The Marriage Penalty Women, Property Rights, and Credit Markets in Yucatán, 1850 – 1900

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For comments on earlier versions o this article, I am grateul to participants in the UCLA

Von Gremp Workshop in Economic and Entrepreneurial History, the Business and

Economic History Workshop at the University o Western Ontario, the research seminar at

the Center or U.S.-Mexican Studies at UC San Diego, and the seminar series at the Helen

Kellogg Center or International Studies at the University o Notre Dame, as well as the

commentator and audience at the 2002 Western Association o Women Historians Annual

Conerence, San Marino, Caliornia. Research or this article was made possible through a

UC Regents Faculty Fellowship, a UC Riverside Senate Grant, and a Residential Fellowship

at the University o Caliornia, Riverside Center or Ideas and Society. I also extend

thanks to the anonymous reviewers, whose comments and helpul suggestions signifcantly

improved the fnal version. All errors are o course my own.

Hispanic American Historical Review 88:3 doi 10.1215/00182168-2008-331

Copyright 2008 by Duke University Press

The Marriage Penalty:

Women, Property Rights, and Credit

Markets in Yucatán, 1850 – 1900

Juliette Levy

Marriage is a contract that historically carries with it signifcant fnancial

corollaries. Dowries, marital property regimes, and inheritance laws wereall designed to support the economic relations represented by marriage, and

marriage interacts with markets in many ways. Here I explore the relationship

between marriage, gender, and markets in Yucatán in the nineteenth century,

a time when the property rights o women, especially married women, were

markedly dierent than those o men.

Property rights both allow and limit access to and use o property. When

property rights are unequally distributed, the eect is not just on property

markets but on any economic transaction that relies on the rules o owner-

ship. Mortgage markets provide a vantage point rom which to observe howlegal rules aect economic behavior, especially with respect to women, because

while women were relatively active participants in the credit market o Mérida

in nineteenth-century Yucatán, both as borrowers and lenders, restrictions on

married women’s property rights resulted in higher interest rates or women

borrowers.





The Marriage Penalty 429

However, this generosity o the Mexican codes had limits, since the law

also separated asset ownership and use in marriage. While the Mexican maritalproperty rights regime protected a wie’s ownership, it gave the husband exclu-

sive power to administer his wie’s property and control over the use o the com-

munity property during the marriage. This scission between ownership and use

damaged the seamlessness by which ownership should have conerred access to

credit. It was particularly damaging when married women used their property

as collateral on a loan, since legal constraints required the husband’s approval o

the use and transer o a married woman’s property.

These legal norms undermined the strength o women’s ownership and

weakened their participation in the credit market during a time when the region’s

economy grew exponentially as a result o the boom in exports o henequen, a

sisal ber native to the Yucatán Peninsula. The henequen boom, as this period

between 1870 and the turn o the twentieth century is known, transormed

Yucatán into the most important exporting state o the young Republic. Eco-

nomic growth begs or investment, yet banks did not open in Yucatán until the

last decade o the century. In their absence, Yucatán’s private mortgage market

developed to satisy the growing local need or credit.

Women were an important part o this market because, in contrast to the

United States and Great Britain, Mexican women were entitled to own assets

throughout the nineteenth century, and indeed had had this right since thecolonial period. Between 1850 and 1895, 30 percent o lenders and 20 percent o

borrowers were women. Nevertheless, women did not participate in this credit

market on an equal ooting with their male counterparts. The clearest evidence

o this lies in the interest rates women paid. Compared to men, women were

charged on average two percentage points more than men.

The particular status o women in Mexican law, which considered them to

be innately weak and provided them special protection in light o this assump-

tion, distorted the conditions under which women lent and borrowed.3 Wo-

3. Like indigenous Mexicans, the poor, and children, women were considered to be

weaker members o society requiring special protection. Legislative restrictions on women’s

reedom were presented as a means to protect them rom being unduly infuenced by

unscrupulous people (presumably men). See Silvia Marina Arrom, The Women of Mexico

City, 1790 – 1857 (Stanord, CA: Stanord Univ. Press, 1985), 71–81. The nineteenth-

century reorms to private laws began a series o reorms concerning the poor and the

indigenous, but the legislative position toward women scarcely changed beore the Mexican

Revolution and the 1917 Constitution. See M. C. Mirow, Latin American Law: A History

of Private Law and Institutions in Spanish America (Austin: Univ. o Texas Press, 2004),

102–6.



430 HAHR / August / Levy

men’s property rights aected wives in such a way that their rights o ownership

did not translate into rights o participation. We have no evidence that womenpresented collateral that was less valuable than land mortgaged by men, and bar-

ring such quantitative dierences, the explanation or their unequal borrowing

terms lies in qualitative assessments o the security o their ownership o this

collateral. Gender, like ethnicity, was not in itsel a barrier to ownership, but

like ethnicity it aected participation in the market.4

The conditions o women’s participation in the credit market in nineteenth-

century Yucatán highlight how laws (and by extension property regimes and

spouses) curtailed ormal rules o ownership, which in turn motivated higher

interest rates. Using mortgage contracts and probate records recorded by nota-

ries, I analyze the participation o women in the local mortgage market, taking

into account the legal context in which it developed, and explain how legal tradi-

tion and civil codes contributed to the distortions that aected women and the

local credit market.5 I will show specifcally that the analysis o women’s partici-

pation in credit markets in the nineteenth century must take their marital status

into account as well as the unequal legal position o husbands and wives under

the law. I conclude that property rights and the state o marriage penalized mar-

ried women in the credit market.

The Mérida Credit Market

The liberal Mexican Reorm Laws, a succession o laws enacted in the late 1850s

through the early 1860s, came into eect prior to the henequen boom and were

aimed at modernizing landownership and reducing the landed wealth o the

church. Wishing to leave behind a backwardness associated with their colonial

past, liberal governments enorced the gradual confscation and sale o ecclesi-

4. The Mayan residents o Yucatán were the region’s largest and most marginalized

ethnic group, yet they owned property, as attested in public records o sales o land, landdeeds, and probate inventories. Nevertheless, in the notarial ledgers debtors or creditors

with Mayan surnames are quite rare.

5. The data in this analysis are based on the mortgages recorded by notaries in Mérida,

and in its entirety the data set recreates the mortgage market o the city. The size o the

data set, approximately 800 contracts culled at fve- and ten-year intervals or the years 1850

to 1895, is a testament to the economic reality o Yucatán and the central role that notaries

played in it. All mortgage contracts rom extant notarial ledgers rom 1850, 1860, and 1870

are in the data set. The set was expanded to include 1875, 1880, 1885, 1890, and 1895, as

well as all years in which the most prolifc Mérida notary, José Anacleto Patrón Zavalegui,

was active rom 1879 through 1899.




astical and communal and village lands.6 The monarchy o Maximilian o Habs-

burg (1864–67) did not interrupt the process, supporting throughout Mexico

the creation o large haciendas made up o the previously divided parcels o cat-

tle ranches, village lands, and any piece o land that was or seemed uncultivated.

The eect o the henequen boom in Yucatán was to infate the demand or and

price o land as well as to increase the demand or credit, since the seven-year

maturation period o henequen required signicant initial investment.

Henequen rst ound markets in European and American ports, where

it was used to make heavy ropes to tie transatlantic ships to dock. Ater the

McCormick mechanical reaper began to be produced and sold in the United

States in the mid-1870s, henequen became the preerred binding twine or use

by the machine. Yucatán’s henequen planters sold the ber almost exclusively tothe United States, and consequently, much o the nancing o the production

and sale o henequen happened through American brokers, who made advance

payments to local trading houses. Beore local banks began to make short-term

loans in Mérida in 1889, the only alternative source o unding came rom pri-

vate mortgages, and mortgages continued to be the primary source o long-term

credit ater the creation o banks.7 Between 1850 and 1895, increasing numbers

o Yucatecans borrowed, using their real estate as collateral. The participants

in this growth, borrowers and lenders, were not necessarily members o the

wealthiest elite but were planters and businessmen, lawyers and doctors, school-teachers, day laborers, and urban artisans. Table 1 illustrates the eect o the

henequen boom on the growth o mortgage loans.

