The alhondijaje of Guadalajara (1662-1742): a grain duty that exempted subsistence, and a city too poor to fill its own council
Guadalajara charged half a real on every fanega of maize entering its grain market, except from the clergy, the tithes, the Indians and any vecino bringing maize to eat. Ninety thousand fanegas came in each year and the duty yielded about 1,200 pesos. The 1742 chronicler who prints those figures prints what followed too: a council chamber in the ruins of the palace, aldermanships knocked down at a hundred pesos, and his plan to elect regidores instead.
Why this wins its question: Colonial taxation in Spanish America is usually summarised at the level of the empire — alcabala, quinto, tribute — and municipal food dues almost never surface in English at all, so the question of who was exempt is never asked. This object gives one grain duty in full from a single eyewitness chapter: the rate per fanega and per carga, the naming of Mexico, San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas as the models, a royal order of 1664 asking on whose money the alhóndiga was built and how much was collected, an author who states that he searched and found no approval although the duty had run eighty years, and the exemption list in which the Indians and every vecino pay nothing on maize brought in to eat. It then prints the arithmetic that follows — 90,000 fanegas entering, about 1,200 pesos collected, some 2,000 pesos of total municipal revenue for the capital of a kingdom, a council meeting in the ruins of a palace, aldermanships knocked down at a hundred pesos against 8,000 for the same office in new-built Chihuahua — and ends with a criollo lawyer in 1742 proposing that perpetual purchased aldermen be replaced by triennial elected ones, because perpetual holders would not prosecute the market regrators.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The duty's origin is dated and its model named, and it was never confirmed. The chapter says the alhondijaje began in 1662 "porque libremente entraban los labradores á vender sus semillas en la ciudad", and that president Antonio Álvarez de Castro "estableció dicho derecho, que aplicó á propios, con el ejemplar de la ciudad de México, San Luis Potosí y la de Zacatecas, y con la calidad de que su Magestad lo apruebe". Consulted, the king ordered on 20 March 1664 "que la audiencia informase de qué bienes se habia hecho la alhóndiga, y á costa de quién, y en qué forma se cobran los derechos y cuántos". The author then states flatly: "No he hallado la aprobacion, pero está en corriente." A standing municipal tax, raised on the example of three other cities, subject on its face to royal approval, and still being collected eighty years later with no approval that its own city's lawyer could find in the archive.
The rates and the exemptions are printed together, and the exemptions are the finding. "Lo que pagan es medio real de cada fanega de maiz, y dos reales de la carga de trigo, excepto los labradores del contorno, que solo pagan un real de la harina; y son exentos del derecho de alhondijaje los eclesiásticos, los diezmos si se administran por la Iglesia y por remate, y los indios y todos los vecinos, del maiz que conducen para su gasto." Two of those exemptions are the familiar corporate privileges of clergy and tithe. The third is not: the Indians, and every vecino, pay nothing on maize brought in for their own consumption. The duty falls on grain entering commerce and is lifted off grain entering a household, which makes it a market due rather than a food tax, and it is written that way in the same sentence that exempts the Church.
The chronicle prints the volume and the yield in the same breath, and the gap between them is the measure of the exemption. "Por lo que sin embargo de que entran en la ciudad 90,000 fanegas de maiz, solo produce el alhondijaje por arrendamientos 1,200 pesos poco mas ó ménos." At half a real the fanega, ninety thousand fanegas would have carried a duty of some 5,600 pesos; the farm of the duty produced about a fifth of that. The figures are the author's and were not checked here against any account, and a farmed duty yields the lease price rather than the collection; but as he states them, roughly four fifths of the maize entering Guadalajara in 1742 moved without paying, which is what a subsistence exemption looks like in a city fed mainly by its own countryside.
The whole municipal revenue is then given, and it is very small. With the letting of the market stalls — "que se reducen á vendedores bohoneros, mesilleros y pulperos" — the propios "llegarán… á dos mil pesos, con lo que escasamente se pagan los censos, con los salarios del escribano, procurador, portero, maseros y demas gastos que se le ofrecen al cabildo, y en soportar las funciones de Corpus, San Miguel, San Clemente, Nuestra Señora del Rosario, Nuestra Señora de Zapopam y otras". Two thousand pesos a year for the capital of a kingdom with an audiencia in it, most of it pre-committed to mortgage interest, four salaries and six religious festivals. Against that figure the bullfights and comedies the previous chapter charged to the same purse are not a system of plunder but a share of a very short blanket, and the object of this entry is to make the arithmetic visible in both directions.
