matthew c. lafevor - builind a colonial resource monopoly: the expansión of sulphur mining in new...

8/20/2019 Matthew C. LaFevor - Builind a Colonial Resource Monopoly: The expansión of sulphur mining in New Spain, 1600…

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the geographical review

The Geographical Review (): –, April Copyright © by the American Geographical Society of New York

* I thank the staff s of the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City and the Rare Books Room of the BensonLatin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin.

Mr. LaFevor is a doctoral candidate in geography at the University of Texas–Austin, Austin,Texas ; [[email protected]].

BUILDING A COLONIAL RESOURCE MONOPOLY:

THE EXPANSION OF SULPHUR MINING

IN NEW SPAIN, 1600–

1820*

MATTHEW C. LAFEVOR

abstract. The discovery, extraction, and monopolistic control of key natural resources wasa priority of New Spain’s colonial administration. Managing the region’s abundant resources,however, often proved difficult for the Spanish Crown. Human and environmental challengesimpeded protoindustrial growth and development, and monopolistic control of resourcesoften met resistance. In this article I examine these processes in the context of New Spain’slittle-known monopoly on sulphura yellow, powdery mineral the Crown jealously guardedas its own. Sulphur was critical for gunpowder and explosives production, yet the Crownoften failed to produce enough of it to meet the growing demand by its military and thesilver blast-mining industry. Colonial documents reveal administrators’ attempts to improvesulphur production through reform measures, which included advising sulphur miners on

how to discover sulphur deposits and, eventually, how to develop their mines. Eff orts to im-prove sulphur production were moderately successful, although the process was messy andinefficient. Keywords: Bourbon Reforms, Mexico, monopoly, natural resources, New Spain, sulphur.

T he eighteenth-century Bourbon Reform period is critical to historical researchon New Spain’s resource monopolies. In New Spain (colonial Mexico), the Bour-bon Reforms were a series of economic and political measures, laws, regulations,and reorganizations the Crown issued in an eff ort to improve economic develop-ment, efficiency, and ultimately, the profitability of its overseas empire (Florescanoand Gil Sánchez ). Although the long-term social and political consequences of the reforms and their impact on the movement for independence continue to be

explored (Stein and Stein ; Dobado and Marrero ); in the short to me-dium term the reforms appear to have positively aff ected economic growth (Garnerand Stefanou ).1 Macroeconomic indicators, such as industrial yields beforeand after the legislation and the increase in total royal tax revenues, point to theirnet eff ectiveness in generating wealth for the Crown (Humboldt ). Yet beyondthe colonial accounting books, comparative tables of yearly revenues, and the broadeconomic and political reorganizations, the Bourbon Reforms also sought indi-vidual, resource-specific solutions for unique management problems (agn a).

The current study investigates the impact of the Bourbon Reforms on New Spain’ssulphur monopoly, which focused on two main areas: increasing production, whichmeant improving both the quality and quantity of sulphur the azufreros (sulphurminers) produced, and preventing contraband sulphur mining. To accomplish these


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sulphur mining in new spain

goals, the Crown published a set of formal rules, regulations, incentives, sugges-tions, and mining advice for the azufreros: the Sulphur Ordinances of . In this

article I argue that the ordinances, as an arm of the Bourbon Reforms, successfully drove the expansion of sulphur mining during the late eighteenth century by in-creasing the number and size of the mines. I explore the geographical expansion of the industry, specifically detailing the mechanisms that inspired sulphur prospect-ing and mining development, and thus, overall production.

As for the second goal, contraband sulphur mining continued to pose problemsfor the monopoly even after the Sulphur Ordinances outlined harsh penalties forillegal possession and/or mining of sulphur. My analysis reveals why contrabandsulphur mining continued to proliferate after the ordinances were issued and how royal administrators confronted this black-market industry. Although legal sulphurmining off ered some institutional advantages over contraband trade (Ebert ),the incentives off ered by the Sulphur Ordinances favored large landowning azufreros

over small-scale prospectors. The imbalance encouraged small-scale, illegal sulphurmining. Although historical research on colonial contraband continues to be “anextremely elusive issue” (Baskes , ), this article off ers insight into why clandes-tine mining occurred and how colonial administrators responded to the challengesof controlling it.

Finally, I investigate whether commodity producers, in this case the azufreros,were passive victims of colonial domination and a repressive monopoly system. Inthe case of the tobacco monopoly, for example, the complex relationships betweenroyal administrators and producers demonstrate a mixture of defiance and resis-tance, as well as accommodation (Deans-Smith ). In addition, other studiespropose that Latin American producers were “much more than simple marionettesset to dance by overseas commands and demands” and that producers often played“enterprising, defining, and even controlling roles” (Topick, Marichal, and Frank , ).

Although I found little evidence to support a “controlling” role by producers,the azufreros did develop and exercise codependent relationships with royal ad-ministrators that were critical to the functioning of the monopoly. Fully aware theCrown was in desperate need of sulphur and gunpowder for its military and silverblast-mining industries, azufreros exercised considerable leverage during contractnegotiations over mining quotas and sales prices for the mineral. Although the Crownand its colonial administration were the final word on mining-contract details, theazufreros indeed played enterprising and defining roles, often receiving importantconcessions from the Crown.

