James D. Riley

Public Works and Local Elites: The Politics of Taxation in Tlaxcala, 1780-1810

In the winter of 1791-1792, meetings were being held in all of the principal towns of the Mexican province of Tlaxcala. Decisions had been reached that something had to be done about the recurring flooding of the Zahuapa river in central Tlaxcala and, independently, about the lack of an adequate water supply for the southeastern provincial town of Huamantla. As a result of these meetings, two independent projects began both of which were locally conceived and, more importantly, locally funded. In a burst of civic pride groups of Spanish vecinos (landowners and merchants who claimed Tlaxcala as their home) and Indian communities collaborated in constructing and financing these improvements. The work on the Zahuapa lasted until 1802, and the work to supply water in Huamantla was ongoing in 1810 when the Hidalgo revolt interrupted it. What is interesting about these decisions is not the success of the projects themselves—the first failed badly and the second was foundering when aborted—but rather what they highlight about the way Spanish and Indian leadership in local communities interacted politically in the late Bourbon period, both with each other and with Bourbon officialdom.

Atlas ilustrado de los pueblos de indios. Nueva España, 1800 (review)

There are coffee table books, and then there are COFFEE TABLE BOOKS ! Dorothy Tanck de Estrada has produced one of the latter. Not only is it heavy and filled with gorgeous full-color pictures, plans and maps, but it is also a positive contribution to scholarship in the tradition of Peter Gerhards works on geography. She and her collaborators have culled statistical and visual information created between 1766 and 1800 regarding 4,468 officially recognized Indian communities within the sixteen intendencies of New Spain encompassed within the boundaries of the modern Mexican republic. These communities and their elected officials along with those of 20 Hispanic cities and 50 villas constituted the administrative foundation of viceregal government.