Gamboa's World by Christopher Albi

Author:Christopher Albi [Albi, Christopherx]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780826362964
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

The End of the Visita

Meanwhile, in New Spain, the visita of Gálvez was coming to an anticlimactic close. In 1768 he had presented his intendancy plan, which immediately raised bureaucratic resistance in Madrid and Mexico City. He then set off on his great American adventure, an expedition to the far northwest of New Spain. Fancying himself a modern-day conquistador, Gálvez oversaw an ambitious campaign of exploration, conquest, and settlement.7 In Baja California he handed over the old Jesuit missions to the Franciscans, led by Junípero Serra. He coordinated land and sea missions up the Pacific coast as far north as San Francisco Bay. His young nephew Bernardo de Gálvez, who later became the governor of Louisiana and viceroy of New Spain, accompanied him. Gálvez’s main task was to create a new administrative unit under military control, a captaincy general, to govern the territory encompassing Alta and Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa, and much of Chihuahua. Only a military government, it was believed, could secure Spanish sovereignty in lands still contested fiercely by Apaches and Comanches.

In the summer of 1769, while Gálvez and his nephew were waging war against the Apache in Sonora, the strain of the past few years caught up with him. He suffered what appeared to be a serious nervous breakdown. From July 1769 to the spring of 1770, he lay incapacitated. At one point, delirious, he raved that he was the king of Prussia and would bring an army of apes from Guatemala to subdue the Indians of northern New Spain. He claimed St. Francis of Assisi—of all people—gave him military advice. When he recovered his wits, he took vengeance on anyone who dared to speak of his mental illness, including his private secretary, Juan Manuel de Viniegra, and a young military officer and future viceroy of New Spain, Miguel José Azanza. Both were imprisoned without charge and expelled from New Spain.8

Back in the capital, Gálvez accomplished little of note in the final year of the visita. He backed the creation of a bakers guild, the very thing Gamboa had stopped five years earlier with his order to release Natives confined to bakeries under the collera. Gálvez, however, saw the value of guilds: through them the crown could reward favored subjects while simultaneously curtailing the jurisdiction of older, more autonomous institutions, like the audiencias. In November 1770 he issued a set of detailed regulations for the bread market. It proposed that anyone not inscribed in the new bakers’ guild who attempted to sell flour or bread to the public would be subject to imprisonment, a 200 peso fine, or banishment for up to five years. The plan would also reduce the number of licensed bakeries in Mexico City, another measure to limit competition. To show their gratitude for these privileges, the bakers were expected to contribute 6,000 pesos annually to the upkeep of the hospital for the poor.9 Naturally, Croix, the deferential collaborator of Gálvez throughout the visita, endorsed the plan. Everyone else thought it was dangerous in the extreme.

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