Over the almost three-hundred-year-long colonial period–admin-istrators sought to control the discovery, extraction, and redistribution of New Spain’snatural resources through a system of royal monopolies. Historical studies of theseresource monopolies focus on economic, administrative, and bureaucratic aspectsof key revenue-generating commodities, especially those with export potential, suchas silver (Topick, Marichal, and Frank ). The extraction and minting of New


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World silver was by far the largest source of wealth for the Spanish Empire, for itlargelyfinanced the expansion and settlement of New Spain (Marichal and Mantecón

; Jones ). Early geographical studies of individual silver-mining districtsdocument the settlement and northward expansion of mining communities (Wagner; West ); more recent research considers the impacts of silver smelting andrefining on environmental degradation (Studnicki-Gizbert and Schecter ). Sil-ver mining in New Spain was indeed an important colonial industry that demandedboth the principal attention of the Spanish government and much of the subse-quent historical and geographical research on colonial resource extraction (Brading; Stein and Stein ).

The Crown also monopolized other profitable or useful mineral and non-mineral resources, either as finished products or as complementary goods. Mer-cury mining was essential for the processing of silver and gold (Heredia Herrera; González ); copper and tin mining proved critical to Spain’s European

war eff orts (Barrett ). The tobacco monopoly was second only to silver tithes ingenerating royal revenue and was one of the largest organized industries in latecolonial Mexico (Deans-Smith ; Nater ). The Crown monopolized New World dyes, including cochineal and indigo, and found exuberant European mar-kets ready to pay a premium for them (Lee ; Marichal ; McCreery ).Domestically, in New Spain the Crown monopolized the sale of alcoholic drinksfrom agave, issuing lucrative sales contracts to only a few prominent families (Kicza). Even snow and ice from mountaintops were the providence of the Crown, asluxury items whose distribution rights colonial administrators auctioned off to only a select few (González de la Vara ). The breadth and diversity of natural-resource monopolies in New Spain demonstrate wide-ranging royal appetites forNew World commodities.

Within this diverse range of natural resource monopolies were smaller, less con-spicuous colonial industries; namely, those without sufficient economic importance,large bureaucracies, or historic transatlantic ties to have generated a wealth of ar-chival materials and, perhaps consequentially, interest among researchers. Many of these resource monopolies are absent from the oft-cited tables and charts compiledby Fabian de Fonseca and Carlos de Urrutia ([] ), Alexander von Hum-boldt (), and more recently, John TePaske and Herbert Klein (). The origi-nal primary sources these studies consultedroyal accounting books and yearly sales chartsdo not include all resource monopolies in their revenue tables. Thusmany of the “lesser” colonial resource monopolies are absent from modern histori-cal-economic or geographical studies.

Analysis of human and environmental aspects of the “lesser” resource monopo-lies therefore requires research in primary sources beyond the original revenue tablesand sales charts. The written correspondences between producers and colonial ad-ministrators related to the identification and development of resource deposits, ap-plications for royal business contracts, contraband investigations, and legalproceedings, for example, provide valuable data on the origins and development of


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these “lesser” industries. In this article I demonstrate that, although these resourcemonopolies provided little revenue for the Crown and were absent from the Royal

Treasury’s books, many were far from unimportant industries.Two notable examples of “lesser” resource industries that, to date, have escapedin-depth historical or geographical inquiry are the Crown’s monopolies on sulphurand saltpeter (potassium nitrate)the two critical ingredients in gunpowder pro-duction, which, incidentally, was also a colonial monopoly (Lewis ; Villar Ortiz; Núñez ). Gunpowder was essential for New Spain’s military and silverblast-mining industries, and although the Crown often included gunpowder salesin its revenue tables (TePaske and Klein ), its component ingredients providedlittle direct revenue and were therefore absent. As part of a larger project on thehuman and biophysical ecology of New Spain’s explosives industry, I investigatedthe archival record for evidence of one of these “lesser” industriessulphurminingand how the Crown dealt with consistent problems of sulphur supply.

I begin by reviewing one of the few published works, colonial or otherwise,that mentions the subject of sulphur mining in New SpainAlexander vonHumboldt’s Political Essay on New Spain (). After analyzing Humboldt’s brief work on sulphur, I explore the archival record for additional evidence of the six colonial sulphur mines, examining their ecological origins, their relative impor-tance, and the challenges the Crown faced in developing them. Through thesecase studies, which represent the complete available archival record, I trace theorigins and development of the monopoly. I conclude that, although the SulphurOrdinances of resulted in improved production, the harsh regulations andstrict mining protocols that the Crown mandated were incompatible with New Spain’s geographical realities.

Humboldt’s Observations

Having an acute interest in New Spain’s mineral resources, the Prussian polymathAlexander von Humboldt made a passing note about colonial sulphur mining onhis – journey through the region. The few sentences he wrote represent themost complete published record of the industry to date. Humboldt noted that sul-phur abounded “in the volcanoes of Orizaba [Citlaltépetl] and Puebla [Popo-catépetl], in the province of San Luis near Colima, and especially in the intendency of Guadalajara, where rivers bring down considerable masses of it,” and that it came“quite purified from the town of San Luis Potosí” (, ).

