Daily Life in Colonial Mexico: The Journey of Friar Ilarione da Bergamo, 1761-1768

Volume 78 in The American Exploration and Travel Series After returning to his Italian monastery in 1770, a Capuchin friar named Ilarione da Bergamo wrote an account of his transatlantic crossing and five-year residence in colonial Mexico. Sent to Mexico to collect alms for missionary work, Friar Ilarione lived four years in the silver-mining camp of Real del Monte, fifty miles north of the viceregal capital. Ilarione relates how he secured silver donations from the miners, describes mining and refining techniques, and writes of a bitter and widespread labor strike. Ilarione also spent a number of months in Mexico City. He reveals the squalor, crime, and other perils of life in the capital, and describes details of daily life, including the public baths, medical practices, cockfights, bullfights, birds, native plants, popular food, and religious rituals. In this recently discovered manuscript, published here for the first time in English, editors Robert Ryal Miller and William J. Orr identify obscure references, translate Nahuatl words, amplify details, and verify historical events. Daily Life in Colonial Mexico is a welcome addition to the firsthand literature of New Spain. William J. Orr was a Foreign Service officer in the U.S. Department of State. Robert Ryal Miller was Professor Emeritus of History, California State University, Hayward, and the author of Mexico: A History.