Poverty and the Politics of Colonialism: “Poor Spaniards,” Their Petitions, and the Erosion of Privilege in Late Colonial Quito
2005; Duke University Press; Volume: 85; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1215/00182168-85-4-595
ISSN1527-1900
Autores Tópico(s)Politics and Society in Latin America
ResumoIn the first weeks of May 1785, several friends and long-term acquaintances came before the royal courts of Quito to testify on behalf of Don Josef Quiñones y Cienfuegos.1 They described in rich detail the wealth Quiñones once enjoyed: several businesses, homes, haciendas, mines near Barbacoas, slaves to work them and to serve his large family, and a gold-trimmed cloak. However, after many years of litigation over his enterprises, and afflicted with ailments, Don Josef now only had the benefit of a small house of little value, two slaves who were part of his wife’s dowry, and no employment. “In sum,” a witness said, “one can understand him as the poorest fellow among noble people [el sujeto más pobre entre gente noble].” In light of his present legal predicaments, coupled with his insolvency, Quiñones and his witnesses worried that justice might be beyond his reach. The crown attorney (fiscal) adjudicating this case agreed, reasoning that pobres were not only beggars with “absolutely nothing” but also those individuals who lacked the means to pursue justice and, because of their poverty, might lose their rights. As such, the courts declared Quiñones “pobre de solemnidad,” solemn poor, so that he might take up his legal cases free of charge. Don Josef Quiñones y Cienfuegos successfully demonstrated his need and his merit as a deserving member of the solemn poor.During the eighteenth century, hundreds of similar petitions beseeched the royal courts of the Audiencia of Quito for official recognition of supplicants’ poverty.2 Like Don Josef Quiñones y Cienfuegos, many others in the northern Andean highlands found themselves beset by financial and legal woes. With the decline of the textile industry and Bourbon-inspired economic shocks further compounded by natural disasters, poverty nipped at the heels of many residents. In their statements of poverty to the courts (declaratorias de pobreza), people lamented their loss of land, ill health, inadequate housing, poor food, and shabby dress. They all had one common concern: that their poverty might prevent them from obtaining justice.Petition writers also had something else in common: they typically appeared to be of Spanish origin, most likely creole. The surprisingly “white” face of poverty petitioners may at first glance seem odd in a society where we would expect the poor to emerge from the masses of Indians, mestizos, and blacks collectively known as the miserables, or the “wretched ones.”3 After all, Quito was part of an empire where, in theory, people of Spanish descent—whether American-born creoles or peninsular Spaniards—should have enjoyed the spoils of colonialism. Nevertheless, poor whites could be found among the empire’s needy, thereby throwing into question the social ideal of Spaniards’ position at the pinnacle of colonial hierarchy. According to colonial logic, the wretched of Indians, mestizos, and peoples of African descent were expected to form the economic poor of laborers and tributaries. Their poverty, as such, did not contravene the principles underpinning colonialism. The presence of poor Spaniards, however, contradicted normative social precepts.4Yet poverty did not necessarily undermine hierarchal order. Indeed, quite the opposite: the relief of poverty could shore up a faltering colonial framework. The pobreza de solemnidad system responded to a failing economic and political system that gave rise to creole impoverishment. This relief measure waived normal legal fees and gave speedy resolution of court cases for economically troubled residents who could prove their honor, merit, and need, thereby sustaining their privileged position even if only for a little while longer. Pobreza de solemnidad offered a kind of “justice by insurance” for the elite. Rather than undermine the social order, the poverty of Spaniards served to bolster the colonial structure, for the relief of their misery was a privilege granted to only the favored few. The miserables might have received legal assistance via the “medio-real” judicial system in place for Indians.5 But state relief for most of the wretched meant one of the following: imprisonment, enclosure in a poorhouse or house for wayward women (recogimiento), or forced labor in one of the Audi-encia’s many workshops (obrajes), tobacco factories, or presidios. Not all the poor in colonial Spanish America were equal, and thus distinct relief measures were extended to the two republics, according them each specific rights and duties.6This article draws upon over six hundred pobre de solemnidad petitions from 1678 to 1800 (see table 1).7 Recent research indicates that colonial society offered similar relief measures directed at the middling poor of fallen creoles: the monte de pío pensions for the widows and offspring of ministers, state pawnshops whose clients included women of tight but not necessarily destitute economies, and a poorhouse that housed women who came from the class of gente decente, “decent people.”8 These measures—ranging from mere patches to impressive institutions—sought to prevent or at least cushion the slide of the colony’s privileged poor into the ranks of the truly down-and-out. One of the most striking aspects of these poor relief measures for the middling poor was their implicit maintenance of the colonial divide between the republic of Spaniards and that of Indians, each with their separate forms of aid.Over the course of the eighteenth century, distinct poor relief measures proved feeble in separating “poor whites” from the wretched poor, just as the idea of identifiable republics or a fixed sistema de castas proved more fiction than reality. This essay traces the transformation of pobreza de solemnidad from a remedy to abate elite impoverishment that propped up colonial boundaries to a more generic petitioning for a public service that obscured socioracial divisions.Poverty was a diverse and changing concept: a condition as well as a social construct. Change in its meaning is evident in the transition from baroque to Bourbon Quito. During the first century of records analyzed (1678–1782), many individuals who from our modern-day perspective do not seem poor—such as landowners, merchants, and notable widows—penned petitions bemoaning their economic woes and drawing upon a long-standing, Christian, and paternalistic compact whereby the king was to aid his subjects.9 Their poverty was relative, grounded less in economic conditions than in their failure to live up to social expectations. Gender, race, class, and generational considerations structured their arguments of poverty. For this reason, landowners and the like could be considered poor according to unmet social aspirations. They were social poor, rather than economic poor.The number of petitioners seeking legal aid jumped between 1782 and 1783, from a mere 7 petitions to 23; I use this year as the separation point between early and later understandings of “solemn poor.” Some of this increase came from creoles who suffered the economic squeeze of a troubled economy and the strain of an increasingly intrusive state. Many creoles felt, and some actually were, poorer than before. The increase in petitions represents not just a rise in poverty, but also reflects the extension of this status more broadly to include the previously absent wretched ones (miserables), as nonwhite poor also began to seek this remedy. The late colonial era witnessed an opening of racial categories at the same time that the Bourbon reforms resulted in a closing or tightening of extralegal practices harmful to royal interests: a contradiction also evident in the legitimacy petitions (gracias al sacar) studied by Ann Twinam.10 This contradictory motion of opening up and closing down led to a paradox in social policy: white privilege eroded at the same that the state gained strength as guarantor of welfare. As nonwhites successfully petitioned for the status of solemn poor, we witness the subsequent undoing of the separate compacts upon which colonialism was built: the economic poor came to compete with the social poor for the same forms of poor relief. All the region’s poor could claim the status of solemn poor, not just poor whites.This inquiry complements studies into other aspects of poor relief under the Bourbon reforms. The surge of pobreza petitions paralleled state efforts to participate directly in the lives of the poor. At times, state relief measures partnered with ecclesiastical efforts, but in so doing, the state partially usurped the role of the church as principal caregiver to the needy. Though traditionally the monarch had paternalistically cared for weak vassals, it was not until the institutional fervor of the late eighteenth century that we witness the creation of tobacco factories to reform the slothful, poorhouses to shelter the poor and itinerant, and public granaries to feed the needy in times of famine in the cities of the empire.11 Several of these state-run institutions—such as the Montepíos pensions, Monte de Piedad pawnshops, and even the poorhouse—principally benefited the middle classes rather than the poorest of society.Quito’s creoles were not alone in seeking relief from poverty. A culture of begging dates back to conquistadores displeased with their rewards and the practice of providing evidence of merit (probanzas de mérito). For instance, when Bernal Díaz, an early encomendero of New Spain, wrote the crown complaining of his poverty, he did so in full seriousness. He expected more than a meager encomienda in the outlying region of Guatemala, and he thus saw himself poor in comparison with his central Mexican counterparts.12 So too perhaps felt Don Josef Quiñones y Cienfuegos in relation to his peers, one of whom was his brother, a lawyer for