The only one of these locations I verified is San Luis Potosí, which is probably areference to the Guascamá mines of Guadalcazar. Humboldt’s observations that

sulphur abounded in Citlaltépetl and Popocatépetl are odd, given that thefirst suc-cessful scientific exploration of Popocatépetl’s crater occurred in , a monumen-tal event recorded in both Mexican and international literature (smge [] ;García Cubas , ; Farrington , ). Archival documents also state,definitively, that postconquest sulphur mining in Popocatépetl did not begin until, after a thorough investigative period (smge , –). Furthermore, ap-


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plications for establishing sulphur mines in the crater of Citlaltépetl first begin toappear in , more than eighty years after Humboldt’s brief visit (ascjn , ).

Although in – he certainly was privy to information not present today in the archival record, it is equally likely that, given his expertise as a mineralogistand his interest in volcanic environments, he simply assumed that sulphur was lo-cated at some of these places (Humboldt ). He believed that no one had suc-cessfully ascended to the summit of Popocatépetl since the time of theconquistadores, a belief that, at least superficially, conflicts with his certainty thatsulphur abounded in the volcano (, ). Furthermore, it is doubtful thatHumboldt came across information on sulphur in the historical record because hedoes not mention the mines of Taximaroa, Atlixco, Tlalpopoca, Zacatlán, orHuamantla, which I investigated thoroughly. Although Humboldt’s greater work isindispensable, the extant archival record off ers a more complete understanding of New Spain’s sulphur-mining industry.

Early Colonial Sulphur Mining and Gunpowder Production

Archival documents do, however, support Humboldt’s observations that most sul-phur mined in New Spain was of volcanic origin, often found within the craters of volcanoes, condensed around geothermal vents, or in deposits of porous rock. Whensulphur was commingled with other debris, azufreros mined the materials withpicks and shovels, ground and mixed them in water, and then distilled the solutionthrough a series of ovens and containers. Azufreros then transported the refinedmineral to Mexico City and sold it to the Royal Gunpowder Factory (agn b).The following analysis reveals this process was labor intensive, relatively unprofitable,and often contentious.

Geographical challenges aff ected the development of New Spain’s sulphur-mining industry from the time of the earliest available records. Formal organiza-tion of the industry appears to have been scant until , when workers built thefirst explosives factory adjacent to Chapultepec Hill near Mexico City (Fonseca andUrrutia [] , ). Before that time, administrators manufactured gunpow-der on the roofs of royal buildings until repeated fires and explosions promptedofficials to move the production and storage sites to the outskirts of the city. There,the forests of Chapultepec could supply the charcoal necessary for gunpowder pro-duction, and the rebuilt aqueduct could provide water to run the powder mill (VillarOrtiz , –). From this strategic location, the Royal Gunpowder Factory col-lected sulphur along with the other essential ingredients of gunpowder and shippedboth sulphur and gunpowder across its empire to controlled points of distribution

(agn c). By this number had risen, domestically, to at least distributionpoints, which the Crown managed through centralized administrative offices (Fig-ure ).

Upon receiving sulphur and gunpowder from Chapultepec, this network of ad-ministrative offices and distribution points provided both Spain’s military and thegrowing silver-mining industry with explosives.2 In eff ect, azufreros transported sul-


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phur from their mines to Mexico City at their own expense, only to have the samesulphur, along withfinished gunpowder, transported back to areas often much closer

to the original sulphur mines than to the Royal Gunpowder Factory, but this timewith a significant increase in price to cover the Crown’s added transportation costs(agn d). Partly as a result of this inefficiency, contraband sulphur proliferated.Sulphur abounded in New Spain (Fonseca y Urrutia [] , ), but the legalframework designed to deal with this geographical reality produced a generally inefficient system of control. In spite of itself, and the thriving contraband trade,the royal monopoly was able to meet the Crown’s basic needs.

zacatlán, puebla

Although documents in Mexico’s Archivo General de la Nación mention the im-portance of sulphur shipments for New Spain’s gunpowder industry as early as, the exact origins of these shipments remain obscure. Not until the s do

sources reveal the specific locations of the earliest sulphur mines in New Spain andoff er some glimpses into how colonial administrators utilized them. These first ac-counts mention a mining operation in , just north of the Tlaxcala region inZacatlán, Puebla. Here, the indigenous workers who mined sulphur from nearby mountains demanded that they be paid more equitable wages for their labor in themines. Juan de Ortega Baldivia, administrator of the Royal Gunpowder Factory,appears to have heeded the requests, for he ordered that the miners be paid a new wage of three reales per day (agn ).3

Twenty-two years later, in , another dispute arose in Zacatlán between theowner of a sulphur minewhether it is the same mine is unclearGregorio de Ávila,and a lessee, Pedro García de Sotomayor, over mining rights and payments. A royalorder resolved the dispute, mandating that Sotomayor pay pesos to Ávila as com-pensation for his management of the mines (agn ). Additional sources detail alengthy trial involving witnesses and interrogations regarding Ávila’s business deal-ings (agn ), but they give few relevant details about sulphur mining, except thatthe mines were about kilometers from Zacatlán in some mountains with highsulphur content (agn ).

