Ordenanza de quarteles de Santiago de Queretaro (1796)
A 24-page printed rulebook that cut Queretaro into nine wards, put an unpaid neighbourhood magistrate over each, and told him what he might and might not do. It orders schools, medical relief for the destitute sick and street lighting; it also orders a house-by-house census, servant papers and night rounds against the idle. Its article 14 forbids the same magistrates to make general inquisitions or to meddle inside a household.
Why this wins its question: Alcaldes de barrio are a standing item in the literature on the Bourbon reforms and are almost always described from secondary summaries of the Mexico City ordinance of 1782. This object works from a different and smaller printing that has scarcely been read in English at all - the Queretaro ordinance of 1796, twenty-four pages, thirty-two articles, opened page by page - and quotes the operative wording of each duty in place of paraphrasing the type. It puts the surveillance apparatus and the relief apparatus in the same object because the same articles created both: the padron that names every woman, child and servant in every house sits beside the article compelling apothecaries to supply medicines to the destitute, and the ban on general pesquisas and on meddling in the interior government of a household sits beside the night rounds against the vagos. The printed plan attached to it supplies something no summary offers: the city's own count of its blocks, fountains, convents, workshops and its two free schools, against which the ordinance's programme can be measured.
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 pamphlet states its own chain of authority on its title page. The division of Queretaro into wards, the creation of alcaldes for them and the rules for their government were drawn up by the corregidor de letras of the city, Lic. Joseph Ignacio Ruiz Calado, "segun lo resuelto por S.M. en Real Cedula de 17 de Junio de 1794" and under orders of the viceroy, and were approved by superior decree of 4 June 1796. The text itself closes "Queretaro Marzo 5 de 1796" over Ruiz Calado's name, and the imprint is Mexico City, Mariano de Zuniga y Ontiveros, calle del Espiritu Santo.
The scheme is three over nine. Articles 1 to 3 divide the city into three quarteles mayores - the first under the alcalde ordinario de primera eleccion, the second under the corregidor, the third under the alcalde ordinario de segunda eleccion - and each of those into three quarteles menores under an alcalde de barrio, so that nine neighbourhood magistrates covered the city. The boundaries are set street by street, and article 1 concedes at the outset that the city's shape, a quadrilong running east to west, does not permit the wards to be laid out as true squares.
The office was unpaid, compulsory and biennial. Articles 5 and 7 make the posts cargas concejiles and oficios honorificos which nobody may decline, "baxo la pena de cien pesos" irremissibly exacted from anyone who resigns, with the terms running two years and the nominations made each December by the three jueces mayores and sent to the viceroy for approval; article 8 has the appointee take possession before 1 January, sworn in a public place and recorded in a book, and forbids any refreshment, banquet or expense on entering or leaving office under penalty of 200 pesos. Article 6 gives the holder a blue uniform with red cuff facing and a silver braid, a black staff a vara and a half high with an ivory or white bone head, and a passive fuero in criminal and civil causes, excepting matters of the royal revenues and of the Consulado and Mineria.
Article 7 gives a reason for preferring a magistrate who lives inside his own ward that is worth quoting for what it assumes about the job: it facilitates the administration of justice, "y porque el intimo conocimiento de los habitadores de el, franquea mayor motivo para el acierto". The ward officer was meant to be a neighbour, not a stranger posted in.
The most unexpected article is a limit on the power the ordinance has just created. Article 14 states that general pesquisas are prohibited by the laws, and warns the ward magistrates not to proceed by indeterminate inquisitions into crimes, which by causing "disgusto, zozobras e inquietudes en las familias, solo sirven para difamarlas", and "mucho menos de mezclarse en el gobierno interior y economico de las casas". It requires them to weigh denunciations, reflecting on the quality and circumstances of both denouncer and denounced and considering with maturity whether the denouncer is moved "por el servicio de Dios o bien del Publico, o les dirige pasion, deahogos de sentimientos, u otro fin particular", and to lay the denunciation papers before the judge, and before the accused when the case merits it.
Their criminal jurisdiction was deliberately partial. Article 10 confines it to forming the sumaria, whether on a party's complaint or ex officio, securing the accused and the corpus delicti and passing serious cases - homicide, grave wounding - at once to the juez mayor; they may arrest into the jails but "no podran ponerlos en libertad sin que preceda la orden del Juez mayor", and each has two alguaciles approved by the juez mayor. Article 11 requires them, without excuse, to attend the weekly and Easter jail visits and to report there the sumarias they have formed, their state, and the prisoners held with the causes of arrest.
Article 13 makes the ward magistrate a conciliator before he is a judge: in light matters - quarrels between husband and wife where nothing serious is involved, disputes of words between neighbours, provided they are not grave and there is no blood or dangerous blows - he is to "componerlos y amistarlos verbalmente", sparing the principal judges the business and merely notifying them of what occurred.
