedo, the focus of the viceroy’s attention is a facsimile of a map, which sits on the table.2

Created in 1792, by Master Architect Ignacio de Castera, the drawn map aided repairs to the city’s public water system. This map portrays a mediated vision of

Mexico City. Its straight lines and mathematical logic rectify the substantial physical inconsistencies of this environment. Realities such as ruinous tenement buildings, homeless encampments, and deteriorating public infrastructure are resolved with 62 imagination and techniques of graphic abstraction.

Widely regarded as one of the most capable leaders to hold office,

Revillagigedo began his appointment in October of 1789 and held the post until July

11, 1794. As viceroy of New Spain, he performed his duties in the name of King

Charles IV, descendent of the House of Bourbon (r. 1788 – 1808). In the colonies and in Spain, the ideal model of governance rested on the framework of patriarchal authority. Audiences on both sides of the Atlantic used the father trope to understand paradigms of political power. Occupying the top post in the colonial government meant that Revillagigedo’s duties were vast. Besides handling the general administration of the colony, Revillagigedo oversaw a variety of matters including the facilitation of diplomatic relations with frontier territories like

California, Texas, and New Mexico; the management of mining production and the foundation of the new College of Mining; the promotion of scientific exploration; and the implementation of imperial policy.3

Like the many viceroys who served before him, Revillagigedo was indeed a busy man. Some of his most notable accomplishments included managing the paving of major roads, the repair of drainage canals, and the construction of sidewalks with subterranean piping—as well as the reorganization of principal markets and plazas.4 His efforts to leave a lasting mark centered largely on the physical rejuvenation of Mexico City’s urban environment. In this effort, Revillagigedo was not alone; many viceroys worked diligently to ensure that the viceregal capital offered a showpiece of European influence and Spanish enterprise. Boasting a population of more than 130,000 individuals by the late eighteenth century, Mexico 63

City stood as the largest and most prosperous urban center in New Spain.5 Home to the two highest offices of Church and State, the city furthermore headquartered hundreds of clergymen and bureaucrats, as well as wealthy entrepreneurs.

Despite its prosperity, Mexico City suffered from a multitude of environmental problems.6 One of the most serious difficulties was inadequate sanitation. This challenge arose from the lack of infrastructure needed to manage waste removal. As a city, then, not equipped with subterranean sewers, residents of the viceregal capital had little alternative but to toss their rubbish into open-air gutters that flanked streets. Habitual clogs of these conduits meant that foul debris, bacteria, and air-borne diseases often overflowed into public spaces. Access to potable water presented another challenge. When operable, public water fountains were frequently employed as personal washbasins, launderettes, and watering troughs for livestock. Lastly, the urban environment suffered from mild to severe damages caused by periodic floods and the frequent seismic activity of the region.

Crumbling and/or sinking buildings, impassable streets, and washed-out bridges presented constant reminders of these threats.

Middle-class book merchant and historian Francisco Sedano described daily life in the capital as being fraught with challenge. Born in 1742 and living to the age of seventy, Sedano gives a firsthand account of the quality of life in colonial Mexico

City. In his memoirs, titled Noticias de México, Sedano describes streets in the year

1790 as:

. . . all of them rubbish heaps, even the principal ones. On each corner lie huge mountains of garbage. With total abandon and at all hours of the day residents throw rubbish, excrement, and all manner of filth including the carcasses of horses and dogs into the streets and canals . . . During the rainy 64

season this refuse mixes with the mud . . . and later by evening it leaves behind—even when removed—a fog of pestilent odor. It is impossible to maintain cleanliness for more than an hour, because no sooner is a mound of trash taken away than straightaway people throw more in the same place.7

Descriptions of Mexico City nevertheless varied and not all were as unfavorable as

Sedano’s. Writing around turn of the nineteenth century, Alexander von Humboldt, a

Prussian geographer and explorer, penned an attractive picture of Mexico City. He writes:

Mexico is undoubtedly one of the finest cities ever built by Europeans in either hemisphere. With the exception of Petersburg, Berlin, Philadelphia, and some quarters of Westminster, there does not exist a city of the same extent which can be compared to the capital of New Spain, for the uniform level of the ground on which it stands, for the regularity and breadth of the streets, and the extent of the public places. The architecture is generally of a very pure style, and there are even edifies of very beautiful structure.8

Deciphering the inconsistencies between various accounts requires recognition of an unspoken truth; which was, impressions of colonial Mexico City depended largely on the spaces one occupied. The social elite, for example, found ways to insulate themselves from the squalor of the urban environment. They resided in urban mansions equipped with modern conveniences and opulent furnishings, traveled by coach, and rarely associated with persons outside high society. In contrast, daily life for individuals occupying the lower rungs of the social ladder meant hunger, disease, and even mortal danger. A sizable portion of the urban poor was in fact homeless.9 For individuals who did hold jobs, meager wages went toward purchasing daily allocations of food; or in some cases, buying a drink or two in hopes of escaping a miserable reality.

In truth, when Revillagigedo took office in 1789 he inherited an environment tarnished by disrepair and a society suffering from economic imbalance. Like all 65 viceroys, Revillagigedo was responsible for overseeing colonial affairs, managing fiscal matters and extracting an annual profit for the Crown. His assignment was significantly affected by a series of legislative, economic, and political reforms known collectively as the Bourbon Reforms.10 Developed and implemented during the 1760s by administrators serving the Bourbon Kings of Spain, the reforms sought to counter the deficiencies perceived in Hapsburg policy. Creating a more efficient economic system, streamlining political institutions, and limiting the power of the

Church were some of the ways that Bourbon officials attempted to rein in colonial affairs. As their ultimate goal, reformers sought a symbolic re-colonization of

Spanish America. They believed that bringing colonial inhabitants more resolutely into alignment with the economic agenda of the Crown would promote fiscal development and generate more tax revenue, which would benefit the Empire at large.

Officials in New Spain recognized that a radical overhaul of the colonial economy could not be accomplished without addressing what they perceived as inhabitants’ slipshod work habits and laxness in customs. Hence, local legislation increasingly intruded into the cultural affairs of residents. Officials such as Viceroy

Revillagigedo believed that exerting greater control over the urban poor would lead to economic gain and the advancement of modern society. Urban renovation programs therefore aimed to eliminate physical disorder, while accompanying moral legislation sought to put an end to ethical transgressions. By criminalizing the actions of the urban poor, authorities churned up class conflict. The push and pull of social unrest is portrayed in city views. In particular, the present study finds that 66 views of Alameda Park offer a compelling narrative of the situation. Reading these viewpoints requires keen knowledge of the physical and cultural dimensions of the city.

The Physical Environment

During the Age of Exploration, the colonization of North and South America granted Spanish city planners the opportunity to put Renaissance architectural theory to practice.11 Beginning with modern-day Cuba, the Caribbean Islands,

Mexico, Florida, Tierra Firme (Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia, and

Venezuela), and Peru—Spanish colonists founded new towns that operated as regional strongholds. Believing cities to structure an ideal environment where law, order, and government prevailed—early colonizers trusted urbanism to protect their interests in unknown lands. When the topography allowed, planners built towns upon a gridiron or checkerboard design. This practice regimented the look of new civic spaces, and as Spaniards additionally hoped, impressed lessons of discipline upon the native population.12

Spain’s emissaries to Tenochtitlán, the former capital of the Aztec Empire, found that the city already exhibited an orderly layout. Dating from the mid- fourteenth century, the metropolis spread out across more than three-square-miles of marshland fed by a system of five, freshwater and saline lakes. Relying on a system of dams, canals, and terracing, Aztec builders constructed a city upon this aqueous environment.13 At the heart of Tenochtitlán, lay the spiritual and administrative core of the empire. The central plaza featured a double-temple 67 pyramid dedicated to the gods Huitzilopochtli and Tláloc, as well as the grand palaces, aviary, menagerie, and gardens of the Aztec nobility.14 From its center, the city expanded outward to the districts of Atzacualco (to the northeast), Zoquipan (to the southeast), Moyotla (to the southwest), and Cuecopan (to the northwest).15 A vast network of causeways and watercourses facilitated access to the four zones and helped to circulate people and goods. The waterways also aided the removal of wastes; nightly barges ferried away refuse collected by crews of workers who swept public areas daily.16 Fastidious sanitation measures and an overall well-organized civic environment supported a thriving metropolis home to more than 200,000 inhabitants.

Despite the conquistadors’ appreciation for the city, Captain Hernán Cortés and his men destroyed much of Tenochtitlán during the Conquest of Mexico (1519 –

1521). When the battle ended, Cortés chose to locate the capital of New Spain directly upon the ruins of the former city. This act went against the counsel of

Cortés’s officers who advocated a more salubrious and strategic location.17 In hindsight, the opposition was valid. Mountains and volcanoes ringed the Central

Basin, preventing the natural runoff of rainwater; Spanish city planners thus puzzled over how to transform the watery setting of Tenochtitlán into a European- style city situated on dry land.18 In contrast to Aztec builders, Spaniards perceived the lacustrine environment negatively—as a challenge to security and a hazard to public health. The frequent seismic activity of this area, and its rainy and dry seasons, compounded associated hazards. Given these difficulties, one may assume that the imperative to demonstrate Spanish supremacy outweighed any initial 68 concerns about the environment.

La Ciudad de México, Anglicized as Mexico City, retained the basic footprint of

Tenochtitlán. Spanish engineer Alonso García Bravo set down plans to reorganize the city center.19 His gridded design featured broad, straight streets oriented to the cardinal directions. The city center became known as the plaza mayor or the main square. In time, the plaza housed the viceregal palace, the Cathedral, city government offices, and market space.20 Officials assigned new homesteads outside the plaza to Spanish colonists in accordance to social status. High-ranking officers received first choice among new allocations of land with prime lots being those located closest to the main square.21 Unlike Spanish officers, Amerindians did not receive gifts of land. The Crown’s officials furthermore decided that the Amerindian population should be prohibited from living within the center of Mexico City.

Displaced Amerindians were forced to resettle on the outskirts of town. As historian

Susan Socolow explains, urban planners in the New World never intended for their designs to promote social equality.22 A rigid concept of racial privilege lay at the heart of colonial society, and once it had been established those at the top of the social index had little interest in altering the system.

A prime example of the hierarchies inscribed on the environment can be observed in a closer examination of residential settlement. Land reserved for

Spanish colonists extended outward from the main square roughly six blocks in each direction. In theory, the traza, or the Spanish area, insulated Amerindians from the corrupting customs of Spaniards.23 In practice, however, separating Spaniards from Amerindians enabled colonists to distance themselves from a population 69 whom they regarded as inferior and potentially mutinous. While Spaniards staked their claim to the central portion of the city, the quarter to the southwest became known as the Amerindian barrio of San Juan Tenochtitlán and the region to the north became known as the Amerindian barrio of Santiago Tlatelolco.24 In contrast to the Spanish area, which had been laid out by rule and cord, administrators did not plan Amerindian neighborhoods. Consequently, the latter developed organically and in unpredictable ways.

Despite efforts to regulate settlement within the traza, officials soon discovered that the physical needs of residents would ultimately shape the environment. Indeed, logical models set on paper became muddled when transposed to real situations wherein the practical exigencies of inhabitants took precedence. As a result, the racial boundaries etched on the environment by the traza dissolved, to a large extent, with the constant need for Amerindian labor and services throughout the city. Over time, residential areas became more and more racially integrated. By the eighteenth century, it was not uncommon to see

Amerindians, Spaniards, and mixed-raced individuals living side by side.25 Put another way, beyond the early colonial period, the settlement patterns of Mexico

City were not dictated by race alone. On the contrary, where and how a person lived depended to a great extent on personal economics, although one could argue that the distribution of wealth favored Spaniards.

Over the course of the colonial period, a rich tapestry of neighborhoods grew outward from the main plaza. Located in the northern portion of the city were the communities of La Lagunilla, San Carmen, and Santa Anna; east of the city center lie 70

San Sebastían, Santa Cruz, and Santo Tomas, while situated to the south were the neighborhoods of San Pablo and Salto de Agua.26 By the eighteenth century, western areas of Mexico City were home to some of the most coveted addresses, such as those found in the barrios of Belén y Campo Florida, San Juan, Alameda, Santa María, and San Cosme. In addition to homes and businesses, neighborhoods throughout the city contained parish churches, chapels, and monasteries.27 Opulent and richly decorated, religious houses also served as community venues, giving spiritual council and administering medical care and welfare, as needed.28

Situated at the heart of Mexico City, the plaza mayor embodied Spanish colonial authority. Officials allowed only the most vital government and spiritual offices to be located there. These included the cathedral and seat of the

Archbishopric, which stood at the northern end of the plaza; the viceregal palace and military garrison, found along the eastern perimeter; and to the south, the casa de cabildo or city council building, the city jail, silver assay office, and the public granary and meat market. Teeming with clattering carriages, mule wagons filled with goods, and pedestrians conducting daily affairs; the plaza mayor provided a lively venue for social interaction. It was here, for instance, that bureaucrats read out loud royal decrees; onlookers jeered at persons enduring public punishments; and crowds convened to witness religious processions and military parades.

Residents also utilized the openness of the plaza as a large marketplace where Amerindian farmers sold basic foodstuffs. Middle-class merchants alternatively set up shop in the Parián. The Parían was a luxury goods emporium where wealthy individuals shopped for sumptuous fabrics, Asian imports, jewelry, 71 fine furniture, porcelain, bridles and tack, crystal, and other fine objects.29 From the plaza mayor, city inhabitants could also purchase victuals and hire professional services. Ambulating vendors, for example, sold a ready assortment of refreshments like hot chocolate and bizcochos (pastries) to sate the appetites of city dwellers; and the labors of scribes, barbers, and tailors, satisfied inhabitants’ other personal needs.30

The many institutions located near the plaza demonstrate the centrality this space to colonial life and government. Located three blocks north of the cathedral stood the Plaza de Santo Domingo. This plaza contained several offices, among them, the Royal Customs House where agents passed final inspection on a variety of imported merchandise. Also located in the Plaza de Santo Domingo was the Holy

Office of Inquisition. Individuals went to this office to file reports on the suspicious behaviors of their neighbors; or, in some cases, to brave their own summons and interrogations. To the east of the plaza mayor, stood the Royal Mint where silver bullion was coined and certified. Beyond the Mint, lay the Royal and Pontifical

University of Mexico. A nearby building on Amor de Dios street housed a later addition to the cultural offerings of the city: the Royal Academy of San Carlos.

Established in 1783 and modeled on the art academies of Rome, Paris, and Madrid, the Academy of San Carlos offered instruction in the traditional Fine Arts.31 And lastly, the Plaza del Volador, located across the street from the Academy, provided an additional marketplace that specialized in the wholesale of fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers. 72

In addition to the plaza mayor, city inhabitants mingled in other urban settings. Grand boulevards such as the Paseo de Bucareli—named after Viceroy

Antonio María de Bucareli (vr. 1771 – 1779) and the Paseo de Revillagigedo, which took its name from the second Count of Revillagigedo—were two such places. Both paseos were located south of the city center; the Paseo de Bucareli extended south from the Alameda, while the Paseo de Revillagigedo originated southeast of the plaza mayor and continued east. Also popular among inhabitants was a recreational area known as La Viga or the Paseo de la Orilla. This boulevard ran along the banks of the acequia real or Royal Water Canal. Beginning on the first day of Shrovetide and ending on Easter Sunday, La Viga swarmed with pedestrians, boats filled with merrymakers, and refreshment stands.32

However, it was Alameda Park that provided perhaps the most popular leisure setting. Having been established in 1592, the Alameda was free and open to the public. As indicated in the previous quote from Thomas Gage, elite residents, whose unhurried schedules permitted ample time for recreation, arrived to the park in richly decorated carriages. Dressed to the nines in silk gowns or menswear cut to the latest fashions, the beau monde placed both their wealth and social superiority on display. The urban poor also enjoyed spending time in the Alameda where they could observe the pageantry of their so-called social betters or simply take respite from the generally foul living conditions of their neighborhoods. Historical accounts suggest that during celebrations the Alameda swarmed with as many as five to six thousand people who chose to savor holidays there.33 73

As Mexico City expanded westward, the area surrounding Alameda Park became home to a variety of businesses, religious houses, and mainstays of quotidian life. Over the course of the seventeenth century, the street south of the park transformed from a sleepy lane on the outskirts of town to a congested avenue that accommodated the coaches of colonial elites and the foot traffic of the less affluent. During religious festivals the Franciscan Stations of the Cross (located on

San Francisco Street directly south of the Alameda) were the center of organized pageantry.34 Other nearby religious houses included Santa Isabel, east of the park; the Church of Diego to the west, and the Church and Hospital of San Juan to the north. In the eighteenth century, the area south of the Alameda gained two more institutions: the Convent of Corpus Christi, reserved for Amerindian women, and the

Hospicio de Pobres, which provided welfare to the homeless. Despite the convivial atmosphere, twin reminders of the repercussions of moral transgression cast shadows across the park. These were: the Holy Office of the Inquisition, which kept its burning stake directly west of the Alameda; and to the southwest, the Acordaba

Prison, which stood only a short distance from the park.35

Spanish Colonial Society

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Mexico City was home to an estimated

137,000 inhabitants. The Spanish population numbered around 67,500 persons and consisted of two ethnic groups: Iberian-born Spaniards known as peninsulares

(roughly 2,500 individuals) and criollos, Creoles or Spaniards born in the Americas

(approximately 65,000). Amerindians comprised roughly twenty-four percent of the 74 population or about 33,000 people. Mestizos, individuals of mixed Spanish and

Amerindian lineage, totaled nineteen percent of the population; and mulatos— persons of mixed African, Caucasian, and Amerindian ancestry—registered about seven percent of the population or about 10,000 in number.36 While these figures report on the racial profile of residents, they do not tell of the connection between race, status, and the distribution of wealth.

Racial Heterogeneity

In Spanish America, categories of race and social status were the product of deep-seated belief. In the years immediately following the Conquest of Mexico

(1519 – 1521), racial identity provided a relatively unambiguous indication of social status. White, Spaniards occupied the top of the social ladder and all others followed. This hierarchy connected to Iberian ideas about blood purity or limpieza de sangre. The historian María Elena Martínez suggests that beliefs about blood cleanliness emerged in fifteenth-century Spain. At this time, the absence of hereditary ties to infidel groups—defined as Jewish or Moorish persons and also known heretics—signified honorable, Christian ancestry.37 Perceiving the Americas to be a land similarly inhabited by non-Christians, sixteenth-century Spaniards used limpieza de sangre to claim their supremacy over populations of Amerindians and sub-Saharan Africans brought to the New World for slave labor.

The political organization of the colonies reflected administrators’ desires to preserve Iberian racial purity. The viceregal government was divided into two republics: the república de indios and the república de españoles.38 Yet, despite 75 segregation in a bureaucratic sense, sexual contact between Spaniards,

Amerindians, and Africans occurred by force and by will. The resultant offspring of mixed-race individuals, or castas, became the fastest growing segment of the population.39 As city inhabitants increasingly intermarried and adopted customs from one another, a diverse population grew in Mexico.

This situation displeased colonial officials. Expressing contempt for racial mixing or mestizaje, Viceroy Don Luís Velasco (vr. 1555 – 1564) stated:

The mestizos [individuals of mixed Spanish and Amerindian ancestry] are greatly increasing and they all end up poorly inclined and susceptible to vices, and these people and the blacks you should be wary of. They are so many that coercion and punishment, even regular punishment, has no effect.40

Velasco’s words show that officials disparaged the growth of the mixed race population; they believed interbreeding weakened the social hierarchy. Historian

Douglass Cope adds that caste stigmatization stemmed from the fact that authorities found mixed race individuals legally dissociable to the fixed categories of Spaniard,

Amerindian, and African. To bring these persons into alignment with the two repúblicas, bureaucrats introduced the caste system or sistema de castas around the turn of the seventeenth century. The sistema de castas managed the legal affairs of castas, allocating select rights and disabilities to this group.41 Needless to say, most mixed-race persons faced some level of social discrimination since they lacked society’s essential benchmark of status: limpieza de sangre.

Legislation pertaining to the legal disabilities of caste society varied throughout the colonial period. The following examples illustrate the ideology and common standards of caste society. In 1549, for instance, Charles V mandated that 76 castas be prohibited from holding public office without first obtaining a royal dispensation.42 Thus, for much of the colonial period, top bureaucratic posts remained out of reach to persons of mixed-race ancestry. Additionally, all free

Africans and caste members were required to pay a monetary tribute to the Crown.

And since European and Creole craftsmen sought to corner the market on paid commissions, the bylaws of many professional guilds forbade membership to individuals of color. One example is the 1686 Painters’ and Gilders’ Guild of Mexico, whose ordinances forbade master painters to take on non-Spanish apprentices.43

Over the course of the colonial period, the measure of social status shifted from a traditionally religious definition of limpieza de sangre to one that embraced subtleties of personal wealth and racial identity. This shift occurred in step with the rise of mercantile capitalism and the espousal of enlightened political and social philosophies; while the first circumstance fostered more opportunities for social mobility (upward and downward), the other made personal achievement socially acceptable. By the late eighteenth century, the summa of social status was best encapsulated in the expression: “calidad” or quality. Historian Robert McCaa defines calidad as:

. . . typically expressed in racial terms (e.g., indio, mestizo, español), in many instances [it] was an inclusive impression reflecting one’s reputation as a whole. Color, occupation, and wealth might influence one’s calidad, as did purity of blood, honor, integrity, and even place of origin.44

In other words, calidad assumed multiple dimensions of identity assignation; the sum of these factors gauged social status. Author Martínez notes that the term came into use via eighteenth-century affidavits of blood purity.45

The indeterminable states and subjective qualifications of blood purity 77 suggest that in the colonial context race and status were fluid concepts. As one example, fair complexioned castas typically enjoyed more social privilege than dark complexioned castas since the former could sometimes pass as Spaniard.46 The work of historian Ann Twinam explores an official means of gaining status: the gracias al sacar (forgiveness from exclusion). The gracias de sacar was a royal certificate that validated blood cleanliness.47 Occurring more frequently and with less red tape were instances in which the age-old power of persuasion prevailed.

That is to say, a person might simply exercise influence on the priest responsible for registering a newborn in either the libro de españoles (book of Spaniards) or the libro de color quebrado (book of broken color).48 Consequently, many mixed-race individuals found ways to overcome legal discrimination. And, in just as many cases, plenty of purebloods discovered race was no guarantee of high social status.

Material Contrasts

If race was not a sure indication of social status, money was. Colonial society displayed a severe imbalance in the distribution of wealth; inequality was most pronounced between the upper one percent of society and the remainder of the population. The colonial elite was comprised of mostly Spaniards, but also some casta families. Members of the elite generally held titles of nobility or alternatively possessed great fortunes derived from investments in mining, commerce, agriculture, or real estate. The net worth of some individuals reached staggering amounts, such as the estimated wealth of the Marquis de Aguayo-Alamo, who in

1781 was said to be worth 3,797,309 pesos.49 Elites disinclined to commercial 78 ventures held positions in the upper clergy as well as royal and municipal governments.

Beneath the wealthy, existed a small middle class that included Spaniards,

Amerindians, and castas. Members of the middle class earned their livings as retail merchants, shopkeepers, textile manufacturers, owners of modest rental properties, lower-level bureaucrats, lawyers, the clergy, and master artisans in higher-status trades.50 On the whole, this social group lived comfortably, but possessed meager reserves. Enterprise among the middle class centered largely on small-scale commercial activities like the ownership of neighborhood stores called pulperías or the management of rental properties. A typical pulpería ran on assets between one and ten thousand pesos per year, while investment properties brought home, on average, 5,000 pesos.51 Compared to elites, the middle class operated from a smaller purse and a less diverse portfolio, which made them susceptible to economic fluctuations.

At nearly ninety percent, the urban poor constituted the largest segment of the population. Amerindians and castas numbered among this social group, as did many Spaniards. The personal finances of the urban poor ranged significantly. On one side of the scale, the poor blended with the middle class. These individuals found employment as notaries, assistant priests, teachers, small-scale vendors, low- status artisans, and semi-skilled laborers.52 They typically earned an income of around one to four hundred pesos annually. At the midrange of the scale, were unskilled laborers such as porters, construction workers, water carriers, and domestic servants. These workers earned salaries of around fifty pesos annually.53 79

On the extreme side of the scale, the homeless earned no wages at all. As the most impoverished of the lower classes, these persons numbered around twenty percent of the population. Subsisting on charity and/or hustling, the homeless struggled to put food in their mouths and clothes on their backs.

City life occasioned multiple opportunities for elites to flaunt status and wealth. Although the wealthy enjoyed princely advantage and the finest luxuries, the majority of the population found security and comfort to be fugitive. While the poor dressed in cotton rags, elites donned sumptuous suits made from imported fabrics.

The palatial homes of the wealthy took up entire city blocks, yet the homes of the poor were small and poorly ventilated. Even the physical topography of Mexico City communicated inequality as the wide, paved avenues of the traza and other elite areas gave way to poverty-stricken neighborhoods bereft of infrastructure and resource. And where physical distance already existed, assumptions about how the other half lived served to widen perceptions of the cultural divide.

The residences of the wealthy stood out as some of the most magnificent structures in Mexico City. The areas west and southwest of the Plaza Mayor, along

Calles San Francisco, Capuchinas, and Cadena, were particularly popular among the elite. Homes in those neighborhoods valued at as much as 300,000 pesos.54 One of the most sumptuous may have been the mansion of the Marquise de Jaral situated along San Francisco Street. Intended as a wedding gift for the marquise and her

Sicilian husband, the father of the bride purchased the property and converted it into a replica of the Royal Palace of Palermo in Italy.55 With its delicate wrought-iron 80 balconies and effusive Churrigueresque façade, the exterior trumpeted the wealth of the family.56

By the same token, the interiors of private mansions displayed opulence equal to any well-appointed European estate. Decorated with imported fittings such as French furniture and rugs and porcelains from Manila, the homes of the elite delivered the finest material comforts relative to their day and age. The most vital of such amenities may have been private water and sewage lines. Standard among the townhomes of the elite, these conveniences ensured the wealthy had uninterrupted access to potable water and that wastes were discarded in a sanitary manner.57 The homes of the elite were not only expensive to build and maintain; they were also costly to staff. A typical estate found along San Francisco Street would have required the services of around ten to twenty servants, including cooks, housekeepers, laundresses, drivers, personal attendants, notaries, seamstresses, and even chaplains.58

Footloose and fancy-free, so to speak, elites filled their days with leisure.

Special occasions like the arrival of a new viceroy warranted grand feasts that featured frivolities like surprise dishes, i.e., pies with live animals inside.59

Alternatively, a stroll through Alameda Park offered a popular and daily form of recreation. Attending mass enabled the men and women of high society to demonstrate their piety and charitable interests. But it was the theater that constituted perhaps the most class affirming activity. During the eighteenth century, theatrical performances were held every night of the week, except Saturdays. The wealthy generally traveled to the theater by carriage, while all others made their 81 way on foot. Because the street leading to the Coliseo frequently flooded, pedestrians often arrived disheveled and wet. Once inside the auditorium, seating similarly endorsed the rigid class boundaries of the social hierarchy. High society men and women sat in balconies away from the masses, and it was not uncommon for the former to rain the casually tossed cigar butt or fruit peel upon the second- rate seats of their social inferiors.60

The ostentation in which the upper class conducted affairs unsettled some among their own rank. Chief judiciary officer Hipólito Villarroel was one such person. In his critical exposé on the sociopolitical state of the viceregal capital, titled

Political Infirmities Suffered by the Capital, Villarroel condemned the wealthy for their lack of temperance. He compared the affluent citizens of Mexico City to ancient

Romans, finding similarities between colonial society and a former people ruined by overindulgence.61 Never a person to skirt the issue, Villarroel furthermore called attention to the unnecessary use of carriages in Mexico City. Estimating that some six hundred and thirty-seven coaches were in daily use, he felt that carriages were overused by elites merely seeking to advertise their wealth. Villarroel cited traffic and physical damages to city streets as concrete reasons as to why carriage use should be limited.62 Although the display of wealth may have struck Villarroel as excessive, he was the exception, not the rule. The vast majority of elites had no intention of downplaying their social privilege. Flaunting material wealth reinforced rank and allowed the upper class to maintain their discrete identity.

While the wealthy luxuriated inside private homes, attended lavish parties, and dallied around town by carriage, the largest portion of the population lacked the 82 means to own property or even purchase basic foodstuffs. In terms of housing, the urban poor rented apartments; built huts on the outskirts of town; or in extreme cases of hardship, lived on the streets. Individuals who could afford to pay rent typically resided in multistory tenement buildings known as a casas de vecindad.

Occupants tended to prefer the upper floors where suites of rooms known as viviendas provided more space and better ventilation than single-room habitations found at ground level. Monthly rental fees varied from four to eight pesos for an upper-floor suite, to one and one-quarter pesos for ground level accommodations.63

However, even these modest prices proved too steep for some. The ecclesiastical rent books of the Convent of Regina Celi, dated May 1699 to January 1703, for example, show that approximately fifteen percent of rental fees owed to the convent remained unpaid.64 In reality, many debts remained uncollected since tenants with back owed fees habitually departed under the cover of night.65

Unlike the mansions of the elite, which were typically equipped with water and sewage lines, individuals who lived in communal apartment buildings lacked private access to city services. For many people this created challenge because while the urban landscape featured approximately twenty-eight public water fountains, almost all were contained within the traza.66 Individuals living outside the city center were faced with two choices: either spend a great deal of time and energy fetching and transporting water or pay for the services of an aguador or water carrier.67 If getting water was not problematic enough, disposal of it and other detritus compounded difficulties. In the absence of private sewage lines, the standard practice for discarding wastes was to dump it into city gutters. Burdened 83 by filth and debris, these conduits often clogged, and in turn, retched their putrid contents onto the environment. Suffice it to say, the stench emanating from the streets would have been unbearable, especially to persons housed at ground level.

The buildings of Mexico City also suffered from the frequent seismic activity of the region. Unfortunately, building owners rarely repaired damage as it occurred, opting instead, to let apartment buildings slowly deteriorate before rebuilding from the ground up.68 Even in situations where structures were described as uninhabitable, property owners could still bank on finding tenants willing to risk life and limb for the nominal privilege of calling an unsteady roof and four crumbling walls home.69 In truth, dilapidated tenement buildings still provided better living quarters than the alternative, which was no residence at all. In his 1803 census report, Humboldt estimated that some twenty to thirty thousand residents of

Mexico City were homeless. A decade later Dr. Luis Montaña echoed Humboldt’s observations writing, “[the poor] live like prisoners in shacks hidden away in a maze of alleys and lots, which are surrounded by rubbish, manure piles, and puddles.”70 In many areas of the city it would have been common to see unclothed children playing in the streets alongside straying chickens, mangy dogs, rotting animal carcasses, pools of stagnant water, and mounds of garbage.

Due to the poor health that resulted from substandard living conditions and malnourishment, the urban poor were often most at risk for epidemic diseases. City officials, however, saw only a population routinely beset with illness and not the underlying cause, which was environmental pollution and wealth inequality.71

Periodic outbreaks of typhus, smallpox, and measles occurred, in addition to the 84 widespread contraction of respiratory ailments, which tended to afflict residents during the summer rainy season and relatively cold months of October through

December. For the urban poor, the cost of food was often the largest economic burden. Throughout the colonial period, the typical diet of city dwellers consisted of corn, bread, chilies, and beans in addition to the occasional portion of meat or fowl.

Yet, the paltry earnings of the poor gave them only enough purchasing power to buy food on a day-to-day basis, and even then only in small amounts. Simply put, this meant that the impoverished were especially affected by fluctuations in food prices.

And, in order to stretch meager allowances, they frequently bought substandard products such as stale bread, moldy corn, and spoiled meat.72

In addition to consuming unwholesome food, lack of clothing may have also contributed to the ill health of the urban poor. It certainly drew criticism from elites whose notions of social correctness was upset in the scandalous apparel of the lower classes. Without the means to purchase sufficient clothing, the desnudos resorted to donning blankets, shawls, and other coarse cloths called chispas or sarapes.73 Viceroy Revillagigedo reserved a special repugnance for this segment of the population whom he regarded as unwashed and unkempt.74 His distaste for the apparel of the lowest strata prompted Revillagigedo to issue a study on the bottom line cost of a basic wardrobe. At almost twenty-four pesos for men and twelve pesos for women, he likely realized that the price of sartorial decency lay well beyond the means of many among his constituency.75 Renting clothing offered one alternative to the poor, as well as purchasing secondhand items from street vendors and peddlers.76 The common practice of poaching merchandise from asylums, city 85 hospitals, and freshly dug gravesites made an unfavorable impression on observers; it also hastened the spread of illnesses.77

Reformism in the Eighteenth Century

For Spain and its colonies, the eighteenth century dawned with change. In

1700, King Charles II died childless, bringing roughly two hundred years of Spanish

Hapsburg rule to an end. Before dying, Charles II named his grandnephew, the sixteen year-old Philip Duke of Anjou, from the French House of Bourbon (grandson of Louis XIV), his successor. The reign of Philip V (r. 1700 – Jan. 1724 and Sep. 1724

– 1746) launched a new era in Spanish history known as the Bourbon Period. The leadership of the Bourbons differed from that of the Hapsburgs in many ways. Most notably, the dynastic succession brought an alternative approach to the role of government. While the Hapsburgs ruled loosely and from the theoretical position of

Divine agency, the Bourbons stood at the helm of a modern kingdom dominated by enterprise and free market trade.

Transforming the political and economic landscape of the Spanish Empire was not instantaneous; change unfolded gradually and in geographical pockets over the course of the century. It reached its apogee with the reigns of Charles III (r. 1759

– 1788) and his son Charles IV (r. 1788 – 1808). The historian Colin MacLauchlan locates the source of Bourbon ideology in the intellectual climate sown by enlightened Spanish scholars.78 MacLauchlan cites the work of eighteenth-century

Professor of Theology and Benedictine monk Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Monetenegro as an early, influential source on critical theory.79 In 1726, Feijóo’s nine-volume 86 work, Teatro crítico universal reached the public.80 The innovation of Feijóo’s disquisition lies in its analysis of two princely archetypes: the peaceful prince and the prince-conqueror. While the prince-conqueror sought personal gain from his subjects, the peaceful prince pursued economic development, supported research in the sciences and arts, protected commerce, and provided stability and comfort for his subjects. The comparison was undoubtedly intended to evoke rumination on the conservative politics of the Hapsburgs and the progressive attitudes of the

Bourbons.

By grounding his work in the philosophies of science pioneered by Francis

Bacon, René Descartes, and Isaac Newton—Feijóo introduced Spanish intellectuals to the critical methodologies of the Enlightenment. His lasting contribution was a rejection of the notion that human ingenuity and industry fluctuated from people to people; in other words, Feijóo refuted the theory that Spain was and always would be backwards.81 His writings advocated a positive, proactive stance, finding in such frameworks the means to revive a fiscally depressed nation. Over the century, these seeds took root in the work of economic theorists Bernardo de Ulloa, José del

Campillo y Cossío, and later Bernardo Ward and Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos— authors who placed the burden of change on the state, and who cited trade as the key to economic recovery.82

It was Campillo’s major work, Nuevo sistema (released in 1743) that offered the first comprehensive plan for reform—one that Spain would eventually implement.83 The plan demonstrated how diversified trade could stimulate consumption and production, and how the lifeblood of the country coursed through 87 commerce. Campillo recognized that entrepreneurial interests spurred favorable economic conditions; he furthermore emphasized the duty of government to enrich its people first and itself second. The author supported a kingdom-wide adoption of the intendant system. Under the order of Charles III, a group of economic specialists convened in 1764 with a mandate to generate new policy. In February 1765, the council submitted its report.84 The comprehensive and wide-ranging legislation that grew from this moment is known collectively as the Bourbon Reforms.

The Bourbon Reforms set in motion an ambitious program designed to modernize Spain. In adopting free trade policies, attacking corporate rights, and streamlining economic policy, the Reforms aimed to revive the motherland. But effecting change in Spain was only part of the plan; the rest hinged on extracting more colonial wealth. To gather detailed information about the economic sector,

Charles III sent General Inspector José de Galvéz to New Spain. At the close of his six-year tour, conducted between 1765 and 1771, Galvéz submitted recommendations. His report detailed strategies for implementing the intendant system, centralizing administration, promoting fiscal development, increasing contributions to the royal treasury, limiting the power of the Catholic Church, and in general a comprehensive reining in of colonial affairs.85 Enacted shortly thereafter, changes to the tax system and industrial operations helped to increase Mexican commerce. At the same time, it put a tremendous burden on the local economy. By the end of the eighteenth century, the population of New Spain paid seventy percent more in taxes than individuals living in Spain. What was more, forty percent of tax 88 revenues left the colony and went to the Crown.86 Spain’s fiscal reform, in short, skyrocketed the Mexican deficit.87

Social Reform in Mexico City

While bureaucrats abroad devised policies to tighten the economy of New

Spain and streamline its administration, leaders on the ground negotiated their responses to the Bourbon agenda. Local reforms addressed the perceived disorders of the social body with mandates spilling over and into the personal affairs of residents. But not all persons felt the eyes of justice upon them. To be more precise, officials disproportionately scrutinized the urban poor. They located in this segment of the population, the source of social and economic malaise, civic dilapidation, and immoral practice. From authorities’ standpoints, the key to removing blight was in civilizing commoners.

Emphasizing a program of industry and self-discipline, officials sought to eradicate idleness and to turn perceived loafers into contributing members of the workforce.88 Authorities specifically targeted the work habits of trade laborers who set their own schedules and enjoyed the regular Saint Monday (San Lunes). And since alcohol-related offenses accounted for almost half of all arrests, new cultural attitudes about drinking aimed to curb substance abuse and associable misdemeanors like nudity and public incontinence. On a fundamental level elites claimed that their cultural preferences set them apart from the masses. Unlike the plebs that delighted in raucous spectacle, elites argued that their amusements revolved around grandeur and tasteful restraint. While members of high society 89 claimed to embrace Bourbon order—a condition marked by composure and self- discipline—they wagged their fingers at the lower classes, characterizing the appetites of the latter as expressive, reckless, and uncontrollable.

Plebian culture centered largely on city streets.89 Circulating people and merchandise, these conduits penetrated every recess of the city, and provided the ultimate stage for social interaction. It was within the alleyways of Mexico City, for example, that residents worked, bought and sold merchandise, ate, consumed alcohol, participated in civil and religious ceremonies, and committed clandestine acts of passion and crime. As the historian Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán suggests, to remain inside one’s home was unthinkable and impractical.90 For one, tenement buildings fell short of providing the comfort to which modern society is accustomed.