Because these are the only available clues to sulphur mining in seventeenth-century New Spain, judging the importance of the Zacatlán site(s) alone is difficult.Sotomayor’s payment to Ávila of pesos was a significant amount for thattimeworth approximately pounds of finished gunpowder or days of In-dian laborand this suggests that mining operations in Zacatlán may have beensignificant. Other documents point to the growing importance of New Spain’s sul-

phur trade during the seventeenth century and the increasing shipments from theRoyal Gunpowder Factory (agn ; Villar Ortiz , –), but they do notspecify the sulphur’s provenance. Not until the early s does the archival recordprovide additional information on sulphur mines. Given their apparent stages of development at that point, however, some of these mines likely yielded sulphur tothe Crown much earlier.


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maravatío–taximaroa, michoacán

As part of the Purépechan (Tarascan) Empire, the Maravatío-Taximaroa region

now eastern Michoacánplayed a key role in early Spanish exploration and silverand copper mining (Wagner ; Gerhard , ; Craig and West ). How-ever, evidence of sulphur mining there is elusive until (Pérez Escutia , ).Archival accounts reveal an extensive regional operation.

With picks and shovels, azufreros mined sulphur around sulphuric geysers andthe lake known as Los Azufres, near the towns of Agua Fría, Jaripeo, Zitácuaro, andUcareo (agn ). Miners also extracted sulphur from the craters of Las Huma-redas (the smoker) and El Chillador (the screamer) volcanoes, the latter named forthe sound made by sulphuric fumes escaping from between volcanic rocks. Uponrising and cooling from the geysers and volcanoes, vapors condensed and yellow sulphur crystals fell to the ground, where miners collected them or dug for olderdeposits in other extinct volcanoes of the region (Figures and ) (GuadalupeRomero , –; Bancroft , –; Cardona , ). By the middle of the eighteenth century the Taximaroa mines provided the bulk of New Spain’s sul-phur for gunpowder production. Yet, despite the importance of the Taximaroa mines,the Crown was dissatisfied with the amount and quality of sulphur they producedfor the Royal Gunpowder Factory (agn e).

The Search for More Sulphur and the Ordinances of

Throughout the colonial period New Spain produced an insufficient amount andquality of sulphur to meet the growing demands of the Spanish Empire (agn f).Sulphur was an essential ingredient in gunpowder explosives, whose strategic im-portance had been increasing from two main sectors. First, Spain’s military was

demanding more of the mineral to produce high-quality gunpowder for its arma-ments. Second, the burgeoning silver-mining industry demanded more and moreinexpensive gunpowder for blasting through rock. Accordingly, José de Gálvez, in-spector general of New Spain’s colonial monopolies, wrote and distributed the Sul-phur Ordinances of . The ordinances were one small part of a comprehensivelegislative plan to modernize the Spanish Empire. Collectively, historians refer tothese legislative measures as the Bourbon Reforms (Florescano and Gil Sánchez). As the Bourbon Reforms pertain to sulphur mining, regulatory measuresappear to have driven the geographical expansion of sulphur mining, both improv-ing the Crown’s resources and enabling a reduction in the price of sulphur (agna). In turn, the expanded gunpowder industry helped improve royal solvency inthe short term by contributing to the eighteenth-century silver bonanza through

price incentives on gunpowder sales to silver miners, who used the explosive toincrease yields (Fonseca and Urrutia [] , –; West , , ; LaFevor). But because of chronically insufficient gunpowder supplies for the military,royal gunpowder production was barely enough to avoid military defeat againstGreat Britain in the Caribbean region during the s and early s (Lewis ,–). The Crown blamed the poor quality of gunpowder on insufficient sulphur


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Fig. An active sulphuric geyser, approximately meters wide, in Los Azufres National Park,Michoacán, Mexico. (Photograph by the author, June )

Fig. The mouth of a flooded colonial sulphur mine, approximately meters wide, nearTaximaroa, in Los Azufres National Park. (Photograph by the author, June )


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production and looked to the administrative and organizational changes broughtabout by the Bourbon Reforms to alleviate the deficiency (agn f).

The Sulphur Ordinances included new mining regulations designed to curbcontraband mining and increase sulphur prospecting and production for the Crown.Gálvez focused on prospecting for new sources because, until , the Crown hadconsistently mined sulphur from only one main location in New Spain: Taximaroa,Michoacán (agn e).4

In an attempt to encourage mining, the Sulphur Ordinances explained to pro-spective sulphur miners how to find and extract the mineral. The ordinances re-quired that miners transport all sulphur, once extracted and refined, from the minesto the Royal Gunpowder Factory in Mexico City, where administrators paid thembetween six and seven pesos per hundredweight. Factory workers processed sul-phur and then transported it to the distribution points. The distribution points, inturn, provided sulphur and gunpowder to military installations and silver-mining

districts throughout New Spain (see Figure ).Gálvez had blamed the poor quality of royal gunpowder on the insufficient quan-

tities and low-grade sulphur mined by the azufreros of Taximaroa. Sulphur-miningdeficiencies, he wrote, were due to the “lack of skill of those who mine it” and theirlack of “instruction and rules on how to find and extract it” (agn f).5 Gálvez’sstatements, in part, suggest that he either ignored or misunderstood the socioeco-nomic complexities–the lack of wage incentives, for exampleinvolved in miningsulphur (agn a).

