Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and warehoused the major exports of the port: silver, hides, dried meat,
and exotic commodities like nutria pelts and ostrich feathers for Europe's
fashionable salons.
The growth of the great merchant families in Buenos Aires paralleled
that of their peers in Mexico City and Lima. Young Spanish men, emi-
grating especially from the Basque provinces of northern Spain, began
work as apprentices. Once successful, they then married the American-
born daughters of older Spanish merchants. They invested in retail
shops and transport facilities, established their relatives and kinsmen
in the cities of the interior, joined the correct lay brotherhoods, gave to
the church, and competed for political honors and offices. Their Creole
sons were destined for the church, the shop, the low bureaucracy, and
the military. Their daughters who had dowries were reared to marry
other Spanish merchants, and those without dowries expected to
marry families of upstanding Creoles, to go to the nunneries, or enter
spinsterhood. In all respects, the merchants of Buenos Aires comported
themselves with the same haughtiness and commercial behavior as
those in Mexico City and Lima, save one peculiarity: They did not
invest in haciendas. Land was too easily available and too cheap to offer
big returns on investment—at least for the time being—and profits
from the long-distance trade in silver, mercury, slaves, and merchandise
were just too plentiful.
Increased legal commerce and relaxed trade restrictions did not
resolve all the market conditions that gave rise to smuggling. Clandestine
commerce continued on a smaller scale because the Bourbon reforms
failed to eliminate high customs duties and certain monopolies. They
did not permit unrestricted foreign shipping in the Río de la Plata.
Smuggling was still a welcome vice among otherwise respectable colo-
nial merchants. By trading in contraband now and again, they realized
greater profits on their investments.
Porteños
(Buenos Aires residents)
often dealt directly with foreign ships in the estuary and brought goods
ashore to their warehouses under the cover of darkness. Contraband
was never surreptitious enough to escape the notice of viceregal author-
ities. Indeed, without their compliance, smuggling could not have
reached such heights. Those very functionaries charged with suppress-
ing smuggling—customs officials, coast guard officers, and the viceroys
themselves—profited from payoffs they received for ignoring it.
Owing to its population growth, administrative importance, and
commercial wealth, Buenos Aires soon became the largest and most
important domestic market in the entire region. Ponchos and cheap
