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A Nation of Villages Riot and Rebellion in the Mexican

Huasteca, 1750-1850

Michael T. Ducey

The University of Arizona Press

Tucson

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 4

The Illusions of Municipalities

The Politics of Rebellion in Independent Mexico

In 1829 Mexico suffered one of the many foreign invasions that threatened the nation during the turbulent nineteenth century. Some four thousand Spanish soldiers under Col. Isidro Barradas, promising to liberate Mexico from postcolonial anarchy, invaded Tampico. They failed miserably, but throughout the country the return of Spanish soldiers to Mexican soil caused alarm. T he minister of external and internal affairs, José Maria Bocanegra, expressed concern about a pamphlet circulating in the State of Mexico call ing on the Indians to support the invasion. In a letter to the state legislature, he worried that the republic had placed additional burdens on the natives without granting corresponding advantages. “[Njow that they are equal to all citizens they arc obligated to serve in the military.” 1 T he state Congress replied somewhat sheepishly that it “had not been able to do all that it had desired for Indians” owing to the “partisan spirit” that had frustrated the efforts of the legislature. It then passed a resolution calling for “a just and egalitarian distribution of land, and what is more, enlightenment for all of the inhabitants of the state . . . and complete equality before the law, exiling forever the hateful caste distinctions, that are the principal pillars of this terrible anarchy.”2

The seditious pamphlets, evidently circulated by a parish priest and a hacienda administrator fromTlanepantla, did not produce a groundswell of support in the communities.3 The 1829 invasion did not provoke any pro- Spanish popular uprisings; to the contrary, it galvanized popular opinion against Spaniards.4 However, the hurried response of the local legislators and the fear Bocanegra expressed reflected growing concerns about the im pact of republican rule on Mexico‘s indigenous population and perhaps a

sense of guilt about the failed promises of the constitutional order. The di lemma faced by the state Congress mirrors the questions historians have posed about the new nation. Were the indigenous villagers victimized by the constitutional rule? Did the disappearance of the paternalist institutions harm the pueblos and create widespread discontent?

Independence required the creation of a new republican order to replace the colonial system of corporate identities and racial domination. The cre ation of a new, liberal order based on individual citizenship was a contested process in which competing political actors sought to preserve colonial privi leges even as they used the new constitutional system to their advantage.5 The indigenous communities, the majority of the population at indepen dence, posed a challenge to the new society of citizens. T he Constitution of Cádiz and the War of Independence destabilized the old order in rural Mexico as villagers aggressively sought to claim citizenship in the republic. At the same time indigenous peasants clung to their identities as “sons of the pueb los.” T he negotiated settlement that led Olarte and his followers to join the constitutional order left political power on the local level up for grabs.6

Docs the end of colonial paternalism explain the explosion of regional rebellions after independence? Historians have often suggested that with the abolition of colonial institutions, such as the república and the Indian Court, peasant communities lost the ability to protect their interests. When pueblos de indios ceased to pay tribute, the government lost its incentive to protect them, and land-hungry hacendados expanded their holdings at the villagers’ expense. Historians have tended to agree with Bocanegra, concluding that the new constitutional order worked against the interests of indigenous vil*» lagers.7 When the municipalities replaced the república de indios, villagers faced the loss of the ethnically separate local governments that had once overseen their daily lives. In this chapter I will discuss the fallout from the constitutional transformation following the establishment of the Mexican republic.

Indigenous villagers never simply rejected the new state project; rather, they adopted sophisticated strategies to incorporate the new political reali ties into their traditional practices. Popular critiques of the new order did not use the language of colonialism; instead, they used the logic of the liberal order to challenge the new state. In 1829, Spain’s would-be liberators found little resonance in rural Mexico because the loyalty of the villagers to the old order had always been tempered with a hardheaded understanding of the costs and benefits of the colonial rule. The fact that Mexican liberal politicians

The Illusions of Municipalities / 95

believed Indians would respond to Barradas’s invasion tells us more about the gap between the rural majority and the rulers than it does about pueblo attitudes.8

The ambiguities of independence threw the traditional system of subor dination into question, allowing villagers to seek out new alliances and new claims to political participation. Indigenous village politics ultimately be came coupled to the militarized political movements, known as pronun ciamientos, that frequently destabilized national government. The dizzying series of barracks uprisings and politicians in uniform have often led to the conclusion that political life was a question of ambitious military men exert ing control by virtue of armed might. However, pronunciamientos were not merely military coups made in the barracks, they were political movements that incorporated civilian society.9 T he events of the early 1830s reveal the local roots of political disorder, as the popular rebellions in Papantla (1836- 38) and the caste war (1846-49) illustrate how villagers used the techniques of pronunciamiento to push their own agendas.

