Lépero

Lépero, a pejorative term used primarily in the nineteenth century to refer to Mexico City's underclass. During the long period of economic stagnation and political instability after Independence in 1821, Mexico City's elite grew obsessed with the suspected volatility, moral turpitude, and criminal activities of the vast majority of the urban population, who led lives of poverty and uncertainty. The term lépero or populacho indiscriminately lumped together underemployed artisans and manual laborers with beggars and criminals. Successive governments implemented various legal measures, such as a special vagrancy court, to fight the perceived infestation of idlers and thieves, but such legislation did little to eliminate the city's problems, which were primarily a result of the country's chronic political and economic crises and not the criminal proclivities of its residents.

The term lépero is of obscure origin and was also used as a pejorative in parts of Central America and Ecuador. In Cuba, however, it was equivalent to Ladino.

See alsoAcordada, Revolt of; Parián.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Torcuato S. Di Tella, "The Dangerous Classes in Early Nineteenth Century Mexico," in Journal of Latin American Studies 5, no. 1 (1973): 79-105.

Frederick J. Shaw, Jr., "Poverty and Politics in Mexico City, 1824–1854," (Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 1975).

Silvia M. Arrom, "Popular Politics in Mexico City: The Parián Riot, 1828," in Hispanic American Historical Review 68 (May 1988): 245-268.

Eric Van Young, "Islands in the Storm: Quiet Cities and Violent Countrysides in the Mexican Independence Era," in Past & Present 118 (1988): 130-155.

Additional Bibliography

Arrom, Silvia Marina, and Servando Ortoll. Riots in the Cities: Popular Politics and the Urban Poor in Latin America, 1765–1910. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1996.

Illades, Carlos. Hacia la república del trabajo: La organización artesanal en la Ciudad de México, 1853–1876. México, D.F.: Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Históricos: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, 1996.

Lida, Clara E., and Sonia Pérez Toledo. Trabajo, ocio y coacción: Trabajadores urbanos en México y Guatemala en el siglo XIX. México, D.F.: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Iztapalapa, Casa Abierta al Tiempo, División de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Departamento de Filosofía: Porrúa, 2001.

Piccato, Pablo. City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900–1931. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.

Warren, Richard A. Vagrants and Citizens: Politics and the Masses in Mexico City from Colony to Republic. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2001.

                                        Richard Warren