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Hispanic American Historical Review 80.2 (2000) 350-351



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Book Review

La administración de temporalidades y haciendas en Chihuahua colonial, 1767-1820

Colonial Period

La administración de temporalidades y haciendas en Chihuahua colonial, 1767-1820. By H. Bradley Benedict B. Mexico City: Casa Londres, 1998. Maps. Tables. Figures. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xiv, 212 pp. Paper.

This book is a slightly revised version of the author's 1970 doctoral dissertation written at the University of Washington, and it examines the administration of ex-Jesuit [End Page 350] holdings in Chihuahua from the order's expulsion through the end of the colonial period. Rural and urban properties supported Jesuit missionary work among the Tarahumara and the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Loreto in the town of San Felipe el Real (today the city of Chihuahua). The administrator of the temporalidades in Chihuahua, assisted by a municipal junta comprised of leading local citizens, managed the lands and livestock belonging to the missions, the haciendas Tabaloapa and Dolores, the Colegio's physical plant and library, and a few urban rental properties and liens, along with three haciendas owned by the Colegio de San Pedro y San Pablo in Mexico City.

Apache attacks, political upheavals, outstanding debts attached to the haciendas, and the generally precarious economy of the region contributed to the failure of these properties to yield significant revenues. Despite the crown's intent that all confiscated Jesuit properties be sold at auction in timely fashion, in Chihuahua only the hacienda Tabaloapa passed into private hands until after independence. Administrative ineptitude at the local level made the situation even worse, especially in the period from 1767 to 1790. Thereafter management of the temporalidades in Chihuahua fell to the more capable hands of Juan José Ruiz de Bustamante, a prominent miner and civic leader in San Felipe el Real, who held the post until his resignation in 1820.

Based heavily on documents from the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City, especially the temporalidades section and the Archivo Histórico de Hacienda, this book is a classic institutional study with all of the strengths and shortcomings of the genre. The book's very organization, with chapters dedicated to each successive administrator, reflects this perspective. Benedict gives extensive coverage to each man's accomplishments and foibles, as well as his relations with higher authorities in Mexico City and Madrid. The financial fate of each property receives meticulously detailed treatment in the text and in numerous graphs and tables. Future scholars working on the economic history of late colonial Chihuahua will find this information particularly helpful.

Other sections also speak to questions of current concern in the field. Benedict offers, for example, interesting but brief discussions of hacienda labor, the rapid deterioration of the missions' economic base after 1767, and the formation of legally constituted pueblos by residents of two of the rural estates. Regrettably, however, he has made relatively little attempt to place the administration of the temporalidades in a wider social and economic context. Moreover, he fails to bring the work up-to-date by not engaging many relevant studies on northern New Spain and on late colonial haciendas that have been published in the last three decades.

This volume is flawed by numerous grammatical errors and awkward literal translations from the English that will distract and confuse native speakers of both languages. Anyone with a basic reading knowledge of academic English would do better to consult the original dissertation or the various articles that the author published on the subject in the 1970s.

Cheryl E. Martin
University of Texas at El Paso

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