This chapter focuses on the impact of trade on the functioning of the economy of favor. It argues that the growing importance of conspicuous consumption in New Spain and the introduction of new venal practices raised questions about the assessment process that, according to many, was the key to a just distributive process. In the context of these discussions surrounding such impact, transpacific trade was thematized as well. After discussing critical reflections about the ways in which consumption and trade affected ideas of worthiness, the chapter returns to Rodrigo de Vivero’s Abisos to analyze his critique of the growing influence of commerce on New Spanish society and distributive processes in the Spanish empire. Subsequently, it examines the efforts of Mexico City’s cabildo to fashion a particular image of a deserving community while negotiating with the Crown over financial contributions to the Armada de Barlovento. By juxtaposing Vivero’s reflections with those of Mexico City’s cabildo, the chapter seeks once more to exhibit how calls for isolationism or economic integration were each, in their discrete way, crucial to the distributive struggles within the viceroyalty.

New Spain’s integration into the Pacific Basin played an important role in the viceroyalty’s political and social history. Interactions between the two become visible in descriptions of Spain’s distributive struggles. The conclusion argues that diverging notions of a deserving self and undeserving other produced by such disputes were strategic responses to a changing world in which the increasing mobility of people and goods created both opportunities and fierce competition over limited benefits and resources. Consideration of the ways in which these men and women engaged with the logic of assessment has resulted in a more variegated understanding of their views of the world, as well as their places within it, that acknowledges not only individual agendas but their divergent relationships to collectives as well. While Pacific and transpacific exchanges continued to have an impact on distributive struggles after 1640, the importance of the hierarchy of beneméritos, as it developed in the wake of the diminished conquest, once again altered discussions about worthiness and unworthiness and the ways in which people identified themselves and others.

The chapter examines the efforts of a group of veterans from earlier expeditions to capitalize on their knowledge of Asia and/or routes between the Indies, while grappling with their relatively modest position within the hierarchy of meritorious. The chapter argues that such a hierarchy became increasingly clear during the 1540s, due to the viceregal authorities’ efforts to identify and hierarchically order New Spain’s conquistadores, primer pobladores, and other beneméritos who had served the Crown. Against the background of these initiatives, it considers the efforts of men such as Andrés de Urdaneta, Guido de Lavezaris, García de Escalanate Alvarado, Castaneda de Nájera, and Juan Pablo de Carrión – who all fell within this third category of meritorious – to stand out among those included in the register by presenting themselves as veterans. Analyzing their interactions with the viceregal authorities and referring to reports produced during the 1550s and 1560s, the chapter reveals how the men’s drive for social advancement inspired them to fuel interest in Spanish expansion into the Pacific. In the process, they presented various visions of the Pacific and the potential benefits of New Spain’s connections to Asia.

The chapter explores how the activities of Spanish officials and men-at-arms impacted identity-making processes against the background of debates over the significance of the movement toward defining the benemérito category and the hierarchy of the meritorious. The chapter argues that, beginning in the second half of the sixteenth century, imperial agents faced the challenge of fashioning notions of a deserving self or undeserving other while balancing two opposing metrics of merit: rootedness and mobility. It first examines the unwillingness of conquistadores and first settlers, and their descendants, to serve in the Philippines and the ways such unwillingness reinforced development of negative stereotypes associated with these privileged social categories. Subsequently, it explores the efforts of Melchor López de Legazpi, Pedro de Robles, Diego García de Palacio, and Rodrigo de Vivero to use their Pacific service as a basis for fashioning themselves as meritorious subjects. Finally, it considers how debates over the hierarchy of the meritorious shaped ideas about New Spain’s transpacific connections and the region’s position between Europe and Asia.

The chapter explores how the production of cosmographical knowledge and acts of self-fashioning interacted in negotiations over royal capitulaciones, which were contracts between the Crown and private individuals that permitted the latter to act on the Crown’s behalf in matters such as exploration. After a brief discussion of prior Spanish efforts to reach Asia, the chapter then concentrates on the legal cases that were argued and decided during the 1530s and early 1540s concerning the right to explore the regions in the Pacific Northwest and who was to be recognized as the discoverer (descubridor) of this part of the world. The analysis presented here shows how the efforts of Hernán Cortés, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, and others to prove they deserved to be recognized as discoverers had an impact on the mapping of the Pacific Northwest and left deep marks on the laws of the Indies.

With the expansion of Spanish activities into the Pacific Basin, New Spain increasingly became a global point of intersection for imperial, commercial, and religious networks. The mobility of persons and goods affected external perceptions of New Spain’s place in a globalizing world, as well as its residents’ self-perception. The Introduction observes that these transformations have typically been studied through the lens of a historiographic narrative about creolization. After reviewing debates about the use of the creole paradigm for the study of Spanish identities in the Indies, the chapter introduces the notion of the deserving self, which had emerged in the context of late medieval struggles over the distribution of royal favor, as an alternative framework for studying the interrelationship between movement and processes of identity-making and identification at this crossroad of transoceanic networks. Finally, it explains the link between various conceptualizations of a deserving self and the stories people recounted about the world and the desirability of global integration.

In this chapter, the effects of the clergy’s movement along the Asia-bound religious itinerary on disputes over royal patronage in New Spain are examined. The chapter first explores how the route between Spain and Southeast Asia turned into a standardized itinerary. Attention is then shifted to disputes caused by the clergy’s movements along this route and the meaning the category of criollo acquired in them. Delving further into the uses of the logic of assessment, the chapter explores how the qualities of New Spain and its creole inhabitants were celebrated by clergymen with varying agendas. The chapter argues that the positive assessment of both from someone like the Spanish Augustinian Rodrigo Aganduru Moriz were the result of his efforts to defend the role of creole friars during the evangelization in Asia. Although Moriz’s celebrations mirrored those of creole clergymen, his aim of attracting friars to Asia actually collided with the interests of a considerable segment of the local clergy. Finally, the chapter uses the celebrations of Felipe de Jesús, one of the Nagasaki martyrs, to reconsider how the criollo identity was operationalized in struggles over the distribution of privileges and honors.