Secondly, the streets of Mexico City operated as the nexus of life. The workshops of blacksmiths and copper smelters, for example, spilled out onto the streets, as did countless other shops and ad hoc markets. As well, hundreds of street vendors hit the pavement daily to hawk wares, and secretaries lined plazas at the ready to write letters for eager clients.91

Rather than attempting to reform street culture, colonial authorities condoned the use of city streets for fraternal activities. The rationale was simple: a population kept within sight was easier to police.92 Officials applied the same principle to regulate the many drinking establishments within Mexico City. Tavern ordinances, for instance, required bars to keep their doors open to the street and to remove all but one wall so that authorities could monitor the activities of patrons.93

Needless to say, the watering holes of the city provided some of the most lurid of all 90 spectacles. Inside these establishments, men and women sometimes enjoyed a drink or two with friends, while others spent the entire day absorbed in this very popular pastime. Other street diversions included acrobatic productions and dance performances like the dance of the moros y cristianos, as well as games such as pelota, and gambling on cards and cockfights. Yet in the eyes of the upper class, all of these pastimes were reprehensible.

Legislation aimed to correct the conduct of the lower classes presented one response to Bourbon reformism; physical transformation of the urban environment offered a second. Bent on exposing vice and other illicit activities cloaked by spatial disorganization, local authorities endeavored to reorganize Mexico City. The renovation of civic space promised that it would be equipped with the infrastructure necessary to support more invasive methods of crowd control. Bourbon officials justified intervening in social matters by claiming to act on behalf of the public. In addition to installing new street lighting, reformers directed attention toward cleaning up trash, improving sanitation, repairing roads and buildings, and detaining vagrants who congregated in the streets.

Conclusion: The Cultural Landscape of Bourbon Mexico

Not without coincidence, ideas about moral reform and spatial revision surface in city views dating from the Bourbon period. But these objects reveal more than just the end goals of administrators. City views speak to the strained relations between the upper class and the lower classes. Appalled by the shameful habits of the poor, such as using the street as a personal toilet, drinking to excess, and 91 squandering money on games of chance; the upper class associated their social inferiors with the foul things of the streets. The poor, for their part, felt equal contempt toward the members of polite society whose morality campaigns and policymaking forcibly intruded on their daily lives. In this context of class struggle, city views supplied reforms with the more powerful weapon—that is, the vision needed to carry out their mission.

It is important to note that city views satisfied the desires of a certain class of patron. Hung in the homes of the wealthy, many city views celebrated illusory worlds of beauty and prosperity. This chapter has suggested that the Bourbon

Reforms provided a framework for visual studies of the urban environment.

However, it would be naïve to think that this category of images responded simply to the one-note interests of elite patrons. Variations among the genre reveal the complex nature of these works and suggest that visualizing public space factored in the agendas of many individuals.

Notes to Chapter Two

1 James Manfredini, “The political role of the Count of Revillagigedo, Viceroy of New Spain, 1789 – 1794” (Ph.D. dissertation, University College Rutgers University, 1949), 3.

2 The map is: Plano de la Ciudad de México de las Acequias de su circunferencia; it is reproduced in Manuel Carrera Stampa, Planos de la ciudad de México (desde 1521 hasta nuestros días), (México, D.F.: Sociedad Mexicana de geografía y estadística, 1949), Lamina XXXI. A copy is held in the Archivo Histórico del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Hisoria, Planos, Núm. 121, 2 Serie, Núm 1.

3 For information and/or and analysis of Viceroy Revillagigedo’s term of office, see Sonia Lombardo de Ruiz et al., Juan Vicente de Güemes Pacheco de Padilla, segundo Conde de Revillagigedo: testimonio documental (México, D.F.: Gobierno de la Ciudad de México, 1999); Manfredini, “The political role of the Count of Revillagigedo”; Revillagigedo, Juan Vicente Güémez Pacheco de Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, José Bravo Ugarte, and Revilla Gigedo, Juan Vicente Güémez Pacheco de Padilla Horacasitas y Aguayo, Informe sobre las misiones, 1793; and Instrucción reservada al marqués de Branciforte, 1794, (México: Editorial Jus, 1966; 1831).

4 Specifically, the viceroy oversaw 545,039 square varas of street paving, construction and repair to 16,535 varas of drainage canals, and construction of 27,317 varas of sidewalks with subterranean piping. He also supervised the reorganization of the Volador Market and the Plaza Mayor. These accomplishments were proclaimed on a plaque affixed to one of the four fountains constructed in the Plaza Mayor as part of that renovation, see Francisco Sedano, Noticias de Mexico: Cronicas de los Siglox XVI al XVIII (Mexico: Secretaria de Obras y Servicios, 1974), 67. A vara is a linear measurement equal to approximately thirty-three inches.

5 Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán, Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, and Sergio Rivera Ayala, Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, (Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, 1999), 97. For more information about the role Mexico City played in the economy of New Spain see, D. A. Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763 – 1810 (Cambridge Eng.: University Press, 1971); John E. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs, Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983); Richard L. Garner and Spiro E. Stefanou, Economic Growth and Change in Bourbon Mexico (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993); and Louisa Schell Hoberman, Mexico's Merchant Elite, 1590 – 1660: Silver, State, and Society (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991).

6 For firsthand descriptions of eighteenth-century Mexico City, see: Francisco and Vicente Castañeda y Alcover, Diario del viaje que por orden de la Sagrada Congregación de Propaganda Fide hizo a la América Septentrional en el siglo XVIII el p[adre] fray Francisco de Ajofrín, (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1959); Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Carreri, Viaje a la Nueva España, trans. José María de Agreda y Sánchez (México: Libro-Mex, 1955); Alexander von Humboldt, Political essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, trans. John Black, (London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822); Sedano, Noticias de Mexico: cronicas de los siglox XVI al XVIII; Juan de Viera, Compendiosa narración de la ciudad de México ed. Gonzalo Obregón, (México: Guarania, 1952); Hipólito Villarroel, Enfermedades políticas que padece la capital de esta Nueva España, (México: Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 1999); José Antonio de Villaseñor y Sánchez, Theatro americano: descripción general de los reynos y provincias de la Nueva España y sus jurisdicciones, (México: Editorial Trillas, 1992).

7 “. . . eran unos muladares todas ellas, aun las más principales. En cada esquina había un grande montón de basura. Con toda libertad, a cualquiera hora del día se arrojaban a la calle y los caños los vasos de inmundicia, la basura, estiércol, caballos y perros muertos . . . En tiempo de lluvias era tal el lodo mezclado con la inmundicia . . . y cuando de tarde en tarde se quitaba un montón de basura, al 93

removerlo, salía un vapor pestífero a modo de humo. No se verificaba limpiar una calle ni por una hora, porque aún no bien se quitaba un montón de basura, luego luego empezaban a echar más en el mismo lugar.” Sedano, Noticias de Mexico, I:54 – 55.

8 Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, 2:29.

9 Recent scholars have done an excellent job of correlating the high crime rates of colonial Mexico to circumstances of poverty. See, Haslip-Viera, Crime and punishment in late colonial Mexico City, 1692 – 1810; Teresa Lozano Armendares, La criminalidad en la ciudad de México, 1800 – 1821 (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 1987); Michael Charles Scardaville, Crime and the urban poor: Mexico City in the late colonial period, (PhD dissertation, University of Florida, 1977).

10 The literature on the Bourbon Reforms is extensive and best addressed topically. For example, on government, David Brading, “Bourbon Spain and Its American Empire,” in The Cambridge History of Latin America. Vol. 1, Colonial Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 112 – 162; Mark A. Burkholder, From Impotence to Authority: The Spanish Crown and the American Audiencias, 1687 - 1808, (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1977); on the military, Christon I. Archer, El Ejército en el México Borbónico, 1760 – 1810 (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1983); on economic reforms, Eduardo Arcila Farías, Reformas Económicas del siglo XVIII en Nueva España (México: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1974); Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763 – 1810; Susan Deans-Smith, Bureaucrats, Planters, and Workers: The Making of the Tobacco Monopoly in Bourbon Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992); John R. Fisher, Commercial Relations Between Spain and Spanish America in the Era of Free Trade, 1778 – 1796 (Liverpool: Centre for Latin-American Studies, University of Liverpool, 1985); and on society, see Brading, Church and State in Bourbon Mexico: the Diocese of Michoacán, 1749 – 1810, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Nancy M. Farriss, Crown and Clergy in Colonial Mexico, 1759 – 1821: The Crisis of Ecclesiastical Privilege (London: Athlone P., 1968); Doris Ladd, The Mexican Nobility at Independence, 1780 – 1826 (Austin: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas, 1976); Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574 – 1821, (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988).

11 Inspired by the rediscovery of ancient Greco-Roman architectural sources, European intellectuals sought a theoretical formula for the ideal city. Materials such as Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture and translations of the Corpus Aristotelicum led Renaissance luminaries like Leon Battista Alberti (1402 – 1472) and Andrea Palladio (1508 – 1580), as well as neo-Aristotelian Spanish philosophers such as Alonso de Castrillo (flourished 1521), Diego Pérez de Mesa (1563 – 1616), and others to correlate the practice of urban dwelling with the rise and development of civilized society. For an overview of these ideas applied to a Spanish context see, Santiago Casajuana Quesada, La Idea de Ciudad en la Cultura Hispana de la Edad Moderna (Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona, Publicaciones, 1992).

12 The development and urbanization of Spanish America is a topic that has been well researched. For an introduction to this subject see the three-volume series, Historia Urbana de Iberoamérica eds. Albert Salvador Bernabeu, Francisco de Solano, and María Luisa Cerrillos (Madrid: Consejo Superior de los Colegios de Arquitectos de España, 1987 – 1992).

13 The five lakes were: Texcoco, Xaltocan, Zumpango, Chalco, and Xochilmilco. For more information on the location of lakes and the placement of dikes and causeways, see John Lopez, “ ‘In the Art of My Profession’: Adrian Boot and Dutch Water Management in Colonial Mexico,” Journal of Latin American Geography, no. 11 (2012): 37.

14 A view of what the city of Tenochtitlán might have looked like can be seen in the Nürnberg Map of 1524. For foundational sources on the map, see the following: Manuel Toussaint, “El plano atribuído 94

a Hernán Cortés, estudio histórico y analítico,” in Plano de la ciudad de México, siglos XVI y XVII, Manuel Toussaint, Federico Gómez de Orozco, Justino Fernández (México: XVI Congreso Internacional de Panificación y de la Habitación, 1938), 91 – 105; and Justino Fernández, “El Plano atribuido a Hernán Cortés, estudio urbanístico,” in Planos de la cuidad de México, siglos XVI y XVII, Toussaint et al., 107 – 115.

15 Charles Gibson, The Aztecs under Spanish rule: A history of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519 – 1810, (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964), 37.

16 Michael C. Meyer and William L. Sherman, The Course of Mexican History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 86 – 87.

17 Jay Kinsbruner, The colonial Spanish-American city: urban life in the age of Atlantic capitalism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 14 – 16.

18 Because of its location, issues related to water (drainage, flooding, and access to potable sources) presented constant challenge to inhabitants of Mexico City. An excellent study of the disastrous 1629 flood can be found in Louisa Schell Hoberman, City Planning in Spanish Colonial Government: The Response of Mexico City to the Problem of Floods, 1607 – 1637 (Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1972). For more recent work on the challenges of water management in the Central Basin during the colonial period see, John F. Lopez, The Hydrographic City: Mapping Mexico City’s Urban Form in Relation to its Aquatic Condition, 1521 – 1700 (Ph.D. Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013).

19 Jesús Romero Flores, Mexico; Historia de Una Gran Ciudad, (Mexico, D. F.: Ediciones Morelos, 1953), 67.

20 In 1573, King Philip II issued the Ordenanzas sobre descubrimientos, nueva población y pacificación de las Indias (Ordinances on the discovery and settlement of towns and pacification of the Indies). Regarded as the first urban development laws of the modern era, the mandate presented a vast compendium of instructions for the foundation of colonial settlements. By the time the Ordinances were published, however approximately 180 colonial cities had already been founded. This included Mexico City. The Ordinances therefore summarized rather than innovated seven decades of accrued experience. Believing that the organization of cities constituted a powerful expression of European social norms, Spanish city planners reveled in the opportunity to create new urban centers. The messages communicated by spatial management aimed to regulate the lives of inhabitants, impose normative models, and dictate the relationship between the Crown and colonial subjects. A portion of the Ordinances are published in, “Royal Ordinances Concerning the Laying Out of New Cities, Towns, or Villages,” translated by Zelia Nuttall, The Hispanic American Historical Review 5, no. 2 (May 1922): 249 – 254.

21 Kinsbruner, The colonial Spanish-American city, 25.

22 Louisa S. Hoberman, Cities and Society in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), 7.

23 The term “traza” refers to the design plan drafted by Alonso García Bravo; however, because García only accounted for Spanish-only settlement areas, usage of the word “traza” came to signify the Spanish areas of Mexico City. The demarcation of the earliest traza stood, to the north, from west to east: the Puente del Zacate (today Avenue Santa María la Redonda), Misericordia (Mariana Rodríguez del Toro de Lazarín), the block where later the convent of San Domingo would be built (República de Chile), the Puente del Cuervo y Plaza de San Sebastián, which intersected with the Plazuela de San Juanico (Lecumberri); to the east, from north to south: following the streets of Espaldas de Santa Teresa (today Leona Vicario), Santísima, Alhóndiga, Talavera, Plazuela de Florida (Juan José Baz), 95

until the plazuela de San Pablo; to the south, from east to west: from San Pablo westward by way of the streets Garrapata, San Miguel, La Verde, Don Toribio and Salta del Agua (today the streets of José María Izazaga); to the west: from the Salta del Agua (today San Juan de Letrán) heading north by San Juan de Letrán, the Hospital Real, Santa Brígida, Santa Isabel, Puente de la Mariscala (Aquiles Serdán), Rejas de la Concepción, until the Puente del Zacate (Santa María de la Redonda). Native barrios included: to the west, Santa María (formerly Cuepopan); to the north, San Sebastián (Atzacualco); to the east San Pablo (Zoquiapan); and to the south, San Juan (Moyotlan), see Manuel Carrera Stampa, “Planos de la Ciudad de México,” in Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística LXVIII no. 2 – 3 (1949), 317.

24 Use of the term “barrio” (with italics) sets it apart as a Spanish-language word. This study employs the literal meaning of “barrio,” in Spanish, as a district or neighborhood—not “barrio” in its colloquial English usage, which refers to a high-poverty and high-crime neighborhood.

25 Gibson, The Aztecs under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519 – 1810, 377.

26 Carrera Stampa, Planos de la ciudad de México, 275.

27 By the end of the colonial period, Mexico City contained approximately twenty churches, twenty- one convents, and fifteen monasteries. Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment, 11.

28 Various orders of the Church founded each of Mexico City’s six major hospitals. These were: the Hospital de Jesús, the Hospital Real de los Naturales, the Hospital de Espíritu Santo, the Hospital de San Juan de Dios, the Hospital de San Antonio Abad, and the Hospital de San Andrés.

29 The Mexico City Parián was built in 1703 and remained a fixture of the Plaza Mayor until 1828 when a fire destroyed it. The name of the market was inspired by the Chinese quarter of Manila, known as the Parián.

30 Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment, 10; Viqueira Albán, Lipsett-Rivera, and Rivera Ayala, Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, 99. See also the description of the plaza mayor in Juan de Viera, Breve y Compendiosa Narración de la Ciudad de México, facsimilar ed. (México, D.F.: Instituto Mora, 1992), 25 – 28.

31 For foundational sources on the history of the Royal Academy of San Carlos see, Justino Fernández, Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo de México (México: UNAM, IIE, Imprenta Universitaria, 1952); Jean Charlot, Mexican Art and the Academy of San Carlos, 1785 – 1915 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962); Eduardo Báez Macías, Fundación e Historia de la Academia de San Carlos (Mexico: Ciudad de Mexico Colección Popular 7, 1974); and Eloísa Uribe, Historia Social de la Producción Plástica en la Ciudad de Mexico, 1781 – 1910 (México: División de Ciencias y Artes para el Diseño, 1984).

32 Viqueira Albán, Lipsett-Rivera, and Rivera Ayala, Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, 111 – 112.

33 Informe sobre pulquerías y tabernas el año de 1784” in Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación, ed. Julio Jimenez Rueda, tomo XVIII, no. 2 (1947): 200.

34 These small chapels were erected along San Francisco Street as a reminder to the faithful of the suffering Christ endured as he carried the cross to His crucifixion. During Holy Week, Catholics would make their way from one Station to the next in a symbolic re-enactment of Christ’s journey to Calgary. The number of Stations varies according to region and historical period. During the seventeenth century, Spaniards typically celebrated 18 stations; others recognized ten. In Mexico, the Franciscan Order initially constructed five stations (1611)—two were located inside the Convent of 96

San Francisco, two along Calle Francisco, and the final one behind the convent. By the end of the seventeenth century, six more were added. Between 1685 and 1686, the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Stations were constructed along Calle San Francisco directly in front of the Alameda’s main entrance.

35 The quemadero was removed in 1771 under the order of Viceroy Carlos Francisco de Croix, Marquis de Croix (vr. 1766 – 1771). The land was annexed and used to enlarge the Alameda.

36 Due to transience and tax evasion, demographic studies of colonial Mexico City are famously flawed and inconsistent. These numbers are quoted by Alexander von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, trans. John Black 4 vols. (London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822), 2:62. 37 María Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 25 – 51.

38 The república de indios distanced itself from the day-to-day affairs of constituents by allowing the native nobility to retain a certain amount of local autonomy. Alternatively, under the república de españoles, the Crown closely managed the affairs of Spaniards and sub-Saharan Africans.

39 Douglas R. Cope, The limits of racial domination: plebeian society in colonial Mexico City, 1660 – 1720 (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 15 – 16.

40 Quoted in Linda Ann Curcio, The Great Festivals of Colonial Mexico City: Performing Power and Identity (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004), 3 – 4.

41 Cope, The limits of racial domination, 24.

42 Ibid, 16.

43 Manuel Toussaint and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Pintura colonial en México (México: Impr. Universitaria, 1965), 225. For more information about guild restrictions see, Manuel Carrera Stampa, Los gremios mexicanos; la organización gremial en Nueva España, 1521 – 1861 (México: Edición y Distribución Ibero Americana de Publicaciones, 1954), 225 – 226.

44 Robert McCaa, “Calidad, Class, and Marriage in Colonial Mexico: The Case of Parral, 1788 – 90,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 64, no. 3 (1984): 477 – 478.

45 Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 247 – 248.

46 Alexander von Humboldt describes the social advantages of light-skinned castas in, von Humboldt, Political essay on the kingdom of New Spain, 1:244 – 248.

47 Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999). Twinam explores 244 cases of legitimization.

48 A narrative involving the allegedly mistaken entry of an individual’s name in the book of mixed- bloods can be found in Magali Carrera, Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 2 – 6.

49 Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 1692 – 1810 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999), 24.

50 Sharon Bailey Glasco, Constructing Mexico City: Colonial Conflicts Over Culture, Space, and Authority (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 24. See also, Carrera Stampa who provides an excellent discussion of master artisans within the middle class in: Carrera Stampa, Los gremios mexicanos; la organización gremial en Nueva España, 1521 – 1861, 53 – 59.

51 Kicza, Colonial entrepreneurs, families and business in Bourbon Mexico City, 110 – 114.

52 Ibid.

53 Haslip-Viera estimates that between the years 1769 and 1805 an individual would need to make between 34 and 69 pesos a year to support oneself. The average lower-class family, consisting of 3.8 persons, would then need a minimum of 129 to 262 pesos annually, see: Haslip-Viera, Crime and punishment in late colonial Mexico City, 31.

54 Timothy E. Anna, The fall of the royal government in Mexico City (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), 16.

55 Ladd, The Mexican nobility at Independence, 64 – 65.

56 The stateliness of the property apparently did not diminish over time, as some years later the first emperor of the independent Republic of Mexico, Agustín de Iturbide, elected to establish his Royal Palace there.

57 Bailey Glasco, Constructing Mexico City, 38.

58 Ladd, The Mexican nobility at Independence, 67.

59 Gauvin A. Bailey, Art of Colonial Latin America (London and New York: Phaidon, 2005), 324.

60 Viqueira Albán, Lipsett-Rivera, and Rivera Ayala, Propriety and permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, 42 – 44. For a colonial description of the Coliseo see, Silvestre Díaz de la Vega, Discurso sobre los dramas (Mexico: 1786), 7 – 16.

61 Villarroel, Enfermedades políticas, 171.

62 Ibid.

63 Haslip-Viera, Crime and punishment in late colonial Mexico City, 1692 – 1810, 12.

64 Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination, 32.

65 Viceroy Revillagigedo attempted to end this practice by issuing an edit on December 31, 1791 that prohibited the moving of large furniture or cargo after nightfall. See, AGN, Bando, vol. 16, exp. 44, fol. 108.

66 Carrera Stampa, Planos de la ciudad de México, 287 – 290. The author states that in 1806 11,049 varas of piping, 505 private fountains, and 28 public fountains were recorded. It is difficult to know precisely where many of these fountains stood, however, records place them in the following areas: barrio of San Francisco, Portal de Flores, Plaza Mayor, Plazuela del Factor, Plazuela de Loreto, Puente de San Jerónimo and Plaza de Santa Cruz, Plaza de Concepción, Plaza de San Domingo, Plazuela de Santa Ana, Plazuela de Santa Catarina, the corner of Calle de Cerbatana and the Plazuela de San Sebastián, Calle de Revillagigedo, Calle de Candelaria, Puente del Blanquillo, Puente del Fresno, Plazuela de la Paja, Plazuela de las Vizcaínas, Plazuela de la Barata, Plazuela de San Salvador, Plazuela de Monserrate, Plazuela de San Pablo, and Plazuela de Regina. 98

67 Ibid., 289. According to the author agaudores charged as much as one real (1/8th of a peso) for a large pitcher of water.

68 Cope, The limits of racial domination: plebeian society in colonial Mexico City, 1660 – 1720, 31.

69 Ibid.

70 Quoted in, Donald B. Cooper, Epidemic disease in Mexico City, 1761 – 1813: An administrative, social, and medical study (Austin: Published for the Institute of Latin American Studies by the University of Texas Press, 1965), 163 – 164.

71 Sharon Bailey Glasco, Constructing Mexico City, 50 – 56. Glasco notes how elites viewed disease as the product of plebeian behaviors, not the material conditions of the poor. For further reading on the impact of epidemic diseases on the population of New Spain see Cooper, Epidemic Disease in Mexico City, 1761 – 1813 and América Molina del Villar, La Nueva España y el matlazahuatl, 1736 – 1739 (México: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 2001).

72 Haslip-Viera, Crime and punishment, 31. Throughout the colonial period, it was common for the working poor to consume the majority of their daily calories in corn products. Although the state was supposed to regulate the cost and supply of corn, large landowners often manipulated the market for maximum profitability. For example, see Enrique Florescano, Precios del maíz y crisis agrícolas en México (1708 – 1810); ensayo sobre el movimiento de los precios y sus consecuencias económicas y sociales (México: El Colegio de México, 1969).

73 Silvia Marina Arrom, Containing the Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774-1871 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 33.

74 Revillagigedo, Informe sobre las misiones, 1793; e Instrucción reservada al marqués de Branciforte, 1794, 168.

75 Norman F. Martin, “La Desnudez en la Nueva España del Siglo XVIII,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos, no. 29 (1972): 273.

76 Founded in 1775 and located next to the Cathedral, the Pawn Shop (Monte de Piedad) provided another low cost exchange for clothing. For more information see, Marie Eileen Francois, “When Pawnshops Talk : Popular Credit and Material Culture in Mexico City, 1775 – 1916.” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Arizona, 1998) and D. S. Chandler, Social Assistance and Bureaucratic Politics: The Montepíos of Colonial Mexico, 1767 – 1821 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991).

77 See for example the discussion of contaminated clothing sourced from hospitals and graveyards in Baltasar Ladrón de Guevara, “Discurso sobre la policía de México, 1788” in Antología de Textos sobre la Ciudad de México en el Periodo de la Ilustración (1788 – 1792) ed. Sonia Lombardo de Ruíz (México: Colección Científica Fuentes Historia Social, 1982), 31 – 32. Also, Revillagigedo, Informe sobre las misiones, 1793; e Instrucción reservada al marqués de Branciforte, 1794, 161. See also the discussion of “contaminated clothing” in, Cooper, Epidemic disease in Mexico City, 36, 81 – 82, 140, 143 – 144, 158 – 159, and 192.

78 Colin M. MacLachlan, Spain’s Empire in the New World: The Role of Ideas in Institutional and Social Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 67 – 82.

79 Ibid., 69 – 70.

80 Benito Jerónimo Feijóo, Teatro critic universal (Madrid: Impr. de L.F. Mojados, 1726 – 1740).

81 MacLachlan, Spain’s Empire in the New World, 70.

82 See for example: Bernardo de Ulloa, Restablecimiento de las fabricas y comercio español (Madrid, 1740); José del Campillo y Cossío, Lo que hay de más y de menos en España para que sea lo que debe sery y no lo que es (Madrid, 1789); Bernardo Ward, Projecto económico en que se propenen varios providencias, dirigidas, á promover los intereses de España (Madrid, 1779); and Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, Informe de la Sociedad Económica de esta corte al real y supremo consejo de Castilla en el expediente de ley agrarian . . . (Madrid, 1795).

83 Campillo y Cossío, Nuevo sistema de gobierno económico para la América (Madrid, 1787).

84 MacLachlan, Spain’s Empire in the New World, 74.

85 José de Galvéz, “Informe general . . . entregó el Exmo. Señor Marqués de Sonora . . . al Virrey Don Antonio Bucareli y Ursúa” in Informe general . . . entregó el Exmo. Señor Marqués de Sonora . . . al Virrey Don Antonio Bucareli y Ursúa con fecha 31 de diciembre de 1771 ed. facsimilar (México: Ciesas, 2002). For analysis, see MacLachlan, Spain’s Empire in the New World, 89 – 95.

86 John H. Coatsworth, “The Limits of Colonial Absolutism: Mexico in the Eighteenth Century,” in Essays in the Political, Economic and Social History of Colonial Latin America, ed. Karen Spalding (Newark: University of Delaware, Latin American Studies Program, Occasional Papers and Monographs no. 3, 1982), 25 – 51. 87 The debt of the viceregal government went from three million pesos in the 1770s to more than thirty-one pesos in 1810. See Brian R. Hamnett, “Absolutismo ilustrado y la crisis multidimensional en el periodo colonial tardío, 1760 – 1808,” in Interpretaciones del siglo XVIII mexicano, ed. Josefina Zoraida Vázquez (México, D. F.: Nueva Imagen, 1992), 72.

88 Situated just beyond San Cosme and Alameda to the south, stood the Royal Tobacco Factory. There, workers processed raw tobacco for domestic and foreign consumption. In addition to its contribution to the gross domestic product, the tobacco factory further stimulated the economy by providing hundreds of jobs to primarily low-income workers. Colonial bureaucrats, such as Viceroy Antonio María Bucareli (viceroy 1771 – 1779) for one, firmly believed the factory provided an honorable and honest source of income for the poor. For more information on the factory see Susan Deans-Smith, “The Working Poor and the Eighteenth-Century Colonial State: Gender, Public Order, and Work Discipline, “ in Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico, ed. William H. Beezely, Cheryl English Martin, and William E. French (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1994). Deans-Smith offers a more detailed examination of the tobacco business in Bureaucrats, Planters, and Workers, 1992.

89 See the discussion of colonial street culture in Viqueira Albán, Propriety and permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, 97 – 182.

90 Ibid., 98.

91 Ibid., 98 – 100. Other descriptions of the streets of Mexico City can be found in Hipólito Villarroel, Enfermedades políticas, 166 – 168 and Romero Flores, México; historia de una gran ciudad, 353 – 365.

92 For an interesting analysis of the cultivation of the “public gaze” in late eighteenth-century society, see Pamela Voekel, “Peeing on the Palace: Bodily Resistance to Bourbon Reforms in Mexico City,” Journal of Historical Sociology 4:2 (1992), 183 – 208.

100

93 Ordinances published in 1793, for example, repeat and expand legislation (dating from 1671). Some of the items addressed include: that the tavern be formally registered, open on three sides, and its name be visible from the street. See, “Ordenanzas,” AGN, Bandos, Enero 25 de 1793, vol. 17, exp. 4. fols. 31 – 38. 101

CHAPTER THREE

VOWS OF PURITY, CONQUEST, AND PATRIARCHY

None put their heart into serving the Spanish Crown like Baltasar de Zúñiga

Guzmán Sotomayor y Mendoza, Marquis of Valero, and viceroy of New Spain from

1716 to 1722.1 An example of his deep commitment to civic duty can be appreciated in the terms of his last will and testament. Invoking rituals of the Baroque, the viceroy stipulated that upon death his body be buried in his homeland of Spain, but that his heart, literally, make the trans-Atlantic journey back to Mexico City and find its final resting place inside the Convent of Corpus Christi.2 What prompted this bizarre and moving request? One clue can be found in a poem inscribed on the cover of the reliquary formerly housing the viceroy’s heart. Its last line reads: “. . . where he placed his treasure, he there laid his heart.”3 The terms of Valero’s last will and testament suggest that the viceroy derived genuine fulfillment from one of the most controversial acts of his regency: the foundation of the Convent of Corpus Christi.

The importance of the Convent of Corpus Christi cannot be overemphasized; when it opened in 1724, Corpus Christi was the first nunnery in almost two hundred years of Spanish colonial rule to permit entry to Amerindian women.4 Its foundation stands as a watershed moment in the history of race and gender in Mexico and as a significant turning point in ecclesiastical policy. Despite its great importance to history, very little is known about the events surrounding the convent’s establishment. Current scholarship credits the Marquis of Valero with singlehandedly conceiving of the convent and overseeing its formation. While this 102 may seem a reasonable assumption given Valero’s dying request, an event of this magnitude undoubtedly drew support from pre-existing ideologies and assuredly had a longer trajectory than one man’s term of office. Unfortunately, the forces prompting Valero’s involvement in the establishment of Corpus Christi remain unknown since either he did not put into writing the reasons for his participation, or the records in which he did, have not been recovered.5

One piece of physical evidence linking the Marquis to the convent is a painting titled, Mapa del Alameda Paseo de la Mui Noble Ciudad de Mexico (Figure

3.1). Mapa del Alameda Paseo presents a southern view of Alameda Park; in this view, the Convent of Corpus Christi is visible at the top of the painting, on the south side of the park. An unknown artist created this oil-on-wood panel painting sometime after the year 1719 when the nunnery project began. The Alameda fills the center two-thirds of the composition. Park-goers occupy the lawns and are seen picnicking, vending refreshments, and strolling along shady paths. Outwardly, the subject of this painting is Alameda Park as indicated by the title. However, the conspicuous portrayal of the convent, featured in the upper one-third of the composition, asks viewers to contemplate what additional messages are alluded to in this cultural landscape.

A key located at the bottom of the painting supports a more analytical reading:

[bottom left] “MAP OF THE PASEO OF THE ALAMEDA OF THE VERY NOBLE CITY OF MEXICO [bottom right] New Convent of Corpus Christi, Ordered to be built by his Excellency Señor Marquis de Valero, 1. The four fountains that his Excellency the Señor ordered to be made New 2. Chapels of the Calvary 3. Gate that looks to Santa Isabel 4. Gate that looks to the New Convent 5. Gate 103

that looks to San Diego 6. Gate that looks to San Juan de Dios 7. The channels from which water comes to the city from the springs of Santa fé 8.”6

The key is an instrument that scaffolds how viewers of Mapa del Alameda Paseo move through the painting. Out of the many landmarks found near the Alameda, the key identifies eight: the convent, new park fountains, the chapels of the Calvary, four gates, and the aqueduct. Enumeration introduces a hierarchy in which items are ranked and sorted. Item number one is the Convent of Corpus Christi; the key therefore prioritizes this institution. Second, because landscapes typically spread laterally, not vertically, the upright canvas orientation works in conjunction with the key to insist the prominence of Corpus Christi. And, because the key explicitly names

Viceroy Valero, the painting puts forward a tantalizing scene in which ideas about patronage and paternalism converge on one specific act: the foundation of the

Convent of Corpus Christi.

The following chapter explores circumstances surrounding the establishment of Corpus Christi. It differs from previous studies because the present analysis brings to light two pieces of evidence not yet applied to questions about the convent’s origin. First, is Mapa del Alameda; and second, is a secular manuscript that casts light on why political leaders might have desired to establish an Amerindian nunnery.7 Current scholarship traces the foundation of the convent through two centuries of gradual religious support, which found a spokesperson in Viceroy

Valero. This study adds to the literature a secular viewpoint, suggesting how Corpus

Christi also validated the colonial narrative. As shall be argued, the foundation of the convent was an act of patronage carried out on behalf of the patriarch of the Empire. 104

Hence, the two pieces of evidence showcased by this study address the hitherto unexamined political dimensions of the convent.

Founding the Amerindian Convent of Corpus Christi

The first female convent in New Spain, Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, opened its doors to Spanish women in 1540.8 Admittance to La Concepción was conditional; it required proof of limpieza de sangre and confirmation that the professant was a child conceived in wedlock. These standards originated in Spain where protocol prevented women of Jewish, Moorish, or otherwise ignoble ancestry from becoming nuns. In addition to providing an alternative to marriage, living in cloister—especially in the New World—helped to safeguard Spanish women from violence and sexual jeopardy. Convents established after Nuestra Señora de la

Concepción adopted its admission policies. Consequently, from inception, the colonial Church prohibited Amerindian women from taking vows and becoming nuns. They were however permitted to live inside convents, performing the duties of domestic servants.9 A change to the admission policies of colonial nunneries would not occur for almost two hundred years.10

Support for the first convent to accept Amerindian women came from

Viceroy Valero, who acted as one agent of a greater cultural and ideological movement. The beginnings of this shift are complex, although one could say it was set in motion around the year 1700 with the transition of monarchial power from the Spanish Hapsburg dynasty to the Spanish Bourbon dynasty. Under the leadership of the Bourbons, expansion of the government and new patriarchal 105 frameworks of power necessitated that Amerindians be fully incorporated into enlightened programs of thought and behavior. But even before the ascendency of the Bourbons, the cultural consciousness of New Spain had in many ways warmed to the idea of receiving Amerindian women into the Church. This occurred as

Amerindian men and women gained a reputation for being uniquely endowed with spiritual gift.

Belief in Amerindian spiritual aptitude gained momentum over the course of the seventeenth century. Historically, in the eyes of the Church, Amerindians were perpetual neophytes, and therefore unable to assume leadership positions in the

Church.11 However, some churchmen believed that Amerindian men and women possessed a special talent for attracting Divine experience.12 Mendicant friars working on the frontier reported multiple incidences of Amerindians having supernatural visions, Divine encounters, and other proofs of grace. Over the course of the century, clerical reports coalesced into a substantial body of hagiographic literature.13 Importantly, this literature opposed negative stereotypes of

Amerindians, such as belief in their persistent idolatry and sexual perversity.14 The literature also helped to single out Amerindian women as even more spiritually inclined than their male peers. Characterized as humble, innocent, and devout;

Amerindian women were said to epitomize the ideal qualities of womanhood.

Unfortunately, the exact events precipitating the establishment of the

Convent of Corpus Christi in 1724 remain shrouded.15 What is known follows. First, the proposal to establish the first convent accepting Amerindian women generated virulent opposition mostly between the Franciscans, who were in favor of the 106 initiative; and the Jesuits, who were against it. The Mexico City cabildo (city council) joined the Jesuits and likewise opposed Corpus Christi, believing that the convent would strain the city’s budget.16 Second, the historical record suggests that Viceroy

Valero singlehandedly spearheaded the project; while it appears that he was the chief proponent of Corpus Christi (or at least its highest-ranking proponent), a more plausible account includes multiple protagonists and/or factors. Third, Valero’s support for the convent hinged on one condition: that it be reserved exclusively for pureblood, noble Amerindian women. Expressed differently, the Convent of Corpus

Christi did not break with the strict admission policies set forth by La Concepción.

Just as Spanish women who entered sisterhood were required to furnish proof of limpieza de sangre and noble birth, so too were Amerindian women.

According to accounts, the deeply religious Valero sought the advice of a young novice belonging to the convent of San Juan de la Penitencia regarding an unknown matter. Reputed to possess exceptional virtue, Sister Petra Francisco wrote back to the viceroy, offering her prayers for a speedy conclusion to the business. She also added in postscript, her hope that God would guide the viceroy to establish a nunnery in the name of Saint Claire. Moved by this request, Valero paid

Sister Petra a visit. The meeting between Valero and Sister Petra resulted in Valero’s resolution to establish a Franciscan convent for Amerindian women.17 Importantly, it was not Petra who proposed the idea; instead records suggest Valero did. If he explained his rationale in writing, that document has not been found.

In 1719, Valero informed the cabildo of his plans, stating that he had already begun to accept pious donations in care of the project.18 A polemic soon broke out. 107

On the one hand, the Council of the Indies, the cabildo, and the Royal Courts raised practical arguments that revolved around resources and expense. Other detractors of the initiative, such as the Jesuits of the College of San Gregorio, insisted that

Amerindian women were not sufficiently astute to manage the demands of spiritual devotion. On the other hand, the Franciscan Order advocated on behalf of the convent; they claimed that Amerindian women were humble and obedient and therefore well equipped to join the religious community.19 The decisive factor in this battle was the support of Viceroy Valero. Corpus Christi benefited from the patronage of the highest secular official in New Spain. Valero even donated 40,000 pesos of his own to the project.20

The viceroy hired Pedro de Arrieta—architect of the famed Basilica of

Guadalupe—to build the convent; construction began in July of 1720.21 In 1722, amid construction and continued dispute, the viceroy’s term ended when he accepted a promotion requiring him to return to Spain. His influence in the Spanish courts may have been responsible for the royal cédula or charter that arrived to

Mexico City on March 5, 1724. The last move on the chessboard, so to speak, the charter announced the Crown’s approval of the Convent of Corpus Christi. Under the terms of the contract, the nunnery would house thirty-three nuns of noble

Amerindian ancestry. Corpus Christi would furthermore follow the First Order of

Saint Claire—an observant branch of the Franciscan Order that did not require novices to submit dowries.22 Franciscan ministers presided over Corpus Christi’s inaugural ceremonies, which took place on June 16, 1724. The three-day ceremony was open to the public and well attended.23 108

Fabricated from local materials, tezontle (red volcanic rock) and chiluca

(white granite), the facade of the convent provided a stunning focal point to the area directly south of Alameda Park. Still in existence today, the main portal features a monstrance carved in stone relief. This element references the name of the church:

Corpus Christi or Body of Christ. Two heraldic escudos belonging to the Zuñíga family appear on either side of the monstrance in honor of Valero’s patronage.