Nevertheless, Gálvez’s ordinances sought to improve the Crown’s sulphur sup-plies by implementing both incentive and punitive measures in mining. Ordinance, for instance, outlined environments where azufreros might discover sulphurthe

preferred locations being in volcanoes and in the riverbeds that originate from them.Ordinances and described complicated refining and distilling procedures andprescribed sulphur purity tests ranging from tasting the mineral on the tongue toapplying a whale oil mixture, which supposedly measured the quality and in partdetermined the expected sales price in Mexico City. The Crown also lifted thepreordinance taxes on sulphur to encourage its sale to the Royal Gunpowder Fac-tory instead of as contraband and wrote liberal usufruct rules for sulphur prospect-ing and mine ownership designed to maximize sulphur discovery and extraction(agn f).

The Sulphur Ordinances also specified punitive measures for those caught inpossession of sulphur without a license. Ordinance , for example, stated that allsulphur be sent to the Royal Gunpowder Factory at Chapultepec and required car-

riers to possess, at all times, a physical copy of Gálvez’s Sulphur Ordinances as wellas a written figure of the quantity being transported and a description of the cara-van members and their origins. Without this documentation, customs could arrestthe convoy as smugglers and could confiscate all cargo and any beasts of burdenused in the transport. Ordinance specified that the first infraction merited losingall production facilities, materials and instruments, in addition to paying a ,-


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peso fine, at that time worth approximately tons of refined sulphur. Azufreroswho could not pay the fine were to receive a four-year jail term, followed by an

eight-year sentence for a second infraction (agn f). These punitive measuresillustrate how intently, at least rhetorically, the Crown sought to prohibit contra-band sulphur mining.

At the Chapultepec factory an administrator measured the quantity and gradeof the sulphur, and azufreros received payment in the form of a coupon, redeem-able at the Royal Treasury (agn f). Gálvez wrote that, despite better earningsfor sulphur in the past, the price would henceforth be fixed “without harm to theRoyal Treasury or detriment to the azufreros” (Fonseca and Urrutia [] ,). Later administrators appear to have prioritized the former, for after the re-forms archival sources detail tough negotiations between azufreros and Chapul-tepec administrators over sulphur-mining contracts, prices, and quotas. The salesprice for sulphur dropped from ten pesos per hundredweight to between six and

seven per hundredweight after the reforms, depending on the contract detailsand the yearly quotas assigned to diff erent mines (agn a). The shrewdness of the Crown in these matters, combined with the increase in sulphur supplies andthe resulting downward push in pricing, probably detracted from the appeal of sulphur prospecting, a fact intimated in several pieces of correspondence betweenmine owners and Chapultepec officials (agn ). But despite the declining profit-ability of sulphur mining for the azufreros, the net eff ect of the ordinances ap-pears to have been a modest expansion of available sulphur resources for theCrown.

Geographical Expansion of Sulphur Mining

atlixco, pueblaIn Gálvez wrote that azufreros had recently discovered a promising new minenear Atlixco, Puebla, at the eastern foot of Popocatépetl. The sulphur from this sitewas purportedly of a higher quality than any from Taximaroa (agn e). In Juan de Echeveste, administrator of the Royal Gunpowder Factory, wrote to AgustínOrtiz, owner of the Atlixco mine, stating that the factory faced an acute shortage of sulphur that year and that administrators greatly desired his high-quality sulphur.Echeveste called for the immediate increase in provision of sulphur from Atlixco,noting that the mine had been able to produce a better quality and a greater abun-dance than in the recent past and that a new delay in shipments was unacceptable.Ortiz responded that the production problems had been due to the illness of hisentire family (agn ).

Despite all of this, by , during correspondence concerning an applicationfor another mine, Echeveste mentioned that the sulphur of the Atlixco mine hadbeen exhausted (agn b). Because no additional accounts of sulphur mining inAtlixco are available, the mine so eagerly prospected during the s and s wasprobably short-lived.


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huamantla, tlaxcala

Correspondence concerning a newly discovered mine in Huamantla, Tlaxcala, dem-

onstrates the lengths to which a landowner might go to bargain with the RoyalGunpowder Factory over a mining contract. In , a two-year-long process of applying for legal mining status and bargaining over the sales price of sulphur be-gan between Miguel Bernardo Yllescas, owner of the hacienda at Santa MaríaMagdalena Xonecuila, near Huamantla, Tlaxcala, and Juan de Echeveste.

Yllescas had sent a Chapultepec official named Salvador Dampierre a sample of sulphur from a mountain approximately kilometers from the former’s hacienda.Given the location of the hacienda, which is now a tourist destination, Yllescas wasprobably referring to Malintzín (Malinche) volcano as the source. Dampierre quotedYllescas a sales price of between seven and eight pesos per hundredweight for thesample he provided along with his licensing application. Echeveste spent the nexttwo years trying to reduce Dampierre’s imprudent off er to six pesos per hundred-weight. Yllescas, however, let it be known in his letters to Echeveste that he knew theCrown was in dire need of sulphur and that before the Sulphur Ordinances theminers of Taximaroa had generously received ten pesos per hundredweight. Healso reasoned, strangely, that because the owner of some mines in San Luis Potosí,who was receiving seven pesos per hundredweight, had recently died, a price of six and one-half pesos would be a fair compromise (agn a).

