The Many Meanings of Poverty: Colonialism, Social Compacts, and Assistance in Eighteenth-Century Ecuador (review)

Cynthia Milton's book is a rigorous historical work that treats a complex topic: poverty in colonial Ecuador. It is a refreshing study of Quiteño popular sectors and the way they were represented from above, mainly by colonial authorities and institutions of the time. The central argument is that "colonialism necessitated many meanings of poverty, corresponding to the principle of a socio-racial hierarchy," and that idea is developed in the context of dynamics that affected the continuity of the colonial system, mainly the transition from Habsburg to Bourbon rule in eighteenth-century Quito. The exploration of negotiation over symbolic spaces in reference to colonial governance and the different meanings of poverty are very appealing. Nevertheless, one wonders whether the negotiation of symbolic space was determined exclusively by the needs of the Crown, its institutions, and its officials, or whether it involved other processes of empowerment and rapid change in response to native peoples' demands of, and resistance to, colonialism.

The first part of the book is dedicated to the city and people of Quito. There, conflict developed around the ideas of ethnic differentiation, which produced a conceptualization of poverty in contexts of migration and disorder that drew the attention of Crown officials. From the second chapter onward, we follow the strategies of the judicial construction of robbery, beggary, vagrancy, and other behaviour associated with poor inhabitants. It is interesting how this was evolving from purely aid policies during the Habsburg regime towards more "modern" conceptions of control oriented to workers, or potential workers, whose integration into the systems of production was a priority. Bourbon policies towards the poor paid more attention to this integration and less to the correction of their diminished moral standards.

The book shows us how the definition of poverty at the time was used mainly as an excuse for the elites to reproduce and consolidate colonial hierarchies and to legitimize their position of power through paternalistic behaviour, articulated of course to religious discourses. It is not surprising that the poor whom Milton studies are not always the real poor, the pobreza de solemnidad, the misérables, but also individuals from more privileged groups who had lost some benefits expected in their social rank. The distinction between the economic poor and the social poor is a brilliant interpretative resource. What is also interesting in the cases selected is the contrast Milton offers on the coexistence of the colonial pact with the racial hierarchies of work at the time, the reason it is possible to differentiate pobres notorios and pobres económicos and even the pathétic. Only at the end of the eighteenth century did the economic poor become, according to Milton, the social poor, thanks to the importance of the principles of charity. At the same time, she explains, the colonial order changed with the disappearance of ethnic criteria of differentiation, and privileges rested on the same criteria of duty and honour.

Widows and children, who comprise the subject of the third and fourth chapters, were identified in terms of their judicial incapacity. Girls and boys were not perceived as equal by the Crown. The first were minors who needed protection; the second were young adults who tried to avoid paying tribute. When describing the role of widows, following works such as Nathalie Zemon Davis's Fiction in the Archives for the European case, the author shows how they manipulated the language and rituals of the colonial system to gain access to benefits. Milton refers to the patriarchal duties of the King immersed in the colonial pact that permitted those women to use tradition to impose subjective perceptions on their poverty and eventually to get access to pensions. But what about more general discussion on issues of moral economy that opened so many questions about universes of reciprocity as well as horizontal, not just vertical, issues of domination and social control? Paternalism, as a fragile...