John Tutino's MAKING A NEW WORLD: FOUNDING CAPITALISM IN THE BAJIO AND SPANISH NORTH AMERICA

Just out in Literal 34, 2013, my double review of:

MAKING A NEW WORLD: FOUNDING CAPITALISM IN THE BAJIO AND SPANISH NORTH AMERICA
By John Tutino
Duke University Press, 2011
ISBN 978-0-8223-4989-1

MEXICO AND THE MEXICANS IN THE MAKING OF THE UNITED STATES
Edited by John Tutino
University of Texas Press, 2012
ISBN 978-0-292-73718-1

Review originally published in Literal 34, 2013

The Bajío, a rich agricultural, mining and industrial region north of Mexico City, does not even appear on most English-speaking peoples' mental maps of Mexico. North of the U.S.-Mexico border, the best word to describe the image of Querétaro, the Bajío's first and still thriving major city, would probably be "obscure." And yet Querétaro, founded by Otomís and Franciscan friars in 1531, may be the hometown of capitalism-- so argues John Tutino in Making a New World: Founding Capitalism in the Bajío and Spanish North America, a nearly 700 page tour de force of original research heavy with appendices, yet with such a wealth of novelistic detail, the reading itself trips along like a novel.

While not denying the role of England and its North Atlantic colonies, Tutino points out that because they dominated the capitalist world after 1800, the origins and nature of what preceded it—sparked by Ming China's demand for silver and Spain's American colonies' ability to provide it—have been overlooked. The main early silver mines in the 16th century were Potosí in South America and Zacatecas, in the Bajío north of Mexico City. It was this nexus out of which flowered the international trade and culture of capitalism.

The "enduring presumption" that capitalism was "Europe's gift to the world (or plague upon it)," is the first Tutino explodes, and the second, that the conservative nature of Spanish Catholic culture could not nurture the innovation and creativity necessary for true capitalism, he attacks with a few life stories from the early days in the colonial Bajío, as it was expanding beyond traditional farming and mining into a more intricate and internationally connected commercial society. He gives their names, describes their accomplishments in trade, mining, farming, and various social honors and donations to the church, yet, to the reader's undoubted surprise, one is Otomí, one most likely descended from African slaves, and another, an Italian count. Tutino asserts:

"[T]the Bajío and Spanish North America were not ruled by a dominant Spanish state; they were not led by men more interested in honor than profit; they did not organize work mostly by coercion. Life was not ruled by rigid castes; communities were no constrained by an imposed Catholicism that inhibited debate. They were instead societies founded and led by powerful, profit-seeking entrepreneurs of diverse ancestry."

This dynamism of the Bajío and Spanish North America and its vital importance for understanding North American, and therefore the United States history itself, is reprised in Tutino's anthology, Mexico and Mexicans in the Making of the United States, with his essay, "Capitalist Foundations: Spanish North America, Mexico, and the United States." . . . READ MORE

Links: 

Literal Magazine
My book reviews page
My ever-growing embryonic list of recommended books on Mexico.

P.S. My interview with John Tutino will be podcast #13 (hey, I say that is a lucky number!) in the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, I am still battling the fallout of the asteroid, that is, my new book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual Introduced and Translated. Updates about that anon.