There appeared to be nothing outwardly indigenous-looking in the exterior of the convent. The only indication that the building served as an Amerindian nunnery is an inscription added above the main portal in 1729. Placed within a cartouche, it reads:

This is a Franciscan convent for the Indian daughters of caciques and no others, the convent was founded and built by His Excellency Señor Don Baltazar de Zúñiga y Gúzman Sotomayor y Mendoza, Marques de Valero y Alenquer, being Viceroy, Governor and Captain General of this Kingdom, genteel man of the House of Your Majesty and Judge of Your Royal Courts.24

The inscription publicizes the pious work of Valero; it also makes known that not just any woman could join Corpus Christi. Membership required limpieza de sangre, which meant membership required high social status. So crucial was this point that

Valero petitioned and received a papal brief from Pope Benedict XIII confirming that only legitimate, pureblood daughters of Amerindian nobles would be accepted into

Corpus Christi.25

At the heart of the matter was the longstanding belief that racial purity or limpieza de sangre amounted to social capital. In recognizing the racial purity of

Amerindian women, the Church simultaneously extended and maintained the exclusivity of its membership. And, while the foundation of the Convent of Corpus 109

Christi may have set a new historical precedence by endorsing Amerindian women as capable and worthy of sisterhood, its admission policies did not break with established social patterns. Limpieza de sangre remained the measure of personal worth just as it had for Spanish women. As a result, the establishment of the first convent to house Amerindian nuns simply introduced a new way in which the question of racial identity could be applied to existing policy.

A Picture Fit for the King

All forms of geographical representation are shaped by real and imagined social, political, and personal viewpoints. In the apt words of geographer J. B. Harley:

“A map is a social construction of the world.”26 Mapa del Alameda Paseo shapes space and stages human actors. This painting constructs a viewpoint in which race, gender, and political ideology converge on the emblem of the Convent of Corpus

Christi. The convent in turn reflects ideas about colonized bodies and frameworks of patriarchy. Although the record of commission and earliest provenance of Mapa del

Alameda Paseo are unknown, logical deduction dates the origin of the painting to sometime between 1719—when the project of Corpus Christi began, and 1722— when the painting likely journeyed to Spain in the care of Valero. It also places the artwork in the audience, or at least the intended audience, of King Philip V (r. 1701 –

1724 Jan. and 1724 Sept. – 1746).

The paper trail for Mapa del Alameda Paseo begins in 1746 when executors recorded the artwork in the inventory of the Palace of La Granja in San Ildefonso,

Spain.27 Presumably, the register was conducted after the death of Philip V, which 110 occurred on July 9, 1746. It has not yet been determined how the painting entered the Royal Collection. The most plausible explanation is that when Valero returned to

Spain in 1722 to serve as Chief Aide to the Prince of Asturias Louis I (r. Jan – Aug

1724), the former viceroy gifted Mapa del Alameda Paseo to Philip V. This scenario is the most reasonable explanation for how the king acquired an article so intimately connected with the Mexican residency of Valero.28

A view of Alameda Park might have seemed to Valero a gift well suited to the king’s tastes. Philip admired gardens, particularly the formal gardens of Versailles— an estate where he (a grandson of Louis XIV) was born.29 In fact, Philip spent large sums of money in an effort to transform his estate, the Royal Palace of La Granja in

San Ildefondso, Spain into a landscape on par with the stately Versailles.30 This being the case, one would expect Philip to appreciate a view like the one shown by

Mapa del Alameda. The painting depicts a healthy environment; assets of managed diversity align in the aesthetic of the formal garden to construct a picture of culture and sophistication. While the appearance of easy social order was arguably a fallacy, the painting nevertheless possesses psychological appeal. Of course, there is no way to know how this painting registered with Philip V. Uncertainty aside, the conventions in which Mapa del Alameda Paseo might have been displayed rehearse a common metaphor of monarchial power: the idea of the Father King.31

Mapa del Alameda Paseo measures 210 x 148 cm. These proportions match the equally grand measurements of cartographic paintings typically hung in map rooms. From the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, royal apartments and other well- apportioned estates commonly contained rooms decorated with maps and/or map 111 paraphernalia, e.g., tables with map inlays. These objects presumably enabled monarchs to visualize near and far dominions; they may have also given rulers an opportunity to reflect on the social relationship between themselves and their vassals. As the author Christian Jacob writes: “Possession of the map and its display on the walls or on the floor of the palace express the glory of its owner, and the universality of power.”32 The possession and display of an object like Mapa del

Alameda Paseo may therefore be understood to issue a vision of power. On display, it would have reminded of the paternal contract between kings and vassals, and given the illusion that subjects remained perpetually within sight.

The size of Mapa del Alameda Paseo also engenders a kind of corporeal intimacy. Although one cannot know if Philip V projected himself into the vista—as people often do by metaphorically stepping inside a map—the proportions do connect to the physical presence of an average-sized adult. If Philip gazed upon

Mapa del Alameda, the size of the painting is ideally suited to foster a physical connection between viewer and subject. The aerial perspective furthermore simulates the opening of a Renaissance-style window onto the world; incidentally, a world that the king ruled, but not one that he knew firsthand. Lastly, the scale of the scene and the overhead view work in tandem to stage physical domination. If Philip

V looked upon this scene, he would have been predisposed to experience a resounding affirmation of Spanish supremacy.

Art historian Michael Schreffler has suggested that by mid-seventeenth century, the elevated panoramic view was an established pictorial genre with abundant examples existing in the collections of the Spanish Habsburgs.33 The 112 panoramic view, he argues, was a key expression of kingly power; it operated through the metaphor of “spectatorial reflectivity.”34 Put another way, the panoramic viewpoint offered a metaphor in which the act of virtual spectatorship expressed the paternal watchfulness of the king. One example of the connection between the panoramic view and political exercise is found in a chronicle of the

1640 disembarkation of Viceroy Diego López Pacheco Cabrera y Bobadilla the

Marquis of Villena (vr. 1640 – 1642). The author of this description, Cristóbal

Gutiérrez de Medina, writes: “From the Port His Excellency [the Marquis of Villena] looked out across the city and land of New Spain, and to look at it was to protect it, to keep safe all that he saw . . .”35 Here, the idea is that the viceroy was responsible for all he laid eyes on. Support for this interpretation is found in the 1734 Spanish dictionary, the Academia Autoridades. The first entry defines “mirar” as the act of looking or fixing one’s sight on an object or thing. A subsequent entry adds, to the basic definition, another connotation. “Mirar” also means the act of “caring for, attending to, protecting, looking after, or defending any person or thing.”36 In

English, the corresponding meaning is to watch over someone or something.

The panoramic view displayed in Mapa del Alameda Paseo communicates paternal watchfulness; hence, the painting participates in the ways of seeing that

Schreffler describes as “an imperial discourse that fuses, space, vision, and power.”37

In the case of Mapa del Alameda, cardinal orientation cues additional information about the panoramic viewpoint and the construction of watchfulness. Mapa del

Alameda Paseo portrays a southern view of the park; north lies at the bottom, and south at the top. The cardinal arrangement is atypical; most city views of Mexico 113

City are oriented to the east. This particular convention sprung from necessity since to capture a panoramic view height was required. A large hill in the Forest of

Chapultepec, which lies four and one-half miles west of the plaza mayor, offered the highest point of elevation. From the hill where the Castillo was located, illustrators were naturally positioned to look eastward across the horizon. The longevity of this practice is supported in the 1554 work of Rhetoric Professor Francisco Cervantes de

Salazar. Cervantes’s characters seek out this same hill because it offered the best place to get a clear and unobstructed view of the environs.38

The longstanding tradition of easterly, panoramic spectatorship calls attention to the uncommon, southern orientation of Mapa del Alameda. The cardinal alignment is not coincidence; it works with the vertical orientation to create a top down visual hierarchy that places importance on the Convent of Corpus Christi.

Through conventions of panoramic spectatorship, Mapa del Alameda Paseo communicates the king’s watchfulness. And, like a benevolent father, Philip V (the intended audience for this painting) is seen to look after his community. The view additionally flatters Philip by showing how his government succeeds in the maintenance of social order and the provision of opportunity to all members of society.

And lastly, while no Spanish monarch ever visited overseas, Mapa del

Alameda Paseo cleverly situates the king within the colonial landscape. Appearing below the convent is a carriage and a six-horse driving team.39 As convention dictated, the emblem represents the office of the viceroy. Viceroy Valero, or rather

“vice-king” Valero, carried out his duties while performing as the body-double of the 114

Spanish sovereign. The carriage is therefore an emblem that does double duty; it inserts both Valero and King Philip V into composition. Its effect is appreciable. The emblem links Philip V to this important historical moment—one that culminated in the foundation of the first Amerindian nunnery in colonial history.

The Medics in Babylon

An unpublished manuscript authored by Viceroy Fernando de Alencastre

Noroña y Silva, Duke of Linares (vr. 1710 – 1716) may offer insight into the involvement of Viceroy Valero in the foundation of the Convent of Corpus Christi.40

Linares wrote Instrucciones del Duque de Linares around 1716 at the culmination of his term as viceroy. Addressed to the incumbent Valero, the report provides a firsthand account of the events and matters of importance affecting New Spain during Linares’s residency. Woven throughout the correspondence are the personal opinions Linares held about Amerindian communities, Spanish colonial society, and patriarchal duty. This manuscript potentially sheds light on the cultural situation from which Valero acted when he decided to establish a nunnery for Amerindian women. To date, the report has not been analyzed in conjunction with the establishment of the Convent of Corpus Christi.

Instrucciones del Duque de Linares consists of one hundred and fifty-six pages.

It is organized by province and city, beginning with Havana and moving west, then south. Mexico receives the greatest page weight. In the last quarter of the manuscript, Linares discusses itemized subjects such as mining, agriculture, and pulque revenue. The manuscript offers an example of a particular type of official 115 correspondence that viceroys penned at the end of their terms. These documents are also called informes (summaries) or relaciónes (accounts). Such reports aimed to brief incumbents about important issues and to orient new officeholders to the needs of the people and the resources of the land.

Instrucciones is somewhat atypical of the genre. As an official document, the report should be fact-driven and even-handed. This manuscript is just the opposite.

Instrucciones vents personal opinions and passes judgments. It may be that Linares felt a need to qualify his words since in the opening paragraph of Instrucciones he clarifies that the report expresses his sentiments, ones he uniquely acquired through his experience alone.41 Articulated throughout the manuscript is a sympathetic tilt toward the plight of Amerindian women. As the recipient of

Instrucciones, Valero may have been influenced by the opinions articulated by his predecessor. What the report undoubtedly proves is that other secular administrators, in addition to Valero, were entertaining the idea of co-opting

Amerindian women.

Spanish Corruption

Linares composes a tactical dialog that draws the reader into a comparison between Spanish colonial society and Amerindian society. He begins by stating that the perceived good or bad state of the Indies derives from the quality of the missionaries, the men responsible for introducing New World peoples to the Gospel.

Admittedly, the Amerindian situation was complicated, Linares writes; “[God] has not entrusted dominion over the [Amer]Indians to any other Spanish Prince.”42 But 116 by embracing this duty with gratitude, Linares perceived an opportunity for him and other men to prove their mettle. In his opinion, this challenge occasioned “heroic work and tolerance in the name of virtue and religion . . . using zeal to draw the infidels of the region into knowing their Creator and Redeemer.”43 To avoid immodesty, Linares couches these ideas in metaphor. He draws an allusion between missionary work in New Spain and the work of Saint Francis Xavier in the

Philippines.44 In doing so, he not only emphasizes the need for a continued commitment to ministry, but he also links pious work to acts of loyalty and an all around sense of duty.

Linares precedes the section on Spanish society with a reflection on

Amerindian barbarism, as historically conceived. He writes:

. . . in a sense, all the names of wilderness and Brute animals have been attributed to the [Amer]Indians; owing to their generally corrupt nature and lack of education, Government, and civil order; living freely in the darkness of simplistic reason, they possess a certain liberty, but one that can only serve those who live as irrationals, not as men: The evangelical effort has put the [Amer]Indians on God’s path and given them the eternal Truths and Divine instruments necessary for [spiritual] health.45

At this point, the author’s opinions about Amerindian communities may come across to the modern reader as condescending. A product of his age and time,

Linares found pre-Hispanic customs and lifestyles primitive and impractical. While he commended good, missionary work; in the next sentence, Linares calls into question the dedication of the clergy, which did not have uniform success in improving the lives of Amerindian communities. “I have known accomplished individuals who have risen to top clerical posts,” he writes, “but they lack patience and moderation when treating the [Amer]Indians, and as a result, this group 117 continues to suffer.” According to Linares, “[here, in New Spain] it is as if Wolves lie amongst Wolves, or [Wolves] lie amongst sheep.”46 Presumably the viceroy introduced the idea of Amerindian suffering in order to pair it with what he saw as

Spanish duplicity and corruption.

On this topic, Linares reported many concerns. From royal officials, entrepreneurs, socialites, and the clergy to the impoverished lower classes, Linares chastised the immorality of Spanish colonial society. “Even if His Excellency the King were generous in judgment,” Linares writes, “none among this damaging population could be considered a neighborly Christian.”47 The plebe was composed of freeloaders (zanganos) that attended public events simply to pickpocket; lying was a common art form practiced by everyone; and the scandals among the clergy were so grave that it broke his heart (que parte me Corazón) to put them in writing.48

According to Linares, the source of colonial vice was money. He claimed the wealthy were motivated only by self-interest, and that the merchants and hacendados of New

Spain made sin fashionable.49 Although they had the means, Linares accused the upper class of not putting their resources to better use, which was tantamount to failing to serve the King. As Linares states, “they live by their own rule, derisively claiming to know their King as their sovereign.”50 In other words, elites were vassals in name only because when duty called they evaded their civic responsibilities.

According to Linares, the solution to greed and corruption was already known. It existed in enforcing the current mandates of the government, which

Linares found “holy” (santas), “good” (buenas), “just” (justas), and “entirely reasonable” (maduramente establecidas).”51 The problem was that some officials 118 blatantly flouted the Laws of the Indies. “Good government is like a body,” Linares writes, “composed of many parts, some members unfortunately harm it.”52 In his opinion, the political health of New Spain depended on punishing those who corrupted it. Linares remained confident that the King in his infinite wisdom would

“extend care to this small part of the body of the Crown and apply the proper medicine.”53 Linares clearly understood his duty to protect the interests of the

Crown. He states: “To prove that I am a Medic in Babylon, I shall identify to Your

Excellency [the Marquis of Valero] the disorders present in this jurisdiction.”54

The above statement is rich in metaphor. For one, the turn of phrase shrewdly describes Linares’s assessment of colonial society. He compares Mexico

City to Babylon—a biblical city that faced the wrath of God and was ultimately undone by the sins of its inhabitants. Secondly, Linares refers to himself as a “medic” who administers the “medicines of the Crown.” This statement emphasizes the principle upon which royal authority rest: the trope of the king’s “two bodies.”

Colonial governance operated under the assumption that the body politic of the sovereign transcended flesh and blood; it was an illimitable power that could be embodied in another who acted on behalf of the king. In this example, the office of viceroy extended the policies of the Crown, acting as a doctor who applied the salve of law and order to bring health and spiritual vigor to the community.

Amerindian Purity

The purpose of referring to Instrucciones in detail has been to better understand the perspective from which Linares wrote and to think about how such 119 a discourse may have influenced Valero. At this point, it is necessary to take stock of what has been learned. Linares’s words evidence a deeply devout man who cared tremendously about the evangelistic project of New Spain. His words are mildly caustic when referring to the customs of pre-Hispanic Amerindians; however, the viceroy did not suppress harsh language in his critique of Spanish colonial society.

In his opinion, “would-be gentlemen” practice the “new theology of monopoly,” dishonorable clerics hear confession while in bed with their mistresses, and royal administrators search for legal loopholes for personal gain and/or the sheer enjoyment of defying the king.55 To summarize, the disorders of colonial society agonized the statesman, causing him to write:

Like a good vassal and a saddened prophet I warn of the excessive vice [in New Spain], which will bring ruin or desolation; these vices have taken strong hold in the hearts of inhabitants, which one might say they deserve . . . but even so, someday the sinful will call out for repentance.56

The language of this passage conveys a certain mindset; it is indicative of a person who thinks about the world in apocalyptic terms—for example, the fated city of

Babylon and the dichotomy of good and evil, pure and impure. If one believes that

Linares was of this persuasion, and that he characterized Spanish colonial society as sinful, then the corresponding, virtuous social group was that of Amerindian women.

Amerindian woman, the most marginalized segment of the population, embodied to Linares a pure counterforce to the corruptions he perceived elsewhere.

According to the viceroy, Amerindian women were clean, untainted by the vices that riddled the rest of colonial society. He twice relays to Valero that this state of purity 120 was unique to the female gender since Amerindian men learned vice from their contact with the outside world.

Overall, they [the Amerindians] are soft and impressionable; as an example, they have effectively learned the Dogmas, but in terms of models [of behavior], the [male Amer]Indians see the Spaniards that live amongst them, and also those who govern their Political and Catholic lives; unfortunately, these superiors conduct themselves in the most scandalous manner. It is unfathomable that the [male Amer]Indians would be better behaved than these so-called Teachers. And that accounts for the difference in the customs, which you will observe, between the male [Amer]Indians and the female [Amer]Indians. 57

While Linares describes Amerindian men as drunkards and gluttons, he found

Amerindian women to be “frequenters of the sacraments and hardworking servants in the Care of their homes, Husbands, and Children.” He goes on to write, “I have never before found in a people such a difference between the genders.”58 The fundamental distinction came down to one thing: Amerindian women were furthest removed from the profane world; they were, according to Linares, less polluted by the “contagions of social corruption.”59

One begins to see how Linares’s words might indeed spark ideas about female purity and cloister, a sentiment that may have translated into Valero’s support for Corpus Christi. In the Iberian world, female monasteries encapsulated deeply ingrained ideals of honor and femininity. And while Linares never specifically mentions the need to create a facility like the Convent of Corpus Christi, his words suggest a train of thought that Valero apparently shared since he did act on it. At the heart of the matter was the belief that Amerindian women became corrupted when they were “abused by their husbands, men who introduce vice into the home.”60 Given these facts, it seems highly plausible that the ideas expressed in 121

Instrucciones resonated with Valero. That he later petitioned Pope Benedict XIII for a brief confirming that only pureblood Amerindian women were eligible to join

Corpus Christi suggests that constructs of purity and corruption weighed on his mind.

While in some ways a reading of Instrucciones might indicate that Linares wrote, and Valero acted, out of altruism and a sense of duty, it must be noted that intentions are rarely one-dimensional. Gestures of containment and the fear of contamination closely align with measures of regulation and the desire to control a population. Consequently, it is worthwhile to reconsider what is known of Valero’s patronage of the nunnery. Not only did he launch the initiative, Valero also donated

40,000 pesos of his own. This gift follows suit with normative patriarchal and gendered frameworks that assign the role of father/man with tasks related to providing for the child/woman. Indeed, Valero seems to have been particularly inclined to sponsor institutions for women. In addition to the Convent of Corpus

Christi, his patronage included mediation in the foundation of the Royal School for

Girls of Santa Rosa in Querétaro.61

In both acts of goodwill, Valero assumed the role of fatherly patron, providing care and opportunity to Amerindian women. Which is also to say, Valero exercised his duty as viceroy, watching over the population as he simultaneously represented and served the king. This example illustrates a case of double entendre within the paradigms of Spanish power. In founding the nunnery, Valero took on a paternalistic or fatherly role; at the same, he did so while preforming as the body- double of the king; thereby rehearsing the patriarchal model on which Spanish 122 governance rested. As a second point, the concept of female purity stands apart as one of the dominant themes expressed in Instrucciones. With this in mind, it is worthwhile to reexamine the complexities of limpieza de sangre in Spanish America.

Doing so enables this study to consider how ideas about racial purity and the colonial narrative find representation in Mapa del Alameda.

Purity in Word and Image

In the final years of his reign, Hapsburg King Charles II (r. 1665 – 1700) issued an answer to the sweeping debate that had grown over the course of the seventeenth century. That debate centered on the question of Amerindian blood purity, i.e., whether or not Amerindians could claim the status of limpieza de sangre, and if so, whether or not the title of cacique (chief) was legally equal to that of

Spanish hidalgo (noble). On March 12, 1697, Charles issued a decree affirming both points.62 In the eyes of the law, pureblood Amerindians were the social equals of pureblood Spaniards. Clarifying the high status of Amerindian subjects helped to pave the way for institutions like the Convent of Corpus Christi. It also served a political purpose. Ratifying the purity of Amerindian populations helped to legitimize the colonial enterprise and to validate Spain’s right to govern its New

World colonies.

As the historian María Elena Martínez argues, the debate surrounding

Amerindian rights and privileges in New Spain grew as the colony itself developed a more diverse demographic profile.63 Over the course of the seventeenth century, the mixed-race population expanded. Customary restrictions to professional and 123 institutional membership on the basis of race required explicit explanation.

Exclusions targeted not only Amerindians, but also castas, particularly persons of

African descent. When Charles II validated Amerindian limpieza de sangre, he did not address the question of African blood purity. This dismissal was consistent with traditional, religious definitions of limpieza de sangre, which historically drew a connection between persons of Africans ancestry and Islamic Muslims. Importantly, what the decree did was formally disassociate Amerindians from co-called stained races.

Disputes about the legal and moral implications of Spain’s intervention in the

New World began in the sixteenth century and centered on the question of

Amerindian humanity, i.e., were Amerindians human, and if so, what legal rights did they have under the Crown?64 These discussions did not end when the Evangelical period came to a close. The sixteenth-century debate rang on and in fact intensified during the seventeenth century when rumors of the Black Legend circulated among

European adversaries. Protestant areas, especially English, Dutch and German- speaking nations, disseminated propaganda aiming to demonize Spaniards; their attacks accused the latter of genocide, greed, and the exploitation of colonial subjects.65 Constrained by this unfriendly climate, Spanish authors and political advisors countered with materials intending to validate the Conquest and to legitimize colonization.

One of the most powerful vindications of the Crown’s actions in the Americas is found in the work of Spaniard jurist Juan de Solórazano y Pereira. Solórazano authored a compendium of colonial legislation enacted by Hapsburg kings.66 124

Presumably his intent was to show how Spanish leaders had protected the interests of Amerindian communities; to suggest that the Conquest had been Divine will; and to establish that the evangelism was an honor and responsibility God bestowed on the Spanish Empire. These points endorsed Spanish colonialism on the grounds of religion—in other words, Solórazano asserted that Spain’s ultimate mission was to spread the Faith and to convert indigenous populations to Christianity. Integral to the argument was the concept of purity. In order to receive Christ, Amerindians had to be pure souls, unblemished by Jewish or Moorish infidelity; to suggest otherwise invalidated the entire evangelical platform from which Spain claimed it operated.67

Furthermore, as Martínez points out, to insist on two categories of Christian, i.e., a first-rate category of limpieza de sangre for Spaniards and second-rate category for

Amerindians undermined the argument that evangelism was vital and compulsory.68

The passage of the 1697 decree furthered Spanish political cause since it built a case for colonialism on the basis of religion. It likewise linked the Conquest of

Mexico to an earlier narrative: the Re-conquest of Spain from the Moors. Doing so fabricated a seamless trajectory of religious purpose across multiple epochs and two continents. Twenty-two years following the 1697 piece of legislation, the origin of the Convent of Corpus Christi followed as a sequel to the former’s ideological momentum. The convent applied the statutes of limpieza de sangre to create opportunity for a subgroup of the population previously without recourse. However, most pertinent to this event is the particular moment at which the idea of the convent took root. Ground broke on Corpus Christi in 1719—a date that stands out 125 in history as the two hundred year anniversary of the Conquest of Mexico. This co- occurrence suggests that while the origination of the convent served social cause, it also leveraged political gain and promoted colonial propaganda.

Proof that contemporaries were thinking about Corpus Christi in relation to the bicentennial celebration of the Conquest is found in the benediction read during its opening ceremonies.69 Distinguished theologian (and later Bishop of Yucatán)

Juan Ignacio María de Castorena y Ursúa crafted a sermon rich in allusion and metaphor to honor the deeds of Viceroy Valero, as well as King Philip V. As

Castorena y Ursúa orated:

with good cause, the King has put your Excellency [Valero] in the employment of the Supreme Council of the Indies, so that the King’s burning zeal for the Glory of God, and the conversion of the Infidels, could be carried out in this Hemisphere.70

The priest praised the viceroy whose patronage supported four institutions serving the Amerindian community. According to Castorena y Ursúa the Convent of Corpus aligned with a long history of Christian evangelism, which refined the spirit of the

Amazons and the vestal virgins of Imperial Rome. Here and now, he stated, the gospels are “renewing the Pantheon in this city where in the times of Emperor

Moctezuma; young, beautiful virgins fed the flames of religious fervor.”71 While the brilliance of the Mexican Church ended this practice, the priest extolled that the best of the past was reborn in eighteen Amerindian damsels of noble birth who would remain virgins and join Christ in death.72

Castorena y Ursúa defended Spanish colonialism, suggesting that Moctezuma willingly delivered the city to Charles V. The emperor perceived, according to the priest, the glimmer of new age, ostensibly realized at that moment, in the Convent of 126

Corpus Christi. It may be assumed Castorena y Ursúa wished audiences to grasp the idea that no feat proved the success of the colonial mission more than the assimilation of native peoples. The Convent of Corpus Christi gave proof that Spain’s great responsibility had finally been achieved. Hence, the origination of the convent at the same time as the bicentennial anniversary of the Conquest gave credence to the idea that Spanish colonialism was a tremendous success. In his sermon,

Castorena y Ursúa likened the nuns of Corpus Christi to “rational birds” whose dedications showed intelligence and grace. Put differently, the women were said to be exotic, yet tamed creatures transformed to follow the models set by biblical virgins. Throughout this discourse two points standout: first, the idea that

Amerindian purity justified acceptance into the religious community; and second, the idea that Amerindian purity gave cause for the establishment of the colonial

Church and government. With this in mind, it is fruitful to consider how the concept of purity is illustrated in Mapa del Alameda.

Mapa del Alameda Paseo uses compositional handling and pictorial tropes to reinforce notions of Amerindian limpieza de sangre and Spanish colonial prosperity.

Unlike most maps or landscapes, Mapa del Alameda Paseo sits vertically. This characteristic compels viewers to scale the painting from bottom to top or vice versa.

The movement rehearses a hierarchy set by the key and reinforces the importance of the Convent of Corpus Christi. The convent, for example, is metaphorically located among the Divine sphere, while the rest of the scene occupies the earthly profane.

As historian Margaret Chowning argues, colonial audiences believed nunneries to have express civic benefit. The epitome of earthly perfection, observant nuns were 127 thought to share an intimate bond with God. While for the laity this closeness was unattainable, ordinary persons could rely upon nuns to serve as spiritual mediators.73 The value invested in the convent is reflected in the honored position it receives in Mapa del Alameda. Corpus Christi stood as an asset to the community, a facility that reproduced Spanish cultural values.74

The depiction of the convent, the park, and the aqueduct share a common feature: an emphasis on enclosure. In Mapa del Alameda, a large gate is found at the bottom of the painting; it is not mimetic—no such gate existed. Locked and barred, the portal introduces a fictive and simultaneously restrictive element into an otherwise open, expansive view. Repetition of the gate as a motif continues in the park entrances and the tripartite portal of the Convent of Corpus Christi. Park gates suggest the obstruction of trespassers, while the portal of the convent designates a barrier between the laity and the nuns. Gates are elements that regulate ingress and egress; they therefore are a suggestive motif, especially in relation to the idea of purity. Visual repetition of this element throughout the composition offers a metaphor for the ways colonial officials sought to protect Amerindian women from a presumably irreverent society.

In this view, Alameda Park may furthermore be understood to signify a microcosm of colonial society. The park issues a field wherein design elements reflect physical order and neat, quadrangular lawns create a genteel space for social exchange. Trees bordering these units add structure to the scene by framing space and ensuring that discrete units do not bleed into one another. The microcosm repeats again in the painting’s portrayal of the convent. With its own quadripartite 128 design and central fountain, the garden behind the nunnery bears a strong resemblance to the Alameda. Like the Alameda, it too presents ideas about spatial order. The convent’s garden calls upon a familiar Christian emblem to express ideas about enclosure and purity. The emblem of the enclosed garden, or hortus conclusus in Latin, derives from the Vulgate Bible’s Song of Songs.75 In this account, the purity of the Virgin Mary is allegorized by a walled garden that keeps a central fountain.

The hortus conclusus was a common symbol in the art and literature of early modern

Europe. Presented in Mapa del Alameda, this emblem alludes to the sexual purity of the nuns who joined the Convent of Corpus Christi. It may also allude to their blood purity.

Conclusion: Utopian Visions of Kingdom and Conquest

In an attempt to better understand the origins of the Convent of Corpus

Christi and the social discourse surrounding the concept of limpieza de sangre, this study has examined two artifacts previously unconnected to the relevant literature:

Mapa del Alameda Paseo and Instrucciones del Duque de Linares. Both the city view and the report work together to bring insight into the ways secular officials thought about Amerindian communities, as well as the political relationship between a sovereign and his subjects. The painting emphasizes, through the reoccurring motif of gates and barriers, ideas about purity and enclosure. In this sense concepts of purity relate to both sexual purity—the essential characteristic of the ideal Spanish woman, and racial purity—the essential right of status conferred on Amerindian persons by Charles II some twenty years prior to the foundation of the convent. In 129 making a place for Amerindian women in the Church no single quality was more important than that of purity.

The establishment of the Convent of Corpus Christi was a turning point in the history of race, gender, and class in Mexico, but not for its purported egalitarianism.

The admission policies of colonial convents did not change with Corpus Christi; what changed were the ways the statutes of blood purity were applied to individuals. Permitting Amerindian women to become nuns simply added another clause to the unspoken command of the social hierarchy. And rather than a place of equality, Corpus Christi was known for its continuation of Amerindian discrimination. Spanish nuns, for example, were enlisted to govern the Amerindian novitiates for a period of twenty years, or until Church Fathers deemed Amerindian women competent to manage their own affairs.76

Evidence presented by this study suggests that the origin of the first

Amerindian convent served political ambition. This study does not claim that religious and social cause held no importance; rather it casts light on the untold political dimensions of this act of patronage. The establishment of the Convent of

Corpus Christi provided another demonstration of the ways that Spanish colonialism put “the [Amer]Indians on God’s path” giving them the “eternal Truths and Divine instruments necessary for [spiritual] health.”77 As a political act motivated by the desire to defend colonial expansion, the convent offered a keen reminder of Spain’s concomitant contribution to the growth of the Church. In doing so, patronage of Corpus Christi reproduced the narrative of Spanish colonialism; that is, the myth that Christianity reigned triumphant in the New World. 130

On another level, the establishment of the Convent of Corpus Christi provides an apt example of the patriarchal framework upon which the Crown’s authority rested. Scholars have repeatedly employed the concept of patriarchalism to describe colonial relationships of power and subordination; the trope of the father king thus held a special place in the political imaginary. The concept of fatherly/kingly love is expressed in Mapa del Alameda. This park view is in fact the glue that binds the colonial narrative to ideas about stewardship and good governance. Mapa del

Alameda Paseo stages a rhetorical discourse in which, the physically absent Father

King is made present. The scene also indulges a need to represent the eternal watchfulness of the Crown and delivers a picture of the king as protector of the

Indies. While Spain drew criticism for the Conquest, colonial expansion on the basis of Christian evangelism validated those actions. Hence, the establishment of the

Convent of Corpus Christi two hundred years later brought new relevancy to an old narrative. Mapa del Alameda Paseo not only illustrates the cultural landscape, it celebrates the bicentennial anniversary of the Conquest—offering then a utopian vision of kingdom and conquest.

131

Notes to Chapter Three

1 Valero was a Spanish nobleman possessing the titles of Duke and Marquis. Born in 1658, he was the second son of Juan Manuel de Manrique y Zúniga. Valero earned military honors serving in the Turkish War (1683 – 1699) and the Spanish War of Succession (1701 – 1714). In gratitude of service, Philip V awarded Valero the governorship of Sardinia (vr. 1704 – 1707). Valero’s rise to top-level government continued when he took office as viceroy of New Spain on August 16, 1716. Valero was eventually promoted to President of the Counsel of the Indies—a post he held until his death on December 26, 1727. See, Manuel García Puron, México y sus Gobernantes (Biografías) (México, D.F.: Libreria de Manuel Porrua, S. A., 1949), 109 – 110.

2 Cited in, Alejandro Encinas, Guillermo Tovar de Teresa, María Estela Ríos González, Carlos González Manterola, and José Ignacio González Manterola, Corpus Christi: Sede Del Acervo Histórico Del Archivo General De Notarías, (México: Gobierno del Distrito Federal, 2006). 93. The heart was transported by Colonel Pedro del Barillo y Esprilla.

3 “. . . donde estaba su tesero allí estaba su corazón” Quoted in Ibid.

4 Having been introduced to Christianity in the sixteenth century, Amerindians were regarded by ecclesiastics as still too new to the Faith to take part in one of the most prestigious vocations of the Church. In the eyes of the clergy, Amerindians remained perpetual neophytes and “high risk” idolaters.

5 On this point, see the following: Josefina Muriel de la Torre, “El Convento de Corpus Christi,” Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 7, (1941): 15; Asunción Lavrin, “Indian Brides of Christ: Creating New Spaces for Indigenous Women in New Spain,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 15:2 (Summer 1999): 241; and Lavrin, Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 244 and 255 – 256.

6 “MAPA DEL ALAMEDA PASEO DE LA MUI NOBLE CIUDAD D/E MEXICO Conbento Nuevo de Corpus Christi, que Mando fabricar el Exmo. Sr. Marquez de Balero, 1. Las cuatro fuentes que Sr. mando hacer Nuevas 2. Hermitas del Calvario 3. Puerta que mira á Santa Ysabel 4. Puerta que mira del Convento Nuevo 5. Puerta que mira á San Diego 6. Puerta que mira a San Juan de Dios 7. Los caños por donde biene el agua ala cuidad desde Santa fee, 8.”

7 The manuscript is: Fernando de Alencastre Noroña y Silva, Instrucciones del Duque de Linares [Fernando de Alencastre], Gobernador de la Nueva España, para su sucesor [el Marqués de Valero], con descripción geográfica y política de su gobierno e informe de los males que padecía (México, ca. 1716). It is housed in the collection of the Bibiloteca Nacional de España. The manuscript is digitized and available for online viewing: http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000116552&page=1. The Duke of Linares (vr. 1710 – 1716) addressed the report to incumbent Viceroy Valero; it expresses the former’s opinions about the assimilation of Amerindians communities.

8 Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 20.

9 In special circumstances, Indian women could take the “simple vows” reserved for donadas, i.e., women who lived and worked in convent but had no rights or membership to the community of black-veiled nuns.

10 The first Bishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumárraga, entertained the possibility of an Amerindian female clergy. His attempts to set up a girl’s school like the one at San José de los Naturales failed. There are several reasons why. First and foremost, gender discrimination affected the ways colonial ecclesiastics approached pedagogical instruction. Zumárraga, for example, was not alone in believing 132

that Amerindian boys were intellectually more capable than girls of accepting higher education and assimilating Spanish customs and beliefs. Second, in this endeavor, ecclesiastics did not anticipate the opposition they received from within Amerindian communities. As it turned out, indoctrinated girls assumed European gender identities, which were incompatible with traditional, Amerindian gender roles. While Amerindian women had, in the past, worked for their husbands and families, indoctrinated women expected the opposite, i.e., that their men assume the role of family breadwinner. Zumárraga later reported that Amerindian men refused to marry women who had been instructed in Spanish ways. Third, for reasons not entirely known the Crown refused to supply resources that would have enabled cloistered Spanish nuns to set-up a ministry for Amerindian novitiates. The decision may have had to do with the fact that Amerindian women lacked social status and the financial means to live cloistered. For more information, see, Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Las Mujeres en la Nueva España, Educación y Vida Cotidiana (México: El Colegio de México, 1987), 27 – 61 and Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Gail Wood, and Robert Stephen Haskett, Indian Women of Early Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997).

11 In 1585, the Third Provincial Council of the Church of Mexico officially prohibited Amerindians (male or female) from joining the clergy. See, Stafford Poole, “Church Law on the Ordination of Indians and Castas in New Spain,” The Hispanic Historical American Review 61, no. 4 (1981): 638.

12 Perhaps the most well known example of a “Divine experience,” is the account of the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe to Amerindian Juan Diego. For more information about the Virgin of Guadalupe in the colonial period, see: David Brading, Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Stafford Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531 – 1797 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995).

13 Asunción Lavrin, Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 248 – 252.

14 Jesuit scholar Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora and Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, Bishop of Puebla (1640 – 1655) were two highly influential authors. Sigüenza y Góngora expressed his admiration for Amerindian women in Parayso occidental: plantado y cultivado por la liberal benefica mano de los muy catholicos y poderosos reyes de España, nuestros señores, en su magnifico Real Convento de Jesus María de Mexico (México: 1684). See also, Kathleen Ross, The Baroque Narrative of Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora: A New World Paradise (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Virtudes del Indio is a treatise in which Palafox’s viewpoint on Amerindians may be found. See Virtues of the Indian/Virtudes del indio ed. and trans. Nancy H. Fee, (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009.

15 See: Muriel de la Torre, “El Convento de Corpus Christi,” 15; Lavrin, “Indian Brides of Christ,” 241; and Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 244 and 255 – 256. All three authors cite Valero as the person responsible for initiating the project; however, no author brings conclusive evidence in support of why or how the viceroy became involved in this affair.

16 Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 258 – 259.

17 AGN, Historia, vol. 109, exp. 2, fols. 11 – 16. This is also discussed in Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 256 and Lavrin, “Indian Brides,” 241.

18 Ibid.

19 See the discussion in Lavrin, “Indian Brides,” 243 – 245 and Muriel, “El Convento de Corpus Christi,” 15 -16. Muriel’s article also includes transcriptions of the letters in support of the convent penned by Friar Antonio Gutiérrez and Friar Ignacio García de Figueroa. 133

20 Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 256.

21 Encinas, Tovar de Teresa, Ríos González, González Manterola, and González Manterola, Corpus Christi: Sede Del Acervo Histórico Del Archivo General, 236.

22 Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 259.

23 Encinas, Tovar de Teresa, Ríos González, González Manterola, and González Manterola, Corpus Christi: Sede Del Acervo Histórico Del Archivo General, 93.

24 “ESTE CONVENTO ES DE RELIGIOSAS FRANCISCANAS INDIAS HIJAS DE CACIQUES Y NO PARA OTRAS, SE EDIFICO Y FUNDO POR EL EXCELENTISIMO SEÑOR DON BALTAZAR DE ZÚÑIGA Y GÚZMAN SOTOMAYOR Y MENDOZA, MARQUE DE VALERO Y ALENQUER, SIENDO VIRREY, GOBERNADOR Y CAPTIANGENERAL DE ESTE REYNO, GENTIL HOMBRE DE LA CAMARA DE SU MAGESTAD Y OIDOR DE SU REAL AUDIENCIA” Transcribed in Muriel, “El Convento de Corpus Christi,” 28.

