The populace, urged by the pangs of hunger and by their fancied grievances, were now in a mood which boded ill for the peace and safety of the capital. Yet, although previous outbreaks had shown their turbulent nature, no precaution whatever appears to have been taken to guard against a disturbance. Affairs were ripe for an outbreak. The city was divided into nine wards, six of which were inhabited wholly by natives having their own governors. The total population was over one hundred and forty thousand, of whom the Spaniards and mixed races formed but a small proportion. A large part of the lower classes were idle and dissolute, and among them were many criminals. The name saramullos was then applied to them and later they were called léperos.[1]
The usual resorts of this class were the shops where pulque was sold, and the baratillo,[2] where the natives also congregated, and where all plotted against and denounced the government at will, free from the interference of the officers of justice.[3]
The natives at this period, especially the men, were restless, indolent, and vicious, and so addicted to the use of pulque, the consumption of which had never been so great, that all contemporary writers concur in affirming that they were daily under its influence. They were the chief complainers against the government, and were constantly encouraged by the saramullos, who eagerly desired an outbreak because of the opportunity thus afforded them for plunder.
To oppose these dangerous elements there was in
- ↑ 'La poblacion. . . de las grandes ciudades interiores de la colonia, cuya mayoría inmensa se componia entónces, como se compone todavía hoy por desgracia, de esa plebe vagamunda y degradada por la ignorancia y la miseria, conocida con el infamante apodo de léperos.' Lerdo de Tejada, Apunt. Hist., 300. See also Sigüenza y Góngora, Carta, MS., 37.
- ↑ A shop or collection of shops in the main plaza where cheap and second class wares were sold, and where stolen articles were also dispossd of. It was frequented by vagabonds and criminals, and several attempts had already been made by the authorities to abolish it. Rivera, Diario, 72; Robles, Diario, ii. 26. The baratillo was not abolished until several years later, although a cédula prohibiting it was published in November 1689.
- ↑ ’Las pulquerias donde por condision iniqua y contra Dios que se le concedió al Asentista no entra justicia,' Sigüenza y Góngora, Carta, MS., 42.
