A history of institutional function: Mexican notaries and wealth distribution – Yucatan, 1850–1900

Abstract

This paper uses probate records and records from notaries in the southeastern State of Yucatan in Mexico to explore wealth inequality in an ethnically heterogeneous economy. This paper will explore the elements that constituted Yucatan’s institutional context, and how the inequality between its constituents contributed to it. Following the contribution of Monkkonen, who conducted an ‘institutional archaeology’ of the role of Mexican notaries in space, this paper will dissect their institutional function in time.

Keywords:

• inequality
• institutions
• notaries
• probates
• Mexico

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities; the University of California Riverside Senate Grants; and Peter Ho for many inspiring exchanges and readings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Juliette Levy

Juliette Levy is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Riverside. Her work focuses on the role of informal intermediaries in credit markets in Mexico. She is currently engaged in a collaborative project comparing pre-modern financial markets and their intermediaries across the world, as well as a digital curation and archiving of historical credit transactions from Mexican archives. Her book The making of a market: credit, notaries, and Henequen in Yucatan, 1850–1900 was published by Penn State University Press in 2012. She is at work on a second book, tentatively titled Popular finance and revolution: Yucatan during the Mexican Revolution. You can reach her here: