186 PART TWO
of managing their estates to others, but the writer accurately identifi ed this grad-
ual Europeanization of elites under way throughout the continent.
The process began right after independence but greatly accelerated after mid-
century. Within a decade after independence, marked changes in manners and
consumption patterns had occurred. “Fashions alter,” wrote Fanny Calderón
de la Barca, Scottish-born wife of the Spanish minister to Mexico, who described
Mexican upper-class society in the age of Santa Anna in a series of sprightly let-
ters. “The graceful mantilla gradually gives place to the ungraceful bonnet. The
old painted coach, moving slowly like a caravan, with Guido’s Aurora painted on
its gaudy panels, is dismissed for the London-built carriage.”
The old yielded much more slowly and grudgingly to the new in drowsy co-
lonial cities like Quito, capital of Ecuador, but yield it did, at least in externals.
The U.S. minister to Ecuador in the 1860s, Friedrich Hassaurek, who was harshly
critical of Quitonian society and manners, noted that “in spite of the diffi culty of
transportation, there are about one hundred and twenty pianos in Quito, very
indifferently tuned.” Another U.S. visitor to Quito in this period, Professor James
Orton, observed that “the upper class follow la mode de Paris, gentlemen adding
the classic cloak of Old Spain.” He added sourly that “this modern toga fi ts an
Ecuadorian admirably, preventing the arms from doing anything, and covers a
multitude of sins, especially pride and poverty.”
Under the republic, as in colonial times, dress was an important index of so-
cial status. Orton reported that “no gentleman will be seen walking in the streets
of Quito under a poncho. Hence citizens are divided into men with ponchos and
gentlemen with cloaks.” Dress even served to distinguish followers of different po-
litical factions or parties. In Buenos Aires under Rosas, the artisans who formed
part of the dictator’s mass base were called gente de chaqueta (wearers of jackets),
as opposed to the aristocratic unitarian liberals, who wore dress coats. In the gau-
cho army of Justo José de Urquiza, Rosas’s conqueror, the only Argentine offi cer
dressed as a European was Sarmiento, a strange sight in his frock coat and kepi
(a French military cap) among the gauchos with their lances and ponchos. For
Sarmiento, writes John Lynch, “it was a matter of principle, a protest against bar-
barism, against Rosas and the caudillos.... ‘As long as we do not change the dress
of the Argentine soldier,’ said Sarmiento, ‘we are bound to have caudillos.’”
By the close of the century, European styles of dress had triumphed in such
great cities as Mexico City and Buenos Aires and among all except native peoples.
Attitudes toward clothes continued to refl ect aristocratic values, especially scorn for
manual labor. In Buenos Aires, for example, at the turn of the century, a worker’s
blouse would bar the entrance of its wearer to a bank or the halls of Congress. As a
result, according to James Scobie, “everyone sought to hide the link with manual
labor,” and even workingmen preferred to wear the traditional coat and tie.