Discussion board assignment

A Nation of Villages Riot and Rebellion in the Mexican

Huasteca, 1750-1850

Michael T. Ducey

The University of Arizona Press

Tucson

The University of Arizona Press © 2004 The Arizona Board of Regents

All rights reserved “ This book is printed on acid-free, archival-quality paper.

Manufactured in the United States of America

09 08 07 06 05 04 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Duccy, Michael Thomas, 1960-

A nation of villages : riot and rebellion in the Mexican Huasteca, 1750-1850 / Michael T. Duccy.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8165-2383-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Peasant uprisings—Mexico—Huasteca Region. 2. Indians of Mexico—

Huasteca Region- Government relations— History— 18th century. 3. Indians of Mexico— Huasteca Region—Government relations— History— 19th century,

i. Title. h n i 20.h 8d 83 2004

972'.440049742---dc22 2004004667

Chapter 3

'Following the Law of Our Lady de Guadalupe'

Insurrection in the T ierra C a lie n te , 1810-21

T he War of Independence in Mexico proved to be a pivotal event in the histories of many rural pueblos. It is at this moment that large numbers of villagers mobilized to support the insurrection, linking numerous commu nities that had never before cooperated to achieve common political objec tives. The causes of discontent that motivated these insurgents were similar to those described in the previous chapter. Concerns about local power struc tures and systems of ethnic domination reappeared in the acts and words of these rebels, but the villagers presented their dissent in new, challenging ways. In this chapter I demonstrate that the insurgents of 1810-21 went be yond the village riots of the previous fifty years to create a new way of mak ing politics. A new language of nationalism and citizenship became the norm over the decade of armed rebellion against the colonial order. I trace here the transition from colonial riot to national rebellion in the mentalité of the vil lagers of tierra caliente by describing their motives during the revolt and how they perceived their role in politics as the decade-long war evolved.

Although there is an extensive body of work dealing with the political objectives of the Creole advocates of independence, these studies often ex clude rural insurgents from the discussion. In exploring the reasons for the outbreak of insurgency, recent work has focused on long-term social and economic tensions that developed in the twilight years of the Spanish Em pire, or on more immediate causes such as food shortages.1 The literature tends to skirt the issue of the impact of these tensions on the political aspira tions of the independence movement, as if to substitute “cause for reason” when describing peasant motives.2 Jaime E. Rodriguez summarized much of the recent research when he proposed that during the war, “two broad movements

emerged: an urban upper-class demand for home rule and a rural revolt against exploitation.”3

Peter Guardino and Virginia Guedea have demonstrated important links between elite and popular political thought during the insurrection.4 These authors point out that the insurgents framed their initial discussions of po litical legitimacy in terms of Spanish legal traditions of the pueblo. Guardino in particular points out how insurgents adopted the constitutional concepts in response to the viceregal government’s counterinsurgency state. Guedea’s works have the virtue of demonstrating the mechanisms that connected the urban autonomists to the rural insurgents.5 Rodriguez’s recent work has also noted the shift within Spanish American thought as a result of the constitu tional crisis of 1808 and the subsequent wars for independence.6 These au thors describe how the political thought of both urban intellectuals and rural insurgents evolved during the war to a point where they abandoned the tra ditional Hispanic legal precepts of the monarchy and embraced constitu tional concepts of sovereignty. The relationship between elite and plebe is not uncontrovcrsial. Recently Eric Van Young, in his monumental work, has offered an in-depth review of popular political culture, finding a wide breach between the two. Pointing to such features as the widespread belief in the good king (naive monarchism) and the localism of village action. Van Young sees continuities in peasant action and ideology before and after 1810.7

I explore in this chapter how elite concerns filtered into the camps of indigenous insurgents, who then gave new meanings to issues of constitu tionalism and independence. The war changed local political actors, forcing them to confront ideological challenges as they sought to build a state from the village up. James Scott reminds us that popular beliefs are in constant dialogue with the official ideologies of the powerful.11 Scott’s insights help explain how, as the rebellion progressed, local insurgents reacted to the chang ing political scene by adopting new political objectives and identities. While these objectives had a provincial bent, they did not simply revolve around the issues of village land and local pride. Rather, they set out to redefine the political ties between the patrias chicas of the rebels and the larger state. The insurgency built on the traditional hostility toward Spanish officials and merchants as it linked village concerns to a wider vision of politics. Villagers claimed new identities as citizens, casting off the sociopolitical category of indio and demanding new rights for local rule. Rural rebels appealed to the concept of patria and named their troops “nationals” to distinguish them selves from the royalist militias they fought.9 Constitutionalist and proto-

Thc Law of Our Lady de Guadalupe / 61

nationalist rhetoric entered into village discourse and helped sustain the guerrilla war through the long years of royalist ascendancy.

For the villagers of northern Veracruz, the insurgency offered them op portunities to favorably resolve issues of political power in two critical areas: within the pueblos themselves (between cabecera and sujeto), and between the pueblos and the state. The villages experienced the war not as a war be tween Indians and Spaniards, but as a civil war within the pueblos that di vided them along the same hierarchical lines that had evolved during the colonial period. As we shall see, the royalists mobilized Indian villagers to fight indigenous insurgents from their own pueblos while those same rebels often took reprisals against their fellow villagers who refused to join them. A second line of political tension ran between the village and the Bourbon state, which in its efforts to increase revenues and streamline administration had raised taxes and increasingly intervened in community affairs. These ten sions, seen clearly in the events described earlier, now gave momentum to the long guerrilla war.

The attitude of the rural insurgents at the end of the war reveals an at tempt to shift the balance of power in favor of the communities by having their members affirm their new status as citizens and assert their rights to autonomous town governments (ayuntamientos) . 1(1 Socioeconomic issues found an avenue for political expression through the rebel critique of state- pueblo relations. The new constitutional debates that percolated into local politics opened up novel vistas to villagers who had become discontent with pueblo government.11 The new town councils, therefore, were at the center of the events of 1820-21. The transformation of repúblicas de indios into constitutionally based forms of local rule offered villagers opportunities to address the disputes over power that had affected relations both between Crown officials and subjects and within the pueblos themselves. Local gov ernment was in flux as a result of both the war and constitutional change, a situation that created unusual opportunities for subalterns to claim political rights.

The rebel worldview is evident in how insurgents organized their resis tance to the state. Another useful benchmark of rebel attitudes is the rhetoric they employed to respond to late-colonial political change, particularly the reintroduction of the Constitution of Cádiz in 1820. In the following sec tion, I describe the organization of the local insurgency, paying particular attention to the regional space in which the insurrection thrived and to situ ating changes in the rebels’ political identities in this space. I then discuss

A Nation of Villages / 62

the political situation created by the readoption of the constitution in the context of a country exhausted by years of warfare. In the last two sections, I explore the meaning of nation and constitution to rural people by focusing on the evolution of political identities within the insurgent camp.

How the War Was Fought: The Regional Context

On 15 September 1810 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the parish priest of Dolores, Guanajuato, called on his parishioners to join him in an insurrec tion against the government in Mexico City. Hidalgo and his fellow con spirators never expected the outpouring of popular support that their call to arms garnered. The size and spread of the insurrection alarmed the colonial establishment, and local royal officials diligently sought public professions of loyalty from the towns they administered. T he region’s subdclegates as sured Mexico City that their districts were quiet. Jose María Bausa, subdel egate of Papantla, sent a petition signed by the prominent non-Indian resi dents pledging their loyalty while Indians in Tamazunchale likewise insisted on their submission to authority.12 Royalist officials were confident as they mustered the militias to meet the threat of the insurgency. In a departure from colonial policy, local officials, at the urging of Mexico City, created new militias composed of Indian villagers to supplement the pardo (non-white, non-Indian people) militia units.

News of the insurgency spread very quickly to the towns of the lowlands, as the insurrection spread beyond the Bajío and throughout the altiplano. As described earlier the littoral lowlands of the G ulf region were intimately con nected to the altiplano through trade routes in the Sierra Madre Oriental. T h e principal routes of trade ran from Papantla and Tuxpan through Huachinango, Zacatlán, and Tezuitlán, while alcaldía mayor of Panuco was intimately tied to Chicontepec and Hucjutla. From Chicontepec trade routes ran through Tianguistengo, Molango, and Mctztitlán. This network of east- west trade routes dominated the geographic logic of the region, as merchants in the late-colonial period looked toward Tulancingo and Mexico City for credit and political direction.13 On the basis of these traditional contacts, it is not surprising that during the insurgency the coastal rebels maintained close ties to representatives of the insurgent government in Zacatlán de las Manzanas.14

Subdclegates and militia officers viewed the spread of the insurrection as they would the progress of an epidemic. The rebellion traveled along the

The Law of Our Lady dc Guadalupe / 63

routes of commerce originating in the altiplano and moved toward the coast. This phenomenon was evident to local administrators, who viewed every small merchant coming from the west as a potential agent of rebellion. At one point the royalist commander of Huejutla, Alejandro Alvarez de Güitián, sought to control the movement of small-scale merchants because of their role in propagating the insurrection. “Food merchants, known by the name o f ‘Molangueros’ who go from town to town with their goods, will not in any case be permitted to enter the towns, because they have been everywhere the principal agents of the rebellion.” 15 Significantly, Molango, the town from which the term “Molangueros” originated, was famous both for its muleteer merchant activity and as a center of insurgent sympathy in 1811. These Molangueros typically purchased the surpluses of Indian farmers and mes tizo ranchers and sold them in local markets; naturally, they were ideally poised to carry news and subversion to the countryside. They were also of ten victims of the commercial restrictions described in the previous chapter and as such would no doubt have looked with sympathy on the prospect of political change. Alvarez was right to recognize the danger that these small time merchants carried with their mule trains, but at the same time his pro hibition was futile since they were the lifeblood of the economy.

Local officials began to report the presence of insurgent emissaries in the region, and rumors of the rebellion’s progress had a destabilizing effect on the towns. The first disquieting news arrived in the form of a rowdy mulatto cowboy from Huejutla, Nasario Manzano, who declared that “the insurgents had a closed carriage holding three disguised personages . . . that these indi viduals paid a peso a day to each soldier.” 16 A Spanish merchant, Diego Santander, testified that Manzano had said that the king was in the carriage. Even though the prisoner was drunk when he made his subversive outbursts and he had no formal ties to the rebels, local officials treated Manzano harshly, sending him to the capital where he won release only after suffering an inca pacitating accident during his two and a half years forced labor.

The closer the insurgency came to the district, the more worried local officials became; during Manzano’s trial, Santander testified that “the town is in considerable conflict because of the insurrection so close to the jurisdic tion.” 17 Even though the insurrection did not yet have any organized pres ence, there was a marked decline in the deference shown to local Spaniards. In Chicontcpcc a Castilian-born merchant complained that since February 1811 he had “not had a single day of peace” because of the constant insults he received.18 Merely the news of the insurrection destabilized long-held

A Nation of Villages / 64

patterns of domination and changed the ability of local Spaniards to com mand respect. Rebellion spread like a “contagion,” as Ranajit Guha points out, because colonial domination provided a universal organizing principle for the rebels. A common enemy enabled villagers to rise above traditional peasant localism.19

T he overreaction of the royalists in the Manzano case also reflected the power of the insurgent idea; unlike earlier colonial riots, the insurgency of fered an alternative political legitimacy. The disappearance of the king from Spain and the coup organized by the Spaniards in Mexico City in 1808 cre ated uncertainty throughout the political system. Manzano’s drunken out bursts inspired fear in the local Spanish officials and merchants precisely because similar declarations characterized the Hidalgo insurrection to the east. T he fact that Manzano had come from Valles, where the insurgency had recently taken hold, did not help his case. T he fate of Manzano and the at tempt to prohibit trade demonstrate the official view that insurrection was a kind of contagion that could be controlled by quarantine measures.20

In spite of the quarantine the insurgency spread. TheTotonac Sierra town of Pahuatlán joined the insurgency, while in the Huasteca rebels seized the regional market town ofTianguistengo in May of 1811. Rebels were encir cling Hucjutla; the district of Valles, including the nearby town of Tama- zunchalc, revolted; and to the east Molango and Metztitlán were firmly in rebel hands, while in the south dissidents occupied towns in the Sierra de Puebla. The same rebels challenged Mexico City’s grip on the area around Huejutla. De la Vega reported that the European residents of Huejutla had begun to flee the town with their goods as news of rebel advances spread.21 Insurgent forces in these towns made a conscious effort to persuade nearby Indian communities and mestizo rancheros to join the rebellion, singling out officials of the Indian repúblicas and members of the local militias for inducements to revolt, including commissions as “American officers.” In the following paragraphs I use the events in Chicontepec to demonstrate why the “contagion of insurrection” was so effective.

Once established in Tianguistengo the insurgent leader José Manuel Cisneros sent letters to the Indian governor, Diego Hernández urging him to arrest the subdelegate, Juan González de Burgos, embargo his goods, and send him to the rebel camp. Cisneros charged that González acted “contrary to the Nation and Fatherland.” The insurgent commander also commissioned Hernández as a “captain of the Royal Orders of the American Nation.”22 Cisneros recruited several Creole farmers from Chicontepec—José and

The Law of Our Lady de Guadalupe / 65

Lorenzo Espinoza, their mother Ana Villegas, and Lorenzo’s father-in-law Vicente Ortega, a small “molangero” merchant— to help him to convince Hernández and the Indian república to join the insurrection. The Espinozas and Ortega had ties to both Tianguistengo, where they were born, and Chicontepec, where they were “vecinos.” Subdelégate González and his lieu tenant, José Ignacio Cantos, fled at the first sign of trouble.