During the nineteenth century the Constitution of Cádiz and later the Federal Constitution of 1824 replaced the semiautonomous indigenous repúblicas with ethnically neutral municipal governments. The Constitu tion of Cádiz encouraged the establishment of town councils in towns with more than one thousand inhabitants, and in practice the councils sprang up whereever repúblicas had existed previously.10 The first constitutional pe riod in Mexico saw the rapid proliferation of local governments, even in the sujeto communities ofYahualica and Huejutla.11 The colonial order had strictly limited political rights in the repúblicas such as voting and holding office to the “sons of the town,” but the new order extended citizenship to all resi dents. This meant that non-Indian residents could vote, but it also extended the vote to indigenous villagers who had not been among the privileged few with “voice and vote” in the traditional governments. The constitution sought to banish the traditional political identity used by villagers, sons of the town, and replace it with the enlightened role of citizen.

The creation of the federal republic in 1824 left the states to decide their internal political structure, including suffrage and the population require ments for town councils. Three states, Veracruz, Puebla and the State of Mexico, controlled parts of the Huasteca, and in each of these entities local legislatures drew back from the expansive rights granted under the Cádiz Constitution. Veracruz permitted town councils only in pueblos with more than two thousand residents, Puebla set the limit at three thousand, while

A Nation of Villages / 96

the State of Mexico raised the requirement to four thousand “souls.” 12 The elimination of the traditional conduits of indigenous political representa tion, the repúblicas, and the reduction of town councils in the posdndepcndencc period raise the issue of how Totonacs and Nahuas reacted to what appears to have been a system designed to exclude them.

T he letter of the law left no role for the old repúblicas ruled by the sons of the town and their traditional elders, but in practice they continued to func tion on the submunicipal level, serving an administrative function that the new governments found indispensable. The initial objective of integrating the old colonial identities into a single political organism did not become reality in the villages. Municipalities failed to eliminate repúblicas in part because they found them to be necessary intermediaries between themselves and the indigenous population. Traditional forms of government were aban doned in the town halls of the head towns, only to re-emerge in the outlying villages and hamlets. The new order superimposed the head-town-versus- subject-village split on the new dichotomies of town council versus república de indios and non-Indian versus Indian. T he control of local government became a critical issue that involved questions of race, particularly in the larger municipalities where non-Indians dominated the towns. These divi sions, with their origins in the colonial order, became the basis of rural poli tics during the turbulent decades of the early nineteenth century. Villagers continued to support unofficial repúblicas de indios, and they challenged town councils that sought to intervene in the administration of indigenous resources. To use a term that Guy Thomson coined: Indian actors adopted political “bilingualism,” seeking to be both citizens and sons of the town, manipulating national political discourse to preserve local identities and com munity resources.13 In a society where political power was not equally dis tributed, indigenous villagers used the new liberal ideology of the dominant groups to stake out new political spaces for themselves.

Repúblicas in the Mexican Republic

Although the new order formally “extinguished” the colonial repúblicas de indios, state constitutions and regulations left day-to-day questions of gov ernance undecided. The issue of who was to control the land and labor re sources of the repúblicas was left to locals to resolve. As the paternalist pro tections of the colonial state faded away, local resources did not immediately fall into the hands of the non-Indian elite. The first decade of independent

T he Illusions o f Municipalities / 97

rule was a period of experimentation during which villagers sought to use the new order to defend their interests.

