A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and Governance in Mexico City, 1750 – 1920

This outstanding study goes well beyond the excellent dissertation on which it is based. Marie Francois has brought new information and understanding of how everyday life functioned in Mexico from 1750 to 1920. She demonstrates how individuals from the middle through the lowest orders lived their daily lives in the capital city and how they valued their possessions, no matter how meager, and utilized them in strategies to meet everyday needs, celebrate important events, and survive major disasters, that is to say, how they made ends meet. The essential individual and institution, no matter how disliked, was the pawnbroker (usually a Spaniard) and his shop, whether the government-run Monte de Piedad or the private casa de empeños. Francois narrates in detail how collateral credit operated; what goods were hocked, by whom, and how often; and how frequently pawned items were redeemed during the years from the late colonial era...