Cisneros made several concrete proposals to the Indians, offering to rid the town of the unpopular subdelegate and end royalist military service. One of the Indians involved in the rebellion had originally fled Chicontepec to avoid enlistment by the subdelegate. Lorenzo Espinoza promised “the gov ernor that he would never leave his post and that the [officers of the] república would always hold their jobs.” By removing the subdelégate and promising the Indian leaders that they would continue in their offices, the insurgents offered greater autonomy to the Indian elders controlling the Indian pueblo than they had under the trends described earlier. The rebels offered to virtu ally eliminate the system of colonial subjugation by cutting the political and fiscal bonds between the state and the village community, leaving the local Indian leaders to determine the form of the new state. The insurgents and the Indians of Chicontepec set out to decapitate local officialdom. Signifi cantly, the villagers sought to arrest the officials involved in regulating and taxing trade: the tobacco-monopoly administrator and the alcabala collector. According to the testimony of the república officers, Espinoza and the In dian governor Hernández discussed confiscating the goods of the tobacco- monopoly administrator, the postal agent, and the priest because of their opposition to the rebellion. Insurgents promised to divide land confiscated from these officials “among the sons of the town.” The insurgents thus of fered concrete collective and individual benefits to Indian leaders and villag ers willing to take the risk of opposing local Spanish government. While the letters introduced new identities of the “American nation” to Chicontepec, local politics continued to be at the center of political activity. The insur gents promised a reorganization of local power, deposing the royal represen tatives who traditionally intervened in village institutions.

Subdelegates, never popular in the best of times, now faced extremely dangerous conditions. González de Burgos discovered the planned insur rection before the village insurgents could call out their followers, and he made preparations to leave. When the Indian leaders tried to convince him to stay, telling him that he “was their father and that they loved [him] very much,” it merely confirmed their subversive intentions in the mind of

A Nation of Villages / 66

González. “I knew the governor and republican request that I stay had a malicious intent, for never have they made such a request of any subdel égate.” Gonzalez’s telling comment reveals the hatred that characterized re lations between Indians and Spanish officials. When the Indians declared their love for him, González, his lieutenant Cantos, and the tobacco-monopoly administrator beat a hasty retreat from the town. Subdelegate González got off easy: in Valles the insurgents assassinated the subdelegate and hung his corpse at the crossroads.25

The Chicontepec revolt represented the persistence of colonial political culture in the insurrection. Events in the town appear very similar to those described by Eric Van Young in his meticulous discussion of the insurrection in towns such as Atlamulco, where insurrection proceeded as village riot.24 The insurgent governor used the institutions of the república de indios to mobilize supporters, sending letters to the principales and lesser officials (Chinampixqui) in the sujeto towns to bring their people to the cabecera on the day of the planned insurrection. Rebel objectives resembled the aims of local riots and rebellions in colonial Papantla and Yahualica in that they con sisted of expelling Spanish officials and tax collectors in the name of the king. T he Tianguistengo insurgents played on the villagers’ rebel tradition since the order to arrest González de Burgos claimed to have royal origin.

As in the colonial rebellions, the Indians seemed reluctant to use violence against the authorities in spite of their overwhelming numbers. The Indians and their non-Indian allies were armed with bows and arrows, machetes, and clubs, but there is no evidence that they used force against the local notables who refused to join the rebellion. The principal activity of the Indians was to frighten off the subdelegate and his lieutenant and to prepare to greet the arrival of the Tianguistengo rebels “with súchiles [lit., flowers, but here per haps bouquets] of flowers.” Ana Villegas, who served as an emissary between Chicontepec and Tianguistengo, was angry with Governor Diego Hernández when he told her that the subdelegate had fled. Believing that Hernández could have prevented his escape, she scolded him, “Well, now you arc in a bad spot, who knows how it will go for you.” Perhaps Villegas was aware that the rules of the game had changed and that the Mexico City government would no longer be as conciliatory as it had been when confronted by previ ous isolated colonial riots.

T he denouement of the movement in Chicontepec was similar to events in earlier riots. The parish priest and two local landowners, José Francisco del Valle and José Antonio Cuervo, organized thirty “patriots” and arrested

The Law of Our Lady de Guadalupe / 67

the leadership of the Indian community and Lorenzo Espinoza when they were meeting in the town hall. Del Valle later stated that the thousand or more Indians who were “in rebellion did not resist”25 and that the principal weapon used against the rebels was persuasion rather than force. Cuervo, it should be noted, had a tradition of hiding Indian tributaries from tax collec tors in exchange for working on his estate.26

But there were important differences between this uprising and the colo nial movements because it challenged the tradition of declaring loyalty to the state. In 1810-11, two groups claimed to act in the name of the king, one loyal to the government in Mexico City, and one insurgent. The insurgents created their own hierarchy of officials and titles, sending out orders in the name of the king. Unlike earlier riots, this insurgency offered an alternative order with its own claims of legitimacy. Espinoza produced his letters of commission, written in Metztitlán, “in the name of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Femando VII.”27The makeshift documentation did not meet the elegant standards of papers produced in Mexico City, and when the Chicontepec conspirators showed their orders to del Valle, he dismissed them as being written “by some muleteer.” More significantly he questioned the right of local market towns to usurp the authority of the viceregal capital: “Why do the people of Metztitlán and Tianguistengo order you about?” The reader is struck by the fact that the insurgents evidently accepted the “royal” orders and expected members of the local elite to embrace them as well. While de la Vega could blame the rebel success on the Indians' ignorance and naivcté, it is more likely that the villagers (some of whom were not Indians) accepted the letters as authentic because they confirmed what they already believed, namely, that Femando VII hated González dc Burgos and loved his subjects.

The harsh punishments meted out in the aftermath of this brief revolt served notice to the Indian population that the Mexico City government would no longer tolerate riots. The non-Indian “residents” who organized the local counterrevolution initially arrested only Espinoza and three mem bers of the Indian government. But when loyalist troops arrived, twenty- eight more Indians were arrested, along with twelve non-Indians.2*The gov ernment executed Ana Villegas (a Creole) in July and the other prisoners disappeared into the prisons of wartime New Spain, where several died. On 27 June 1817 the viceroy ordered the release of the remaining prisoners, except for the governor Diego Hernández and Lorenzo Espinoza.29 The in surrection made it dangerous to complain since abusive officials responded to complaints with charges that the protesters were crypto-insurgents. Such

A Nation of Villages / 68

was the case in Huautla, where villagers claimed the parish priest stifled objections to his demands for labor by accusing villagers of being subversives.30

T he insurrection in Chicontepec demonstrated the weakness of the colo nial regime. Once the insurrection challenged the legitimacy of the state, dissident locals could turn to the alternative state to redress their complaints. In large part, Spain had succeeded in channeling social discontent into the courts because there was no viable alternative. The Nahuas of Chicontepec quickly realized the opportunity that the arrival of rebel government in the area represented. At least to the local villagers the crudely written invitations were enough to undermine the insecure legitimacy of colonial officialdom. T he failure of the insurgents in Chicontepec was a temporary setback; rebels remained in control of Tianguistengo and Metztitlán, broadcasting their subversive message with effect. In the next year the insurgents extended their influence into Huayacocotla, and Chicontepec soon followed the lead of their neighbors in July 1812.31

Besides appealing to the Indian republics, the insurgents found local mi litias to be fertile grounds for recruitment. The loyalty of the militia was the key criterion for the successful defense of the region from insurgents. In the first months of the war, the loyalist government repelled Ignacio Rayon’s attempt to establish headquarters in Pahuatlán with troops recruited in Papantla. But ultimately the loyalty of the local militia was not secure. The insurgents succeeded in winning over the local militia by recruiting the non commissioned officers. The local rebellions also reflected an important so cial cleavage. As noted earlier, the leading merchants and government offi cials (the subdelegate, royal tax collectors, and tobacco-monopoly police) had pledged their loyalty to the Crown in early 1811. They were also the leaders of the military expedition against the insurgents in Pahuatlán. These indi viduals did not change their affiliation. Rather, the insurrection recruited the leaders of Indian communities and the sergeants of the militia compa nies. In general the militia companies of the coast, composed of “pardos,” that is, non-white, non-Indian people (except for the officers), proved to be a key source of rebel recruits in Nautla, Misantla, and Papantla. In the case of Nautla, the entire militia joined in the insurrection. When the loyalist army finally reconquered the town, the loyalist commander felt that there were no members of the old militia loyal enough to be trusted with command posi tions.32!^ . Col. Carlos María Llórente, royalist commander of theTuxpan- Papantla region after 1814, also justified his lack of success in pacifying the region by pointing to the fact that the rebels were experienced militia soldiers,

T he Law o f Our Lady dc Guadalupe / 69

unlike the rebels of the early stages of the war in the central plateau.33 The colonial militia was in many ways organized along the principles that domi nated Bourbon society. T he officers were drawn from the local elite (land lords, merchants, and officials), and the soldiers were pardos and mestizo farmers, fishermen, laborers, and, as the war progressed, Indian villagers. The split that occurred in the militia thus mirrored the split within colonial society.

The war itself quickly heightened the tensions within the militias. As they demonstrated in the colonial rebellions, the pardo militiamen were never fond of serving under arms for long periods, and with the outbreak of the war the government began to create Indian militias. In the case of the tierra caliente, Indian military service was very problematic. The subdelegate of Hucjutla and Yahualica, de la Vega, was uncertain of the loyalty of the region’s Indians and raised objections to the formation of Indian militia because any demand for militia service not based in “custom would breed disloyalty in the Indian community.”34 De la Vega words were prophetic: the militia raised from the Indian population of Papantla revolted in 1812 under the leader ship of Serafín Olarte and later served as the backbone of the insurgency during the long war.35

In the early stages of the war, reports mentioned the high wages the insur gents offered. Nasario Manzano, the unlucky cowboy caught mouthing off about the king’s presence among the rebels, had also declared that the rebels paid a peso a day to all recruits. What must have been even more alarming to the local magistrates is that Manzano testified that he heard the story of high pay from royalist militiamen who came to visit him in jail in Valles. Antonio Cortes, a Hucjutla militia lieutenant, received a letter from theTianguistengo insurgent, Cisneros, in January of 1811, promising him “a commission as captain with a good salary and four reales daily for each soldier.”36 For mili tiamen, an offer of double the standard wage must have been very enticing. Hugh Hamill has observed that the royalists took these salary offers seri ously enough to address them in their anti-insurgent propaganda.3 The thought of a peso a day fired the imagination of the lower class as much as the rumors of the king’s presence.

The success of the insurgents in subverting most of the coastal region is noteworthy. It came at a time when loyalist forces were stretched to the limit. Insurgent activity simultaneously overran the nearby provinces of Nuevo Santander to the north and much of the Sierra de Puebla to the west. Insur gents from along the coast were in close communication with those of the

A Nation of Villages / 70

Sierra de Puebla. By 1812 rebels controlled the entire coast except forTuxpan and Tampico. During 1811, insurgent forces approached Altamira on the outskirts of Tampico.38 Loyalists reported that in Altamira the few soldiers “of this province are scandalously deserting daily and what is worse they take their arms with them.”39The desperate situation led the loyalists to aban don Altamira and the entire north bank of the Panuco River, moving the garrison to Pueblo Viejo.-*0 The coastal towns of Pueblo Viejo and Tuxpan became loyalist redoubts as exiles from insurgent-controlled territories made their way to the ports.41 The urgent pleas of the port garrisons led the gover nor ofVeracruz to dispatch troops to Tampico to forestall the fall of the port to rebel armies. But even in this loyalist refuge along the coast, the loyalist commander found that one of his sergeants “has been surprised in corre spondence with the enemy. He is one of those seducing the troops and Euro pean residents of that town [Altamira].”42 Indeed the frequent defections of militia units largely triggered the crisis in Santander.

In several towns the insurgents failed to prosper. This is especially true of Huejutla, where the militia commanders rebuffed the early attempts to re cruit them. Likewise, the rebels never occupied the head towns ofYahualica and Huazalingo, although these cabeceras did suffer rebel invasions and a clear challenge from the traditionally dissident sujeto villages.

While the loyalist reinforcements from Veracruz under General Arren- dondo successfully campaigned against the northern rebels, rebellions throughout the Huasteca created a new series of pressures on the loyalist redoubt in Tuxpan. In June 1812 the loyalist commander Domingo Comuñez reported that the insurgents controlled the entire region. Only the port of Tuxpan remained. Comuñez stated that rebels were laying siege to the port. The attack lasted eight days and three thousand rebels were said to have participated.43

During the following year, insurgent control of coastal Huasteca was al most complete. Tuxpan successfully survived the siege but the rebels cowed the loyalist commander into remaining behind entrenched positions in the port. At the same time the Sierra was largely in the hands of insurgents. Chicontepec rebelled in June 1812, and the Indians of Huayacocotla affili ated themselves with the insurgents after insurgents from Molango recruited the Huayacocotla governor.44The same rebels challenged Mexico City’s grip on the area around Huejutla. De la Vega reported that the European resi dents of Huejutla had begun to flee the town with their goods as news of rebel advances spread.45

T he Law of Our Lady de Guadalupe / 71

The insurgency of 1811 and 1812 was not a spontaneous outburst of anger. There was a slow process of recruiting support from communities beyond the field of action of the first insurgents. The insurgents built upon the ten sions within the villages created by the late-colonial regime. Villages divided internally, often continuing the factional lines of the earlier riots. The insur gents offered Indians new powers to control their repúblicas and remove the subdelegates from their posts. Furthermore, they created new opportunities to sectors of local society (mulatto and mestizo ranchers and laborers) who had access to neither the Indian repúblicas nor the offices of Spanish gov ernment. I will now consider what the insurrection offered to its new re cruits and who the new followers were.

