Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Ordenanzas del baratillo de Mexico Compuestas por don Pedro Anselmo Chreslos Jache
LSC.170/513
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Contributing Institution:
UCLA Library Special Collections
Title: Ordenanzas del baratillo de Mexico Compuestas por don Pedro Anselmo Chreslos Jache
Creator:
Chreslos Jache, Don Pedro Anselmo
Identifier/Call Number: LSC.170/513
Physical Description:
1 Volumes
155 leaves: paper ; 235 x 165 mm. bound to 240 x 180 mm.
Date: 1734
Abstract: This humorous and sarcastic mid-eighteenth century treatise attributes a heavily anti-Spaniard perspective to Mexico City's
multiracial lower-class population, particularly in relation to themes such as peninsular privilege and racial discrimination.
Taking the form of traditional Spanish legal codes, the text describes the nature, attitudes and material conditions prevalent
in creole society, while ridiculizing peninsular or "Gachupin" tendencies through a collection of mock ordinances.
Physical Location: Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located
on this page.
Language of Material: Materials are in Spanish.
Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located
on this page.
Restrictions on Use and Reproduction
Property rights to the objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained
by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue
the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
[Identification of item], Ordenanzas del baratillo de Mexico Compuestas por don Pedro Anselmo Chreslos Jache. (Collection
170/513). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Provenance/Source of Acquisition
Formerly Phillipps Manuscript no. 21332.
Processed by Pablo Sierra with assistance from Kelley Bachli, May 2008, in the Center For Primary Research and Training (CFPRT).
Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user
interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides
a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive
processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.
We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating
existing description of our materials that contains language
that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they
could be described more accurately, by filling out the form
located on our website:
Report Potentially Offensive Description in Library Special
Collections.
UCLA Catalog Record ID:
9985538153606533
Almost nothing is known about the text's purported author, Don Pedro Anselmo Chreslos Jache. Given the manuscript's extremely
critical nature, Chreslos Jache was surely a pen name for a highly educated individual that was undoubtedly very familiar
with the particularities of urban life in New Spain. Although the text takes on creole tendencies, several passages throughout
the narrative (and the introductory letter) suggest that its author may have in fact been a Peninsular Spaniard. At one point,
the "Ordenanzas" slip into first person in order for the narrator to admit his lower-class origins, when he declares "fui
zapatero" (I was a shoemaker). Nothing else is known in relation to Chreslos Jachme, with exception of what can be gleaned
from the manuscript.
According to a nineteenth century catalogue entitled "Bibliotheca Mexicana," a copy of the "Ordenanzas" was put up for auction
in 1869 by the London-based rare book traders Messrs. Puttick & Simpson. Listed as item #1958, the book was described as "an
anonymous work full of humour and satire on the respective customs and relations between Spaniards and the native born Mexicans."
At 310 pages long, the copy described in the catalogue coincides exactly in length with the current extant version.
The "Ordenanzas del Baratillo", which has been described as Mexico's earliest major satire, is divided into three sections:
an introductory letter, a prologue and a collection of ordinances. While the largest number of pages concern the latter section,
a lengthy introductory letter and a shorter prologue provide dubious (albeit humorous) background information on its anonymous
author. The letter, addressed from a Spaniard living in the Indies to one living in Madrid, makes several fascinating references
not just to travels through Mexico and Spain, but to Peru as well (thereby explaining the multiple references to "peruleros").
The brief prologue contextualizes the introductory letter in relation to the ensuing collection of ordinances, while setting
the tone as a sarcastic anti-Spaniard treatise.
The bulk of the narrative consists of 377 decrees which enumerate the norms regulating the behavior of the lower-class brotherhood,
"la Hermandad". Often quite vulgar, the "ordenanzas" nonetheless follow the formulaic and ostentatiously elegant format so
prevalent in Spanish notarial documentation and personal correspondences of the colonial period. The text is thematically
restricted to the general poverty, material culture, and political reality encountered by the kind of people that would frequent
the "baratillo" (the notorious secondhand black markets of Mexico City and Puebla). As a result, those traditionally rejected
by elite society (mulatto, black, and indigenous people) feature prominently throughout the development of the narrative.
Underlying the entire text is a generalized sentiment of creole dissatisfaction with the status quo and in particular with
the privileged Peninsular elite. In the words of Ilona Katzew, the text "describes and demythologizes the colony's social
situation by inverting its commonly acknowledged power dynamic… and provides a fascinating glimpse into the mentality of the
period regarding mixed-bloods and their purported negative effects on the Spanish body politic."
Text in Spanish.
Bound Manuscripts Collection (Collection 170) . Available at UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Manuscripts.