Poverty and welfare in Mesoamerica during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: European archetypes and colonial translations

This study focuses on the precepts that missionaries, churchmen, and crown officials serving in the New World borrowed from contemporary European discourse on poor relief to mould their concepts, attitudes, and policies towards the native Indian. It illustrates how native Indian customs of corporate support and assistance in Maya society became deeply interconnected with European-Catholic notions of charity, and argues that the cofradia (confraternity), a major religious, social, and economic institution established by Christian regligious ordres in the 1560s, became the most crucial institution for the realization of common and individual relief. In addition, the paper examines overall colonial policy with regard to the implementation of welfare regulae in the areas of Chiapa and Guatemala.