This mortgage market was run entirely out o the oces o the Mérida

notaries, who became a keystone o Yucatecan nance during the boom. In the

absence o banks, notaries were the only institution legally entitled to record

and secure long-term collateralized loans. Any transaction involving the sale

and transer o property, including contracts with real estate collateral such as

6. These liberal reorms, which began with the Ley Lerdo in 1856 and wereormalized in the 1857 Constitution and urther emboldened by Benito Juarez’s presidential

victory in 1861, were aimed at breaking down the stranglehold o the church on Mexican

landownership and bringing progress to the Mexican economy. The process o privatization

and commercialization continued throughout the nineteenth century. Under Porrio Díaz

(1876–1910) the land reorms supported the privatization o village lands and are part o the

explanation o the land concentration in Yucatán and elsewhere in the country, which was

one o the driving causes o the Mexican Revolution between 1910 and 1917.

7. For an analysis o this local credit market see Juliette Levy, “Yucatan’s Arrested

Development: Social Networks and Credit Markets in Mérida, 1850–1899” (PhD diss.,

UCLA, 2003).




mortgages, had to be recorded by notaries, so anyone who had any dealings thatrequired a contract would eventually fnd themselves in a notary’s ofce.8 In

their role as representatives o the civil law, notaries gave legal underpinning

and enorceability to mortgage contracts, thereby becoming the linchpins o

Mérida’s credit market as the mortgage market grew. Even ater banks opened

in 1889, notaries continued to be essential to the process, since banks did not

make long-term loans and made very ew mortgage or equity loans.9 Notaries

8. Beore the establishment o the Property Registry (Registro Público de la

Propiedad) in 1870, real estate transactions were ofcially recorded only in notarial ledgers. The establishment o the registry did not eliminate the role o the notary in property

transers, since the notary recorded the terms o the transer and conerred it legality (and

then orwarded the transaction to the Property Registry). The registry only held a public

record o the transer, but the notary was the person who recorded the original sale contract

and kept a copy o it in his fles. (He also issued a copy to the purchaser.) The requirement

o public recording goes back to the sixteenth-century Pragmatica o Charles I in 1528,

in which he dictated that all contracts establishing liens on property and transerring

property by sale or inheritance had to be “maniested and declared” (maniestar y declarar).

The Pragmatica was reinorced in 1539 in the pillar o colonial legislation, the Novísima

Recopilación de Leyes , and in subsequent legislation that conerred on the scribe the duties o

maintaining a mortgage and property record. C. Bernardo Pérez Fernández del Castillo, Historia de la escribanía en la Nueva España y el notariado en México (Mexico City: Colegio

de Notarios del Distrito Federal, Ed. Porrua, 1988). The obligation to register mortgage

loans was reinorced in the Civil Code o 1870, which created the Property Registry and

stated that mortgages had to be recorded in a public document (“La hipoteca solo puede ser

constituida en escritura pública”; art. 1979, Codigo Civil del Estado de Yucatán, 1870) and

that mortgages were never tacit; they had to be made explicit in a notarial document (“La

hipoteca nunca es tácita”; art. 1980, Codigo Civil del Estado de Yucatán, 1870).

9. In 1850 mortgage loans via notaries amounted to 75,000 pesos and had grown

by 1895 to more than one million pesos lent via their ofces by local Yucatecan traders,

landowners, and wealthy widows. Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán (hereater cited as

AGEY), Fondo Notarios.

Table 1. Mortgage market growth 1850 – 1895 as recorded in notarial ofces.

Data rom Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán (AGEY), Fondo Archivo

Notarial.

1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1895

Total mortgage amounts

(in real pesos) 74,482 84,002 192,865 268,752 907,054 894,402

Total number o mortgage

contracts 68 68 135 102 129 111




recorded the loans, and they also provided, through inormal means, inorma-

tion on borrowers and lenders, easing this particular human interaction andproviding a measure o trust between parties. But inormation alone did not

coner all the guarantees, and in order or the credit markets to exist and pros-

per, lenders needed material claims to their debtors’ property. All these debt

contracts recorded by notaries thereore included real estate such as a plot o

land (a solar ), a house and/or a garden, or a hacienda and felds as security.

Women in the Mérida Credit Market

An 1895 census in Mérida revealed that a majority o the city’s population

was emale (55 percent) and that most women were engaged in domestic labor(labores domésticas ), meaning the unpaid work they undertook within their own

homes.10 Among these housebound women were the wives, unmarried daugh-

ters, and widows that populated the mortgage market. The Mérida census also

accounts or a large number o women engaged in cleaning, cooking, and educa-

tion outside the home or pay. The industry that employed most women out-

side the home was the garment industry, which employed almost 1,000 women

working as seamstresses or ashion designers in 1895. Another 1,700 women

were employed as cooks, cleaners, and laundry workers. Other occupations that

avored the employment o women were wet nursing (Mérida had 8 women inthis necessarily eminine proession), prostitution (17 women were counted by

the survey), and midwives (o which there were 24). Nevertheless, most women

(60 percent) were not ofcially employed and most probably spent most o their

existence within the boundaries o labores domésticas, the term itsel reinorc-

ing the separation o women rom the public and commercial enterprises that

men were engaged in.

The separation between public and private spheres is, however, not sup-

ported in the notarial evidence rom nineteenth-century Mérida, as the next

table illustrates. Women were intertwined in the public world o mortgage con-

tracts, since they were in act actively borrowing and lending between 1850 and

1895, even i the proportional amounts transacted by women were ar less than

those transacted by men. Women borrowed in larger numbers than they lent,

and they borrowed relatively smaller amounts than they lent. As lenders, women

represented a small group, but they could make relatively large contributions to

the total o loans in any year, which is explained by the act that emale lend-

10. The total population o Mérida in the 1895 Mérida census was 50,657. Boletín

Estadístico de Mérida, Ocupaciones, 1895, Centro de Apoyo a la Investigación Historica de

Yucatán (hereater cited as CAIHY).




ers were usually widows, a wealthier group.11 Table 2 aggregates the amounts

women were borrowing and lending in this market and illustrates the dier-

ence in average loan sizes between women and men. Once again, the unequal

eect o the economic boom is illustrated in the relative growth in average loan

sizes. In 1850 and 1860, women and men borrowed and lent comparable average

amounts per mortgage contract, but at the time o the transition to large-scale

henequen production in the 1870s, the average size o loans to men increases

signifcantly.

The average size o loans made by women, however, barely diers rom

that o men, because women lenders were widows with signifcantly expanded

property rights compared to married women, who were mostly borrowers. The

11. Having claimed their hal o the marital property at the death o their husbands (as

was guaranteed by the laws governing community property), widows (and widowers) were

comparatively wealthier than their married or never married counterparts.

Table 2. Women in the Mérida mortgage market. Data from AGEY and Archivo

Notarial del Estado de Yucatán (ANEY), Protocolos Notariales.

