Black Market Capital - Andrew Konove

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western borders. The motivations for replacing the plaza’s market stalls with a new structure made of stone were fourfold: to reduce the risk of fire by replacing wooden stands with a more fire-resistant material; to improve the aesthetic appearance of the plaza, leaving it “free, spacious, uncluttered, and controlled”; to attract businesses that would increase tax revenues for the local government; and finally, to change the social composition of the vendors and customers who occupied the space.41 To achieve all of these goals, the first step was eliminating the Baratillo.

      Although the fire of June 1692 had destroyed or badly damaged the stores of the plaza’s more established merchants, it had less effect on the Baratillo, where the more portable nature of its stands made them easier to replace. The market appears to have been humming only a month after the riot, and by the summer of 1693 authorities were complaining of an “incomprehensible number of baratilleros” peddling their wares in the plaza “at all hours of the day.”42 In July of that year, Viceroy Galve complained that previous orders for the Baratillo’s closure “have not led to the just and proper extirpation of the Baratillo but instead have seemed a motivation for its expansion.”43 In August of 1693, the alcalde del crimen Don Gerónimo Chacón noted that the situation had gotten so out of hand that a policeman had been killed for trying to enforce the ban on the market.44 Since previous decrees had had little effect in closing the Baratillo, authorities now believed that they could eliminate it by depriving it of its central location and replacing it with a market of a completely different nature.45

      The project sought to turn the Plaza Mayor into a site worthy of its location at the center of Spanish power in North America. To that end, on December 30, 1694, King Charles II ordered the construction of an imposing new structure, an alcaicería (later known as the Parián), on the western side of the square—a much more ambitious undertaking than the Ayuntamiento’s original plan.46 The new stores, or cajones, would be large enough for the merchants to live in them with their families, which, the Crown believed, would help reduce the risk of fire. The greatest advantage, however, would come from the replacement of the Baratillo with a more reputable commercial institution. With merchants taking the place of baratilleros, “the Plaza will become more beautiful, safer, and the rents more stable.”47

      Half a century before New Spain’s Bourbon rulers embarked on a series of sweeping urban reforms in the capital, Spain’s last Habsburg ruler, a man historians have described as sickly and incompetent—anything but Enlightened—sought to achieve some of the same goals.48 The 1694 plan would transform the Plaza Mayor, turning chaos into order and a site of plebeian sociability into one fit for the city’s respectable classes.49 In his letter to Admiral Pez, Sigüenza y Góngora called the Plaza Mayor an “ill-founded village” and a “pigsty.” The Plaza Mayor, in his estimation, was no place for improvised markets for foodstuffs and second-hand goods: “Due to bad government, such stands have been permitted there (which, by nature, should be free and clear), making it so easily combustible.”50 A painting of the Plaza Mayor that Viceroy Galve commissioned before leaving office in 1696 sought to capture that vision—depicting a marketplace organized in neat rows and an alcaicería where well-dressed men and women could shop in comfort and style (see figure 1). Local and royal officials seemed to agree that Mexico City’s Plaza Mayor could no longer host such a disorderly and heterogeneous commerce. But removing the baratilleros and the other itinerant and semipermanent vendors from the main square would prove more difficult than those men imagined.

Konove

      THE PLAZA ERUPTS AGAIN

      On March 27, 1696, just before sunset, the alcalde del crimen Don Manuel Suárez Muñoz was attempting to remove vagabonds from the Baratillo, which continued to operate in the Plaza Mayor despite the earlier prohibitions.51 Inside the market, one of Suárez’s deputies spotted a man who had helped a prisoner escape from jail a few days earlier. As the deputies took this suspect, one Francisco González de Castro, into their custody, some students who were in the Baratillo demanded with “immodest voices, almost like plebes” that Suárez and his men let González go, for he too was a student.52 From there, the situation deteriorated. The students snatched the prisoner from Suárez and set fire to the whipping post located in the market, which authorities had placed there “to terrorize the baratilleros,” nearly causing the whole plaza to go up in flames as it had four years earlier. The interim viceroy of New Spain, Juan Ortega y Montañéz, perhaps mindful of his predecessor’s absence during the 1692 riot (Galve supposedly hid in the Convent of San Francisco while the plaza burned), left the palace that evening to personally oversee the efforts to restore order in the market and apprehend the aggressors.53

      The incident produced a flurry of correspondence as officials attempted to determine what, exactly, had happened that day and who was responsible. The viceroy, who served simultaneously as archbishop of Mexico, became engaged in a heated, months-long exchange with the rector of the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico, Juan de Palacios. The viceroy was furious that a group of students preparing to join the clergy had acted with such “grave indecency”—men who in their hair and clothing styles “imitated their inferiors.”54 Ortega y Montañéz complained that, “in their clothes and long hair these men looked secular, profane, anything but disciples.”55 Given their appearance and comportment, how could Suárez and the alcaldes of the criminal court have known that their attackers were students? Ortega y Montañéz urged the rector to adopt stricter dress codes for his students to avoid this type of confusion in the future. He also reminded Palacios of the entrance requirements that he expected the rector to uphold: no one whose parents or grandparents had appeared before the Inquisition, nor anyone who had “any note of infamy” attached to his name could enter the university. Most importantly, blacks, mulattos, chinos, and slaves of any ethnicity were strictly prohibited so that “the evil races do not pervert those of a better nature.” The viceroy was careful to make an exception for Indians, “who, as free vassals of His Majesty can and should be admitted”—an opportunity that existed on paper but in practice was rarely extended.56

      As the investigation into the student uprising progressed in the spring of 1696, it became increasingly unclear whether the instigators were, in fact, students. Eyewitness testimony at first confirmed Suárez’s initial impression that his attackers attended the university, but other witnesses were less sure of the men’s identity. Both Juan de Morales, a Spanish iron vendor in the Baratillo, and Andrés Martínez, a free mulatto who also sold in the market, stated that they could not see well enough to say for sure whether the men were students. Martínez noted that the vagabonds who lingered around the Baratillo often “took the name of students in order to commit similar crimes … and get away with them.” Fernando Suárez, another vendor, echoed this last point, telling officers from the criminal court that he doubted the offenders attended the university because he had never before seen students “attempting to impede Justice,” as those who freed the prisoner had done on March 27.57 Within a few months of the incident, Spanish authorities had determined that the offenders were not students after

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