25 Ibid., 17.

26 J. B. Harley, The New Nature of Maps, ed. Paul Laxton (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 2001), 35.

27 Carmen Díaz Gallegos, Área de Conservación, email message to author, March 14, 2013.

28 The idea that Valero gifted the painting follows suit with common practices of gift exchange. Illona Katzew has discussed particular instances in which Spanish dignitaries collected “novelties” from New Spain and sent them home to distribute among friends, family members, and colleagues. See Illona Katzew, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 147 – 148.

29 For more on the formal garden aesthetic see, Kenneth Woodbridge, Princely Gardens: The Origins and Development of the French Formal Style (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986).

30 The most comprehensive source on the gardens of La Granja remains Jeanne Digard, Les Jardins De La Granja Et Leurs Sculptures Décoratives (Paris: E. Leroux, 1934). It is rumored that, regarding the Baths of Diana fountain, the mercurial Philip remarked, “It has cost me three million and amused me three minutes.” Quoted in, Tryphosa Bates Batcheller, Royal Spain of Today (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1913), 597.

31 The idea of the Father King presented a figurative means to express monarchial power. For a more thorough discussion of the patriarchal model applied to colonial government see, Alejandro Cañeque, The King’s Living Image: The Culture and Politics of Viceregal Power in Colonial Mexico (New York: Routledge, 2004).

32 Christian Jacob, The Sovereign Map: Theoretical Approaches in Cartography throughout History ed. Edward H. Dahl, trans. Tom Conley, (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 318.

33 Michael Schreffler, The Art of Allegiance: Visual Culture and Imperial Power in Baroque New Spain (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 25.

34 Ibid., 20 – 30.

134

35 “Desde el Puerto miró Su Excelencia la Ciudad y tierra de Nueva España, y el mirarla fué mirar por ella y por su conservación . . . Cristóbal Gutiérrez de Medina, Viaje del Virrey Marques de Villena (México: Imprenta Universitaria, 1947), 49 – 50. Also cited in Schreffler, The Art of Allegiance, 26.

36 “se toma por cuidar, atender, proteger, ampara, ú defender alguna persona ó cosa” Real Academia Español, 1734 Academia Autoridades (G – M), s.v. “mirar” accessed January 24, 2015, http://buscon.rae.es/ntlle/SrvltGUIMenuNtlle?cmd=Lema&sec=1.0.0.0.0.

37 Schreffler, The Art of Allegiance, 27.

38 Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Life in the Imperial and Loyal City of Mexico in New Spain, and the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico, as Described in the Dialogues for the Study of the Latin Language, eds. Minnie Lee Barrett Shepard and Carlos Eduardo Castañeda, (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970), 73 – 77.

39 See Schreffler, The Art of Allegiance, 21, for evidence that this emblem denotes the office of the viceroy.

40 The W.E.B. DuBois Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst owns the only photo, facsimile reproduction of this manuscript in circulation. However, the facsimile owned by this library is miscataloged. Its MARC record states that Valero penned the report to incumbent viceroy Juan de Acuña y Bejarano (vr. 1722 – 1734). This is not the case. The Duke of Linares addressed the report to incumbent Viceroy Valero. The original manuscript resides in the collection of the Bibiloteca Nacional de España; it is digitized and available for online viewing. See: Fernando de Alencastre Noroña y Silva, Instrucciones del Duque de Linares [Fernando de Alencastre], Gobernador de la Nueva España, para su sucesor [el Marqués de Valero], con descripción geográfica y política de su gobierno e informe de los males que padecía (México, ca. 1716): http://bdh- rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000116552&page=1.

41 de Alencastre Noroña y Silva, Instrucciones del Duque de Linares, fol. 1r.

42 “. . . todos los Principes españoles . . . y a ningun otro á dado el Imperio sobre estos Indios . . . ” Ibid., fol. 51r.

43 “. . . como quiso darle ocasión de travajos eroícos y material liveral, para el ejercicio de la virtud y Religion en atraer con ese ardiente zelo . . . a los ynfieles de estas Regiones á el conocimiento de su Criador y Redemptor . . .” Ibid., fols. 51r– v.

44 Ibid.

45 “… todos los nombres de tierras silbestres y animales Brutos se le atribuia á los Indios en el sentido, que los que son por naturaleza por la general corrupcion de ella, y por falta de la educacion, Gobierno, y orden de la vida humana; luego por la obscuridad de la rraazon natural, como eclipsada y suspensa, en esta operacion, de donde les nace una livertad y herencia de vivir mas á el uso de los Vivientes Yrracionales, que de Hombres: . . . todo ere los operarios evangelicos, han de poner a los Indios, en la vida humana y christiana, y en la Creencia de las Verdaderas eternas y Dibinas necesaria para la salud . . . ” Ibid., fols. 53v. – 54r.

46 “. . . Yo he conocido sugetos de buenas prendas y letras, y que han subido a los maiores puestos de este Religion . . . [los misioneros] no se podian aberiguar con los indios ni sufrirlos . . . cada dia muchas veces les faltava la paciencia, y andar cada dia con […] y enojo y gritos; Yo os enbío como corderos entre Lobos, sino ser Lobos entre los Lobos, o entre Corderos.” Ibid., fol. 54r.

135

47 “en esta son miembros dañados que la corrompen . . . y á S. M. ninguno aun dando de varato á lo christiano la obligacion de la charidad en los proximos. Ibid., fols. 77v. – 78r.

48 Ibid., fol. 129r., fol. 80r., fol. 121r., and fols. 84v. – 85r.

49 Ibid., fol. 149v.

50 “pues este fin es vivir en absoluta livertad, riendo que con decir que conozen al Rey por su soverano.” Ibid., fol. 127v.

51 Ibid., fol. 69r.

52 El cuerpo de la Ciudad en todo el Mundo y ese buen govierno le compone los Capitulares, en esta son miembros dañados que la corrompen . . .” Ibid., fol. 77v.

53 “este no pequeño miembro del cuerpo de la corona, apliquensele los medicamentos . . .” Ibid., fol. 67v.

54 Para probar que Medicó en Bavilonia me sera preciso hacer notorio á Vd. en la confusion que en el vive de Jurisdiccion.” Ibid., fol. 67r.

55 “Los Cavalleros sean Mercaderes ó Hazenderos hallan una nueva teología el Monopolio . . .” Ibid., fols. 95r., 131r., and 67v.

56 “Como buen Vasallo y como melancolico Propheta, que son presagios de acelerarse la Ruina ó desolacion por el exceso en los vicios; estos han tomado tal dominio en el Corazon de sus havitantes, que desde luego dira el varato de que los practicasen como culpas; pues asi llamaria algun dia el arrepentimiento . . . Ibid., fol. 121r.

57 “ . . . ellos en fin son una blanda raza, dispuesta a recibir la ympresion que se quisiere pero como los exemplos son las Dogmas que mas eficazmente enseñan, y los que tienen a la vista los Yndios no solo de los españoles que con ellos conmoran sino de los superiores que gobiernan su vida Politica y Catolica son estragados y escandalosos es ymposible que esten ellos mas bien morigerados que los Maestros . . . la causa de los disordenes la haze manifiesto la diferencia de costumbres que percibida Vs. entre los Yndios y las Yndias.” Ibid., fol. 82r.

58 “. . . yo no é hallado para esta discrepancia entre los dos sexos de una misma Nación …” Ibid., fols. 82r. – 82v. It is unclear whether or not Linares read the published writings of Amerindian advocates like Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza; yet the terms in which Linares describes Amerindian women suggest he was well-read in literature debating Amerindian spiritual and intellectual aptitudes. For similarities in language, see for example, Palafox, Virtues of the Indian.

59 “. . . con las contangia menos la corrupcion de las costumbres de los otros” fol. 82v.

60 “. . . bien que es poca la parte, que en lo maltratadas de son que sus Maridos les alcanza de lo viciado de estos . . .” Ibid. fol. 82v.

61 Josefina Muriel, Crónica del real colegio de Santa Rosa de Viterbo (México: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, UNAM, 1996), 107 – 108.

62 Richard Konetzke, Colección De Documentos Para La Historia De La Formación Social De Hispanoamérica, 1493-1810 (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953), 66 – 69.

63 Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 205.

136

64 Perhaps the most famous Amerindian advocate was Dominican Friar Bartolomé de las Casas (1484 – 1566), also known as “Protector of the Indians.” On June 2, 1537, Pope Paul III issued a papal brief that confirmed Amerindians were rational human beings with souls; they could not therefore be enslaved and were henceforth entitled to legal rights under the Crown.

65 For a recent contribution to the subject of the Black Legend, see: Margaret Rich Greer, Walter Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan, Rereading the Black Legend the Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

66 Juan de Solórzano y Pereira and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, De Indiarum Iure. Liber II, Cap. 1-15 Liber II, Cap. 1-15 (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1999) and Política Indiana. 1648 (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1972). Cited in Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 206.

67 Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 206.

68 Ibid., 206 – 207.

69 Juan Ignacio de Castorena y Ursúa, “Las Indias Entendidas Por Estar Religiosamente Sacramentadas En El Convento y Templo De Corpus Christi De Esta Imperial Corte De Mexico, Que Edifico El Excmo. Señor Don Bathasar De Zúñiga Guzman Sotomayor y Mendoza ... a Quien Dedica Este Panegyrico ...” Mexico: s.n., 1725.

70 “. . . y no sin alta providecia ha puesto el Rey nuestro señor a V. Exc. en el eminente empleo de Presidente del Supremo Consejo de las Indias para que su zelo ardiente de la Gloria de Dios y conversión de los Infieles tanga quien la fomente desde… este Emisferio.” Ibid., 2 – 3.

71 “renovando aquí, aquí en Mexico el Panteon de su Gentilisimo; pues en tiempo del Emperador Moctezuma, eran escogidas unas Doncellas de las mas hermosas Indias . . . animando las llamas al soplo de su fervor.” Ibid., 4.

72 Ibid., 4.

73 Margaret Chowning, Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a Mexican Convent, 1752-1863 (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 38 – 40.

74 For another example of the ways in which Spanish administrators aimed to reproduce Spanish cultural values though non-Spanish women, see: Kathryn Burns, Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999).

75 The Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon or Canticles is a book in the Old Testament. The scripture express love, desire, and female purity. From it, Christians have developed a rich visual lexicon of emblems that relate to concepts of ideal womanhood.

76 Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 260 – 268.

77 See footnote 45. 137

CHAPTER FOUR

THE DIRT POOR AND THE FILTHY RICH

On March 5, 1774 Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli (vr. 1771 – 1779) introduced residents of Mexico City to a revolutionary experiment that aimed to resolve the chronic problem of vagrancy and panhandling:

I have resolved . . . that the opening of the House of Charity shall be on the nineteenth of the corresponding month, I order that all beggars of both sexes shall be taken by force if they do not present themselves to the hospice, where there they will remain until their fortunes change, whether through inheritance, benefaction, or a means of earning a living by using the training provided to them by the hospice, so that henceforth they cease to be beggars . . . I assign them the term of eight days, counted from the publication of this edict to present themselves voluntarily, letting it be known, that passed said term they shall not importune the Faithful by asking for charity, and that all those found begging in the Streets, Plazas, Houses, and Churches will be apprehended by watchmen stationed in various neighborhoods of this city . . . 1

The launch of the Hospicio de Pobres or Poorhouse (also referred to as Hospice) set a new course in the way officials dealt with the homeless—a large population that routinely took shelter in the streets, plazas, and flophouses of the city.2 Officials suspected that many among this group chose to live as they did, preferring to beg for charity rather than clock in for an honest day’s work. By forcing a strict regime of labor and religious observance on Hospice detainees, officials aimed to reform the mores of pretend beggars (mendigos fingidos) and voluntary idlers (voluntarios).

The Hospicio de Pobres operated at the cutting edge of social science theory, advocating a comprehensive treatment that consisted of aid, suppression, and rehabilitation. As the historian María Jiménez Salas suggests, pairing philanthropy with discipline, allowed the Hospice to model the tenets of enlightened reform.3 138

Reformist ideology flourished amid Bourbon ambitions to upgrade the colonial labor force. In Mexico City, the launch of the Poorhouse, along with other kinds of stimulation projects, responded to officials’ desires to spur industry and to sanitize the environment, expunging filth and flotsam.4

Located diagonally southwest of Alameda Park, the Poorhouse appears in a park view dated 1775, just one year after the Hospice opened its doors to the public; or more precisely, closed its doors on the city’s indigent. The simultaneity of these two affairs, i.e., the creation of the park view in 1775 and the establishment of the

Poorhouse one year earlier, cannot be coincidental. The painting calls attention to a momentous event: the launch of the Poorhouse and its introduction to the cultural landscape of Mexico City. Put differently, in reality the Hospicio de Pobres promised a facility that could rehabilitate the poor, turning idlers into productive members of society; in simulacrum, the Poorhouse is an emblem paying tribute to a cause that aimed to end cases of illegitimate state dependency. Present scholarship on Paseo de la Alameda situates the painting in a discourse on history and urban development.5

Remaining unexplored is the way this view connects the Poorhouse to cultural judgments about poverty and the behaviors of the urban poor. These beliefs found expression in the visual and symbolic topographies of dirt.

“Dirt is essentially disorder,” goes the aphorism coined by social anthropologist Mary Douglas.6 Distilling a wide range of material and immaterial situations into a cleverly uncomplicated statement, Douglas finds dirt as nothing more than matter out of place. Hence, it is the definition of place or disorder that introduces complexity to the concept of dirt. Disorder may refer to any culturally 139 conceived material and/or psychological deviance. Throughout Western history, shifting constructs of disorder have been used to express ideas about civilization and two watchwords closely associated with it: civility and culture. Both terms are used to distinguish the self from the aberrant other, the clean from the perverted, and the high from the low.7 People are deviant, for example, when the dominant culture perceives them as unassimilable; objects are filthy when they are identifiable with feces or decay; and actions are base when they appear unrefined.8

In the context of colonial New Spain, dirt was a consequence of racial identity and personal economics. Wealthy socialites and civic administrators linked the

[dirt] poor to base disorders that manifested in perversions like alcohol abuse, indolence, and public incontinence. According to educated opinion, these actions induced the self-perpetuating cycle of penury and were therefore inextricable from the program of thought that lay behind the Poorhouse. In addition to the challenges destitution wrought on the civic environment, elites claimed that the physical and symbolic dirtiness of the poor insulted the purported cleanliness of their lifestyles.

Thus, articulating attitudes about dirt visually, through views like Paseo de la

Alameda, furnished elites with a lexicon of superiority. The following chapter explores expressions of dirt portrayed in Paseo de la Alameda.

The Dirt on Paseo de la Alameda

Paseo de la Alameda is an oil-on-metal plate painting, measuring 47 x 56 centimeters. The western-oriented view shows a renovated Alameda Park and the area immediately surrounding it.9 A key, located at the bottom of the painting reads: 140

PROMENADE OF THE ALAMEDA OF MEXICO completed in the year 1775, looking to the West. 1. His Excellency the Viceroy. 2. House of Charity. 3. [Acordada Prison.] 4. Chapels of the Calvary. 5. Convent of San Diego. 6. [Mill of Portillo.] 7. Convent of San Hipólito and Insane Asylum. 8. [Boys playing moors and Christians.] 9. Drains of the Fountains. 10. The Insane. 11. Main Fountain of the Alameda. 12. Fountain of Hercules. 13. Fountain of Triton. 14. Fountain of [Ganymede.] 15. [Fountain of Arion.]10

Emblem one, “1. El Sôr Virrey,” denotes viceroy Bucareli, who oversaw the renovation of the park.11 The number indexes the viceroy’s carriage, which appears to exit the Alameda (upper, left-hand corner). Emblem number two is “2. the

Hospicio de Pobres. The first and second items connect to one another. Not only was the viceroy in full support of the Hospice, as indicated by the Bando, but he also served as President of its Board of Directors from 1774 until his death in 1779.12

Pictured in Paseo de la Alameda, the austere exterior of the Poorhouse reflects the asceticism of its interior—that is, a place where hard labor and religious instruction aimed to cure sloth. The Acordada prison is the third item; it appears west of the hospice.13 Together, the symbol of the viceroy and the illustrations of the hospice and the prison embody the monumental powers of colonial law and order.

Paseo de la Alameda portrays the park as a refined social setting. The view may be said to capture the “spectacular promenade” envisioned by civic leaders.14

Items nine and eleven through fifteen index subterranean drains, the main park fountain, and the auxiliary fountains of Hercules, Triton, Ganymede, and Arion.

Statuary reflects the style of buen gusto or refined taste, which in the eighteenth century generally meant a neoclassical vocabulary. One may assume that sophisticated audiences of the painting and sophisticated audiences of the park appreciated how this aesthetic communicated lessons on Greco-Roman 141 mythology.15 Although not itemized, figures are visible within the gardens. Details of physiognomy, clothing, and activity allow the figures to perform their calidad, i.e., racial and socioeconomic identity. A bedraggled tobacconist (middle right) personifies a popular characterization of the Spanish working class; a swarthy porter (top right) represents a dark-skinned casta and corresponding form of plebeian employment; and the fair and fashionably dressed figures at leisure personify the Spanish elite.

Outside the park the: “4. Chapels of the Calvary.,” “5. Convent of San Diego.,”

“6. [Mill of Portillo.],” and “7. Convent of San Hipólito and Insane Asylum.” are drawn and labeled. These items index real buildings and landmarks; in doing so, they contrast with other indexed items that are purely notional. Emblem eight, for example, “8. [Boys playing moors and Christians.],” shows a fictional reenactment of the Morismas de Bracho.16 For some individuals, the tradition of morismas may have signaled religious conviction; however for others, it might have expressed a lack of restraint and/or fanaticism. Thus, the “Boys playing moors and Christians” introduces an ambiguous, perhaps a disorderly, element to this scene. Alternatively, emblem number ten indexes a definite form of social disorder. This item calls attention to the pathological condition of mental illness. Wearing brown gowns and carrying collection baskets, figures labeled “10. The Insane” represent patients of the Asylum of San Hipólito. As historian Cheryl Martin found, mentally ill wards were allowed to roam city streets soliciting for alms.17 However, in Paseo de la

Alameda these fictive patients may express a counterpoint to Bucareli’s law against public begging. Although officials were determined to rehabilitate persons 142 suspected of abusing the welfare system, authorities recognized the need to offer assistance to the insane, the old, and the infirm; or the true needy (pobres verdaderos), as they were called.

Common stereotypes of pretend beggars appear outside the park.18 For example, along the eastern perimeter, a jaundiced-looking woman slumps against the park gate; a male, secondhand clothing salesman peddles his wares; a female casta gestures for alms; and a vagabond stands idle. These figures represent agents of importunity; they embody reformers’ descriptions of the city’s sinful vagrants

(vagos y vicios). Because reformers often associated penury with public impropriety, it is unsurprising that Paseo de la Alameda shows perhaps the most fundamental infraction against public comportment. Along the northern perimeter of the park, a figure is rendered in the indelicate act of defecation. While the picaresque element entertains, it also relays cultural attitudes about hygiene and the polluting habits that elites connected to the lower classes.

Using a similar expressive language, judicial officer Hipólito Villarroel describes his perspectives on the poor who congregated inside Alameda Park. In

Enfermedades políticas, his 1787 discourse on the civil and political state of Mexico

City, Villarroel writes:

Take for instance, the Alameda. It is the only comfortable and convenient spot for lively entertainment. Although it is supposedly under the care of an alderman, there is no political order there. Indeed, a visit to the Alameda is more exasperating than enjoyable since this small, public park is frequented by the lowest of the masses: those that are naked or practically naked. Any decent man, or one of caliber, dares not sit down for fear of being inundated with lice, or perhaps suffering other discomforts that are sure to ravage his body like a plague. This danger could be avoided, if despite not being able to sit and rest, one were not equally disturbed by the stench. The nauseating 143

aroma of fetid lard, which the commoners use to stew their revolting food, permeates the park.19

Like the figures portrayed in Paseo de la Alameda, Villarroel’s villains were persons that fouled the environment. The naked—a euphemism for persons too poor to afford proper clothing—singed eyes, introduced vermin, and poisoned air. If cultural ideas about dirt are essentially composed of two aspects: attention to hygiene and respect for convention, Villarroel’s words, like Paseo de la Alameda, reveal the filthiness he and other high society persons ascribed to the lower classes.20

The Landscape of Poverty

As the administrative and spiritual center of New Spain, Mexico City represented a beacon of opportunity. Individuals seeking work and those looking to advance their careers migrated to the capital where they turned the city’s constant need for low-skill trade labor and artisan employment to their advantage. While some individuals earned a sufficient amount of money, a great many did not.

Consequently, in the most affluent city in New Spain, crippling poverty thrived alongside great fortune. During the latter part of the eighteenth century, extensive rural-to-urban migration brought this situation to a head. In particular, between the years 1770 and 1785, the population of Mexico City swelled as droves of famine- and plague-weary peasants left their rural homes to seek succor in the city.21 The author Silvia Arrom refers to this period as Mexico City’s first urban crisis.22 To give some indication of the population spike, census estimates show that between 1742 and 1803, the number of Mexico City residents practically doubled.23 And because 144 population growth came from a generally unemployed demographic, the crush of bodies on the capital overwhelmed traditional relief systems.

Apart from times of emergency, many people endeavored to make their way in the world by relocating to Mexico City. Peasant families, for example, frequently sent their adolescent children there. Working as day laborers and domestic servants, young men and women from rural areas both provided for themselves and sent money home. Other unskilled migrants earned a living in the service industry; finding employment as porters, coal sellers, drivers, water carriers, blacksmiths, laundresses, and fruit sellers.24 Members of the middle class also perceived advantage in urban living. Merchants capitalized on the fact that Mexico City offered a primary center of consumption; craftsmen relocated in order to apprentice with master artisans; and, educated professionals found that the seat of the viceregal government, Church, and Pontifical University provided auspicious locations for the advancement of their careers.

In regard to socioeconomic class, colonial society consisted of three levels: the wealthy, the bourgeois, and the poor. At less than one percent, the wealthy constituted only a fraction of the population. They included predominately Spanish and creole families that had amassed fortunes in the industries of mining, commerce, and agriculture. Affluent residents also frequently held high-level positions in the clergy and the municipal or viceregal governments.25 The middle class totaled approximately seven percent of the population; these individuals worked as retail merchants, tradesmen, shopkeepers, artisans, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and low-level clergy and bureaucrats. However, the vast majority of the 145

Mexico City population lived as paupers. Membership into the social category of urban poor knew no bounds. Amerindians, mestizos, mulatos, and other castas numbered among the lower classes, as did many Spaniards.

The economic situations of the urban poor ranged considerably. The upper grade blended with the lower strata of the middle class; these individuals found work as entry-level bureaucrats, small-scale vendors, and semi-skilled tradesmen.

The wealthiest among the urban poor earned an income of around three hundred pesos annually.26 Compensation for the middle strata of the urban poor— individuals employed as unskilled laborers, porters, construction workers, and domestic servants—dropped sharply. A day laborer earned around fifty pesos annually while housemaids received approximately eighteen pesos per year; however, the wages of domestic servants typically included free room and board.27

Other laborers rented rooms in tenement buildings. A suite of upper-story rooms typically cost between four to eight pesos per month and ground level, single rooms rented for about one to one and one-quarter pesos per month.28 For the average water carrier or coal seller, this meant that approximately one-quarter of every peso earned went towards housing. To bring perspective to these numbers, the viceroy received an annual salary of 40,000 pesos plus an allowance of 20,000 pesos for his table of state.29

The homeless were the lowest denomination of urban poor. Called lepers

(léperos), troublemakers (mal entretenidos), and simply the naked (desnudos); the vagrants of Mexico City struggled to find adequate food, shelter, and clothing.30

Having no private residences of their own, this group dominated the public 146 landscape. They made their homes wherever they could, sleeping on benches, along gutters, under the eaves of buildings, and amid the flophouses, stables, market stalls, and dumps of the city. Unable or unwilling to find work, the homeless sustained themselves on handouts and hustling. Educated opinion held that only grave character defects like malice and sloth could induce such a severe state of human degeneracy. Hence, officials frequently accused the homeless of criminal activity and of spending ill begotten coin on hard liquor and games of chance.

Rampant destitution provided a subject that few travelers to Mexico City failed to note. In the early nineteenth century, Prussian natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt estimated that some twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants of Mexico

City were homeless.31 The sheer number of paupers also struck Joel Poinsett as being extreme. Serving as the first United States Foreign Minister to the Republic of

Mexico, Poinsett approximated that 7.5 percent of the population had no permanent residence and lacked steady employment.32 Vagrancy on this scale not only shocked observers; it downright unnerved them. When it came to the homeless, American

Secretary of Legation Edward Thornton Tayloe articulated a common, upper class point of view. He writes:

The city is . . . thronged with the dirtiest, the most diseased, deformed and half naked wretches you can imagine. Disgusting sights every moment present themselves—at the corners of every street (each street has a corner), at the doors of the churches which you must constantly pass by in your walk, and sometimes in the area of a private residence; you are importuned by miserable beggars, some of whom, not satisfied with a modest refusal, chase you into charity . . . Such is the character of the street population of Mexico. So much filth, so much vice and so much ignorance are nowhere else . . .33

These accounts bring focus to the problem of vagrancy and to the severe wealth gap that characterized colonial society. And even though only a slim portion 147 of the population amassed significant fortune, residents nevertheless worshipped at the altar of conspicuous consumption. Life in the viceregal capital occasioned multiple opportunities for displaying riches and cultural superiority. For elites, opulent carriages meant never having to experience the foulness of city streets; tailored clothing advertised sophisticated tastes; and a nutritious selection of food sustained the picture of health. On the other end of the spectrum, hoofing it meant that pedestrians often traversed muddy gauntlets of black water; tattered clothing risked vulnerability to the elements, and an inadequate diet invited unwelcomed anxiety and illness. These differences shaped a vulgar reality wherein one social group enjoyed princely advantage, but for the other, security and comfort were virtually inconceivable.

The pastimes of the rich were also unequal and class affirming. The social calendars of the wealthy filled with showy parties where colorful gowns and exquisite coiffures sent ripples through high society. Elites typically marked occasions such as the celebration of royal birthdays with grand banquets and musical performances—events that sometimes lasted for days.34 Promenading in the Alameda or along paseos Revillagigedo or Bucareli offered another recreational outlet, as did attending mass and the theater. In these activities, elites found social distinction. They also leveraged hobbies to craft enviable public personae. Sculptors, painters, musicians, and actors in turn provided their benefactors with tasteful diversions that doubled as vehicles for cultural education.

But lessons in social correctness were largely lost upon the urban poor whose lives entertained more pressing problems. Perhaps because of their 148 hardships, the poor relished holidays. Festivals, such as Corpus Christi, brought lively occasions when friends and family members gathered to take pause from the struggles of their lives. Of course, celebrations among the lower classes drew sharp criticism from officials since the former typically ate, drank, and demonstrated their faith in unorthodox ways. Authorities claimed that during holidays plebs drank to excess, becoming violent and sexually promiscuous in the process.35 High society also took issue with other forms of plebian entertainment like socializing in taverns, dancing, singing, attending bullfights, and betting on card games and blood sports.36

In all of these hobbies, alcohol provided a constant companion to the poor. While intoxication presumably provided a distraction from a life filled with hardship, authorities claimed it was substance abuse that was the true source of the plebs’ miseries.

The “Offices of Lucifer”

In 1784, a commission consisting of Archbishop Antonio de Mirafuentes,

Judge of the Royal Courts Miguel Calixto de Acedo, Senior Municipal Attorney Cosme de Mier y Trespalacios, and Superintendent of the Office of Pulque Tax Assessment

Eusebio Ventura Beleña undertook a detailed investigation of alcohol culture in

Mexico City.37 Addressed to Viceroy Matías de Gálvez (vr. 1783 – 1784), their findings describe tavern disorders in the following terms:

. . . far from trying to dissuade people from spending excess time in the taverns, barkeeps make every effort to keep patrons there for many hours . . . they fabricate enclosures inside and outside the tavern so that patrons are never required to leave the offices of Lucifer—not even when exercising major bodily functions; instead, to do so men and women enter into the worst caves of his [Lucifer’s] domains compelled by their vile and lascivious 149

thoughts, and never giving the slightest regard for Christian morals—such is this pathetic class of inebriates, which is almost everyone who frequents such places.38

The convergence of alcoholism, excreta, and sloth in this description of low class persons relates to the cultural expression of dirt in Paseo de la Alameda. Although the painting does not portray drunkenness per se, judgments on the pernicious effects of alcohol abuse are demonstrably expressed through it.

A Popular Pastime

Officials condemned the immoderate consumption of alcohol, claiming drink poisoned every aspect of life. But it was not simply the act of having a drink that incensed authorities. Educated opinion found alcoholism symptomatic of a larger problem: the inability to discipline oneself. Officials asserted that a lack of self- command incited inebriates to commit crimes and other immoral acts. In other words, authorities believed alcohol was a catalyst that spun the already-faulty moral compasses of the pleb further askew. As General Inspector José de Gálvez reported to Viceroy Bucareli, “drunkenness in the pulquerías is the true center and source of the many crimes and public sins that drown this large population;” there was not a police force large enough, in Gálvez’s estimation, to stop alcohol abuse.39 Villarroel expressed a similar opinion on tavern culture, blaming alcohol consumption for the idleness, nakedness, and general perversion common among the lower classes.40 He was convinced that intoxicants seduced husbands, causing a “voluntary misery”

(miseria voluntaria) that left wives and children to starve.41 150

The great demand for alcoholic beverages (pulque, aguardiente, and tepache) meant that by end of eighteenth-century, approximately 1600 taverns (pulquerías, casas de pulque, tepacherías, and vinaterías) operated in Mexico City.42 To put this number in perspective, the city offered at least one drinking establishment for every fifty-six persons, fifteen years of age or older—a figure that does not include the numerous pulque stalls found in marketplaces, nor the legions of women who sold alcohol in the streets illegally after dark.43 Distributed throughout the city, these taverns indeed kept a sizeable portion of the population under the influence.

Consumption records indicate that on a daily basis thirteen percent of the adult population was over the limit. And, one may only assume this number spiked when residents indulged during the eighty-five holidays observed annually.44

The excesses that occurred during times of celebration and on ordinary days of the week overwhelmed law enforcement and scandalized polite society.45 As one example, early nineteenth-century British traveler G.F. Lyons made note of a common spectacle—that is, what he called “pulquefied” men and women who slept off their excesses alongside boulevards and within public markets.46 Removing these “living logs” (vivientes troncos) a euphemism cited in one official document, was the duty of the Alcaldes de Barrio, a special police force organized in 1782.47

Records indicate that the Alcaldes paid special attention to policing alcohol-related crime. A study compiled by the historian Michael Scardaville shows that in the year

1798, alcohol offenses accounted for roughly forty-five percent of arrests made citywide.48 Another example of authorities’ special interest in alcohol regulation is found in a joint report submitted by the Alcaldes of Minor Districts 29, 30, 31, and 151

32. The report, dated 1804, describes the advanced state of alcohol-induced debauchery in those wards. According to the report, drunkards there feigned homelessness, begged for charity, and then spent handouts on cocktails of cane liquor spike with additional intoxicants.49

Despite the fact that civic leaders officially denounced alcohol consumption, they were well aware of the benefits these beverages delivered to the population.

First, pulque possessed some real nutritional value. Given the relatively high cost of food, and consequently, the innutritious diets of the lower classes, this beverage provided an important supplement to the caloric intake of the lower classes.50

Second, many taverns provided housing to the homeless. For free or for a meager price, the poor could sleep underneath the bar or in a side room kept for over- served clientele.51 Third, some of the most respectable colonial families had made their fortunes from the manufacture and distribution of alcohol.52 And, many of those individuals held important civic posts.53 Fourth, the government profited handily from the distribution of alcohol. Viceroy Revillagigedo (vr. 1789 – 1784), for example, reported that in 1794 the tax revenues from pulque alone totaled 800,000 pesos.54 As a valuable source of royal income, alcohol distribution was in many ways a necessary evil. Rather than prohibit its sale, authorities sought to correct the misuse of its consumption.

Baltasar Ladrón de Guevara, Judge of the Royal Courts from 1779 to 1795 and presumed author of “Discurso sobre la policía en México,” argued that fault lay not in the substance, but in the consumer.55 He claimed that unlike Europeans, the inhabitants of the Americas suffered from a propensity for alcohol abuse and sloth. 152

This defect passed from one generation to the next, according to the author, because

“in each generation, the child inherits the parents’ customs.”56 Ladrón criticized the recreational interests of the poor, alleging that if given the choice, the pleb would always choose drink and depravity over civil forms of entertainment. In his words:

These transgressions are no surprise, since they [colonial subjects] were brought up to serve without theater, promenade, hunts, fishing, decorous entertainment, or fresh air. Their only culture is that of a “theater” of laziness, ringing bells and parading in disorderly retinues, and of course, not working.57

This passage calls to mind the spectacle of “8. Boys playing moors and Christians.” found in Paseo de la Alameda, as well as a funeral procession in front of the Hospital of San Juan de Dios, also depicted in the painting. What Ladrón suggests is that bad breeding perpetuated low culture, and it was an unfortunate fact that the plebeians of Mexico knew no better.

In addition to perceiving tavern culture as a vulgar contrast to elite forms of entertainment, Ladrón correlates corrupted habits with what he saw as perverted people.

The people who frequent pulquerías are of the lowest class. One might argue that among the morally deficient there are no scandals. Having been swaddled in vice since birth, nothing shocks the sensibilities of these people, nor impeaches their [lack of] moral judgment. As a case in point, men and women of this class have no qualms about nudity or using the bathroom publicly . . . they have no decency, covering their dirty hides with nothing more than a fraying piece of soiled blanket.58

Ladrón connects alcoholism, morality, and toilet habits to class, assuring the reader that nothing fazes these people of base caliber. His litmus test for determining high and low class comprised of observing human conduct and noting one’s reactions to it. Responses like disgust and revulsion to the functions of the body signaled, to 153

Ladrón, a state of civility. As sociologist Norbert Elias explains, standards of repugnance always underlie judgments about barbarism.59 In the case of colonial

Mexico, high society felt disgust with the lower functions of the body and perceived the urban poor as an uncouth entity with no shame attached to supposedly indecorous habits.

In the rhetoric of alcohol reform, educated society understood dirt as a figurative concept that had substantive origins. In other words, pulquerías, tepacherías, and vinaterías represented physical sites where the lower orders violated, in measurable ways, the cultural boundaries set by dominant society. The obsessional need to track alcohol abuse suggests that authorities felt simultaneously threatened and at the same time fascinated by the abject ways in which the lower orders cut loose. Records and contemporary accounts also reveal a system of classification—a construct of oppositional and dichotomous relationships that served to culturally marginalize the urban poor. Just as stereotypes of vagrants occupy spaces outside of the park in Paseo de la Alameda, written accounts describing low-class persons and their behaviors set the poor apart from the wealthy.

Idle Hands

According to officials, excessive drinking was vulgar and it led to sloth and complacency. Put differently, drunkenness was perceived to erode industry, which consequently impeded economic growth. In the 1784 “Informe sobre pulquerías,” officials Mirafuntes, Calixto, Mier y Traspalacios, and Ventura confirm this 154 assumption. They wrote of the main problem of alcohol consumption: wasted time.

Instead of working, the urban poor spent their days lounging in the “caves of evil,” referring to pulque stands, where the backs of men and women see neither sun, air, nor water.60 If the indolent pleb had their way, the report continued,

One would see the taverns open day and night, especially during the [work] hours of ten in the morning until four or five in the afternoon; inside men and women would congregate, sitting as they do on the floor, eating food they brought or purchased from nearby vendors, and the majority would be gambling or engaged in some form of dishonest activity.61

In a word, authorities perceived the poor as first-rate wasters of time, persons whose voluntarily laziness brought poverty upon themselves. The ever-opinionated

Villarroel proposed one solution to ending idleness. His thought was that the unemployed would change their customs if banished from the city and forced to make their way without aid.62

But according to Italian traveler Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Carreri, the problem was not simply a matter of laziness, rather it stemmed from immorality and choice. The idlers of Mexico City worked very hard, he concluded, to master their craft since nary a seasoned traveler sojourned there without finding their return luggage lighter.63 The connection between idleness, graft, and alcohol abuse is illustrated in a report conducted in 1800 on the shortcomings of the public water system in the barrio of Santa Cruz.64 Informants from the neighborhood claimed that part of the reason for the scarcity of water was the crookedness of city workers.

Instead of cleaning and maintaining the water conduits, employees turned the spigots off and requested exorbitant bribes to resume services. In particular, an employee named Jacinto (infamously known as Chavacano [the vulgar one]) 155 terrorized residents by withholding water and sometimes filling the lines with manure.65 According to several anonymous witnesses, when ransoms were not met

Chavacano would become verbally abusive, shouting expletives and threatening that without payment residents “will drink shit the next day.”66 To pay bribes, inhabitants noted they could find city workers in a nearby tavern drinking and bullying people instead of working.67

The misconduct Chavacano perpetrated was not an isolated incident; it represents situations that were all too typical of the colonial city. Accordingly, the manifold approaches officials took to counter idleness, graft, and crime suggest that the root of the problem ran deep. Viceroy Revillagigedo, for his part, implemented one of the most creative incentive programs to teach time management. Under his orders, winners of the Royal Lottery received imported French watches.68 Ergo, in a sense, wasting time and money on games of chance did pay off; recipients earned a prize that allowed them to stay on schedule wherever and however they chose to spend the day. Revillagigedo furthermore urged the Archbishop to dispense with the sounding of Cathedral bells on canonical hours, keeping secular ones instead, and ordered city patrolmen to announce the time and temperature at regular intervals throughout the day.69 Authorities met these measures with stricter regulations on tavern hours of operations so that workmen were no longer able to tank up before clocking in.70

Hard work and industry had its rewards, officials claimed. Meeting each day with a greater awareness of time discipline would benefit all persons. In his report on the general state of affairs in New Spain, Inspector General José de Gálvez 156 expressed his opinion to Viceroy Bucareli that factories rated among the best kinds of hospices, since they kept the population from sinful pursuits.71 And as Director of the Tobacco Monopoly Silvestre Díaz de la Vega suggested, all persons reaped the benefits of dedicated work habits. “The man without an occupation is dead for the

State;” he writes, “those who work are like living plants which not only produce but also propagate . . . wherein lies the true increase of the population and prosperity of the State.”72 Idleness and irresponsibility, in other words, thwarted efficiency and retarded the aspirations of state growth. The reference to plants, prosperity, and industrialism additionally brings to mind the scene portrayed in Paseo de la

Alameda.