Indigenous villagers joined the insurgency in 1812 and quickly over whelmed the royalist militia that had taken refuge in the principal towns. The insurrection spread along trade routes coming into the Papantla region through the Huasteca and the Sierra de Puebla. In the coastal lowlands, two important social groups found the insurgency particularly appealing: Indian villagers and pardo militiamen. Rebel emissaries arrived and incited villag ers to remove the subdelegates and expel the gachupines, as Spaniards were disrespectfully called. Some rebels made their appeals more effective by sug gesting that the rebellion enjoyed the sanction of the captive king, Fernando VII.46

Rebel action directly attacked local officialdom, targeting the traditional objects of village unrest: the subdelegates and royal tobacco-monopoly offi cials. In Papantla the insurgent villagers also singled out the commercial elite for abuse. This no doubt reflected resentment toward merchants and offi cials who promoted a system of repartimiento de mercancías to control the profitable vanilla trade. We have already seen how the insurgents effectively subverted the local militias by offering soldiers better pay.47 In chapter 2 we saw how the coastal militias were reluctant enforcers of colonial order, espe cially when the government called on them to serve any lengthy amount of time. Insurgents exploited resentments over racial hierarchies practiced in the coastal militia units. They promised pardo militiamen that they would be promoted to officer rank, positions that they were denied in the royalist army, where the government generally reserved command positions for whites.4* The impact of insurgent subversion was impressive. By June 1812, with the notable exception of the officers, almost the entire coastal militia had defected, and the royalists had lost control of all the coastal pueblos between the ports ofTuxpan and Veracruz. The rebellion in Papantla followed

A Nation of Villages / 72

this same pattern whereby rank-and-file militiamen joined indigenous vil lagers in overthrowing the subdelegate and imprisoning local militia officers.

Papantla became the regional insurgent command center. The influential leaders from the sierra, José Francisco Osorno and Ignacio Lopez Rayon, commissioned a priest, José Antonio Lozano, to administer the region for the insurgent cause, and bestowed upon him the title of “Colonel and Com mander of National Forces.” Throughout the insurrection rebels from the sierra and the coast worked in close cooperation. According to Llórente, Osorno called on lowland rebels for reinforcements whenever royalist incur sions threatened his sierra strongholds. He described the rebels in Papantla as “followers of Osorno.”49 Papantecos moved from the coastal regions to inland rebel strongholds such asTlaxcalantongo, Apapantilla, Pahuatlan, and Huachinango, obtaining weapons and soldiers from the serranos who, in turn, gained access to the outside world through the modest ports of Tecolutla, Nautla, and Boquilla de Piedra.so

Although the coastal rebels had close ties to the sierra insurgents, there was no closely articulated hierarchical organization between the two groups. Local rebels fought in small bands that coalesced around allegiance to their own pueblo leaders. A case from Misantla offers a fine illustration of the military autonomy of these groups. When Guadalupe Victoria, the rebel com mander who time and again ambushed royalists and merchants traveling along the camino real to Veracruz, ordered Misantla insurgents to send him their cannon, they refused, asserting that they had bought it themselves and that it was very much theirs.51 In the Papantla region, the Olartc family became the dominant leaders, mainly on the basis of their long-established role in indigenous cabildos and their ability to muster large numbers of Indians to fight for them.52 Serafín Olarte and his son Mariano became the leading in surgents by virtue of their ability to forge a coalition among the region’s diverse rebel bands, who joined together to sustain Olarte’s redoubt in Coyusquihui.

In September 1813 royalist forces staged a minor rally when they reoccu pied Papantla. But government troops made real progress only after 1817, with the decline of the insurgency in the Sierra de Puebla, a decline that forced the insurgents to abandon all of the principal towns of northern Veracruz. However, rather than suppressing the insurrection, as the military hoped it would, the royalist reconquest of the towns simply displaced the rebellion, turning it into a guerrilla war between towns occupied by royalist garrisons and hinterlands infested with intransigent rebels.

The Law of Our Lady de Guadalupe / 73

Events between 1813 and 1820 demonstrated the royalists’ inability to defeat the insurgent challenge. As the royalist armies reoccupied the region, the towns split and rebel combatants fled into the hills with their families. These rebel households became the nuclei of new communities that formed in opposition to the royalist-controlled cabeceras. The pattern became so common that each royalist town seemed to be shadowed by a corresponding insurgent camp (cantón). In 1816, Colonel Carlos María Llórente described this curious geography of rebel communities. He had garrisons located in Tuxpan,Tamiahua,Temapache,Tihuatlan, Papantla, El Espinal, and Nautla, while in the rough terrain of the sierra his opponents had created a line of camps facing each of the royalist-controlled towns.53 Rebels established com munities in Tlacolula, Cimarrona, and Palo Blanco, near the towns of Temapache andTihuatlán. Likewise, they occupied the lands of the hacien das of San Diego and San Antonio and the hill of Coyusquihui, all close to Papantla, and surrounded El Espinal with insurgent camps at Mesa Grande, Palo Gordo, and Tenampulco (the latter now in the State of Puebla). The division between cabecera and hinterland during the war exacerbated one of the sources of tension that had existed within colonial pueblos. The political logic of the Indian repúblicas made the hamlets perennial foci of dissidence, particularly in regard to the distribution of tax and labor burdens. The sujeto communities and outlying settlements in the hinterlands of indigenous towns proved too dispersed for the military to garrison. Traditionally, the colonial state had placed few of its representatives in sujetos, relying instead on in digenous intermediaries to administer rural hinterlands. In the conditions of civil war, the rough terrain and, in the coastal region, the dense forests that surrounded these communities offered a ready-made refuge for the insur gents and added to the difficulties of the royalist army. Although close to Papantla as the crow flies, Coyusquihui was separated from the town by streams impassable in the rainy season and by dense forests and a hilly land scape that throughout the year made military operations almost impossible to coordinate.

Although royalist commanders used military terminology to describe these rebel settlements, calling them “cantones,” in reality they were much more than that. The rebels recreated their villages, bringing their families with them as they fled the loyalist occupation.54 Not only did peasants rebuild their huts, they also raised large community structures (galeras); and in Palo Blanco rebels even built their own church. Rebels near Coahuitlán, in the Sierra de Papantla region, built “a large house with the accouterments of a

A Nation of Villages / 74

church; although it lacked a saint’s image, it was well protected from ani mals, and the facade was decorated with flowers and a star and there were many burials.” 55 During insurgency, rebels created these militarized villages throughout much of Mexico. In the Huasteca there were rebel redoubts at Venasco, Siete Palmas, Cimarrones, and Xihuico, to name but a few. Unfor tunately, little information about how these communities governed them selves has survived. The royalist military reports, which emphasize the armed activities of rebel leaders, give some indication that the refugees re-created their own repúblicas de indios. For example, one captured Totonac, Salvador M endez, described him self as an official of the “república de indios rebeldes.” *’ As they had done before the insurgency, the rebels sustained themselves and their communities by growing and selling a wide variety of commercial crops, including sugarcane, tobacco, and vanilla. Llórente de scribed the agricultural base of the revolt in a letter to the viceroy: “In the rugged mountains, Excellent Sir, these perverse wild animals live in the most horrendous vice. In the remotest hills they build their grass huts, and grow their fields of corn, beans, rice, and other grains that this fertile land pro duces, [and which] easily provides their livelihood.”57 Rebels used the small port of Boquilla de Piedra to trade with the outside world, and commercial tics between rebels and nominally royalist estate owners provided the means by which insurgents were able to acquire goods that they could not produce locally. Insurgents thus fashioned a social and economic identity indepen dent of the traditional villages, which remained in the hands of royalist gar risons.

Villagers defined their political identities (insurgent or royalist) in terms of their relation to members of the local elite and the seats of colonial admin istration. At the center of rural insurgency were the questions of internal divisions within the pueblos as well as the subordination of the pueblos to the state. The war translated into a conflict for control of the pueblos and an attack on outside administrators who dominated local resources and com merce. As we have seen, late-colonial riots in northern Veracruz and the Huasteca displayed conflicts over pueblo elections often accompanied by complaints against administrative abuses. During the war itself, royalist mili tary commanders took control of town governments, which they used both to recruit companies of “patriot militia” and to collect taxes that would sus tain their military operations. Rebels sought to renegotiate the relation be tween the colonial repúblicas de indios and the representatives of the state. Although these rebels viewed the insurgent cause through the lens of the

The Law of Our Lady dc Guadalupe / 75

if

I

municipal “patria chica,” this docs not mean that they were without any sense of national identity. Nationalism had many meanings in 1821, mean ings that were rooted in the soil of localized village identities and the very local conflicts of the previous eleven years of war.5f*

The Loyalist Movement

So far I have concentrated on the composition of insurgent groups, but my comments would be incomplete without a discussion of who the royalists were and how the royalist forces evolved during the long years of bloodshed. The insurgents directed their rage at members of the local elite as much as at government officials. Insurgents raided the possessions of the Vidal family in Papantla, while in Tantoyuca, insurgents sacked two properties belonging to Carlos María Llórente.59 Landlords and merchants did not confront the in surrection with their arms crossed; rather, they formed the leadership of the counterrevolution, using the war to find new ways to assert their tradi tional power. These individuals had powerful incentives to carry the war to its ultimate extreme.

T he leadership of the forces loyal to the viceregal government evolved into an independent force in local politics. As Juan Ortiz Escamilla has dem onstrated, Viceroy Calleja adopted a dangerous strategy to confront what seemed to be an unstoppable wave of insurgency: he delegated authority to local notables who organized militia companies under their command/10The creation of numerous locally recruited militia units represented a massive change in Mexican society. In the eighteenth century militia units had ex isted along the coast, but as seen in the events in Papantla, they were not very effective, and participants resented any attempt to make militia service long term. During the years of insurgency, local society became militarized to an unusual degree. Militia soldiers and officers served for long periods, and for the first time local landowners and merchants saw military careers as promising, if not essential to their strategies for success. Furthermore, mili tary authorities began to supplant civil officials as the army began to assume control of fiscal resources to pay for the war. Conflicts emerged between local commanders and subdelegates which generally ended with the army taking the advantage.

In some cases the new military officers found a direct connection between their fortunes and their service. Probably the best example of this is the some time commander of the Papantla garrison, Juan Baptista Vidal, who used his

A Nation of Villages / 76

militia units to escort his goods rather than participate in military campaigns. Alvarez de Güitián, the active commander of Huejutla, also could not resist using the control of revenues that his post gave him to accumulate a fortune. A review of the books revealed at least thirty thousand pesos missing. Villag ers in Chontla accused Carlos María Llórente of using his military authority to seize communal lands. Thus, military careers offered prominent local fami lies opportunities to recoup their losses incurred during the insurrection. Naturally, this benefit only accrued to those fortunate enough to occupy posts as commanders.

When questions of economic interest arose, the drive for control by mili tary commanders undermined the pacification effort. A good example of this occurred in Tantoyuca in 1816 where a group of owners commissioned José Antonio Díaz de la Concha, a priest recently appointed administrator of the hacienda de las Flores, to negotiate a settlement with the local insurgents led by Félix Mesa. Many of Mesa’s men were former estate employees. Among the generous terms offered by the owners was freedom for the slaves and an increase in wages for laborers. Diaz de la Concha offered Félix Mesa the position of hacienda administrator/’1 Not only do the records of the negotia tions indicate that slaves were an important part of the local movement, the terms also indicate that local landlords had become desperate enough to make ample concessions to return their lands to production. T he owners recog nized that there was no going back to the old order. However, the peace plan did not prosper. According to Diaz de la Concha, the loyalist captain, Andrés Jáuregui, deliberately derailed peace negotiations by initiating an offensive while he was treating with Mesa. Jáuregui, he argued, feared losing his mili tary fiefdom if the rebels took an amnesty. One suspects that peace was not always in the best interest of local commanders.

Calleja’s strategy was very successful in mobilizing provincial elites against the insurrection, but it also armed and organized them into an effective po litical force that proved to be politically independent in 1821. The leaders of the “patriot militias” went on to play a central role in the creation of the independent state. The arrival of independence did not destroy their politi cal influence.

The Negotiated Settlement and the Constitution

The last years of insurgency provide some unusually good documentation that describes the transformation of political identities in Coyusquihui, the

The Law of Our Lady de Guadalupe / 77

refuge of a large contingent of indigenous rebels from Papantla.62 In this section, I explore how recalcitrant villagers reacted to the Spanish constitu tion promulgated in 1820. The jockeying for power between government and rebels reveals how rural insurgents perceived their struggle and how these perceptions had changed since 1810. Concomitantly, this power struggle provides insights into rebel aspirations and demonstrates the pivotal role that the constitution rcadopted in 1820 played in Olarte’s surrender. Finally, this struggle serves to demonstrate how the popular concepts of power had changed by the end of this ferocious insurrection.

The government of Viceroy Juan Ruiz dc Apodaca pursued an effective policy of negotiating with local insurgents and granting liberal terms of amnesty. This policy played a key role in pacifying the Sierra de Puebla, where in 1817 the local insurgent leader Jose Francisco Osorno negotiated an amnesty for himself and many of his principal officers. The relative suc cess of the royalist army under Apodaca was in large measure due to an am nesty policy that sanctioned the military and political authority of repentant guerrillas. The settlement negotiated in Coyusquihui followed this pattern. But with the changes that accompanied the promulgation of the Spanish Constitution in 1820, Olarte’s capitulation was much less than surrender.

