Mexican Elites of a Provincial Town: The Landowners of Tepeaca (1700-1870)

Abstract

RESEARCH on elite groups in Latin America has made enormous progress during the last few years,' as have studies focused on the relationships between family structures and the world of power and business.2 In this work we pro- pose to follow those same lines of analysis, from a perspective that com- bines economic and social history, prosopography, and microhistory. Our immediate goal is to draw a picture of the dominant landholding and commercial groups in the socioeconomic life of a Mexican provincial vil- lage, Tepeaca, during almost two centuries. We will trace some members through the Bourbon reform era, insurgencies, the imperial adventure...