Containing the Poor

"In 1774 Mexico City leaders created the Mexico City Poor House- the centerpiece of a bold experiment intended to eliminate poverty and impose a new work ethic on the former beggars by establishing a forcible interment policy for some and putting others to work. In Containing the Poor Silvia Marina Arrom tells the saga of this ill-fated plan, showing how the asylum functioned primarily to educate white orphans instead of suppressing mendicancy and exerting control over the multiracial community for whom it was designed. For a nation that had traditionally regarded the needy as having the…