Toms Murphy y la Independencia de Hispanoamrica Mndez Reyes, Salvador (Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico)

Toms Murphy perteneca a una familia espaola de origen irlands que desarroll importantes actividades econmicas en la Pennsula ibrica, Gran Bretaa y Nueva Espaa (actual Mxico) a fines del siglo XVIIII y principios del XIX. Toms Murphy resida en esa poca en el puerto de Veracruz. Desde 1808, cuando se inici el proceso que llevara a la independencia de Hispanoamrica, Murphy y otros miembros de su familia tuvieron una activa participacin en dicho proceso. Don Toms form parte de una sociedad secreta independentista mexicana, fue diputado a Cortes en Madrid en 1820-1823, estuvo vinculado con latinoamericanos independentistas residentes en Londres. El estudio de la figura de Toms Murphy se deriva de mi inters por otros personajes de las lites de Nueva Espaa, que participaron en el movimiento independentista de manera casi secreta, como es el caso de algunos miembros de la familia Fagoaga. La vinculacin con la comunidad hispanoamericana de Londres es muy importante, ya que en dicha ciudad residieron personajes tan importantes para la Independencia latinoamericana como nada menos que Francisco de Miranda, Andrs Bello, el Libertador Jos de San Martn, el Libertador Simn Bolvar y un espaol, muy significativo, quien adems era de origen irlands, me refiero a Jos Blanco White. La metodologa seguida ser la de este tipo de trabajos histricos, sealando que por el carcter a veces secreto de sus actividades independentistas en ocasiones es muy difcil encontrar informacin sobre Murphy y su familia, y sobre los Fagoaga.

In 1796, Tomas Murphy y Porro was a partner in the London merchant house of William Duff Gordon. Jimenez Codinach, La Gran Bretana, cited in Souto Mantecon, Mar abierto, 104 and n. 19

Gazeta de Mexico, 21 July 1802. Echeverria consiliarios were Alberto Herrero, Pedro Antonio de Garay y Llano, and Rafael Canalias y Alvareda. Echeverrias extended (Navarrese) family had roots in Veracruz. Juan Jose de Echeverria was a merchant there in 1781; Francisco Xavier de Echeverria was the son-inlaw of Jose mariano de Almanza, born in Veracruz; Almanza and Pedro Miguel de Echeverria were fiadores of a shipment unloaded at Veracruz under comercio neutro and consigned to Tomas Murphy. Pedro Miguel was a consulado officer in 1795; sometime after 1799 he established commercial ties with Havanas leading merchant, Pedro Juan de Erice, as well as with Baltimores Robert Oliver. Pedro Miguel was the

Tomas Murphy y Porro was a malagueno born in 1766 to Juan Murphy y Elliot, presumably a wine exporter to England. Young Murphy, a shareholder in Malagas recently chartered Compania de Navieros, had been briefly a correspondent of Colonial Secretary Jose de Galvez; in the late 1780s he had left Malaga for Veracruz to set up the firm Murphy y Cotarro. In 1801 he had rented office space to Jose Benito de Austria, a Riojano and perhaps brother of the energetic secretary of the recently created Consulado de Veracruz, Jose Donato de Austria y Achutegui. At Veracruz Murphy built on his knowledge of Malagas English trade and established contact with merchants at Kingston, Jamaica, with the prominent Havana merchant Pedro Juan de Erice, and the Hamburg export house of Bretano, Bovera y Urbita. In the 1790s Murphy married a daughter of a long-term colonial functionary, Martin Jose de Alegria y Egues, whom Jose de Galvez had shifted from Havana to serve as the Hacienda administrator at Veracruz. Alegria married a second daughter to a nephew, the viceroy Miguel Jose de Azanza, in the late 1790s. Within the ambience of commericial growth at Veracruz then contesting the hegemony of Mexico Citys merchant oligarchy, Tomas Murphy had caught the attention of Viceroy Revillagigedo, and with good reason.

The first company to advertise was a chartered by two alamaceneros of the capital, Miguel Angel Michaus and Antonio Uzcola, who jointly put up 100,000 pesos backed by 200,000 peso fianza of wight shareholders-two from mexico city (Juan Bautista Fagoaga and Juan Fernando Meoqui), one from Guanajuato (Obregon), one from Zacatecas (Manuel de Tegui), and four from Veracruz, all highly distinguished and of well-known credit (Pedro Miguel de Echeverria, Tomas Murphy, Angel Gonzalez, and Jose Gutierrez de Cuba); the firms Acapulco agent was another merchant, Juan Sanches de Movellan. Conspicuosly, all eight fiadores formally renounced protection of their special rights, homes, and neighborhoods against judicial authority. Mexico citys merchant and mining elites must have immediately connected these shareholders with the bankrupt Vertiz y Oteyza conductor de plata: Fagoagas (Juan Felipe, Juan, and Jose Mariano), Ignacio Obregon, whose mines were then booming, the Murphy brothers (Tomas, matias Lorenzo), and Meoqui would surface among their supporters in the course of the Vertiz y Oteyza bankruptcy proceedings. Coincident with official approval of their charter, the firm of Micahus y UZcola was awarded the government contract for freighting government silver and goods.

To view the unexpected demise of the major firm for the conduccion de plata and the rapid chartering of two substitutes companies as normal and inevitable consequences of New spains economic expansion risjs minimizing the significance of the conflictive currents splintering the colonys mining and merchant elites in the closing decades of the colonia era. Two companies marshaling twenty guarantors had replaced Vertiz y Oteyza, just as two factions vaguely marked by ethnic or regional differences now competed for dominance of the colonys mining and commerce, one difinable as criollo-vasco, the other as montanes. The criollo-vasco consortium of Michaus y Uzcola drew its eight backers from longtime merchant houses of the capital and Veracruz; through its Obgrego and Fagoaga fiadores it was tied to groups at Guanajuato and Zacatecas; two of its Veracruz merchant representatives Echeverria and Murphy were in the process of diversifying their Spanish commercial connections to Hamburg and and London, the English West Indies, and the United States, and Cuba. For its part, the competing montanes consortium of the Peredos collected its twelve backers almost exclusively from montanes immigrants among the Mexico City almaceneros. Direct links to New Spains mine owners are not evident; however, this group was connected essentially to the port of Santander and its Montana hinterland by recent emgigration and to montanes figures at Cadiz and Manila.

Criollo Vasco, was associated with elements of New Spains tradional elite establishment who owned and managed mining properties that produced the hightest volume of silver and therefore had to bank on reliably large supplies of basic inputs, especially mercury-whether the supplier was from Spain, the English West Indies, or neutral European ports-at stable rather than inflationary prices. The other group, identifiably, montanes, was more closely tied to Cadiz and the traditional structure of Spains Atlantic and Pacific trading systems; because of its high percentage of recent immigrants, perhaps it remained relatively apart from the colonial mining elite.

In 1802-1822 three mine owners epitomizing the predominant criollo-vasco group were elected administrators-general of the ribunal-Jose mariano Fagoaga (of the family of the marques del Apartado) in 1800, Sardeneta (Marques de Rayas) six years later, and Fagoaga in 1811.

Edge of Crisis; War and trade in the Spanish atlantic, 1789-1808, Barbara h. Stein, Stanley J. Stein