The coercive half of the office is in the same pamphlet and is not softened. Article 12 makes night rounds one of the alcalde's chief duties, against street music, open-door accessories, gatherings held under the title of wakes, drunkenness and gaming, with inspection of vinaterias, pulquerias, mesones and trucos, denounced tepacherias and prohibited drinks, people carrying unpermitted arms or abroad at extraordinary hours of the night; and where these are "sospechosos, vagos o mal entretenidos" they are to be secured and their domicile, estado, oficio y costumbres investigated.
Articles 19 to 21 build a standing register of the population. Each alcalde keeps a folio book with the streets of his ward separately entered according to the printed plan, the houses set down by number, worn door numbers and corner street signs renewed, and workshops, inns, fondas and figones noted; he forms "un exacto Padron de la familia o familias que vivan en cada casa", ecclesiastical or secular, "sin reserva de sexo o edad", with the names of women, children and servants, their state, age, calidad and the occupation of the householder, heads of family being answerable for exact returns; deaths are notified for entry in the book, innkeepers hand in a nightly list of their guests with where they come from and where they are going, and a family that moves house must notify the alcalde under a fine of ten pesos or as many days in jail, ecclesiastics expressly included "pues como Vecinos y miembros de la Republica, estan obligados a ella".
Article 22 regulates domestic service in both directions, and the second direction is the one usually left out. A salaried servant leaving a house must ask the master for a paper saying so, and no one may take him on without it, even in the same ward; but the master "no podran negarselo sin justa causa", and where the paper is refused the alcalde is to judge the motive and provide sufficiently, "ya sea a contener al Criado, ya a que no se veje indebidamente".
Article 23 assigns the ward magistrate a duty of medical relief and gives the reason for compelling the practitioners. Because of "la escasez de Medicos y Cirujanos que se experimenta en esta Ciudad, como el corto numero de Boticas y Parteras que hay en ella", a sick person who through destitution lacks the help he needs is to be sent to the hospital; and if even there a bed is wanting, the hospital being so small, the alcalde is to practise "quantas diligencias dicta la humanidad", making a physician, surgeon or other practitioner attend the case and the apothecaries supply the necessary medicines - "pues como que tienen la utilidad que les produce el Publico, no pueden negarse al socorro de los de su especie".
Article 24 puts schooling on the ward officer's list. He is to procure that there be a school and an amiga for the teaching of boys and girls with virtuous and apt masters, to inform himself of the pupils' progress and to oblige indolent parents to send their children; and because such houses of teaching are scarce in the city, the corregidor and the alcaldes ordinarios together are to press the prelates of the religious houses to erect schools of first letters in them "a imitacion de lo que ya se practico en la Capital Mexico". Those old enough for a trade are to be placed in one.
Articles 25 to 28 are welfare and coercion in one breath, and both halves are printed. Orphans left by the death of a head of family are to be taken in by pious persons of the ward and boys of age placed in a trade; poor maidens and honest widows who cannot work for illness, or cannot earn their keep, are to be recommended for alms, sewing or spinning, "sin obligar a ello a ningun Vecino". In the same articles women of ill life are to be proceeded against and idle women applied to serve in honest households; the city having no hospice for beggars, the alcaldes are to establish how many there are in each ward, notify outsiders to return to their own places, and compel to work those local beggars whose mendicity is found to come from idleness; and the custom of not working on Mondays is to be cut off entirely.
Two articles are urban public works, and one of them records an institutional failure. Article 29 charges the alcaldes with seeing the paving kept in good state, the vecinos sweeping and watering their frontage, no rubbish thrown into the middle of the streets, the drains running and the acequia covers not left open - explicitly because the zeal of the judges cannot reach the whole city "y el numero de Regidores de que se compone el Ayuntamiento no admite la division en Quarteles". Article 32 orders the first alcaldes, within two months of taking possession, to find the arbitrios for establishing street lighting in the city, in a junta of all of them with the jueces mayores and with the procurador general and sindico personero del comun attending, the chosen means to be sent up for superior approval.
The pamphlet ends with a sheet, "Explicacion del Plano de Queretaro dividido en tres quarteles mayores, y cada uno en tres menores", whose Resumen General is a statistical portrait of the city in 1796: 155 manzanas, 272 streets and alleys, 6 plazas and plazuelas, 21 public fountains, 2 parishes with one ayuda and three auxiliaries, 2 reales colegios, 7 convents of religious with 1 hospice of the same, 2 convents of nuns, 2 reales colegios de ninas y beatas, 15 public chapels, 2 terceras ordenes, 2 escuelas gratuitas, 18 factories of woollen cloth and other wool goods, 129 trapiches of Spaniards and 198 of Indians and other castas, 4 ribbon works, 35 hat works and 10 tanneries. A note adds that the city was measured for the plan and runs 4,514 varas from east to west and 2,425 across.
The plan checks the ordinance, which is why both are worth reading together. The same pamphlet that orders each ward officer to see there is a school and an amiga counts exactly two free schools in a city of 155 blocks, which is the measure of how far the programme of article 24 had to travel. The workshop counts cut the other way against the usual picture of a colonial city: the sheet records more trapiches held by Indians and other castas than by Spaniards, 198 against 129. What a trapiche was in Queretaro's wool economy the sheet does not say, so the figures are reported here as the categories the plan itself used.