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Black Market Capital. Andrew Konove
Читать онлайн.Название Black Market Capital
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780520966901
Автор произведения Andrew Konove
Издательство Ingram
In another case, from 1819, Ángel Ramírez, an indio ladino (or Indian fluent in Spanish) and Victoriano Sánchez, a Spaniard, were charged with breaking into a woman’s home and stealing four black tunics, three shawls, a shirt, and a tablecloth. The police caught the men as they attempted to sell some of the clothes to a trader in the Baratillo for ten pesos. Ramírez assured the authorities of his innocence, claiming that he was selling the clothes on behalf of another man, a common defense. Sánchez, for his part, claimed he was in the Baratillo not because he was involved in any crime, “but rather to find a woman named Guadalupe whom he says he had seen pass through the Baratillo around this time, because he needed to see her”—an explanation the police quickly dismissed.34
These cases illustrate how Mexico City’s shadow economy transcended ethnic divisions, bringing individuals from diverse backgrounds together in the business of illicit commerce. They also reveal the geographic reach of that trade, which drew in people like Pineda, who lived in the capital’s hinterlands.35 And they hint at the important social role the Baratillo played in the city. More than just a place to buy and sell, it was a point where men and women from across the city and beyond also gathered to gossip, flirt, and exchange ideas. Authorities worried about those types of interactions, too. Colonial officials repeatedly complained that the Baratillo attracted an unholy mélange that engaged in illicit transactions that extended beyond trading in stolen goods.
The Baratillo also attracted vendors who businesses violated moral and religious laws. Prostitutes gathered there, and, authorities complained, “under the shadow of darkness, sins of sensuality” abounded.36 The market attracted other vices, too, such as gambling, which colonial authorities repeatedly outlawed.37 On a number of occasions, vendors in the Baratillo came before Mexico’s Inquisition for crimes against the faith. In 1751, the mestiza María del Castillo appeared before the tribunal for practicing witchcraft in the Baratillo Chico—using her supposed powers to save people’s souls, make them fall in love, improve their luck in cockfights, “and other such stupidities.”38 As the location of a number of bookshops, the Baratillo Grande was an emporium of dangerous ideas. In 1768, a Spanish poet went before the Inquisition for writing, publishing, and selling a “libelous ballad” criticizing the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish America the previous year.39 In 1791, the Tribunal accused another Spanish bookseller in the Baratillo of “propositions,” for telling people that monks and friars served no purpose.40 To their critics, the baratilleros trafficked not only in pilfered goods but also in seditious thought and moral perversions.
Yet, even as authorities prosecuted some economic exchanges in the Baratillo vigorously, they condoned others. The mere act of collecting rent from vendors in the Baratillo, which the Ayuntamiento did throughout the market’s history, conferred a degree of legitimacy on its businesses. Officials also participated directly in extralegal activities in the Baratillo by accepting gratificaciones, the tips or bribes that vendors paid local officials to transfer ownership of a business in the plaza and expedite other bureaucratic processes.41 On at least one occasion, officials contradicted standing prohibitions of the Baratillo by acknowleding the baratilleros’ right to practice their trade. In 1777, the regidor (city councilman) Don Thomás Fernández sought to remove the the baratilleros who trafficked in used iron goods in the Plaza Mayor. His argument was the familiar one: its vendors were selling keys, nails, knives, and other implements that servants had stolen from their masters’ homes, in addition to prohibited weapons. This activity gave rise to “drunkenness, stupidity, and other vices” from which the “miserable people” suffered. Fernández acknowledged that the trade in stolen goods required both vendors and customers, and the latter were far from innocent, because they bought “knowing that those pieces [had been] stolen.”42 Fernández’s complaint resulted in a new ordinance, in May 1778, from the fiel ejecutoría, the branch of the Ayuntamiento responsible for enforcing consumer laws, stating that the sale of new or used iron in the Baratillo was a violation of guild regulations.43
Yet the city stopped short of removing the vendors’ mesillas altogether, as Fernández had wanted. In fact, the plaza judge determined, in a June 1785 report, that doing so would violate King Philip III’s original 1611 decree granting petty vendors the right to practice their commerce in the Plaza Mayor and the Mexico City Ayuntamiento the authority to collect rent from them. Municipal officials, the judge concluded, would have to find new ways of preventing the “inconveniences” these vendors caused. He added, with a note of resignation, that “even if the puestos and mesillas are exterminated, with the hardware, iron, and tin shops remaining open, the evil-doers will never lack a place to buy and sell” their stolen goods.44
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