Black Market Capital Urban Politics and the Shadow Economy in Mexico City

Reviews

"In this study of ‘illicit commerce’ in Mexico City between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, Konove focuses on the development and functioning of Baratillo, ‘the city’s infamous thieves’ market’. He claims that the vendors in this market have long enjoyed ties with the capital’s political and mercantile elites."—Survival: Global Politics and Strategy

"Black Market Capital offers a number of contributions to our understanding of urban life in Mexico. . . . challenges some commonly held historical interpretations of Mexican and Latin American history."—Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"This broad-ranging study examines a commercial space that many saw as marginal but that has, in fact, played a central role in the economy of Mexico City since the colonial period. Andrew Konove shows how the Baratillo market survived as a key place of social interaction during four centuries of urban history. Rather than a story of segregation, resistance, or clientelism, Black Market Capital tells the story of sellers and customers who were often outside the law yet managed to shape urban regulations, republican politics, and public life."—Pablo Piccato, author of A History of Infamy: Crime, Truth and Justice in Mexico

"Black Market Capital is the first full scholarly study of a critical topic in the history of Mexico, and it will certainly be the go-to text for any study of urban social and economic life. It provides a close-focus view of what is arguably the central social institution in the life of Mexico City: the popular marketplace, in general, and Mexico City’s most (in)famous marketplace, the Baratillo, in particular. Konove ably demonstrates that the market was at the very center of the city’s economic life—the beating heart of petty commercial activity—and, at the same time, was a highly politicized space, where different views about state-building, ideologies of commerce, and the rights of citizenship were debated and negotiated."—Edward Beatty, author of Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico