In this book, Felipe Tena Ramírez, an authority in Mexican jurisprudence, gives us valuable new insights into some juridical aspects of the development of the hospital towns founded by Vasco de Quiroga. But some words of caution are necessary regarding his title. In speaking of the pueblos de Santa Fe, he is thinking in terms of three hospital towns rather than the usually accepted two. Besides Santa Fe de México, or de los Altos, just outside of Mexico City to the west, and Santa Fe de la Laguna, on the north shore of Lake Pátzcuaro, he argues that Quiroga founded a third, Santa Fe del Río, on the south shore of the Río Lerma in northern Michoacán. Further, although the title indicates that the study deals with these towns in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the first half of the book deals with Vasco de Quiroga, his origins and background, and the establishment of the hospitaltowns in the sixteenth century.

In regard to the founding of the town of Santa Fe de la Laguna, the author appears to be unsure regarding the date of its founding, indicating (p. 75) that Quiroga had not yet founded it in 1535. But there does not seem to be any real reason to doubt that Quiroga founded the town when he was acting as judge in Michoacán during the second half of 1533.

Possibly the weakest part of the book is in the author’s attempt to prove that Quiroga personally founded Santa Fe del Río. He does show clearly that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Santa Fe del Río was considered as a Quirogan foundation on an equal footing with the other two towns. But when he tries to prove that Quiroga personally founded it, he encounters the same obstacle that has baffled previous writers—the lack of any sixteenth-century documentation regarding the town on the Río Lerma. As evidence to support his case he adduces a royal letter of 1539 in which the king gave Quiroga permission to found a town for Chichimeca Indians some fifteen leagues from his see city. This might be considered as permission to found a town such as Santa Fe del Río, since it is approximately the mentioned distance from Pátzcuaro, and its location on the Río Lerma would make it an apt place for a settlement for Chichimecas. But it is weak to argue from possible permission to fact, in the absence of any certainly provable references to Santa Fe del Río during Quiroga’s lifetime. And the fact that Quiroga devoted considerable space in his testament to arrange for the future of the other Santa Fes but never once mentioned Santa Fe del Río is a strong argument against its being his personal foundation. Perhaps it was an offshoot of Santa Fe de la Laguna at a later date.

In his last three chapters the author makes a genuinely new contribution to the history of the hospital towns. Using documentation from the archive of the cathedral chapter of Valladolid-Morelia, he shows that during the late eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century the hospital towns were still governed by the ecclesiastical cabildo of Michoacán independently of the authority of the bishops of Michoacán and archbishops of México, as Quiroga had desired. He shows that this unusual jurisdictional independence perished as a result of the Ley de Desamortización (1856) and Ley de Nacionalización (1859), under which the towns of Santa Fe were eventually deprived of their corporate sources of income. In the 1870s, they were reduced to the status of simple parishes within their respective dioceses.

The documentary appendix is taken from the acts of the ecclesiastical cabildo between 1757 and 1774 and indicates the interest that the cabildo was dedicating to the hospital towns during the years when Juan José Moreno was writing his biography of Quiroga.