As a result of this bargaining attempt, Echeveste sent an angry letter to Yllescasstating the Crown still was able to obtain large quantities of high-quality sulphurfrom the San Luis Potosí mines. He doubted that Yllescas could provide the quan-tity of sulphur he promised, and furthermore, that because of Yllescas’s insolenceduring the bargaining process, the license would be denied. Yllescas’s mine was to

be closed immediately in order to prevent him from selling sulphur as contraband(agn c).

The mine was apparently not closed, however. A final letter from an Echevestesubordinate from thefiscal division of the Royal Treasury granted the license to Yllescaswith the repeated condition that all sulphur be sent to the Royal Gunpowder Factory,again expressing the dire need for sulphur. In February , two years after the appli-cation process had begun, administrators finally granted Yllescas a contract to sellsulphur at six and one-half pesos per hundredweight to the factory, provided that itsquality was as good as the sample he had originally provided (agn d).

The Huamantla case off ers a glimpse into the interactions between privatelandowners and the factory’s administration, demonstrating the relatively stronghand of the former in light of the Crown’s desperation for sulphur, paralleling asimilar desperation for saltpeter and gunpowder during the postreform period(Lewis ). Echeveste did not easily dissuade Yllescas from Dampierre’s origi-nal off er; only after a noticeably hostile letter and the threat of closing the minedid the parties finally agree on a contractand for an amount greater than whatEcheveste wished. During the correspondence Echeveste based his principal ar-


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gument on the large amount of sulphur that was beginning to be supplied by anetwork of new mines at San Antonio Guascamá, near San Luis Potosí. Despite

the failure of the Atlixco mine and the contentious bargaining process with Yllescas,the Crown’s options for purchasing sulphur were expanding, only a decade afterissuing the ordinances.

guascamá, san luis potosí

Sulphur deposits from mountain peaks near the hacienda of San Antonio Guas-camá, about kilometers east of the town of San Luis Potosí, provided sulphurcomparable in quality and quantity to that from Taximaroa from the middle sto at least through the War for Independence (–). The owner sent the origi-nal application for legal mining status to the Royal Gunpowder Factory in ,listing eight locations in and around the hacienda: Cerro Colorado, Cerro del Som-brero, Cerro de Posada, Cerro de las Saladitas, Cerro de la Escalera, and several

others with illegible names. Echeveste granted a sulphur-mining contract to theowner of the hacienda in June after a year of correspondence, sample testing,and repeated warnings about contraband and the need to adhere to the ordinances.The mining operations of Guascamá dwarfed those of Yllescas in Huamantla, eventhough Francisco Xavier de Miera, the owner, received a contract for only six pesosper hundredweight (agn ).

By , however, Miera had successfully bargained with Echeveste for sevenpesos per hundredweight after complaining that the costs of the refining equip-ment and of employing almost miners was too high. Later that year Miera died,and the sulphur mines passed to his youngest daughter, Josepha Miera (agn e).The executor of the estate and Josepha’s guardian, Cipriano González, then ran thesulphur mines, although Josepha remained the owner until , when DonCipriano’s son married her and began to manage the mines after a new licensingprocess (agn , ). By , during the War for Independence, Josepha’s hus-band had died, and she once again became the sole owner of the mines. Commu-nications between a factory manager and the wartime Viceroy Félix María Callejaexpressed relief that her sulphur mines, which apparently had flooded, were opera-tional again and were providing sulphur to the Royal Gunpowder Factory (agn, ).

These examples of correspondence outline the expansion of sulphur miningafter the issuance of the Sulphur Ordinances. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries data are piecemeal, but the few records that do exist reveallarge annual shipments made from both Guascamá and Taximaroa, while the other

mines remained much less significant. The factory awarded yearly contracts of ,pesos to the Guascamá and Taximaroa mines but issued contracts for only pe-sos over a series of months to the Zacatlán, Tlalpopoca, and Huamantla mines (Fig-ures and ). Although the Crown enjoyed increased sulphur production from thefive legal mines, archival sources reveal that other mines continued to produce sul-phur clandestinely.


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Contraband Sulphur Mining

From the issuance of the Sulphur Ordinances of until the War for Indepen-

dence, the Crown attempted to tighten control over contraband sulphur mining, atleast rhetorically. Decreasing smuggling was a general goal of the Bourbon Reforms(Deans-Smith , xiii), and the Crown also emphasized the goal in its manage-ment of the sulphur-mining and gunpowder industries (Fonseca and Urrutia [], , , , ).

Despite the tough rhetoric of the Sulphur Ordinances and subsequent procla-mations, administrators seem to have done little to enforce the punitive measuresthat Gálvez had laid out. Instead, they allowed some degree of leniency, especially during the transition period immediately after . In Carlos Francisco deCroix, viceroy of New Spain, issued another royal proclamation stating that hence-forth none could plead ignorance of the sulphur laws as a defense for contrabandmining (agn ).