The results of the long insurrection of 1810-21 were ambiguous: the war created a tradition of lower-class dissidence, but it also provided Creole land- owners and merchants with powerful new tools. The local elite inherited a military tradition, and their claim to manage local affairs was not disputed by the national state. During the war, insurgents had exploited the tensions between Spanish administrators and the repúblicas de indios as well as conflicts within the Indian communities themselves to recruit followers. In dependence and the new political order that accompanied it failed to resolve the discontent within the communities and raised new political hazards for the indigenous communities. The change from colonial repúblicas de indios to municipalities had several implications. The constitutional arrangement addressed some of the dissatisfaction within Indian communities by increas ing the autonomy of local government and removing the hated Crown officials who intervened in república affairs. But the new municipal councils chal lenged the local traditions of political access permitting non-Indians to in tervene in communal affairs. These contradictions had their origins in the coalition that brought old insurgents and Creole royalists together in the Plan de Iguala. In rural Mexico, the Plan preserved the potentially demo cratic elements of the new town councils, but it also assured that the local- elite-turncd-militia-officers would remain powerful.14

Alicia Hernández Chavez has documented the rapid creation of munici palities in 1813-14 and 1820-21, and Antonio Escobar Ohmstcde has out lined this process in the Huasteca.1' Their work illustrates the divergent in terpretations concerning the changes in local politics. Whereas Hernández suggests that the councils offered an opportunity for greater political par ticipation in the new constitutional framework, Escobar stresses the con struction of a new system meant to dominate the rural population of Mexico.

The new order did not guarantee the easy access of villagers to town offices. The larger municipalities with significant numbers of non-Indian residents tended to come under the domination of mestizo and Creole merchants and landowners, whereas the smaller towns with more homogeneously indigenous populations tended to elect Indians to municipal posts. In some cases, such as the Andrades in Huejutla or the Núñez family in Ozuluama, Creole fami lies came to control local offices for decades at a time. Domination, however, was not complete, and the privileged non-Indians failed to establish the level of unquestioned legitimacy enjoyed by the colonial state. Participation in

A Nation of Villages / 98

municipal elections and the right of smaller towns to have independent coun cils became contested issues in local politics in the decade of the 1820s. The openness of the new politics of the 1820s declined throughout the decade, and the protest politics of the 1830s and 1840s reflected the efforts of com munities to protect what they had won.

To defend their interests, indigenous villagers retained colonial Indian institutions on an informal basis. Repúblicas de indios continued in practice to regulate communal life for much of the peasantry. The Indians’ tenacious attachment to local political traditions created a dual system of authority where the ancient repúblicas de indios survived at the submunicipal level and the representatives of the indigenous villagers still presented themselves as the spokesmen of the 1'común de indígenas. ’’The colonial titles of gobern ador, gobernador pasado, viejos, pasados, and principales appear on the peti tions of nineteenth-century villagers, indicating the survival of the tradition of indigenous government where the elders made decisions even when they held no official posts.16Rather than simplifying political territory, daily prac tice laid the new constitutional system over the ancient repúblicas.1*

Indian villagers especially in the sujeto communities, organized as the común de indígenas, hired lawyers, and initiated lawsuits.18 Petitions from the Huasteca Hidalguense reveal that the repúblicas de indios now controlled the indigenous hamlets in the hinterland of each municipality. Often the leaders of the indigenous repúblicas held low-level posts within the munici palities as justices of the peace and subregidores. In 1840, the “justices of the peace, elders, and other natives of the five towns of Huazalingo” initiated a complaint against their municipal government.19 Other signatories of the documents included Don Martin Leonardo, past Indian governor, and Don Diego Martin, justice of the peace of Santo Tomás, the current alderman, and the “elders of the town of Chiatipan.”20The actors presented themselves both as officials holding constitutional posts and as representatives of the “extinguished” república. The repúblicas had always served as the point of contact between the indigenous world and the “superior government” ; now, the elders held the posts that served as the nexus between the hamlets and municipal governments. The shift to a constitutional order merely pushed the repúblicas out of the head towns and into the sujetos.

One should not confuse this conservatism with a general rejection of change or an ignorance of the transformed political order.21 The villagers quickly grasped the utility of constitutional rights in their struggle against the old colonial taxes. In spite of the new liberal order, local officials sought to retain

The Illusions of Municipalities / 99

the colonial labor draft.22 In the early 1820s, landlords and officials found that, at first, they could not bend the new municipalities to their will largely because villagers used the new constitution to resist their efforts to re-create colonial taxes. These developments point to the emergence of local politi cians who informed the Indians of their rights. In the decades following the war villagers struggled to eliminate the colonial obligations, such as unpaid forced labor (personal service) and local taxes levied only on Indians.

