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chapter 8 Caste and Class in the Urban Context G Colonial Spanish-American society was organized by imperial policy into castes, as we have seen, but it was also divided into socioeconomic classes through the actions of the marketplace, even when this was distorted in favor of some and to the prejudice of others. Classes formed within the castes. Among whites, for instance, some were very rich, some were very poor, and they were not in the same socioeconomic class. Similarly, among the free colored some had achieved wealth and social status manifestly higher than others. Notwithstanding legal discrimination and racial snobbery , the dynamic of the economy sometimes breached the restrictive caste system, especially where the economy flourished and employment was widely available. class and class interest From the very beginning of the colonial period Spanish Americans were politically active, not through the operation of political parties, legislative assemblies, and generalized suffrage, but through corporate and individual petition. When guildsmen and women, merchants, public market sellers, water carriers, street vendors, grocers, and others petitioned authorities for privilege or redress of grievance, they were contributing to an evolving class interest.1 Nevertheless, both evolving and mature classes (those capable of acting with political coherence) manifest differing intramural interests. Thus, textile manufacturers might desire a protective tariff but want cheap imports of cotton, while local cotton producers might demand a protective tariff against both cheap imports of cotton and cheap imported textiles. Urban artisans nominally desired restricted production and high prices for 103 the colonial spanish-american city their goods, while neighbors of ostensibly the same social and economic class would have benefited from greater domestic production and more imported goods. Such was the case in Buenos Aires toward the end of the eighteenth century. When the master shoemakers of Buenos Aires formed a guild during the 1790s, their ordinances attempted to prohibit the sale of locally produced shoes anywhere but in their stores. The problem was that the grocers (pulperos ) made a practice of selling ready-made locally produced cheap shoes in their stores. The guild ordinances stipulated that only eight (or possibly more) grocery stores in various parts of the city should be permitted to sell such cheap shoes. All other grocers (there were several hundred others) would have to liquidate their inventories within two months after the restriction was published; thereafter any shoes they still held would be con- fiscated. The viceroy approved the restriction—yet another one imposed on the grocers. After two months, more than two hundred pairs of shoes had been seized. The grocers did not object to the restriction against the sale of cheap shoes in their stores, only to the short period allotted for liquidation of their inventories. In arguing their point, the grocers reiterated the central and great social benefit they provided: they offered cheap goods to the public on credit. The grocers ‘‘sold these shoes to the public, especially the poor, as a wellrecognized benefit, since we did not require full and immediate payment.’’ The grocers and the shoemakers reached an accord whereby there would be compensation for the confiscated shoes. In 1799, however, when the attorney for the Buenos Aires city council argued against the formation of the white and colored shoemaker guilds, one of his points was that the shoemakers’ attempt to deny the grocers the right to sell ready-made shoes would deprive the public of cheap shoes.The city council refused to approve the guilds, and that ended the matter. There is a bit more to this. The grocers not only sold cheap ready-made shoes but supplied some shoemakers with materials and purchased the finished product at a predetermined price.2 Obviously there was a conflict of interest between the master shoemakers and the grocers, yet in any meaningful sense many of them were in the same socioeconomic class. Furthermore, the interests of the master shoemakers were not always convergent with those of the journeymen, especially those who established their businesses without having taken or passed the appropriate exams and perhaps were among those who ‘‘manufactured’’ cheap shoes for the grocers. Restrictive monopoly and free entrepreneurial enterprise were in conflict in late colonial Buenos Aires, and we need to know much more about this throughout the colonies. 104 caste and class in the urban context Differing economic interests within what would appear to be a single class in an undifferentiated analysis are again exemplified by...

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