Containing the Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774–1871

Abstract

Silvia Marina Arrom provides a well-researched and thorough picture of the ultimately failed efforts of the state, the church, and private philanthropists to aid Mexico City’s legitimately needy, while forcing undeserving vagrants to either work or face internment. Arrom traces the changes of the Poor House experiment’s goals from the late eighteenth to late nineteenth century and how both its administration and residents influenced its function and the populace it served. Arrom’s study denies the conventional periodization of Mexican history and instead bridges the colonial and national periods. Furthermore, Arrom argues that the differentiation between heroes and villains in Mexican political histories proves overly simplistic.Arrom pieces her study together using archival sources from Seville, Mexico City, and Salt Lake City, as well as various newspapers and secondary materials. Michel Foucault and the social control school influenced her analysis, which was initially meant to serve as a “Latin American example of the state mobilizing its coercive powers against a disorderly populace” (p. 3). The finished book moves beyond the preliminary works of Gabriel Haslip-Viera and Moisés González Navarro, highlighting the differences between the Poor House’s proposed goals and the way it functioned in reality. Although the experiment sought to improve social control in Mexico City, it was less rigid than Foucault’s asylum.Arrom opens with a broad examination of the problem of beggars and vagrants in Mexico City from 1774 to 1871 and within this context details the establishment of the Poor House. The experiment heeded dual and somewhat contradictory initial aims: a campaign against mendicity and a charity project for the deserving poor. The Poor House reflected a late-eighteenth-century watershed, when enlightened reformers sought to transform traditional charity into more rational poverty relief by disciplining beggars and forcing them to work. The Poor House initially flourished, but by 1800 it faced financial difficulties and resistance from the poor. In 1806 it was reorganized into four departments: the Patriotic School, the Department of Worthy Paupers, the Department of Correction, and the Department of Secret Births. This marked a turning point that undermined its original goals. The new departments specifically targeted white paupers and prevented their downward social movement, thus reinforcing a social hierarchy based on white privilege. Additionally, they received fewer adults and more children. Independence and the early republican years brought material hardship and increased attention to the needs of Poor House employees. The Department of Worthy Paupers, guided by the Poor House’s original goals, shrank and became a part of the expanding Patriotic School. This signaled the end of the original social project and an increased focus on educating poor children, who represented potential paupers. While many historians tout the accomplishments of the liberal state, Arrom argues it failed to improve the Poor House and “instead of replacing caridad with beneficiencia, the Reforma merely undermined the already faltering welfare system, and left little in its place” (p. 227). Arrom credits the Second Empire, specifically Charlotte, wife of Maximilian I, with contributing most significantly to the Poor House. Charlotte feminized social welfare and inspired women to expand their roles in caring for the poor. Arrom discredits the notion that the Restored Republic’s liberal reforms helped the Poor House. Benito Juárez’s administration could not accommodate the large numbers of those in need, and the Poor House sank deeper into ruin.Arrom’s study is more than an innovative perspective of a project to eliminate begging in Mexico. It demonstrates the importance of Mexico City’s poor and the persistent problem they posed for leaders in both New Spain and Mexico, a problem that resonates even today. Arrom provides a window into the life of people seldom captured by history. While most of the Poor House residents did not leave personal traces, Arrom’s careful research draws them from the historical record. She uses municipal censuses to detail the ethnicity, gender, and social class of the inmates. She uses a daily register book to describe those forced into the Poor House and those turned away. She describes the work that both inmates and employees performed. When possible, she details the inmates’ opinions of the treatment they received. Her study demonstrates that the Poor House residents not only negotiated the function of the institution but also influenced its demise. The book contributes to an understanding of how different social classes lived and interacted in Mexico City and serves as a model for further studies on experiments of social control, charity projects for the poor, and the negotiations that lower classes used to control their own lives.