The sujeto towns of Huazalingo submitted a complaint to the provincial legislature against the alcalde, Ignacio Alarcon, for “failing our sage and adored constitution.” The villages of Chiatipan, Santo Tomás, San Juan, San Pedro, and San Agustín pointed out that “article 338 of our wise constitution” pro hibited the “old contribution,” but Alarcon had continued to collect it and whipped villagers who refused to pay. T he villagers protested Alarcon’s de mand of “services without paying even a half real, treating us like slaves, [and] punishing us with the lash.”23 The rhetoric of resistance to slavery re calls Olarte’s insurgent language and reveals how widespread the republican critique of colonial racial categories had become. Indigenous peasants seized on the promises of the constitution to protest traditional labor demands. In the Yucatán, for example, Terry Rugeley has noted that villagers immedi ately began to use their constitutional rights to refuse “Indian” burdens such as clerical taxes.24 The town councils sought to use the faculties of the old república system, and in these cases villagers used their new rights to reject colonial subjugation.

In the states of Veracruz and Mexico six or eight years elapsed between the establishment of the town governments and the promulgation of regula tions spelling out how they were to function. Hernández Chávez has noted that the state constitutions failed to define the municipality’s role, allowing for “usos y costumbres” to thrive.25 This situation permitted the old repúblicas staffed by village elders to exercise authority and economic power, at the same time that the town councils were formally in charge. It also left an opening for municipalities to claim república practices, such as labor service, for themselves.

An unambiguous case of the survival of the repúblicas appeared in 1839, when the residents of the sujetos of Yahualica presented a petition against the local municipal half-real tax. The signatories included “the justices of the peace of the visitas [sujetos] and hamlets in Yahualica’s jurisdiction, the governor of Indians of the same in their own name and in the name of the commons.” The authors invoked the institutional memory of the indigenous

A Nation of Villages / 100

community when they recalled how the tax originated. “In 1823 the town council assembled the Indian commons to present a tax project that would form the municipal fund . . . said tax would have no other use but to pay the secretary of said council, cover the expenses of the secretariat, and pay the school teachers. They cheerfully resolved to accept said tax.”26The munici pality had treated the indigenous community as a separate corporate body that needed to be consulted before they adopted the tax. The villagers pointed out that the town council had failed to fulfill its obligation to the visitas since it had never paid their schoolteachers. They threatened to cease providing the tax unless the town supported the teachers, insisting that any revenue left after covering the teachers’ salaries be used to support the reconstruc tion of their church.27 The “indigenous residents” observed that, while in the 1820s local governments had sought their consent, by the late 1830s the councils ignored them.

The story of the 1823 meeting also reveals how indigenous citizens of the 1830s remembered the creation of municipalities. Municipalities needed the consent of traditional bodies to take over the role of taxman, as if the ex república was the sovereign constituting body and not an abstract body of citizens. T he petition artfully manipulated ideas about tradition to claim that only the Indian community could approve the half-real tax, and therefore, the commune had the power to revoke it.

In neighboring Huazalingo, a similar protest against payment of the half- real municipal tax occurred within months of the Yahualica petition.28 Criti cizing the distribution of resources, the Indians complained that although they paid the tax, they did not receive the services they expected. Only teach ers in the head town received salaries from the tax funds while the remote schools remained vacant.29Town officials required that sujeto village Indians serve as unpaid mail couriers and imposed fines on Indian children who could not attend school. The villagers even charged that during the cholera epi demic the council provided medicine to the head town but denied aid to the sujetos. “The municipality treats the outlying villages as if we were brutes or savage Africans without humanity.” 30 In subsequent petitions the villagers accused the non-Indian officials of “using municipal funds to capitalize their commerce and lend to other white residents.”31 The prefect in Metztitlán attributed the political ferment to local non-Indian politicians who were fishing in troubled waters: Captain José Antonio Lara, a local landlord, and the parish priest ofYahualica, Don José Rosalino del Rosal.32These cases dem onstrate several elements repeated on a grander scale during the political

The Illusions of Municipalities / 101

disorders of the 1830s and 1840s. In all of these tax conflicts, the divisions that emerged were both ethnic and territorial. The petitioners originated from the municipal hinterlands and challenged the distribution of power between their largely Indian hamlets and the more mestizo head towns.

