Daily Life in Colonial Mexico: The Journey of Friar Ilarione da Bergamo, 1761–1768 (Volume 78) (American Exploration and Travel Series)

Daily Life in Colonial Mexico: The Journey of Friar Ilarione da Bergamo, 1761–1768 (Volume 78) (American Exploration and Travel Series)

In 1761 Ilarione da Bergamo, a Capuchin friar, journeyed to Mexico to gather alms for foreign missions. After harrowing voyages across the Mediterranean and Atlantic, he reached Mexico City in 1763. His account reveals the squalor, crime, and other perils in the viceregal capital, and details daily life: food, public hygiene, sexual morality, medical practices, and popular diversions. His observations about religious life are particularly valuable. Ilarione also describes mining and refining techniques, recounts a bitter and bloody miners’ strike, and recalls traveling across bandit-infested wilderness to Guadalajara. After his return to Italy, Ilarione wrote an account of his journey, published here for the first time in English. The editors have liberally annotated the text, written an introduction about Ilarione’s life and the historical context of his journey, and included more than a dozen of Fra Ilarione’s original drawings, including maps and sketches of Mexican flora. Daily Life in Colonial Mexico is a welcome addition to the firsthand literature of New Spain. “Historians, university students, and general readers will find in the book numerous nuggets to add to their knowledge of social and economic conditions in New Spain at the beginning of the reforms of Charles III.”— Mark A. Burkholder , co-author of Colonial Latin America William J. Orr was a foreign service officer with the U.S. State Department. Robert Ryal Miller was Professor Emeritus of History at California State University, Hayward. He was the author of Mexico: A History and Juan Alvarado: Governor of California, 1836–1842, also published by the University of Oklahoma Press.