The Caribbean, Buenos Aires, the Pacific coast, … Smuggling was widespread in the Spanish American world in the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries. The true dimensions of the phenomenon are still a subject of controversy, although most would agree that smuggling contributed to the weakening of Spain’s control over its overseas empire. Nevertheless, such a generalization is neither evident nor valid for every region. In the case of the Río de la Plata, Atlantic commerce was characterized by the persistence and regularity of smuggling (or direct commerce with non-Spanish powers). The relations of illegal with legal trade, as well as its articulation with the crown’s objectives in the area, constitute an example of the difficulties inherent in generalizing about the role of contraband. The purpose of this article is to study one aspect of these complex relations.
I will demonstrate that the crown resolved the problems of creating and maintaining its administrative and military structure in Buenos Aires by resorting, on the one hand, to navíos de registro, or ships licensed to sail outside the regular fleet system, and, on the other hand, to shipments of silver from Potosí, the so-called situado. But the first were so closely associated with illegal commerce that it can be said that the crown financed its local administrative structure from the resources that the Buenos Aires Atlantic commerce, illegal as well as legal, afforded it. As to the second expedient, a group of merchants who advanced the crown funds from their mercantile activities had a part in the utilization of the situado. In other words, the crown depended on the economic practices of the dominant local group, including smuggling, to erect that distant and obscure subsidiary of its imperial apparatus. This elite, in turn, was intertwined with the administrative and military structure that it helped to create. All this implies a particular relationship between the crown and the dominant figures in Buenos Aires society that I will refer to below.
Although a general discussion of Atlantic commerce through the Río de la Plata exceeds the limits of this article, that trade plays a central role in my analysis, and I therefore need first to point out its main characteristics. During the seventeenth century, Buenos Aires was a bustling port for the economy of the interior, especially the mining industry of Upper Peru.1 Between 1590 and 1640, intercolonial commerce with Brazil and the Portuguese colonies of western Africa constituted the greater part of this activity. But large ships—Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch—also arrived directly from Europe. European luxuries, sugar, and slaves were imported, and precious metals and a few local products were exported—flour until 1630, hides, tallow, and dried meat. During the first half of the seventeenth century, some 25,000 slaves were brought in. Local products represented a minimal proportion, between 15 percent and 20 percent, of the value of exports. This commerce reached a peak between 1600 and 1625, then entered a period of decline that accelerated after 1640.
Later, in the 1650s, port activity recovered rapidly thanks to the large numbers of Dutch ships which made use of the legal right to seek refuge in inclement weather or if a ship was damaged. In the 30 years between 1650 and 1680, the entry of large European ships—especially Dutch ones—set the tone of port activity in Buenos Aires, even though this did not completely displace intercolonial trade. The types of merchandise exchanged differed little from the preceding period, and during these same 30 years no fewer than 10,000 slaves were brought in. After 1675-80, the rhythm of ship arrivals began to decline, although the Portuguese foundation of Colônia do Sacramento, in 1682, created a new hub for clandestine commercial activity. Despite that important stimulus, evidence shows that the years from 1657 to 1665 were those of greatest port activity in the entire seventeenth century.2 And meanwhile, according to some authors, the Atlantic commerce linked to Lima diminished considerably between 1650 and 1700.
A comparison of my estimates with those of Lutgardo García Fuentes reveals that the volume of port activity in Buenos Aires during the second half of the seventeenth century was comparable to that of Portobelo, the Atlantic port on the official Lima route. Between 1648 and 1702, some 200 unauthorized ships entered the Río de la Plata, to which 34 navíos de registro and the ships involved in trade with Colônia do Sacramento can be added. At the same time, between 1650 and 1700, 313 ships sailed from Spain to Portobelo.3 We also know that the silver production of Upper Peru declined during this period, according to data presently available, and that the costs of the Potosí-Buenos Aires route were obviously less than those of the complicated Portobelo-Panamá-Callao-Potosí route. Thus, we could deduce that, at a time when returns from mining were in decline, the recovery of Buenos Aires after 1650 was made at the expense of Lima.4
However, the situation is more complex. First, it is important to take note of smuggling in the Pacific and Caribbean, in which Lima was also involved. In addition, García Fuentes points out a divergent evolution as between the value and the volume of commerce. But above all, the statistics of Michel Morineau show that the arrival of precious metals in Europe during the second half of the seventeenth century did not diminish but increased—although Morineau does not believe this sufficient reason to modify existing ideas about the evolution of mining production in the Americas.5 Carlos Sempat Assadourian, on his part, comments on a well-known document of 1603 which reveals that 90 percent of the value of merchandise entering Potosí represented products coming from the Peruvian interior and that only the remainder of the merchandise was really imported. In other words, much of the precious metal was first being dispersed among the regions that received it in exchange for their goods, to be concentrated only later in the ports from which it was exported.6 In this way, the Atlantic trade through the Río de la Plata integrated regional markets and production with European manufactured goods, slaves, and sugar in a complex network of exchange that also implied a system of commercial balances. The flexibility which this network gave the system does not permit us to assume that there was a direct correlation between the level of silver production and the level of consumption of imported goods. And, of course, the tensions between Buenos Aires and Lima reflected more than a competition for markets. There was also a spatial reality, which conditioned the attitude of the crown toward the Río de la Plata: this was the most direct access route to Upper Peru, although Potosí owed its existence to its integration in the Andean region.
For my argument, I need to underscore that the greater part of the Atlantic trade with the Río de la Plata area was clandestine. It is well known that Buenos Aires remained outside the system of fleets and galleons that maintained the essential part of the legal trade between Spain and the Americas. Consequently, according to some legislative texts, Buenos Aires would have to depend on Lima or the Lima merchants to supply itself with European products. In 1595, a prohibition expressly forbidding direct trade by way of the Río de la Plata was added. Theoretically, the port was closed, and all navigation in its direction required royal authorization.7 There were two ways in which such permission might be granted.
For reasons which I will discuss later, between 1602 and 1622 the crown granted the vecinos, or citizens, of Buenos Aires a series of authorizations to trade with Brazil and Guinea.8 But this trade had begun before the authorizations went into effect and continued long afterward. Besides, their limitations were not respected. Among other restrictions, it was strictly forbidden to import slaves, an obvious incongruity with the existing authorization to sail to Guinea. Another restriction, on the exportation of precious metals, was also impossible to enforce.
In addition, throughout the seventeenth century the crown promoted the dispatch of navíos de registro by Spanish shipowners. But this legal traffic represented a small percentage of the total trade. As we have just seen, 200 unauthorized vessels traded with Buenos Aires between 1648 and 1702 compared with 34 navíos de registro. If we add the commerce that originated in Colônia do Sacramento and the continuation of the slave trade to the large numbers of unauthorized ships, it is clear that smuggling, regular and structured around the port of Buenos Aires, was the more important commercial activity. It was a port of interlopers.
In practice, the ships “authorized” by the grants of 1602-22 cannot be distinguished from others that were not; there was simply a pervasive violation of the limits imposed by the crown. As for the navíos de registro, during the second half of the seventeenth century they were closely linked with Dutch shipowners and, in general, with the clandestine trade of the latter in the Río de la Plata.9
In reality, there was little distinction between legal and illegal commerce. In their mechanisms, their circulation patterns, and the men who conducted them, clandestine commerce and “authorized” commerce formed part of a single phenomenon: the functioning of a route that united Upper Peru with the Atlantic directly through Buenos Aires. In the latter, the arrival of precious metals, whose exportation was the motor of the Atlantic trade, depended, as we have seen, on the articulation of complex mechanisms of exchange that were the same whether the ship was Spanish or foreign.
At this point, the classic question arises: how could a clandestine activity grow to such dimensions in spite of the presence of treasury officials, a governor, an audiencia that functioned for ten years, and a military garrison? Generally, the explanations revolve around the corruption of the officials due to low salaries.10 But this explanation is insufficient. For one thing, we have just seen that the Atlantic commerce was a whole that cannot be separated into clandestine and authorized trade. That trade, from the local point of view, was the work of a nucleus or clique that dominated the life of Buenos Aires. Merchants and landowners at the same time, they typically held some type of public office in the cabildo, the garrison, or the administrative structure.11 Consequently, we should ask ourselves up to what point the representatives of the crown, charged with carrying out its legal dispositions, constituted an element separate from the dominant nucleus of smugglers, whose activities they were supposed to repress.
