De la República de las Letras a la República de las Bestias: El Diario Económico de México como Fuente para el Análisis de las Relaciones Humano-Animal en la vida Cotidiana de la Ciudad de México Novohispana

Abstract

The Diario Económico de México was one of the most significant periodicals of its time. Some of its more fantastic qualities include the fact that vast swaths of Mexico City’s society participated in it with publications of all sorts, and, unlike other periodicals of the era, this one enjoyed an almost uninterrupted run for more than a decade, 1805 to 1817. Despite the variety of its contents, historians have seldom used it to study the human-animal relationships of the past. This article examines the Diario’s “Announcement” section from 1805 to 1809 as a sample to analyze how the residents of Mexico City interacted with three specific types of animals: equines, birds, and dogs. In the process, it also proposes how these human-animal relationships intersect with other areas of historical interest, such as the notion of labor, the significance of agency, evidence of transculturation, the history of women, and the formation of family units in the early modern period.