Mexico

Mexico’s place in world monetary history is both dramatic and paradoxical — the silver mines of Zacatecas and Guanajuato produced more precious metal than anywhere else on earth between 1550 and 1800, reshaping global monetary systems while the territory’s own creative workers were compensated in a colonial currency that captured little of that wealth for the people who extracted it. The peso’s long history as a silver coin trusted across the Pacific — Manila galleon trade made it legal tender in China — gives Mexican monetary records a global resonance that extends well beyond the territory’s borders. Within those borders, the layers of creative culture run from pre-Columbian tribute economies through the colonial guild system to the independent republic, each with its own relationship between surplus wealth and creative expenditure, and each leaving behind a documentary record that remains incompletely explored by economic historians.

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Master Builder’s Annual Salary at Mexico City Cathedral c.1650s–1700s

The master builder (maestro mayor) overseeing ongoing construction at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico City received an annual salary of approximately 500 pesos de plata during the seventeenth century, paid from the cathedral chapter’s accounts. This was a supervisory creative and technical role: the cathedral was under continuous construction from 1573 to 1813, and the maestro mayor was responsible for structural decisions, design interpretation, and management of a labour force that blended European-trained craftsmen with indigenous workers trained in colonial workshops. The Spanish peso de plata (piece of eight) contained approximately 25.6g fine silver; the gold equivalent is estimated at the prevailing 1:13 silver-to-gold ratio.

~985g

Tovar de Teresa, Guillermo. Pintura y escultura en Nueva España (1557–1640). (Azabache, 1992); Mexico City Cathedral chapter accounts cited in Kubler, George. Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century. (Yale University Press, 1948).