Page 174 - Mediterranea-ricerche storiche, n. 48, aprile 2020flip

174 Roberto Rossi

The Hospicio de Pobres of Mexico City

The creation of Mexico City Poor House coincides with the start of the
reformist policies of the Bourbon monarchy of Spain. The idea of
rationalizing the administration of the state by overcoming an inadequate
organization of the Ancien Regime now involved many aspects of public
life both in the motherland and in the viceroyalty. As in the case of
Palermo, even the Bourbons of Spain had a very clear model of a
productive and well-ordered society, certainly more responsive to the
economic transformations that were characterizing the eighteenth
century. In this sense, the philanthropy that had always characterized
the welfare activity in Europe had to be combined with a disciplinary
mechanism. Mexico City and all greatest cities of Spanish America, since
their foundation, benefited from presence of hospitals – settled by
religious orders or by noblemen – that had the twofold duty of health
assistance and poor relief. However, even in these cases, these were small
and non-specialized structures closer to the model of a medieval hospital
than of a modern hospice or workhouse.
Therefore, the new institution had at the same time to help the
poor, repress poverty and prevent it, overcoming a model that, in the
past, had largely superimposed assistance and care. During the
second half of the eighteenth century, in Mexico City were established
four new welfare / disciplinary institutions . Two ecclesiastics turned,
9
above all to the assistance of disadvantaged social groups such as
orphans and single mothers and two lay the Poor House and the Monte
de Piedad (Pawn Shop) . The entire project was based on the
10
consideration that education and work were the essential elements for
the economic and social progress of the country. In some ways, the
regulation of the poorer classes – often composed by vagabonds,
beggars, and individuals from rural areas – reflected and referred to
the transformations of the world of work . In this context, the
11
traditional mode of artisanal production based on uncertainty of
production times and contiguity of space with non-productive
activities was gradually but inexorably supplanted by the production

9 S.M. Arrom, Containing the poor. The Mexico City Poor House, 1774-1871, Duke
University Press, Durham, 2000, pp. 14-21.
10 J. Abadiano, Establecimientos de beneficencia: apuntes sobre su orígen y rélacíon
de los actos de su junta directiva, Imprenta de la Escuela de Artes y Oficios, Mexico City,
1878; D.S. Chandler, Social Assistance and Bureaucratic Politics. The Montepiós of
Colonial Mexico 1767-1821, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1991.
11 M. Gonzalez Navarro, La pobreza en Mexico, El Colegio de México, Mexico City,
1985; M.C. Scardaville, (Hapsburg) law and (Bourbon) order: State Authority, Popular
Unrest, and the Criminal Justice System in Bourbon Mexico City, «The Americas», vol. 50,
n. 4, 1994, pp. 501-525.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XVII - Aprile 2020
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)