These cases also suggest that the decade of the 1820s witnessed an open ing of the political system during which local communities explored the new system of constitutional rights, ethnic equality, and town councils. The num ber of petitions and conflicts over tax burdens and resource distribution in the 1830s suggests growing disillusionment with the ethnically neutral mu nicipality. During the 1830s indigenous villagers entrenched themselves in traditional forms of government in the visita hamlets as they lost influence in the town councils. In the process, villagers living in the hamlets had more control and contact with the repúblicas than in colonial times. In other words, the repúblicas of the national period were not merely the old colonial insti tutions. They were more sujeto oriented and probably more indigenous than had been their predecessors.

Communal Resources

Land tenure was one aspect of indigenous life that demonstrates the compli cated relationship between the republican order and the colonial past. In the G ulf lowlands Indians continued to control land and even expand the amount they had at their disposal. Furthermore, control over land continued to be governed by indigenous traditions. In spite of laws passed by the state legis latures in Veracruz and the State of Mexico, land continued to be held and administered by the “común de indígenas.” Village land use offers a con crete example of how local traditions transformed the liberal impulse of the new republican state.

Beginning with the ideologues of the Mexican Revolution, historians have assumed that peasant access to land declined after independence. The two systematic studies of nineteenth-century revolts by Leticia Reina and Jean Meyer attributed much of the conflict to land disputes and to the abolition of paternalist forms of government.33 John Tutino’s work was one of the first to break with this interpretation when he pointed out that both peasant vil lagers and small-scale tenants on private lands increased their landholdings after independence. He labels the years prior to 1850 a period of “agrarian decompression.”34 The agrarian history of the Huasteca tends to confirm Tutino’s findings. The cases described below demonstrate that communities

A Nation of Villages / 102

successfully expanded their holdings by purchase, judicial initiatives, and sometimes by outright invasions. At the same time the private estates of the region continued to languish, with little investment and marginal connec tions to national and international markets.35 The large-scale peasant rebel lions reflected the weakness of the landowning class, not its aggressiveness.

The liberal project sought to simplify land tenure, replacing the particular arrangements of large communal holdings with individually owned private plots. But the uniform territorial division for rural Mexico that lawmakers envisioned did not emerge until the late nineteenth century. Throughout the early republican period village practices based on colonial law regulated the lives of communal farmers. Even as state legislatures promulgated new poli cies along liberal lines, villagers, assisted by the new municipalities, main tained and increased the agricultural space governed by the old communal rules.

A review of village titles in the State ofVeracruz reveals that communities continued to hold their land well into the Porfiriato and that in many cases during the early nineteenth century, peasant communities bought land. In 1826 the ex-marquesa of Uluapan sold the hacienda of Buenavista to the indigenous villagers of Temapache, who had previously exploited the same lands as tenants. According to the bill o f sale, the marquesa sold the 15,380 hectares estate for 3,120 silver pesos. The Indians raised the money with a collection of 20 pesos from each of 187 community members.36 Ixcatepec also assured its access to land by means of the purchase of an 18,695-hectare estate for the price of 7,500 pesos in 1867.37 In theTotonac town of Coxquihui, the villagers bought the large fertile lands of Comalteco with a payment of 1,200 pesos worth of zarzaparrilla (sarsaparilla) collected by the entire com munity in i835.38In this last case, the records specify the role of the tradi tional república in mobilizing the community to collect the payment and carry out the purchase.

