“Bourbon Family Planning”: Recogimiento and Spatial Governance in Mexico City’s Bourbon Reform Era

This paper demonstrates that the Real Casa de Recogimiento (1738-1848), an institution dedicated to housing women facing destitution or incarceration, was a (re)productive space in eighteenth-century Mexico City. Clearly a house for mothers, the state institution produced disciplined skilled laborers and a sellable product. Through an analysis of the volume “Casa de Recogidas" at the Archivo Histórico de la Ciudad de México, this paper seeks to trace the evolution of the casa de recogidas from a place of penitence and redemption to one of production and self-discipline. Whilst recogimiento has previously been studied to address the spiritual social hierarchies within and outside of female houses of seclusion (Muriel, 1974; Burns 1999, Van Deusen 2001; Delgado 2018); this paper will underscore the role recogimiento played as a form of colonial gender spatial policing. By exploring how the Casa de Recogimiento, under the tutelage of the Real Audiencia, implemented state-sanctioned medical standards as early as 1757, I propose the Bourbon state, like the Catholic Church, sought to monitor and regulate women’s reproductive practices. One of three major institutions dedicated to colonial women's correction, education, and rehabilitation, the historical location of the Casa de Recogidas illuminates the spatial policing of productivity, and sex in eighteenth-century Bourbon Mexico. By examining how the casa de recogidas was reorganized to effectively discipline non-conforming women in 1783, and later contain female insurgents in 1810, I further scholarly explorations of the Bourbon state’s efforts to modernize their colonial possessions through the monitoring of space (Arrom, 2000; Few, 2015; O’Brien, 2023; Voekel, 2002). Lastly, this paper briefly draws on how contemporary sex workers and local merchants employ the figure of the Santa Muerte to critique state violence, incarceration, political marginalization, and poverty within the historic site of the colonial Casa de Recogidas.