Borrowers 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1895

Amounts borrowed by women

(in real pesos) 14,414 15,109 25,834 35,014 86,800 92,220

Female share o total amounts

borrowed 19.35% 17.99% 13.39% 13.03% 9.57% 10.31%

Number o contracts to

women borrowers 14 11 36 28 33 31

Female share o contracts 20.59% 16.18% 26.67% 27.45% 25.58% 27.93%

Average size o loan to women 1,030 1,374 718 1,251 2,630 2,975

Average size o loan to men 1,112 1,209 1,687 3,159 8,544 10,027

Lenders 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1895

Amounts lent by women

(in real pesos) 180,017 28,954 23,021 39,528 158,505 145,938

Female share o total

amounts lent 24.19% 34.47% 11.94% 14.71% 17.47% 16.32%

Number o contracts by

women lenders 17 21 17 16 25 29

Female lenders’ share o

contracts 25.00% 30.88% 12.59% 15.69% 19.38% 26.13%

Average size o loan by women 1,060 1,379 1,354 2,471 6,340 5,032

Average size o loan by men 1,107 1,171 1,439 2,665 7,198 9,128




participation o these women both as lenders and borrowers provides a glimpse

into the participation o women in mundane fnancial rather than just domestic

aairs. Whereas research on the economic activity o women is much more

complete or the colonial period and the twentieth century, we know relatively

little about how women, especially elite women, used the money and assets the

law entitled them to own in the nineteenth century.12 The table cannot explore

what the loans were being used or, but it does show that in the nineteenth cen-

tury women in Yucatán were active participants in the credit market and that

the constraints to women participating in elite commercial circuits were not

absolute.

Table 3 succinctly illustrates one o the most interesting aspects o women’s

presence in the Yucatán credit market, namely the disparity between the inter-

est rates charged to men and women over time.13 The disparity charted in the table is not a statistical accident; it is a very

12. The ocus in the colonial literature has rarely been on property rights per se, but

the legal context looms large as the structure within which the role o gender and the lives

o women are analyzed. See Arrom, The Women o Mexico City; Susan Migden Socolow,

The Women o Colonial Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000); Patricia

Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conficts over Marriage Choice 1574 – 1821

(Stanord, CA: Stanord Univ. Press, 1988); Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets:

Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanord, CA: Stanord

Univ. Press, 1999).13. The table starts in 1880 because the ecclesiastical ban on usury created an artifcial

cap on interest rates until the early 1870s. The usury ban was supported in civil law and

made it illegal to charge more than 6% on private loans and 5% on commercial loans. Any

record o interest rates until then is rather inconclusive, especially since the constraints

caused by the usury ban led to widespread underreporting o interest rates in mortgage

contracts until the 1870s. Benito Juarez lited the ban on usury in 1861, but it took another

ten years or the liberal reorms to aect commercial legal proscriptions and ree interest

rates rom this tether in Yucatán. It was not until the mid-1870s that notaries regularly

recorded interest rates, and once they started doing so interest rates were oten well in excess

o the ban maximum o 6%.

Table 3. Average interest rates by gender of borrower (N in parentheses). Data

from AGEY and ANEY, Protocolos Notariales.

1880 1885 1890 1895

Women 11.43% (28) 14.69% (29) 13.61% (32) 11.54% (31)

Men 9.80% (74) 11.85% (155) 12.08% (107) 11.19% (80)

Dierence 1.63 2.84 1.52 0.35




robust statistical reality. The eect o gender on interest rate in the data set

yields a coecient o 1.53, with a t -stat o 2.91. The regression was estimated

or the entire length o the period and gives statistical support to the relation-

ship illustrated in table 3. Gender has a signicant eect on the price paid or

credit in all the years sampled and among all borrowers. The regression cannot

explain the causal mechanisms that are embedded in gender, but the data rom

the notaries’ records do provide a number o possible explanatory variables.

Notaries recorded many details like marital status, gender, occupations, and

place and date o birth, and in the case o mortgages they were exhaustive in the

recording o the description o the collateral and its geographic location, as well

as, o course, the size and term o the loan itsel.

Mexico’s laws conerred dierent legal capacities on adult women accordingto their marital status, dening them as “widowed,” “married,” or “unmarried.”

Using these categories to reanalyze the interest rate evidence shows that mar-

riage, more than any other variable, aected interest rates (as table 4 illustrates).

The evidence suggests that women paid a penalty in credit markets and it was,

by any measure, a marriage penalty. The same regression using male borrowers

yields a low coecient o no statistical signicance, suggesting that the mar-

riage penalty aected married women only.

The results rom this regression show that neither the length o the loan

nor the location o the collateral was statistically signicant in setting interestrates. Marital status, however, was statistically signicant, and the positive coe-

cient estimates the dierence at more than 2 percent. These results and the

interest rate penalty they highlight are reinorced by the act that that in most

years, except or 1895, the majority o emale borrowers were in act married

women. Thereore, the borrowing premium refected not only the marriage

penalty but the act that most o the borrowers were married, as table 5 illus-

trates. Married women borrowed oten; widows and spinsters rarely did. Not

only did married women borrow more and pay more than any other women,

they also ar outnumbered widows and spinsters.

Table 4. Regression analysis of women’s interest rate variables based on

a constant interest rate of 9.52. Data from AGEY and ANEY, Protocolos

Notariales.

coefcient standard error t-stat

Marital status (married/unmarried and widows) –2.23 1.06 2.10

Length o loan (short term/long term) .47 1.21 –.40

Location o collateral (urban/rural) 2.26 1.28 1.72




Most lenders assessed risk based on what they knew about the borrowers.

Previous interactions with a borrower or someone close to the borrower (such

as a notary) provided inormation on a poor payment record, a reputation as a

gambler, or an ailing business — all o which would lead to higher interest rates.

Alternatively, positive previous interactions or recommendations rom trusted

colleagues (or again notaries) could help reduce the interest rate. But when there

was little or no inormation about a borrower, a lender had to assume the worst

and estimate an interest rate that could protect against a perceived risk. The risk

inherent in any o these loans was a combination o the real and the perceived

risks assessed by the lender.14 In this assessment o risk, a lender needed to consider the possibility that

women, especially married women with children, might receive more lenient

treatment rom the legal system. The colonial laws had protected women rom

destitution and abuse, especially in matters concerning their dowries, and while

the protection was meant to protect the integrity o the amily estate, the justi-

cations or it were based on historical notions o innate eminine weakness that

survived into the nineteenth century. These legal biases could have represented

a real risk or any lender, especially i creditors eared the courts might avor

women in rst-order lines o repayment i they were lenders, or be more orgiv-ing i they were borrowers. While the courts could avail themselves o the right

to distribute an estate to the surviving wie and children ahead o creditors,

there is absolutely no evidence in Yucatán that the courts intended to or ever did

privilege delinquent emale debtors.

14. These rationales or risk evaluation did not preclude the possibility o interest rate

manipulation, which ecclesiastical edicts on usury were designed to control, but these edicts

were no longer in eect by the late 1870s. Even in cases o manipulation, usuriously high

interest rates were still a refection o the perceived risk o the borrower, even i this was the

perception o a prejudiced or rapacious lender.

Table 5. Comparison of average interest rates by marital status and gender

(N in parentheses). Data from AGEY and ANEY, Protocolos Notariales.

1880 1885 1890 1895

Average interest rates to unmarried women 12.60 (5) 15.80 (5) 13.80 (7) 12.10 (6)

Average interest rates to widowed women 9.30 (6) 17.60 (8) 15.00 (7) 11.60 (10)

Average interest rates to married women 12.40 (17) 19.20 (16) 14.30 (18) 13.20 (15)

Average interest rates to male borrowers 9.80 11.85 12.08 11.19

Average interest rates to all borrowers 10.60 15.90 12.50 11.40

Proportion o contracts by women 27% 28% 23% 27%




I borrowing women did not present this type o risk to lenders, why did

married women pay higher interest rates than widows or women who nevermarried? Did married women constitute a greater credit risk, or was a risk per-

ceived by virtue o their absence rom the traditionally male centers o com-

mercial and fnancial activity? All women, irrespective o marital status, and

especially among the elite and the urban middle class, were largely let out o

the commercial circle o Yucatán’s masculine world o henequen trade. Their

interaction in commercial circles was as wives, daughters, or mothers o the

landowning hacendados and traders; but the day-to-day business was not theirs.