On 9 May 1820 Colonel Carlos María Llórente wrote Viceroy Apodaca that pamphlets from Havana had arrived with news that the Spanish Consti tution had been readopted. Llórente revealed his antipathy to the change, remarking, “Your Excellency already knows the kind of venom that such publications contain.. . . [N]ews is already spreading to the interior.”63 Per haps Llórente sensed the challenge to his own authority that a return to the constitutional order entailed. Without a doubt the reestablished constitu tion posed merely one of the difficulties that the royalist military faced. In the summer of 1820, a new commander, Colonel José Rincón, led the local military in a successful but costly campaign against the insurgent redoubt in Coyusquihui. His plan consisted of ringing rebel territory with garrisoned forts and maintaining his troops in active campaigns throughout the rainy season.64 In spite of its military success, the royalist offensive began to crumble under the impact of disease and declining supplies of men and money. In September, Colonel Rincón abruptly resigned his post. When his replace ment, Colonel José Barradas, arrived, he found that the garrisons surround ing Coyusquihui were dangerously undermanned. Desperate for reinforce ments, on 7 October 1820 Barradas reported that one-third of his soldiers were ill and that he would soon have to abandon the forts surrounding

A Nation of Villages / 78

Coyusquihui. He concluded by stating his regret at sending such a bleak report.65

In this context of impending crisis, Barradas began negotiations with the Coyusquihui rebels. The negotiated settlement that resulted from the new commander’s initiative can help us understand how villagers perceived the political changes associated with the new constitutional system. When Barradas replaced Rincón in September 1820, his first action was aimed at winning the trust of the insurgents. He sent letters to the rebels informing them of Rincon’s departure and dispatched José Maria Aguilar, the parish priest of Tlapacoyan who once had spent several months in Coyusquihui as Olarte’s prisoner, to the insurgent camp to inform the rebels about the rcadoption of the constitution and to baptize rebel children. He also sent an offer of amnesty by way of a sergeant who had also been held captive in Coyusquihui. More than simply offering amnesty, however, Barradas wrote “of the transformation of the government . . . [and of the new] immortal Constitution that makes men free and independent. Now," he concluded, “you have what you have fought for and dreamed o f for so long. ” 66 Even so, Barradas’s envoy did not receive a positive reception. Upon his arrival, in surgent captain Pedro Ferral accused the sergeant “of seducing the people so that they would ask for amnesty.” Acting for Olarte, who was ill, Ferral took the emissary to a ranking rebel chief, who was presented with a copy of the constitution. “I explained at length,” reported the sergeant, “that the war must end, not in threats that would give cause and motive for a new outbreak of war . . . but with the Constitution.”67

The insurgents responded with caution, stating that they would consult with Olarte before making a decision. Nevertheless, Prudencio Ibáñez, one of the rebel officers, wrote that Rincon’s replacement with Colonel Barradas was a positive sign, because of the “ punishing policy” that the former army commander had pursued. He added that the change in officers had given the insurgents “hope to enjoy the peace that some of us desire, according to what the government of the Spanish monarchy’s Constitution has granted us.”f>fl One reason rebels such as Ibanez were happy to see Rincón go was precisely because his tactic of repeated campaigns and the permanent garrisoning of troops in forest fortresses was having a tremendous impact on rebel troops. Rincon’s scorched earth policy destroyed the provisioning system that had fed the insurgent cantones. Such conditions had created dissension. One captured rebel, Mariano González, testified through a translator that Olarte was determined to fight on even if “all the milpas are destroyed” and that he

T he Law of Our Lady de Guadalupe / 79

vowed to kill anyone he encountered who accepted the government amnesty.69 In November, Barradas again sent Father Aguilar to negotiate with the rebel camp and, as an act of good faith, he also released Francisco Ibáñez, the brother of Olarte’s lieutenant. Prudencio Ibáñez soon responded that he and several other gente de razón were willing to accept the amnesty but had held back “out of compassion for the Indians, whom they do not wish to leave.”70 Ibáñez reported that the exhausted rebels were waiting for a general meeting that Olartc planned to call. However, on 11 November Pedro Ferral and a group of non-Indians appeared in Nautla and accepted the terms of am nesty, while reporting that Olarte and about two hundred rebels were cross ing the Espinal River in order to continue the struggle alongside rebels in the nearby camp of Palo Gordo. Worried that he would not favorably con clude negotiations before Olarte discovered the weakness of his garrisons, Barradas made an attempt at psychological warfare. He released two amnestied insurgents, who were instructed to go to the rebel camps and spread the word that the royalists would soon attack Olarte.71

In December 1820 Olarte’s forces finally reached an accord with the roy alist officers when the rebel commander led 468 armed rebels, organized in seven military companies, to accept the amnesty. In a letter published in the Gaceta de Mexico, the official organ of the government in Mexico City, Olarte disavowed his previous actions and declared that he and his followers had been “engañados” (deceived).72 Olarte thus adopted the language of the Gaceta, where reports always described rebels as deluded or misled. Yet Olarte’s repentant declaration, created for the military as part of its propa ganda campaign, only temporarily obscured what his subsequent actions soon revealed: the evolution of a new political text that was articulated by the former rebels. This change from intransigence to negotiation was due to the diplomacy of Father José María Aguilar and the very generous terms of the amnesty. Aguilar and Barradas agreed that the rebels would be entitled to establish new pueblos in the regions they had occupied during the war. On 17 November the commander of Papantla recognized the new municipality of El Cepillo, founded by Pedro Ferral and his followers. This no doubt sent a clear and reassuring message to the rebels still under arms in Coyusquihui, who subsequently set up a new town council in their redoubt. T he fact that they were allowed to do so amounted to a de facto recognition of formerly autonomous rebel cantones as legitimate pueblos under ex-insurgent con trol, with political rights protected under the terms of the constitution. With the creation of these new municipal governments at the end of the war, power

A Nation of Villages / 80

shifted away from the principal towns that had traditionally administered large hinterlands. Unlike those who had participated in earlier colonial re bellions, the rebels of 1820 demanded constitutional guarantees that would ensure that the transformation (mutación) of the government would be per manent.

After Olarte’s surrender, the only remaining rebel band in the Papantla region was that of José Santiago Moreno, located in Palo Gordo. Barradas demanded that Moreno and his followers accept unconditional surrender, but Viceroy Ruiz de Apodaca ordered Barradas to commission Moreno as a lieutenant who would, along with his armed followers, be placed under Olarte’s immediate command. Moreno’s rebels surrendered “with the condition that they not put down their arms, which they would no longer use to pursue, invade, or fight, but [only] for their defense.” The local royalist commanders agreed that “in the name of the Nation . . . [the rebels be allowed] to keep their arms for personal defense.”73T he question of against whom, precisely, they needed to defend themselves, seems not to have been asked.

Ruiz de Apodaca’s policy of absorbing former rebels into the royalist army was a double-edged sword. It allowed for the rapid pacification of the coun tryside, but it also gave recognition to the new political actors who emerged from the long insurgency. T he treatment of Moreno and his followers indi cates that the peace accords allowed political autonomy with teeth. The rebels kept their arms, and their own insurgent officers commanded the new mili tias. For example, on 30 November 1820 several rebel leaders wrote Olarte that they accepted the constitution and that they “have kept their arms in hand to defend their rights.”74 This letter may well have influenced Olarte’s decision to surrender, since soon afterward he declared his loyalty to the constitution. Mexico City authorized Barradas to grant Olarte a commis sion as a cavalry captain.75 As further proof of government goodwill. Barradas sent ammunition to the newly commissioned “national” militia of El Cepillo under Ferral’s command. The new militias adopted the terminology that local insurgents had begun to use in 1813. But it was only after the promul gation of the constitution in 1820 that the government troops dropped the term realistas in favor of nacionales, implying that the militiamen were in the service of the nation rather than the king. A change had clearly occurred in how militiamen perceived their service.

In essence, Olarte had made his peace with the constitution before he accepted the government that ruled in its name. Olarte’s letter accepting amnesty, cited earlier, described his surrender as an act that embraced the

The Law of Our Lady de Guadalupe / 81

“party of the constitution,” not the government. Most immediately, the rebels implemented the terms of the new constitution when they established a town council for a new pueblo named Santiago Coyusquihui. The former rebels had a strong appreciation of the prerogatives won under the negotiated settle ment and the constitution. When Juan Vidal, the new commander of Papantla, arrested some of Olartc’s followers in April 1821, Olarte protested to the viceroy in terms that indicated his interpretation of the peace agreement. Olarte stated that Barradas had told him that his followers in Papantla would not be bothered for any reason, neither by the military chief Vidal, nor by anyone else. Captain Olarte believed that his people had the right to put their entire efforts into building their community wherever he and they found it most convenient. “This,” continued Olarte, “is what I have been offered on behalf of the Sovereign and the Nation.”76 Olarte thus interpreted the truce as recognition of local autonomy from colonial authorities. And he set out to create a new pueblo using the political rights granted to ayuntamien tos by the constitution. In claiming that both the sovereign and the nation had granted him these rights, he suggested that these rights originated from a source beyond the personal will of the monarch.

Evolution of Insurgent Ideology

Eric Van Young’s work has shown that the insurgents originally espoused a form of “naive monarchism,” believing that the insurgency was in defense of the king and that it was supported by Femando VII.77 This perspective also characterized revolt in the Huasteca region during 1811 and 1812, when it aimed to restore the royal protector. The villagers saw the monarch as a ruler who intervened in their favor and whose beneficent laws had been ma liciously frustrated by the gachupines.78 Though monarchism was the lan guage of power, it was not an idiom wielded exclusively by those in power. The myth of a beneficent king became a powerful mobilizing tool for rebels. This deeply rooted belief made it possible for the rebels to claim legitimacy as they defied authority.

Nor were the subaltern classes the only ones who professed a faith in the benevolent monarch who identified with their well-being. Creoles clung to dreams of naive kingship and Femando VII even after the triumph of the Plan de Iguala, a tendency that indicates that popular and elite conscious ness were not completely alien to each other. Anna shows that the Plan de Iguala succeeded because of the widely held hopes that a Bourbon would

A Nation of Villages / 82

accept a Mexican throne.79 It was this shared community of beliefs that made the insurgency so powerful. Trusting the king was a universal trait, not merely a plebeian one.

Even during the early stages of rebellion, popular beliefs about the mon archy played a role in creating a new nationalist idiom. For example, an in surgent letter sent to Huejutla on 16 January 1811 invited the local militia to revolt “under the banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe and King Fernando VII in favor of America, faith, and religion, but against the gachupines.”80 Cap tured rebels declared that they followed “the law of O ur Lady of Gua dalupe.”81 In Zacualtipán the Indian governor wrote to the insurgents asking for protection, explaining that “the gachupines protect the gente de razón but we have no other protection but Our Lady of Guadalupe.”82 In the world of indigenous villagers, the absence of the monarch created a profound crisis of state legitimacy because without the king there was no check on the power of the subdelegate and other gachupín officials. Insurgency became one way of protecting the community against the subdelegate and his local merchant allies. At the local level, anti-gachupin sentiment had a very concrete mean ing. In claiming to speak for the king, rebels implied that the monarch was the source of their political legitimacy. But at the same time, insurgents modified their royalism with an “American” identity. Even in the earliest stages of the revolt, they identified the enemy as the colonial state and the Spaniards, suggesting a new alternative order in the “American” party.

One remarkable aspect of the rebellion is that although the violence had its roots in the local conflicts of village politics, insurgents used a protonational language. As Alan Knight has pointed out, by 1810 key elements of “cultural nationalism” had already filtered into popular consciousness.83 Anti-gachupin sentiment and identification with the Virgin of Guadalupe were evident in local indigenous rhetoric. Village rebels immediately identified the royalist government as the protector of the Spaniards. In essence, for them the vaunted paternalism of the colonial regime fell far short of popular expectations.

Anti-Spanish sentiment and royal paternalism may have dominated the early declarations of village rebels, but their political outlook did not remain static. Insurgent officials constantly sought to bolster the morale of their followers with propaganda that took the changing political scene into ac count. Debates surrounding the Spanish Constitution and the insurgent charter of Apatzingán filtered into the rebel camps, especially during the period of rebel administration under José Antonio Lozano. Although Lozano held the impressive title of commander general, he was aware that his sur-

The Law of Our Lady de Guadalupe / 83

vival depended on the goodwill of the villagers. Insurgent villages could, and often did, refuse Lozano’s attempts to command village militias or tax their com m unity m em bers.114 Lacking the powers o f royalist officers and subdelegates, Lozano adopted a language of persuasion to get what he needed, circulating letters to the indigenous town governments in favor of the insur gency. Reminding the villages of the services that he and the insurgents had rendered the community, Lozano stressed the defense of the patria in very local terms, equating it with the defense of the pueblos. Lozano played on the very real fears of royalist revenge, warning of the consequences of a roy alist restoration. “Since my arrival in this command,” he said to local rebels in 1813, “I have not followed any other course but to defend the places where you live and to avoid the ruin that would befall you if the enemy returned to dominate you. [If that were to happen] incalculable evils would result.”'15

The insurgents attempted to create a new political order in the rebel towns. In 1813 they held elections in Papantla and the surrounding towns to choose electors for the provincial delegation to the insurgent congress in Chilpan- cingo.w’ The local rebel leaders, although threatened by a royalist counter offensive, paused to carry out the elections.87 Apart from the traditional voting for officials in the repúblicas de indios, these were the first national elections many pueblos participated in, and they indicate a new political practice in rural Mexico.

The political structure that Lozano sought to create collapsed in Septem ber 1813, when the royalist army reoccupied Papantla and rebel resistance was increasingly reduced to the activities of a loose confederation of insur gent villages and camps. Even then, however, continued tics to the colonywide insurgency meant that “peasant localism” did not simply dominate the in surgent struggle. For example, the Supremo Congreso Nacional Americano maintained a presence in the region through the person of Jose Joaquin Aguilar, the intendant ofVeracruz, who established his headquarters in the Papantla region in 1814. Besides his military activities, Aguilar dedicated considerable energy to antigovemment propaganda. Between 1813 and 1816, he wrote and circulated tracts that ridiculed the practices of the old regime. Aguilar engaged in give-and-take with the royalist Gaceta de México. He wrote circulars denouncing the Gaceta's war propaganda; debunking royalist claims of military victories and defending the demands of “the Americans,” Aguilar’s pronouncements challenged the legitimacy of the colonial state by referring to Viceroy Félix Calleja as “the Tyrant called Viceroy of the kingdom,” who taxed and conscripted villagers. He ridiculed the inability of the royalists to

A Nation of Villages / 84

defeat insurgent guerrillas and contrasted the “courage, enthusiasm, strength, and resourcefulness of the Americans” with the royalist “wave of slaves” that tried to subdue them.88 Aguilar’s public letters indicate the existence of political debate within rural Mexico, a struggle for the minds of villagers.