The park view illustrates voluntary vagrancy, a condition fed by alcoholism and idleness. Well-known stereotypes of the vagos y vicios, i.e., the vagabond and figures who gesture in supplication, loiter outside the Alameda. The space occupied by these figures remains outside the boundaries of polite society—that is the boundaries of the park, which mark the location of culture and good breeding as apart from the location of poverty and immorality. Idleness, of course, presents a difficult condition to illustrate; Paseo de la Alameda accomplishes this task by portraying contrastive relationships, i.e., the symbolic dirt found on the margins of the park versus the symbolic cleanliness of its interior. But in order to fully understand the polemic against the urban poor, it is necessary to also examine cultural attitudes about public incontinence. Excrement is a physical and material manifestation of dirt; the ways it links to the discourse on poverty illustrated by 157

Paseo de la Alameda brings additional context to the situation in which the

Poorhouse originated.

The Art of Incontinence

The body is a crucial repository of societal values, and arguably nothing is more elemental to the body than the cultural expression of excrement. As literary critic Susan Signe Morrison writes, “excrement served to both undermine or disturb and confirm ideas of ‘normalcy’ (cleanliness) and bodily completion.”73 Real and symbolic acts of defecation relate to ideas about discipline and self-control, mastery over intractable urges. Cultural expressions of excrement also participate in the rhetorical invective against pollution; expunging filth becomes a way of protecting purity. Similarly, beliefs about excrement are used to articulate boundaries between public and private worlds, order and chaos, and high and low culture. Lastly, the repression of excrement and its association with disgust and shame are longtime constructs that designate the civil from the uncivil. In the case of colonial Mexico, evidence suggests that the upper class associated their social inferiors with the lower orders of the body—functions that polluted, defiled, and shamed nature.74

Indeed, as the author of Discurso suggested, the casual manner in which the urban poor treated their bodily functions challenged behavioral norms. It is therefore no surprise that the culture expression of excrement relates to the polemic against poverty. Paseo de la Alameda portrays a figure that—in full and public view—appears to answer the call of nature. It is an element that entertains, but also one that directs attention to the ways the urban poor were perceived to 158 transgress the limits of civilized society.75 The lack of self-control communicated by this act ostensibly correlated to the general lack of self-control on display in the lower classes. Devoid of temperance, the urban poor were said to drink immoderately and to feed their appetites for torpidity with games of chance. The compositional placement of the defecator may carry additional significance. Located on the margins of the frame and symbolically on the margins of society, this element occupies space next to the aqueduct. The figure that defecates speaks to real acts of pollution, i.e., men and women who fouled the environment, and also to symbolic acts of pollution, i.e., the immoral and the lazy that corroded the body politic—or rather, as this view suggests, seeped into it. The illustration is also compelling for its continuity with the villainous Chavacano. Like the figure in Paseo de la Alameda,

Chavacano was a low-class idler who literally circulated filth throughout Mexico

City.

Acts of public incontinence are illustrated in at least two other views from this region and period, suggesting a common leitmotif that connected a wide- ranging discourse on dirt to low culture.76 Views like Paseo de la Alameda narrate the many contemporaneous accounts of bathroom etiquette. In 1794, for example, an unidentified police officer submitted a report to his superiors stating that incontinence threatened the safety and security of his neighborhood. As he writes:

Sir: the abuse, disorder, and libertinism that is customary among all persons within this city who indulge their natural operations by dirtying themselves publicly in the streets and plazas, stand as an affront to proper behavior and present great scandal and damage to public health.77

In sum, these examples testify to the significance of bathroom habits to judgments about civil and uncivil. In Paseo de la Alameda, this difference is illustrated in the 159 spatial and behavioral contrast between park patrons and wrongdoers. Fecal discourse also sought to establish a symbolic, cultural boundary that would contain the allegedly dangerous behaviors of the poor. In the real world, colonial authorities aggressively policed bathroom habits, as the above example implies. Public officials enacted strict fines and stays in the pillory to punish those caught in relieving themselves in public.78 Ordinances furthermore required that taverns and private residences be equipped with latrines; the burden for retrofitting these buildings naturally fell on the owners.79

New sanitation measures and the set of beliefs underpinning them forced the cultural expectations of one social group, i.e., the upper class, onto another group, i.e., the urban poor. Surrounding this discourse where value judgments that connected the abject to measures of personal worth. Absent in the historical record is evidence to suggest that authorities understood in a meaningful way how the circumstances of poverty contributed to extreme states of physical and symbolic dirt. In some ways there was a real and measurable correlation between class and cleanliness. As researchers Campkin and Cox state, “cleanliness marked higher status in a world where being clean was difficult.”80 The wealthy, for example, employed servants to keep their worlds free of filth. Of course, this option was not available to the urban poor. Thus, it was the distance from dirt marked high status, which prompts the question: if poverty caused dirt, could prosperity cleanse it?

Cleansing the Dirt Poor

According to colonial authorities, the answer was yes. The Hospicio de Pobres provided a facility that promised to reform the habits of the poor. It therefore 160 represents the nexus between colonial attitudes about physical and symbolic dirt and socioeconomic class. The stringent program of work and religious instruction dosed by the Hospice sought to civilize the vagos y vicios of Mexico City and to inculcate in them new priorities such as work ethic and an investment in civic and cultural development. Put another way, the Poorhouse sought to purge the poor of their thirst for alcohol, longing for Saint Monday (San Lunes), and abandonment of propriety. Working eight and one half hours in the summer and seven hours in the winter, the strict regime endeavored to shape inmates into hard workers and to teach viable skills necessary for the workforce.81 In the history of assistance, the

Hospice stands apart because of this approach. Unlike past facilities that simply distributed aid, the Poorhouse sought to remedy the dirty habits of poverty.

As historian Norman Martin explains, the problem of vagrancy was not unfamiliar to eighteenth-century society, nor was it unique to Mexico City. In Spain, authorities had for many centuries struggled with the issue of poor relief.

Administering aid traditionally fell under the purview of the Church, an institution that placed virtue in the disavowal of worldly possessions and instructed followers in the belief that spiritual reward came to those who exercised charity. However, the manner in which ecclesiastics indiscriminately gave alms complicated the act of goodwill. Authorities often found recipients undeserving of aid. Hostility to indiscriminate giving lay behind the Crown’s mid-century efforts to restrict mendacity. This included criminalization of the act and confinement of indigents.82

In 1774, the establishment of the Hospicio de Pobres offered a facility on the cutting edge of social policy in Mexico and in Spain. The bando or edict preceding its 161 inauguration announced that begging for charity was henceforth illegal and moreover a punishable offense. This legislation marks a shift in traditional perspectives on charity and those who chose paths of asceticism; that is to say, society found no honor in mendacity. On the contrary panhandling was associable to the other dirty habits of the poor. During the late colonial period in Mexico, authorities prosecuted these offenses with exuberance; with the establishment of the Poorhouse, they also began to prosecute cases of abject poverty. And if alcohol abuse and misconduct could be rehabilitated, the same logic held that poverty could similarly find resolve. Amid this climate also circulated the belief that paupers stifled economic development.

In 1770, before the Poorhouse opened, Archbishop of Mexico Francisco de

Lorenzana sent Charles III a twenty-nine-page essay in which he outlined the reasons why the king should give his support for the future hospice.83 Between the years 1766 to 1771, Lorenzana witnessed firsthand the associated disorders of poverty. As he writes,

The lazy man is a Sponge that absorbs every poison, a Pump that attracts all filth; a Fungus that shields all Serpents; a Wax in which bad judgment is imprinted, he is that animal the Owl that draws men near with vile breath only to swallow them, a Creature of the night that blinds with the light of day and steals by the cover of darkness; he is the rotten Member of the Republic who transfers his cancer throughout the body politic, a man without hands, rational in appearance but vacant in mind, a Catholic without Religion, a Christian in name only, and lastly a hindrance to humanity, an annoyance to all, a use to no one, he is self-damaging and thoughtless with no purpose to his operations and no value in his speech.84

According to Lorenzana, sloth not only led to penury it also carried with it innumerable defects. The Poorhouse, he argued, would counter these problems. It would control the “hordes of Idlers that inundate towns, going door to door begging 162 for food and money.”85 Underneath Lorenzana’s virulent words is the message that the Poorhouse could turn [dirty] unproductive persons into contributing members of society.

The Hospicio de Pobres was, in effect, the keystone to a much larger effort that aimed to modernize the Spanish Empire; address local, out-of-hand problems; save souls; and upgrade the labor force. Its representation in Paseo de la Alameda underscores authorities’ grand vision for social progress. The emblem cannot therefore be dismissed as a landmark casually appearing within the view. Vagrancy threatened the future of the Empire; the confinement and rehabilitation of vagrants protected it. As one historical observer stated, the “idle poor formed slag heaps of society,” but they could be shaped “into pure gold with which to enrich and adorn the monarchy.”86 To extend the metaphor, the Poorhouse embodied the notion of a shrewd alchemist—one capable of turning unwanted scraps [dirt] into precious metal. One wonders how literally this idea connects to Paseo de la Alameda and its sheet metal support. The parallel is suggestive; it bears noting that another observer expressed a similar analogy with metallic metaphor. As Lorenzana understood it, the Hospice would forge a new citizenry—one as strong as iron, and one that never dulled nor stained from its labors.

These ideas were popularized in the work of Spanish Minister Bernardo

Ward, the Count of Campomanes, whose major work Economic Project, published in

1779, championed the idea that layabouts were a untapped resource; once reformed of their slothful ways, these persons offered human capital that could be put to use.87 Ward furthermore advocated that paupers be arrested and interred in 163 facilities where rehabilitation could occur. Paseo de la Alameda articulates complex ideas about the confinement and rehabilitation of paupers. While so-called productive members of society are assembled inside the park, the so-called nonproductive members are cast outside. The emphasis on separation is made in Paseo de la Alameda by fencing that appears to cordon off the park. Although the design element is mimetic, it is also one that expresses symbolic meaning. The scene is furthermore evocative of a passage in Lorenzana’s disquisition, which describes how like the surgeon must cut away rot, so too must authorities excise cancerous scourge.88 Paseo de la Alameda cuts off of the rotten, consigning degenerate figures to the margins of this view.

Hospice de Pobres was a boon to the cultural landscape, authorities believed, because it offered a means to eliminate poverty and to cure the disorders that perpetuated its cycle. Abolishing handouts and confining moochers also meant that civic resources would theoretically be directed to more profitable uses. At the root of all the politicking and reforming was the idea that Mexico was poor and overrun by good-for-nothing persons; however, that situation was presumed reparable. “The wealth of a nation,” Lorenzana writes, “does not depend on one individual or a few powerful people, but rather from the industry and hard work of the collective citizenry.”89 The Poorhouse represented a way to actuate these ideas thereby symbolically cleansing the poor. Its presentation in Paseo de la Alameda celebrates optimism and possibility; at the same time, its presentation of disorderly behaviors suggests that opinions on poverty and reform were not uniformly shared.

164

Conclusion: Smearing the Filthy Rich

If the reader perceives incongruity in the situation described by this chapter, then it will have served its purpose—a purpose that Paseo de la Alameda likewise participates. As this park view shows, the colonial discourse on poverty presented a paradox. On one side of the coin, reformers championed the Hospicio de Pobres—a facility that promised to end penury and cleanse the dirty habits of the poor; on the other side of the coin, authorities demonstrated an almost obsessional zeal for policing the lower classes, calling attention to the latter’s insatiable appetites for drink, sloth, and indecency. Paseo de la Alameda illustrates both viewpoints; it commemorates the Hospice and it also expresses officials’ all-consuming need to regulate the social and moral lives of the urban poor. The fact of the matter was that even as authorities sought to recalibrate the mores of the urban poor—to assimilate them and to teach normative models of behavior—dominant society had no intention of bridging the cultural divide. Elites sought instead to widen the gulf between themselves and the lower classes; calling attention to the physical and symbolic dirt of the abject other accomplished that goal.

This chapter has argued that massive late-century urban migration to Mexico

City created an urban crisis of poverty. Elites responded to this emergency by calling for reform aid and also by pointing out the cultural differences that set them apart from commoners. In the language of class struggle, dirt—or matter out of place, furnished elites with a vocabulary of cultural superiority: the habits of the urban poor could be described as dirty, their behaviors as abject, and their morals as corrupted. Paseo de la Alameda shows a contested vision of what dirt and 165 cleanliness were to the cultural landscape. In other words, elites needed the dirtiness in order to define the cleanliness; hence the concept of filth existed in a system of oppositional relationships. And if elites styled themselves as the high orders of the social body, then they styled commoners as the low orders of the social body—associating the latter with revolting, bodily functions. Of course, the need to continually reiterate the language of cultural superiority would suggest one thing: the [filthy] rich—who assuredly drank, idled, and scandalized—were really no different in behavior than the [dirt] poor.

166

Notes to Chapter Four

1 “He resuelto . . . que la Apertura del Hospicio sea el 19 del corriente, para lo que ordeno, que todos los Mendigos de ambos sexos se le conducirá por fuerza, siempre que variada su fortuna, ya sea por herencia, Legado, ó proporciones de mantenenerse, usando de los Oficios en que se les instruirá, dejen de ser Mendigos . . . les asigno el termino de ocho días, que se contarán desde la publicación de este Vando para que se presenten voluntariamente, debiendo tener entendido, que pasado el dicho termino, no deben importunar á los Fieles pidiendo limosna; por que á todo el que se sepa que lo hace en los Calles, Plazas, Casas, é Iglesias será recogido por los Zeladores que estarán repartidos, por los diferentes Barrios de esta Ciudad . . .” AGN, Bandos, vol. 8, fols. 210 – 211.” The problem of vagrancy was as old as the city, itself. For a discussion of homelessness in the sixteenth century see, Norman Martin, Los Vagabundos in la Nueva España (México: Editorial Jus, 1957). Martin continues to examine this issue within the context of eighteenth century New Spain in: "La Desnudez En La Nueva España Del Siglo XVIII," Anuario De Estudios Americanos 29, (1972): 261 – 294 and “Pobres, Mendigos y Vagabundos en la Nueva España, 1702 – 1766: Antecedentes y Soluciones Presentadas,” in Estudios de Historia Novohispana 8, (México, UNAM, IIE, 1985), 99 – 126. As one example of how challenging the problem of homelessness was, in 1721 Viceroy Valero requested that the Philip V deliver an injunction against Spanish vagrants wishing to immigrate to New Spain. This example is cited in Martin, “Pobres, Mendigos, y Vagabundos,” 110.

2 For one of the most comprehensive studies of the Poorhouse to date see, Silvia Marina Arrom, Containing the Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774-1871 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000). Two other sources addressing the Poorhouse are: Gabriel Haslip-Viera, “Crime and the Administration of Justice in Colonial Mexico City, 1696 – 1810” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1980) and Moisés Gonzaléz Navarro, La pobreza en México (México: El Colegio de México, 1985).

3 María Jiménez Salas, Historia de la asistencia social en España en la edad moderna (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientíicas, 1958), 147 – 148.

4 One example of an economic stimulation project is the Royal Tobacco Factory. In New Spain the tobacco monopoly was established in 1765; at the factory workers processed raw tobacco for domestic and foreign consumption. It stimulated the economy by providing hundreds of jobs to primarily low-income workers. For more information see Susan Deans-Smith, “The Working Poor and the Eighteenth-Century Colonial State: Gender, Public Order, and Work Discipline,” in Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico, ed. William H. Beezley, Cheryl English Martin, and William E. French (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1994) and Deans- Smith, Bureaucrats, Planters, and Workers: The Making of the Tobacco Monopoly in Bourbon Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992).

5 See for instance: Efraín Castro Morales, “Alameda Mexicana Breve crónica de un viejo paseo,” and Lorena Martínez González, “La Alameda Una visión histórica sobre sus áreas verdes y su vegetación,” in Alameda Visión histórica y estética de la Alameda de la ciudad de México (México: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes and Landucci Editores, S. A. de C. V., 2001), 50 – 56 and 210 – 211.

6 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge and & Kegan Paul, 1966), 2.

7 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, ed. Eric Dunning, Johan Goudsblom, and Stephan Mennell, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), 5 and 47 – 52.

8 William A. Cohen and Ryan Johnson, eds. Filth: Dirt, Disgust, and Modern Life (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), ix – x. For a more general discussion of dirt and disorder, see 167

also: Ben Campkin and Rosie Cox, Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007).

9 This renovation is discussed in detail in, José María Marroqui, La Ciudad de México, Contiene: El origen de los nombres de muchas de sus calles y plazas, del de varios establecimientos públicos y privados, y no pocas noticias curiosas y entretenidas (México: Jesus Medina Editor, 1969), 256 – 260.

10 “PASEO DE LA ALAMEDA DE MEXICO, que se finalizó el año de 1775, mira a el Poniente. 1. El Sôr. Virrey. 2. Hospicio de Pobres. 3. [Casa de la Acordada.] 4. Capillas de Calvario. 5. Convto de Sn Diego. 6. [Obraje del Portillo.] 7. Convto de Sn Ypolito y Casa de Locos. 8. [Muchachos jugando a moros y cristianos] 9. Alcantarillas de las Pilas. 10. Los Locos. 11. [Fuente General de la Alameda.] 12. Fuente de Hércules. 13. Fuente de Tritón. 14. Fuente de [Ganimedes.] 15. [Fuente de Arión.]” Due to either framing or print reproduciton, portions of the key are not visible. The key is transcribed in full by Castro in “Alameda Mexicana, Breve crónica de un viejo paseo,” 53.

11 The project had actually begun much earlier, around 1769 under the directive of Viceroy Carlos Francisco de Croix (vr. 1766 – 1771). Planning began in 1769 when de Croix proposed to the cabildo that the land west of the Alameda, where the quemadero once stood, be annexed to enlarge the park. AHDF, Actas de Cabildo originales de sesiones ordinarias. vol. 89A, 1769.

12 Arrom, Containing the Poor, Appendix 4, 294. For more information on the accomplishment of Viceroy Bucareli during his term of office, see: Bernard E. Bobb, The Viceregency of Antonio María Bucareli in New Spain, 1771 – 1779 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962).

13 Eighteenth-century chronicler Francisco Sedano discussed the swift and severe punishments of the Acordada Tribunal. He noted that between the years 1719 and 1732 the Tribunal sentenced 43 defendants to the gallows, 151 to the stockade, and 753 to hard labor. See Francisco Sedano, Noticias de México (Crónicas de los siglos XVI al XVIII) ed. Joaquín Fernández de Córdoba, vol. 1, (México: Colección Metropolitana, 1880), 29.

14 Viceroy de Croix expressed his vision of the park to incumbent Bucareli in instructions to the latter statesman: “y considerado que en dicha situación se podía mejorar y hacer en ella vistoso paseo” Charles-François de Croix, Instrucción del Virrey Marqués de Croix que deja a su successor Antonio María Bucareli (México: Editorial Jus, S. A. México, 1960), 78.

15 For further discussion of the term “buen gusto” see, Buen Gusto and Classicism in the Visual Cultures of Latin America, 1780 – 1910, eds. Paul Niell and Stacie Widdifield (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013).

16 The Morismas de Bracho culminate in annual staging of mock battles, processions, and fireworks that recall three stories of Christian battles against the Moors: the martyrdom of John the Baptist, the crusade of Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers of France, and the battle of Lepanto. In Latin America, the morismas take on additional meaning, representing an amalgamation of Catholic and pre- Hispanic struggles. The theatrical reenactments, celebrated in August, symbolize the Spanish conquest of Mexico. For more information, see: Max Harris, Aztecs, Moors, and Christians: Festivals of Reconquest in Mexico and Spain (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000). For a contemporaneous description of morismas, see Juan de Viera, Compendiosa narración de la ciudad de México, ed. Facsimilar, (México: Editorial Guarania, 1952), 94 – 95.

17 It was common that the most reliable patients be allowed to venture out alone in the city to collect alms. The practice was sanctioned in the 1616 bylaws of the San Hipólito Asylum. It was furthermore considered a reliable means of revenue. AGN, Tierras, vol. 3082, exp. 1, fol. 5v., cited in, Cheryl English Martin, “The San Hipólito Hospitals of Colonial Mexico: 1566 – 1702” (PhD diss., Tulane University, 1976), 101. 168

18 A fictional, but contemporaneous description of so-called pretend beggars is found in José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi’s The Mangy Parrot. See Fernández de Lizardi, trans. David L. Frye, The Mangy Parrot: The Life and Times of Periquillo Sarniento: Written by Himself for His Children (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Pub., 2004).

19 “La Alameda, supongamos, que es el único paraje cómodo y más inmediato que hay para divertir el ánimo y gozar los hombres de un rato de recreación y pasatiempo que corre a cargo de uno de los regidores, sirve más de enfado y de molestia que de diversión, por el ningún orden político que hay en él; porque siendo sitio común se ocupa el corto recinto de la más baja plebe, desnuda o casi en cueros, sin atreverse ningún hombre decente, ni de alguna graduación a sentarse al lado de ella por excusarse de la inundación de piojos en que va a meterse, sufriendo más bien otras incomodidades que exponerse a recibir en su cuerpo semejante plaga. Ya sería evitable este peligro con pasar el rato sin la comodidad del asiento y del descanso si no llegara a molestar igualmente de sentido del olfato, la fetidez y mal olor de la manteca, que se desparrama por todo su circunferencia, a causa de permitirse indebidamente que en ella se guisen comistrajos y porquerías que es el reclamo de la gente ruin y ordinaria.” Hipólito Villarroel, Enfermedades políticas que padece la capital de esta Nueva España: en casi todos los cuerpos de que se compone y remedios que se le deben aplicar para su curación si se quiere que sea útil al Rey y al público, (México, D.F.: Gobierno de la Ciudad de México, 1999), 142 – 143.

20 Douglas, Purity and Danger, 7.

21 During this period, particularly the years 1770 – 1773, 1778 – 1780, and 1785; severe drought caused a colony-wide corn shortage. The famine was so grave that the year 1775 was called el año de hambre, or the year of hunger. For an analysis of this situation see, Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519 – 1810 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), 457 – 458.

22 Arrom, Containing the Poor, 6.

23 In 1742, Villaseñor y Sánchez estimated the population at 98,000; in 1803, Alexander von Humboldt used a 1790 census, which counted 112,926 inhabitants, to tabulate an estimated 137,000 persons. See, Joseph Antonio Villaseñor y Sánchez, Theatro americano, descripción general de los reynos, y provincias de la Nueva-España . . . 2 vols., (México: Imp. de la vda. de Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, 1746), 1:35 and Alexander von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, trans. John Black 4 vols. (1811; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1966), 2:81 – 82.

24 John E. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs: Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), 209 – 211. For types of jobs, see Table 33, which lists craft guilds registered in Mexico City in 1788.

25 Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 1692 – 1810 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999), 24.

26 Enrique Florescano, Precios del maíz y crisis agrícolas en México (1708 – 1810): Ensayo sobre el movimiento de los precios y sus consecuencias económicas y socials (México: Colegio de México; Centro de Estudio Históricos, 1969), 143 – 144.

27 Ibid.

28 Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment, 12.

29 Timothy E. Anna, The Fall of the Royal Government in Mexico City (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), 14 – 15. 169

30 The author Silvia Arrom believes the term “lépero,” came into use after Alexander von Humboldt used the word “lazaroni” to describe the homeless of Mexico City in his widely circulated Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain. The term “lépero” was clearly in use in 1816 when the novelist José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi used it to describe false beggars in the fictional Mangy Parrot. See: von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, trans. John Black, (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822), 1:235 and Fernández de Lizardi and David L. Frye, The Mangy Parrot.

31 von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, 1:235.

32 Joel Roberts Poinsett, Notes on Mexico Made in the Autumn of 1822: Accompanied by an Historical Sketch of the Revolution, and Translations of Official Reports on the Present State of that Country (New York: Praeger, 1969), 48.

33 Edward T. Tayloe, Mexico: 1825 – 1828 The Journal and Correspondence of Edward Thornton Tayloe, ed. C. Harvey Gardiner (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 53 – 54. The use of italics belongs to the original author.

34 An example of such a party can be found in the Gazeta de México, 8:27, Diciembre 28, 1796, 13 – 15.

35 For example, see the discussion of why administrators chose not to fund the renovation of Alameda Park with proceeds earned from bullfights in AHDF, Paseos en general, vol. 3584, exp. 7, fol. 11.

36 The author Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán explores popular forms of recreation in colonial Mexico. See, Viqueira Albán, Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, (Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, 1999).

37 Informe sobre pulquerías y tabernas el año de 1784” in Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación, ed. Julio Jimenez Rueda, tomo XVIII, no. 2 (1947): 193 – 236 and 363 – 405.

38 “. . . lejos de estar las pulquerías en disposición de no detenerse las gentes, antes bien, la hay para mantenerse en ellas muchas horas, no satisfecho algunos pulqueros con las contravenciones y referidas . . . de fabricar corralones dentro y fuera de las bodegas, para que los concurrentes ni aun con pretexto de ir a hacer sus mayores necesidades corporales desamparen aquellas oficinas de Lucifer, metiéndolos en otras peores cavernas de éste con aquel reprobado motivo, y dándoselo para cuanto malo debe discurrirse de la oculta mezcla de hombres y mujeres a cual más lujuriosos, borrachos, y sin la más mínima señal de cristianos, pues de esta lastimosa clase, son casi todos las personas asistentes a pulquerías.” Ibid., 210 – 211.

39 “…. abúsos de las Pulquerias que son el verdadero sentro y origen de los delitos y pecados públicos en que se anega esta numerosa Poblacion ....” José de Gálvez, Informe general que en virtud de Real Orden instruyó y entregó el excelentísimo señor marqués de Sonora siendo visitador general de este reino, al excelentísimo señor virrey don Antonio Bucarely y Ursúa con fecha 31 de diciembre de 1771, ed. Facsimilar, (México: Ciesas; M.A. Porrúa, 2002), 112. A pulquería is a tavern that sold pulque. Pulque is a fermented beverage made from the nectar of the maguey plant or agave.

40 Villarroel, Enfermedades políticas, 183.

41 Ibid., 184.

42 Aguardiente de caña is a type of distilled liquor made from sugarcane; tepache is a beverage made from soured pulque mixed with brown sugar and citrus juices. The approximate number of taverns 170

comes from, Michael C. Scardaville, “Alcohol Abuse and Tavern Reform in Late Colonial Mexico” Hispanic America Historical Review 60.4 (1980): 646.

43 Ibid. For a firsthand description of ambulating alcohol venders, see: Juan de Viera, Compendiosa narración de la ciudad de México, 91.

44 Scardaville, “Alcohol Abuse and Tavern Reform,” 645 – 646.

45 For an analysis of the trends in colonial crime, see Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment, 51 – 79.

46 G. F. Lyon, Journal of a Residence and Tour in the Republic of Mexico in the Year 1826 (London: J. Murray, 1828), 127 – 128 and 131 – 132.

47 AGN, Bandos, vol. 12, exp. 36, fol. 119.

48 Scardaville, “Alcohol Abuse and Tavern Reform,” 645. Scardaville analyzed 6,064 arrest inventories complied in the ten extent libros de reos. Of the forty-five percent of arrests, twenty-four percent were for tavern infractions, twenty-one percent for public drunkenness, and less than one percent for illegal distribution.

49 “ por el aguardiente caña, la qué la mas darle actibidad, mescla con alumbre, sal viva, y otras ingredientes venenosos” AGN, Real Audiencia, Civil, Civil Volúmenes, vol. 2126, exp. 2, fols. 1 – 1v. 50 Virginia Guedea, “México en 1812: Control Político y Bebidas Prohibidas,” Estudios de historia moderna y contemporánea de México 8, (1980): 32.

51 Ibid., 647.

52 The account ledgers of maguey hacendados (estate owners) show that maguey products made for a profitable enterprise. In 1786, the earnings of the hacendado Conde de Jala totaled 25,000 pesos, while in 1810 the Marqués de Vivanco raked in a very respectable 41,304 pesos. See Doris Ladd, The Mexican Nobility at Independence, 1780 – 1826 (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1977), 41 – 43 and 141.

53 One was the Conde del Valle de Orizaba, a maguey plantation owner who served as a district judge from 1791 to 1793. See, Haslip-Viera, Crime and punishment in late colonial Mexico City, 1692-1810, 65.

54 Juan Vicente Güémez Pacheco de Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, Conde de Revillagigedo, Informe sobre las misiones, 1793; e Instrucción reservada al marqués de Branciforte, 1794 (México: Editorial Jus, 1966), 372.

55 The case for Baltasar Ladrón de Guevara being the author of this document is made by Ignacio González-Polo. See, González-Polo, “Introducción” in Reflexiones y Apuntes Sobre la Ciudad de México (Fines de la Colonia), versión paleographica (México: Colección Distrito Federal, 1984), 14.

56 “. . . dandoles sus padres la única de sus extragadas costumbres, que hereden por ejemplo y por tradición . . .” Baltasar Ladrón de Guevara, “Discurso sobre la policía de México, 1788” in Antología de Textos sobre la Ciudad de México en el Periodo de la Ilustración (1788 – 1792) ed. Sonia Lombardo de Ruíz (México: Colección Científica Fuentes Historia Social, 1982), 63.

57 “Sobre estos principios inculpables, nada extraña es su concurrencia a donde desde que nacieron se les enseño a asistir, no habiendo para ellos más comedia, más paseos, más caza, pesca o entretenimiento ni más ejercicios que aquel teatro en los ratos que no están tocando las campanas o formando un desordenado séquito en las procesiones o no trabajan . . .” Ibid., 64. 171

58 “Los que se ven en las pulquerías son todos de la ínfima plebe . . . Entre ellos casi puede aventurarse la proposición de que no hay escandalos mutuos porque estos son indubitablemente en todo el mundo no absolutos, sin relativos en sí respecto a que el que mira una acción u oye una expresión inmoderada que desde que nació he estado viviendo u oyendo, el habito continuado ninguna impresión nueva le causa contra la virtud, ni le fomento o sugiere instigación depravada en lo moral. Lo mismo es de discurrir comparativamente tocante a la desnudez y a los desahogos naturales que en todas las calles aun de las muy concurridas . . . ni otra camisa que su pellejo asqueroso, y mal cubierto con un pedazo de frazada inmunda. Ibid., 60.

59 Elias, The Civilizing Process, 51.

60 Informe sobre pulquerías y tabernas el año de 1784,” 208.

61 “Verían a la primera vista de una pulquería en todas las horas de venta y especialmente desde las diez de la mañana hasta las cuatro o cinco de las tarde, congregadas muchas personas de ambos sexos, sentadas en el suelo las más comiendo unas lo que ellas mismas llevan, comprándolo otros de las varias almuercerías portátiles que has en todas, y en no pocas hallarían juegos y advertirán otras acciones inhonestas. . .” Ibid., 213 – 214.

62 Villarroel, Enfermedades políticas, 179.

63 Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Carreri, Viaje a la Nueva España, trans. José María de Agreda y Sánchez (México: Libro-Mex, 1955), 176.

64 AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Aguas: fuentes públicas, vol. 58, exp. 47, fols. 1 – 34.

65 “Ibid., fols. 1 – 7.

66 “les dice que beberan mierda al dia siguiente.” Ibid., fols. 7r – 7v.

67 Ibid., fol. 4v.

68 AGN, Gobierno Virreinal, Bandos, vol. 15, exp. 71, fol. 191.

69 Regarding the sounding of the Cathedral bells, see José Ignacio González-Polo, “Compendio de Providencias de policía de México del segundo conde de Revilla Gigedo” in Boletín del Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas 14 – 15, (1977 – 78): 33. In reference to the patrolmen, see: AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Alumbrado, vol. 345, exp. 7. fol. 10r.

70 González-Polo, “Compendio de Providencias,” 33.

71 Cited in Susan Deans-Smith, “The Working Poor and the Eighteenth-Century Colonial State: Gender, Public Order, and Work Discipline,” in Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico, ed. William H. Beezely, Cheryl English Martin, and William E. French (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1994), 50.

72 Ibid., 48.

73 Susan Signe Morrison, Excrement in the Late Middle Ages: Sacred Filth and Chaucer’s Fecopoetics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 7.

74 There are many excellent studies of dirt, disgust, and fecal discourse. The following authors offer psychoanalytical and Marxist approaches to the subject; they were therefore most useful to the 172

present study. See Julia Kristeva and Leon S. Roudiez, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); Ian William Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); Dominque Laporte, History of Shit (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000); Winfried Menninghaus, Disgust: The Theory and History of a Strong Sensation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003); Cohen and Johnson, Filth: Dirt, Disgust, and Modern Life; and Campkin and Cox, Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination.

75 Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politcs and Poetics of Transgress (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1986), 132.

76 The two additional examples show figures urinating. They are found in: Miguel Cabrera, De Castiso y Mestiza, Chamizo, 1763, oil on canvas, Museo de América, Madrid, Spain; and Anonymous, The Alameda of Mexico City, eighteenth century, oil on canvas, Museo de América, Madrid, Spain.

77 “Exmo. Señor. El abuso, desorden y libertad con que en los Barrios de esta Cuidad, acostumbra toda clase de Gentes, hacer las operaciones Naturales, ensuciandose Publicamente en las Calles y Plazas, contra el devido Pudor y con grande escandalo y daño de la salud Publica. . .” AGN, Ayuntamiento, Polícia y Empedrados, cont. 5, vol. 15, exp. 1, fol. 2r.

78 AGN, Bandos, vol. 15, exp. 80, fol. 208v – 210r.

79 See, for example, AGN, Bandos, vol. 7, exp. 48, fol. 175. The fine for refusing to build a latrine was 100 pesos.

80 Campkin and Cox, Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination, 11.

81 During the summer inmates were required to rise at 5:30 a.m. to attend mass and breakfast; afterwards they worked in the facility’s workshops until 11:30 when lunch was served. Inmates took siesta until 2 p.m. after which they worked until 6 p.m. In the evenings they attended mass and supped at 8 p.m. During the winter, inmates rose at 6:30 because it was too cold to rise earlier and worked until 5 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. As for trades, inmates learned how to weave wool and cotton cloth, sew clothes, make shoes, and garden. The Hospice sold the cloth produced by inmates for profit. See Arrom, Containing the Poor, 54 and 66.

82 See, Norman F. Martin, “La Desnudez en la Nueva España del Siglo XVIII,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos, no. 29(1972): 261 – 268; and William J. Callahan, “The Problem of Confinement: An Aspect of Poor Relief in Eighteenth-Century Spain,” Hispanic American Historical Review 51, no. 1. (Feb., 1971): 1 – 4.

83 Francisco Antonio Lorenzana, Memorial. Que Presentan a Todos Las Comunidades, y Gremios Los Pobres Mendigos De México (Mexico: 1770).

84 “El ocioso es una Esponja, que recibe en sí todo veneno, una Bomba, que atrahe toda inmundicia; un Hongo, adonde se acoge toda Serpiente; Cera, en que se imprime, y sella todo mal juicio de la fama agena; aquel animal Buhio [Búho], que con su aliento venenoso atrahe á los hombres para tragárselos; Ave nocturna, que ciega con la luz del dia, y se sustenta en la noche con los robos; Miembro podrido de la República, que inficiona, y cancera todo el cuerpo, hombre sin manos, racional en la apariencia, corcho vacío, Católica sin Religion, Christiano en el nombre, y últimamente un estorbo de la vida humana, á todos molesto, á ninguno útil, á sí dañoso, y que solo vive maquinalmente, sin norte en sus pasos, sin modelo en sus operaciones, y sin racionalidad en sus discursos.” Lorenzana, Memorial, II.

85 “De clase de Pobres ociosos estan inundados los Pueblos, que solo saben los Conventos para la sopa, los portales de los ricos para el medio real, y las pulquerías, ó tabernas para la embriaguez.” Ibid., III.

173

86 Quoted in Callahan, “The Problem of Confinement,” 7.

87 Bernardo Ward, "Proyecto Económico En Que Se Proponen Varias Providencias, Dirigidas á Promover Los Intereses De España, Con Los Medios y Fondos Necesarios Para Su Plantificacion" J. Ibarra, 1779, 11 – 17. The publication of this manuscript is five years after the opening of the Poorhouse. Ward rehearsed these in an early work, Obra pía, published in 1763.

88 Lorenzana, Memorial, X.

89 “La riqueza de los Pueblos no depende de uno, ó mas Poderosos, sino del giro, círculo, y continuo movimiento, y Manifacturas de todas los Vecinos” Lorenzana, Memorial, XII. 174

CHAPTER FIVE

super VISION: ABSTRACTING SPACE

On February 15, 1773 during the chapter meeting of the Mexico City town council (cabildo), Judge Superintendent Juan de Vergara spoke passionately about the city’s obligation to complete the renovation of Alameda Park.1 Vergara urged the council to act immediately since the time was now right for workmen to plant trees.

Dwindled funds had caused the renovation to lag; but, according to Vergara, it should recommence posthaste because reconditioning the park was “the will of citizens.”2 The judge’s words indicate that the Alameda delivered a recreational venue enjoyed by many residents; its expedient return to working order was therefore paramount. Truly, Alameda Park offered one of the most popular gathering spots in Mexico City. The popularity of the park invited individuals to render their perceptions of it within the pages of travel narratives, political essays, poems, and as the subject matter of fine and decorative arts, as well as drawings and other graphic materials.

Plano ignográfico de la Alameda de la nobilísima Ciudad de México [h]echo el año de 1778, signed by José María de la Bastida, a soldier serving in the Royal Corps of Military Engineers, offers one such portrayal of the Alameda (Figure 5.1). Created in 1778, this painting shows a view of the renovation; it also documents the number of pilasters that delineated the new park boundaries.3 Simple and graphic, Plano ignográfico compels audiences to observe the park and its spatial organization. The design reads clearly: a lattice of intersecting meridians and parallels that represent 175 the avenues pedestrians and carriages traversed, and crisscrossing footpaths that carve the lawns into four quadrants, segmented into twenty-four parterres. With meticulous care, Bastida emphasizes the aspects of the park that evidenced its reconditioned order and the measured beauty of its new landscaping. Yet, behind this seemingly uncomplicated vision lies a paradox. Plano ignográfico suppresses the most intrinsic element of the park: its people.

The liveliness of the Alameda, a setting that incited the “will of the citizens,” as Vergara pointed out, is not communicated in this rendering. In fact, the scene is virtually devoid of human activity. Dwarfed by immense gardens, scant figures seem miniscule and indistinct—like tiny ants on a large field. By deemphasizing elements prone to irregularity and disorder, i.e., human subjects, Plano ignográfico presents a scene characterized by order and homogeneity. It is a vision that stands apart from the true nature of the park, which scholars recognize as having been more accurately characterized by racial heterogeneity and socioeconomic colorant. In contrast to depictions of social activity, audiences of Plano ignográfico see, in this arrangement, ordered space and regulated people. Plucked from the surrounding urban environment and set against a white background, the view furthermore calls to mind the picture of a specimen, slide-mounted and primed for visual inspection.