Women held wealth (through dowries, inheritances, and community property

partitions) and they were not entirely removed rom the commercial world, but

their world was constrained by the domestic nature o the circles they moved

in, and trade and fnance were generally activities engaged in among men. The

persistent interest rate dierence between married women and other borrowers

suggests that interest rates, with their built-in assessment o risk, hinged not just

on women’s limited exposure to the commercial market and its social distinc-

tions but also on characteristics o married women relative to their property

rights status.

The statistical evidence confrms that the correlation between marital

status and interest rates is not just a random coincidence, but statistics can-

not account or the causality that drives this relationship. An explanation o the logic o the relationship between marriage and the cost o borrowing or

women lies in the legal texts. The centrality o property rights in the assessment

o credit risk is at the core o the interest rate dierential that married women

experienced in the mortgage market.

Women, Law, and the Market

Under Spanish law, a married woman had a legal personality. Roman law, rom

which the Latin American legal codes spring, provided an underlying recogni-

tion o women’s property rights. The colonial pillars o legislation, the Siete

Partidas and the Leyes de Toro, both ocused on the aspects o private law

regarding emales, including their right to enter into contracts, their right to

appear in court, and the scope o their husband’s authority (i they were mar-

ried) or their guardian’s (i they were minors).15 The Napoleonic Code, which

15. See Eugene H. Korth and Della M. Flusche, “Dowry and Inheritance in Colonial

Spanish America: Peninsular Law and Chilean Practice,” The Americas 43, no. 4 (April

1987): 395–410, a concise overview o the Castilian legislation that provided the ramework

or many o the Latin American laws, including those concerning women.




inspired the independent Mexican legislators in the nineteenth century, contin-

ued the long tradition o securing these rights, especially or those individualsthe state considered weak, including women.

Independent Mexico’s frst constitution in 1824 granted citizenship to all

Mexicans, irrespective o property ownership or literacy, but the ormal rights

o women were limited (as was the case in many other countries at the time).

The women o independent Mexico did not have the right to vote, married

women continued to be subject to the will o their husbands in legal and eco-

nomic matters, and widows were no more allowed to be guardians o their chil-

dren’s inheritance in 1824 than they had been under Spanish law. The exclusion

o women rom this sphere o civil interaction “was considered so natural that

it did not have to be specifed in the Constitution,” and this exclusion was not

entirely out o line with the legal regimes in other parts o the world.16

Gender equality is a relatively recent civil prerogative, and in nineteenth-

century Mexican law, rights were distributed according to a series o qualifers.

The issue o women’s rights, especially civil rights, depended on many variables,

the frst o which, o course, was gender, and Mexico’s nineteenth-century legal

codes duly distributed property rights along these lines. Marital status was a

unique variable in the distribution o rights among women, as only women were

aected legally by a change in marital status, and unmarried women, whether

spinsters or widows, could act with relative independence.17 Widows and spin-sters could enter into transactions, manage their property, and appear in court

without prior permission rom a male. This independence was limited, because

unmarried minors required guardians, and widows were not allowed to act as

fnancial guardians to their children’s wealth until the reorm o the Civil Code

in 1884. Similarly, underage widows returned to their civil status as minors

upon the death o their husbands. Married women o any age, however, had ew

civil liberties at all. Marriage returned women to a lesser civil status by subject-

ing them in many civil and economic matters to the will o their husbands.

However, marriage did not eliminate a woman’s rights absolutely. She held on toher legal persona and could write a will (which covered her personal wealth, to

which her husband had no rights o ownership), and she also shared in the joint

property o the couple.

16. Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 84. The American or British legal systems

reserved even ewer rights or women up until the nineteenth century.

17. I say “relative independence” because while widows and spinsters had similar

property rights to those o men (barring age limits), in practice they retained their status as

weaker members o society with concomitant limits on their property rights versus those

o men.




Age limits and marital status, thereore, were the main barriers to women’s

legal equality. Even ater turning 25, the legal age o majority, wives required theexpress permission o their husbands beore entering into a contract. Women

who remained unmarried eventually gained the right to transact individually

when they turned 30. A married woman never did, unless she became a widow.

This conditional age o majority remained in place until the enactment, under

President Porfrio Díaz, o the 1884 Civil Code, which widened the scope o

civil action or women, even i it really only benefted widows. The new code

did nothing to change the situation o married women; instead it reafrmed

that a wie’s reedom to transact was subject to the will o her husband. Wives

continued to retain sole ownership o the assets they brought into the marriage,

and husbands retained exclusive power to manage this property and had fnalsay in any contract a wie wished to sign. Although an adult married woman

had a legal personality (she could write a will, and any commercial or fnancial

contract that involved community property required her signature), marriage

eectively limited the legal sphere in which she could act without her husband’s

consent, a situation that endured until his death.

The laws aorded widows the widest legal berth, though i they remarried,

they returned to the legally subordinate status o a wie. I they were underage

when widowed, they returned to the guardianship o their male parent. Until

the enactment o the 1884 Civil Code, widows o any age were not allowed toact on behal o their children, who as minors required the guardianship o a

man. The wealth that children inherited on the death o their ather had to

remain under the authority o either a male amily member or an appointed

male guardian. This changed ater the 1884 reorms to the Civil Code, when

widows and unmarried mothers (who had reached the age o majority) were or

the frst time granted control over their children’s inheritance.18

In Mérida, however, this change in the law did not make much o a dier-

ence. Beore and ater the passing o the 1884 law, widows who lent usually did

so with their own money (the money they had brought into the marriage andtheir hal o the marital property over which they gained rights ater the death

o their husband) and not the inheritance o their minor children, and they did it

without the legal representation o a man. For instance, in 1860 Fidelia Quijano

de Lara lent $2,000 to María Encarnación Guzman de Quijano. Both women

were widows, and both signed on their own behal without the help o a male

18. Silvia Marina Arrom, “Changes in Mexican Family Law in the Nineteenth

Century,” in Confronting Change, Challenging Tradition: Women in Latin American History,

ed. Gertrude M. Yeager (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1994), 87–102.




legal representative. Another widow, Concepción Troncoso, signed a mortgage

in 1890 in which she lent her son Joaquin Duarte Troncoso $30,000 pesos.19

As widows, Concepción Troncoso and Fidelia Quijano were typical o a majority o

the emale lenders in Mérida, who were an important source o credit to enter-

prising Yucatecans looking or unds during the boom. These widowed lenders

behaved very much like any male lender. They did not lend at lower or higher

interest rates than men, they did not lend to a signifcantly dierent group o

borrowers, and there were no specifc dierences in amounts lent or interest

rates charged. In sum, there is nothing save their gender and marital status

that dierentiates them rom male lenders.20 Furthermore, among women,

widows were the most prolifc lenders, and among widowed lenders (male or

emale), widows tended to transorm most o their wealth into fnancial assets.Evidence rom the probate records in Mérida reveals widows’ particular preer-

ence or fnancial assets, which ar surpassed that o their male counterparts,

who died with ewer outstanding credits owed them and many more tangible

assets. Among the 11 widows who died with more than $1,000 pesos in valued

assets between 1850 and 1900, 5 died with more than 50 percent o their assets

lent out.