The extent to which Aguilar’s letters were “consumed” by the public is hard to gauge. Lacking printing presses, local insurgents could not publish the letters. Instead they circulated through the loose chains of command within the insurgent camp.89 Aguilar used the language of the widely circu lated Gaceta de México to mock the regime in Mexico City. He adopted the rhetoric of the Gaceta to describe “American” victories and to point out the discrepancy between government reports and the ongoing war. Significantly, royalist propaganda relied on the same ideas as those of the insurgents: patria, religion, and even monarchy. The idea of the noble defense of patria runs throughout royalist discourse.90Insurgents merely added that defense of the patria meant fighting gachupines. The popular discourse absorbed elements of elite thought but turned it to revolutionary purposes. The political changes that took place in Spain before the return of Fernando VII also allowed an easier diffusion of the new political identity of citizen in the colonies.91

The influence of Lozano and Aguilar is apparent in the proclamations of Mariano Olarte, written in the rustic Spanish of a village-educated insur gent. In his proclamations, Olarte adopted the terminology and mimicked the mocking tone of Aguilar’s dispatches. Even before 1820, Olarte’s dis course recognized villagers’ rights as citizens and supported their demands for increased local autonomy. In an 1819 document, for example, he referred to the lives of villagers under the viceroyalty as similar to those of “beasts of burden” and “slaves.”92 He lauded the “nationals” (i.e., insurgents) because they offered villagers control of local politics in opposition to the towns, which were then under royalist military command. Olarte’s words indicate that political autonomy was high on the list of rebel objectives: “We must no longer allow ourselves to be ruled by Viceroys, judges, and subserv ient min isters of the tyranny that has sucked the blood from our hearts; rather we must govern ourselves so that we may see the subjects as brothers, not as mules or animals, which up to now is how the previous government has viewed us. Yes, my brothers, those who have offered you amnesty are the same ones who would shackle you with the chains of slavery.”93 In his declaration Olarte introduced the image of the beast of burden, a metaphor that worked on different levels. From the perspective of indigenous villagers, Olarte’s com ments reminded his readers (and listeners) that colonial officials and royalist

The Law of Our Lady dc Guadalupe / 85

military commanders continually imposed forced labor. His condemnation of how Indians were treated as beasts of burden struck a responsive chord among Indians who had been forced to give personal service to officers and functionaries. Here the political demand for autonomy had clear economic overtones for the Totonacs holding out with him in the hills. On a more general level, Olarte was challenging the caste system and the unequal dis tribution of burdens and privileges that permeated the entire colonial order. The idea of brotherhood served as Olarte’s term for citizen and evoked a claim of egalitarianism within the insurgent movement.

Olarte’s denunciation of slavery indicates that peasants perceived their new political rights in terms of local systems of labor and exploitative taxation. A new, aggressive definition of citizenship also appeared in the “pacified” communities. After 1820 the constitutional regime provided the pueblos with new means by which to oppose the actions of petty officials and military commanders. In 1821 the subdelegate of Yahualica, José Gómez Escalante, wrote an alarmed letter stating that the local Indians had become excessively proud of their rights. “The vain Indians,” he said, “have with gusto begun to call themselves citizens.” The immediate cause of Gomez’s protest was the Indians’ refusal to provide the labor services that subdclegates had tradition ally enjoyed.94 In spite of the new liberal order, local officials sought to retain the colonial labor draft. Administrators like Gómez Escalante relied on such coercive labor arrangements to prosper.95 It also points to the emergence of local politicos who quickly informed the Indians of their rights.

T he declaration of Olarte also indicates how far the rhetoric of Spanish constitutionalism had penetrated the ranks o f rural insurgents. Jaime Rodriguez has demonstrated that the Cortes de Cádiz undermined the posi tion of the royalist government. Indeed, Olarte’s declaration seems to mimic the language of the Cortes that was published in the Gaceta de México: “From this moment, American Spaniards, you see yourselves elevated to the dignity of free men . . . your destinies no longer depend on Ministers, Viceroys, nor Governors; they are in your hands.”96 After Fernando VII revoked the Con stitution of 1812, insurgents found it even easier to wrap themselves in the cloak of constitutionalism.

Insurgents who accepted government amnesties after the readoption of the constitution in 1820 demonstrated considerable independence of thought when interpreting the specifics of the new legal order. But even before De cember 1820 they had obviously discussed the meaning of the constitution with envoys who had been sent to rebel camps. Thus, when Olarte accepted

A Nation of Villages / 86

the amnesty, it became clear that his view of constitutional rights differed from that of local royalist commanders. Only two weeks after Olarte’s sur render, these differences gave Barradas cause for second thoughts about the peace process. He complained that “seditious letters opposed to the healthy morality of religion and society” were passing among the pacified insurgent commanders.97 Barradas’s experience was not unique; other royalist military commanders reported renewed agitation throughout New Spain. But for Barradas, the priests negotiating the peace were to blame for the subversive tone of the letters. And indeed, some local priests were extremely sympa thetic to the insurgents’ interpretation of the new constitutional order. For example, in a letter to José Moreno, Francisco Parroga, the parish priest of Huehuetla, interpreted the constitution promulgated in 1820 asa product of the constitution that Morelos and his followers had adopted in Apatzingán:

I have written you three letters that have gone without response in which I inform you of the joy that came to our America when the Americans promulgated the worthy constitution [of Apatzingán] in the year of [i]8i4. When the government refused to accept this in order to keep us forever as its slaves, all Americans took up arms until they saw that what they de manded had been carried out. The happy day has arrived in which we Americans can have a respite from so much misery, from the hunger and lack of clothing we have suffered, we have emerged to see the establishment of the Constitution to which we American priests have sworn loyalty.98

In the same letter, Parroga invited the “national troops” to swear loyalty to the newly promulgated constitution, because if the “old bayonets . . . chal lenge our liberty, together we are the national troops who are ready to re sist.” Addressing those who had accepted amnesty, he added that “all the pueblos will declare that you are not pardoned (indultados) but rather free citizens, loyal to your homeland, who did not put down your arms until you saw the Constitution of which we have dreamed established.”99

Barradas was correct to worry about the nature of the rebel correspon dence. Essentially, the rebels were claiming the right to rebel if they felt that the army violated the constitution. In January 1821 Barradas reported that seditious proclamations were circulating in the newly pacified region. A group calling themselves “ padres de la patria” issued a document that called for independence on the grounds that the Spaniards dominated the courts and the king was too far away to understand American needs. The letter carried a municipal seal and apparently originated in Jalapa.100

The Law of Our Lady de Guadalupe / 87

Religious imagery, monarchism, and resentment of Spaniards do not pro vide much evidence of a modern concept of the nation, but insurgent con cepts evolved over the decade-long war. The war made Indian principales and pardo militiamen commanders of the nation. These individuals were subjected to the propaganda efforts of both the royalists and insurgent intel lectuals like Aguilar. Individuals like Mariano Olarte could no longer rely on their traditional status as members of principal families; he now spoke as a colonel in the “national” army. Popular ideology changed as the insurgency forced it to integrate new attitudes toward authority.

Pueblo and Nation

% The Mexican War of Independence was undoubtedly a regional affair, rooted, as Brian Hamnett points out, in the social tensions of local societies.101 As we have seen, even within a given locale the insurgency was a loose confedera tion of rebel camps, each with its own leader who jealously guarded his au tonomy of action. The violence of independence heightened the already provincial orientation o f the colonial economy. No overarching economic identity existed that would provide the impetus for a national state, and even the colonial army became balkanized as the war progressed.102 If the factors that historians have often designated as having promoted national unification were absent, what did the nation mean in 1821?

Mexico’s new, independent reality was bom out of the decentralization of power that occurred during the war. Revealing a central tenet of the insur gency, Father Parroga’s letters quoted above used the term “pueblos” (towns) interchangeably with “pueblo” (the people), as if the “national” audience was a plurality of pueblos. Insurgents seemed to have imagined the nation as a confederation of regions, a pluralist reality, just as they had organized the insurgency itself. Indeed, the federal constitution adopted in 1824 was one attempt to accommodate the new political realities produced by the war. The new Constitution of 1824 conceived of the nation as a union of sovereign provinces— in other words, as a collection of patrias.103

While many theorists of national identities assume that nationalism was exceptionally thin in early-nineteenth-century Latin America, involving only a fraction of the Creole population, the events surrounding Coyusquihui suggest that alternative nationalisms developed on the peripheries of New Spain.104 The negotiated settlement and the letters to and from local insurgents supposed that sovereignty resided in an authority other than the monarch.

A Nation of Villages / 88

According to their interpretation of the constitution readopted in 1820, the nation was composed of strong and autonomous municipalities, capable of defying the power of the “old bayonets.” Indeed, the barrier between elite and popular discourse was more porous than it now appears, and villagers participated in the ideological creation of the nation along with the Creole elite. The spread of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe into New Spain’s hinterland is a case in point. The local patron saint of Mexico City became a national symbol as Creole priests, trained in the Basilica of Guadalupe, pro moted the cult in their Indian parishes. At the same time, muleteers spread the practice of the cult along commercial routes.105 By 1810 the cult provided a supravillage identity, enabling the insurgents to transcend the local patron saints of individual villages. Benedict Anderson assigns a central role to the Creole elite’s “bureaucratic career” pilgrimages in the creation of national identities. William Taylor’s work resonates with Anderson’s idea of pilgrim age and goes one step further by suggesting how Creole priests (and mule teers) could promote a national cult of the Virgin in their remote parishes. Thus, the Guadalupe symbol was far from traditional; it represented the genesis of new practices in the villages. The fact that by 1810 indigenous insurgents adopted the language of a national Virgin saint to justify their actions indicates that they found no contradiction between the new nation and their local patron saints.

Indian villagers were often less provincial than observers have supposed. In their commercial transactions and efforts to pursue litigation in the cen tral courts, Totonacs from the coast made frequent trips through the Sierra de Puebla, an activity that gave them the elements to create a vision of na tional space. Mexican insurgents adopted a nationalist discourse before the emergence of national markets or a united national elite, a process that con firms the emerging consensus among scholars that nations are not a natural phenomenon but are ideologically constructed. Insurgents sought to create a nation out of the localist impulses of the rebellion and the overarching elements inherited from colonial society. The insurgents “imagined” a na tion from below without the regions being subordinated to the national cen ter. Although this regional vision of the state did not triumph, this does not mean that it was not crucial in the formation of the nation during the nine teenth century.106

The Law of Our Lady de Guadalupe / 89

The End of Colonial Rule

The army created to suppress the insurgency had grown to prodigious size, but as we have seen by 1820 the royalist army was in trouble, not just in the lowlands ofVeracruz but throughout the colony.107 Carlos M. Llórente, as we have seen above, was not in the least bit happy about the reintroduction of the Constitution of Cádiz, even believing that the first reports he received of the political change were malicious rumors. His response to the rebellion of Agustín Iturbide was likewise negative.

This truce did not produce a lasting peace. The “consummation of inde pendence” followed only a few months later. The proclamation of the Plan de Iguala took place on 24 February 1821. This movement was based on an alliance between the loyalist military commander, Agustín Iturbide, and in surgents in southern Mexico led by Vicente Guerrero. The alliance proclaimed a series of agreements calling for “unity, independence, and religion.” Es sentially, Iturbide’s plan included a promise to uphold the Spanish Consti tution, the position of the church, and independence.

Iturbide’s movement slowly spread through New Spain’s military, while at the same time it began to attract insurgents. Amnestied insurgents, such as Bravo and Mier y Terán, as well as insurgents who had continued the struggle, like Guadalupe Victoria, joined the movement.108 On the local level, Llórente got news of the rebellion in early March 1821, and like many loyal ists, pledged his support to the government in Mexico City. Llórente prom ised that his troops would fight any disruption of public order.100 In spite of Iturbide and the military’s participation, local officials feared the rebel forces. In Huejutla, José Cayetano Lubián wrote that “all those who rise up arc barbarians without any system, or humanitarian ideas, everything comes down to killing and stealing as we have witnessed in our sad experience.”noRegard less of the leadership, locals still feared the social consequences of rebellion.

The main challenge to the precarious peace that had just been achieved in the region did not come from the regular troops but from the pueblos. Llórente especially doubted the loyalty of the towns with insurgent histories such as Nautla and Papantla.m On 30 March the town of Misantla rebelled in favor of Iturbide. T he constitutional town council led the revolt, and the town’s military commander fled to Jalapa. Llórente wrote that he did not know if he fled or left on orders “either because he believed his troops were insufficient to contain the disorders. . . or because he had received orders [to retreat].” 1 l2Llorente ordered the commander of Nautla, Salvador Garcia del

A Nation of Villages / go

Corral, to march immediately on Misantla. As Garcia approached, the popu lation and the municipal officers fled to the hills, as in 1815 and 1817, when loyalist forces had first attempted to occupy the insurgent town. Llórente noted that many of the rebels were members of the militia companies he had reestablished when the town was reconquered for the loyalist cause in i8 i7 .m Garcia calmed the revolt “ with gentle and political measures.” He appointed Miguel Méndez, a leading amnestied insurgent, as military commander of the town because “he was well known to the pueblo.” He also issued a proc lamation granting total amnesty and coaxed the municipal government back to the town after four days.114

Garcia was able to reestablish peace in the town but it proved to be tempo rary. When he returned to Nautla, the peace he established in Misantla was immediately undermined when the nearby town of Naolinco revolted and the military commander of the town defected on 24 April. Llórente reported that Misantla and Boquilla de Piedra would soon follow “because of the opin ion that the inhabitants hold in favor of the plans of this cabecilla [Iturbide].” 115 Unlike his response to the revolt of Misantla the previous month, Llórente did not dispatch any troops to put down the revolt. This was due to the increasingly precarious situation in which he found himself. Even in March he had informed his superiors that desertions were increasing. By May he doubted the loyalty of his own garrisons. His troops were without money, and Llórente began to fear a conspiracy within their ranks.1,6

On 2 May Llórente reported that Zacapoaxtla, followed by Teziutlán, had revolted and arrested Colonel Juan Arteaga. Llórente sent more men to hold Papantla and Nautla, but pessimistically gave them orders to retreat if neces sary.117 Llórente ordered the arrest of several long-standing loyalist officers on charges of conspiring in favor of Iturbide. The officers were Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Barrena, Captain Pedro Blasco, Lieutenant Juan D. Cordero, and Sublieutenant Juan Vega, all from theTuxpan garrison. These officers conspired with members of the municipal government to surprise Llórente and take the port for the independence movement. The plan was discovered, and the participants fled the town or were arrested.118Then the amnestied rebels of Coyusquihui took up arms again and began to turn the tables on Colonel Llorente’s weakened troops.1 i9 Olarte again led his follow ers in an attack on Papantla, and this time he succeeded in taking it. In Au gust Olarte’s forces occupied Tecolutla; and in October Olarte led a contin gent o f troops in the siege of Veracruz.120 Llorente’s soldiers rebelled in Chontla, and the commander was forced to flee to Tantoyuca. Tuxpan now

The Law of Our Lady de Guadalupe / 91

successfully revolted in favor of Iturbidc with the help of the militia offic ers.121 One of the first acts of the independent municipal government was to ask that the town’s militia battalion be disbanded. At the same time, the com mander who had replaced Alvarez de Güitián in Huejutla joined the Itur- bidistas as well. On 29 August 1821, finally bowing to the inevitable, Llórente swore loyalty to the independentista cause inTuxpan.122The negotiated truce ended only four months after it began. Finally, at the end of May or early June, Llórente himself and the town council of Tuxpan declared in favor of the plan of Iturbide.

