As you know by now, Mexican history if my thing. Two years ago I published my second book, and since then I have been researching another aspect of Mexican history. This time I have narrowed the focus to the silver mining town of Taxco in the seventeenth century, drawing on the parochial records which are now available online. I have come across a question which has been puzzling me. I wonder if any of my blog readers could suggest interesting ways to address the question, or even solutions. There follows some background to the question, and then the question itself. Suggestions by email or via the comment feature on the blog please.
CONTEXT
20 January 1685 was a big day in Taxco, a silver mining town, by modern roads about 170kms or so southwest of Mexico City, for the Archbishop of Mexico, Don Francisco de Aguiar y Seyjas, was visiting. Don Francisco himself reported that he was greeted with the peeling of bells by members of the religious brotherhoods and parishioners. Father Bartolome de Pineda, resplendent in his best cloak greeted the Archbishop and a tall cross stood beneath a platform built for the ceremonial welcome. Don Francisco had a busy time – during his visit he confirmed some 944 individuals (priests could baptize, marry and bury, but only bishops and archbishops could confirm). But the archbishop’s main purpose was to conduct a Visita, a formal inspection of the church’s records, its ornaments and so on.
In his address from the pulpit the Archbishop was particularly concerned that the priests should diligently ensure that the church received due payment for masses for departed souls. He sternly lectured those who administered the affairs of the brotherhoods that there should be no expenditures on bullfighting, nor on chocolate, plays or other frivolous entertainments. Priests should maintain records of baptisms, marriages and burials. Marriages of Spaniards, Mestizos, Mulattoes and Blacks should be recorded separately on loose sheets, unbound, and remitted annually to the Notary Public in Mexico City to be stored in the archive. Don Francisco did not mention records of the same sacraments for the Indigenous people of Taxco, but they were recorded and still exist. I’ve been reading them.
This concern with people of different ethnicities was a feature of Spanish policy in New Spain, as Mexico was then known. Different ethnicities had different rights, obligations and privileges. Indians, as the Indigenous Mexicans were known, were obliged to provide labour and services, but they were exempt from some taxes, and could not be enslaved nor prosecuted by the Inquisition. Spaniards could own Black African and Mulatto slaves (some Blacks and Mulattoes were free), and some Spaniards were entitled to Indian labour and services. All were subject to the Inquisition.
The priests of Taxco no doubt did their best to obey the Archbishop’s instructions by keeping separate books for Indians and, and before his visit, for Spaniards and Mestizos, where they also recorded details for Mulattoes and Blacks. Unfortunately, human nature and love did not obey the nest boundaries specified by the Archbishop. For example, on 14 March 1690 Bartolome Curiel, an Indian, and his wife Maria Antonia, a free Mulatta, brought their daughter Josepha to church for her baptism – their happy day was recorded in the book kept for Spaniards, Mestizos, Blacks and Mulattoes. On 4 June Bartolome de la Cruz, a free Mulatto, and his Spanish wife Beatriz de Orduña Beatriz de Orduña had their child Nicolasa Manuela baptized. Such relationships across ethnic boundaries were not uncommon.
A surprisingly large proportion of baptized children were abandoned; in the case of Indians the rate could vary from 19% to 49% per year, and in the case of Spaniards and other ethnicities from 19% to 57%. The priests designated the children (in seventeenth-century spelling) as either “de padres no conosidos” (of unknown parents) or as an “hijo [or hija] de la yglesia” (child of the church). For the first few decades these two terms seem to have been interchangeable. Initially, priests preferred hijo/a de la yglesia, but later de padres no conosidos. Then in the last two decades, hijo/a de la yglesia came to mean something specific: a child left “at the doors of” a named individual or couple. Presumably, children de padres no conosidos (the majority) were simply abandoned, no care being taken about where to leave them.
On occasion a priest guessed the ethnicity of an abandoned child. For example, Juan, baptized on 15 July 1675 was “al pareser mulato” (apparently a Mulatto). Tomassa, on the other hand, on 20 March 1682 was apparently Spanish, and on 27 May 1670 Jhoan Alonso was seemingly a Mestizo. Given the racial admixture of 17th century Taxco, I am not at all sure how reliable the priests’ judgements may have been.
Ethnic boundaries could be fluid, especially in the case of prestigious individuals. In the baptism records I have found a few references to the Moctezumas, a family of Indigenous nobles, originally from Chilapa (a town to the south of Taxco) who intermarried with the Aztec rulers in Tenochtitlán, and became significant landowners. Under Spanish rule, their noble status and landholding were protected. Don Josep de Quiñones Moctesuma appears in a book of Spanish baptisms in 1663 as the father of Alonso. He is given the honorific title Don, and had now acquired a Spanish last name, as well as a wife, Doña Michaela de Ribera (“his legitimate wife”), who was a member of an important family of mine owners. In 1696 he was recorded minus his Spanish Quiñones last name, but identified as a Spaniard. In 1698, Doña Augustina de Moctesuma was the godmother of Diego, son of Lucas Felisiano and Juana Contreras. The record tells us that Doña Augustina was a legal resident of Chilapa, hometown of the Moctezuma clan. In 1697 and 1698, Doña Juana Moctesuma appears with her husband Antonio de Rivera Ulloa y Taboada (another member of that very prominent mine-owning family) as godparents of sons of other members of Taxco’s mining elite. In December 1697 Juana and Antonia brought their own daughter to church all three were described by the priest as Spaniards. In short, if you had pedigree and wealth you could cross ethnic boundaries.
On a more humble level of the social scale, beginning in 1668, when Catalina, whose ethnicity is not stated, brought her daughter Maria to church, baptism records began to note children whose mother was known but not the father. On 6 August 1680 Maria de la Cruz, an unmarried Indian, brought her son Manuel to Father Joseph de Nagera, the Sacristán Mayor, to request that her child be baptized. Maria declared that she wanted to serve God our Lord and to abandon the sinful behaviour in which she had indulged for many years. Two Spanish men accompanied her as witnesses that her repentance was genuine. Maria’s request was approved and little Manuel was baptized.
In the last decade or so of the 17th century these single mothers were almost all classified either simply as a slave, or a Mulatta (and very occasionally Black) slave. Records carefully note the name of the owner of each slave mother, and occasionally record that the child had been born a slave. An exceptionally careless entry dated 5 January 1697 recorded the baptism of Manuel. His entry in the baptism book records that his mother was a Mulatta slave of Don Martin Verdugo, but neither the priest, Don Martin, nor the godfather saw fit to record the name of the mother.
THE QUESTION
Or rather questions.
Records of the Baptism of Indians survive from 1621, for Spaniards and other groups from 1643. There is plentiful evidence of child abandonment, but only in the last two decades of the century do the records tell us of children of named unmarried mothers. And, apart from Catalina in 1668 and Maria de la Cruz in 1680, they are all slaves, mostly Mulattas, in one or two cases Black women.
What might account for this sudden change in the baptism records?
Is it likely that Mulatta women almost exclusively were prone to bearing a child who father they could not name?
Or was there perhaps some ulterior reason for not naming the father?
Any other ideas?
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