The relationship between the local oligarchies and the colonial administration occupies a venerable place in the historiography of Spanish America. Contrary to one traditionally accepted idea, the writings of the last 15 years have underscored both the existence of strong ties between the two and the influence that the local elites exercised over the magistracies. This influence resulted from various factors. The sale of offices to and/or the appointment of powerful creoles not only facilitated their control of the municipal corporations but also gave them access to the highest magistracies, such as the audiencias and at times some governorships. Moreover, high officials were quickly incorporated through alliance or cooptation into an informal structure of personal relations, whose coexistence with the formal imperial power structure created the conditions for a loyalty divided between the metropolitan authorities and local interest groups. This network of personal relations, which in turn was the source of political influence and served to make the administrative structure more flexible, is presented as the basis for the phenomenon of corruption.12
But the phenomenon of corruption was also metropolitan. Jaime Vicens Vives maintains “that corruption is produced when an administration attempts to dominate an important economic reality with narrow, antiquated legislation.…” In that sense, “[i]f corruption took root in Spain it was because … the administration had to make the American trade mechanism function in spite of the laws.…”13 In a more recent article, Horst Pietschmann takes up these and other ideas and concludes, adding to the hypothesis of Vicens Vives, that corruption in the Americas should be seen as a system, and that it can be explained in terms of a permanent tension among the Spanish state, the colonial bureaucracy, and colonial society over the distribution of power and wealth.14
In the specific case of the Río de la Plata, Jorge Gelman adopts a somewhat different point of view.15 According to him, a first wave of colonization formed itself into a group of landholders who slowly turned toward commerce. Simultaneously, the development of smuggling attracted a second wave of merchants who invested in land. Both groups knew how to take advantage of the policy of selling public offices. Around 1610, this process of self-transformation ended, and an elite of notables emerged which was diversifying its economic activities and competing for power. Gelman’s presentation permits the postulation of a third phenomenon: the crown authorities—treasury officials, garrison officers, members of the audiencia, and even governors—also transformed themselves. They dedicated themselves to commerce, invested in land, and joined with members of the elite in an informal structure of personal relations based on alliance or cooptation. That is to say, the movement was two-directional: the members of the local military and administrative apparatus moved toward the elite, created ties with it, and associated it with the imperial function, to the point of creating a single network of notables. This in itself, however, did not mean that the central authority was weakened.
In the Río de la Plata during the seventeenth century, “corruption,” at least as a massive phenomenon, consisted fundamentally of the violation of a fixed set of norms that limited the integration of the crown’s representatives with the local oligarchy—that is, their participation in local economic activities. These transgressions should be considered as an aspect of the economic practices of the dominant elite. The crown adapted to the situation, and this gives rise to another reservation concerning the use of the term “corruption.” On the one hand, there was a military garrison and a group of functionaries that together constituted the means by which the crown could carry out its objectives. On the other hand, these same functionaries and military officials formed part of a local elite whose principal economic activity was smuggling. The crown’s adaptation consisted in financing its local administrative and military apparatus through the economic activities of that elite and especially the most lucrative of these—smuggling.
Which brings me back to the purpose of this study. To restate it differently, I propose to show that the crown succeeded in installing a military outpost, sending troops to Chile, transporting its officials, maintaining communications, and even obtaining sizable amounts of precious metals by using the resources offered by the Atlantic trade, both legal and clandestine. To show this, I will examine three of the themes already mentioned: the role of the navíos de registro, the role of the situado, and the participation of magistrates and military officials in the economic life of the colony. These constituted a unity that I will reconstruct.
I shall further advance the thesis that the economic practices of the local elite—including, obviously, infractions of the legal norms—reinforced the whole, that is, the elite itself, the crown, and its local representatives. And the actions of the crown, at the same time, consolidated the dominant local groups. This is equivalent to seeing the rise of the colonial administration not as the result of the subordination of those groups, but as an aspect of a pact between them and the crown, which included “corruption” (as I have defined it). The tensions which Pietschmann refers to among the Spanish state, the colonial bureaucracy, and colonial society, like any tension, needed a common ground on which to develop and endure.
The Crown, Atlantic Commerce, and Local Government
The attitude of the crown toward the commerce that developed in the Río de la Plata was ambiguous and contradictory, because its overall policy for the viceroyalty of Peru had two thrusts that were difficult to reconcile. The basic goal of the metropolitan officials was to control and exploit the mines of Upper Peru. The priority given to preserving the commercial monopoly of Lima and Seville was associated with the same objective, so the exclusion of Buenos Aires from the regular maritime routes was a reasonable consequence of imperial logic. At the same time, authorities recognized the strategic importance of maintaining a populated center on the Río de la Plata in condition to defend the backyard of Upper Peru. A settlement capable of withstanding a possible act of aggression needed, and would attract, commercial activity. This, in turn, would attract precious metals from the “defended” region, Potosí and its mines, that would break the exclusivity of the monopoly of Lima and Seville, whether or not that was the intention of the metropolitan authorities.
The tension between those two thrusts of crown policy was clearly reflected in many legislative texts, including all those that refer to Buenos Aires in the Recopilación de leyes de Indias (which were originally drafted between 1590 and 1622).16 Forty years later, the crown still continued to refer to the central role assigned to the Río de la Plata in the defense of the mining economy.17 Moreover, it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of the ideas expressed by crown officials about the role of Buenos Aires. That role was based on geographic reality and commercial routes. The Río de la Plata offered the only direct access to Upper Peru from the Atlantic, the most vulnerable flank of the empire. Buenos Aires also formed part of an interregional trade network from whose market centers it was easy to traffic with Potosí. In any case, the tenacity with which the Portuguese maintained Colônia do Sacramento corroborates the fears of the metropolitan officials. The rapidity and military success with which Buenos Aires opposed the first Portuguese settlement likewise confirms the efficacy of the local military garrison.
However, the contradictory desire to maintain a populated center capable of defending itself and at the same time to limit its activities had two important consequences. The first, already mentioned, was the granting to the vecinos of Buenos Aires of authorizations to trade, which helped to consolidate an autonomous nucleus of local merchants. The second was the structuring of a military and administrative apparatus that reached the point of including besides the governor, officials of the royal treasury, and notaries, an audiencia that functioned during ten years and a military garrison whose forces totaled some nine hundred to one thousand men at the end of the seventeenth century.18
Whatever the reasons that explained it, the whole thus formed was manifestly overextended in relation to the economic and demographic resources of the region. By 1700, the houses grouped around the fort of Buenos Aires sheltered scarcely seven thousand inhabitants.19 Consequently, in spite of its modest scale, the administrative-military structure could only be maintained by external support: that brought by the navíos de registro and the funds of the situado.
The Navíos de Registro
Given the location of Buenos Aires, direct navigation from Spain was the easiest and least costly way to effect a part of this external support. In reality, it was the only useful way on a regular basis. Because of that, the central authorities did not resort to the impossible monopoly circuit—Seville, Portobelo, Lima, Buenos Aires—to maintain their lines of communication and to transport officials and troops, but to the dispatch of the navíos de registro.
In another article I have discussed the characteristics of this traffic in detail.20 Here I will point out the following:
The navíos de registro formed part of a system of unattached ships; that is, of vessels that sailed to different ports in the Indies outside the system of fleets and galleons. They had to obtain the express authorization of the crown, the so-called licencias, or permits.
The granting of these permits, at least those for sailing to the Río de la Plata, resulted in a contract—the asiento—between the crown and an individual. By this contract the individual obtained from the crown authorization to sail in exchange for a payment (calculated from the tonnage) and the rendering of a service (the transport of officials and soldiers and the shipment of arms and supplies). The permits were sold publicly to the highest bidder in Seville, although in some cases shipowners would solicit them on their own through an agent at court.
Associated with the rendering of a service, the dispatch of navíos de registro was always a royal prerogative that the crown worked hard to preserve against those who sought either its abolition—the Consulado of Lima and, at times, that of Seville—or its permanent establishment—the vecinos and authorities of Buenos Aires. It is worth noting that it was the crown that decided the frequency of the trips.21
The commerce carried out by the navíos de registro shared the general characteristics of the Atlantic trade in the Río de la Plata, especially with regard to the role of silver as the principal commodity exported. This was in spite of the laws, constantly violated, that limited the exportation of precious metals. Likewise, I have mentioned the close connection between the navíos de registro and Dutch smugglers.
By the end of the 1670s the practice of buying a pardon for frauds committed by paying a fine even before they were uncovered became widespread, exactly as in other sectors of colonial administration.