Conclusions

Observers of rural Mexico agree that indigenous villages were fraught with internal divisions. Studies of Totonac communities in the Sierra de Puebla describe territorial animosities occasionally overlain with ethnic divisions as well as other social tensions.123T he insurgency added new forms of political protest to this inflammatory mix of social and political tensions. Indepen dence offered villagers new opportunities to renegotiate power in Mexico’s hinterlands.

The insurgency shared with the more modest riots of the late eighteenth century common roots in the politics of rural villages. As in the colonial period, there were factional splits within and between villages, fueling social conflict. The insurgents challenged the ways in which rural communities functioned, both internally and in their relations with “outsiders.” The con stitution readopted in 1820 accommodated some of the changes in popular politics that villagers had developed during the long period of guerrilla war fare.

The insurgents’ attitude toward this constitution indicates that the inde pendence movement had created a critical shift in ideas concerning govern ment and political identities. Earlier colonial revolts were brief protest move ments designed to redress specific abuses of local officials. But by the end of the War of Independence, rather than frame their nonconformity in terms of dissatisfaction with particular officials, villagers asserted their rights to control local officials. This was a slow process, assisted by the lack of clear legal authority during the Spanish king’s absence. While the rebels’ early grievances recalled the “naive monarchism” of colonial riots, by 1820 Olarte had come to question the foundation of Spanish rule. He described it as “three hundred years ofTyranny,” language borrowed from Spanish declarations about

A Nation of Villages / 92

the Constitution of Cadiz rcadopted in 1820 that came to form part of the liberal heritage of nineteenth-century Mexico.124 More than just the issue of monarchy, Olarte repudiated the traditional status of Indians as subordinate subjects in the colonial system. Villagers in northern Veracruz began to de scribe themselves as citizens rather than as subjects; and a language that stressed national service rather than royal service became the norm. The activity of Olarte and the negotiated settlement that brought a truce to the region indicate that Indians had developed a set of political objectives dur ing the war, and they did not cease fighting until they had achieved some of their aims.

The ten years of war created a profound disruption in the old order, thwart ing efforts to return to the past. The war had so widely diffused political and even military power that when the Plan de Iguala offered greater autonomy to the provinces, the viceregal government quickly collapsed.125T he actions of the villagers at the end of the war presage some of the conflicts of the new nation. At the center of the negotiated settlement with the Coyusquihui war riors was a promise of autonomy by way of the constitutional town council. Such a promise left unresolved the issue of how the municipality would re late to the nation and how the town council would encompass the former functions of the república de indios. The constitution readopted in 1820, along with subsequent events, left unanswered the questions of who would rule in the hinterland and what the relation between a national state and the patria chica would be.

The Law of Our Lady de Guadalupe / 93

130. Petition of Tomás de la Cruz, gobernador de Huautla, AGN-T, vol. 2832, cxp. 5, fol. 41. The governor complained of the influence of Nanahuaco and charged that the then sub- delegate Rodriguez, the ally of the dissidents, made it impossible to receive justice (“no hace justicia”).

131. Escobar, “La población,” 290, notes that non-Indian populations had become inte grated into most Huasteca communities.

132. Antonio José Vélez to Virrey José de Iturrigaray, 15 February 1808, AGN-C, vol. 280, cxp. 11, fols. 415-19.

133. The sujetos of Zacualpan andTistaca led the rebellion (AGN-C, vol. 314, exp. 5, fol. 217).

134. Patch, M a y a R e v o lt a n d R ev o lu tio n , 210-11, has recently pointed out that the Bourbons broke the compact between the Crown and its Indian subjects and maintains that the disorders in the Yucatán constituted more than a rebellion.

Chapter 3

1. John Tutino’s synthesis of the Bajío region in the years leading up to the war is one of the finest examples of this scholarship; F ro m In su rre ctio n to R e v o lu tio n , 61-100. See also Eric Van Young, “Moving toward Revolt: Agrarian Origins of the Hidalgo Rebellion in the Guadalajara Region,” in Katz, R io t, R ebellion, a n d R e v o lu tio n ; Van Young, “Los ricos sc vuelven más ricos y los pobres más pobres: salarios reales y estándares populares de vida a fines de la colonia en México,” in L a crisis d e l orden co lo n ia l: E stru c tu ra a g ra ria y rebeliones populares de la N u e v a E spaña, 1 7 5 0 -1 8 2 1 , trad. Adriana Sandoval (Mexico City: Alianza Editorial, 1992); and Enrique Florescano, Precios d e l t n a i z y crisis agrícolas en M é xico , 1 7 0 8 -1 8 1 o, rev. cd. (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1986), 89-91,100-2.

2. Ranajit Guha, “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency,” in S e le c te d S u b a lte r n S tu d ie s 4, cd. Ranajit Guha and Gayarti Chakravorty Spivak (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 47.

3. Jaime E. Rodriguez O., “From Royal Subject to Republican Citizen: The Role of the Autonomists in the Independence of Mexico,” in T h e Independence o f M e x ic o a n d th e Cre a tio n o f th e N e w N a tio n , cd. Jaime E. Rodriguez O. (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1989), 20. Jaime E. Rodriguez O.’s recent, L a independencia de la A m e rica española (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico and Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996), dem onstrates that he has modified his view of this division between elite and popular ideology. See, for example, his discussion on Enlightenment ideas and the popular classes, 16,61. Brian R. Hamnett, “Mexico’s Royalist Coalition: The Response of Revolution, 1808-1821,” J o u r n a l o f L a t i n A m e ric a n S tu d ie s 12 (1981), also provides a fine survey of elite reactions to the insurgency.

4. Guardino, P easants, Politics, 45, 49-69. 5. Virginia Guedca, L a insurgencia en e l D e p a rta m e n to d e l N o rte . L o s L la n o s de A p a n y la

S ie r r a d e P ueb la , 1 8 1 0 1 8 1 6 (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto Dr. José María Luis Mora, 1996), 133-37, 171. and E n busca de u n gobierno, 74-113, 256-61.

6. Rodríguez, L a independencia de la A m é ric a española, 123-26. 7. Eric Van Young, T h e O th e r R eb ellio n : P o p u la r Violence, Id e o lo g y a n d th e M e x ic a n S tru g g le

f o r Independence, 1 8 1 0 -1 8 2 1 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2oot), 471-75, 483-84, 517.

8. Scott, D o m in a tio n a n d Resistance, 18,49, 54, 134-35. Scott’s discussion of the subver sive potential of the “good czar” myth is particularly useful (96-103).

9. For examples, sec “Proclamation of Coronel Felipe Lobato”; 26 August 1813, AGN- OG, vol. 4, fol. 193. In the same document. Lobato referred to the royalists as “the emissaries of Napoleon”; see also Antonio Lozano to Col. Francisco Antonio Pcrcdo, 26 August 1813, AGN-OG, vol. 84, exp. 2, fol. 27. Guardino has noted how the insurgency used the French threat as a mobilizing tool and how it had its origins in royalist rhetoric dating from the 1790s. Gucdca has demonstrated that the insurgency made a serious effort to introduce a constitu tional basis to rebel rule in the Sierra dc Puebla; sec her Insurgencia, 51-53, 67, 72-73, and 78-79.

10. Rodríguez, In d ep en d en cia de la A m e ric a española, 237-38, 243-44, demonstrates that the political traditions of municipal rights were turned to new uses in ¡820. The rise of con stitutional rule was also at the root of the royalist military crisis at the end of the war; sec Christon I. Archer, “Where Did All the Royalists Go? New Light on the Military Collapse of New Spain, 1810-1822,” in T h e A U x ic a n a n d M e x ic a n -A m e r ic a n E xp e rien c e in th e N in e te e n th C e n tu ry , cd. Jaime E. Rodriguez o. (Tempe: Bilingual Press, 1989), 37-38.

11. See Hernández Chávcz, L a tra d ició n republicana, 26-27. She describes the rapid cre ation of town councils in 1820 and notes some of the tensions existing within traditional repúblicas de indios (39-42).

12. AGN-OG, Vol. 20, exp. 1, fol. sin número. 13. Materials from the late-colonial period offer descriptions of the sierra trade; sec, for

example, AGN-C, vol. 304, exp. 2, fol. 112. John Leiby, cd., R e p o rt to th e K in g : C o lo n el J u a n C a m a r g o y C a v a lle ro 's H isto ric a l A c c o u n t o f N e w S p a in , 1 815 (New York: P. Lang, 1984), 65.

14. Ample evidence of correspondence between the leaders of the insurrection in the Si erra dc Puebla, Ignacio Rayón and José Francisco Osorno, and the insurgents of Papantla may be found in AGN-INF, vol. 84, exp. 2, fols. 1-43; and Virginia Guedea, cd., P ro n tu a rio de los insurgentes (México City: Centro dc Estudios sobre la Universidad; Instituto Mora, 1995), 140,171-72» 299,306, 343.

15. Mcadc, L a H u a ste c a hidalguense, 170. Contagion was a universal metaphor for describ ing the spread of peasant discontent; sec Guha, E le m e n ta r y A sp ects, 220,222, 225. The conta gion description, Guha notes, also helps officials dismiss rebellion as irrational.

16. “Autos contra Nasario Manzano,” 10 December 1810, AGN-C, vol. 250, exp. 8, fols. 338,347V. See Eric Van Young, “Agustín Marroquin: The Sociopath as Rebel,” in T h e H u m a n T r a d itio n in L a t i n A m e ric a , T h e N in e te e n th C e n tu r y , cd. Judith Ewell and William Bcczlcy (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Inc, 1989), 17-38.

17. Testimony of Diego Santander, 13 April 1811, AGN-C, vol. 250, exp. 8, fol. 247V. Manuel Zcnarro to Virrey, 29 September 1811, Chicontcpcc, AGN-OG, vol. 663, fol. sin número, reported that someone had stolen the mail and wrote, “it makes me suspect there is a hidden fire.”

18. Testimony of Romulado dc Rabago, 5 August 1811, Chicontcpcc, AGN-INF, vol. 17, exp. io, fol. 265. Rabago complained that even the “vecinos” harassed him, knocking on his door and windows in the middle of the night. By all accounts, Rabago was not a popular man.

Notes to Pages 61-64 / *93

19- Guha, E le m e n ta r y A spects, 225. 20. The subdelégate Fernando de la Vega described the rebellion as “the contagious venom

of insurrection” (Auto contra Narciso Manzano, 17 April i8t 1, fol. 345; on his later release, see fol. 368). The subdelégate was also suspicious of Manzano because of his mobility; he had been in Valles where the insurrection had arrived and was on his way to find employment on the hacienda of Ignacio Pérez in Altamira. See also Taylor, D r in k in g , 120, on riot “epidemics” in the colonial period.

21. Report of Fernando de la Vega, subdelégate of Hucjutla and Yahualica, 26 February i8ti,A G N -H , vol. 104, exp. 6, fol. 12.

22. Information for the following paragraphs come from the judicial proceedings carried out against the insurgent república and their non-Indian allies. This material is located in AGN-INF, vol. 17, exp. 7,8 ,9 and 10. Gonzalez got wind of the correspondence when simi lar letters sent to the Indian governor of Huayacocotla were intercepted. See also Isaac Velazquez Morales, “La rebelión de 1811 en Chicon tepee, Veracruz,” in M e m o n a sobre e l p rim e r congreso sobre la independencia, 1 8 1 0 -1 8 2 1 , cd. Abel Juárez Martínez (Jalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 1986), 139-45.

23. Alejandro Alvarez de Güitián, Huehuctla, 13 March 1812, AGN- INF, vol. 14, cxp. 6, fol. 190. On 9 January 1811 Rafael Garcia, a government soldier escorting the subdelégate, turned him over to the insurgents, an action that earned him a commission as captain in the insurgent army. When Ignacio Muñoz, the subdelégate of Mctztitlán, fled his post, he justi fied it in part out of fear of the same fate (I. Munoz, 6 March 1811, AGN-H, vol. 104, cxp. 34, vol. 147).

24. Van Young, T h e O th e r R ebellion, 351-57. 25. AGN-INF, vol. 17, cxp. 7, 143-143V; Ibid., 155-58%’. Likewise to the north in Valles,

the parish priest Pedro Villaverdc was able to calm an insurrection in March 1811, “after a half hour of exhortations” (Genaro García, cd., D o cu m en to s p a ra la h istoria d e M é x ic o , vol. 9, E id e r o de /M éxico y la independencia, docum entos d el arzobispado de M é x ic o [Mexico City: Librería de la Viuda de Ch. Bourct, 1906], 103 4).

