Last updated: January 26, 2021
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El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro and the 'Stock Market'
A New-Mexican Sheep Ranch, photo from The Encyclopedia of Food by Artemas Ward
With so much daily anxiety about the Dow and the S&P 500, it’s easy to forget that ‘stock market’ used to mean something entirely different. Sheep became crucial parts of the New Mexican economy after the Oñate entrada brought large flocks in 1598. Their meat, milk, wool, and hardiness in arid conditions quickly endeared them to colonists. As livestock raiding slowed in the 1700s, New Mexican families rich in sheep began exporting stock and wool southward along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. Demand for mutton was especially high in Chihuahua, a productive mining region that struggled to feed its workers.
Eventually, some New Mexican families built flocks so large they could not manage them. To make matters worse, sheep owners generally lacked cash to pay their shepherds; their stock represented their only capital asset. This led many to adopt the partido system—essentially a livestock loan that had to be paid back with interest. A partidario would borrow a flock of sheep from a patron for a period generally between three and five years. In return, the partidario agreed to return a fixed number of lambs and wethers (castrated rams) to the patron each year, plus a percentage of the flock’s ewes and maybe even a portion of its wool; the partidario kept the remaining lambs and wool as payment for their work. At the end of the contract, the partidario returned a flock equal in size to the one they originally borrowed. This allowed both parties to profit, and all without the exchange of hard currency.
Like many loans today, partidos favored those with the most capital to lend. If a partidario failed to fulfill their contract, the patron could put them into debt peonage—essentially securing their labor for a prolonged period at extremely low rates. By the late 1700s, many New Mexicans had suffered this fate. Poorer families sometimes purchased goods by borrowing against their future crops, in some cases leveraging up to six future harvests. The smallest misfortune could thus lead to crippling debt. As Juan Agustìn Morfi noted, “To enter such a contract it is not necessary to be vice ridden, or wasteful: a marriage, a trip, or a burial or the smallest unexpected expense is enough to submerge them in this labyrinth.” For many modern Americans, these words likely hit close to home.
Jon M. Wallace, “Livestock, Land, and Dollars: The Sheep Industry of Territorial New Mexico” (MA thesis, University of New Mexico, 2013), 28-32
Ramon Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991), 323.