Shortly thereafter, authorities “discovered” a contraband sulphur mine in Tlal-popoca, Puebla (agn ). Viceroy de Croix ordered operators to close the minebecause the owner, Antonio de Aguilar, had not bothered to obtain a license, addingthat the mine produced poor-quality sulphur anyway. That the viceroy recognizedthe Tlalpopoca mine was already producing sulphur hints that administrators hadbeen ignoring or tolerating its unlicenced status. Administrators fined Aguilar pesos, instead of the , pesos that the Sulphur Ordinances mandated, and or-dered no jail time. Instead, authorities suggested he file the proper paperwork inorder to avoid future prosecution (agn ). Aguilar appears to have heeded thisrequest, because by the s the Tlalpopoca mine was again producing sulphur,this time legally (agn ).

More than thirty years after the Tlalpopoca incident, in , Viceroy José deIturrigaray wrote explicitly about the thriving trade in contraband sulphur. He cited“experience” as evidence that silver miners commonly utilized sulphur for blastmining not sold by the royal distribution points, and this fact obliged him to repeatthe penalties described in the Sulphur Ordinances, once again emphasizing thatignorance could not be used as a defense (agn ). Shortly after this proclama-tion, the most highly publicized case of contraband sulphur mining occurred nearTaximaroa.

In , local government officials charged Joaquin Santos Cortés, an Indianwoodcutter from the town of Ucareo, Michoacán, with trafficking pounds of contraband sulphur. Officials also identified three accomplices who either facili-

tated the act or planned to purchase the goods. According to the charges, SantosCortés masterminded the illegal operation and upon capture admitted his guilt.Over the next year José Mariano Lazo de la Vega, Santos Cortés’s attorney, contestedthe accusation and mounted an eff ective defense (agn a).

De la Vega argued that Santos Cortés only began to traffic sulphur because hehad injured his arm while cutting wood, that he was only trying to support his wife


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Fig. A rare example of a financing contract for sulphur mining in Taximaroa, Michoacán.Source: [] –. (Reproduced with permission from the Archivo General de la Nación,Mexico City)


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Fig. An unusually large payment to the Guascamá, San Luis Potosí, mines during thefinal daysof the Spanish colony.Source: [] . (Reproduced with permission from the Archivo Generalde la Nación, Mexico City)


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and three children, that he did not fully understand the charges against him, andthat putting him in prison would leave his family destitute. The attorney also ar-

gued that the infraction was relatively minor because Santos Cortés was a first-timeoff ender who had mined only a small amount of sulphur. Moreover, the twenty-five-year-old did not deserve the penalty of five years in an African jail, a curiousidea that a local official had proposed (agn b). Through this defense and thefact that Santos Cortés had already been in prison for six months while awaitingtrial, de la Vega appears to have had the sentence commuted after authorities cred-ited Santos Cortés for time served. Authorities sentenced two of the accomplices toone year of unspecified public service and warned Santos Cortés that they wouldapply the full penalties specified in the ordinances if he again mined sulphur with-out a license (agn c).

The Tlalpopoca case contrasts with the Ucareo example, in which the authori-ties applied the ordinances more strictly: Santos Cortés and his associates did in

fact receive punishment that included jail time and public service. Although thismay indicate that landowners received preferential treatment when compared withthe landless “Indian” Santos Cortés, de la Vega nonetheless used ethnicity as a de-fense tool, referring to Santos Cortés’s minority status, to the fact that Spanish washis second language, and to several of the “Laws for Indians” which mandated thatthey not be as harshly punished, especiallyfinancially, as non-Indians (agn b).Several previous studies of New Spain’s judicial system also reflect this general fair-ness toward Indians (Borah ; Kanter ; Owensby ). In any case, anddespite the spurious distinctions that can be drawn between the two, both casesdemonstrate that the Crown allowed some degree of leniency with regard to thestrict implementation of the Sulphur Ordinances.

Geographical Eects of the Sulphur Ordinances

My research revealed two distinct stages of development in New Spain’s sulphur-mining industry. Before the Sulphur Ordinances of the Crown consistently utilized only one network of sulphur mines, those of Taximaroa, Michoacán. In-spector General José de Gálvez declared production from these sites to be insuffi-cient and sought to expand sulphur-mining operations to other regions. After theordinances were issued the number and size of mines increased. This expansionimproved the Crown’s resources and enabled a reduction in the purchase price of sulphur. During the postordinance period large landowners who survived the strictnew licensing process continued to profit from legal sulphur mining. A negativeside eff ect of the ordinances, however, was that they eff ectively forced landless, small-

scale miners to mine sulphur clandestinely, which resulted in a thriving contrabandsulphur industry.

Geographical factors, including long distances between the Royal GunpowderFactory and the widely dispersed sulphur markets, chronic problems with colonialtransportation (Suárez Arguello ), and the plentiful volcanic sulphur depositsin distant regions made centralized control of the industry from Mexico City difficult


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from a logistical perspective (Fonseca and Urrutia [] , ). Administratorsand viceroys in Mexico City repeatedly lamented profits lost to the thriving contra-

band sulphur markets in the periphery. But instead of opening the market, asHumboldt suggested for the gunpowder industry (, ), the Crown simply issued more proclamations against contraband production, usually by simply re-peating the substantive points of Gálvez’s original ordinances. These proclamationshad both positive and negative results.

