Power, Class, and Family: Men and Women in the Mexican Elite, 1750-1810

Abstract

This essay explores the social relations within a landed elite—the dominant class in eighteenth-century Mexico. It aims to outline the nature of the powers that sustained that elite, to determine who directly exercised those powers, and to detail the relations between those pivotal powerholders and the remaining majority of elite class members. My primary concern, then, is the relationship between elite power and class membership.That, in turn, brings atttention to the roles of elite men and women, and the relations between them. Powerholders were usually men while class membership was shared equally between men and women. Was the internal structure of the elite thus based on sexual stratification? Were men able to be powerful and thus wealthy, while women could be wealthy only through subordination to a powerful man? To a great extent, that was true. But the majority of men within the Mexican elite were also wealthy while subordinate to a powerful man. And in a few notable cases, elite women exercised great power while men and women lived as their dependents. Sex was not the only principle of stratification among late colonial Mexican elites. Rather, sexual differentiation interacted with inequalities primarily based on economic power. This essay attempts to study the relations between economic power and sexual differentiation to approach an understanding of life within the late colonial landed elite in Mexico.