What the revenue would not stretch to is listed, and the list is an inventory of unmet public works. "Es la razon por que no sobran efectos para gastos extraordinarios, de componer calles y puentes, ni para desempeñar en fiestas reales, exequias de los reyes, ni aun para sitial, doseles ni demas adornos, que conduce á la decencia de un Consejo, que es capital de un reino, y hoy ni aun sala de cabildo tiene, si no es una que ha quedado entre las ruinas de palacio, y aun esta, está al caer." Streets and bridges come first in his own list and the ceremonial trappings after; the council of the capital of Nueva Galicia was meeting in 1742 in a room left standing in the ruins of the palace and expected to fall.
One public work in the chapter was financed by abolishing an office, and the office never came back. To pay for the palace the audiencia applied various judicial condemnations and obtained the suppression for eight years of the corregimiento of Analco, whose salary was a hundred and fifty pesos, "puesto que los alcaldes ordinarios de la ciudad podrian administrar justicia en dicho pueblo de Analco y en el de Mexicalcingo, y es desde cuando el alcalde de primer voto es corregidor de Analco". The work cost 19,293 pesos, the accounts were sent to the king, and because more than seven thousand pesos of it were still owing the salary was diverted for four years more by cedula of 23 January 1675; "y no se volvió á proveer dicho corregimiento, sino que se incorporó en la jurisdiccion de alcaldes ordinarios". A district magistracy over two Indian pueblos was liquidated to fund a building and its jurisdiction folded into the city bench — recorded here because it is a change in who judged two indigenous towns, made for a fiscal reason, and stated as an aside.
The consequence the author draws is that a poor cabildo cannot be a respected one, and he documents it with the price of its offices. "De aquí se sigue estar desautorizado tanto, que no hay vecino que apetezca ser regidor, y aunque á veces se llena el cabildo de sugetos, es en obsequio á los presidentes que los alientan, y entónces se les rematan los oficios á cien pesos, y en acabando el presidente, se desisten y retiran… y no cuidan de cosa alguna, y esto redunda en perjuicio de su Magestad y del bien público." He sets that against the same offices elsewhere: the Council refused confirmation on 7 April 1637 of a Zacatecas alferazgo knocked down at 10,000 pesos as too cheap; on 20 February 1679 it annulled a later remate of the same office at a thousand pesos as fraudulent and fined the president who had given possession five hundred pesos; and "yo ví rematar el oficio de alférez real de Chihuahua (que es villa muy nueva), en 8,000 pesos". Eighty times the Guadalajara price, in a frontier town.
His remedy is the abolition of perpetual aldermen, and he argues it on incentives rather than on principle. Municipal offices sell for so little at Guadalajara, he reasons, "porque no tienen estimacion los regidores, ó porque no cumplen, ó porque se quieren castigar excesos de regatones y otras cosas concernientes, los contienen los respetos de los oidores con un recado, y así no obran por no verse desairados"; and he sees no cure "si no es que se providenciase, el que, como se eligen alcaldes ordinarios, se eligiesen regidores, si no anuales, á lo ménos trienales, porque en un año no fuera fácil se enterasen en el gobierno económico de un cabildo, y como no perpetuos, se esmerarian en llevar las cargas concejiles, y hacer sus turnos con puntualidad". A criollo lawyer in 1742 proposing elected, term-limited aldermen in place of purchased life offices, with a stated term of three years and a stated reason for rejecting one — and the grievance behind it is that perpetual regidores would not prosecute market regrators because the judges leaned on them.
The counterpoint belongs on the record with the exemption. The venality of municipal office the author complains of was crown policy, not a local abuse: the same treasury that sold alferazgos at Zacatecas and Chihuahua was refusing confirmation of sales it thought too cheap, which is the behaviour of a seller and not of a regulator. The Analco corregimiento was suppressed for a building. The 90,000 fanegas figure comes from a writer whose argument requires the yield to look inadequate. And a subsistence exemption is not a subsidy: the Indians of the pueblos who brought maize in free of duty were also the population from whom tribute, repartimiento labour and church fees were taken elsewhere in the same system, as other objects in this corpus set out. What the chapter establishes is narrower and still worth having — that in one city, in one duty, the line between commerce and eating was drawn and written down.
The limits of this entry. All of it is read from pages 338 and 339 of the 1870 Mexico printing of a manuscript finished at Guadalajara in 1742, by a lawyer of the audiencia whose thesis is that his city is under-endowed and its council disrespected. No lease, cedula, alhóndiga book or account was seen here; the rates, the exemptions, the 90,000 fanegas, the 1,200 pesos and the 2,000 pesos are all his, and a man arguing for more revenue has a motive to state the yield low. Nothing establishes how the exemption for maize "para su gasto" was policed at the gate, whether it was abused by dealers, whether the duty was ever confirmed afterwards, or what it became under the intendancy reform of 1786. The reform proposal at the end of the chapter is a private opinion in an unpublished manuscript, and nothing here shows that anyone acted on it.