the audiencia. Seeking relief and exaggerating the gravity of need seemed part of the process of doing politics in the colonial era. Like other social measures, such as legitimacy petitions or legal dispensations, pobreza de solemnidad played a part in an increasingly legalistic culture of relief petitioning, as middling groups availed themselves of state relief.13 But Quito was perhaps distinct in how deeply its creole population felt a loss of wealth and lack of economic opportunity, especially in the highland region, as the eighteenth century wore on.According to eighteenth-century testimonies, the century before had been “more opulent” in Quito, and commentators remarked upon the increase and new faces among paupers.14 These new faces belonged not only to migrant Andeans or urban castas, but also (and unexpectedly) to members of the upper classes: this indebted elite, “reduced to poverty,” mortgaged their haciendas and sold their jewels, silverware, and family heirlooms. The capital city could not hide its misfortune. In 1735, Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa recounted that in the past, the city of Quito was found “in a much more flourishing condition than at present; the number of inhabitants being considerably decreased, particularly the Indians, whole streets of whose huts are now forsaken, and in ruins.”15 During the first decades of the eighteenth century, Quito’s share of the regional cloth trade dwindled in favor of more easily transportable textiles that poured into central and southern Andean markets.16 The cost of wheat and cane liquor rose in the mid- to late eighteenth century, though the general cost of food in Quito remained low.17 Officials’ complaints of poverty to the crown were nothing new.18 Yet somehow, after the turn of the century the cries seemed more poignant, desperate, and less hopeful, leading President Mon y Velarde, in 1790, to write that Quito gave “shocking testimony of its opulent past and present misery.”19 The misery was so great that Mon worried about imminent lower-class rebellion—not an unrealistic fear, considering the cross-class rebellion of the city’s population just a few decades earlier, partly in response to state reforms.20 Thus, we must understand changes to pobreza petitions within this context of economic loss, regional decline, and frustration with an ever-demanding state.We must also place the petitions for assistance within the long-standing practice of care for a community’s less fortunate members. By the eighteenth century, pobreza de solemnidad was a juridical affair, although it originally had religious connotations. According to Covarrubias, events that were “solemn” were those that were celebrated with much “authority” or “pomp” and included almsgiving to the community’s poor.21 The Diccionario de autoridades defines the “solemn poor” as those individuals who “suffered from total need and poverty and as such are forced to ask for alms in order to survive.”22 Similar to the “shamefaced poor” (vergonzantes), the solemn poor were integral to Christian practices of charity. However, unlike pobres vergonzantes, being declared “solemn poor” entailed official petitioning and recognition.23 Quite-ños who pursued official recognition of pobreza for their legal defense followed a long-standing avenue established to protect impoverished vassals from harmful aspects of a legal system that favored the more powerful.24 Thus, the solemn poverty of creole petitioners referred to a kind of “high poverty” or a “ceremonial poverty,” a very different condition from the economic impoverishment suffered by the Audiencia’s wretched, who, possessing neither honor nor merit, were not “solemn.” In the context of the eighteenth century, “de solemnidad” commented upon the character of petitioners (meaning their calidad and related attributes). As well, “de solemnidad” reflected the gravity of their situation, both their public impoverishment (as in “notoriously poor”) and the legal severity of the procedure to be recognized as such (that is, in accordance with legal formalities).25 With this wide range of meanings, the definition of pobre de solemnidad remained loose enough to allow the not-so-poor (and perhaps the not-so-solemn) to construct convincing arguments of poverty.The declarations of the solemn poor underscore the relative nature of poverty. Poverty, for the petitioners and the royal courts, depended upon perceived social expectations. In the Audiencia of Quito, as elsewhere in the Spanish colonies, this had much to do with Spaniards’ relations to other groups in colonial society. Don Josef Quiñones y Cienfuegos probably compared himself with other men of similar station, rather than to the wretched of the colony.26 That a well-placed gentleman (gente noble) would come before the courts and successfully prove his poverty points to an obvious characteristic of poverty: that it is a subjective, rather than absolute, condition. Just as the fiscal noted in Quiñones’s case, poverty did not apply solely to beggars, but