I have grouped the services rendered in the Appendix, which demonstrates that the navíos de registro effectively assured the functioning of the local military and administrative apparatus. Besides transporting officials and troops, the owners would occasionally pay the costs of provisioning the infantry and of the purchase of arms. They also lent cash as a service. Both types of expenses were reimbursed by the Royal Treasury in Buenos Aires, with interest at an annual rate of 8 percent. I have extracted from the Appendix the data in Table I regarding the transport of soldiers to Buenos Aires and Chile.
Because the crown decided the frequency of the trips, the traffic had a peculiar profile. Comparing my data on the tonnage of the navíos de registro with the information presented by García Fuentes, it is clear that the volume of these navíos followed an evolution opposite to that of commerce between Spain and the Americas as a whole.22 During the five- year period between 1653 and 1657, the tonnage of the ships that sailed to the Río de la Plata represented 2.27 percent of the total tonnage that went from Spain to the Americas. That percentage increased to 12 percent in the years 1673-77, only to fall again to 5.8 percent in the five-year period between 1693 and 1697.
The maximum volume shipped to the Río de la Plata actually coincided with the greatest number of soldiers transported:
From this it might be deduced that, responding to its administrative and military needs in the Río de la Plata, the crown stimulated a current of legal navigation whose evolution was independent of the commerce between Spain and the Americas generally, and that by sheltering the commerce of Buenos Aires from the vicissitudes of the Atlantic trade, the crown reinforced its relative position.
Nevertheless, examining matters more closely, we see that we should turn these statements on their heads. Buenos Aires attracted overseas traffic because it provided access to the precious metals mined in Charcas. These represented no less than 80 percent of the total value of exports from the Río de la Plata. As we have also seen, the navíos de registro represented a reduced proportion of the total movement—although, to repeat, the legal traffic cannot be truly distinguished from the rest.
Theoretically, the navíos de registro either could not export precious metals from Buenos Aires or should have limited the quantity to half the value of the merchandise they had imported.24 But, according to the documents on which the payment of the different duties was based, this almost never occurred. In the cases in which I have been able to make calculations, 13 expeditions out of a total of 16, the exportation of local products covered an average of 25 percent of the value of imports. In 7 cases, the percentage fluctuated between 10 percent and 25 percent; in 5, between 25 percent and 35 percent, and in only 1 case did it reach 46 percent.25 That is to say, the legal limitations were not taken into account even in the customs declarations of the values of the cargoes.
In addition, these declarations were much lower than the real figures and hardly represented more than 30 percent of the value of the merchandise transported. Various testimonies show this. But it is also clearly reflected in the disproportion that existed between the magnitude of the services rendered and the payments made to buy the permit and the pardon, on the one hand, and the declared value of the cargoes, on the other. For example, in 1663, Captain Maleo, who transported two hundred infantrymen, 40 tons of arms, the oidores and the president of the Audiencia of Buenos Aires, and the governor of Chile, paid 15,000 pesos for his permit and declared that he carried merchandise worth 43,500 pesos.26 However, the cost of the permit (15,000 pesos) is too high in relation to the supposed value of the commercial operation. Later on, I will show that not only Captain Maleo but also the officials he transported carried out all sorts of illegal transactions.
The overt repetition of all types of violations provoked an increase in the amount of the fines collected. These always involved a private agreement between the authorities and the holder of the permit. On occasion the fine was negotiated while the ship was still en route, in which case the Consulado of Seville acted for the permit holder and the Casa de Contratación represented the crown.27 The amount of the fine represented a minimal recognition of the infractions that had been committed, and it had to be proportional to the value of the merchandise transported. Therefore, we can use it as an imperfect measure, not only of the prevalence of fraud, but also as evidence of the real importance of the commercial operations (see Table II).
If we take the declared value of the merchandise, it is difficult to imagine that someone like Captain Miluti in 1671 would have agreed to pay 36,000 pesos for a permit and fine to transport a cargo worth only 33,400 pesos in Buenos Aires. Between 1650 and 1700, the declared value of the treasure carried to Spain (as distinct from the amounts estimated by Michel Morineau that appear in the table) amounted to 188,049 pesos, of which 126,000 belonged to private parties. Yet, in just one seizure effected in 1661 against Captain Manuel Tellería, 113,500 pesos in precious metals were confiscated, and during the period 1669-99, 217,000 pesos were paid just in fines.28
On the other hand, Morineau’s figures are consistent with the sums paid out and services rendered, which we can consider a para-fiscal expense. In this respect, the sum of the fines and permits represents, in the cases I have been able to compare, between 0.4 percent and 4.8 percent of the value of the calculated returns in precious metals, with an average of 1.7 percent. Morineau’s totals may appear too high: for example, the 8,500,000 pesos in 1693 equaled the total value of the silver on which duties were paid in the cajas of Potosí during the three years between 1690 and 1692.29 Nevertheless, other sources confirm his findings. At about that time, a prosecutor for the Consejo de Indias referred to the merchandise transported by the navíos de registro, “whose import usually surpasses six million pesos….”30 In other words, the total outlay—permit, fine, the transportation of troops, and duties on declared merchandise—represented a fiscal and para-fiscal expenditure of no more than 5 percent to 8 percent of the returns in precious metals. Consequently, obtaining a permit was attractive in spite of the services that were attached, because of the magnitude of the trade which the permit “authorized.” Comparatively speaking, a totally illegal operation was no less onerous. This was due as much to the fact that the mechanisms for the introduction of merchandise were more complex and required greater bribes as to the fact that the risk was greater, since the illegality of the operation could be used as a weapon by competitors. Accusations and condemnations for smuggling were not unknown, and convicted violators also had to pay for a pardon to free themselves from being sentenced.31
In other words, fraud was so generalized and so profoundly rooted in authorized traffic with the Río de la Plata that the registers kept by the ship captains reported scarcely a fraction of the real value of their trade. The ties that were established between foreign merchants and ships and the navíos de registro constituted one aspect of the problem. As with the system of fleets and galleons, the real owners of the cargoes were usually foreign merchants—French, English, and especially Dutch. Frequently, the assembly of an expedition gave rise to the formation of a company based in Amsterdam and in one of the Basque ports. Frequently, too, Dutch captains used the cover of the navíos de registro, with whose title-holders they were partners, in order to pass merchandise. The relations between the navíos de registro and the Dutch merchants were so close that the former constituted an arm of the smuggling carried out by the latter in the Río de la Plata.32
The ties between legal and contraband, or direct, trade have been underscored by Carlos Malamud for the case of the French presence in the Pacific between 1698 and 1725. According to him, there was a strong inverse relation between the activity of French merchants in Cádiz and the presence of French ships on the Peruvian coast. The same names tended to appear in both operations. Generally, foreign powers preferred to take part in the colonial trade through Seville/Cádiz; in this way, Spain bore the bulk of the costs of maintenance.33 However, this system was rarely able to meet American demand. And, seen from Amsterdam or Saint Malo, Spanish and American ports were interchangeable. Thus, the diminishing number of Dutch ships arriving in Buenos Aires after 1665 appears to have been the result of a combination of factors: on one hand, the attraction of the new Dutch sugar economies in the Caribbean, located in close proximity to already established contraband centers, and, on the other hand, a greater regularity in the dispatch of navíos de registro (especially between 1663 and 1682) which principally benefited the Basque captains associated with Dutch shipowners.34
The navíos de registro, then, participated in the generalized illegality of the port activity of Buenos Aires. They were tied in with the commerce of non-Spanish powers, from which they were indistinguishable, to the point where their activities cannot be classified as legal trade. This is precisely what permitted the crown to implement the licensing system as a mechanism for maintaining its local administrative and military apparatus. A Spanish captain accepted or sought the obligations imposed on him by the crown when it authorized a trip to Buenos Aires because he did the same thing there as his Dutch counterpart, and because the development of smuggling assured him of good commercial prospects. The illegality of their practices and their integration with foreign commerce were the conditions on which the navíos de registro fulfilled the functions the crown assigned them.
In comparison with the efforts devoted to defense of the Caribbean—a particularly vulnerable area within the commercial system—we can verify that those undertaken in the Río de la Plata were relatively important, not costly to the crown, and quite effective in terms of the strategic objective—to defend the back door to Upper Peru. By contrast, the armada of Barlovento meant that funds were constantly drained from six cajas reales to support a mechanism that never functioned adequately.35 Obviously, I do not pretend to equate the difficulties of defending a region such as the Caribbean with those that arose in the Río de la Plata. But in the former area, the local resources, which included the shipyards of Havana, were also incomparably more important than those in the latter. In any case, the example of the armada of Barlovento underscores the rationality of the method chosen by the central authorities to assure the defense of the Río de la Plata. Moreover, the use of the navíos de registro meant a source of specie for the crown (see Table III).