26. Antonio Escobar Ohmstede, “La insurgencia Huasteca: Origen y desarrollo,” in Tres le v a n ta m ie n to s p o p u la res: Pugachov, T u p a c A m a r u , H id a lg o , cd. Jean Meyer (Mexico City: Centre D ’Etudcs Mexicaines et Ccntramcricaines and Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1992), 143- 44-

27. AGN,-INF, vol. 17, cxp. 8, fol. 187. Guha, E le m e n ta r y A spects, 54, notes how the act of writing is a process of claiming power. Here, written orders invoking both the Virgin and the captive king were ploys to claim legitimacy.

28. Meade, L a H u a ste c a v e ra c ru z a n a , 2:4; AGN-INF, vol. 17, exp. 10, fol. 253. 29. AGN-INF, vol. 17, Exp. i t , fols. 306-306V. 30. Escobar Ohmstede, “Insurgencia Huasteca,” 145. 31. Lt. Antonio Román de Odias Hucjutla, AGN-OG, vol. 64, fols. 69-70, describes the

insurgent takeover of Chicontcpcc. José Antonio Sevilla de Olmedo of Huayacocotla circu lated a rebel proclamation 9 May 1812, AGN-INF, vol. 18 cxp. 22, fols. 26-40.

32. AGN-OG, vol. 830, fol. sin número. 33. AGN-OG, vol. 527, fol. 32. In Hucjutla an attempted revolt by a militia captain, Manuel

Carranza, and several followers was also aborted in 1812; see AGN-1G, vol. 149, fol. sin número.

N o t e s t o P a g e s 6 5 - 7 0 / 1 9 4

34- AGN-OG, vol. 21, exp. 19, fol. 183. De la Vega wrote that the Indians lacked the “noble reflections that animate us to willingly sacrifice ourselves as an offering to our just cause.” Militarizing the Indians would bring them “to the precipice of committing the crime of infidelity” (184). The attempt to disband the com pañías d e p a trio ta s realistas was cut short by Joaquin Arrendondo, commander of Nuevo Santander and the Huasteca. Arrendondo stated, “if the Indians of that province [Hucjutla] have not revolted it is not from loyalty but from fear that the king’s arms imposed and the lack of cabecillas.” AGN-OG, Vol. 20, exp. 5, fol. 23, 27 April 1811.

35. Llórente to Viceroy Ruiz dc Apodaca, 16 April 1819, AGN-OG, vol. 124, fol. 49. 36. AGN-IG, vol. 149, fol. sin número. 37. Hugh M. Hamill Jr., “Royalist Propaganda and ‘La Porción Humilde del Pueblo’ dur

ing Mexican Independence,” T h e A m e ric a s 36 (1980): 437-38. 38. Francisco Dc Paula dc Arrangoiz, M e x ic o desde 1 8 0 8 ha sta ¡ 8 6 7 . (Madrid: Imprenta de

A. Perez Bubrcll, 1872), 1:220; AGN-H, vol. 104, exp. 12, fol. 40. 39. AGN-H, vol. 104, exp. 12, fol. 40V. 40. AGN-H, vol. 104, exp. 15, fol. 66. 41. Ibid., fol. 106. 42. Ibid. 43. From 21 August to 30 August, AGN-OG, vol. 735. 44. AGN-OG, vol. 64. 45. AGN-H, vol. 104, exp. 6, fol. 12. 46. For a brief description of the outbreak of the rebellion that stresses the disloyalty of

the militia, see the petition of Papantla militia commander Juan Vidal dcVillamil to Calleja, 13 March 1814, AGN-OG, vol. 273, fols. 143-47. In response to the Hidalgo insurrection, the government formed a company of Indian militia in Papantla. This militia revolted in 1812 under the leadership of Serafín Olartc; see Llórente to Viceroy Ruiz dc Apodaca, 16 Apr. 1819, AGN-OG, vol. 124, fol. 49.

47. For example, see Juan Antonio Sánchez to Antonio Cortes of Hucjutla, 16 January 1811, AGN-IG, vol. 149, fol. sin número.

48. In the 1780s, for example, the Papantla Creole Ignacio Patino refused to serve under a pardo sergeant; AGN-IG, vol. 100a, fol. sin número. From 1812 to 1815, militia sergeant Francisco Bermúdez served as one of the leading insurgent commanders in Papantla.

49. Llórente to the comandante general and intendente ofVcracruz, Brigadier Fernando Millares y Mancebo, 11 January 1816, AGN-OG, vol. 525, fol. 1. Likewise, the rebels on the coasts called on serranos when they were threatened by royalist attacks. Jose Antonio Lozano was originally sent to Papantla to raise cavalry troops for Rayón; see Carlos Maria dc Bustamante, C u a d ro histórico de la revolución m e xic a n a , 8 vols. (1846; facsimile, Mexico City: Instituto Nacional dc Estudios Históricos dc la Revolución Mexicana, 1985), 3:481; Guedea, Insurgencia, 61, 67, notes that Lozano was one of the principal organizers in Osorno’s camp.

50. In 1816 Llórente stated that through the ports that they held, rebels had received “great and continuous quantities of arms and munitions” from overseas (AGN-OG, vol. 526, fol. 165); see alsoTrens, H isto ria d e V eracruz, 3:284. For additional reports of arms ship ments, see AGN-OG, vol. 525, fols. 162, 173, 198 (for 1815); vol. 927, fols. 121, 216 (for 1816).

Notes to Pages 70-73 / 195

5!. Arturo García López to Gen. Dávila, report, 2 June 1816, AGN-INF, vol. 38, cxp. 8, fol. 152. Osomo had little control over the bands he nominally commanded in the Sierra de Puebla; see Guedea, Insurgencia, 3 3 -3 4 . It is interesting to note the similarity in language here between the views expressed by the misantccos and those expressed by Chaleo residents described in Eric Van Young, “The Raw and the Cooked: Elite and Popular Ideology in Mexico, 1800-1821”; in T h e In d ia n C o m m u n ity o f C o lo n ia l M e x ic o : F ifte e n E ssays on L a n d Tenure, C o rp o ra te O r g a n iz a tio n s, Ideo lo g y, a n d V illage P olitics, cd. Arij Ouwcnccl and Simon Miller (Amsterdam: Centro de Estudios de Latinoamérica, 1990), 309.

52. See Lozano to Col. Serafín Olartc, 18 August 1813, AGN-INF, vol. 84, cxp. 2, fol. 20. 53. See Llórente to Calleja, 31 January i8i6,AGN-OG, vol. 525, fol. n;and Llórente to Viceroy

Ruiz de Apodaca, 19 September 1817, AGN-OG, vol. 526, fols. 259-60. For further dispatches from Llórente on the geography of the rebellion, sec vol. 526, fol. 128; and vol. 527, fols. 138-46.

54. All family members, not just male adults, appear in the lists of rebels granted amnesty; see “Lista de indultados,” AGN-OG, vol. 725, fols. 340-46. Loyalist officers also treated women and children captured in insurgent territory as rebels, sending them to be held in loyalist towns, often with the hope that by doing so, they would force rebel sons and husbands to surrender; see Lt. Col. Manuel González de la Vega, report, 7 February 1814, AGN-OG, vol. 697, fol. sin número.

55. Cap. Ignacio de Zuñiga to de la Concha, Coyutla, 20 January 1819, AGN-OG, vol. 124, fol. 75. On the Huasteca cantones see G aceta d e l G obierno de M e xico , 11 February 1813, vol. 4, no. 359, p. 168; and AGN-OG, vol. 4, fols. 27-28.

56. “Declaración tomada al rebelde aprehendido Salvador Méndez,” 29 May 1820, AGN- OG, vol. 890, fols. 210-13. 1° amnesty lists from the Huasteca, the rebels appear organized into repúblicas de indios rebeldes, complete with gobernadores, alcaldes, and escribanos. Sec Lt. Col. José Maria Lubian, “Lista que manifiesta los individuos de la comprensión de Palo Blanco y Sombrerete que han impetrado la real gracia de Indulto desde 10 de diciembre de 1817,” 27 February 1818, AGN-OG, vol. 122, fols. 6-8.

57. Llórente to Calleja, 23 April and 17 July 1816, AGN-OG, vol. 525, fols. 97,116; Llórente to Viceroy Ruiz de Apodaca, 23 June 1817, AGN-OG, vol. 526, fol. 125V.

58. C o m p a ñ ía s de p a trio ta s was one of the terms that royalists favored for their militia units, another example of how the government introduced a new political language into rural Mexico (Alan Knight, “Peasants into Patriots: Thoughts on the Making of the Mexican Na tion,” M S / E M to [1994]: 146). P a m a s chicas were, in Knight’s view at least, potential build ing blocks of the nation.

59. Llórente, 21 March 1816, AGN-OG, vol. 67, fol. 354. 60. Ortiz Escamilla, G u e rra y gobierno, 80-87. On the militarization of Mexican society

during the war, see Christon I. Archer, “The Militarization of Mexican Politics: The Role of the Army, 1815-1821,” in F iv e C en tu ries o f M e x ic a n H is to r y : P apers o f th e V I I I C onference o f M e x ic a n a n d N o r th A m e ric a n H isto ria n s, S a n Diego, C a lifo rn ia , O ctober 1 8 -2 0 , /9 9 0 , cd. Virginia Guedea and Jaime E. Rodriguez O. (Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José Maria Luis Mora; Irvine, Calif: University of California, Irvine, 1992), and by the same author, “Politicization of the Army of New Spain during the War of Independence, 1810- 1821,” in T h e O rigins o f M e x ic a n N a t io n a l P olitics, 1 8 0 8 -1 8 4 7 , C(I* Jaime E. Rodriguez O. (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 1997).

Notes to Pages 73-76 /196

61. AGN-1NF, vol. 57, exp. 1, fol.64. 62. The military reported that 2,051 men, women, and children from Coyusquihui sur

rendered in December 1820; see “Lista de los individuos presentados al señor D. José Barradas,” 20 December 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 725, fols. 340-48.

63. Llórente to Viceroy Ruiz de Apodaca, 9 May 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 767, fols. 326-28. On 21 June 1820 Llórente published the constitution; sec AGN-OG, vol. 768, fol. 97. In referring to the pamphlets from Havana, Llórente gives credence to the idea, as described by Rodríguez, Ind ep en d en cia de la A m é ric a española, 121, that Havana played a role as a center for the dissemination of subversive literature during the insurgent decades.

64. Christon I. Archer, “Insurrection-Rcaction-Revolution-Fragmcntation: Reconstruct ing the Choreography of Meltdown in New Spain during the Independence Era,” M S / E M to (1994): 80-82, gives a brief account that situates Coyusquihui in a wider military and economic perspective. Before this change in tactics, rebels had been able to use the rainy season to recuperate from royalist offensives; Rincon’s tenacity had a terrible effect on the rebels. According to one of his followers, Olarte still believed that “although [Rincón] might destroy all of the m ilp a s and bum all of the houses,” he would eventually leave, “at the latest when the rains come” (“Declaración tomada al rebelde aprehendido Salvador Méndez,” 29 May 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 8go, fol. 21).

65. Barradas to Viceroy Ruiz de Apodaca, 7 Oct. 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 107, fol. 223. Llórente showed little willingness to cooperate with Barradas; indeed, the two had been feuding since 1814, when they served together in the plains of Apan; see Guedea, Insurgencia, 1 18.

66. Barradas to the “rebels of Coyusquihui,” 30 September 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 107, fol. 235 (emphasis in original). This language recalls that of the royal proclamation of 23 July 1820, and it seems that Barradas was following a script provided by the liberal Spanish cortes; sec Timothy E. Anna, T h e F a ll o f th e R o y a l G o v e r n m e n t in M e x ic o C i ty (Lincoln- University of Nebraska Press, 1978), 197.

67. Barradas to Viceroy Ruiz dc Apodaca, 7 October 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 107, fol. 231. 68. Ibáñez to Aguilar, 4 October 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 117, fol. 240. Rincón had also sent

peace proposals to the rebels after the promulgation of the constitution. These met with little success because the rebels “had an absolute aversion to him”; see Mariano de los Rios (one of Olarte’s non-Indian officers) to Aguilar, 4 October 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 107, fol. 239; and Rincón to Viceroy Ruiz de Apodaca, 11 September 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 890, fol. 260. Mendez voiced the same opinion after his capture, AGN-OG, vol. 890, fol. 212.

69. “Declaración tomada al rebelde aprehendido Mariano González,” 29 May 1820, AGN- OG, vol. 890, fol. 207. A certain Captain Blasco reported that the rebels had executed one of their commanders, Lucas Ximenez, for advocating acceptance of amnesty and that Olarte had disarmed another, Alberto Bermudez, on suspicion of wanting to obtain an indulto; see Cap. Blasco to Llórente, 21 January v8, AGN-OG, vol. 767, fols. 142-43. The field diaries of Col. Rincón contain monthly reports of m ilp a s cane fields, trapiches, houses, and granaries that his troops had destroyed. For examples, see Rincón, “Diario dc operaciones,” 1 April, 30 April, and 1 July 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 890, fols. 175, 199-200,235.

70. Ibáñez to Fr. Aguilar, 17 October 1820; Fr. Aguilar to Barradas, 18 October 1820. See also de los Rios to Aguilar, 17 October 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 107, fols. 262, 263, 267.

71. Barradas to Viceroy Ruiz dc Apodaca, 11 November 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 107, fols.

Notes to Pages 77-80 / 197

285-86; and testimony of Pablo Antonio Hernandez, 7 November 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 107, fol. 287. The former rebels claimed that the Indians “disagreed with the [gente] de razón and never wanted to accept the amnesty, and that they were going to cross the Espinal River with their families to go to Palo Gordo and unite with the Morenos.”