Throughout the second hal o the nineteenth century, when widows died

they let behind estates that were signifcantly larger than estates let behind by

married women or spinsters. This explains why widows, who did most o thelending, might lend larger amounts than the married borrowers were borrow-

ing. This tendency among widows to lend more than other women borrowed

was not related to changes in testamentary laws, since the testamentary reedom

enacted under the 1884 Civil Code does not seem to have aected the inheri-

tance patterns in Yucatán. I did not fnd evidence that men became more likely

to will all o their estates to a sole heir (be it his wie or a avored child) ater

1884.21

Candelaria Castillo de Villajuana’s probate is unique because she was also

one o the ew women who made loans beore becoming a widow. Castillo de Villajuana made some loans with the consent o her husband, Cosme Angel

Villajuana, a wealthy Mérida trader and civil judge and also a prolifc lender.

19. This amount was roughly equivalent to US$15,625 in 1895.

20. There are only three cases in which women lent to women. The scarcity o these

cases suggest that women as lenders did not give preerential treatment to emale borrowers.

21. Deere and León, in “Liberalism and Married Women’s Property Rights,” propose

that testamentary reedom may have led to wives being avored in husband’s wills, but I

ound no evidence o this in the Yucatán data.




22. The debts rom 1895 and 1901 were owed her by her daughter, her niece, and

at least 20 other businessmen and tradesmen in Mérida. The debts took the orm o

straightorward mortgage loans collateralized by land, as well as short-term commercial

loans, which Candelaria issued to tradespeople and henequen planters. Inventario de los

bienes de la diunta Candelaria Castillo de Villajuana, 30 Jan. 1901, AGEY, Poder Civil,

Sección Testamentos.

23. These summary fndings are the result o calculations based on approximately 300

probate inventories rom Mérida or the period 1850–1905. The probates were sampled

randomly throughout the period as the boxes in which they are stored in the archive became

available. Seventy are probate inventories o women, both Mayan and other, who died in

Mérida or one o the surrounding parishes. The way probate inventories were recorded

biases the sample in avor o wealthy women and mothers o minor children, especially

poor ones who died intestate and without identiying guardians or their surviving minor

children. The main reasons or an estate to go into probate were complicated estate divisions

(in cases involving large ortunes) and the survival o minor children. In these cases, the

probate proceedings were a way to prove the poverty and indigence o the parent and the

need or the courts to enorce the choice o a guardian.

24. AGEY, Archivo Notarial, libro 392, Notaria Pública 5, José Anacleto Patrón

Zavalegui.

When he died in 1895, the rights to hal o the community assets that went to

Candelaria included the loans owed to him. When Candelaria died in 1901,the inventory o her assets, including the list o loans prepared in January 1895

during the probate o her husband’s estate (some o which had been repaid by

1901), recorded more than $70,000 pesos in outstanding debts, representing

more than 90 percent o the value o her entire estate.22 Castillo de Villajuana’s

case was exceptional; not all widows chose to lend so much o their wealth. But

among those whose probate records survive, many did lend at least some small

part o their wealth. As the probate records show, the average wealth o widows

at death was considerably larger than the average wealth o wives or spinsters,

and this is a powerul explanation o their role as lenders in Yucatán.23 They

loaned money because they had money to lend.Spinsters rarely lent or borrowed, although they were legally entitled to

do so ater reaching adulthood. Minor unmarried girls could not do anything

with their wealth; only their guardians were allowed to lend and invest on their

behal. When they came o age, they acquired the right to terminate the con-

tracts drawn up in their name by a guardian. For instance, 16-year old Mer-

cedes Espinoza’s ather died in 1885, leaving her a small estate. Her grandather

Miguel Espinoza Loza became her guardian and lent $1,820 pesos o his grand-

daughter’s inheritance to his other son, Mercedes’s uncle. As her guardian, her

grandather signed his name at the bottom o the loan, and initiated the proce-dures o the loan.24 The loan did not determine a term date, but it clearly stipu-




lated that Mercedes could call back the loan as soon as she became o age or any

time thereater (although there is no record that she did so).Gertrudis Vado’s history on the Mérida mortgage market is an example

o how spinsters acted in the Mérida credit market. Gertrudis never married,

nor did she enter a convent or disappear into the opaque world o the labores

domésticas, her stated occupation in the contracts. The mortgage contracts

give us snapshots o the truly independent acts o Gertrudis, who was never

accompanied by a guardian or a man when she made the loans at José Ana-

cleto Patrón Zavalegui’s ofce. According to the records o her notary, she lent

money at least twice in her adult lie, frst in 1875 at the age o 25, when she

lent $1,800 pesos or one year to Juan José Martinez, a hacienda owner, and

then in 1885, when she lent another Mérida property owner, Joaquin Mangas,$3,500 or three years. She charged the men 18 percent and 15 percent per year,

respectively, higher rates than average at the time.25 In 1895 the records show

Gertrudis borrowing $3,000 or two years at an interest rate o 12 percent. The

contract was recorded at the ofce o the notary Alonso Peniche. The reasons

why Gertrudis borrowed then at the age o 47 will remain unknown, but her

previous loans show she was not a newcomer to this market, and perhaps this

also explains why she paid slightly less than the average interest rate (the aver-

age interest to the six unmarried women who borrowed that year was 12.10

percent).

The Predicament of Marriage

Widows were once wives; but beyond this the similarity between them ends.

Compared to widows in the mortgage market, wives with living husbands were

much more likely to be borrowers; to borrow more, and more oten; and to pay

higher interest rates, as table 5 showed. The explanatory logic o these observa-

tions requires that we grasp them as dierent aspects o the same issue: married

women were borrowing expressly because they were married. Marriage was an

unequal partnership in which the husband had disproportionate rights over his

wie, and in this relationship, when women borrowed it was most likely because

their husbands requested that they do so. By the same token, married women

paid higher interest when they borrowed because o this husband. They paid

higher interest rates because marriage connected women to a husband who rep-

resented a higher risk to lenders.

25. AGEY, Archivo Notarial, l ibros 303 and 393, Notaria Pública 5, José Anacleto

Patrón Zavalegui.




The reason men would have asked their wives to borrow on their behal

is simple: men did it because they could not borrow on their own. The ormallegal concept o potestad marital (literally translated as “marital power”) gave the

husband control over most aspects o his wie’s lie and property, but it did not

give him the right to use her property as collateral. The reason why mortgages

to married women carried higher interest rates is rooted in the public sphere’s

perception o them as creditors, where the existence o a husband signaled to

lenders specic risk actors that aected their interest rate (above and beyond

those related to the legal constraints associated with gender).

Marital Power

Marriage altered the property rights o women through the concept and prac-

tice o potestad marital, which gave husbands tutelage and control over most

aspects o their wie’s lie, including her wealth.26 Potestad marital was based on

the notion that vesting authority in the husband alone would prevent antago-

nism between the spouses and maintain unity in the amily and coherence in

society. The diminished legal capacity o women was necessary to protect her

economic and moral interests as the vulnerable sex as well as to protect her

husband and amily.

The legal concept o potestad marital originated in colonial legal codesand survived well into the nineteenth century in Mexico. As the legislators o

independent Mexico waded through the mass o colonial laws governing civil

aairs, they oten returned to and relied on the Spanish colonial legal tradition

or personal and amily law. Nineteenth-century Mexican civil codes refected

the concerns o the Spanish codes, which enorced matrimonial peace by giving

the husband the power to decide and maintain amily unity, wealth, and social

harmony, and aording married women limited legal capacity. Only when the

husband was unable to perorm his legal role (due to illness or old age, or exam-

ple) could the wie step in. Barring this, husbands had complete control over

the administration o the joint property o the couple, the wie’s dowry, and

her ancestral inheritance.27 The husband’s power urther extended to the use o

26. Examples o potestad marital are the ollowing articles in the 1870 Civil Code

o Yucatán: art. 205: “The husband is the legitimate administrator o the marital assets”;

art. 206: “The husband is the legitimate representative o his wie.” Código Civil del Estado

de Yucatán, 1870, con todas las adiciones y reformas , 3rd ed. (Mérida: n.p., 1885), 31 (Special

Collections, Biblioteca “Manuel Crescencio Rejon,” Facultad de Derecho, Universidad

Autonoma de Yucatán).