I believe that I have adequately supported the hypothesis expressed in the introduction, that the crown accomplished the installation of a local military garrison, the dispatch of troops to Chile, and the maintenance of regular communications by using the means offered to it by the Atlantic trade of Buenos Aires, both legal and illegal. Confronting a phenomenon (smuggling) that they could not control, metropolitan officials and their local representatives took advantage of it for imperial objectives, even while benefiting personally from clandestine commercial profits. The system had two essential features: making the owners of the navíos de registro bear a part of the installation and maintenance costs of the administrative-military apparatus, and creating a fiscal framework out of fraud through the sale of permits and pardons.
The Potosí Situado
As I have already stated, the second source of external support to maintain the military and administrative structure was the situado, a remittance of coined money that was to be made annually by the cajas reales (royal treasuries) of Potosí. This money was intended to pay the salaries of the garrison; the greater part of these was spent by the troops in Buenos Aires itself Around 1677, soldiers consumed some 36,000 pesos per year in wine, bread, meat, and vegetables alone, according to Governor Andrés de Robles. To this list of expenses must be added shoes, clothing, and lodging as well as the “vices”—tobacco, yerba mate, and aguardiente.36 I have no regular data on the amount of these remittances before 1674; there are only scattered references. Apparently, during the 1650s, the amount was theoretically set at 35,000 pesos per year, although there is evidence of one shipment of 41,000 pesos.37Table IV shows the data corresponding to the years 1674-1702 (there apparently was no remittance in 1673). These quantities represented 4.5 percent of the silver produced to pay the quinto (the royal fifth) to the cajas of Potosí between 1675 and 1702. The percentage varies from 6 percent for the five-year period 1683-87 to 2.9 percent for 1688-92.38
The silver coins were rarely placed in the pockets of the soldiers. Generally, they went directly to those of the merchant-suppliers and some high officials. Under the pretext that the shipments had been delayed, the troops received the various goods they needed directly from the hands of a merchant on credit, or they were paid with tokens. The latter were issued in the name of a more-or-less fixed group of suppliers. When the situado arrived, the fort canceled the debts—sometimes two or three years after they were contracted—as if they were its own.39 The prices were set beforehand, and the kind of “arrangements” the system lent itself to is fairly obvious. The governor mentioned earlier was accused of having established a “company” for part of the provisioning with Amador de Roxas and Juan Pacheco, who had been paid a 10-percent “profit.” The governor’s nephew, Pedro de Montenegro, a captain in charge of a company, entered the same business supplying shoes and clothing.40
Obviously, this mechanism tied the functioning of the fort to the local merchants, whose position was consolidated. The Río de la Plata was an intermediate point between the interior markets and the Atlantic trade. The latter required precious metals. Consequently, the more of those metals that the merchants of Buenos Aires had at their disposal, the greater the control they could exercise over the route to Upper Peru. And the consumption of the soldiers transformed a part of domestic production—bread, meat, farm products, etc.—and specific products of the interregional trade—yerba mate, wine, leather, aguardiente, homespun, etc.— into readily available silver. Someone like Amador de Roxas, rural property owner and merchant tied to both the Atlantic and the interior trade, brought together the whole chain of operations in one person.
The shipment of the situado permitted the carrying out of all kinds of fraudulent deals on the road as well. The officers of the garrison complained about this in 1683 and proposed that the person in charge of bringing the situado from Potosí be a captain from the fort, who would have only four months for the task. Nevertheless, in 1690, 46,000 pesos of the funds were used to purchase merchandise, which would then be sold on the road.41
The funds of the situado placed at the disposition of the local merchants increased their ability to operate both in the Atlantic commerce and in interregional trade. A check of some figures will give us an adequate idea of the impact of this flow of funds on the local economy. The annual average for the 1693-97 five-year period, 106,738 pesos, was enough to purchase a lot of 550 to 600 slaves at public auction prices; and the total value of live cattle sent into the interior during these same years—which were the years when trade was most intense during the second half of the seventeenth century—amounted to some 195,000 pesos, as against total situado remittances of 533,688 pesos.42
But it is no less certain that the credit given by the merchants assured continuity in the maintenance of the troops. Again, we find the double aspect of the administrative and military apparatus. On the one hand, the dispatch of the navíos de registro and the situado funds shored up a current of navigation toward the Río de la Plata and consolidated a group of local merchants. On the other hand, the navíos de registro could pay a share of the costs of keeping the military outpost because they themselves formed part of the universal phenomenon of smuggling, in which the Buenos Aires merchants, whose credit maintained the troops in the fort, also participated and prospered.
More generally, commerce and the military garrison were so closely intertwined that the defensive nucleus in the region existed at the price of stimulating and participating in the drainage, outside monopolistic channels, of a part of the mining production of Upper Peru. In effect, the crown participated in and stimulated lawlessness.
Soldiers, Magistrates, and Merchants
The ties between commerce and the administrative and military apparatus acquired the form of an overlapping between the local elite and the authorities. Let us look at some of its characteristics.
The Garrison
Officers of all ranks as well as some soldiers from the fort were frequently involved in different commercial operations. Their social position—in the case of the higher officers—and, in general, the nature of their functions, placed the military in an ideal situation for participating in the commercial life of the city. Apparently, they came to constitute an important group of “persons regularly dedicated to commerce,” and the sources show them practicing the most varied activities: owners of stores and pulperías, suppliers of ships, partners of foreign and Spanish ship captains, etc.
During the seventeenth century, according to Ricardo Rodríguez Molas, a large number of military men, some of high rank, had solicited and obtained authorization to open pulperías, where they placed other persons in charge.43 This situation was denounced in 1685 by the cabildo, which asked the court to prohibit officers and soldiers of all ranks from operating stores and pulperías, either personally or through intermediaries.44 The crown responded favorably and sent the fiscal of the Audiencia of Chile to investigate the case. At the end of his assignment in 1694, he accused three captains of owning stores: Juan Manuel Ruiloba, Juan Rodríguez Cota, and Francisco de la Cámara. Meanwhile the crown continued to send decrees to the governors ordering them to stop such practices. All the same, royal officials recognized that by 1714 military men owned the majority of such establishments in the city.45
Military ownership of stores and pulperías reveals the persistence of a phenomenon that is interesting insofar as most of the merchandise unloaded by foreign or Spanish ships or brought in from Colônia was distributed through these establishments. I cannot describe the mechanisms at length, as I have already done so elsewhere,46 but some examples will serve. On occasion, a store and a rural holding would serve as the base of activity for a group of soldiers and officers associated with merchants. This was the case of Juan Bautista Fernández and Joseph Antonio Ximénez—both soldiers from the fort—who owned a store in which merchandise taken from the ship belonging to the Dutchman Yansen was found in 1678. They acted in league with a captain from the presidio, Francisco Izquierdo, who in turn was a partner of Juan de Albizuri and Antonio Guerrero, both merchants—the first a Spaniard who arrived in the navíos de registro of Vergara and the second a Portuguese resident of Buenos Aires. The captain and the Spanish merchant visited Yansen’s ship and later unloaded a large quantity of merchandise at the country house of another officer, Captain Pedro Gutiérrez. With a part of the merchandise, Albizuri fled toward Tucumán. Before that he had given Guerrero a power of attorney to collect what was owed for the other goods, among which was the merchandise confiscated from the soldiers, Fernández and Ximénez.47
Another example is the confiscation of merchandise from a Captain Morales, who was found to be tied to the traffic with Colônia do Sacramento. On this occasion, the members of the garrison were accused of participating actively in such commerce, as were two second lieutenants in whose stores cloth and other products were seized.48
Other activities in which the cabildo denounced the presence of military personnel were the provisioning of ships and the sale of hides. Regarding the former, according to the municipal government, around 1662 the sergeant majors of the fort had mounted a network to sell provisions to ships.49 Regarding the latter, the same body complained in a report dated 1693 that the officers obtained sales quotas to the detriment of the accioneros (i.e., holders of permits to hunt cattle), who were considered as having exclusive rights over wild cattle. These officers would obtain hides by buying them in small quantities from different persons not authorized to hunt bulls according to the system the cabildo wished to impose. Two years later, the cabildo repeated its protest.50
Also worth noting is the use of the fort’s storehouses to deposit merchandise from ships voluntarily turned over for confiscation. Later, an officer was put in charge of reselling such goods in Buenos Aires or in the interior, receiving a percentage of the proceeds. In 1662, a certain Captain Arpide formed a partnership with Phelipe Iacome to carry out an operation of this type.51 I shall not recount the cases in which sergeant majors were involved in reshipping imported merchandise into the interior or using the weight of their authority to buy slaves in public auctions. Martín de Borja, Juan del Pozo, Lucas Antonio Orozco, and Juan Pacheco are the ones most frequently accused of such practices in the sources.
