The war over bread

Disputes between bakers and the Montevideo council, 1824-26

Abstract

The article analyses the conflict between the main bakers of Montevideo and the Cabildo between 1824 and 1826, due to the quality of bread and the retail price. The dispute, which lasted during the first two years of the siege imposed on the city by the revolutionary forces, generated intense debates between authorities, jurisdictional discussions, the temporary suspension of production as a pressure measure and the imprisonment of several bakers. This episode is part of a long sequence of disputes between the Cabildo and the bakers, which dates back to the final decades of the 18th century and became more acute in contexts of crisis. In the dispute, regulationist positions, which postulated the need for a balance between reasonable profits for producers and the protection of the population's consumption, clashed with positions sensitive to greater market liberalisation. The text analyses the bread market in the city, the most important events of the conflict and the arguments of the Council, the bakers' representative and the Court of Appeals. It also addresses how the threat of popular unrest or riots was used in the positioning of the litigants. The article is based on the hypothesis that the dispute over the price of food was an important debate in the political life of the city and that the construction of a market freer of regulations was a gradual process, which had social opposition whose visibility must be recovered.