Although lacking figures, Plano ignográfico models how late-century Bourbon administrators envisioned public space, what social groups they felt should have presence within it, and the strategies officials called upon to actuate their viewpoint.

In a word, the painting portrays authorities’ perspectives on crowd control. It shows how processes of abstraction, i.e., graphic design, could be used to homogenize 176 diverse elements, i.e., an irregular environment and a population deemed disorderly. Standardization is a process that enables formerly disparate and unquantifiable elements to find comparison, which in turn facilitates grouping and counting. Yet, legibility in a sense was a trap.4 Renovation of the physical environment brought inhabitants’ social activities into sharper focus; as a result, residents may have felt their privacy constrained by evermore expanding strategies of superintendence. Examples of the ways officials monitored the population are found in city council minutes, ordinances, and other records. These documents are larded with the vocabulary of watchfulness, i.e., vigilance (vigilancia), public exposure (publicidad), and civic order (policía). Like Plano ignográfico, these records evidence the strategies of surveillance at work.5

But as was often the case in the history of colonial Mexico, policing was partisan and unequally directed at one social group: the urban poor.6 Educated

(although not unbiased) opinion vilified the lower classes, characterizing commoners and the spaces inhabited by the pleb as disorderly. In truth, the areas of town where the poor lived did differ from the areas of town where the wealthy livid.

Developing extemporaneously over the course of two centuries, the barrios beyond the traza devolved from broad, straight boulevards into gauntlets of crooked streets lacking subterranean sewers and an efficient system for waste disposal. But officials worried not that these spaces were insalubrious; instead, authorities brooded over the fact that the domain of the poor was visually and therefore administratively impenetrable. In their opinion, the city’s higgledy-piggledy barrios cloaked crime, screened deviance, and concealed corruption. 177

To combat the disorders attributed to the lower classes, authorities sharpened their eyes. These strategies resemble what contemporary political scientist James C. Scott describes as “seeing like a state.” In his apt words:

Certain forms of knowledge and control require a narrowing of vision. The great advantage of tunnel vision is that it brings into sharp focus certain aspects of an otherwise far more complex and unwieldy reality. This very simplification, in turn, makes the phenomenon at the center of the field of vision more legible and hence more susceptible to careful measurement and calculation . . . making possible a high degree of schematic knowledge, control, and manipulation.7

New methods of colonial law enforcement called for an enterprising new take on vision. The answer was super vision, or a modus operandi that simultaneously narrowed and expanded its scope in order to achieve an all-encompassing panorama. Drawing on the meaning of the prefix “super,” signifying above and extreme; super vision is a phrase this study employs to denote authorities’ growing reliance on the tools and techniques of visual inspection. Urban renovation, expansion of the criminal justice system, and census projects aimed to concretize super vision. The following chapter explores colonial attitudes about surveillance and crowd control, calling attention to the inherit paradoxes and ironies of administrators’ goals.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

In a travelogue chronicling his twelve-year tour of New Spain (1625 – 1637),

Englishman Thomas Gage wrote: “It is a by-word that at Mexico four things are fair; that is to say, the women, the apparel, the horses, and the streets.”8 In particular,

Gage was moved by the breadth and cleanliness of Mexico’s grand boulevards. 178

Roughly two hundred years later, another British traveler, G. F. Lyon, echoed the sentiments of his compatriot.

The charm of Mexico consists in the width and regularity of its streets, which cross at right angles, and in almost every instance traverse in one unbroken line the whole extent of the city; affording a fine perspective of nearly two miles . . . They are all well paved, with pathways on each side, while through their centre, beneath a line of broad slabs, runs the common sewer. It is a far cleaner town than might be expected.9

Like Gage, Lyon was impressed by the appearance of a well-ordered civic environment. Although Gage and Lyon offered two flattering assessments of Mexico

City, not all individuals felt this way. An equal number of travelers, diplomats, and local residents shared less rosy opinions of it.

Book merchant and lifelong resident of Mexico City, Francisco Sedano painted a harrowing picture of living conditions. In his account, Noticias de México, penned between the years 1789 and 1789, Sedano described all the streets of

Mexico City as “rubbish heaps” (muladares) with each street corner piled high with a

“mountain of garbage” (montón de basura), “manure” (estiéricol) and filth hastily discarded by residents.10 Sedano’s chief concern rested in the irreverent habits of city dwellers, whose indiscriminate dumping of trash perpetuated the cycle of pollution. Sedano makes no distinction, however, between the methods of waste disposal practiced by the rich and those practiced by the poor. From his middle- class perspective, all persons were guilty of fouling the environment.

This was not the shared sentiment of another critical observer: Baltasar

Ladrón de Guevara, Judge of the Courts and author of a political treatise known as

Discurso sobre la Policía de México, penned in 1788.11 Ladrón, a member of the upper class, denounced the unsanitary conditions of impoverished neighborhoods and 179 proposed ways to rectify the situation. He claimed that beyond the center of the city, the urban environment deteriorated into a labyrinth of irregular streets; according to Ladrón this evidenced the neglect and careless planning of administrators.12 He also rued the malodorous trash heaps that were seen throughout the city—most especially in satellite barrios that served as both residential areas and landfills. The amount of refuse was so great, writes Ladrón, that it could never be removed entirely, and so residents merely went through the motions, shuffling piles of trash back and forth, in order to make way for perfunctory garbage collection.13

These contrastive reports suggest that historical observers recorded relative truths about Mexico City based their own experiences. Many variables such as expectation, level of comfort, and itinerary play a role in the formation of personal opinions. While broad streets and clean lines of sight were generally characteristic of the center of Mexico City, these qualities faded at its periphery. One may assume that well-to-do visitors and residents rarely toured rundown sections of Mexico City.

Additionally, the ways elites interacted with the environment, whether at its heart or at its extremities, differed from the experiences of people on the ground. Social status granted right of entry into the golden chambers of colonial privilege—a position that insulated from “annoyances to the eyes, nose, and feet,” from places where physical labor occurred, and from situations in which sickness struck with impunity.14

Indeed, the connection between social privilege and social insulation were so cemented that one might say the upper class literally lived above the masses. The wealthy, for example, travelled by horseback or in carriages high above the muck of 180 city streets. At the theatre, balconies occupied by the upper class reigned over sections of general admission.15 And, because elites generally found it distasteful to tread amongst the masses, affluent residents employed servants for running errands, shopping, and other domestic chores. Even among the middle and lower classes, those who could afford it made their domiciles in the top floors of apartment buildings, hoping to find a refuge from the intrusive foulness of city streets. Instrumental in establishing a physical separation between the comparatively refined world of the elites and the comparatively vulgar world of the poor was the boundary of the historic traza.

The word “traza,” refers to the 1523 – 1524 design plan that civic administrators created to guide the construction of Mexico City. Geometer Alonso

García Bravo proposed the scheme. The traza instituted a boundary between the

Spanish areas of settlement and the Amerindian areas of resettlement. The earliest traza boundaries staked Spaniards’ claims to lands within an approximate six-block radius of the Plaza Mayor.16 Although, the Spanish section was enlarged several times over the course of the colonial period, and in practice its boundaries were symbolic rather than literal, sixteenth-century zoning initiated a hierarchical division of space and resource. In short, Spanish administrators paid greater attention to the areas of town where Spaniards lived. They approached the planning of their own neighborhoods with purpose, introducing infrastructure to assure the safety and convenience of fellow Spaniards. This degree of forethought was not extended to Amerindian barrios. One may conclude that Spanish administrators perceived less value in the spaces inhabited by Amerindians, and felt less incentive 181 to please a population physically consigned to the margins of the city and figuratively pushed from the upper echelons of society.

To lay out the Spanish areas of Mexico City, planners rehearsed the logic of

Renaissance architectural and political theorists. Designs for the central areas of the metropolis were regimented, orderly, and affirmative of Spanish might.17 The interior of the city featured wide, straight streets laid out to compass points and organized by gridiron. Plazas and roads were aptly proportioned in order to facilitate the flow of equestrian and foot traffic, as well as the circulation of air and the tidy removal of wastes. Officials distributed plots of land outside the plaza mayor to Spaniards in order of rank. High status individuals earned their choice of homesteads closest to the city center. With their own interests at heart, administrators additionally sited the most vital civic amenities near the core of the city.

From an elitist perspective, the encircling barrios collapsed into a chaotic jumble of ill-defined communities, mean and cramped alleys, and residential environments bereft of resource. It seems that with little desire to extend city services to areas of town not inhabited by Spaniards, city planners turned a blind eye as the rest of Mexico City grew haphazardly and by accretion. It could therefore be said that administrative negligence, imposed Western ideas of spatial disorder on resettled Amerindian communities. Residents living outside the traza, for example, faced challenge in the completion of even mundane tasks, such as collecting water.

And while from time to time all areas of Mexico City quartered threats to life and limb, i.e., rabid dogs, thieves, evildoers, reckless carriage drivers, escaped animals, 182 and infectious persons; individuals who lived in neighborhoods furthest from the reach of central, law enforcement faced the greater peril.

One example of the material disadvantages of life beyond the municipal center of Mexico City comes from the testimony of residents living in the barrio of

Santa Cruz. As priest of the Church of Santa Cruz y Soledad explained to the magistrate of district twenty-five, the barrio was completely without water.

Previously, residents obtained drinking water from a fountain located in the plazuela de la Santísima Trinidad; however, the singular fountain serving the area no longer operated. The priest reported that residents were forced to shell out triple the amount of money for the inflated services of ambulating water venders. He furthermore testified that in addition to the scarcity of this resource, the generally out of service fountain was an eyesore and magnet for miscreants.18 While twenty- first-century audiences may never fully comprehend the conditions of daily life in barrios like Santa Cruz, affidavits such as this one bring us closer. It may be helpful to think about the dichotomy of upper and lower class environments in relation to other kinds of oppositional relationships. For instance, the outlying barrios were the yin to the heart of the city, its yang.

To summarize, while parts of Mexico City showed well, the remainder of the urban environment lacked uniformity and order. The boundary of the historic traza marked these physical distinctions; it furthermore cordoned off the spaces of the socially elite and cast a figurative veil over areas this group deemed unlovely.

However, in a broader sense, the boundaries of the traza created a physical and symbolic reality in which a pattern of classist myopia took root. Over time, this 183 nearsightedness became institutionalized to such a degree that it supported social acceptance (or at least elite acceptance) of administrative negligence. Put differently, the chain of command focused on meeting the needs of a specialized group, i.e., elites—at the expense of or without regard to others, i.e., non-elites. In practice, this meant that navel-gazing officials funneled civic resources into projects reflecting statecraft and colonial imaginaries. Perhaps the most apt summarization of the classist myopia underpinning civic administration is told in the familiar adage: out of sight, out of mind.

Changing the Field of Perception

Over the course of the eighteenth century, a profound change occurred in

Bourbon leaders’ indifference towards the spaces inhabited by the urban poor. But it was not altruism that motivated this transformation. The rapid population growth of Mexico City and the problems brought on by urban congestion prompted authorities to restyle their elitist attitudes. Instead of turning a blind eye to problems of the lower classes, authorities turned harsh attention to the problem of the lower classes. According to officials, the city required buffering from the urban poor whose encroachment on public space allegedly threatened civic order.

Beginning around 1770 with a series of massive rural-to-urban migrations, the classist mindset of authorities, i.e., out of sight, out of mind, morphed into a reformist mindset characterized by aggressive, police interventionism. Questions about this turnaround may be best approached with a general understanding of the process as complex and sometimes contradictory. 184

Cycles of agricultural crisis, followed by epidemic; and later, the onset of the

War for Mexican Independence, caused individuals from across the viceroyalty to relocate to Mexico City where they sought safe haven and economic assistance. The wave of urban migration was most pronounced during the final decades of eighteenth century and the initial decade of the nineteenth century.19 Estimates show that in 1742, the viceregal capital was home to approximately 98,000 persons; by 1772, that number had climbed to 112,462; in 1803 it measured roughly

137,000; and the 1811 census registered a total of 168,846 persons.20 Put another way, the growth rate climbed from about 0.46% per year to about 2.61% per year over a span of sixty-nine years.

Civic infrastructure (buildings, roads, bridges, affordable housing, public services, etc.) did not keep pace with the swell of bodies.21 Impoverished and displaced, new arrivals to Mexico City (predominately agricultural workers and their families) taxed welfare agencies and exacerbated existing problems, such as waste management, vagrancy, and crime. The effects of the population spike were felt citywide; however, physical areas of town already burdened by neglect were impacted to a greater extent than areas supported by infrastructure. This did not stop elites from speaking out against the impingement of the poor on spaces like

Alameda Park, to which the wealthy claimed sole right of use.22

Viceroy Francisco de Croix, (vr. 1766 – 1771), like many among his social circle, perceived the rising population of urban poor as a threat to social order. His report to successor Antonio María Bucareli provides a keen example of the language colonial bureaucrats used when demonizing the lower classes.23 Cataloguing the 185 vices he attributed to commoners, de Croix writes: “The most obvious character flaw of these villains is a propensity for drunkenness, gaming, lust and petty theft.”24

Implying that those qualities were just the tip of the iceberg, de Croix added that many among the populacho carried knives and would fight to the death using stones or whatever crude instruments were on hand.25 The situation was so dire that, according to de Croix, every morning a tally was given of the number of cadavers found in the streets from the preceding night. In his first month in office, the viceroy recalled that authorities collected twenty-nine bodies. His solution was to ramp up police patrols and to scour the city day and night.26

The information de Croix imparted to Bucareli alerts readers to the rising tide of police interventionism. Authorities believed that the mounting population of urban poor threatened social stability. Indeed, a grim reminder of the tenuous balance between order and chaos lingered right before administrators’ eyes in the

Viceregal Palace. During the upheaval of 1692, rioters expressed their disapproval of an oppressive colonial system by pulling down a large portion of the viceregal palace—the symbolic vessel of government.27 It stands to reason that bureaucrats like de Croix perceived just cause to fear the rabble; it had a reputation for being a demonstrably volatile entity that although short on capital, was deep in number.

Furthermore, by de Croix’s admission, the city was difficult to police and was in need of additional patrolling. That is to say, authorities believed the irregular environment of Mexico City cloaked an irregular people. As this segment of the population steadily grew in size, officials looked upon the situation with alarm. Like 186 a reservoir on the brink of overflow, the urban poor threatened to spill out and inundate all of Mexico.

The irony of this interventionist mindset was that the city had long been disorderly; it was not a new symptom of population growth; rather, it was an old one that continued to worsen. Consequently, administrators did not have to look far for signs of their impending, although ill-perceived, tidal wave of disorder. Hazards such as physical disorganization, crime, and vagrancy had long existed—even if elites chose not to see them and even if residents of certain areas felt the effects of overpopulation more acutely than others. Descriptions of the Plaza Mayor before

1789 when Viceroy Revillagigedo (vr. 1789 – 1794) initiated its reorganization provide a reference point for examining the irony and misplacement of administrators’ claims.

In a testimony collected for the residency hearing of Revillagigedo, numerous witnesses confirmed a one hundred-point affidavit testifying to the disorder of the plaza mayor prior to Revillagigedo’s efforts to clean it. The affidavit required informants to swear either their affirmation or negation to a written interrogation.

An abridged adaptation of parts one through fifteen appear here:

“1. If prior to the arrival of Viceroy Revillagigedo the grand plaza of Mexico was not a confused labyrinth of huts, pigsties, and [petate] palm leaf shelters – 2. If in this place wrongdoers easily, by day or by night, committed the most atrocious crimes –3. If living among these huts and shadows were not multitudes of dogs that attack whomever were not their masters – 6. If the area in clear view of the Cathedral and Viceregal Palace was not used as a public latrine where men and women attended to their bodily needs without shame and without discretion – 7. If the whole plaza might in fact, be called a common latrine since people used it as such, especially near the Cathedral where custom had set precedence – 8. If this happened at all hours of the day and night, and whenever the viceroys walked about or looked from the balcony they were bothered by the smell, especially on hot days – 9. If amid 187

this corruption and hedonism, there was not a very large fountain whose spout could not be reached making it necessary to scoop water from its basin – 10. If from this basin, [Amer]Indians of both genders and other similar people did not wash their hands, feet, and heads – 11. If the people that come to market carrying their infants do not remain by the fountain making tortillas and other foodstuffs – 12. If they do not wash the soiled diapers of their children and their soiled jugs and greasy leathers in the fountain – 15. If when the fountain was cleaned it did not reveal all manner of putrid things, and frequently dead animals.”28

The purpose of referring to this document in some detail is to demonstrate that even within the plaza mayor—the symbolic heart of the city and seat of the Church and viceregal government—grave environmental disorders existed. And while noxious odors and unpleasant sights may have offended, this prewritten affidavit suggests the situation was run-of-the-mill, uneventful even—a common sight that warranted no special attention. Here lies the point: the fact that administrators before Revillagigedo watched, but did nothing as residents made contributions to a communal dunghill suggests it had long been customary to treat environmental disorders with inattention.

Of course, rapid population growth prompted a change in these attitudes as the press of bodies on the capital snapped authorities into action. But officials seem to have viewed only side of the issue, blaming the taxation of civic resources on marginalized groups like [Amer]Indian men and women. The language of this affidavit is an example of the way city leaders failed to perceive their own culpability in creating this situation. While authorities and the men and women of high society may or may not have attended to their bodily functions in public, they were guilty of ignoring the crises that gripped Mexico City. Poverty and unequal 188 access to resources were realities that the self-interests of the upper class had helped to shape.

The language of the affidavit also offers insight into officials’ perspectives on the usefulness of vision as a countermeasure to lawlessness and environmental disarray. The description of the plaza as overflowing with “mazes of palm leaf huts,” calls attention to a problem, i.e., the need to better see what lurked in the void of optical detection. Put another way, the document communicates the desire to spot persons lurking in dark alleyways, to expose clandestine acts of passion, and to detect watchdogs that sprung from hidden lairs. Yet, there were some disorders that administrators clearly did not wish to see: toilet habits, for instance, and the dregs of public fountains. This testimony conveys dueling attitudes about the constitution of public visibility. First, is the notion that civic space suffered from underexposure to the public eye; or, the idea that a scotoma in the field of vision cloaked miscreants and deviant activities. Second, is the notion that civic space suffered from overexposure to the public eye; or, the idea that observing lower class persons caused upset to the sensibilities of upper class persons.

One way to understand this paradox is to recognize that in the emergent visual practices of the late eighteenth century authorities saw the potential to better control a rising population. From their vantage, the eye was a tool—an instrument of authority able to discern and subsequently remove unsightly disorders. While the affidavit calls attention to the goal of visual perceptiveness: to stop crime and immoral acts, it also shows that being observant was something of a cross to bear, e.g., the viceroys who were compelled to observe the plaza’s al fresco latrine. 189

Logically, turning the spotlight on disorder was the first step in expunging it from public view. Hence, the vigilant eye was ever watchful; it dutifully singled out the foul in order to protect the righteous.

Meticulously cleaning the environment and rigorously regulating people and public spaces was one way to protect the righteous. Elites, for example, envisioned a

Mexico City devoid of social and environmental disorders. The language of the affidavit gives voice to the invectives spewed from high society in their polemic against the urban poor. It also suggests how authorities had begun to think about visual acumen—its applicability to policing public areas and to extracting undesirable elements. Lastly, the picture painted by affidavit marries the idea of vigilance with governmental exercise. Consequently, the intersection of power, surveillance, and regulation found in this example offers a keen indication of the rise of police interventionism in late eighteenth-century Mexico.

Removing the Underbrush

In Enfermedades políticas que padece la capital de esta Nueva España, a critical exposé on the sociopolitical state of the viceregal capital penned in 1787, author Hipólito Villarroel blamed governmental oversight for the disorders he perceived. As he writes:

Mexico City is an impenetrable forest full of spiny thickets and dangerous precipices not fit for the habitation of cultured society; it is an environment brimming with secret lairs and hiding places that shroud vile people . . . a haven for the vulgar, indomitable, brash, insolent, and shameless and lazy filth that fills the good people of this city with horror.29

190

According to Villarroel, the Crown’s authorities had made little progress in

“exposing the deplorable state ” of the capital.30 Righting this situation, he concludes,

. . . entails addressing those in power, ensuring authorities’ actions unite in a coordinated police effort to maintain law and order. In the execution of this assignment, the persistent neglect and carelessness of said political bodies is abundantly clear. They [lawmakers] are so full of hot air that they simply rise up and float away, loosing sight of the objects that demand their focused attention.31

Villarroel clearly held strong opinions about the administrative myopia discussed elsewhere in this chapter. His words generate questions about the strategies administrators would take to expose the “spiny thickets” and “dangerous precipices” of Mexico City. How, for instance, would a coordinated police effort be staged; what might prevent authorities from losing sight of lawbreakers; and in what ways would officials adapt their stance on administrative oversight?

The answer to these questions was simple in theory, but complex in execution. Attempting to enact change, colonial authorities expanded and improved their field of vision. Strategies for abstracting the city’s dense void into a legible scheme of land distribution and demographics included re-zoning, census tabulations, cleaning, installing street lighting and signage, and tearing down dilapidated buildings. A tangible example of the ways authorities exercised their synoptic vision is seen in Plano ignográfico de la Alameda. This view participates in administrators’ efforts to better see Mexico City in two ways. First, the illustration typifies—in the view of a renovated park—the many projects of civic rejuvenation occurring citywide. Second, the illustration communicates how spatial 191 reorganization and strategies of abstraction (compartmentalizing, enumerating, and cleaning) could bring greater clarity to a field of vision.

Plano ignográfico de la Alameda shows an aerial view or an oblique perspective of Alameda Park. The view is oriented horizontally; the left-hand side of the painting corresponds to west and the top is north. It may be assumed that the redevelopment of the park gave cause (at an unknown point in the process) for

Bastida to render the environment. As an outcome of this renovation, the Alameda doubled in size and transformed from a square into a rectangle.32 In this illustration,

Bastida showcases the rectilinear design. The view also depicts landscape redevelopment, showing the park divided into twenty-four parterres. Rows of saplings, equal in height and evenly spaced, flank the walkways, while a grid of horizontal and vertical lines delineates coach avenues. Several horsemen and twelve carriages traverse the avenues; the red coach with the six-horse driving team represents the carriage of Viceroy Bucareli. Additionally, the view shows twelve exterior and seven interior roundabouts. The central traffic circles of each quad, as well as the middle point of the park, are punctuated by fountains that course with crystalline water.

What Bastida’s illustration does not depict are the crowds of people that animated the Alameda. In lieu of characterizing the social activity that occurred there, this illustration calls attention to an aesthetic of straight lines, geometrical order, and mathematical objectivity. One may assume that Bastida—like other military engineers employed in the effort to rejuvenate Mexico City—used his training as a draftsman to render a graphic view of the park. The oblique 192 perspective and textual inscription, for example, are elements that conform to standard mapping practices. However, dissociated from those practices, are size and medium. Measuring 201 x 100 cm, this large, oil-on-canvas work pairs the presence of a landscape paintings with the perspicuity of a diagram. The plain, white background furthermore isolates the park within a fixed field of vision.

The power of graphic imagery exists in its ability to take an amorphous subject—in this case, the spatial, visual and material properties of Alameda Park— and abstract disparate elements into quantifiable bits of information. An apt adjective to describe Plano ignográfico is transparent. The elements Bastida emphasizes are meticulously defined; no detail is muddled. Enlightened thinkers championed the aesthetic of straight lines and geometrical precision reasoning that if nature could be ordered, then so too could people. Land and human resources could be arranged—they could be put into stable, predictable patterns that satisfied the mind on multiple levels.

Bastida’s work offers a view describing the ways that authorities contemplated Alameda Park; it also furnished a tool to translate a mental image into physical form. Put differently, graphic illustrations like Plano ignográfico gave expression to reform, and these materials did not fade for neglect of use; they functioned. Graphic illustration guided planners in their many attempts to shape and to reshape the colonial city. Authorities felt that the green spaces of the

Alameda, like the rest of Mexico City, stood to benefit from greater measures of control, hence it is not surprising to see the techniques of super vision applied to this view. As Scott reminds, “Certain forms of knowledge and control require a 193 narrowing of vision.”33 Actuating modes of synoptic vision—exemplified in Plano ignográfico through a clean, minimalist aesthetic—renders objects of scrutiny susceptible to systemization. Hence, the map played an important role in the attempt to transformation Mexico City into the well-ordered environment that

Bourbon administrators sought.34

Zoning Space

The renovation of Alameda Park circa 1775 called for the reorganization of roughly 86,000 square meters of land. Plano ignográfico shows the green space neatly divided into four quadrants, and quadrants divided again into six sections.

The systemization of land mirrors the strategies officials applied on the ground to better organize what Villarroel described as the “thorny maze” of Mexico City. Like a formal garden carved into parterres, dividing the urban environment promised to bring order to an otherwise large, amorphous expanse. Measurable and contained, administrators’ designs on civic spaces enabled a more assertive approach to criminal intervention. For authorities, the end goal was resolute: to create discreet, spatial units primed for super vision. This plan, they hoped, would bring the chaotic character of Mexico City into uniform alignment.35

There were several, failed attempts to administratively divide Mexico City into secular, police units. The first occurred in 1696, a second followed in 1713, and a third attempt transpired in 1750. All were short-lived. According to Viceroy Martín de Mayorga Ferrer (vr. 1779 – 1783) the problem of “robberies, homicides, and other crimes” was just too big.36 Spatial irregularity and human transience made it 194 impossible for authorities to extend their watchfulness, day and night, to all parts of the city.37 Overtaxed and understaffed, police could not keep pace with what officials perceived as rampant crime. Early attempts to divide Mexico City into police units therefore did not produce the effects administrators desired. As a result, early efforts were quickly abandoned.

Zoning legislation was revived, again, around 1780 under Viceroy Mayorga.

This time, the plan divided the city into eight, large districts (cuarteles mayors) with districts quartered into four, smaller sections (cuarteles minores). The arrangement created a grand total of thirty-two discrete, police units. In relation to earlier zoning attempts, the 1782 plan created more districts, which were smaller and presumably more manageable. However, the pivotal departure of this plan called for the support of a new police force: the Alcaldes de Barrio. The Alcaldes de Barrio or patrol officers aggressively canvassed the city. With eyes in the sky and ears to the ground, the

Alcaldes de Barrio were the foot soldiers of super vision. While zoning delineated a physically ill-defined environment into legible abstractions of space, it was the

Alcaldes who interpreted this system—making prescribed rounds, and in doing so, metaphorically casting an administrative net. While residents’ thoughts about the cuartel plan are unknown, among administrators it was applauded. The plan was promulgated in Mexico City in 1782, and in 1786 Charles IV endorsed it.38

The mental image of Mexico City divided into thirty-two districts is not unlike the view Plano ignográfico constructs of Alameda Park divided into its twenty-four parterres. Both respond to the culture of rationalism, which in the eighteenth century fostered a powerful aesthetic grounded in straight lines, visible 195 order, and reproducible uniformity. Portrayed in Plano ignográfico, this aesthetic transforms a physically diverse space into an abstract, administrative grid. The cuartel divisions operated similarly. Applying the aesthetics of super vision, i.e., simplification, legibility, and central management, the division of Mexico City into secular districts generated legibility. This in turn served the goal of bringing social variables into administrative alignment. Finally, as Plano ignográfico communicates, analogous to the satisfaction of Mother Nature controlled was a well-organized environment where human nature found comparable measures of restraint.

Counting People

Census extended yet another exercise of super vision. While zoning measured space in the attempt to make Mexico City more tractable, census measured people and resources in the hopes of influencing the same outcome. Counting these variables transformed disparate elements into intelligible relationships that could be represented graphically and thereby read at a glance. Graphic arrangement furthermore created a place for each person, and made him or her answerable within a larger system of management. Because the alcaldes were required to live within their jurisdictions, they were often the persons most familiar with the comings and goings of the neighbors, and therefore uniquely poised to collect census information. In the eyes of the courts, the alcaldes were responsible for not only crime prevention, but also serving the end goals of government, which apparently meant keeping tabs on the population.39 196

Upon appointment, the alcalde mayor (chief officer) of a cuartel received a dossier of reports compiled by alcalde ordinarios (patrol officers). The chief officer verified the latter’s information, matching it alongside a master plan and noting which homes doubled as commercial spaces, i.e., those used for professional, retail, and hospitality services. It was the duty of the chief officer to keep the dossier current; patrolmen aided the endeavor by recording the names, genders, ages, marital statuses, occupations, and the racial identities of all new residents. This information joined the dossier, so that up-to-date information on each person existed. Data collected by the alcaldes was also used for official census purposes; the first detailed census was carried out in 1790, presumably under the order of Viceroy

Revillagigedo. This count paralleled the kind of information regularly collected by the alcaldes. It tabulated gender, marital status, caste, occupation, and even the number of state wards, such as prisoners of civil and ecclesiastical courts and detainees of the Hospicio de Pobres.40

Census reporting supported better coordination among law enforcement officers. The alcaldes found that their collective super vision, accomplished via census and zoning, facilitated the ensnarement of criminals and the exposure of criminal acts. One example comes from the alcaldes of minor cuarteles 29, 30, 31, and 32 who informed their alcalde mayor of the advanced state of libertinism occurring in the sub districts.41 The patrolmen, according to the report, had observed an upward trend in acts of “disolución” (dissolution), which emanated from the almost sixty vinaterías found in the cuartel. Although taverns closed at nine in the evening, as required by law, the alcaldes noted that these establishments had 197 begun to open for business before daybreak, so that now customers could find ready service as early as four in the morning.42 The officers thus pooled efforts to crackdown on the illegal operations that occurred in contingent neighborhoods.

Of course, people were not the only bits and pieces of the urban fabric that administrators counted. Authorities imposed enumeration on virtually everything.

Like a pegboard fitted with carefully-arranged implements, census generated a unit and a coordinate for each and every public fountain, city street, residential lot, pulque tavern, and many other animate and inanimate items. But administrators were not simply content to abstract the environment for record keeping; it had to be physically altered so that the legibility of its newly homogeneous parts showed— coincidentally, much like the transparency communicated in Plano ignográfico. A particular case of how administrators sought to turn the urban environment into space transcribed is found in city beautification ordinances from the last decade of the eighteenth century. Viceroy Revillagigedo, for example, required that residential address signage be visible and that numeric tiles be fixed at uniform heights on all homes.43

These actions served efforts to standardize the urban environment and to integrate diverse elements into an intelligible scheme. Plano ignográfico responds to these ambitions. Its tabulation of pilasters speaks the same language as other city beautification measures, which similarly sought to sort and enumerate people, objects, and resources. In the spirit of counting and tabulation, it must be noted that even the arboriculture of Alameda Park found itself reckoned. A park inventory also conducted in 1790 indicates the wealth of park vegetation. The census tallied 5,177 198 adult trees, which included ash, poplar, alder, olive, elderberry, and white cedar; and, the almágigo or tree nursery, added 2,100 young elms to those figures.44 Both census counts and views like Plano ignográfico illustrate a certain way of seeing the environment—a mode of vision that deemphasized the real and the tangible so that the abstract and the ideal could be systematized.

Sanitizing Spaces

The view depicted in Plano ignográfico is remarkable for another reason: its white page aesthetic brings to mind the subject of sanitation. Straight lines and a rigorous ordering of space, in this view, yield an ideal image of beauty and cleanliness. Just as colonial officials used their super vision to remove disorderly actors that marred public space, they also exercised their viewpoint in the effort to remove trash and to sanitize the urban environment. Displaying an aseptic picture,

Plano ignográfico corresponds to administrators’ desires to translate theoretical ideals about waste management into physical reality. Unseen are actual park conditions; one observer, for example, described the Alameda in 1788 as being rundown and riddled with potholes and fusty weeds.45 Alternatively, Plano ignográfico shows a salubrious, well-maintained environment—just the kind of wholeness space authorities desired to cultivate citywide.

Managing the garbage produced by city inhabitants challenged administrators; attempts to clear the urban underbrush were numerous, complex, and largely ineffectual. Generally speaking, plans to clean the city involved removing dilapidated buildings, putting the lid on littering, organizing and outfitting a fleet of 199 sanitation crews, and identifying suitable locations for landfills. But creating a spotless view of Mexico City, such as the one seen in Plano ignográfico, was expensive and near to impossible. To give some indication of the cost of sanitizing the environment, Viceroy de Croix reported to incumbent Bucareli that under his directive the city spent around 12,000 to 14,000 pesos annually on street cleaning.46

With such large sums being allocated to trash collection, de Croix’s command that residents do their part to keep streets clean, articulated in a 1769 edit addressing city beautification, comes as little surprise.47

In the opening sentence of the 1769 edit, de Croix states:

From the moment I became acquainted with this capital, I have wished its streets, plazas, and canals, would reflect the beauty that a city of its stature deserves; and that the inhabitants of Mexico City have ease of navigation, so that they may be the first in its history to venture onto streets free of obstacles, stumbles, filth, and other inconveniences.48

What followed was a twenty-one point plan that gave explicit instructions on how to handle many problems of sanitation including: trash collection, methods for cleaning latrines and disposing of trade-generated wastes, and regulations pertaining to the daily cleaning of personal property, as well as anti-littering laws.

According to the viceroy, citizens gained from enhanced sanitation measures, comfort, health, and happiness. In particular, the ordinances aimed to eradicate environmental pollutants and the “sulfurous vapors” (vapores salinos) that disrupted the balance of healthful humors in the body.49 The viceroy strictly forbade indiscriminate littering and imposed stiff punishments against it. Under penalty of law, Spaniards found dumping trash or night soil were fined ten pesos; those that could not afford the fine were sentenced to one month of jail. Alternatively, non- 200

Spanish commoners caught littering faced fifty public lashes, three days in the stockades, and one month in prison. Plebian women earned twenty-five lashes and three days in the stockades for the same offense.50

De Croix was of course neither the first nor the last civic administrator to address the unsanitary conditions of colonial Mexico. Taking into account the copious legislation Viceroy Revillagigedo (vr. 1789 – 1794) produced during his term of office, it would seem that this politician desired nothing more than to sterilize Mexico City. According to Revillagigedo, one of the most essential points of public order was to maintain cleanliness. His fourteen-point edit on sanitation demanded, once again, that city inhabitants discontinue casual littering as well as the illegal dumping of commercial wastes.51 Revillagigedo also made clear that under no circumstances should daily trash collection be suspended, nor should dead animals lie rotting in the street for more than twelve hours. He added to the ordinances new laws regulating the building of latrines and strict punishments for men, women, and children who chose to exercise their bodily functions in public.52

Indeed, to achieve the clean page aesthetic exemplified by Plano ignográfico,

Revillagigedo eviscerated even domesticated animals from public view; he affected anti-grazing ordinances for livestock and leash laws for pets, as well as overseeing the extermination of thousands of stray dogs.53

Sanitation supported higher standards of living, better civic organization, and enhanced control over the population. To make an analogy of the situation, cleaning the urban environment was to akin to polishing the lens of super vision. Plano ignográfico shows new ways of seeing public space and creating order through 201 abstract configurations, i.e., spatial zoning, enumeration, and sanitation. These systems facilitated the greater super vision of land and resources, and together they formed a troika of policy that allowed civic administrators to discern pattern where little had existed before. Views like Plano ignográfico served the multiple civic rejuvenation projects carried out citywide. Similar to Plano ignográfico, many of these projects were mapped first on paper for physical execution, which occurred later. One of the most inspired undertakings of the period may have been the full city map commissioned by viceroy Revillagigedo; today, this map is known as Plano general de la Ciudad de México.54 Both Plano ignográfico and Plano general underscore the power of vision—an instrument authorities used in their bid to transform Mexico City. Views of the urban environment constituted the pièce de résistance of super vision, providing an instrument powerful instrument to manage land and people.

Conclusion: Scotomas of super Vision

This chapter has introduced the concept of super vision and discussed it in relation to Plano ignográfico. Both the view and the historical evidence cited here provide information about the ways civic administrators of late eighteenth-century

Mexico City probed the urban environment seeking to smoke out disorders of man and nature. Importantly, this interventionism came about as a result of overpopulation and massive rural to urban migration, not altruism or the desire to mitigate the inconveniences of poverty and lack of resource. From the earliest history of Mexico City, the allocation of civic resources privileged those at the top of 202 the social ladder. It was not until this group perceived danger and/or inconvenience in the growing plebian population that measures were taken to better regulate the urban environment and its inhabitants. This process may be understood as the reversal of the traditional classist myopia that had characterized civic administration for much of colonial history. In exchange, authorities adopted an aggressive policy of police interventionism. Better surveillance citywide would right the wrongs of inhabitants, or so authorities thought.

The means to accomplish super vision lie in embracing techniques of visual abstraction. Removing the underbrush of colonial society relied on new modes of spatial management, census tabulation, and improved sanitation measures. Views like Plano ignográfico model this process and show what the eye could not see. This view transforms a formerly real and diverse environment into a homogenous, and therefore legible, abstraction of space and resource. The picture painted by Plano ignográfico and other similar city views suggest that efforts to see the public spaces of Mexico City were driven by the fear of scotoma, or the dread of a blind spot in an otherwise all-encompassing field of vision. While urban renovation in many ways shone light into the dark recesses of the city, some situations remained obscured.

Indeed, despite the best efforts of the alcaldes, elites still feared the alleged disorders of the lower classes.

As a final point, it has been argued that efforts to monitor the urban poor suffered from contradiction. On the one hand, educated opinion held that the population was to be heavily scrutinized and policed; on the other hand, officials actively worked to eradicate unsightly persons and situations from public view. The 203 straight line, clean, and ordered aesthetic portrayed in Plano ignográfico manufactures an artificial and entirely false viewpoint. In the physical world of colonial Mexico, the persistent illegibility of the city continued to furnish the lower classes with a course to resist interventionism. While officials adopted the techniques of super vision in hopes of creating an environment where criminals lay exposed and where disorders were revealed, realistically their field of vision remained intentionally (and fatally) riddled with holes.

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Notes to Chapter Five

1 AHDF, Paseos en General, vol. 3584, exp. 7, fols. 1 – 13.

2 “voluntad de los vecinos” Ibid., Fol. 9v. The project had begun around 1769 under the directive of Viceroy Carlos Francisco de Croix (vr. 1766 – 1771). Planning began in 1769 when de Croix proposed to the cabildo that the land west of the Alameda, where the quemadero once stood, be annexed to enlarge the park. AHDF, Actas de Cabildo, Actas de Cabildo: sesiones ordinarias. vol. 89A, 1769.

3 The notation states that the north side of the park holds 89 pilasters, measuring 5 ¼ varas in height, spaced 5 varas apart; the west side contains 33 pilasters with the same arrangement as the north; the south side has 87 pilasters arranged in the same manner, and the east side holds 32 pilasters. The different measurements take into account the placement of the park gates.

