An outpost of colonialism : the Hispanic community of Mérida, Yucatán, 1690-1730 / Robert W. Patch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Patch, Robert, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Spanish Americans (Latin America)--Mexico--Mérida--Social conditions--17th century.

Spanish Americans (Latin America).

Spanish Americans (Latin America)--Mexico--Mérida--Social conditions--18th century.

Mérida (Mexico)--Social conditions--17th century.

Mérida (Mexico).

Mérida (Mexico)--Social conditions--18th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (284 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"An Outpost of Colonialism focuses on the Hispanic community in Mérida, Yucatán during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the later-middle era of Spanish colonial domination of a heavily Maya region. Unlike other regions of Mexico with rich resources of silver (or gold in South America, or sugar in the Caribbean), the main resource in the Yucatán was Indigenous labor and land, which allowed wealth and power to accrue to the region's Spanish-descended elites. By focusing on a specific place and time, this book illuminates the process of class formation and social reproduction among this group, and traces the means by which patterns of descent, marriage, and inheritance allowed for the continued consolidation of power, as well as social mobility. Using the categories of status, political power, and wealth, and charting demographic change over time, historian Robert W. Patch demonstrates that the upper class was not an endogamous class descended from the conquistadors, but that newcomers moved in and moved up, and that society included an ethnically European middle class that shared in economic opportunities and in the exercise of political power, as well as a large class of poor Hispanic people. Using the case study of a region in which economic production relied nearly exclusively on Indigenous labor, Patch provides a framework for understanding of the nature of social networks, families, social classes, and Hispanic society in Latin America as a whole"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Front Cover

Half-title

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

Map of Yucatán

One. A New Year's Eve to Remember: A Prologue and Introduction

Two. The City: The Founding and Establishment of Mérida

Three. Death: Dying, Love, and Catholic Culture

Four. Life: Status, Relationships, and Children

Five. Migration: People in Motion

Six. Immigrants and Society: Social Lives and Behavior

Seven. Social Status: Class and Political Power

Eight. Class and Wealth: Ranchers and the Urban Market

Nine. Rival Factions: Political Conflict in Mérida

Conclusion: America, Yucatán, and Mérida

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Back Cover.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781503642089

1503642089