27. Silvia Arrom suggests that by the middle o the nineteenth century, dowries were

no longer a main component o a bride’s wealth. This is conrmed in the ocial record




her time outside the home, specically with respect to employment. The Civil

Code also gave athers the authority over the children produced in marriage, as well as their inherited property. Until 1884, i any minors survived the ather,

a male guardian was appointed to administer the minor’s inheritance until the

minor reached adulthood or married.

Family law refected a preoccupation among legislators with maintain-

ing the integrity o amily property. The system o equal inheritance, under

which all children inherited equally, was another pillar o the Mexican property

regime, and it guaranteed emales an inalienable right to their amily’s wealth.

All children, irrespective o gender, inherited at least equal parts o a portion o

the estate reserved or direct heirs, and this wealth could not be transerred or

diluted through marriage. Parents did not have the right to disinherit their legal

ospring, although they could avor one at the expense o others.28 To guar-

antee that the inheritors o a ather’s wealth were his biological children, there

needed to be minimal doubt about the legitimacy o the ospring. The tutelage

and laws controlling a wie’s reedom in the marriage were intended to guaran-

tee that children o the marriage were the biological result o the union.29 The

o Yucatán, where not one single dowry contract appears in the notarial ledgers. Arrom,

“Changes in Mexican Family Law in the Nineteenth Century,” and The Women of Mexico

City. This does not mean that women no longer owned assets beore they got married,but it suggests that amily property and the traditional mechanisms o transmission o

wealth within the amily structure were changing. It is beyond the scope o this essay to

speculate about or analyze this phenomenon. See also Muriel Nazzari, The Disappearance

of the Dowry: Women, Families, and Social Change in São Paulo, Brazil, 1600 – 1900

(Stanord, CA: Stanord Univ. Press, 1991).

28. Parents’ avoritism was constrained by the rule that each child must inherit equally

among the amount in the estate reserved or the children. Parents could avor individual

children in distributing other parts o the estate, but the system guaranteed income to all

siblings, irrespective o gender. Current research on Yucatecan inheritance patterns will

allow greater understanding o the conditions and circumstances under which the mejora

and the quinta were used, which respectively gave parents the right to avor one child withup to one-third o the restricted estate, or with one-th o the unrestricted estate. The

mejora was abandoned in the 1870 Civil Code o the Republic. Margaret Chowning showed

that the equal distribution principle was so strong that beore 1884, testators in Michoacán

rarely availed themselves o the opportunity under the law to reserve one-th o the estate

or someone other than wie or children or to bequeath to a avorite child. Even ater 1884,

testators continued to divide their estate equally among their children. Margaret Chowning,

Wealth and Power in Provincial Mexico: Michoacán from the Late Colony to the Revolution

(Stanord, CA: Stanord Univ. Press, 1999).

29. There are enough cases o husbands (and wives) accusing their spouses o adultery

in the civil court les o the Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán to suggest that these

constraints were not enough to curb certain passions. Nevertheless, it was extremely rare




genetic legitimacy o the child was supported by a guarantee o social legiti-

macy, which was assumed and accepted as long as a wie remained obedient inthe eyes o society.

The way in which the legal restrictions were applied to women has much to

do with the law’s concern with the integrity o the amily estates and women’s

biological ability to jeopardize this integrity. As long as women were o child-

bearing age, the barriers were high. Once dilution o the amily wealth through

irresponsible procreation was less o a threat to the integrity o the amily estate,

restrictions became less stringent. This explains the reduction o limitations

on widows and long-term spinsters, who by virtue o biology and the assumed

celibacy o their marital status would be less likely to bear ospring o dubious

origin. The logic o this argument is supported by gure 1, which charts the

age at which individual women, sorted by their marital status, lent or borrowed

money. As the gure illustrates, widows who lent (and sometimes borrowed)

in Mérida were on average much older than the married or unmarried women.

The tutelage laws refected the paternalistic prerogatives o the law and the bio-

logical unction o the women it addressed. Mexican laws and the civil codes

concerning women were designed to maintain their obedience within the am-

ily, which was both an economic unit and a pillar o social cohesion. The laws

refected the common concern among lawmakers that extending leniency and

reedom to married women would put social and economic harmony at risk.In this light, restricting the mobility and liberty o women, especially wives,

was as much a refection o a ear o independent emales as it was a conservative

concern to saeguard the amily’s estate within the direct amily line. While

the law protected a married woman’s right to be the sole owner o her property,

the law could not trust her to use this wealth.30 Since civil laws urthermore

gave women rights to at least hal o the community regime’s assets, nineteenth-

century lawmakers could not responsibly grant them reedom to use this wealth

until it no longer posed a challenge to the power o the husband and a threat to

the harmony o the amily.Since notaries were bound to record only contracts that were legal (under

or a wealthy member o society to accuse his or her spouse o indelity. The laws

urther improved the chances that by maintaining a wie under tutelage and control, a

husband’s legitimate atherhood would not be easily doubted by either the ather or his

social circle. See most recently Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets .

30. These controls continued in the nineteenth century to be based both on Roman

law and Spanish law, which in turn was dened by the thirteenth-century Siete Partidas

laws and the sixteenth-century Leyes de Toro.




threat o severe penalties), it is highly unlikely that notaries recorded and oversaw

contracts that went against the wishes o recalcitrant husbands.31 The require-

ment that a wie deer to her husband’s will was reinorced in the handbooks

o instructions to Mexican notaries, which reiterated the restrictions on wives

entering into contracts, especially those aecting her wealth (and by extension

the wealth o her children and her husband, were she to die frst) or poten-

tially involving a trial (either as a deender or accuser) that could lead to publicdisgrace.32 The notarial handbooks made no comments concerning unmarried

31. I a notary ailed to use the proper caution in this respect, he would be liable or

the costs o this illegal transaction, as well as or the damages caused. I he could not cover

the costs and damages, he could be suspended or up to two years: “Los notarios que omitan

este requisito incurrirán en la pena de pagar los daños y perjuicios que causaran, y en caso

de insolvencia en la suspensión del ofcio por dos años.” Codigo Civil del Estado de Yucatán,

título 8: “de la hipoteca”; capítulo 4: “del registro de las hipotecas”; art. 2018, pp. 234–37.

Código Civil del Estado de Yucatán, 1870, con todas las adiciones y reformas , 3rd ed. (Mérida,

1885), 31.32. “Sobre los contratos de las mujeres casadas: El interés de la sociedad conyugal y

la deerencia que la mujer debe a su marido la obligan a no hacer jamás cosa importante

sin su licencia ni autorización. No puede por lo tanto la mujer sin licencia del marido hacer

contrato, ni separarse del que tuviese hecho, ni estar en juicio demandado ni deendiendo

por si o por procurador, ni repudiar herencia por testamento o abintestato, ni aceptarla, sino

solo a benefcio de inventario. Esta licencia se la puede conceder el marido para todos los

reeridos actos, o solo especialmente para alguno de ellos y asimismo puede ratifcar lo que

hubiere la mujer ejecutado sin su permiso. Si el marido injusta y arbitrariamente se negase

a conceder esta licencia a su mujer, puede el juez con conocimiento de causa legitima o

necesaria, compelerle que se la otorgue, y si no se la diere, el juez se la puede conceder,

Figure 1. Average age at time of contract, by marital status. Data from AGEY and ANEY,Protocolos Notariales.




women (unmarried girls who were still under the tutelage o their parents were

strictly barred rom contracting anyway). The reputation o women needed tobe saeguarded at all costs, and this was best achieved i husbands were granted

the widest possible discretion over their wives’ transactions.