First, the harsh penalties described in the Sulphur Ordinances and the new, cum-bersome licensing process created a dilemma for all azufreros: either apply for aroyal license or continue to sell sulphur illegally. Because the Crown’s purchase pricesfor sulphur fell dramatically after the ordinances were issued, those miners whowere able to produce larger quantities had an economic advantage in the legal mar-ket. And because documents reveal that only large landowners received royal con-tracts, this imbalance convinced some small-scale miners, like Joaquin Santos Cortés,

to continue to work clandestinely.Second, although the Sulphur Ordinances of appear to have made legal

sulphur mining unappealing to small-scale miners, the reforms encouraged pros-pecting by larger landowners. The incentive measures that the ordinances off ered,including instruction on where to find sulphur and how to refine it, encouragednew mining applications and correspondence concerning the licensing process. Theproliferation of documentation on sulphur mining in the archival record duringthe postordinance period reflects this trend (Figure ), as does the increase in thenumber of legal mines. The net eff ect of the ordinances was an increase in availablesulphur for the Crown.

Third, although contraband sulphur mining was widespread, administratorsappear to have limited its prosecution, for the Tlalpopoca and Ucareo cases are theonly two for which written records are available. The paucity of evidence is prob-ably due less to poor documentary preservation than to lack of attention to thecontraband sulphur trade. Contraband gunpowder, not sulphur, represented a moreimmediate threat to the Crown’s finances and to perceived public order than didcontraband sulphur. The archival record reflects this trendat least seventeen docu-ments on contraband gunpowder are available, compared with only two documentson contraband sulphur. Because colonial administrators were aware of the wide-spread illegal sulphur mining, the Crown appears to have tolerated what was tosome extent probably inevitable, especially given the wide distribution of sulphurdeposits and the unrealistic restrictions on sulphur mining outlined in the ordi-nances (Fonseca and Urrutia [] ; agn ).6

Unintended Consequences of the Sulphur Ordinances

My research supports the notion that, during Mexico’s colonial period, commodity producers were often far from passive victims of domination, that they were “muchmore than simple marionettes set to dance by overseas commands and demands”(Topick, Marichal, and Frank , ). Individual azufreros dared to bargain with


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royal administrators over sulphur-mining contracts, prices, and mining quotas,openly revealing to administrators they knew the Crown was in desperate need of the mineral they mined, refined, and transported to Mexico City. As a result, sul-phur miners exercised considerable leverage by successfully negotiating mining con-tracts in their favor. This process reflects similar negotiations between tobaccogrowers and workers and the colonial state, for example, and reflects the “temperedabsolutism” of the monopoly system (Deans-Smith , xiv). Sulphur miners in-deed played enterprising and defining roles in the development of the industry (Topick, Marichal, and Frank ).

Colonial documents reveal that, until the late eighteenth century, New Spainsuff ered from insufficient sulphur production, despite both the Spanish Crown’sdesperate need for the mineral and the region’s abundant sulphur deposits. Notuntil the issuance of the Sulphur Ordinances of did royal administrators andsulphur miners combine eff orts to expand sulphur prospecting and mining devel-opment. These Bourbon Reform measures drove the growth and development of the monopoly during the late eighteenth century.

At its core, however, strict monopolistic control of sulphur from Mexico City

was incompatible with the geographical realities of New Spain. Transporting sul-phur from distant mines to a centralized production center and then shipping itback to distant markets near where it had originated was expensive, was inefficient,and facilitated the contraband trade (Deans-Smith , ). Releasing the sulphurtrade from monopoly control, as Humboldt suggested for the gunpowder industry (, ), would have better served the Crown’s network of administrative offices

Fig.References to sulphur and numbers of pages containing data on sulphur mines, shipments,and contraband found in archival records for New Spain, –. (Graph by the author)


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and distribution points and would have mitigated contraband trade. Although theordinances did improve overall sulphur production, the unintended consequences

of the legislation included a thriving contraband industry and, ultimately, a messy and inefficient management of the monopoly.

Notes

. This economic growth does not appear to have translated into economic development, how-ever (Garner and Stefanou , ).

. The Crown also sold sulphur to hospitals and gunpowder to fireworks manufacturers, althoughdocuments reveal less about these transactions than they do about sales to the mining districts (agn).

. In colonial Mexico, eight reales was equivalent to one peso, or “piece of eight.” The peso wasroughly equivalent in value to the thaler (dollar) in Europe and the English colonies of North Americaat the time.

. Fonseca and Urrutia also mentioned a mine near San Luis Potosí at this time, but I could notconfirm this claim in the archives ([] ). The reference appears only in their later compilationof materials on the Royal Treasury, and not in Gálvez’s original ordinances. According to what I found,licensing applications for sulphur mining near San Luis Potosí began in , almost ten years afterGálvez wrote the Sulphur Ordinances (agn ).

. This and all other translations in this article are mine.

. Humboldt estimated the amount of contraband gunpowder consumed in the silver mines com-pared with that legally sold by the Crown was about four to one (Humboldt , ). If Humboldt’scomparison were remotely accurate and this ratio extended to account for the sulphur involved ingunpowder production, it is further evidence that a secondary market for contraband sulphur flour-ished.

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