4 This idea is persuasively expressed in Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). Readers will recognize Foucault’s theories about the discipline and governmentality throughout this chapter. His writings on these subjects have informed the questions and analytical viewpoint articulated in this chapter.

5 For a definition of “vigilancia,” see, Real Academia Española, Diccionario de Academia Usual (Madrid, 1780), 929: “s. f. Cuidado y atención exacta en las cosas que están á cargo de cada uno.” For a definition of “publicidad,” see also, Real Academia Española, Diccionario de Academia Usual (Madrid, 1780), 759: “s. f. El estado, ó calidad de las cosas públicas; y así se dice: la publicidad de este caso avergonzó á su autor.” And lastly, for a definition of “policía,” see, Real Academia Española, Diccionario de Academia Usual (Madrid, 1780), 735: “s. f. La buena orden que se observa y guarda en las ciudades y republicas, cumpliendo las leyes, u ordenanzas establecidas para su mejor gobierno.”

6 Scholars have done an excellent job of correlating the high crime rates of colonial Mexico to poverty. See, Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 1692 – 1810 (Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press, 1999); Teresa Lozano Armendares, La Criminalidad en la Ciudad de México, 1800-1821 (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 1987); Michael Charles Scardaville, "Crime and the Urban Poor: Mexico City in the Late Colonial Period" (PhD Dissertation, University of Florida, 1977).

7 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 11.

8 Thomas Gage, Thomas Gage’s Travels in the New World, ed. Eric S. Thompson (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), 67.

9 G. F. Lyon, Journal of a Residence and Tour in the Republic of Mexico in the Year 1826 2 vols. (New York and London: Kennikat Press, 1971) 2:126.

10 Francisco Sedano, Noticias de Mexico: Cronicas de los Siglox XVI al XVIII (Mexico: Secretaria de Obras y Servicios, 1974), I:54 – 55.

11 The case for Baltasar Ladrón de Guevara being the author of this document is made by Ignacio González-Polo. See, González-Polo, “Introducción” in Reflexiones y Apuntes Sobre la Ciudad de México (Fines de la Colonia), versión paleographica (México: Colección Distrito Federal, 1984), 14.

12 Baltasar Ladrón de Guevara, “Discurso sobre la Policía de México” in Antología de Textos sobre la Ciudad de México en el Periodo de la Ilustración (1788 – 1792) ed. Sonia Lombardo de Ruiz (México: Instituto Nacional Antropología e Historia, 1982), 36. 205

13 Ibid., 45.

14 “. . . sino porque fastidia infinito la vista, el olfato y el piso y hace aborrecible el uso y tránsito de las calles.” Ibid., 42 – 43.

15 Viqueira Albán, Lipsett-Rivera, and Rivera Ayala, Propriety and permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, 42 – 44. For a contemporary description of the Coliseo see, Silvestre Díaz de la Vega, Discurso sobre los dramas (Mexico, 1786), 7 – 16.

16 The demarcation of the earliest traza stood, to the north, from west to east: the Puente del Zacate (today Avenue Santa María la Redonda), Misericordia (Mariana Rodríguez del Toro de Lazarín), the block where later the convent of San Domingo would be built (República de Chile), the Puente del Cuervo y Plaza de San Sebastián intersected with the Plazuela de San Juanico (Lecumberri); to the east, from north to south: following the streets of Espaldas de Santa Teresa (today Leona Vicario), Santísima, Alhóndiga, Talavera, Plazuela de Florida (Juan José Baz), until the plazuela de San Pablo; to the south, from east to west: from San Pablo westward by way of the streets Garrapata, San Miguel, La Verde, Don Toribio and Salta del Agua (today the streets of José María Izazaga); to the west: from the Salta del Agua (today San Juan de Letrán) heading north by San Juan de Letrán, the Hospital Real, Santa Brígida, Santa Isabel, Puente de la Mariscala (Aquiles Serdán), Rejas de la Concepción, until the Puente del Zacate (Santa María de la Redonda). Native barrios included: to the west, Santa María (formerly Cuepopan); to the north, San Sebastián (Atzacualco); to the east San Pablo (Zoquiapan); and to the south, San Juan (Moyotlan). Manuel Carrera Stampa, “Planos de la Ciudad de México,” in Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística LXVIII no. 2 – 3 (1949), 317.

17 City planners like Alonso García Bravo took inspiration from a wealth of materials devoted to the theoretical explorations of the “ideal” Renaissance city. Some of the most influential authors of the period included: Francesco de Giorgio Martini, Antonio Averlino Filarete, León Bautista Alberti, Sebastián Serlio, the writings of Vitruvius, and many others.

18 AHDF, Auguas: fuentes públicas, vol. 58, exp. 47, fols. 10r. – 10v.

19 During this period, particularly the years 1770 – 1773, 1778 – 1780, and 1785; severe drought caused a colony-wide corn shortage. The famine was so grave that the year 1775 was called el año de hambre, or the year of hunger. For an analysis of this situation see, Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519 – 1810 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), 457 – 458.

20 In 1742, Villaseñor y Sánchez estimated the population at 98,000; in 1803, Alexander von Humboldt used a 1790 census, which counted 112,926 inhabitants, to tabulate an estimated 137,000 persons. See, Joseph Antonio Villaseñor y Sánchez, Theatro americano, descripción general de los reynos, y provincias de la Nueva-España . . . 2 vols., (México: Imp. de la vda. de Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, 1746), 1:35 and Alexander von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, trans. John Black 4 vols. (1811; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1966), 2:81 – 82. A police census undertaken in 1811 counted 168,846 persons. This figure is quoted in Silvia Marina Arrom, Containing the Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774-1871 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 17.

21 For a discussion of the economic crisis see, Brian R. Hamnett, “Absolutismo ilustrado y la crisis multidimensional en el periodo colonial tardío, 1760 – 1808,” in Interpretaciones del siglo XVIII mexicano, ed. Josefina Zoraida Vázquez (México, D. F.: Nueva Imagen, 1992).

22 For example, during holidays, viceroy Revillagigedo ordered that the dirty, homeless, and unshod be prohibited entrance to the Alameda. AGN, Bandos, vol. 16, exp. 30, fol. 73.

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23 Carlos Francisco de Croix, Instrucción Del Virrey Marqués de Croix Que Deja a Su Sucesor Antonio María Bucareli, ed. Norman F. Martin Testimonio Histórica. Vol. 4. (México: Editorial Jus, 1960). 24 “el mayor carácter es el de la embriaguez, juego, lujuria y ratería, que vulgarmente llaman macutenos;” Ibid., 53.

25 Ibid., Haslip-Viera also notes gang-like activity within the barrios of eighteenth-century Mexico City. See Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment, 51.

26 de Croix, Instrucción del Virrey Marqués de Croix, 53.

27 For a nuanced discussion of the riot see R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660 – 1720 (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 125 – 160.

28 “1. Primente. digan si la Plaza grande de Mexico quando vino el Exmo. Sor. Conde de Revilla Gigedo era un confuso laverinto de xacales Posilgas y sombras de petates – 2. Si dentro de estas podian ocultarse facilmente de dia y de noche los malechores y cometer los mas horribles delitos – 3. Si a estos xacales de sombras acompañaba una crecida multitud de perros que acometian por las noches a quantos no iban en el traje de [. . .] ni otro no acostumbrado alli – 6. Si en ella havia a la vista publica frente del Real Palacio y de la Santa Yglesia Catedral unos lugares comunes o letrinas descubiertas donde hacian sus necesidades corporales Hombres y Mugeres sus succediendose unos a otros sin intermision y sin cosa que los ocultase – 7. Si toda la Plaza podria llamarse letrina comun por que se sentaban en qualesquiera parte a las operaciones correspondientes y especialmente al rededor de Catedral donde havian hecho muladar y a vista de todos los que transitaban por alli estaban en todas horas de dia y parte de la noche sentados Hombres y Mugeres en tan indecente operacion – 8. Si siempre que se asomaban los SS. Virreyes a sus balcones ó salian á la Calle havian de tener tan desapasibles y pestilentes objetos dejandose sentir mas la incomodidad en las horas que calentaba el sol – 9. Si entre estas corrupciones y hediondeses se hallaba una fuente mui grande a cuya tasa y chorros nadie podia alcanzar y tenian que cojer el agua del Pilon – Si en la orilla de esta Pila se lababan pies, manos, cavesas Yndios y Yndias y otras castas de gentes semejantes – 11. Si todas aquellas que viniendo a vender con sus criaturas cargadas estaban haciendo alli tortillas u otros comistrajos ensuciandose como regular los hijos no teniendo trapos con que mudarlos los lababan en la orilla de dicha Pila – 12. Si con las misma agua no habiendola entonces en la del Bolador se proveian todas las immediaciones de la Plaza metiendo dentro de ella los cantaros que havian estado descanzando en aquellos parajes inmundos entrando tambien los cueros sucios ensevados sucediendo lo mismo en las demas Pilas de la ciudad – 15. Si quando se llegaban a limpiar se encontraban en el fondo suciedades y corrupcion y muchas veces animales muertos – . . .” AGN, Colecciónes, Historia, exp. 7, fols. 83r. – 83v.

29 “Considerado México como pueblo, es un bosque impenetrable lleno de malezas y precipicios que se hace inhabitable a la gente culta; lleno todo de escondites y de agujeros, donde se alberga la gente soez . . . depósito de un vulgo indómito, atrevido, insolente, desvergonzado y vago, que llena de horror al resto de los habitantes.” Hipólito Villarroel, Enfermedades políticas que padece la capital de esta Nueva España, (México: Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 1999), 175.

30 “hacer visible el deplorable estado en que se halla esta infeliz ciudad . . . ” Ibid.

31 . . . por lo que respecta a los cuerpos que están destinados para su gobierno y cultura en todos los ramos que debe abrazar una bien coordinada policía. Se ha notado como de paso la omisión y descuido de estos cuerpos políticos en el ejercicio de sus funciones; cuerpos verdaderamente aerostáticos con almas de humo, que los hace inflamarse y elevarse hasta perder de vista los objetos de sus precisas atenciones.” Ibid.

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32 The renovation is discussed in, José María Marroqui, La Ciudad de México, Contiene: El origen de los nombres de muchas de sus calles y plazas, del de varios establecimientos públicos y privados, y no pocas noticias curiosas y entretenidas (México: Jesus Medina Editor, 1969), 256 – 260.

33 Scott, Seeing Like a State, 11.

34 For a discussion of the ways maps act as agents of transformation, see María del Carmen León García “Cartografía de los ingenieros militares en Nueva España, segunda mitad del siglo XVIII” in Historias de la cartografía de Iberoamérica: nuevos caminos, viejos problemas ed. Héctor Mendoza Vargas and Carla Louis (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2009), 441 – 466, especially 448 – 449.

35 For a theoretical discussion of these ideas, see: James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 11 – 22.

36 “los robos, muertos, y otros delitos” AGN, Bandos, vol. 12, exp. 36, fol. 102v.

37 Ibid., fol. 103v.

38 Ibid. fol. 101r.

39 Ibid., fol. 104r.

40 AGN, Impresos Oficiales, vol. 51, exp. 48, fol. 251.

41 AGN, Real Audiencia, Civil, Civil Volúmenes, vol. 2126, exp. 2, fol. 1r.

42 Ibid., fol. 1v.

43 The viceroy stated that displaying addresses and street signage was necessary for census, and additionally convenient in matters of good government. AHDF, Nomenclature en General, vol. 484, exp. 1, fol. 1r.

44 AHDF, Ayuntamiento, Paseos en General, vol. 3584, exp. 16, fols. 1r – 1v.

45 Ladrón de Guevara, “Discurso sobre la Policía de México,” 77.

46 de Croix, Instrucción Del Virrey Marqués de Croix, 76.

47 AGN, Bandos, vol. 7, exp. 48, fols. 173 – 181.

48 “Desde que conozco esta Capital le han dirigído mis deseos á que tenga en sus Calles, Plazas y Acequias la hermosura que merece su Planta, y sus Habitantes la comodidad de pisar las primeras sin los estorbos, tropiezos, inmundicias, y otros desagradables embarazos en su uso y tránsito.” Ibid., fol. 173r.

49 Ibid., 173v.

50 Ibid., fol. 176r.

51 AGN, Bandos, vol. 15, exp. 80, fol. 208v.

52 Ibid., fols. 208v – 210r. 208

53 Ibid., fols. 209v – 210r. In one year, alone, the city euthanized an estimated 20,000 stray dogs. Cited in Pamela Voekel, “Peeing on the Palace: Bodily Resistance to Bourbon Reforms in Mexico City,” Journal of Historical Sociology. Vol. 4:2, (1992), 197.

54 The full title of the map is, Plano general de la Ciudad de México levantado por el Teniente Coronel de Dragones Don Diego García Conde en el año de 1793, y grabado en el año de 1807. For more information about this project see: AHDF, Planos de la Ciudad, vol. 3616, exp. 1. See also, Elías Trabulse and Alejandra Moreno Toscano, Una visión científica y artística de la ciudad de México: El plano de la capital virreinal, 1793 – 1807 de Diego García Conde (México: Grupo Carso: Centro de Estudios de Historia de México Condumex, 2002). 209

CHAPTER SIX

super VISION: CLASSIFYING RACE

In 1777, esteemed polymath José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez tendered to the scientific community of Europe and to Viceroy Antonio María Bucareli (vr. 1771

– 1779) the most comprehensive study of the cochineal insect that had yet been collated.1 Harvested to produce a crimson-colored dye, known as carmine, cochineal was a lucrative colonial export.2 Spain’s monopoly on this product meant that overseas buyers clamored to obtain the vivid dyestuff, which manufactures applied to textiles, paints, and cosmetics. Despite the longevity of cochineal knowledge and application among pre-Hispanic populations, Europeans were entirely unfamiliar with the tiny insect. Invisible to the naked eye, audiences outside of Spanish

America fervently believed the colorant derived from an unidentifiable seed or type of parasitic fungus. It was not until the invention of the microscope in the late seventeenth century that scientists detected evidence of the dye’s true source.3 Even then, skeptics remained since microscopy had not yet gained footing as a credible science.4 The controversy surround cochineal subsided in 1729 when Dutch scientist Melchior de Ruusscher produced incontrovertible evidence of the insect.5

Published almost fifty years later, Alzate’s manuscript: Essay on the Nature,

Cultivation, and Benefit of Cochineal, compiled what was already known about cochineal and added to the literature vital local knowledge. This included information about cochineal history, harvesting methods, dye production processes, and zoological illustrations of male and female specimens. At 0.0001 millimeters in 210 length, a single cochineal egg remained invisible to the unassisted eye, Alzate therefore relied on a microscope set at “high intensity” to observe and then sketch larvae and adult insects.6 Alzate’s publication raises many questions about the cultivation and commerce of cochineal. However, it resonates with the present study for another reason. Essay on the Nature, Cultivation, and Benefit of Cochineal provides a substantive example of the ways eighteenth-century audiences on both sides of the Atlantic magnified their vision and used the methods of scientific observation as a means to satisfy intellectual inquisitiveness.

Art historian Ilona Katzew describes the eighteenth-century as “the culture of curiosity,” finding that the Enlightenment fostered interest in the observation and classification of all life forms.7 In addition to discovering phenomenon such as the microworld of cochineal, scientific inquiry inspired fascination with non-European cultures. Ethnography was of course a subject that had long piqued the interest of

Westerners; the authors of classical antiquity—Herodotus, Pliny the Elder, and

Caius Julius, for example—spun fantastical tales of human monsters, giants, and pygmies who lived on the fringes of civilization.8 While European intellectuals no longer believed in these fabrications, advances in the study of Natural History circa

1700 ushered in an intense attentiveness to new questions about human phenotypes and genealogical patterns.

Spanish colonial casta paintings provide a tangible example of the taxonomic interests characterizing this period. And yet, despite tremendous advances in the study of casta painting, uncharted territory remains. For instance, did these objects express innuendo, metaphor, or visual pun, and how? In what ways did the genre 211 connect to contemporary visual praxis and processes of pseudoscientific observation? And, in what capacity did certain scenes respond to pointed debates about the preservation of Spanish bloodlines within a racially diverse society? The work of visual media historian Jonathan Crary explores the manner in which one’s field of perception is determined by contemporary knowledge and technologies that coalesce to mold a dominant way of seeing.9 The example of cochineal shows one way that eighteenth-century viewers used technology to change their field of perception. This situation, in turn, prompts another question: in what other ways did contemporaries use vision to pursue unknown worlds and undetected knowledge?

Whether actual policymakers or armchair critics, educated society feared that the bodies of the lower classes—unlike their own self-professed, pristine temples—concealed disorder. Visible conditions included scurfy skin conditions, weepy eye infections, and phlegmy respiratory illnesses. Beyond these common ailments, which in fact set upon rich and poor alike, elites loathed their social inferiors for another reason. They believed plebian bodies harbored racial impurity—an affliction that could not always be discerned at a glance. According to elites, the largely mixed-race population of urban poor interbred at an unstoppable rate. Indeed, the swelling numbers of the caste demographic did outpace the reproductive rates of pureblood Spaniards. Some of the dangers elites perceived in this situation were the blurring of social boundaries, the dilution of their own stock, and a weakening of a traditional hierarchy that placed Spaniards at the top of the social ladder. 212

In the previous chapter, the argument was made that Plano ignográfico responded to authorities’ attempts to better monitor the poor by reorganizing the environment, conducting censuses, and improving sanitation. This chapter directs attention to a casta painting, De Alvina y Español produce Negro torna atrás— arguably a park view—in order to show another way colonial audiences used super vision to sort and scrutinize colonial bodies. Eighteenth-century optical theory, which developed concurrently with the rise of the empirical sciences, stressed the belief that vision was a unique, corporeal process. According to enlightened thinkers, it vested those who observed with consummate knowledge and indisputable authority. Through an analysis of De Alvina y Español, this chapter questions how and why colonial audiences relied on visual methodologies to classify genealogical information, particularly the physical markings of race.

Seeing Nature, Observing Diversity

Known by its taxonomic inscription, De Alvina y Español produce Negro torna atrás or “Albino Woman and Spanish Man produce a turns back to Black child,” is an oil-on-canvas painting measuring 46 x 55 cm. The painting originally accompanied a group of individually rendered scenes that together formed a complete series of casta paintings.10 The location of the other paintings remains unknown. Also unknown are the artist who created the works, all of the paintings’ exact dates of completion, and the number of De Alvina y Español in the caste sequence.11 Unlike other casta paintings, which show a generic setting and little to no background information, this scene depicts a specific urban location: Alameda Park. 213

The panoramic view of the park rests horizontally and is oriented to the west. It features a tightly cropped composition, which isolates the Alameda from the surrounding urban environment. Figures depicted inside the garden stroll, sit on park benches, or appear to take in the setting via coach. The composition furthermore combines two perspectival systems: one at work in the background, the other at work in the foreground. The oblique or aerial viewpoint found in background tilts the scene upward, enabling audiences to see the entire park. Like the perspective of Plano ignográfico discussed in Chapter Five, the handling of De

Alvina y Español recalls the cartographic techniques authorities called upon to help visualize the civic environment. In contrast to the aerial perspective seen in the background, the perspective in the foreground is set at eye level. The viewpoint brings focus and intimacy to a separate vignette found there.

This vignette shows three figures: a man designated “Spaniard,” a woman designated “female Albino,” and a child designated, “turns back to Black.” The figures portray caste stereotypes and represent the hypothetical union of a Spaniard and albino to produce a child of Spanish and African descent. All three figures are situated on a balcony that overlooks the Alameda.12 The isolation of these figures and their attire suggests a private setting—an upper class home, perhaps. The male

Spaniard wears a headscarf (indicating his private rather than public persona), a brown topcoat, and shoes with buckles. The figure stands erect, peering at the scene below; he holds a small, telescope to his left eye. The albino woman wears a scarlet dress with matching veil, lace sleeves, decorous jewelry, and a fashionable beauty mark. The female figure appears to kneel and look upward, gesturing in the same 214 direction with her right hand. Behind the woman, stands a boy representing the racial category of turns back to Black. This figure wears a blue suit; his right arm is extended, although the gesture is obscured. The composition lends itself in both

English and Spanish to visual pun being that the “Albina” turns her back on the

“turns back to Black” child. One may wonder whether or not Spanish colonial audiences found humor in the innuendo.

While the painting expresses, on a basic level, the same caste ideologies as others of the genre, its peculiar attentiveness to describing Alameda Park is compelling. Baltasar Ladrón de Guevara, author of the 1788 political treatise,

Discurso sobre la Policía de México, discussed at length the benefits urbanites received from spending time in urban parks like the Alameda. As he explains:

It is not necessary to belabor the point; it is quite useful to have a place that allows people to wander and relax, (call it what you will: Paseo, Prado, Alameda, or Tuileries) – such places must be arranged symmetrically, be kept clean, and located on flat ground in order to please the eye and the nose; they must also provide other comforts or attractions beneficial to the health and recreation of attendees. When it [a park] is located inside a densely populated metropolis or in a location that ease of access encourages high attendance, the aforementioned requisites are even more important to maintain. In fact, all cities of this kingdom that uphold at least a modicum of social order, keep such a space; protecting these venues improves the quality of urban life, refines society, and even invigorates the health of inhabitants.13

According to the author, parks delivered an investment in civic culture, and not just any space would do. Benefits were only reaped when a park appeared tidy with sensory pleasing attributes and a regular, well-proportioned design. To demonstrate, Ladrón calls upon familiar examples including the Alameda, the Prado, and the Tuileries. Naming these spaces sparks a common mental image: that of the formal garden. 215

The formal garden is a type of discursive environment. Historically, the garden delivered a setting where receptive audiences received lessons in reason, aesthetics, science, and mathematics. Designed for the Sun King Louis XIV (r. 1643 –

1715), the Gardens of Versailles offer perhaps the most well known example of formal gardening. In many ways, the conventions of the formal garden delivered a tactical approach also applicable to urban planning. For instance, the formal garden, like other public spaces, demanded cleanliness and order. Garden paths and city thoroughfares, alike, required alignment, leveling, and continued maintenance.

Displays of foliage furthermore shared with the collective community a need for discipline and uniformity. Ladrón couched his recognition of the parallelism between formal gardening and spatial and social regulation in metaphor. While discussing topiary, the author suggests hedging was to young trees as moral interventionism was to the lower classes.14

By portraying the Alameda, De Alvina y Español evokes the emblem of nature controlled, i.e., the formal garden, presumably to articulate ideas about colonial assets and resource management. Assets may be understood as not only nature’s bounty, but also the social and cultural capital of the colony. Just as Ladrón described in writing—De Alvina y Español illustrates in image qualities of cultural refinement, beauty, and morality. Its scene of nature controlled simulates the same attributes administrators hoped to coax when shaping the ideal, compliant, colonial subject. But as a standalone example of a genre believed to express ideals about race in a colonial context, the idiosyncratic presentation of the formal garden, here, offers more. A view of nature suppressed may have reminded elite, colonial audiences of 216 their desires to suppress another form of intractable, uncultivated growth: caste society.

Bodies and the Diagnostic Gaze

Researcher of Spanish literature Rebecca Haidt has convincingly argued that during the eighteenth century the body constituted the most elemental trope in the

European mind, and that individuals evoked this metaphor to express their moral, political, and social judgments.15 Contemporary representations of the body in literature and in visual imagery modeled this process, Haidt finds, providing examples of how external characteristics of the body translated to a system of discursive signs. By reading signs like dress, behavior, bearing, physiognomy, etc., one discovered the so-called true inner character, and therefore worth of an individual. According to Haidt, in Spanish society visual inspection centered on the determination of whether a person was a man of virtue (hombre de bien), or alternatively, a man of disrepute or a fop (petimetre).16 In this situation, and similar to other manifestations of super vision, the eye was a tool for gaining information; physiognomic evidence gleaned via sight could then be used to diagnose calidad or the quality of a person. The best description of this process is the diagnostic gaze, a phrase referencing an act of observation in which value judgments are made and expressed.

Physiognomic diagnostics was not a new praxis; rather it was an ancient one that originated in Mesopotamia as a form of divination. Greco-Roman culture put its stamp on physiognomy, using the diagnostic gaze to divine the natures of human 217 subjects, not the future. Physiognomic diagnostics persisted in the intellectual traditions of Western Europe, a fact Haidt attributes to the inherently binary frameworks of thought privileged by Western society.17 In other words, physiognomy remained relevant to Western Europeans because in understanding their world, European theorists sought to draw “connections between opposites such as hidden and exposed, truth and falsehood.”18 This system of thought—one organized by concepts of the visible and the invisible—self-validated since physiognomic diagnostics bore no burden of proof.

Magali Carrera, researcher of Spanish colonial and Mexican visual culture, finds a compelling connection between Haidt’s analyses of physiognomical otherness in European society and concepts of physiognomical aberration in

Spanish colonial society. In Mexico, as in Europe, the body trope provided colonists with a visual and literary construct useful in expressing cultural beliefs and social hierarchies. However, in contrast to the man of honor/man of disrepute binary relationship found in the European imaginary, Carrera has suggested that expressions of calidad in the colonial imaginary joined with another factor: race.19

Within the racially diverse population of New Spain, the diagnostic gaze provided a tool to identify difference; simultaneously, it was a diagnosis that pronounced judgments of quality. Put differently, society’s scale for measuring calidad rose or fell in tandem with the markings of racial aberrance, i.e. physiognomic features that departed from white Spaniard.

Chapter Three of this dissertation dealt with the concept of limpieza de sangre or blood cleanliness, discussing how a distinction of blood purity elevated 218 the status of Amerindian women and made religious sisterhood possible.

Historically and in Spain, limpieza de sangre constituted a civil and legal classification used to discriminate against non-Christian groups such as Jews and

Islamic Moors. In colonial Mexico, however, the concept met a different demographic and thus evolved from one attached to religion, to one attached to race.20 According to traditional definitions, limpieza de sangre was a largely predetermined trait; however the notion of calidad in the colonial context could be situational. Audiences in New Spain believed states of calidad fluctuated from one race to the next—with racial identity, itself, being a fluid concept. Physiognomic features indicating African lineage were the ultimate, aberrant counterpart to physiognomic features indicating Spanish lineage. Consequently, by the standards of colonial society, individuals who possessed dark skin and Afro-textured hair and craniofacial structure, possessed the least amount of calidad.21 Importantly, it was visual acumen or the diagnostic gaze that made pronouncements of calidad possible.

The casta painting, De Alvina y Español, directs attention to the faculty of sight. In this work, vision is the prerogative of a high calidad social stereotype: the white, Spanish male. Situated on what appears to be an outdoor patio or veranda, the figure labeled, “Spaniard” uses a telescope to gaze upon the Alameda. Like other casta scenes, this painting communicates the importance of the Spanish male to idealized paradigms of patriarchal order. Child is subordinate to adult and female is subordinate to male. Based on Aristotelian ideas about family and polity, the ideological construct of patriarchal authority rehearses a familiar metaphor—one 219 applicable to both family politics, and more broadly, governmental power structures.

On another level, this painting uses the subject of vision to respond to new ideas about the power of the diagnostic gaze. In De Alvina y Español, the Spaniard actively looks upon society. The gesture by which the figure holds the scope to his eye finds visual emphasis in its sharp 90-degree angle. Hard lines, created by both left and right arms, i.e., the hand on hip and hand to eye, contrast with curvilinear elements observable elsewhere in the composition—for example in park benches, balustrades, and fountains. The gesture draws attention to the expression of super vision, and in doing so, places compositional weight on the Spanish, male figure. It is he who is the protagonist of this scene. Indeed, all elements of this painting, i.e., the body language of the kneeling albino mother as well as the child, works together to place the Spaniard in command of wealth, calidad, and sexual reproduction. One may conclude that the Spanish male offers a symbol of patriarchal control. As a signifier of multiple and overlapping ideologies of power, the figure also embodies ideals of racial and gendered endowment. Conversely, the figures of the mother and child express patterns of racial and gendered divestiture.

Quantifying Race/Qualifying Bodies

Of course, it was not only individuals of African descent that lacked calidad and faced social discrimination; colonial society deemed all mixed-raced persons aberrant to some degree.22 The dilution of limpieza de sangre was perceived to occur when another race was introduced to a bloodline. Racial miscegenation happened 220 within all segments of Spanish colonial society. Even though elites outwardly eschewed the practice, upper class men frequently sought “exotic” liaison in situations off the books and out of wedlock.23 Racial mixing or mestizaje was therefore to a large extent unexceptional. But in the opinion of high society—a group whose members possessed both legitimate limpieza de sangre and falsified certificates of blood purity—mestizaje depleted the colony of its Spanish, social capital. The dilution of Spanish stock led to weakened morals, softened intelligence, and inflamed temperament, or so elites believed.

The purpose of introducing the concept of mestizaje to this discussion has been to foreground the growing dependence of categories of race to assessments of calidad. The author María Elena Martínez has explained this phenomenon as owing to the rise of mercantile capitalism in Spanish America, which fostered more opportunities for social mobility, and the gradual espousal of enlightened rationalism, which rewarded individual achievement.24 Consequently, economic and cultural transitions in Spanish America demanded that formerly loose, general notions of affluence now be graded. The language of blood purity reflected this shift, becoming peppered with terms such as calidad, condición (condition), and clase

(class). Martínez notes that at the same time, this language took on new inflections of bourgeois values, such as the appreciation of time management and diligence.25 In sum, over the course of the eighteenth century, the meaning of limpieza de sangre shifted from a concept rooted in religion to one situated in a visual discourse about the body and potential economic mobility. 221

The subject of skin color dominated corporal discourse in the eighteenth century. But this interest in phenotype touched off from a much earlier point in time: ancient Greece and Rome. The contact between Old and New Worlds in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries revived conjecture about aberrant races living at the fringes of civilization.26 Later, during the Age of Reason, scholars applied rational, scientific methodologies to the subject. Spanish intellectuals like

Benedictine friar Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro, for example, used scientific method to hypothesize the cause of African pigmentation. Feijoo’s treatise Color etiópio (Ethiopian color) published in 1739 within his Teatro critic, undertook a careful examination of the origins of skin color.27 Refuting common myths and fables, he found that environmental factors such as air and soil led to dark skin—not biblical curse or other non-scientific explanation. Feijóo’s treatise on climatic determinism exemplifies a stream of contemporaneous scholarship devoted to understanding not only the effects of environment on phenotype, but also to understanding larger questions about human reproduction. In short, the people, flora, and fauna of Spanish America had become the focus of intense study, and these presumed specimens generated questions about human genealogy.

Casta painting was a product of eighteenth-century racial ideology; as type of ethnographic painting casta painting linked a visual discourse about the body to the cross-classifications of race and calidad. Scholars believe the genre originated in the viceroyalties sometime around the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries.28

The paintings do not present portraits; instead casta paintings portray racial types arranged in family units. Casta series typically begin with the pairing of two, 222 pureblood races: Spaniard and Amerindian to produce a mestizo child. African bloodlines were introduced to the sequence around the fourth succession with the pairing of a Spaniard and African to produce a mulata/o child. Taxonomic labels quantified racial stereotypes, while descriptive iconography, such as physiognomic features and behaviors, qualified racial stereotypes.

Through a series of successive scenes, the cataloging of race continued along descending scales of limpieza de sangre and calidad. An undated series of paintings created by artist José Joaquín Magón offers an idiosyncratic take on racial mestizaje.29 Magón goes the extra mile, so to speak, narrating the sequences with inscriptions that describe the traits children inherited from parents. While the mestizo (1/2 Spaniard and 1/2 Amerindian) child was pronounced “usually humble, tranquil and straightforward,” the torna atrás (15/16 Spaniard and 1/16 African) was pejoratively described as having “bearing, temper, and primitive customs.”30 In other casta series, racial types associated with low calidad commit violent acts in a pantomime of their allegedly flawed natures. As leading researcher of casta painting

Ilona Katzew explains, this point of fact delivers an unambiguous statement about racial ideology. According to Katzew, “certain mixtures—particularly those of

Spaniards or Indians with Blacks—could only lead to the contraction of debased sentiments, immoral proclivities, and extreme susceptibility to a de-civilized state.”31

If some racial mixtures were inherently corrupting, then casta paintings show how other racial mixtures could be inherently cleansing. In other words, casta paintings communicate the idea that pairing castas with pure Spanish partners 223 offered the means to bring progeny back to a state of limpieza de sangre. Typically, in casta paintings, the path to blood mending occurs in the third generation after continuous breeding between Spaniards and Amerindians, e.g., Spaniard and

Amerindian produce mestizo, Spaniard and mestizo produce castizo, and Spaniard and castizo produce Spaniard. Technically, the Spaniard yielded in the third generation was only 7/8th Spaniard (and 1/8th Amerindian), but according to the logic of casta painting, the offspring returned to a full state of Spanish limpieza de sangre.

The concept of blood mending holds a systematic bias in favor of Spanish and

Amerindian unions over Spanish and African unions. While mixing with Spaniards cleansed the pedigree of Amerindian and Spanish offspring, no amount of Spanish blood could bring African pedigree to a state of cleanliness. In other words, according to the logic of caste painting, African blood was irreparably corrupted. To explain, if one applies the previous blood-mending scenario, then the third generation reproduction between Spaniards and African offspring should produce a

Spaniard. However, this is not the case; the third generation offspring yields an

Albino (7/8th Spaniard an 1/8th African), not a Spaniard, as in the third generation

Spanish and Amerindian descendent. Furthermore, the Albino paired with a

Spaniard (the next numeric scene in a sequence) did not produce a white child, as one would expect, but instead a child with the physiognomic features of a sub-

Saharan African. Hence, casta paintings present the belief that African bloodlines could never be absorbed into Spanish or Amerindian lineages; it would always 224 reappear—meaning persons bearing any trace of African descent were never fully

Spanish or white.

Casta paintings like De Alvina y Español reveal the importance of Spanishness and whiteness to the narrative of mestizaje. This particular painting presents the breeding of a Spaniard and Albino woman to produce a turns back to Black child.

The physiognomy of the offspring owes to the mother’s 1/8th African lineage.

Because the body operated as a “telltale transcript of the identity it housed,” the so- called African corruption of the mother is visible. It is diagnosable in her Albino appearance—an adjective defined by the Diccionario authoridades in 1780 as “a person born of black parents, yet one who possesses a very fair-complexion and blond, crimped hair and Negroid facial features.”32 The female, figure portrayed in

De Alvina y Español is indeed fair-skinned and blond. De Alvina y Español illustrates the idea that when Spaniards reproduced with African women—even if only 1/8th

African—Spanish identity, status, and calidad were lost. Corruption of the Spanish seed, in this example, manifests in the child.

As Katzew suggests casta paintings, like De Alvina y Español, illustrated notions of creole identity. The gendered power relations embodied in the “family trope,” she argues, “served to stress the hierarchy inherent in colonial society and the success of the colonial enterprise by showing a society glued together by the bond of love.”33 Consequently, like the systematic organization of space and people—through zoning and census, respectively—casta paintings brought the illusion of order to a social situation otherwise characterized by cloudy intersections of race, class, and gender. However, a second discourse present in the 225 representation of racial mixing is calidad—specifically the relationship between calidad and physiognomy. High calidad found form in white, Spanish physical features and low calidad found form in black, African physical features.

Stain and Status

If De Alvina y Español reinforces the colonial belief that calidad was found in the white, Spanish, male; then the question is why. What factors hastened the need to rehash this idea? In almost all cases of systematic ordering, perceptions of chaos precede new patterns of order—in other words, the limitations of a previous system warrants the creation of a new one. The origination of casta painting in the early eighteenth century suggests that the dominant culture perceived disorder in the current social organization, and hence devised new ways to see diversity, i.e., to sort, classify, and represent it. These anxieties grew over the course of the eighteenth century and reached a climax during its waning decades.

Several reasons account for the situation. First, the proliferation of caste society created an extensive population of mixed raced individuals. By the end of the eighteenth century, for example, castas made up approximately one-quarter of the population of New Spain.34 Second, economic growth under the Bourbons brought new opportunities for economic mobility. However, because mobility went in both directions many Spaniards found themselves down and out—an expression indicating both low economic standing and the concomitant exclusion of penniless

Spaniards from upper class society. In short, being a white, Spanish male was no longer a guarantee of status. As white, Spaniards joined the lower classes, and 226 mixed-race castas climbed the social ladder, the surest way to identify what was

Spaniard and in whom high calidad resided, became to differentiate what was not

Spaniard and in whom low calidad resided.

The Perceived Stain of African Heritage

Throughout the history of colonial Spanish America, administrators sought ways to limit the reproductive potential and cultural influence of the African population. An early attempt can be found in 1543 when Charles V (r. 1516 – 1556) issued an edict aiming to regulate concupiscence in the colonies and thereby legislate mixed-race Africans out of existence.35 While this sanction was unsuccessful, colonial society engineered many other situations to restrict the lives of freed Africans. This segment of the population was, for example, generally disqualified from military service; guilds specifically forbade their membership; city ordinances restricted their physical mobility; and sumptuary laws placed strict censors on what people of African descent could wear or possess. Presumably, discrimination in the colonial context stemmed from traditional Iberian belief that connected Africans to Moorish peoples—and also to slavery and atavistic culture.36

Whatever the cause, Spanish colonial society regarded Africans and African caste mixtures as social pariahs.

Around the same time Spaniards began to experience destabilization in their privileged social position, colonial society began to show an intensely negative preoccupation with racial mestizaje involving Africans. The reasons are unclear since the slave population of New Spain had declined steadily since the mid- 227 seventeenth century. Martínez suggests the concern stemmed from an increase in marriages between Spanish Creoles and castas of African descent—in which case the fear was that African descendants might gain greater social mobility.37 By mid- century, Creole elites began to voice these concerns, singling out casta paintings as a heated point of contention. Creole theologian Andrés Arce y Miranda argued that casta paintings created the illusion that the entire population of New Spain was racially mixed, and that much of that amalgamation included African blood. At the same time, he expressed his resentment of the fact that the best pairing—that of

Creole and peninsular Spaniard—was not reflected.38

This example suggests that Creoles perceived black heritage as a risk to the racial profile of white Spaniards. Martínez describes this situation as a “paranoid fear of ‘blackness,’ of its capacity both to be invisible (hidden in the blood) and to influence phenotype and other biological traits.”39 The esteemed intellectual Alzate y Ramírez articulated such concerns, writing about contagions and questions of phenotype in a Natural History essay published in the Gacetas de literatura de

México.40 Alzate begins the essay noting that the origin of African skin pigmentation remained indeterminable. He then discusses his observations of a community living near the volcano Jorullo (today in the state of Michoacán) who had begun to experienced a new “illness” (enfermedad) manifesting in adults as a black stain on the body.41 In children, however, the spots were more numerous and appeared larger and darker. Alzate conjectured that in four or five generations, the people would be as black as Ethiopians.42 While Alzate remained an unbiased observer of this phenomenon, he notes that the discourse surrounding African pigmentation 228 was confounding, especially on the matter of whether or not Negroid traits could ever be extracted from the hereditary bloodline.43

Concerns about African genetic ties were not limited to Spanish populations or to remote villagers; colonial officials also advised Amerindians not to intermarry with persons of African descent. In 1769, for example, the Archbishop of Mexico,

Francisco Antonio de Lorenzana, implored Amerindian fathers to marry their daughters to Spaniards or to fellow Amerindians only—not blacks, mulatos, or zambos. Similarly, in 1784, the Mexican High Court instructed parish priests to warn their congregations of the consequences of racial intermarriage; the Court ruled that

Amerindians and Spaniards who married with Africans would be disqualified from holding municipal positions or honorific titles.44 Even the Holy Office of the

Inquisition joined the polemic; on January 8, 1774 it officially added the stain of

African ancestry as its fourth category of impurity—the others being Jewish,

Muslim, and heretical descent.45 Spurred on by the climate of black persecution, the state took legal action against racial mestizaje with the enactment of a new law dealing with marriages.

