From Calpixqui to Corregidor

Abstract

It was more than 160 years from the Spanish conquest to the establishment of the first cotton obrajes, workshops in which cotton cloth was woven by European techniques under Spanish control (Bazant, 1964: 493). Throughout this period, women continued to produce cotton textiles in their households, following work patterns developed over three millennia. How did the Spanish colonists extract value from domestic cloth production during this interval? The economist Barbosa-Ramirez (1971: 86-87, 136-141) has pointed out that in the early colony a complex interrelation between Spanish and indigenous modes of production evolved in which the former dominated and modified the latter. However, historians have not explored this interrelationship closely with respect to cotton textile production and distribution. This article will examine the appropriation of surplus labor from indigenous women in the form of cotton textile products in the early colony, before any substantial obraje production of cottons had been instituted. Colonial sources show that domestic production of cotton textiles provided cloth for all sectors of society: for urban laborers and miners, rural cultivators, local indigenous elites, Spanish and creole households, churches, and hospitals. I therefore suggest that women's labor within their own households was an integral part of the colonial socioeconomic structure. We know that capitalist production for a mass market began with the manufacture of large quantities of cotton (as opposed to woolen or silk)