Page 182 - Mediterranea-ricerche storiche, n. 48, aprile 2020flip

182 Roberto Rossi

The Mexico City Poor House

The organization of the Mexican institution is drawn, in addition to
the will of the founder Fernando Ortiz Cortés, from the two cedulas
(bills) of 1776 by the sovereign Charles III of Spain and the following
year by the viceroy Antonio de Bucareli y Ursúa. According to these
documents, the administration of the Poor House was submitted to
the Real Junta of the Hospicio de Pobres presided by the viceroy and
composed of 7 members .
26
The organizational structure shown in figure 1 demonstrates the
administrative complexity of the Poor House and the rigid hierarchical
structure that submitted to the administrator the direct control of the
two main branches into which the institution was divided. An
assistant administrator who referred to the scribe, an accountant and
the secretariat coordinated the administrative part. On the other
hand, the inmates were controlled and organized by the mayordomo
who supervised all the activities of the prisoners and responded
directly to the administrator. Specialized artisans (master artisans)
coordinated the work activities of the inmates . The prisoners were
27
divided by sex and this separation is also recognized in the dual
organizational structure. The rectora was the superintendent of poor
inmates and she also coordinated their work through a master artisan.
The organization also included a doctor, a surgeon pharmacist, a
doctor and two chaplains. The chaplains held an important position
in the Poor House hierarchy, since religious indoctrination was also
considered by secular power as an indispensable tool for the control
and re-education of prisoners .
28

26 Agi, Audiencia de Mexico, vol. 2791, exp. 16ª, Expediente relativo a la fundación
en México de un hospicio, 1797.
27 The centralized organization of work, however, was not a prerogative of the Poor
Hospice. Since the seventeenth century, in Mexico there were widespread obrajes, textile
manufactures (wool and cotton) of private or public property that revolved around a
hierarchical organization of work and its division between production phases. Among
the abundant existing bibliography see: R. Salvucci, Textiles and Capitalism in Mexico:
An Economic History of the Obrajes, 1539-1840, Princeton University Press, 1987; M.
Miño Grijalva. Obrajes y Tejedores De Nueva España 1700-1810: La Industria Urbana y
Rural En Una Economía Colonial, 1st ed., Colegio De Mexico, 1998; J. Tutino, Making a
New World Founding Capitalism in the Bajío and Spanish North America, Duke University
Press, Durham, 2011.
28 S.M. Arrom, Containing the poor. The Mexico City Poor House cit. p. 66; M.C.
Sacristan, Locura y disidencia en el México ilustrado, El Colegio de Michoacan and
Instituto Mora, Zamora, 1994, pp. 107-113.

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