Overview

In 1774 Mexico City leaders created the Mexico City Poor House - the centrepiece of a bold experiment intended to eliminate poverty and impose a new work ethic on former beggars by establishing a forcible internment policy for some and putting others to work. In ""Containing the Poor"" Silvia Marina Arrom tells the saga of this ill-fated plan, showing how the asylum functioned primarily to educate white orhpans instead of suppressing menindancy and exerting control over the multiracial comunity for whom it was designed. For a nation that had traditionally regarded the needy as having the undisputed right to receive alms and whose affluent citizens felt duty-bound to dispense them, the experiment was doomed from the start, explains Arrom. She uses deep archival research to reveal that - much to policymakers' dismay - the Poor House became an orphanage largely because the government had underestimated the embeddedness of this moral economy of begging. While tracing the course of an eventful century that also saw colonialism give way to republicanism in Mexico, Arrom links the Poor House's transformation with other societal factors as well, such as Mexican women's increasing impact on social welfare policies. With poverty, begging and homelessness still rampant in much of Latin America today, this study of changing approaches to social welfare should be particularly valuable to students and scholars of Mexican and Latin American society and history, as well as those engaged in the study of social and welfare policy.

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9780822325611

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Reviews

Containing the Poor focuses on a vitally important, timely topic. A monumental piece of investigation into a myriad of sources and a discerning, perceptive model for studies on the dispensing of charity for any Latin American country, it is social history at its best. --John Jay TePaske, coauthor of The Royal Treasuries of the Spanish Empire in America

Silva Arrom's detailed and well-written account of the Mexico City Poor House is a unique contribution to the historiography of Mexico and comparative social welfare. . . . [It] effectively explores and analyzes the nuances and daily realities of Mexican politics and society, and is an essential read for anyone interested in moving beyond the political rhetoric of the period. Furthermore, through the skillful analysis of a wide range of sources, Arrom provides a model for future social historical studies on the contradictions and complexities of modern social welfare. <br>--Jonathan D. Ablard, Journal of Third World Studies

Author Information

Silvia Marina Arrom holds the Jane’s Chair of Latin American Studies at Brandeis University. She is the author of several books, including The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857.

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