Reports from the early nineteenth century indicate the private owners of large estates had great difficulty making their properties productive. Gen eral Guadalupe Victoria, the insurgent and first president of the Federal Republic of Mexico, demonstrated the problems confronting would-be land monopolists. Victoria must have recognized the potential land bargains to be had in Veracruz when he served as an insurgent leader in the region and began to buy up properties during his term in office.30 He purchased the huge estates of El Jobo in Tlapacoyan, Asunción and Santiago de la Peña in Tuxpan, and Piedra Grande in Misantla, among other properties.40 The

The Illusions of Municipalities / 103

amount of land concentrated in these estates is astounding: the Tuxpan es tates consisted of approximately 84,000 hectares and the titles for Piedra Grande estimated its size at 31,500 hectares. Yet in spite of his considerable political and military connections, he was never able to transform them into successful agricultural enterprises, and after his death his heirs sold the ha ciendas, often at lower prices than what Victoria had paid.41 Victoria faced the same problems as all local hacendados: he had plenty of land but not enough labor, and his estates were under-capitalized, far from potential markets, and bereft of the infrastructure to take advantage of any potential demand for their products. As Emilio Kouri has noted, the size of estates in northern Veracruz was not a sign of their economic power but a reflection of the back wardness of the local economy.42

The fate of one of the Victoria properties revealed the ambiguities of postindependence roles of town councils and community landholding. Victoria paid three thousand pesos in 1827 to the de Acosta family for Piedra Grande, an estate that bordered the communal lands of Misantla. T he seven heirs of the family owned the property collectively, and six of them sold their shares to Victoria while the last, Joaquin Mariano de Acosta, retained his part.43 In 1845 the executor of Victoria’s estate, Francisco de Paula, tried to sell the property to one of the descendents of the de Acostas, Gabriel de Acosta (for a thousand pesos less than the original purchase price). However, the town council prevented the sale because it “prejudiced the residents of this mu nicipality,” and offered to buy the land for the same price. Gabriel de Acosta deferred to “the interest of the common good,” and conceded the sale to the town. His willingness may reflect the fact that residents of the town had already invaded the land: enforcing his possession would have been costly if not impossible.44 Townspeople had long established vainillares on the prop erty, and the members of the council sought to protect the producers be cause of the important role they played in the town’s economy.45

The Misantla case also points to the apparently widespread practice of squatting on private land. These invasions appear to have been unopposed by the landlords, and they appear in the documentary record only when there arc attempts to enforce property rights, often decades after the invasion oc curred. Indian villagers invaded lands of the hacienda of Jamaya in the mu nicipality of El Espinal in 1841, and the owners’ effort to dislodge them lasted for more than forty years.44’ Since land was plentiful and labor was scarce, landowners may have tolerated squatters to attract potential labor ers.47 In this context, landowners reached a modus vivendi with villagers that

A Nation of Villages / 104

stressed good relations with peasants rather than a strict adherence to prop erty laws. These events suggest that even men of modest means had oppor tunities to win new access to land during the years of the early republic. In short, the political effervescence of the period was not the result of an agrar ian crisis.

Land use during the fifty years after independence provides evidence about the relations between new republican forms of governance and the weight of custom. T he republican states granted municipalities power over the admin istration of communal lands, but town officers proved unable or unwilling to alter traditional land use. Central to understanding how nineteenth-century villagers actually used the land is the fact that there were different kinds of lands destined for different uses.48 The fondo legal consisted of the original “six hundred yards square” that served as the town site where villagers had their home sites. Most of the land held by communities in the Huasteca belonged to two categories: the propios and the tierras de repartimiento. The propios were properties held by the community and rented out as a source of revenue. Most peasant agriculture took place on the tierras de repartimiento. As the name implied, the villages divided these lands into individual plots assigned to specific families. Peasants had a strong sense of ownership over their specific plots, passing them from father to son. When the government finally enforced the division of these lands into individual plots in the 1880s and 1890s, peasant farmers complained that the boundaries drawn by the surveyors did not conform to traditional usage.49

The manner in which the villages and municipalities administered differ ent categories of land is very revealing. Although both the State of Mexico and Veracruz passed legislation granting municipalities control of commu nal lands and abolishing the existence of the traditional república de indios, control of property did not simply fall into the hands of the town councils.50 The new municipalities inherited the fondo legal and propios, absorbing the rental revenue into their budgets. Following colonial precedents, the mu nicipalities rented out the land to members of the local elite and to individu als with influence in local government. Documents from the Huejutla’s ju dicial archive yield several examples where the Andrades and Larios families rented estates for long periods at low rates.sl Thus, local elites already en joyed large portions of the “communal” lands, but this was not a new devel opment in the nineteenth century.