However, given all these proscriptions and obstacles to the participation o

married women in the civil sphere, the evidence summarized in table 6 suggests

that Yucatecan men oten allowed their wives to borrow yet rarely consented

to them lending. In any year, borrowing wives ar outnumbered lending wives.

Both in terms o number o contracts and amounts, a married woman was ar

more likely to appear in this market as a borrower than as a lender. Even in 1885,

when married women lent more than in any other year, the amounts they lent

($17,000 pesos) were less than hal o what they borrowed (in excess o $38,000 pesos). Similarly, the number o married women who borrowed outnumbered

those that lent in every year. Borrowing wives outnumbered the lenders by at

least 100 percent, but as was the case in 1870 and 1880, only 1 wie lent and

more than 15 borrowed.

In light o the legal context discussed above, how do these gures contribute

to our understanding o the interest rate dierential highlighted in table 3? How

does this borrowing activity among married women relate to their borrowing

costs? In order to answer this question, we must consider the nature o the prop-

erty being used as collateral in these loans. Notaries did not make explicit noteo the property regime under which a collateralized piece o property belonged

to the individual entering into a loan, but based on the signatures at the end o

the loans by married parties, male and emale, the mortgages themselves reveal

the nature o the property regime.

The signatures o spouses on mortgage contracts signied their approval

o the contract but not necessarily their shared liability in the debt. When mari-

tal property was used as collateral then both spouses shared in the loss i the col-

lateral was claimed as repayment. However, we cannot assume that the signature

o a wie on her husband’s loan contract was a sign that she was a co-borrower. A wie’s signature on the contract did not imply active participation in the credit

market but refected instead her knowledge and approval o a transaction involv-

ing community property. O the loans by married male borrowers, 75 percent

bore their wie’s signature, suggesting that joint property was the main source

pudiéndose ejecutar lo mismo en la propia orma, cuando el marido se hal la ausente

y no se espera su próxima venida o corre peligro en la tardanza.” Juan Nepomuceno

Rodriguez de San Miguel, El novísimo escribano instruido (1859; Mexico: Impr. de A. de J.

Lozano, 1892), sección 2a, título 1: “De las escrituras de contrato,” capítulo 1, art. 7.




of collateral. This also means that in 25 percent of the mortgages, the collater-

alized property was the sole property of the husband, and the contract did notrequire his wife to be cognizant of anything happening to that property.

The inverse, however, was not true. When husbands signed at the end of a

mortgage contract, as they inevitably did, they were not signaling their aware-

ness and approval of a mortgage contract using joint property; they were signal-

ing consent of a contract using property that was not theirs. After all, women

were not allowed to transact, let alone transact with communal property. They

could not even manage their own property, never mind use joint property as

collateral. Husbands did not sign as legal representatives or as guarantors (as

was the case for fathers and tutors signing on behalf of underage daughters and wards); they signed because without their signature, the notary could not legally

record the contract, since it was illegal for any married woman to enter into any

kind of contract without her husband’s knowledge and approval.

The Civil Code further reinforced this one-way spousal control through

article 1779. The article, which existed in the 1870 Civil Code of Yucatán and

remained intact under the 1884 code, gave a husband the right to annul any

contract signed by his wife without his express consent.33 According to the code,

husbands had this right during the marriage and retroactively for four years fol-

lowing the eventual dissolution of the marriage (either by divorce or death).34

33. Articles 62 and 65 of the 1889 Civil Law of Spain are similar to article 1779 of the

1870 Civil Code, título 5: “de la rescission y nulidad de las obligaciones,” capítulo 2: “de la

nulidad de la obligaciones” (Código Civil del Estado de Yucatán, 1870, p. 207), albeit without

the retroactive provision included in the Mexican Civil Code.

34. Divorce in this context referred only to a legal separation of residence. Divorced

women and men were not free to remarry, and divorce cases were extremely rare before the

twentieth century. For more on divorce in Yucatán, see Stephanie Smith, “Engendering

the Revolution: Women and State Formation in Yucatán, Mexico, 1872–1930” (PhD diss.,

SUNY Stony Brook, 2002).

Table 6. Married women in the Mérida mortgage market. Data from AGEY and

ANEY, Protocolos Notariales.

1850 1860 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895

Number of borrowers 1 5 16 10 17 26 18 15

Number of lenders — 2 1 3 1 8 2 8

Total amount borrowed

(in real pesos) 1,300 10,209 11,861 12,111 20,971 38,970 44,900 25,450

Total amount lent 0 1,200 10,000 4,300 100 17,200 7,000 12,700




This article created an incentive or all parties to maintain the integrity o mar-

riage, especially in economic terms. The laws protected the right to ownershipor women, but article 1779 essentially destroyed the value o this property were

she to use it as collateral in a contract without her husband’s consent.

The situation was only slightly dierent among married lenders. In the rare

cases when married women served as lenders, their husbands countersigned the

contracts to indicate their knowledge and approval o the transaction. Husbands

controlled their property and the couple’s community property, but they had

only administrative control, without any claims to ownership over their wie’s

property. Married women could only transact using their own property, but

the law gave the husband fnal say over his wie’s decisions over the use o this

property.

One notable legal exception allowed women to enter into contracts inde-

pendently i they were acting in a commercial context. I women were engaged

in a proessional endeavor, the law presumed the agreement o the husband as

long as the transaction was directly related to her stated proession.35 Unor-

tunately, mortgage contracts typically remained mute as to the purpose o the

loan, and the occupation stated in the contracts o most emale lenders was usu-

ally that o “labores domésticas” or de estado honesto (o honest standing). In the

remaining cases, the occupation is either not stated at all or it is replaced by the

general term propietaria (property owner), which is more a confrmation o her wealth than an occupational category.36

I we assume that women were actively using their borrowed unds to start

up businesses, refnish the roo on their house, or plant new henequen seedlings,

there is no reason why we should expect married women would do this more

than unmarried or widowed women. I women were independently engaging in

business or home improvement projects, we would expect all women, irrespec-

35. The civil code presumed the licencia (agreement) o the husband when the contract

happened in a proessional context. The 1866 Código Civil del Imperio Mexicano statedin art. 135 o libro 1: “La licencia para contratar puede ser general, o especial. Se presume

concedida cuando la mujer tiene un establecimiento público o propio, proesional o

mercantil, y en ese caso quedan obligados por los contratos relativos al establecimiento,

celebrados por la mujer, los bienes del establecimiento mismo; si no bastan, los gananciales

del matrimonio y en deecto, los propios de la mujer.”

36. According to the local census o proessional occupations in the city o Mérida

published in 1895, 16,854 out o the 27,844 women surveyed were employed in “labores

domésticas.” The second best-represented occupation or Mérida women was as laundress

(1,379), though no laundress appeared identifed as such in the mortgage contracts. CAIHY,

Boletín Estadístico de Mérida, Ocupaciones, 1895.




tive o occupation or marital status, to borrow. Considering the restrictions the

law imposed on married women in terms o their activities outside the houseand their nancial responsibilities within the household, we might even expect

widows and spinsters to borrow more than married women simply because they

had greater legal ease to do so. Instead, the women with the least control with

respect to their own property — married women — borrowed most.

This reinorces the relationship between marriage and the borrowing

activity o women and suggests that their husbands caused married women to

borrow more than other women. The marriage penalty so clearly evident in the

higher interest rate or married women can thereore be understood not simply

as a result o laws protecting them as women or dening their marital status, but

also as a refection o their husbands’ legal hold on their property.