more broadly those who lacked the means to defend their interests (even when their interests included slaves, haciendas, and vast commercial enterprises). Thus, claims for assistance were made based on the assumptions and aspirations of particular groups and communities within colonial society. In this light, what poverty meant for a Spaniard might not have been poverty for an Indian.Poverty was both a universal concept and a contingent one that reflected the politics of colonialism. Poverty served to separate people into different categories and functions. The trick, then, was for pobreza petitioners to present their poverty while also demonstrating that they were among the deserving poor. They did so in a number of ways: by explaining how they became poor, by showing that they were among the honorable poor, and by differentiating themselves from the urban plebe. Petitioners’ ability to prove poverty depended upon dividing practices such as race and gender. Thus, their petitions included a cocktail of metaphors ensconced in quasiracist, class-biased, and heavily gendered language to illustrate their merit and their right to assistance.The discourse of race that emerged in poverty petitions reflected poor creoles’ place in the colonial urban setting: a kind of middle ground between elite Spaniards and the pueblo bajo, or lower people. Only as “respectable folk” were poor creoles entitled to special legal dispensations, such as pobre de solemnidad. They thus had to prove that they were poor, but they also had to demonstrate that this poverty did not lower them into the mass of castas and Indians. It was a difficult high wire to traverse: poverty brought creoles closer to the nonwhite masses, having to labor and living in humble conditions. For instance, Baltasar Arias described himself as so poor that he did not have an “indio” to work for him, equating the use of one’s own labor power with being poor.27 Arias was part of the laboring poor just like an indio, but by emphasizing that he ought to have had his own servant, he emphasized his distinct position in the color/class hierarchy. Similarly, some Spanish women were so poor that they dressed como una india, “as an Indian.” The claimants’ hidden message was that poverty placed the organizational scheme of society in jeopardy—not even clothing could designate the difference between a Spaniard and an indigenous person.28 Don Julian Borja had seen Juan de la Cruz shoeless and dressed in an Andean poncho “for lack of means to dress more decently.”29 Witnesses similarly described Juan Apolinario Fernández. His bare feet and poncho made him hardly distinguishable from the Indians of the Pueblo de los Azogues with whom he was embroiled in litigation.30 These descriptions of labor and dress imply that an impoverished Spaniard became more like an “Indian.” In Quito, where the population of African descent was small, “Indian” represented the other pole distant from the Spanish elite.31Honor was one trait that separated the deserving poor from the general masses. Gendered honor codes bound men and women to a certain comportment and certain social responsibilities. Men who were in debt, landless, and sold their labor to survive needed to give evidence of honorable behavior in order to fit the category of solemn poor. For instance, the witness Pedro Torres carefully noted that Silvestre Calderón, who worked in a store, made his wages honorably (“assi mismo a pagado honnradamente”).32 Don Tomás Barsena, a Quiteño merchant, spoke highly of his colleague Don Joachin de Veras, who once owned a store in Latacunga.33 He recognized de Veras as proceeding honorably by repaying his creditors; moreover, de Veras suffered poverty by the ill effects of bad times, or contratiempos, and “was not at fault in any other way.” Don Joachin provided for himself through his industriousness and labor, both noteworthy attributes.These efforts to demonstrate one’s higher standing in the social (if not economic) hierarchy highlight the moral underpinnings of poor relief. To be pobre de solemnidad, one’s poverty must have resulted not through the fault of the supplicant but through an accident of fortune. Poverty could not be intrinsic to the person’s being. Many events might lead to poverty: low wages, large families, unemployment, illness, old age, abandonment, loss of property, and the like. Phrases such as contratiempos often explained these predicaments. For this reason, Don Joachin’s witness stated that Don Joachin was not at fault in his poverty. Likewise, the merchant Juan Hidalgo, in his lengthy opening letter, explained how miscalculations and bad times had left him broken and penniless, “remaining without means as a result of these known financial failures.”34Riches-to-rags tales are commonly found in the pobreza petitions and speak to a central purpose of such relief measures: to prevent the fall of Spaniards into poverty. These were not individuals accustomed to impoverishment but were rather the victims of bad luck or ill will. Take, for