In contrast, the tierras de repartimiento remained outside of the adminis tration of the local councils. While the law gave municipalities formal control

T he Illusions of Municipalities / 105

over the repartimiento lands, in practice the peasant traditions regulated ac cess. Local government attempts to administer repartimiento land produced revealing results. When the national government adopted a land tax to pay for the Texas war, municipalities had to assess the value of all rural proper ties (both private and communal) within their jurisdictions and collect a tax of three one-thousandths of the land’s value. Metztitlán tried to carry out a survey of who used the community land and failed completely. T he prefect, José M. de Ahedos, discovered that the municipality had no census of those using the property, and when he tried to interview the Indian farmers they simply denied possession of the land in order to avoid the tax.52

A dispute in one of the hamlets of Metztitlán, Tcmazola, demonstrates the conflicts between the town council and Indians over the rights to admin ister communal property. T he hamlet residents charged that the municipal ity had rented out part of their lands, “contrary to the laws that protect the rights of property that regulate communal lands.”53 The petitioners asserted that the council did not have any authority over repartimiento lands. The hamlet residents used the argument that communal land was owned by specific people in the commons, not the municipal government. The council and the district prefect did not dispute this logic; rather, they argued that the land in dispute had not been part of the traditional communal lands. The prefect insisted the parcel in dispute was unoccupied “vacant” land while the town officers replied that the petitioners had only recently started exploiting the land and were not the hereditary occupants of TemazoIa.54The case revolved around whether the petitioners were comuneros and whether the land was repartimiento. No one suggested that the council had the right to dispose of the land because it was communal. Both local government and popular prac tice considered traditional usage of land “hereditary” in ways usually associ ated with private property.

The administration of land demonstrates that indigenous communities clung to traditional practices independent of the new municipalities. At the same time peasant land use vigorously expanded at the expense of private estates, often with the assistance of local town councils. Republican institu tions did not upset traditional patterns of land use, and in some spectacular cases the town councils acted to extend the amount of land at the disposal of peasants. Within the tierras de repartimiento villagers managed their own affairs, and administrators encountered only frustration when they attempted to intervene.

A Nation of Villages / 106

The Structure of Discontent: Head Towns and Hamlets

The conflicts over the imposition of tax burdens, labor drafts and the distri bution of the benefits government services followed deep divisions in rural society. There were new stresses as well since state governments had left the prefects’ powers over the local municipalities ill-defined, resulting in fre quent tensions between prefects and the municipalities.55 In 1835, the estab lishment of a centralist republic created deeper divisions when it raised the minimum number of inhabitants required for a town to have an independent municipality. This action abolished dozens of town councils and eliminated one of the political benefits resulting from the institution of constitutional rule.

Challenges to the old colonial head towns sometimes accompanied the establishment of the municipalities. In 1822, the town of Huazalingo experi enced several disorders when a sujeto town, San Francisco, refused to recog nize the municipal government because of a new tax levied to fund salaries for the new municipal officers. T he council wrote the provincial legislature requesting guidance on whether the “six towns where there is only a regidor should recognize this municipality or govern themselves.” In a fine example of the ambiguities of the constitutional transition the legislature approved the taxes imposed by the town but postponed any decision on the relation between the new town council and the hamlets pending the state’s constitu tional convention.5f>During the decade of the twenties municipalities sought to define their powers over the indigenous populations of the subject towns, while the villagers disputed the privileges claimed by district and head town officials.

Political divisions at the district level help explain how villagers mobi lized. In Huazalingo, villagers complained about the treatment they received at the hands of the district officials in Yahualica and requested a change of jurisdiction to Huejutla, pointing out that former town was farther away and much less prosperous than HuejutIa.S7The district seat officials dismissed their pleas, charging that Francisco Ugalde, a landowner and justice of the peace in Huazalingo, had manipulated the Indians into initiating the petition because he wanted to increase the influence of Huejutla for his own reasons. The Ugalde family was related by marriage to the influential Andrade clan of Huejutla. Using the oft-repeated refrain, Yahualica dismissed the peti tion, stating that “the Indians are just machines mobilized by any upstart’s desire.” In spite of this view of Indians as mere political cattle led from one

