The Lizardi Brothers: A Mexican Family Business and the Expansion of New Orleans, 1825–1846

Throughout much of the twentieth century, diplomatic and economic historians of the antebellum United States defined and dominated the fields of hemispheric relations and American capitalism, respectively. In recent years, however, cultural historians of the antebellum United States have turned their attention to the role of the U.S. South in the broader exchange of peoples, ideas, and goods. Historians using innovative literary approaches address questions of race and identity in connecting the U.S. South to Latin America and beyond, while scholars of the “new” history of capitalism aim to deepen our understanding of the business of slavery in southern economic development.¹ These two fields at times converge on the subject of empire, as the Gulf Caribbean is ever more frequently characterized as the “American Mediterranean” by U.S. as well as Cuban historians.² Indeed, no analysis of the antebellum United States is complete without integrating perspectives from the southern neighbors themselves—that is, by looking from south to north, rather than reflexively from north to south. In particular, the rapidly changing political and economic landscape of Mexico in the early nineteenth century impacted in highly significant ways the expansion of the U.S. South’s premier port, New Orleans. A Mexican family business, the Lizardi Brothers, was at the center of key financial transactions in New Orleans in the 1830s and 1840s. Through the family’s transnational business activities in the Americas and Europe, the Lizardi connected New Orleans to Texas, to Mexico and Cuba, and to the Gulf Caribbean and the Atlantic world more generally during this transformative period in the development of global capitalism.

The port of New Orleans played a prominent role in the economic development of the antebellum South and the United States, a role far more complex than just as a point of deposit for the trans-Mississippi Valley.³ By the 1830s and early 1840s, the city’s exports matched or surpassed those of New York in value, although the value of New Orleans’s imports remained far below those of eastern cities.⁴ The peculiar nature of these imports, especially specie, had monetary implications that far exceeded the absolute size of the import trade and that affected the economy of the nation. Silver specie was a significant component of the U.S. domestic money supply and a source of reserves to the banking system. Because much of the specie arriving in New Orleans originated in trade with Mexico and Spanish Cuba, the nature, mechanisms, and merchant families associated with this exchange take on a special significance.

Among the chief participants in this trade was the Lizardi family, who originated in Veracruz, Mexico. Strikingly, the Lizardi maintained their involvement in the United States even as they functioned as major financiers to the First Mexican Republic (1824–1835), also known formally as the Federation. Since money is fungible, the profits that the Lizardi gained from their activities in Mexico financed and supported their activities in New Orleans. For this reason, the Lizardi and their Mexican connections deserve particular attention.⁵ With the exception of Antonio López de Santa Anna, with whom the Lizardi had an intimate connection, there were no Mexicans of greater importance for the United States in the 1830s and early 1840s than the Lizardi family. They were an integral part, however briefly, of the history of capitalism in the United States, especially during the Panic of 1837, the most disruptive financial crisis of the antebellum U.S. economy. Although historians of the United States often mention the Lizardi and their importance, Mexican history and its sources, on the one hand, and the local records of Louisiana, on the other, allow for a fuller understanding of the family’s origins, activities, and influence during this critical period.

While focusing on the Lizardi places Mexico and Mexican players firmly at the center of local, regional, national, and international dealings, the family’s deliberately opaque actions and sketchy records are obstacles to producing a complete picture of their complex...