The Husband Phenomenon

The question posed at the beginning o this article — why interest rates on

emale borrowers were higher than those or men — has as much to do with the

legal protections and restrictions toward women as with the ubiquitous husband

who ollowed his wie into the notary’s oce. While the loans that notaries

recorded were signed by women using their own property as collateral, women

were rarely the nal users o the loan. The man sitting next to a woman acrossrom the notary, the one who approved her use o the collateral to take out the

loan and who signed his name next to hers on the loan document, was the most

likely beneciary o that transaction. When a husband gave his wie the right to

transact, he was giving her the right to use her property as collateral or a loan

he would eventually use. Wives did not borrow or any specic projects they

were involved in, since married women who borrowed were never employed

outside the home. Thus the husband was the true originator o the loan. Wives

borrowed to raise unds or their husbands, meaning that loans to married

women were in act repackaged loans to husbands.

In summary, a wie could not legally borrow without the express consent o

her husband, since independent use o her wealth constituted a threat to social

and amilial harmony, and the husband in turn could not use her assets without

her collaboration, since the laws continued to protect ancestral property lines.

In this arrangement, neither the wie nor the husband could legally act alone to

eectively manage the wie’s assets. While the husband had the right to admin-

ister his wie’s assets, he did not have the right to sell, lend, or do anything else

with them. I a husband needed to borrow or his own enterprises, he could only

use his wie’s property as collateral i she perormed the transaction. Thereore,




i a husband wanted to use his wie’s property as security against a loan, his wie

had to serve as the primary borrower. And in order or his wie to borrow, thehusband had to grant her legal license to contract and then he had to sign the

contract as legal proo o his consent.

Married women were connected to the mortgage market by their husbands,

and these husbands explain both the interest rate dierential and the greater

borrowing activity o married women. The marital partnership structured the

loans in such a way that while it appears that women were borrowing (indeed

they were signing the contracts and using their property as collateral), it was in

act the husband who originated the request or credit. Since a husband’s rights

over his wie did not extend to using her property as collateral or a personal

loan, he would have had to use his privileged position as head o household and

administrator o his wie’s wealth to ask or pressure her to give him use o her

property by other means. The reason why this resulted in higher than average

interest rates is connected to the earlier discussion on the laws that controlled

a wie’s reedom to use her own wealth and controlled her husband’s privilege

over it as well. The world o commercial transactions was a masculine one, and

even i widows were important lenders, most borrowers were men. These men,

married or not, used their own assets to secure unds through the mortgage

market, and men, regardless o marital status, constituted the larger share o

borrowers and lenders in the credit market. They used either their own prop-erty or joint property to secure the loan, which not only conerred security to

the mortgage but also signaled to the lender that the borrower was solvent and

was the rightul owner o the bulk o his household’s wealth.

However, husbands who granted their wie the permission to borrow sent

a very dierent message to lenders. A husband’s consent to let his wie use her

property as collateral proved not only that the husband was not using his own

assets but that he was probably dependent on his wie’s wealth, whatever it might

amount to. Furthermore, there is no evidence among the mortgage contracts

and a large sample o the sales contracts and land deeds recorded by notariesthat these husbands owned any property at all, and their absence in the records

constitutes the virtual evidence that the husbands o borrowing women had no

assets o their own.37 There are no surviving previous sale contracts or deeds

that recorded any evidence o these men’s assets. In the case o these husbands,

their name at the end o the contract generally constitutes the frst and only

evidence o their existence in the market.

37. The sample o sales contracts between 1850 and 1899 amounts to approximately

fve thousand land sales and deeds.




38. According to the 1895 survey o occupations in Mérida, there were 12 sorbet

makers in the city. I his business survived or at least ve years, Blas Díaz would have been

among those listed. CAIHY, Boletin Estadístico de Mérida, Ocupaciones, 1895.

An anecdotal but telling example o the ways in which these mechanisms

might have unolded is the story o Antonia Pereira and her husband. Blas Díaz,one o Mérida’s sorbet makers, was married to the 45-year-old Antonia Pereira.

In 1885, Antonia borrowed $1,500 pesos rom Remigio Nicoli, a wealthy prop-

erty owner in Mérida, and she put up as collateral her share o a house she owned

with her sister, having inherited that home recently rom their parents. For this

transaction she paid 15 percent annual interest on the one-year loan. Five years

later, Blas Díaz borrowed $3,000 rom another Mérida lender, putting up a

house he now owned in Mérida as collateral. The couple no longer lived at the

same address; and the henequen boom and Mérida’s sweltering climate no doubt

helped the sorbet business, since Blas could now put up his own property as col-

lateral, borrow in his own name, and pay 12 percent interest per year.38

Once Blas no longer relied on his wie’s property, he used his own property

as collateral. In this transaction the interest rate was signicantly lower than

when his wie borrowed using her own property. The laws protecting women

rom rapacious repossession could not aect Blas when he borrowed in his own

name, and this was at least one o the reasons or his lower interest rate cost.

The other reason was that the lender was dealing directly with the borrower, in

contrast to the previous transactions, in which the lender knew he was not just

lending to Antonia but instead was nancing a project that Blas would control.

In 1885 Remigio Nicoli could not have known that Blas Díaz would launch asuccessul sorbet business. All he knew was that his wie had to use her property

as collateral. In marriages such as these, where wives ostensibly had property

and the husband did not, the credit risk was compromised not just by the hus-

band’s lack o unds but by his lack o reputation in the market.

The interest rates that married women paid refected the interest cost that

their husbands represented to the lender. Relying on his wie’s personal assets

was a public indicator o a man’s economic distress or inexperience; to creditors,

past and present, the act that the husband allowed his wie to use her property

as collateral on a loan either signaled that he did not have any property o hisown or was willing to pay a higher interest rate in order not to put his own prop-

erty at risk. The interest rate premium charged to married women was a mea-

sured response to the implication o their borrowing, namely that husband and

household were less creditworthy. Loans to married women were much more




closely associated to the real risk presented by their husbands than to any risk

embodied in the women themselves.

Mind the Interest Rate Gap

Property rights laws, especially those that determined how women carried out

fnancial transactions in Yucatán during the nineteenth century, connect mar-

riage and markets. In considering how credit was distributed in Mérida and the

gap between who paid the lowest and the highest interest rates, the evidence

provided here shows that the restrictions on the use o property created by the

Mexican Civil Codes were real obstacles to the allocation o credit.

I have argued here that the imbalance in the elaboration o property rightsis crucial to understanding how credit markets worked prior to the creation o

banks, and who was allowed to participate in them. In the case o Yucatán dur-

ing the henequen boom, laws and mores curtailed the ormal rules o ownership

and distorted the way in which women could use property. This had observable

consequences in the allocation and cost o credit.

Law and economics overlapped in Yucatán in the civil laws that both pro-

tected the integrity o the amily estate and also weakened women’s property

rights, establishing a dynamic in which women could own but not use property.

The laws reinorced this by giving husbands no rights over the property they were by law entrusted to manage, leading to a division between use and man-

agement o property. This scission increased both the real and perceived risk o

married women, who, when they borrowed, did so not or their own purposes

but or the husband who sat with them at the notary’s ofce, consenting to a

transaction that existed solely or his use. The existence o this partner/husband,

who had no rights to his wie’s property but most rights over his wie, dam-

aged the seamlessness by which ownership should have granted access to credit.

The same was not true or all women, as widows and spinsters represented only

themselves instead o a married unit. They had the legal reedom — and in the

case o widows, the fnancial wealth — to lend rather than borrow, inverting the

power dynamic that marriage imposed on women.

In conclusion, we can better understand credit markets and the participa-

tion o women in these markets when we better understand the legal ramework

that underpins these markets and their participants. Beyond the commercial

and fnancial laws that were aimed directly at credit markets lies a spectrum o

laws that aected how these markets worked and, most importantly, who was

allowed to participate in them.



Documents

The Marriage Penalty Women, Property Rights, and Credit Markets in Yucatán, 1850 – 1900