Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico (review)

Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico. By JUAN PEDRO VIQUEIRA ALBÁN. Translated by SONYA LIPSETT-RIVERA and SERGIO RIVERA AYALA. Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, 1999. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. xxii, 280 pp. Cloth, $55.00. Paper, $19.95.

In 1987 scholars and students of Mexican cultural history were greatly pleased to read the original Spanish version of this work. In many respects, the publication of Viqueira Albán's monograph marked a turning point in colonial cultural history and represented a shining example of the political and social information that can be gleaned from the study of popular diversions as diverse as the bullfight and the performance of jugglers. It now finally appears in a truly fine English translation for the benefit of non-Spanish speaking students and scholars of Latin American history and culture.

In this highly detailed and nuanced analysis, the author seeks to determine the nature of the much proclaimed (by historians) decline in propriety in New Spain during the eighteenth century. The author questions whether society changed at all and points to a Spanish and Creole elite who, under the guise of Enlightenment thought, could no longer tolerate the traditional social practices of the capital. He dedicates four hefty chapters to the analysis of evolving and occasionally conflicting Bourbon official policy towards the major public diversions of the era. For example, with their enlightened sensibilities, authorities deplored the bullfights as bloodthirsty and barbaric yet recognized their utility as major revenue generators. Although they banned the corrida, authorities were more than willing to revive the bullfight tradition when it could be utilized as a symbol of monarchical absolutism before local proponents of the Liberal Constitution of Cádiz. Viqueira Albán further documents how, in the name of modern comportment, popular religious festivals could be restricted and even abolished with the result that supposedly unseemly behavior could take place in the privacy of homes farther from the view of officials, even with new street lighting and neighborhood constables. Official policy regarding the theater, the pelota game, pulque consumption, city police, and urban planning, all are scrutinized within this book. The author ably demonstrates that Bourbon officials and allied local elites utilized regulations formulated for Spain and imposed them on capital inhabitants with little regard to local circumstances and traditions. More importantly, these elites, under the guise of the philosophical currents of the period, created spaces for themselves that were distinct from the lower orders. As the caste system failed to maintain their position, officials promulgated laws regulating some popular diversions to the point of oblivion, and relegating others to outside of the city limits or setting high admission prices for them, in an effort to shield themselves from the masses, while they enjoyed their fashionable European pleasures.

This work is provocative and well written although some of the chapters are overly dense and the small details regarding each pastime may seem tedious to some students. The majority of the information is culled from the Mexico City archives, secondary sources, and contemporary accounts, leaving the documents housed in the national archive for other scholars to review. Also it is for other scholars to investigate how the popular classes (or distinct representatives from those classes) may have responded to such regulations and the loss of their traditions. Furthermore, the elite are represented as a monolithic group obsessed with modernity and status, although some surely had a vested interest in preserving some of the these popular pastimes, for economic considerations if not for tradition's sake. Nonetheless, this is an excellent work, a necessary read for scholars and students alike, and it has opened the door for future research in the growing field of Mexican cultural history.

Linda A. Curcio-Nagy, University of Nevada-Reno

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