72. Olartc to Barradas, 1 December 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 107, fol. 271. 73. José Francisco Gonzalez and Jose Ignacio Maria Partana to Barradas, 3 December

1820, AGN-OG, vol. 107, fol. 282. 74. González and Partana to Olartc, 30 November 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 107, fol. 275. 75. Viceroy Ruiz de Apodaca to Barradas, 11 December 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 107, fol. 270. 76. Olarte, 23 April 1821, AGN-OG, vol. 725, fol. 377. The situation suggests that Olartc

also claimed the right to be the political arbiter of his community with caudillo-likc powers. 77. Van Young, “Raw and the Cooked,” 299-301 and more extensively, T h e O th e r R eb e l

lion, 463-83. 78. Andean historians have been less reluctant to link indigenous and Creole ideologies;

for an interesting ease, see Alberto Flores Galindo, “In Search of an Inca,” in Resistance, R ebellion, a n il Consciousness in th e A n d e a n P ea sa n t W orld, ¡ 8 th to 2 0 th C enturies, cd. Steve J. Stem (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 201, and passim.

79. Timothy E. Anna, T h e M e x ic a n E m p ire o f Itu rb id e (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 11, 17, 24.

80. Juan Antonio Sanchez to Cap. Antonio Cortés, 11 January 1811, AGN-IG, vol. 149, fol. sin número.

81. Testimony of Sebastian Antonio (Indian alcalde of Tlatclmaco near Zacualtipán), 10 January 1812, AGN-C, vol. 251, exp. 12, fol. 321.

82. Pérez (Indian governor of Papantla) to Juan Agustín González, 25 November 1811, AGN-C, vol. 251, exp. 1, fol. 6. In a letter, the rebels claimed to have royal orders to arrest anyone who defended the government “because what the government does favors the gachupines” (J. M. Cisneros to Diego Hernández [Indian governor of Chicontepec], 27 May 1811, AGN-C, vol. 17, exp. 7, fol. 166).

83. Knight, “Peasants into Patriots,” 141. 84. Lozano to Juan Pérez, 16 August 1813; and Lozano to José Mariano Belendcs (priest

of Coxquihui) on “donation for the nation,” 19 August 1813, AGN-INF, vol. 84, exp. 2, fols. 22 and 23-24, respectively.

85. Lozano to “los señores gobernadores y alcaldes de Espinal, Zozocolco Coxquibui, Chumatlán, Mctcatlán, Santo Domingo, Coahuitlán; Coyutla,” 2 August 1813, AGN-INF, vol. 84, cxp. 2, fol. 9. See Lozano to Bernardo Angulo, 17 August 1813, AGN-INF, vol. 84, exp. 2, fol. 23.

86. Virginia Guedea, “Las elecciones entre los insurgentes, 1811-1813,” in F iv e C enturies o f M e x ic a n H is to r y : P apers o f th e E ig h th C onference o f A U x te a n a n d N o r th A m e ric a n H is to

rians, S a n Diego, C a lifo rn ia , 1 8 - 2 0 O ctober 1990, ed. Virginia Guedea and Jaime E. Rodriguez O. (Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. Jose Maria Luis Mora; Irvine, Calif: Uni versity of California, Irvine, 1992), 309-11, discusses the process of popular participation in the insurgent elections. Gucdca’s work on Mexico City elections during the first constitu tional period also reveals the importance of increasing popular participation in the political life of the colony. A dramatic evolution of political identities occurred even within “royalist”

Notes to Pages 80-84 f 198

Mexico; see Virginia Guedca, “El pueblo de Mexico y la política capitolina, 1808-1812,” M S / E A l 10 (1994): 60-61. Guedca, Insurgencta, 78-83,171-76, demonstrates that the sierra insurgents made frequent efforts to create a new political order in their territories. One of the characteristics of changes in political practice during the insurgency is that there were often parallel developments within the two sides, with insurgents often borrowing from the prac tices that came out of the Spanish Constitution; see also Rodriguez, Independencia de la A m e rica española, 123.

87. Lozano to Nicolás Bravo, 16 August 1813; Lozano to Peredo, 16 August 1813; Lozano to Calixto Garcia (priest of Papantla), 20 August 1813; and Lozano to Peredo, 3 1 August 1813, on representatives elected from El Espinal; AGN-INF, vol. 84 exp. 2 fols. 21, 24, 25, 28, respectively.

88. Letter of Jose Joaquin Aguilar, “cuartel general por la nación de la sierra y costa de Barlovento,” 2 December 1816, AGN-OG, vol. 65, fols. 57-60. Aguilar’s surviving circulars mirror the G a ceta in that they manifest an obsession with giving the insurgent military report as a reply to the military reports printed so frequently in the official paper.

89. The rebel camps, although often independent of one another, seem to have established a systematic mail service to keep in touch. A royalist emissary in the insurgent camp of Palo Blanco reported that mail arrived daily with news of political events (José Ignacio Martinez to Alvarez de Güitián, 20 March 1816, AGN-OG, vol. 65, fol. 110).

90. The royalists often used the term “patria” in their dispatches. See, for example, Ar cher, “Militarization of Mexican Politics,” 285; also Llórente, 24 May 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 528, fol. 66.

91. Rafael Sagredo Baeza, “Actores políticos en los catecismos patriotas y republicanos americanos, 1817-1827,” H isto ria M e x ic a n a 45 (1996): 507-8, notes that in 1814 the Crown attempted to prohibit the circulation of Spanish “political catechisms” in the colonies.

92. Declaration of Mariano Olarte, 1 March 1819, Campo Nacional de Coyusquihui, AGN- OG, vol. 490, fol. 202.

93. Ibid. The spelling and calligraphy of the Spanish original indicates that the author had a modest village education, even though his political vision was clearly not restricted to the village. “Ha no ai que dejarse Gobernar de Virreyes, oydorcs, y Ministriles de jentes de la Tirania que nos an chupado esta Sangre del Corazón sino Gobernamos por nosotros mismos para bcr en los Subditos unos crínanos no unos Jumentos o animales como nos a bisto asta aqui el Anterior Gobierno, si Ermanos mios esos que os an ofresido el Yndulto Son los Mismos que os an de echar las cadenas dcsclabitud.”

94. BCEM, año 1820/19/1/f. 2. Archer points out that the constitution made it increas ingly difficult for local military men to raise the manpower and fiscal resources needed to continue the war (Christon I. Archer, ‘“La Causa Buena’: The Counterinsurgency Army of New Spain and the Ten Years’ War,” in Rodriguez Q , Independence o f M e xico , 106, and Archer, “Where Did All the Royalists Go?” 31, 34, 38). Similar protests occurred in the Yucatán, where the Mayas seized upon their newly won rights to refuse clerical demands for taxes and labor during the first constitutional period of 1812 to 1814; see Rugelcy, Y u c a ta n ’s M a y a P ea sa n try, 41-42.

95. Gómez Escalante later revealed that the Indians were willing to work, but only when paid “triple the normal wage in this region” (BCEM 1820/19/1 /2v). Perhaps this also points

N o t e s to P a g e s 8 4 - 8 6 / ig g

to why the república survived: the local elite relied on them to mobilize labor for their benefit. The diputación dismissed Gómez Escalante’s request to re-establish forced labor “que por ningún pretexto obligue a los indios a trabajar contra su voluntad” (f. 3V.).

96. G aceta de M é xico , vol. 1, no. 56 (18 June 1810): 413, cited in Rodríguez, Independencia de la A m é ric a española, 120. As mentioned above in the discussion of Aguilar, the insurgents readily borrowed the constitutional rhetoric that appeared in the G aceta.

97. Barradas to Viceroy Ruiz dc Apodaca, 6 December 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 107, fols. 274-75. Rodriguez noted that the restoration of the constitution seemed to have created an opening for the noninsurgent autonomists to agitate for deeper changes (In d ep en d en cia d e la A m é ric a española, 243-44, 24&)- Parroga’s letters may well have fit into this tendency.

98. Parroga to Jose Santiago Moreno (insurgent leader of Palo Gordo), ioDcccmber 1820, AGN-OG, vol. 107, fol. 277.

99. Ibid., fol. 278. The important distinction that Parroga made in this text is even more striking when one considers that after the triumph of Iturbidc, Mexicans began to call Span iards "capitulados, ” that is, people who surrendered and had no rights; see Anna, M e x ic a n E m p ire o f Iturbtde, 33.

100. Barradas to Viceroy Ruiz dc Apodaca, 8 January 1821, AGN-OG, vol. 725, fol. 363. 101. Brain R. Hamnett, R o o ts o f In su rg en c y: M e x ic a n Regions, 1 7 5 0 -1 8 2 4 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1986), 24, and passim. 102. The army failed to become an effective unifying force given that the counterinsurgency

effort tended to divide the army into smaller and smaller units with little supervision, while regional commanders sought to create their own semiautonomous satrapies. See Archer, ‘“La Causa Buena,”’ 101; Hamnett, R o o ts o f Insurgency, 178; and Hamnett “Royalist Counter insurgency and the Continuity of Rebellion: Guanajuato and Michoacán, 1813-1820,” H A H R 62 (1982): 48.

103. Timothy E. Anna, “Inventing Mexico: Provincehood and Nationhood after Indepen dence,” B u lle tin o f L a t i n A m e ric a n R esearch 15 (1996): 9.

104. Benedict Anderson, Im a g in e d C o m m u n ities: R e fe c tio n s on th e O rigin a n d S p r e a d o f N a tio n a lism , rev. cd. (London: Verso, 1991), 48.

105. William B. Taylor, “The Virgin of Guadalupe in New Spain: An Inquiry into the Social History of Marian Devotion,” A m e r ic a n E th n o lo g is t 14 (1987): l, 14, 16-19. Linda Curcio-Nagy, “Native Icon to City Protectress to Royal Patroness: Ritual, Political Sym bolism and the Virgin of Remedies,” in T h e C h u rch in C o lo n ia l L a t i n A m e r ic a , ed. John F Schwallcr (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2000), 197-98, describes the ca reer of the “ royalist Virgin.” In this case the royalist government seized upon Remedios as a loyalist icon. The two cults share humble origins in the local religious practice of indig enous communities around Mexico City, but only Guadalupe was projected as the patron ess of the entire viceroyalty.

106. Mario Cerruti describes the consolidation of Latin American nations as a process of linking “regional power bases together.” See Mario Cerruti, “Monterrey and Its Ambito Re gional, 1850-1910: Historical Context and Methodological Recommendations,” in Van Young, M e x i c o ’s Regions, 146. Sec also Mallon, P ea sa n t a n d N a t io n ; and Guy P. C. Thomson, “Agrar ian Conflict in the Municipality of Cuctzalan (Sierra dc Puebla): The Rise and Fall o f ‘Pala’ Agustín Dicguillo, 1861-1894,” H A H R 71 (1991): 205-58.

N o t e s to P a g e s 8 6 - 8 9 / 2 0 0

107- Archer, “ Where Did All the Royalists Go?” describes the crisis within the counterinsurgent army at the end of the War of Independence.

108. See Lucas Atamán, H isto ria d e M é jic o : D es J e ios prim eros m o v im ien to s que p re p a ra ro n su independencia en e l a ño de 1 8 0 8 h a sta la época presente (Mexico City: n.p., 1849-53; reprint, Mexico City: Libros del Bachiller Sansón Carrasco, 1985), 5: chapters 5, 6. Often the divi sions between insurgents were as deep as the differences between insurgents and loyalists; such was the case in a running feud between Victoria and Mier y Tcrán.

109. AGN-OG, vol. 767, fols. 422-23, dated 17 March 1821. Llórente wrote that Iturbidc “has tried to envelop these vast provinces in the most horrible anarchy, just when they began to enjoy the benefits of peace and tranquility.”

110. AGN-IG, vol. 148, dated 15 May 1821. i n . AGN-OG, vol. 767, fol. 500. 112. Ibid., vol. 767, fol. 470. 113. Ibid. 114. Ibid., fol. 475. 115. AGN-OG, vol. 767, fol. 498. 116. Ibid., fols. 476-8. 117. Ibid., fol. 500. 118. AGN-GSS caja (henceforth cited as c.) 11, exp. 12, fols. 2, 11-1 iv. 119. Meade, H u a ste c a v e ra c ru z a n a , 2:38. 120. Jorge Flores D., L a revo lu ció n de O la rte en P a p a n tla (i8j 6-i8j 8) (Mexico City:

Imprenta Mundial, 1938), 13-14. 121. Sec AGN-GSS, c. 11, exp. 12, fol. 11 for a lengthy description of the conspiracy to

rebel in favor of independence in 1821. On the Chontla revolt, sec Zózimo Pérez Castañeda and Angel Daqui, M o n o g ra jia d e la C iu d a d de T u x p a n (Jalapa: Talleres Gráficos del Gobierno del Estado, 1955), 32.

122. AGN-G, c. 11, cxp. 12, passim. Llórente was not completely resigned to accept inde pendence and in 1821 attempted to use his authority to punish the officers who had conspired to join the independence movement (Agustín Iturbide, P lausibles noticias [Puebla: Imprenta de Ejercito Imperial Mexicano, 1821J). On the petition of Tuxpan to disband its militia, sec AGN-G, c, 1, cxp. 12, fol. 13V.

123. See Carmagnani, E l regreso de los dioses, 171, 181, 185-87; and García Martínez, L o s pueblos de la sierra, 189,201-4,antl passim.

124. Declaration of Mariano Olarte, 1 March 1819, Campo Nacional de Coyusquihui, AGN-OG, vol. 490, fol. 202; sec also “Declaración de los capitanes del campo de Coyusquihui,” 22 February 1819, AGN-OG, vol. 323, fol. 308

125. Anna, M e x ic a n E m p ire o f Iturbtde, 20-24; antl Archer, “Insurrection-Rcaction-Rcvo- lution-Fragmcntation,” 96-98.

Chapter 4

1. BCEM, 1829/330/54/2, Bocancgra to governor of the state of Mexico, 28 August 1829. The comment also reflects the fear that military service might provoke discontent.

2. Resolution of the permanent commission of the state Congress of the Estado de Mexico,

Notes to Pages 90-94 / 201