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Everything in its Right Place? Drinking Places and Social Spaces in Mexico City, c. 1780-1900

The article makes a significant contribution to the historiography of the history of alcohol in Latin America and to the cultural history of Mexico. In particular, while a considerable amount of published work already exists on the economic and anthropological aspects of pulquerías, pulque and alcohol regulation in Mexico City, very few works provide serious discussion of their social and cultural history, as this article does. A second strength of the article is its chronological scope, focusing on more than a century of social and cultural change, covering major developments in Mexican history from the late colonial period through the independence period, the mid-century contests between various liberal and conservative factions for control of Mexico’s institutions, and the late nineteenth-century establishment of a conservative liberal compromise under Porfirio Díaz. This article, therefore, by concentrating on the long-term socio-cultural conflicts and processes in which a variety of drinking places were engaged, makes several important arguments in nineteenth-century Mexican social and cultural history. Firstly, the article shows how central the control of urban space was to the articulation of social boundaries and class identities in Mexico City, by tracing the increasing segregation of elite and non-elite, or popular, spaces of leisure. Secondly, in examining documentation relating to the licensing and regulation of different drinking places, the article reveals the attempts made by both customers and proprietors of popular drinking establishments to articulate and defend their own priorities and interests, within the discursive framework set by municipal authorities. And, finally, by analyzing archival records alongside newspaper articles and advertisements, the article establishes how the contested social processes ongoing in the various drinking places of Mexico City figured in the delineation of imagined boundaries of class in broader nation-building discourses in the nineteenth century.