instance, the story of Ignacio Velázquez.35 According to Don Víctor de Roxas, who had known the petitioner for some 30 years, Velázquez had been a man of some fortune and bien puesto, “good station.” Unfortunately, since Velázquez had been imprisoned in Cali and Buga and all his goods impounded, his fortune had changed. Since then, in Quito, Reyes had seen Ignacio Velázquez as a poor forastero en suma orfandad, “an outsider, completely orphaned,” without means to pursue litigation. He walked around complaining of his unhappy luck. Another riches-to-rags man, Manuel de Jesus González Mas y Berugo, was a pauper through no action of his own. Once, González had been better off (“mejor desencia”) but because of the “contratiempos that happen to men,” he now lacked the means to meet his “matrimonial burden” and the needs of his “many children.”36 Others complained of being reduced to poverty, meaning that they were not accustomed to such scarcity and that this was not their lot in life.The sense of falling into poverty comes forward in comments relating petitioners’ social expectations and their reality.37 An honorable man would not attend mass without a cape. Indeed, standards of social decency appropriate to a particular station led charitable people to lend capes to fallen gentlemen, such as Francisco Guevara, who suffered this indignity.38 Don Tibursio Benites and his sisters fretted over the contradiction between their present state and their noble origin. Poverty had left them “exposed to soliciting food with grave stigma [nota] to the illustrious family.”39 Marcial Bravo saw himself as having succumbed to poverty, a contradiction to his status as an honorable Spaniard (peninsular):Poverty and honor did not necessarily contradict one another, as Marcial Bravo’s statement suggests. On occasion, a fiscal would refer to the “true poor” (verdaderamente pobres) and the “honorable poor.” Other petitioners placed themselves firmly within the realm of the honorable poor. Michaela Matute made her way from the Pueblo of Achambo (Chambo) in Riobamba to Quito with her husband’s permission. The sight of their pitiful lives caused their neighbors much sorrow. One witness, Don Juan Andino, stated that the Matute couple was known within their community as the “honorable poor.”41Poverty, however, did threaten honor by compromising one’s ability to meet gendered responsibilities. Luis de Arévalo, who was imprisoned for debt in a public jail, cried out that his poverty left him without the means to care for his wife and children—his obligation as an honorable paterfamilias.42 For reasons of “mercy and justice,” he requested assistance from the ministers and president of the audiencia. Antonio Mideros, also in prison for debts for 16 months, wrote a declaration in hopes of leaving his cell. In prison, he was unable to fulfill his familial obligations or pay back his creditors.43 Melchor Molina and his wife, María Augustina Suárez, pleaded that their total impoverishment was so great that they could not even feed their “horde of children, who were almost begging for daily sustenance.”44 Silvestre Calderón and Asencia Sánchez stated that their poverty left them without enough to support themselves, their children, and the rest of their family.45 We ask: support them at what level? Most likely this meant to the standards compatible with their social position as a respectable and honorable family.For Spanish women, the status of deserving poor hinged delicately upon proof of honor. A young, single woman should live under the protection of a patriarch. A widow ought to indicate her recogida (secluded) lifestyle. A married woman needed to defend her faithfulness. But what happened to poor women who, due to poverty, were forced into realms that threatened their honor? These women’s poverty resulted from the lack of a patriarch (or at least of an adequate one) and the lack of the economic and social means to protect themselves. How did such women establish both the facts of their poverty and the integrity of their honor when economic reality pushed them out of the confines of the patriarchal home and into the local economy? For instance, both María Catuña and Doña Bernarda Ballenas rented out their homes to boarders.46 Perhaps only their “good reputation” saved them from being viewed as madams. María Catuña earned what little she did as a seamstress and landlord, yet she remained so poor that “even her husband left her.”47For some, impoverishment hit swiftly. For example, the sisters Doña Juana and Doña Agustina Pobeda, and also Doña Paula Ordoñes, all found themselves suddenly impoverished by the loss of their male guardians, either through death or abandonment.48 As a consequence, Doña Ordoñes lay exposed to social opprobrium by publicly begging. Other women survived through more discreet forms of charity. According to Padre Fray Luis Cubillus, the modest, orphaned sisters Banegas persevered by alms and by their own labor of sewing and weaving in Cuenca. Their participation in the world of work did