Although Juan de Páez always appears in the documents with the denomination of “mercader” (“merchant”), in fact his professional practice depicts him specifically as a financial service provider in the administration of assets, money lending, speculation, purchase-sale of silver and real estate, the leasing of estates or property to third parties (cattle, land, buildings, slaves, etc.), collection of money. He also provided legal representation to his clients, in particular concerning bureaucratic procedures. Páez’s self-assurance and mastery in the performance of these services could be described as outstanding. His indisputable technical knowledge as a businessman was well proven by the remarkable number of people who appointed him executor of their wills. 

Basically, an executor administers a deceased person’s estate or property for the period of time in which it was being legally disbursed; once done, the executor had to account for the administration of said estate. It was also his job to pay and collect the debts inherited by the deceased. In the days immediately following death, the executor had to take care of funeral arrangements and expenses, such as the funeral mass service, the burial, the payment of posthumous masses, the payment of fees and others associated with the will. In order to cover these expenses, he would take twenty percent (one-fifth) of the inheritance. For these reasons, the executors had to be completely reliable people who were also endowed with the required technical capacity to undertake such dispositions. 

Now, why was it desirable to be appointed executor? The position was more often than not a strategy to attain social and patrimonial promotion. As explained by Thomas Calvo in the case of seventeenth-century Guadalajara, executorship was “one of the most efficient resources” used by businessmen “to expand their power over the most important layers of society.” In addition, access to “managing fortunes that were often considerable [were] for the benefit of the heirs, but also for the executor’s, whose economic and moral clout became reinforced”.[23]

Juan de Páez’s highly successful career provided an excellent example of this model, for it is possible to see how, in the 1640’s, he used important public relations work to catapult him to the highest spheres of Tapatía society. We can see that in 1643, he appeared as an executor for the first time, by testamentary disposition of Juan Jiménez, probably a city merchant.[24] In that same decade, Páez would receive the same commission on three additional occasions, two of whom were citizens of Spain: the merchant Juan de Arce, and Don Julián de Cárdenas y Monreal; the third was Don Mateo Ramírez de Alarcón, Dean of the Ecclesiastic Town Council, and the first member of the clergy to appoint Juan de Páez his executor.

  

In the 1650’s, Juan de Páez reaped the rewards of what he had planted the previous decade, as evidenced by the increase in the number of appointments he received as executor in those years: between 1650 and 1658, he was appointed nine times as testamentary executor, seven of them by members of the clergy in Guadalajara. The other two concerned Catalina Bravo (a widow), and Alonso Núñez,  who was for many years the apothecary and an important administrator of the San Miguel Hospital.[25] In addition to the previous cases, there were others in the following years until 1674, a year before Páez’s death. During this period, there were fifteen more appointments, among which them still more members of the clergy, although the most prominent case was probably that of a civilian authority: Don Jerónimo de Aldas y Hernández, a judge of the Guadalajara Real Audiencia, who passed away in July of 1663.[26]

It is worth noticing that almost fifty percent of Juan de Páez’s executorships come from members of the Tapatío clergy. Thomas Calvo gives us a clear explanation:

It is clear this Japanese transplant to Guadalajara became the most trusted man of the Guadalajara clergy at the time that he was a highly successful businessman. In fact, his name recurred most often as executor in the burial records of the Sagrario Metropolitano from 1634 to 1674, during which twenty-eight people in Guadalajara appointed Páez as executor. 

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