What I have just described, as with the situado, shows that the garrison was an environment of intense commercial activity. In partnership with merchants, some military personnel formed important groups that operated in diverse sectors, especially in the importation of foreign merchandise. At the highest levels, the agreements made with the merchants for supplying the soldiers on credit, in which large sums of money were involved, favored other arreglos related to the clandestine introduction of European manufactured goods and slaves.
The Commercial Magistracy
The cases in which governors, treasury officials, and notaries were implicated in commercial activities can be looked at in much the same way. All detected entrances of ships into the Río de la Plata, whether authorized or not, automatically called forth the reaction of these high officials. From the routine control of navíos de registro to proceedings of confiscation against an arriving ship, the rules required intervention of the governor and the officials of the Real Hacienda, and behind every official paper there was a notary. Obviously, these men were in an optimal situation for participating in commerce because of their social position and the nature of their work. Indeed, they were linked, especially in the case of the treasury officials, not only to the importation of foreign merchandise, but to all types of economic activity.
From 1650 to 1692, the treasury officials violated the norms regulating the form in which they were to keep their books, some of which were missing.52 Many of these irregularities hid anomalies in ship arrivals. In any case, a good number of the accountants and treasurers who succeeded each other throughout the second half of the seventeenth century were accused of fraud in their duties.
Let us look at some examples. According to Governor Andrés de Robles, at least 36 persons were implicated in smuggling during the existence of the first audiencia (1664-74). He questioned especially the notaries and royal officials who had acted as partners to various merchants.53 One of them, Pedro de Alvarado, had served as an accountant between 1658 and 1662, when he was fined three hundred pesos and given a ten- year suspension. Nevertheless, he was pardoned in return for payment of another six hundred pesos; and he was again accused while acting as treasurer from 1669 to 1674.54
In a comparable situation, the treasurer Hernán Suárez Maldonado was served writs for complicity with the Spanish captain, Gaspar Barsabe. The latter arrived with his ship in 1662 without any type of authorization and entered into contact with two Dutch vessels which he helped to unload different kinds of merchandise, including 130 slaves, making trips in lighters between the island of San Gabriel and two estancias in the Magdalena district.55
Another notorious case was that of Miguel Castellanos, treasurer between 1665 and 1669. Years later, between 1674 and 1694, he returned as an accountant in spite of having been found guilty of crimes committed in 1668 and 1669. The latter involved irregularities and negligence in the inspections of arriving ships and in the notation of confiscated merchandise as well as, perhaps most seriously, the organization of fraudulent auctions.56 In addition, while holding his first position, Castellanos was a close friend of Alonso Muñoz Gadea, an accountant from 1662 to 1669 and accused of permitting the landing of illegally imported slaves and merchandise, auction frauds, etc.57
Regarding the notaries, I will only cite the two most important, since nothing new can be added to the above. Juan de Reluz y Huerta was tied to the operations imputed to Muñoz Gadea and Castellanos in 1668-69. He was accused of the same crimes and infractions: irregularity in procedures, trafficking in slaves and merchandise, etc. His successor, Bernardo Gayoso, was no less active.58
Some of these people formed among themselves, and together with other merchants, more or less stable groups—whose activities ranged from smuggling to the exportation of cattle to Upper Peru. So went the denunciations against Bernardo Gayoso, Juan de Reluz y Huerta, and Pedro Alvarado, made by Captain Pedro de Montenegro, the nephew of Governor Andrés de Robles.59 There is some evidence to confirm the charges, or at least to indicate that the field of action of these men was not limited to the importation of slaves and foreign manufactures. In effect, Agustín Gayoso, Bernardo’s brother and interim treasurer from 1678 to 1683, was an accionero. The two, as well as Reluz y Huerta, participated in supplying hides to Gómez del Rivero’s navíos de registro in 1674. In addition, the second of the brothers had shipped four hundred mules three years earlier.60 Another revealing example is that of the treasurer Íñigo de Oroeta. By 1692, he had installed in his house a “public store with different [kinds of] merchandise in violation of the royal laws and decrees that prohibit it.”61 This last statement could be made about all of his colleagues, since the position of treasury official was theoretically incompatible with the practice of any commercial activity.
It mattered little in this context if some governor or another wanted to strictly enforce the royal dispositions—if such an expression even made sense in that society.62 In any case, we can draw the same portrait of the very highest representatives of central authority. From 1644 until 1674, the three governors of the period—Jacinto de Larriz, Pedro Baygorri Ruiz, and Alonso de Mercado y Villacorta—and Joseph Martínez de Salazar, who served as president of the audiencia, tolerated and authorized commerce with arriving foreign vessels;63 and they did not stop with that.
The first of the men named personally attempted to promote trade with Brazil. Baygorri was Tomás de Roxas y Acevedo’s partner. The usual charges were made against both—trading with foreign captains, sending remittances of silver to Holland, and reexporting merchandise and slaves.64 With the second of these men, it is difficult to say where the merchant began and the public official ended. In effect, Tomás de Roxas rose from being a captain at the fort to alcalde ordinario and regidor of the cabildo. He was also named treasurer of the Santa Cruzada in 1660. Accused of being the agent of numerous foreign and Spanish merchants as well as reshipping merchandise to Potosí in partnership with others, he was sent to Spain in 1662 as a “prisoner.” When he made the trip, he took with him silver, merchandise, and slaves from Brazil, which caused the initiation of a second trial. Nevertheless, a notarial act shows him in Amsterdam in 1663. Four years later, while residing in Lisbon, where he had a brother who was “secretary of state,” he presented his candidacy through an intermediary for the license covering the navíos de registro which in 1668 Miguel de Vergara would end up bringing to Buenos Aires. All of which led to a protest by the consulado of Seville.65
Returning to the higher public officials, the president of the audiencia, Martínez de Salazar, and an oidor, Pedro de Roxas y Luna, invested large sums of money in the cargo carried by Captain Maleo, in whose navíos de registro they sailed.66 Martínez de Salazar’s successor, who passed for a bitter foe of smuggling—the only one in this period—was also indicted for illicit commercial activities, although he was completely exonerated. Nonetheless it was also true that the later governor, Andrés de Robles, frequented the most important merchants, such as the already mentioned Amador de Roxas and Miguel de Gambarte. Was it possible not to? (A Potosí merchant owed him 2,600 pesos, apparently for the sale of merchandise.)67
Another suggestive case was that of the “tolerancias” of Governor Herrera y Soto Mayor in respect to trade with Colônia do Sacramento. In his juicio de residencia, 38 people were fined for infractions related to this commerce. Among them were merchants, a notary public, and other minor public officials.68
The groups of merchants and functionaries structured around these higher magistrates were more powerful socially and economically than those that formed around the members of the garrison: it was as if each sphere of the bureaucratic-military apparatus generated its own groupings of this sort. Nor do the examples given constitute a series of intermittent semiclandestine acts. On the contrary, it was the constant activity of the groups that assured their reproduction.