The Royal Pragmatic on Marriages

Society’s preoccupation with Spanish limpieza de sangre, in particular guarding against its exposure to African blood, culminated in the Royal Pragmatic on Marriages issued by Charles III in 1776 and promulgated in New Spain in 1778.

As the historian Patricia Seed notes, the Pragmatic gave expression to the convergence of several complex phenomena: changing economic conditions that 229 brought instability to traditional definitions of status, expanded domains of patriarchalism, and escalating concerns about interracial marriage.46 The values expressed in this legislation find symmetry with those expressed in De Alvina y

Español. Both the Pragmatic and the painting cast judgment on interracial union and the growth and diversification of caste society.

In both Spain and New Spain, the Royal Pragmatic granted parents the legal right to scotch the weddings of their offspring (twenty-five years or younger) to spouses of lesser calidad. However, between Iberian Peninsula and colony, the language of the Pragmatic differed in its definition of social inequality. In New Spain, inequality was narrowly defined; it meant unequal matches of race, i.e., when individuals possessing limpieza de sangre paired with “mulattos, blacks, and persons of Afro-Indian heritage.”47 Under the terms of Pragmatic, differences apart from race, such as reputation, political power, or Amerindian heritage did not constitute inequality. In short, the Pragmatic determined that only African persons or African- descended persons made for unequal spouses. Parents wishing to prevent the tarnishing of their ancestral bloodline could take their case straight to a royal judge.

A good example of the Royal Pragmatic in practice and the language used to address situations of interracial marriage is found in a 1792 hearing overseen by

Don Francisco Bustamante.48 According to the file, father of the groom Jeronimo

Marani—described as a poor, but pureblood Spaniard—opposed the marriage of his son, Juan Marani, to suspected mulato Barbara Alvarez on grounds that the marriage was socially unequal. The Marani bloodline, the father claimed was impeccable; it derived from Old World Europe where practices such as interracial mixing were not 230 permitted.49 To determine whether or not Marani senior had right under the

Pragmatic of 1778 to file an injunction against the marriage of Marani junior to

Alvarez, the adjudicator heard evidence from both parties. Because Alvarez’s baptismal record was mysteriously unavailable for examination, the case was constructed around her parents’ birth records. Incidentally, Marani senior claimed the absent record could easily be located in the parochial books of Marabatio

(Maravatío, Michoacan) within the section labeled, mulato, lobo, and coyote mestizo.50

Regarding the parents, informant Juan Samoza testified it was “public knowledge” that José Antonio, father of Alvarez was a mulato and that the mother,

Felipa Josepha, was an indeterminable breed of [Amer]Indian or loba.”51 Another witness stated he had no clue what racial derivative José Antonio was; the former simply took Alvarez’s father to be a “common, vulgar man” (hombre comun, y vulgar). Counselor Bustamante clarified this point in unequivocal terms, stating “this undoubtedly means that he [José Antonio] was not a pureblood Spaniard because if he were, José Antonio would never have had the reputation of belonging to the lowest calidad—that of mulatos, lobos, and coyotes.”52 As the case unfolded, a great deal of attention was also paid to uncovering the truth behind Felipa’s claim to the calidad of Spaniard. While her baptismal record stated as much, its authenticity as a loose-leaf page casually slipped into the Book of Spaniards and not matching the existing numbering system of the volume, was declared dubious.53

In the end, Bustamante found plenty of proof that Barbara Alvarez lacked limpieza de sangre in both the paternal and maternal bloodline; he therefore ruled in 231 favor of Marani senior, who desired to resist his son’s wedding. What is most curious about this case is the ideology behind the verdict. As Bustamante justifies,

. . . here, there are many different castas; and regardless of whatever mixture they are, the result is always the same: the mother [mother’s lack of blood purity] prevents the son from inheriting the noble honor of the Father or vice versa. It is true that in . . . all of Europe there are two levels of status: that of nobility and that of plebian. While the first has its levels and grades, the latter is absolute and binding. Just like in Spain where commoners can resist their sons’ attempts to marry women, whose lineages contain a mix of Jewish, Moorish, or heretical blood; in the Americas pureblood Spaniards should be allowed to do the same; because when Spaniards take for wives women of the caste of mulatto, wolf, coyote, or mixtures of these, it constitutes a definite social inequality that dishonors Spanish families even if they are common and poor.54

Bustamante applied this logic to support a ruling in favor of Marani senior. He found that the African ancestry of Barbara Alvarez posed hazard to the pure, Spanish bloodline preserved in the Maranis; to defile an adulterated state of limpieza de sangre would dishonor even this humble family. Throughout the hearing, and untold others just like it, Alvarez was treated as a specimen and tried on the basis of racial identity. In effect, litigators probed her family history searching to see what lay unseen: her biological profile. This impulse relates to the theme of super vision as it is depicted in De Alvina y Español.

De Alvina y Español portrays an albino mother whose biological profile allegedly retained African roots. Viewers are led to believe that this figures delivers to her white, Spanish husband, a black child. The taxonomic label reads, “turns back to Black;” hence, the scene attempts to literalize a completely improbable genetic mash-up in which progeny presents the identical attributes of distant African ancestors, not the attributes of direct parentage. In this painting, just as in the

Marani case, corruption or potential corruption travels via the female host. This 232 pattern follows the prejudices of contemporaneous racial ideology. As Martínez notes, “Spaniards were linking creoles with illegitimacy and mixture, signaling out those who had African blood as impure, and focusing on women as the sources of contamination.”55 Pictured in De Alvina y Español the blood impurity of the mother lies dormant, but springs to the surface in the next generation. Regarding the subject of visual metaphor, one wonders what colonial audiences read in the conspicuous beauty mark found on the figure’s left temple. Viewers may have looked upon this element and saw tongue in cheek humor, i.e., like the stain that albino persons supposedly bore inwardly, the beauty mark implies an outward manifestation of spotted ancestry.

Lastly, both the painting and the Royal Pragmatic on Marriages case convincingly illustrate the high stakes and potentially damaging repercussions colonial society associated with marriages between whites and blacks. Marani senior took legal action against his own son for simply wishing to marry a woman of

African ancestry. A marriage of inequality would have degraded the calidad of the

Marani family, bringing with it a level of shame and dishonor that apparently unchained Marani senior’s bonds of parental love.56 Alternatively, De Alvina y

Español shows how similar scenarios played out when legal recourse was not taken.

Displaying features deemed aberrant by dominant society’s standards, the child stands as a token reminder of what could happen. While civic leaders, in reality, warned against racial intermarriage, the child within this interpretive setting illustrates a forgone conclusion: in the context of colonial New Spain, African- derived progeny would not inherit the same social privileges as their white, Spanish 233 fathers. The fact that the painting dates circa 1775 and that the Pragmatic originated near to the same year, suggests that De Alvina y Español expresses the hostile viewpoint that foregrounded laws aiming safeguard limpieza de sangre.

Passing as Spaniard

The painting and the marriage case are touchstones to eighteenth-century racial ideology for another reason; they both elicit the question: what if. What if inheritance was not a forgone conclusion and African heritage offspring indeed became heir to Spanish social privileges; what if these persons passed themselves off as Spaniards; and how would the professed true bearers of limpieza de sangre differentiate themselves and identify the aberrant other? These questions cut to the heart of elite anxiety about the preservation of their social status. The “paranoid fear of blackness,” discussed by author Martínez, manifested as a compulsive worry about whether or not high society might lose the one quality separating their bodies from non-elite bodies: whiteness.57 This concern, illustrated by a case in which someone of African heritage attempted to pass as Spaniard and a painting portraying the transmittance of a clandestine racial impurity, suggests an obsessional awareness that unseen forces shook the essential pillar of the colonial social hierarchy.

Between the years 1764 and 1775, successful Spanish merchant Pedro

Alonso O’Crouley made several overseas journeys to Mexico where he witnessed firsthand the complexities of racial diversity in a colonial context. His observations are recorded in a manuscript titled, A Description of the Kingdom of New Spain.58 In 234 chapter seven, “Racial Mixtures,” O’Crouley gives an outsider’s perspective on New

Spain’s racialized social hierarchy. According to O’Crouley, Spanish heritage carried the highest value of social currency, but between Amerindians and Africans, the

Amerindian by far possessed greater prestige. Africans were in fact the “most dispirited and despised” social group, he writes; their stock rated lowest among caste society.59 As O’Crouley explains:

From the union of a Spaniard and a Negro the mixed-blood retains the stigma for generations without losing the original quality of a mulato . . . it is said, and with reason, that a mulato can never leave his condition of mixed blood, but rather it is the Spanish element that is lost and absorbed into the condition of a Negro . . . To those contaminated with the Negro strain we may give, over-all, the name of mulatos, without specifying the degree or the distance direct or indirect from the Negro root or stock . . . which even the most effective chemistry cannot purify. Many pass as Spaniards who in their own hearts know they are mulatos.60

O’Crouley’s belief that Spanish, i.e., white traits, were irreversibly lost when crossed with African lineages and his concern over the passing of any degree of mulato as

Spaniard, link to the problems expressed in De Alvina y Español.

Just as O’Crouley described, De Alvina y Español illustrates period beliefs about what happened when Spanish bloodline were crossed with African. In this fictive scenario, the Spanish element carried by the father figure is entirely absorbed into the African element carried by the mother figure. The resultant offspring bears no trace of Spanishness or any hereditary similarities to either parent. The child has moreover turned back to black with no possibility of reaching the racially pure state of Spaniard. This scene illustrates the perceived virulence of African heredity. Unlike

Amerindian heredity, which cleansed at this point in the caste sequence, African heritage was absolute and binding. And yet, as O’Crouley states, many mulatos self- 235 identified as Spaniard, despite their so-called permanent stain. Hence, the question remains: in what ways does De Alvina y Español address how figures like the “turn back to Black” passed as Spaniard and enjoyed the social capital or calidad of this designation—despite the best efforts of elites to quash such scenarios?

Art historian Carrera suggests, “physiognomics was the perfect diagnostic system to deal with the threat of passing, and as a result, diagnosis of one’s calidad came into play as a visual and aural means of assessment of physical traits as indicators of moral character.”61 But, as De Alvina y Español points out, while visual scrutiny had its usefulness, it also had its limitations. Reliance on what the eye alone could detect was an insufficient measure of the imperceptible pathogens of heredity.

In De Alvina y Español, the turns back to Black child wears sophisticated clothing and appears within an elegant, private setting—the author García Sáiz has argued it may be the rooftop terrace of the Guardiola family palace.62 Excepting physiognomy, this figure bears all of the markers of elite status, i.e., wealth, leisure, and advantage.

This view presents what one may assume O’Crouley and others of his social bearing feared: the passing of African-descended individuals as Spaniards. Once again, the element of humor comes into question. If viewers were primed to read the location as the home of noble Guardiola family, then the painting may be understood as a playful reminder that even among illustrious lineages of the Mexican nobility possessed the proverbial, skeleton in the closet existed.

De Alvina y Español appears to make a case for more extensive measures of social management, i.e., tactics of state interventionism, such as such as the Royal

Pragmatic on Marriages of 1778. In the case of the Marani marriage, it was the 236 shrewd investigation of adjudicator Bustamante and the unyielding position of

Marani senior that delivered the family dynasty safely from a near collision with so- called adulterating contagions. In other words, the courts provided a legal checks and balances system that compensated for the shortcomings of the diagnostic gaze and the reading of the body for markers of calidad. From this situation one learns that while colonial audiences perceived the eye as tool for inquiry, and the body as a transcript waiting to be read, they were woefully aware the limitations of practice.

Casta paintings like De Alvina y Español responded to the deficiencies of sight; they compensated for racial subtleties that the eye could not see. Structuring information in new discernable patterns, i.e., the genealogical sequencing of caste painting delivered a means to extend vision, to amplify it—and ultimately to exercise super vision.

Conclusion: Resistance to Systems of Legibility

This chapter has continued the discussion of super vision by exploring how audiences used the eye to diagnose calidad in the racially diverse context of colonial

New Spain. It has examined these ideas through De Alvina y Español; which in addition to describing situations of racial mestizaje, engages the subject of vision in surprising ways. In this park view, the male, Spanish body symbolizes a source of epistemological and moral authority. The figure holds a telescope—a tool for augmenting vision—to declare the investiture of power gleaned by the eye. In this way, the painting delivers a message not unlike the discourse that surrounded the microworld of the cochineal insect discussed at the beginning of this chapter. In 237 both examples, magnified vision was the key to knowledge and authority. Both furthermore underscore a historical situation in which the desire to see and to systematize worldly knowledge, through abstract systems like casta painting, took precedence.

Audiences in Europe and those in the Spanish Americas treated the eye as instrument. In theory, by reading physiognomy, one could diagnosis the calidad of an individual; the eye was nevertheless an imprecise tool. Spanish notions of genealogical purity, expressed in the phrase limpieza de sangre, were not always marks that could be visually detected; sometimes they hid from the unaided eye or found disguise in the trappings of wealth and power—a certainty that calls to the mind the scotomas of super vision addressed in Chapter Five. Evidence furnished in this study has suggested that much of the looking and diagnosing of race applied to

African hereditary, which embodied the ultimate, aberrant contrast to elite, Spanish qualifications of calidad.

With compulsive fervor, upper class Spanish society attempted to thwart the racial mestizaje occurring between Spaniards and Africans, as well as Amerindians and Africans. Authorities went so far as to even create a legislative apparatus, the marriage Pragmatic of 1778, to impede the advancement of caste society. It may be assumed that this historical moment forms the subtext behind De Alvina y Español.

As discussed in Chapter Four, defending the borders of cultural superiority was a way for elites to preserve the closed institution of high society—one that was largely and historically determined by race. Fearing the collapse of their position within a diverse demographic, elites fought to preserve rank. The exercise of super 238 vision provided them with a powerful tool to achieve their goals. It dictated arrangements of public space; it counted bodies; it policed sanitation; and lastly, it exposed hidden, genealogical impurities.

239

Notes to Chapter Six

1 The cochineal insect is a type of arthropod—a sessile parasite, which lives on and feeds off of certain types of nopal cactus indigenous to subtropical North and South America. The original report is: José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez, Memoria sobre la naturaleza, cultivo, y beneficio de la grana, 1777. A copy of it exists in the Edward E. Ayer Manuscript Collection at the Newberry Library in Chicago, IL. This study consulted a facsimile reproduction found in: La Grana y el Nopal en los textos de Alzate, eds. Carlos Sánchez Silva and Alejandro de Ávila Blomberg (México: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, CONACULTA, 2005).

2 Alexander von Humboldt discussed the importance of cochineal exports to the economy of New Spain, calling it along with sugar a “precious commodity.” He notes that in the year 1802 Veracruz exported 46,964 arrobas of cochineal worth 3,368,557 pesos.” See Alexander von Humboldt, Political essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, trans. John Black, (London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822) 4:4 and 64.

3 This study owes a debt of gratitude to undergraduate student Ondrea Levey, whose outstanding research on cochineal brought attention to the mystery and misinformation surrounding early modern studies of this insect.

4 For more information on the development of microscopy see, Jutta Schickore, The Microscope and the Eye: A History of Reflections, 1740 – 1870 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

5 Amy Butler Greenfield, A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2005), 156 – 164.

6 Greenfield, A Perfect Red, 154. “Microscopio de mucho aumento.” de Alzate y Ramírez, Memoria sobre la naturaleza, Plancha 1.

7 Ilona Katzew, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 63.

8 See, for example, the discussion in: Rebecca Parker Brienen, Visions of a Savage Paradise (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 76 – 78.

9 Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press, 1990).

10 The literature on casta painting is copious, see for example, the work of the following researchers: Magali Carrera, María Concepción García Sáiz, and Ilona Katzew. See, Carrera, “Locating Race in Colonial Mexico.” Art Journal 57, no. 3 (1998) 36 – 45; Carrera, Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003); García Sáiz, Las Pintura Colonial en el Museo de América (Madrid: Patronato Nacional de Museos, 1980); García Sáiz, Las castas mexicanos: Un género pictórico americano (Milan: Olivetti, 1989); Katzew, New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America, (New York: Americas Society, 1996); Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico; and Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World (Los Angeles; New Haven Conn.: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Distributed by Yale University Press), 2011.

11 Based on the configuration of the park and the development of the cityscape, the present study finds the relative date of this painting to be circa, 1775. In terms of numeric sequence, it was customary for African linages to be introduced in the fourth succession; hence, the offspring depicted in this example would have likely been number six in a typical caste painting series. 240

12 Author María Concepción García Sáiz notes that the location of the family might be either the roof of the Guardiola palace or the convent of Santa Isabel. Both are no longer standing. See García Sáiz, Las castas mexicanas: un género pictórico americano (Place of publication not identified: Olivetti, 1989), 250.

13 “No necesita persuadirse con demasiadas razones lo regular y útil que es, se halle cualquier paraje en que para desahogarse o pasearse concurra la gente de una población, (llamese Paseo, Prado, Alameda, Tullerías o tenga cualquiera denominación), – en un aspecto de simetría, limpieza, piso plano y amenidad, que no solo complazca la vista y aún el olfato, sino que también contribuya con otras comodidades o atractivos al recreo y saludable esparcimiento de los concurrentes. Tales circunstancias parece se recomiendan todavía en mayor grado, cuando alguno de aquellos sitios de reunión y concurrencia existen dentro de las poblaciones o tan cerca de ellas que por su inmediación y facilidad de disfrutarlos convidan o provocan a que se frecuenten, siendo por esto en realidad uno de los objetos de que en toda ciudad en que reine siquiera una mediana policía, se procura cuidar, como que hace mucho más agradable la residencia, aumenta la sociedad y en cierto modo interesa indirectamente la salud de los habitantes.” Baltasar Ladrón de Guevara, “Discurso sobre la policía de México, 1788” in Antología de Textos sobre la Ciudad de México en el Periodo de la Ilustración (1788 – 1792) ed. Sonia Lombardo de Ruíz (México: Colección Científica Fuentes Historia Social, 1982), 75.

14 Baltasar Ladrón de Guevara, “Discurso sobre la policía de México,” 76. Cited also in Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán, Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, and Sergio Rivera Ayala, Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, (Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, 1999), 173.

15 Rebecca Haidt, Embodying Enlightenment: Knowing the Body in Eighteenth-Century Spanish Literature and Culture (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998), 1 – 5. For more examples of the trope of the body expressed in the eighteenth century see, Antoine de Baecque, The Body Politic: Corporeal Metaphor in Revolutionary France, 1770 – 1800 trans. Charlotte Mandell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).

16 Ibid., 107 – 111.

17 Ibid., 125 – 127.

18 Ibid., 126.

19 Magali Carrera, Imagining Identity, 9.

20 The evolving definition and social and cultural applications of limpieza de sangre in New Spain is the central premise of María Elena Martínez, Geneaological Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008).

21 On topic of African discrimination in colonial Mexico, the following works have influenced the present study: Leslie B. Rout, The African Experience in Spanish America, 1502 to the Present Day (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660 – 1720 (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994); John Smolenski and Thomas J. Humphrey, New World Orders: Violence, Sanction, and Authority in the Colonial Americas (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Ben Vinson and Metthew Restall, Black Mexico: Race and Society from Colonial to Modern Times (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009); and Ilona Katzew and Susan Deans-Smith, Race and Classification: The Case of Mexican America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).

22 One example of discrimination is found in the Inquisition case of Mauricia Josepha de Apela. In the late eighteenth century, Mauricia was called before the Inquisition to defend her faith. Her alleged 241

heretical thinking included believing in seven levels of Heaven, which permitted entry to individuals based on their racial identity. This example is cited in Magali Carrera, “Locating Race in Late Colonial Mexico,” 33 – 45.

23 A good example of the fetishizing of African women is found in the Thomas Gage’s description of his travels in Spanish America. In addition to making suggestive comments of his own, he reports that many Spanish husbands “disdain their wives” for women of African heritage. See, Thomas Gage, Thomas Gage’s Travels in the New World, ed. Eric S. Thompson (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), 68 – 69.

24 Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 239.

25 Ibid., 247 – 248.

26 Katzew, Casta Painting, 63 – 65.

27 Benito Jerónimo Feijóo, Teatro critic universal (Madrid: Impr. de L.F. Mojados, 1726 – 1740). See also, the discussion of “Color etiópico” in A. Owen Aldridge, “Feijóo and the Problem of Ethiopian Color,” in Racism in the Eighteenth Century Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture vol. 3 (Cleveland and London: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 173), 263 – 277.

28 Katzew, Casta Painting, 10. Katzew argues that the earliest series of casta paintings were created by a member of the Arellano family in 1711.

29 Magón created at least two sets of casta paintings. One was produced for the Archbishop Francisco Antonio Lorenzana; the patron of the other set is not known. The set produced for the Archbishop does not include the inscriptions, however, the other one does. The series with inscriptions is reproduced in: María Concepción García Sáiz, Las castas mexicans: un género pictório americano (Place of publication not identified: Olivetti, 1989), 102 – 111. Furthermore Magón was not entirely alone in providing descriptive inscriptions. Another example is Luis Thiebaut’s Quadro de historia natural, civil, y geográfica del Reyno de Perú. For more information see, Ilona Katzew, 154 – 159; Katzew, New World Orders: America, 15 – 16; and Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 231 – 232.

30 “I. Del Español y la Yndia nace él Mestizo, por lo común, humilde, quieto y sencillo. VII. Albino y Española. Los que producen de torna átras, en figura, genio, y costumbres.” The paintings are reproduced in García Sáiz, Las castas mexicanas, 103 and 106.

31 Katzew, New World Orders, 24. Although many casta series portray the lower classes engaged in violent actions, the majority, Katzew notes, portray the lower classes at work or at leisure.

32 “Albino, NA. adj. El que de padres negros, ó de casta de ellos nace muy blanco, y rubio, conservado en lo corto, y retortijado del pelo, y en las facciones del rostro las señales que tienen los negros, y los distinguen.” Real Academia Español, 1770 Academia Autoridades (A – B), s.v. “albino” accessed March 18, 2015. Interestingly, this definition stands until the publication of the 1884 Diccionario Academia Usual, which defines albinism as a congenital condition; the definition makes no mention of African genealogies. See, Real Academia Español, 1884 Academia Usual, s.v. “albino” accessed March 18, 2015.

33 Katzew, Casta Painting, 93.

34 Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574 – 1821 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1988), 25.

35 Rout, The African Experience in Spanish America, 127. 242

36 See the discussion of blackness and social hierarchy in Katzew, Casta Painting, 46 – 48.

37 Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 243.

38 Ibid., 242 – 243. Martínez cites a personal correspondence between Creole theologian Andres de Arce y Miranda and Juan José de Eguiara y Eguren, a professor at the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico. Importantly, this letter challenges the assumptions made today about casta painting. Contemporary scholars assume that eighteenth-century audiences were well attuned to the fallacy and artificiality behind casta painting; Arce y Miranda’s concerns, however, contradict this assumption, suggesting that audience may have actually believed in the indexicality of casta paintings.

39 Ibid., 243.

40 José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírz, “Historia natural [sobre el color de los negros],” Gacetas de literatura de México 4 vols. 1788. (Puebla: Reimpresas en la Oficina del Hospital de S. Pedro, á cargo del ciudadano M. Buen Abad, 1831), 4: 223 – 226.

41 Ibid., 224.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid., 223 – 224.

44 Rout, The African Experience, 144.

45 Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 247.

46 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 205.

47 “mulatos, negros, y coyotes” The Royal Pragmatic is reproduced in Richard Konetzke, Colección de Documentos Para la Historia de la Formación Social de Hispanoamérica, 1493 – 1810 (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1963), 3:438. See also, the discussion of the Pragmatic in Rout, The African Experience, 140 – 142 and Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey, 205 – 225.

48 AGN, Inquisición, Inquisición, vol. 1378, exp. 2, fols. 5 – 17.

49 Ibid., fol. 5v.

50 Ibid., fol. 7r.

51 “fué publicamente tenido y reputado,”Ibid., fol. 8r. Loba, or wolf in English, refers to a fourth generation African descendant mixed with Amerindian.

52 “hombre comun, y vulgar; cuya expresion significa claramente que no era español libre de toda mala raza, pues el lo és, no reputado en las Americas por de baja esfera, por haber otros inferiores aun respecto de los Indios, y son los mulatos, lovos, y coyotes.” Ibid.

53 Ibid., fol., 7r – 7v.

54“Aqui hay diversas castas y qualquiera mescla de ellas aunque sea por la madre impide que el hijo herede la nobleza del Padre ó vice versa. Verdad es que . . . en toda la Europa hay dos estados, el de la nobleza y el de la plebe, que en el primero tambien hay sus grados de mas y menos pero en el segundo 243

todos son unos. Asi como en España las personas del estado pechero ó plebeyo pueden resistir la alianza de sus hijos con mugeres en cuyo linage hay mescla de Moros, Judios, o herejes tambien en las Americas pueden hacer esto mismo los españoles y, limpios de sangre, cuando las mugeres son de castas de mulatos, lovos, coyotes, ó mestizos porque en uno y otro caso hay desigualdad positiva y ser deshonran las familias españolas aunque sean del estado plebeyo con semejantes enlazes.” Ibid., 10v. – 11r.

55 Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 244.

56 Alternatively, one could say that the bonds of parental love were so strong that Marani senior could not let his son tarnish a golden ancestry for the sake of potentially fleeting love.

57 See fn. 40.

58 Pedro Alonso O’Crouley, A Description of the Kingdom of New Spain trans. Seán Galvin (San Francisco: J. Howell, 1972). The title of the original manuscript is Idea compendiosa del Reyno de Nueva España; the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid conserves it.

59 Ibid., 20.

60 Ibid., 20 – 21.

61 Carerra, Imagining Identity, 14.

62 García Sáiz, Las castas mexicanas, 250. Charles II awarded the title to Judge of the Royal Courts Juan Bartolomé de Padilla Guardiola y Guzmán in 1691. 244

CONCLUSION

READING BETWEEN THE [TREE] LINES

In the real and figurative space of the garden, historical audiences found a fundamental expression of social order, cultural refinement, and health.

Accordingly, the garden communicates a cogent metaphor for civilization; it is a familiar trope, one rich in subtext. Reading between the [tree] lines is a way of saying that this study analyzed eighteenth-century views of Alameda Park for their presentation of visible subjects and invisible subtexts. Far from mimetic or indexical pictures of place, the park view presents a highly nuanced transcript of a distinct, historical situation. Some historical situations are beyond literal representation; they are the stuff of hopes, dreams, aspirations, and contestations. It has been argued that the articulation of these qualitative states coalesced in the park view, illustrating then the cultural landscape of Mexico City.

Cultural landscapes are never static; this study presented evidence to suggest that the cultural landscape of Mexico City shifted at key, historical moments. It asserted that audiences recorded their interpretations of these changes in cultural objects. The study found relevancy by examining, in these objects, the interstice between reality and simulacrum—in other words, the intervening space between the actual physical and material conditions of eighteenth-century Mexico City and the imagination of Alameda Park in visual media. Located amid the interstice between the real and the fictive, this study identified three, binding themes: culture, class, and cleanliness. The ways in which these constructs find representation in the 245 park view reveals what colonial audiences saw; or rather, wanted to see in their worlds.

Repeatedly throughout this study, evidence called attention to the contest between so-called high and low cultures of Mexico City. In colonial Mexico, dichotomies of high and low were defined in relation to behaviors, living conditions, and cultural activities. For all intents and purposes, the elites of colonial society loathed the coarse activities of their social inferiors. Policing the recreational interests available to the poor, i.e., drinking and gambling, offered a means for high society to define their cultural tastes as a cut above the rest. The concepts of labor and leisure coincidentally intersected in the physical and symbolic space of Alameda

Park. The park and park views embody the idea of leisure, a cultural pastime largely enjoyed by those who do not have to labor, i.e., members of high society. For this reason, it may be assumed that colonial audiences saw the Alameda as the location of high culture, operating as a discursive space where privilege found expression.

Chapter Three addressed the idea of culture in relation to the Convent of

Corpus Christi. In the Spanish world, convents were important institutions that reflected the Christian values of not only clerics, but also the secular community.

Additionally bound to these institutions were longstanding beliefs about female purity, honor, and the ideal Spanish woman. Creating a space for Amerindian women within the Mexican Church made them culturally comparable to Spanish nuns. Hence, it was from a population of Amerindian women that Corpus Christi generated culturally Spanish women. While the origin of the convent represents a monumental shift in the cultural landscape of colonial Mexico, it also represents 246 continuity. Corpus Christi continued the narrative of the Conquest of Mexico by colonizing yet another group: Amerindian women. The nuns of Corpus Christi learned Latin, Castilian Spanish—in short, they adopted the ways of Spanish nuns. It is of course ironic that authorities placed the means of reproducing culturally

Spanish individuals in the bodies of non-reproductive women.

In discussing the Mexico City Poorhouse and authorities’ campaign against poverty, Chapter Four examined the divisions between high and low culture. The park view Mapa del Alameda spatially represented this divide, locating the so-called dirt of the lower orders outside the park. Suffice it to say, the view locates culturally proscriptive behaviors on the margins of polite society. More generally, Chapter

Four argued that in the physical and symbolic vessel of the Poorhouse authorities placed their belief that the cultural preferences of the urban poor could be rehabilitated. And yet, while elites outwardly worked toward cleansing the poor, they privately worked to maintain the cultural divide. Chapters Five and Six discussed measurable ways that elites sought to create distance between themselves the lower classes. This study argued that elites perceived the urban poor as dangerous—both in the sense that the poor disturbed social order and in the sense that the growing number of poor persons threatened the stability of the social hierarchy. In particular, Chapter Six discussed how elites sought to preserve their position by protecting white, Spanish culture and denigrating black, African culture.

This study found that closely associated to constructs of culture were ideas about class—a term that, as modern speakers define it, did not exist in the colonial lexicon. For sake of simplicity, class connected to race and race connected 247 socioeconomics. This study questioned how class came to be defined in a colonial context by examining ideas about calidad or quality. Assessments of calidad took into account a summa of one’s racial, social, and economic conditions. Consideration of class brought this study back to the idea of oppositional and dichotomous relationships, i.e., high class versus low class, and vice versa.

Chapter Three addressed the concept of class through its discussion of limpieza de sangre. Recall, Corpus Christi was reserved for only a certain class of

Amerindian women: those possessing limpieza de sangre. Hence, the high class, social capital needed to join the convent rested in proof of racial purity. Chapter

Four analyzed the ways that colonial authorities sought to engineer class—that is, the idea that a working class could be generated by rehabilitating the social mores of the urban poor. Institutions like the Hospicio de Pobres aimed to create a middle- class citizen who would contribute to the wealth and health of the Empire.

Seeing and representing class constituted the subjects of Chapters Five and

Six. Through zoning laws, census, and new sanitations measures, this study examined the ways officials sought to take disparate elements of land and people and arrange them into patterns wherein class and type could be discerned by glance. And yet, as this study found, while homogeneity motivated reformers, high society had no intention of downplaying their wealth, since it differentiated them from commoners. Put another way, even though elites worked to promote social order, they did not advocate equality. Instead, they wished to remain culturally separate from those they deemed inferior. Lastly, Chapter Six explored new markers of class told through states of calidad. Explicitly, this chapter called attention to the 248 ways officials sought to legislate class by disallowing marriages between socially unequal partners.

Needless to say, the theme of cleanliness dominated the discourse. As addressed by this study, cleanliness referred to both a physical state of order, e.g., the cleanliness encapsulated in the picturesque park view, and to a symbolic state of purity, e.g., the cleanliness observed in limpieza de sangre. Yet another way this study considered cleanliness was in connection to the so-called clean spaces of the elite and the so-called dirty spaces of the urban poor. The study called attention to the certainty that is: interpretations of cleanliness have no value without clarifications of dirtiness. Such was the case in colonial Mexico where the culturally elite sought to bolster their social position by locating abnormality in the bodies and behaviors of the urban poor. Of course, these polarities existed throughout the history of colonial Mexico—the oldest perhaps being the symbolic dirt of the colonized and the symbolic cleanliness of the colonizer. In specific, this dissertation addressed the ways that audiences invested ideas about cleanliness in Alameda

Park. As views of the park communicated, if dirt was matter out of place, then cleanliness was matter in place.

In Chapter Three, this study found that the origin of the Convent of Corpus

Chrisit had historical ties to royal legislation supporting Amerindian claims to limpieza de sangre. Importantly, the validation of blood purity purportedly raised the social status of Amerindians to a level on par with Spaniards. The social elevation of Amerindians within colonial society (if only for the sake of appearance) paved the way for institutions such as the Convent of Corpus Christi. Likewise, 249 endorsement of Amerindian blood purity provided moral justification for the

Conquest, i.e., Spain could claim that the Conquest was Christian duty and that the

Crown had a moral and religious obligation to save innocents. Chapter Six distanced itself from the religious connotations of limpieza de sangre to examine ideas about blood purity as they related to whiteness. This chapter addressed the ways in which the absence of African heredity denoted a state of pure, Spanish heredity. It was suggested that the obsessional need to restrict African parentage marked a transition within the social hierarchy, and the growing irrelevance of limpieza de sangre to a racially heterogeneous context.

Chapters Four and Five dealt with physical states of cleanliness. In particular,

Chapter Four examined the material conditions of poverty, furnishing proof that elites associated the poor with the most odious filth produced by the city. Of course, it could be said that between the [dirt] poor and the [filthy] rich, elites were physically no cleaner; rich and poor alike fouled the environment—even if only the hygiene practices of latter were called into question. Chapter Five furthered the discussion of dirt by examining the ways administrators removed the so-called filthy underbrush of the colonial city. Plans to clean Mexico City revolved around improving sanitation so that filth could be expunged from public view. But the fact that authorities sited landfills in the outer regions of Mexico City where many among the urban poor lived was problematic. In effect, it reinforced belief among the upper class that dirt and the lower classes were one in the same.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of this project has been its treatment of the park view as a cultural expression. Doing so enabled views of Alameda Park to exist 250 in the interstice between art and cartography. This study presented a new way of thinking about geographical representation in Mexican studies from this period.

Eyeing Alameda Park has been a project about vision and understanding how past audiences interpreted the world around them; it focused a lens on real instances of seeing and imagining. Whether one observes in the park view a convent, a hospice, an interracial couple, or a space devoid of people—these objects communicate the contours of an infinite topography. Park views address relationships of power and privilege; they pronounce goals, ambitions, and agenda; they convey experiential knowledge; and they express multifocal situations where underrepresented persons find space alongside customary portraits of the socially elite. The historical moments addressed in this study stand as key points during which society reinterpreted its beliefs, biases, and/or practices. Hence, the park view embodies a fresh perspective. By eyeing Alameda Park one may plot these perspectives; doing so enables contemporary audiences to see the cultural landscape of Mexico City.

251

FIGURES

Permission to reproduce images cited in this dissertation was not sought. Published reproductions are available from sources indicated in the corresponding captions.

252

Withdrawn from Publication

Figure 1.1

Anonymous, Procesión de Santiago Apóstol en el barrio de Tlatelolco, mid-18th century, oil on canvas, 83.5 x 112 cm, Galerías la Granja, México, D.F.

Reproduced in, Jaime Soler, Los pinceles de la historia de la patria criolla a la nación mexicana 1750-1860 (Mexico, D.F.: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 2000), 101.

253

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Figure 1.2

Anonymous, View of the Alameda and the Viceregal Palace, Folding Screen, Biombo, ca. 1650, oil on canvas, 184 x 488 cm, Museo de América, Madrid, Spain.

Reproduced in, Michael J. Schreffler, The Art of Allegiance: Visual Culture and Imperial Power in Baroque New Spain (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), 16 – 17.

254

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Figure 2.1

Prometo Barragán Velázquez, Portrait of Juan Vicente de Güemes, Second Count of Revillagigedo, ca. 1790, oil on canvas, 239 x 176.5 cm, Museo de la Ciudad de México, México, D.F.

Reproduced in, María Estela Duarte, Américo Sánchez, and Nadia Ugalde, Alameda: Visión Histórica y Estética De La Alameda De La Ciudad De México (México, D.F.: Inst. Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2001), 56. 255

Withdrawn from Publication

Figure 3.1

Anonymous, Mapa del Alameda Paseo de la Mui Noble Ciudad de Mexico, ca. 1719 – 1722, oil on wood panel, 210 x 148 cm, Colección Palacio Real de la Almudaina, Palma de Mayorca, Spain.

Reproduced in, Sonia Lombardo de Ruiz, Yolanda Terán Trillo, and Mario de la Torre, Atlas Histórico De La Ciudad De México 2 vols. (México: Smurfit Cartón y Papel de México, 1996), 2:499. 256

Withdrawn from Publication

Figure 4.1

Anonymous, Paseo de la Alameda de Mexico, 1775, oil on metal sheet, 56 x 47 cm, Private Collection, México.

Reproduced in, Sonia Lombardo de Ruiz, Yolanda Terán Trillo, and Mario de la Torre, Atlas Histórico De La Ciudad De México 2 vols. (México: Smurfit Cartón y Papel de México, 1996), 2:501.

257

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Figure 5.1

José María de la Bastida, Plan Ignográfico de la Alameda de la Nobilísima Ciudad de México [h]Echo en el Año de 1778, 1778, oil on canvas, 201 x 100 cm, Museo de la Ciudad de México, México, D.F.

Reproduced in, Sonia Lombardo de Ruiz, Yolanda Terán Trillo, and Mario de la Torre, Atlas Histórico De La Ciudad De México 2 vols. (México: Smurfit Cartón y Papel de México, 1996), 2:55.

258

Withdrawn from Publication

Figure 6.1

Anonymous, De Alvina y Español, produce Negro torna atrás, ca. 1775, oil on canvas, 46 x 55 cm, Banco Nacional de México, México, D.F.

Reproduced in, Ilona Katzew, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 181.

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