Writing by Caste, Counting the Past: Alphabetic Literacy and Age Consciousness in the Colonial Pátzcuaro Region, 1680-1750

In June of 1739, what might have proven to be a festive early-summer afternoon celebrating the fiesta of Corpus Christi in Pátzcuaro (Mexico), instantaneously veered toward deadly combat when a fight broke out in the streets near a commonly used well in the San Augustín neighborhood, close by where the Corpus procession passed. The turn to violence occurred when two groups of men settled an apparently petty dispute with physical measures that ultimately claimed one participant's life. Two Indian nobles, don Juan de Vargas and his nephew, Santiago Valerio, and a Spaniard, Joseph Ruíz (alias Alvarez), composed one party. Two coyotes, Augustín Calvillo and Matías Martínez Serrillo, and a mulatto, Juan Joseph de los Santos, made up the other. The men knew one and other prior to the argument, though it is impossible to glean from the criminal record of the event whether any festering rivalry played into the dispute. Available evidence suggests that Vargas' refusal to accept a sip of charape (a type of pulque) from Ruíz triggered the incident. This rebuff represented an affront that drew Calvillo, Martínez, and Santos into the fray, siding against the native nobles. In the ensuing upheaval, Valerio sustained a fatal stomach wound.¹

The multi-caste nature of those involved and the fact that Ruíz, Calvillo, and Martínez all worked together (as cowhands with varying degrees of responsibility for the regidor don Juan Andrés de Arza) hints at the rich cultural diversity that defined colonial Pátzcuaro, a small city nestled high in the mountains of Michoacán province. More specifically, the various descriptions of the event provided by the combatants and witnesses suggest some potentially significant connections between the witnesses' caste identity and their command of alphabetic literacy and age consciousness. The surviving Indian, don Juan de Vargas, spoke Spanish but chose to present his statement through don Pedro de la Cruz Nambo, Michoacan's interpreter general. Vargas recounted that he, Valerio, and Ruíz, left the barrio San Francisco during the "afternoon" to attend a wedding in San Augustín. Vargas closed by pegging his age at fifty years and not signing his statement, as he did not know how to do so. Ruíz (Alvarez), his companion that day, and a self-described Spaniard, said he left the hospital of the San Francisco convent with Vargas and Valerio during the afternoon in question, said he was thirty-five years old and, like Vargas, did not sign his statement.

All three of the other group made statements to criminal officials as well. The unlucky Calvillo gave his statement from Pátzcuaro's jail, where he had been deposited by the local alcalde after his apprehension, and Martínez and Santos gave theirs from the convent of San Augustín, where they remained under ecclesiastical sanctuary. Calvillo said that on Sunday, "sobre tarde" (during the afternoon), he was with Santos and Serrillo, fellow muleteers and "compañeros," when they ran into Ruíz (whom Calvillo disdainfully labeled "el presumido"), Vargas, and Valerio. Calvillo said he was "nineteen to twenty" years old and could not sign his name. Serrillo, who knew neither his age nor how to sign his name, said the events occurred "sobre tarde," an opinion shared by Santos, who found himself with his compañeros "in the afternoon." After insisting that he did not wound Valerio, Santos failed to seal his testimony with a signature. While none of the aforementioned actors in this lethal discord exhibited any ability to read or write, they described themselves using a range of caste labels and showed differing capacities to state their ages in annual measures reflecting the Gregorian calendar.

This case and others like it found in the Archivo Histórico del Ayuntamiento de Pátzcuaro (AHAP) facilitate investigation of the relationship between the self-evaluated caste of criminal court witnesses and their rates of alphabetic literacy and age consciousness. For purposes of this study, alphabetic literacy denotes the ability to sign one...