A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and Governance in Mexico City, 1750-1920

5. Positivist Housekeeping: Domesticity, Work, and Consumer Credit, 1880-1910

five Positivist Housekeeping Domesticity, Work, and Consumer Credit, 1880–1910 In her 1887 memoir Face to Face with the Mexicans, American visitor Fanny Gooch Chambers commented on numerous ‘‘public charitable institutions ’’ in Mexico City. Her opinion of the Monte de Piedad was high; she thought it ‘‘one of the noblest benefactions, enabling those whom misfortune has visited to realize or receive advances upon valuables without the risk of losing them. These pawnshops exist all over the country, and all classes can avail themselves of their advantages.’’∞ In contrast Spanish resident Julio Sesto lamented the sight for sore eyes that casas de empeño owned by his compatriots presented to visitors in 1909, with ‘‘dirty clothes, above all, which makes one sick (da asco) to see hanging in the view of the public. Clearly this obeys the general needs of the moment in an unequal society, where each person pawns what they have; but if the pawnbroker was not [himself ] dirty, accepting, in his quest for profit, unattractive collateral (prendas indecorosas), the ugly aspect of these establishments could be avoided along with the danger of contagion that these infernal caverns enclose.’’≤ Visitors to Mexico City during the reign of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1910) regularly commented on both the wonderful service provided by the Monte de Piedad and the seedy character of neighborhood pawnshops . Most commentators on collateral-credit practices emphasized the poor and illicit character of pawning, although—as Fanny noted—people of all classes benefited from temporarily hocking private possessions in the public world of commerce and charity. Indeed, as levels of consumption by individuals and within households kept pace with the modernizing and scientific emphasis of the Porfirian years, consumer credit continued to be an everyday need in proletarian neighborhoods and middle-class suburbs across the expanding city. Positivist Housekeeping 151 This chapter picks up the demand side of the collateral-credit story during the positivist liberal reign of Díaz. Drawing on inventories from casas de empeño and branch o≈ces of the Monte de Piedad as well as extensive travel and memoir literature, fiction, and newspapers, it considers the degree to which the material culture of the city changed, including an increasing attention to household decoration; changing clothing fashions, with clothing itself losing collateral value; and the adaptation of modern appliances. Empeños and Monte branches in the city center and in new middle-class neighborhoods served a clientele who lived comfortably, while those on the outskirts lent against more humble collateral. The dynamics of housekeeping, especially the roles played by domestic servants and ‘‘commercial housekeepers’’ such as laundresses, seamstresses, and food vendors, continued to shape the material lives and public identities of the working class and an emergent middle class.≥ The chronic need for collateral lending continued among housekeepers despite political stability . The heralded liberal development of Porfirian capitalism did not alleviate pocketbooks of most city residents, though it did alter the gendered labor market somewhat. Long accustomed to shaping material life in the city, household women saw legal frameworks for and discourse about gender relations changing, while material goods that were ‘‘prime essentials of a well-arranged home . . . [placed] with the careful forethought of the housewife’’ also changed. Perhaps those who saw the least change were poorer women depending on collateral-credit services to provision families , the typical ‘‘unfortunate woman’’ of newspaper editorials turning to the Monte de Piedad branches or facing humiliation exacted by pawnbrokers in order to get more for her collateral, ‘‘representing all of her hopes.’’∂ Liberalism and Domesticity After a tumultuous fifty years of republican rule, Mexican politics settled down under the firm rule of Díaz, military hero of the resistance to the French intervention turned liberal statesman. Since the Reform of midcentury , liberal legislation had been expanding individual liberties, especially in economic terms. Protection of ‘‘private property’’ went further during the Porfiriato, with the amount of property in the hands of some individuals increasing substantially. As part of this protection, the double standard on adultery safeguarded the inheritance system based on legitimate heirs. Other changes in family law served to disinvest some women of means of their property. 152 Positivist Housekeeping The Civil Codes of 1870 and 1884 allowed couples to choose whether to marry under separate or community-property systems. The statesmen writing the 1870 Civil Code o√ered the separate-property regime as an improvement for...