Poor, artisans and popular industry projects in Zacatecas, 1790-1856

Abstract

This research explains the process of protoindustrialization in Zacatecas from 1790 to 1856, as part of the economic actions carried out by local authorities to meet macroeconomic political expectations and resolve the disarticulation of urban work, which left as a result the impoverishment of artisans and sought the incorporation of poor population into salaried workforce and promoted the modernization of the national textile manufacturing characterized by spaces, a division of labor and machines that function progressively and systematically.

In this historical period, the principle of public utility served to triangulate three ideals: work as a secular activity, industry as a company and labor as a moral quality of artisans and the poor. From this perspective, the "promotion of industry" was assumed as political and economic means to achieve progress and happiness to the largest number of people through manufacturing or agricultural projects of local or foreign entrepreneurs.

In Zacatecas, the statistical data obtained by the viceroyal authorities and the national authorities revealed two situations: the lack of steady jobs for artisans that had some degree of qualification and the existence of an idle work force because it lacked wealth to undertake, on their own, a productive unit or a salary for their daily subsistence.