Red social de compadrazgo bautismal en una comunidad rural de la Provincia de Maracaibo (1834-1841)

Abstract

This article aims to understand the structuring of the baptismal co-parenthood (“compadrazgo”) network in the La Cañada parish, Province of Maracaibo, Venezuela, in the second decade of the republican period (1834-1841), and to evaluate the importance of this connecting link in the generation of social capital and social cohesion in the parish in said historical time. Additionally, the structural differences between said network and the network of baptismal co-parenthood generated in the parish at the end of the monarchical period are compared, in order to infer possible differences in the structuring mechanisms of the relational fabric and the generation of social capital in the parish in both historical times. The methodology of Social Network Analysis (sna) is used for the structural analysis of the network. It is found, among others, that the baptismal co-parenthood network generated in the second republican decade had a lower degree of integration and structural cohesion in comparison with the equivalent network generated at the end of the monarchical period, which would indicate that by the years 1834-1841 the role of baptismal co-parenthood as a generator of social cohesion in the parish had somewhat eroded. It is argued that this could have been related to changes in the social reproduction strategies of the parishioners, more specifically, to changes in the modalities of alliances as a consequence of the new forms of sociability of the republican period. The main primary sources used in the investigation were a population census of the parish carried out in the year 1834, and the marriage and baptism records registered in the ecclesiastical books of the parish in the years 1834-1841.