Almost all of the accused mentioned above commuted their sentences, which included prison or exile, in addition to a fine. The only exceptions I know of were Muñoz Gadea and Reluz y Huerta, and I even have doubts concerning them. The pardon thus purchased usually included the recuperation of the right to hold public office, if that had been suspended. All this inevitably brings to mind what we have already seen with regard to the navíos de registro. After the death of Philip IV, the practice became so widespread in the region of the Río de la Plata (peaking especially toward the end of the 1670s) that we can speak of a tax on smuggling.69
The continuity of the public official/merchant groups becomes even clearer if we look at the phenomenon from the opposite perspective. Following the careers of many of the merchants, we frequently find a magistracy or an official post in the garrison of the fort. The list is extensive. Thus, Juan and Amador Vaez de Alpoin were merchants and holders of various public offices, as were Juan del Pozo Silva, Diego and Gaspar Gaete, Alonso Pastor, and others. On evoking the venturesome Tomás de Roxas y Acevedo, I stated that it was difficult to separate the merchant from the bureaucrat. Almost the same can be said about his four brothers—Gregorio, Juan, Agustín, and Amador. Were they merchants? Yes, but they were also captains, high magistrates, and members of the cabildo, as well as rural proprietors and slaveowners.70 They were the grandchildren of Diego de Vega, the brilliant Portuguese smuggler from the beginning of the century, whose illegitimate daughter, María de Vega, married Pedro de Roxas y Acevedo, lieutenant governor and also provisional governor (from January to July 1641). In other words, a family that already spanned a century of trade and participation in local government.71
I have mentioned Antonio Guerrero, a Portuguese merchant who arrived in Buenos Aires at the beginning of the 1660s, as a partner of Captain Izquierdo. During the period of the first audiencia, he was implicated in several cases involving ship arrivals, and he owned a ship which he used to link the Río de la Plata with the different ports of Brazil. In 1671 he became a vecino, and in 1689 the crown granted him Spanish citizenship. Some months later he was a member of the cabildo, and that same year Governor Agustín de Robles named him his lieutenant. This merchant’s career was exemplary; he was also a rural proprietor and owner of slaves, who participated in interregional trade as well as in the importation of European merchandise.72
As in other regions of Spanish America, the dominant groups formed a many-sided whole based simultaneously on land, commerce, and public office. Although there is no prosopographical study for the region, there is sufficient evidence to affirm that the commercial associations I have just shown formed part of a network of personal relations of clientelism, kinship, and friendship, on which the elite structured itself internally. The series of examples presented further underscores the fact that corruption was the process by which the local representatives of central authority, both military and civilian, integrated themselves into that elite, thereby associating it, in turn, with the imperial functions.
That elite was no more than a tiny universe set precisely at the hinge of a commercial route. In 1664, a census registered a total of 211 vecinos, that is, native or naturalized Spanish subjects who owned a home and, as a consequence of both circumstances, were citizens with full rights. They represented a total of 900 persons out of a total urban population of approximately 4,000 inhabitants.73 They constituted a layer of “gente decente,” a sort of hidalgos set apart ethnically and socially from the subordinated strata of society. Among the gente decente there was a nucleus of some 50 to 60 prominent families, characterized by their concentration of wealth and power, the latter expressed in terms of officeholding, a seat on the cabildo and/or a military rank, such as we have seen with the Roxas y Acevedos and the Vaez de Alpoins.
The global dimensions are confirmed in the report of 1677 in which Governor Robles mentions 250 vecinos, in the sense indicated, who lived in houses and whom he differentiated from poor whites and soldiers, who lived in ranchos (thatched huts). At that time the urban population approximated 5,000 inhabitants, plus 750 members of the garrison.74
It is now time to reexamine some of Gelman’s ideas that were mentioned in the introduction. According to him, Buenos Aires was not simply a warehouse, because the merchants established there relied on local production. To maximize their gains and to carry out their role as intermediaries, they mounted a productive structure with a rural base.75 This was probably the result of a two-way process. The first inhabitants, self-identified as descendants of the conquistadores, members of a group whose merits entitled it to special rewards, discovered in trade with Paraguay, and, to a lesser extent, in smuggling an opportunity to widen their business interests. At the same time, the development of smuggling itself attracted a wave of merchants who tied themselves to some public officials and constituted a second group, the “confederates.” Better inserted in long-distance trade, the confederates dominated economic life until 1610. By that period, Gelman verifies a tendency toward unity through marriage of the two groups. By this and other means, the confederates acquired land.76
The policy of the sale of public offices brought this process to its culmination. The sales began about 1603, and by 1640 some 40 offices had been purchased, among them notarial appointments and municipal posts. The majority were offered at public auction in Potosí, although some were also sold in Buenos Aires.77 Obviously, this favored the more important merchants, not only because they had access to metallic currency, but also because they were more mobile.
In a letter written in 1603, Governor Hernandarias sought the suspension of the sale of offices, arguing that only “foreigners and Portuguese” (i.e., merchants) had the means to buy the positions. In this way, the conquistadores would be deprived of their deserved recompense.78 What Hernandarias proposed implied the structuring of local power on the basis of retribution for personal services or for “lineage,” through the award of public offices. As things turned out, however, the possession of precious metals facilitated integration with an administrative structure in formation. At the same time, from what we have seen, officeholding facilitated control of the circulation of precious metals. By 1640, in any event, the factions of beneméritos and confederados were little more than two clans, two networks of notables, who displayed similar and profoundly interconnected characteristics. Indeed, what Gelman considers stages were probably no more than simultaneous aspects of a single process.
The public officials intertwined themselves with the dominant groups and rapidly associated themselves with their economic practices. The case of the first royal treasurer, Simón Valdés, illustrates this intermixing.79 Later, in 1640, the establishment of the garrison widened the process of overlapping in two directions: the officers coopted members of the elite, they dedicated themselves to commerce, and they acquired land. At the same time, both the officers and the positions at the fort were drawn to the preexisting group.
Conclusion
The first part of this article demonstrated that the crown financed an important part of its military and administrative apparatus from illegal commerce. The navíos de registro participated in the general illegality, and the local authorities were tolerant toward smuggling of other kinds as well. But corruption per se is not a sufficient explanation for this. Corruption was both part of the self-transformation of the public officials into a local elite and a central aspect of the economic activity of the latter. The premises that led me to argue that the rise of the administrative and military apparatus constituted an element of the pact (which included corruption) between the local elite and the crown have been demonstrated as well.
I stated in the introduction that the navíos de registro, the situado, and the participation of magistrates and military men in the economic life of the area constituted a whole. Later, at the end of the first part, I took up the same idea again, and now it is well to develop it further. Smuggling permitted the rise of a very small local oligarchy whose evolution was shaped and directed by key points of metropolitan policy: the sale of public offices, the permits of the 1602-18 period, the dispatch of the navíos de registro, the installation of the fort, and the remittances of the situado. At the same time, smuggling was the condition under which the navíos de registro fulfilled the function we have just seen, and under which the merchants, beneficiaries of the situado, could assure credit for the garrison. In other words, the more they participated in the Atlantic commerce, the better the merchants fulfilled their function in relation to the administrative and military apparatus. As for the transgressions of the public officials, corruption was born out of the conditions in which the system was erected.
The intertwining of magistrate and merchant did not mean a weakening of metropolitan power, as believed by the theorists of colonial power in the second half of the eighteenth century, whose ideas were inherited by the earliest historiography that dealt with the theme.80 As Guillermo Céspedes del Castillo has pointed out, in Buenos Aires one was powerful because one was involved in commerce.81 The opposite was equally true—one became involved in commerce because one was powerful. This was true not only because of the advantages that holding public office afforded, but above all because the military and administrative apparatus furnished Buenos Aires and its elite a degree of control over the Potosí-Atlantic route that was more important than the region’s economic resources alone would have permitted. That is, the interrelationship with the administrative structure was intrinsic to the very form of the smuggler-landlords’ hegemony over the minuscule universe of the Río de la Plata. Only if power had been restructured to the exclusion of commerce, as proposed by Hernandarias, would corruption have been transformed into an aberration and an enemy of the state.
To paraphrase Vicens Vives, the crown created its local power structure in spite of its own laws. For its part, the local process gave rise to the emergence of an elite that included public officials and that held power as if it carried it in its genes. This meant that it was associated with the imperial and colonial function, even when it traded with foreigners. The smugglers gave proof of that in 1680 when they opposed the establishment of the Portuguese on the opposite shore.82 The wealth of the merchants consolidated royal power, and the latter propped up its partners.
Funds Supplied and Services Rendered to the Crown by the Navíos de Registro to Buenos Aires 1648-1702 by Five-Year Periods
Alice P. de Canabrava, O comércio português no Rio da Prata (1580-1644) (São Paulo, 1944); Zacarías Moutoukias, “Le Río de la Plata et l’espace peruvien au XVIIème siècle: Commerce et contrebande par le Buenos Aires (1648-1702)” (doctoral dissertation, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1983), chaps. 2, 3, 5. and 8. The commerce of Buenos Aires has been treated in numerous works throughout this century; I will only cite those that I believe go to the heart of the problems dealt with or present some new element. For general treatments, see Guillermo Céspedes del Castillo, Lima y Buenos Aires: Repercusiones económicas y políticas de la creación del virreynato del Plata (Seville, 1947); Raúl Molina, Las primeras experiencias comerciales del Plata: El comercio marítimo, 1580-1700 (Buenos Aires, 1966); Clarence H. Haring, Comercio y navegación entre España y las Indias en época de los IIabsburgos (Mexico City, 1939; 1st Eng. ed., Cambridge, MA, 1918), 176-180.