not bring their honor into question, though, since they remained homebound and of good behavior: “poor, orphaned damsels, secluded, leading honest lives,” commented the priest.49These women’s petitions veiled a threat that their dire economic situation could place their honor at further risk, an event that would be shameful not only for the women but for Quiteño society as a whole. That poverty would force women such as Doña Bernarda Ballenas into the streets to beg opened the door for them to further slide into the status of “public women,” nearly synonymous with prostitutes. Indeed, Doña Bernarda Ballenas was so destitute that she no longer owned a bed, and she had to sell her possessions, “even her undergarments.” Considering the precarious circumstances of poor, honorable women, it was in the interest of good government to aid poor women on the verge of moral corruption.50Gendered honor and race combined overtly in the construction of women’s arguments for poverty. Socially defined race influenced a woman’s ability to demonstrate her “shamefaced” poverty. Poor criollas, perhaps playing the trump card as the subsequent generations of “daughters of the conquistadores,” may have found it easier to prove their honor than casta women.51 However, the honor/shame scheme most likely did not reflect neatly non-elite lives; elite and popular notions of honor and good repute differed. For instance, a poor mulata washerwoman could possess a good reputation just as could a Spanish woman. Yet, the nature of that good reputation would have been different. Perhaps for the washerwoman it signified hard work, strength, and resolve. For a Span-ish woman, it meant leading a cloistered life—regardless of what did take place behind the high walls—and submissiveness.52Having noted that the honor/shame model may not have guided the actions of the poor in their daily lives, petitioners nevertheless used the language of honor and shame (just as they did race) to coax assistance. Drawing upon a common language and familiar arguments of social hierarchy and good governance, poor urban creoles adeptly maneuvered notions of calidad, race, and gender to defend themselves and their economic interests, as demonstrated in their pobreza petitions. In their declarations, common tropes of poverty (such as nakedness, hunger, lack of wealth, orphanhood, and begging) took on deeper, more embedded meanings. The creole pobres de solemndidad might be reduced to begging, but they were not vagabonds. They might be dressed in rags, but they were not Indians. They were poor because of hard times, but they were not poor due to choice or to vice. Their families joined in their suffering, yet they did not abandon their familial obligations. Poor women might be forced into public exposure, but they did not become “public women.” The point and counterpoint of their claims demonstrate their ruined state while at the same time separating them from the “undeserving” poor. In a social order based on difference and privilege, they were impoverished but still stood above the poor masses. And in granting them assistance due to their status, the royal courts recognized them as distinct and strengthened the social hierarchy of difference threatened by their economic downfall.By the late colonial period, the separate spheres of poor relief that pobreza de solemnidad served to bolster had begun to break down. With the general trend of “dark whites” entering into the category of españoles, and with the widespread impoverishment pushing creoles into the ranks of urban poor, we witness the collapse of two distinct relief measures for the Audiencia’s poor. A weakening colonial system buffeted pobreza de solemnidad.As already noted, pobreza de solemnidad originally favored the not-so-poor of colonial society. Of the 159 declarations of poverty between 1678 and 1782, most were penned by riches-to-rags pobres, imprisoned debtors, invalids, individuals burdened with large families, or women and dependents without patriarchs. They were Spanish in culture and habit. Though few petitions employed racial nomenclature prior to the 1780s, clues to their calidad include the use of honorific titles of don and doña, the status and titles of witnesses, and mention of dress and property or lack thereof. Petitioners had means to pens, paper, and scribes. In addition, though in theory pobreza petitions were free, auxiliary staff might levy fees until the matter was successfully resolved. The procedure could take many months or even years. Thus, the truly poor would not have been able to access this system.The location and legal imbroglios of petitioners further suggest that pobreza de solemnidad was intended for the not-so-poor urban residents of the province. Because of evidential requirements and the structure of colonial judicial system, pobreza was an urban measure, drawing most cases from cities and towns of the highlands. Out of the 159 petitions, 57 came from the city of Quito. Another 38 v
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