Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
RISE OF A SPANISH
MERCHANT IN
VICEREGAL BUENOS AIRES
V
entura Miguel Marcó del Pont was one of the Spanish merchants
who connected Spain to the distant cities of the empire. Born
in 1762 at the port of Vigo, in Galicia in northwestern Spain, Marcó
moved to Buenos Aires and acted as the commercial representative of
his father's Spanish merchant house. Using influence based on family ties
and his Galician origin, Marcó actively directed a commercial network
that included Lima, Santiago de Chile, Mendoza, and Córdoba in the
west; Potosí in the northwest; Montevideo, Colonia, and the smaller
river ports in the Paraná River basin; and Vigo and Málaga in Spain. In
this kind of business, Marcó differed little from other successful Buenos
Aires merchants of Spanish birth who maintained commercial ties
based on kinship and credit.
Despite its sophistication, the commercial system, even in the best of
times, was vulnerable to distance and competition. Marcó owed his suc-
cess to Spain's control of its own colonial trade. European war threat-
ened to erode that control and permit Creole merchants and British
shippers to encroach on the trade monopolies of Spaniards such as
Marcó del Pont. As European warfare intensified in the first decade of
the 19th century, the Spaniards began to lose their advantages in South
American commerce. One Lima correspondent reported to Marcó del
Pont in 1807, “Sales are fatal here on account of the numerous effects
that the treacherous British enemies are introducing to us now with
contraband and then with permissible trade, so that I do not lose sight
of the many ways their treachery seeks to ruin us.”
Source:
“Cuenta de la venta, gustos y líquido . . . ” Lima, April 20, 1807.
Papeles Ventura Miguel Marcó del Pont.
Benson Latin American Collection.
University of Texas Library, Austin. 1807, file 6.
native textiles from Tucumán and Santiago del Estero found their big-
gest markets in the port city, where they were sent via oxcart in bundles
of 50 ponchos each. Córdoba's leather industries supplied Buenos Aires
and other provinces with chamois and suede. Paraguay also found
greater markets in Buenos Aires for its hemp, fruits, vegetables, raw
cotton, and native textiles.