The description of the outstanding aspects oí the Atlantic commerce of Buenos Aires is based on the chapters of my dissertation cited in n. 1.
Lutgardo García Fuentes, El comercio español con América 1650-1700 (Seville, 1980), 214; Moutoukias, “Le Río de la Plata,” 2o6ff, 303.
Peter Bakewell, “Registered Silver Production in the Potosí District, 1550-1735,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft and Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas, 12 (1975), 67-103; Lamberto de Sierra, Manifiesto de la plata extraída del cerro del Potosí 1556-1800 (Buenos Aires, 1971), 26-31.
Michel Morineau, Incroyables gazettes et fabuleux métaux: Les retours de trésors américains d’après les gazettes hollandaises (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles) (Paris, 1985), 321; García Fuentes, El comercio español, 230-233.
Carlos Sempat Assadourian, “La producción de la mercancía dinero en la formación del mercado interno colonial: El caso del espacio peruano en el siglo XVII,” in Ensayos sobre el desarrollo económico de México y América Latina (1500-1975), Enrique Florescano, ed. (Mexico City, 1979), 231-237; “Descripción general de la villa y minas de Potosí; año de 1603,” in Relaciones geográficas de Indias, 3 vols., Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, ed. (Madrid, 1965), I, 377-385; see also the commentary on Sempat Assadourian’s ideas in Steve Stern, “Nuevas direcciones en la historia económica de los Andes: Un diálogo crítico con Carlos Assadourian,” IIISLA, 3 (1er. semestre 1984), 104-114.
Haring, Comercio y navegación, 177-178; Molina, “Una historia desconocida sobre los navíos de registro arribados a Buenos Aires en el siglo XVII,” Historia, 16 (1959), 11-100.
Molina, “Una historia desconocida,” 21-22; Céspedes del Castillo, Lima y Buenos Aires, 19-21; Moutoukias, “Los navíos de registro a Buenos Aires, 1648-1702,” IV Jornadas de Historia Económica Argentina (Río Cuarto, 1982), 218-221.
This link with Dutch commerce is thoroughly documented. See sources cited in n. 32.
See Horst Pietschmann, “Burocracia y corrupción en hispanoamérica colonial: Una aproximación tentativa,” Nova Americana, 5 (1985).
See n. 15.
I do not claim to give a complete bibliography, but only to cite some of the more recent publications. Jacques Barbier, “Elites and Cadres in Bourbon Chile,” HAHR, 52:3 (Aug. 1972), 416-435; David Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico (Cambridge, 1971); Brading, “Government and Elite in Late Colonial Mexico,” HAHR, 53:3 (Aug. 1973), 389-414; Mark Burkholder and S. D. Chandler, From Impotence to Authority: The Spanish Crown and the American Audiencias, 1687-1808 (London, 1977); Leon Campbell, “A Colonial Establishment: Creole Domination of the Audiencia of Lima during the Late Eighteenth Century,” HAHR, 52:1 (Feb. 1972), 2-25; S. N. Eisendat, The Political System of Empires (New York, 1963); “Algunos apuntes acerca del poder y del estado,” Instituto Nacional de Antropología, Departamento de Investigaciones Históricas. Cuaderno de trabajo 41 (Mexico City, 1982), 163-191; John N. Kennedy, “Bahian Elites, 1750-1822,” HAHR, 53:3 (Aug. 1973), 415-439; Doris Ladd, The Mexican Nobility at Independence, 1780-1826 (Austin, 1976); Frank Jay Moreno, “The Spanish Colonial System; A Functional Approach,” Western Political Quarterly, 20:2 (June 1967), 308-320; John L. Phelan, “Authority and Flexibility in the Spanish Imperial Bureaucracy,” Administrative Sciences Quarterly, 5 (June 1960); Phelan, The Kingdom of Quito in the Seventeenth Century (Madison, 1967), 326-329; Magali Sarfatti, Spanish Bureaucratic Patrimonialism in America (Berkeley, 1966); Stuart Schwartz, “Magistracy and Society in Colonial Brazil,” HAHR, 50:4 (Nov. 1970); Jaime Vicens Vives, “Estructura administrativa estatal en los siglos XVI y XVII,” XI Congrès International des Sciences Historiques, 5 vols. (Stockholm, 1960), IV.
Vicens Vives, “Estructura administrativa,” 20.
Pietschmann, "Burocracia y corrupción,” 30-31.
Jorge Gelman, “Economie et administration local à Buenos Aires au XVIIème Siècle” (doctoral dissertation, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1983), 237, 303-311; “Cabildo y elite local; El caso de Buenos Aires en el siglo XVII,” HISLA, 6 (2° semestre 1985), 3-20; “Economía natural y economía monetaria: Los grupos dirigentes de Buenos Aires a principios del siglo XVII,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos, 44 (1987). Although these studies do not offer prosopographic investigations, it is interesting to compare their conclusions with those of Stephanie Blank, “Patrons, Brokers, and Clients in the Families of the Elite in Colonial Caracas, 1595-1627,” The Americas, 26:1 (July 1965), 90-115.
Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de Indias, facsimile reproduction of Julián Paredes’s edition of 1689, 4 vols. (Madrid, 1973), libro VIII, título XIV, leves i, ii, iii, vii, x. xi, xii, fol. 72, libro IX, título XVIII, ley v, fol. 118 verso; see also Céspedes del Castillo, Lima y Buenos Aires.
Reales cédulas July 20, 1661 and Jan. 30, 1663, Archivo General de Indias (hereafter AGI), Contaduría, leg. 1876.
Informes y cartas del gobernador, Nov. 15, 1677, Mar. 14, 1680, Nov. 23, 1686, AGI, Charcas, leg. 179; Informe del gobernador, Nov. 14, 1699, AGI, Indiferente General, leg. 2797.
Nicolás Besio Moreno, Buenos Aires, puerto del Río de la Plata, capital de la Argentina: … Estudio crítico de su población, 1536-1936 (Buenos Aires, 1939), 224-225.
Moutoukias, “Los navíos de registro,” 216-225.
Ibid., 221-224.
García Fuentes, El comercio español, 224-225.
See the sources in the Appendix.
For tax purposes, the merchandise received a 60-percent increase in its value in Buenos Aires over its fiscal value in Spain. I suppose that in terms of real prices, the increase was even greater. See the sources cited in the Appendix, especially AGI, Contratación, legs. 1698, 2421, 2424, 2426, 2427, 2428, 2725, 3522.
Moutoukias, “Le Río de la Plata,” chap. 8, 135-137.
AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, leg. 876 B; Charcas, leg. 127; Contratación, leg. 2725.
AGI, Charcas, leg. 129, and in general the sources in the Appendix; García Fuentes, El comercio español, 124-158.
AGI, Contaduría, legs. 1876 and 1905; García Fuentes, El comercio español, 385.
Sierra, Manifiesto de la plata, 33.
Roberto Levillier, ed., Correspondencia de la ciudad de Buenos Aires con los reyes de España: Reunida en el Archivo de Indias de Sevilla, 3 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1915-18), III, 405.
AGI, Buenos Aires, leg. 341; see sources cited in notes 39 and 55.
AGI, Charcas, legs. 126 and 127; Escribanía de Cámara, legs. 876 A, 876 B, 876 C.
Carlos Daniel Malamud Rikles, Cádiz y Saint Malo en el comercio colonial peruano (1698-1725) (Cádiz, 1986), 97, 281.
Moutoukias, “Le Río de la Plata,” chap. V; I am grateful for the comments of Franz Binder, who generously helped me in everything relating to Dutch commerce.
Bibiano Torres Ramírez, La armada de Barlovento (Seville, 1981), chaps. 8-9.
Copy of different chapters from a report sent with letter of Nov. 15, 1677, Andrés de Robles, AGI, Charcas, leg. 279.
Ricardo Levene, Investigaciones acerca de la historia económica del virreynato del Río de la Plata (La Plata, 1962), 177, n. 35; Molina. “El primer banquero de Buenos Aires. Jerarquía alcanzada por su descendencia,” Revista de Historia Americana y Argentina, 2:3-4 (1958-59), 97.
Sierra, Manifiesto de la plata, 32-33.
Comisión a Joseph Herrera Sotomayor, Jan. 10, 1692, AGI, Charcas, leg. 262.
AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, leg. 883 A, leg. de comisión no. 1, fols. 17 and 162.
Sentencia del Consejo de Indias, Sept. 23, 1694. AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, leg. 903 B, fol. 132 verso; Puntos propuestos por los cpns de Cavallos y de infanteria del presidio de Buenos Ayres, Jan. 24, 1683 and Carta del gobernador, Jan. 30, 1696, Charcas, leg. 29.
Eduardo Saguier, “Commercial Cycles and Intra-Colonial Struggles in an Entrepot Economy under Habsburg Mercantilism: Buenos Aires in the Seventeenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., Washington University, 1981), 513-518, 704-708, 802-804.
Ricardo Rodríguez Molas, “La pulpería rioplatense en el siglo XVII,” Universidad, 49 (1961), 133-134.
Levillier, Correspondencia, III, 186.
Richard Konetzke, comp., Colección de documentos para la historia de la formación social hispanoamericana, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1953-62), III, 52, 55, 135.
Simplifying greatly, we can identify basically two ways of “passing” contraband. In the first and easiest, the ship sought refuge on the northeast coast of the Río de la Plata, from which it would establish contact with an estancia or a chacra (farm) that would serve as a landing place. From there the merchandise was taken to stores, pulperías, or houses that served as such. It was more frequent for the vessel to communicate with the authorities and declare itself arribada, that is, having put into port because of bad weather or for repairs. Then, upheld by the law, it would seek authorization to sell part of the cargo to be able to pay for the repairs and would end up selling all of the cargo. Or there might be a fraudulent confiscation, which the captain himself would seek. In any case the goods were distributed through the stores and pulperías. When a simulated confiscation took place, this led to a “public” auction, also simulated, in a pulpería or, more rarely, in the public plaza. Occasionally, the cargo was deposited in the storerooms of the fort, an officer in partnership with the merchants taking charge of reselling it. We are dealing, then, with more of a true distribution system than a clandestine “fencing” network. See chap. 4 of my dissertation, cited in n. 1.
AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, leg. 883 A, leg. 6 de comisiones de Buenos Aires, fols. 41 verso, 42 verso, 52 verso, 115, 118, 122.
Carta de los oficiales reales, May 20, 1691 and Carta del governador, Feb. 28, 1693, AGI, Charcas, leg. 129; Testimonio de comisos, Feb. 27, 1690, ibid.
Source cited in n. 47.
Levillier, Correspondencia, III, 239, 394.
Cargos contra Hernán Suárez Maldonado, Escribanía de Cámara, leg. 903 B, fol. 182.
Sentencia del Consejo de Indias, Sept. 23, 1694, AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, leg. 903B, fols. 26-37 verso.
Carta del gobernador, May 3, 1676, AGI, Charcas, leg. 28.
Real cédula, June 15, 1668, AGI, Buenos Aires, leg. 341.
Cargos …, AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, leg. 903 B.
Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, mss. 18,65427; Real cédula, Mar. 31, 1697.
Cargos contra Alonso Muñoz Gadea and Real cédula, Oct. 9, 1690, AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, leg. 882, leg. no. 4 de comisiones de Buenos Aires Sentencia…, AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, leg. 903 B; Real cédula, Oct. 31, 1679, AGI, Buenos Aires, leg. 341; Real cédula, Feb. 26, 1648, AGI, Charcas, leg. 29. I could also include the cases of Francisco Quintana Godoy, treasurer from 1658 to 1662 and later from 1674 to 1676, and of Íñigo de Oroeta, who held the same position from 1676 to 1678 and later from 1688 to 1692.
Reales cédulas, Dec. 31, 1679 and Feb. 26, 1684, AGI, Buenos Aires, leg. 341; Carta del gobernador, Mar. 3, 1679, AGI, Charcas, leg. 28.
Sentencia del Consejo de Indias, Sept. 15, 1687, AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, leg. 883 A.
Levillier, Correspondencia, III, 349, 353.
Sentencia…, AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, leg. 903 B, fol. 35 verso.
In reality, the prevailing legislation, the concrete regulations, and the instructions directed to the governors were sufficiently ambiguous and contradictory to leave lots of room for maneuvering. Real cédula, May 4, 1673, AGI, Buenos Aires, leg. 341; Carta del gobernador, Oct. 15, 1677, AGI, Charcas, leg. 279; Reales cédulas, July 25, 1648, Mar. 18, 1652, Mar. 2, 1655, and July 18, 1661, Ricardo Trelles, Registro estadístico de Buenos Aires (1876) (Buenos Aires, 1877), II, 19-25, 40-41; see also Carlos Malamud, “El comercio directo de Europa con América en el siglo XVIII,” Quinto Centenario, 1 (1981), 26.
Carta del Embajador Esteban de Gamarra, Oct. 21, 1656, Archivo General de Simancas, leg. 2088; Informe del Gobernador Andrés de Robles, Dec. 15, 1675, AGI, Charcas, leg. 279; Carta del gobernador, May 3, 1675, AGI, Charcas, leg. 28; see also José Torre Revello, “Los gobernadores de Buenos Aires,” Academia Nacional de la Historia, Historia de la Nación Argentina (desde los orígenes hasta la organización definitiva en 1862), 10 vols., Ricardo Levene, director general (Buenos Aires, 1939-47), IV; Enrique Peña, Don Jacinto de Lariz, turbulencias de su gobierno en el Río de la Plata (1646-1653) (Madrid, 1911).
Real cédula de indulto, Nov. 5, 1665, AGI, Charcas, leg. 127; Real cédula de indulto, Nov. 5, 1665, Buenos Aires, leg. 341.
Molina, “El primer banquero," 96-101; Real cédula…. Autos enviados a Pedro de Rojas y Luna undated, Representación del Consulado de Sevilla, Nov. 5, 1668, AGI, Charcas, leg. 127; Municipal Archive of Amsterdam/Notarial Archive, lias 2892, fols. 83 and 1459. I again wish to express my gratitude to Franz Binder, thanks to whose collaboration I was able to use material from the Dutch archive.
Carta del Licenciado P. G. del Valle, Aug. 31. 1664, AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, leg., 876 B.
AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, leg. 883 A, leg. and fols. cit.; Carta del obispo gobernador, May 6, 1681 and Cartas del governador, July 12 and 14, 1678, AGI, Charcas, leg. 28.
Real cédula, Dec. 20, 1696, AGI, Buenos Aires, leg. 341.
Ibid., the entire leg.
Padrón de vecinos, 1664, Trelles, Registro estadístico … (1860) (Buenos Aires, 1861), I, 46-59; Archivo General de la Nación, Sala IX, 40-7-5, leg. 1 exp. 2; Autos…, AGI, Charcas, leg. 127.
Molina, “El primer banquero,” 55, 90.
AGI, Charcas, leg. 211, fols. 1–44.
See n. 71; Besio Moreno, Buenos Aires, 424-425.
Informe del Gobernador…, AGI, Charcas, leg. 279.
Gelman, “Economic et administration,” 172; see also Moutoukias, “Le Río de la Plata,” chaps. 2 and 7.
Gelman, “Economic et administration,” 198-222, 237.
Ibid., 303-314.
Konetzke, Colección de documentos, II (1), 111: “… and if it were granted that in [these provinces offices] were sold as in other parts of the Indies, they and their vecinos would be drained of wealth to pay the value of the offices, because they are very poor, and it would cause them to be bought by Portuguese and foreigners, and if they [i.e., the vecinos] were granted [the offices], it would cause them to serve me better.… [It is therefore supplicated] that no public office, quill, regiment, position of alguacil mayor nor menor, be sold nor Portuguese nor foreigners be admitted to them….”
Simón Valdés, treasurer between 1615 and 1630, participated actively in contraband and was a leading member of the “confederate” faction. His marriage with the heiress of a notable family of the other faction served to consolidate his social position.
See Haring’s book, cited in n. 1, as well as his The Spanish Empire in America (New York, 1949); Gervasio de Artiñano y Caldácano, Historia del comercio con las Indias durante el dominio de los Austrias (Barcelona, 1917).
“[I]t can be said that clergymen and functionaries were powerful to the extent that they participated in commerce…” (Céspedes del Castillo, Lima y Buenos Aires, 15).
Moutoukias, “Le Río de la Plata,” chap. 6.
Author notes
I would like to thank Samuel Amaral, Juan Carlos Garavaglia, and Ruggiero Romano for their comments. (Translated by Judith Sweeney, with the help of a grant from the Tinker Foundation.)
