Carlos Marichal and Daniela Marino, De colonia a nacion: Impuestos y politica en Mexico, 1760-1860

'H&RORQLDD1DFLRQLPSXHVWRV\SROLWLFDHQ0H[LFR UHYLHZ Richard J. Salvucci

The Americas, Volume 60, Number 3, January 2004, pp. 470-471 (Article)

3XEOLVKHGE\7KH$FDGHP\RI$PHULFDQ)UDQFLVFDQ+LVWRU\ DOI: 10.1353/tam.2004.0030

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tam/summary/v060/60.3salvucci.html

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en el desafecto con que han mirado siempre los españoles de Santa Cruz de la Sierra, fueron allí voluntariamente a pedir Padres que los doctrinasen y dispusiesen al bautismo” (ibid.). The history that the author unfolds parallels events in nearby regions, where disease, slave raiders and rivalries between ethnic groups were ravaging communities, and it was becoming more difficult to find a secure place to live and means of support in an increasingly insecure environment. The author suggests that the very name Chiquitos may have derived from the need for security, in that the doors or entrances to the houses were built very low so that people entered on hands and knees or even crawling for protection (“entrar en ellas ir a gatas y a vezes pecho por tierra” [p. 226]), a protection against raids, as well as against mosquitos. The Spanish, because of the small doors, called the people Chiquitos. The people, however, referred to themselves as Chiquitanos, or even by other names, perhaps due to the fact that in their own language “Chiquito” was too close to their own word for testicles. The language of the Chiquitos seems to have been especially difficult to learn—one Jesuit commented, “La Gramática es dificilísima y el artificio y definición de los verbos es increible” (p. 234)—which restricted some of the missionizing efforts as well as the training of people who worked among the Chiquitos. La primera evangelación is a fountain of very accessible material on the subjects of the Jesuits, the Chiquitos and the missions. Despite stemming directly from the dissertation, it is well written and organized. While others wearing different lenses and with interests other than the author may ask different and more pointed questions, this book should be of great benefit to those interested in the peoples, region or themes that are addressed. University of South Florida Tampa, Florida

WARD STAVIG

De Colonia a Nación: Impuestos y política en México, 1750-1860. Edited by Carlos Marichal and Daniela Marino. Mexico: El Colegio de México, 2001. Pp. 279. Illustrations. Notes. In 2001, former Finance Minister, Jesús Silva Herzog was quoted in the press as saying that the state’s lack of financial resources was a defining theme in the history of Mexico. Citing Matías Romero’s great Memoria de Hacienda (1870) as an authority, Silva Herzog said “It’s the history of Mexico, we’ve lived permanently with that limitation since we’ve been a country, first as a colony, then independent” (Reforma, 9 December). Could you imagine a United States Secretary of the Treasury, especially in the current Administration, citing a report from the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant? Either Silva Herzog is unusually literate (he is), or Mexico’s modern governing class has been permanently scarred by the experience of its ancestors living a seemingly endless hand–to–mouth existence. It is perhaps more fashionable among historians to say sin maíz, no hay país, but sin hacienda, no hay estado surely merits more of a claim on their attention as well.

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Not that anyone has to remind Carlos Marichal, his students or his colleagues, of Silva Herzog’s insight. Particularly when it comes to the early nineteenth century, the use of the much–overworked adjective, “pioneering,” is well deserved when applied to their work. An essay by Jorge Castañeda Zavala on the contingente, or state contribution to the Federation, shows it to have been the Achilles heel of public finance, uncollectable under federalist and centralist regimes alike. Not that alternatives remained unexplored. As Martín Sánchez Rodríguez points out, the Central Republic (1835-46) was driven by more than the fiscal exigencies of the campaigns against Texas or hostilities with the French. Yet attempts to diversify the tax base away from unstable (and often unavailable) customs revenues toward direct taxation of wealth produced meager results, with problems of assessment and enforcement the major impediments. Sergio Miranda Pacheco emphasizes that administrative and political conflicts often complicated the effort to solve the problem of municipal finance with a detailed analysis of the Federal District. There are some ironic observations, unintentional to be sure, of the contribution of the occupying United States forces to this disorder during the War of 1847. Is there anything new under the (Baghdad) sun? If I have any problem with pieces like these, it is that they rely, or at least appear to rely uncritically on beguilingly fresh nineteenth–century numbers. But what went on the books and what really passed into the Federation’s coffers were very different indeed. Customs duties, for example, could be paid in a variety of instruments other than hard cash, and adjusted for payments on the short–term debt, sometimes yielded shockingly little in the way of real resources. It is doubtful that the Republic, federal or central, ever really disposed of much more than 10 to 12 million pesos a year in cash before 1850, less than half of what the viceregal administration typically collected in the late eighteenth century. The states, on the other hand, ran the occasional surplus, if their numbers are to be believed. Thus the centralist impulse to intervene and transform sovereign states into government “departments.” Like Willy Sutton said, you rob banks because that’s where the money is. In any event, one suspects the fiscal straits of the Federation were, if anything, even worse than they are usually portrayed. Nor do the essays neglect the colonial period. I found one by Mónica Gómez on the Klein–TePaske fiscal accounts to be extremely perceptive. To simplify considerably, she concludes that increasing revenues do not necessarily imply real growth, particularly when both the tax rate and base are expanding, precisely what occurred in the eighteenth century. Do not let the trappings of calculus in this essay fool you. Gómez is someone who has taken the trouble to read up on what all those obscure fiscal categories really meant. What exactly do they mean? Tolle. Lege. Trinity University San Antonio, Texas

RICHARD J. SALVUCCI