T he Illusions o f Municipalities / 107

Í 7»

cause to the next, when Yahualica officials assembled them the villagers re fused to withdraw their petition. In a second petition, Huazalingo persisted in its request and added complaints that the town council was abusing the people promoting the change.5H

If the number of petitions and complaints to the state governments is any indication, the decades of the 1830s and 1840s saw heightened tensions be tween head town and hinterland. Indian hamlets of Huejutla— Vinasco, Xuchil, Tetlama, and Santa Cruz— petitioned the state government for tax relief on the grounds that they did not receive any benefits from the munici pal taxes they paid in 1843. They asserted that town officials diverted funds for their own use and did not send teachers to their communities.59The town council responded by presenting the state government with accounts of its expenditures indicating that while funds were not used for personal gain, they were spent to serve the municipal seat, principally on cabecera schools and on paving streets.60 That the municipality found funds for paving stones but not for hiring teachers in the hamlets reveals much about the council’s priorities. The town authorities dismissed the complaints as signs of Indian backwardness. Although the subprefect sought to make the dissidents look like country bumpkins, describing them as “enemies of the comfort and beautification of the town,”6' in fact, the dissidents were careful to couch their criticisms in modern liberal terms. The discourse of the peasants was not reactionary; rather, they claimed to be actively pursuing the liberal goal of education.

Subprefect Viniegra saw the petitions merely as the result of the machi nations of a justice of the peace, Antonio Núñez, rather than as the legiti mate expressions of the rural inhabitants.62Judge Núñez reportedly used the threat of a possible rebellion to give emphasis to his complaints/’3 Viniegra reminded his superiors that the insubordination was not only a local affair since the tax protest affected all revenue collection and that income from the national “direct contribution” declined along with the municipal taxes.

Another traditional burden that the head towns continued to impose was personal labor service, a tax levied exclusively on Indian villagers.64 The municipalities of the thirties and forties used this prerogative, formerly be longing to the colonial repúblicas, to augment municipal budgets. In Huejutla, for example, the council rebuilt the parish church in 1843 at almost no ex pense because “the Indians of the town seat did the work for free.”65 The labor draft was also an indication of how the non-Indian-dominated coun cils sought to keep certain elements of the old colonial order intact for their

A Nation of Villages / 108

own benefit. The flurry of official complaints in the early twenties bemoan ing the end of personal service gave way to Indian villagers protesting colonialism’s return in the thirties. Differences in taxes and labor demands based on ethnicity were extremely contentious and continued to be one of the issues that mobilized villagers.^Thc early nineteenth century did not see rural discontent over a precocious liberalism alienating village land; rather, the protest language of the villagers stressed a persistence of colonialism.

Efforts to limit the power and independence of local government accom panied the attempt to establish centralist rule. In 1835, the centralists re placed elected state governments with “departments” ruled by governors appointed from Mexico City. Centralist policy raised the minimum popula tion required for the formation of municipalities, thereby reducing the num ber of local elected councils. Effectively, the new administration eliminated all councils save those in the district seats where the prefects resided. The leading conservative intellectual and advocate of centralism, Lucas Alamán, charged that demagogues easily exploited municipalities to gain support of the common people/'7 Centralists hoped that by eliminating town councils they could limit the ability of radicals to organize the lower classes. Central ists believed that the municipalities were too “popular” in nature, noting that the social origins of the council members made them untrustworthy. Complaints about the “popular” characteristics of local officials were often a coded way of speaking about ethnicity. Fears about illiterate alcaldes holding the reins of judicial authority disturbed urban elites. Conservatives sought to restore ethnic boundaries that characterized colonial government, where Indian society would be semiautonomous but clearly subordinate to non- Indian administrators.

The Politics of Pronunciamientos: National Plans and Local Actors

During the late 1820s and early 1830s armed movements organized around a political “plan” or pronunciamiento became the most common method for changing presidents, ministers, or policies. Although the traditional histori ography has tended to see these events as barrack politicians competing for control of the national treasury, there is an emerging consensus that pronun ciamientos reflected more than unbridled personal ambition. They involved a political process that incorporated municipalities as actors and often began with civilian leadership/’* Others stress that the participants in the chaotic

The Illusions of Municipalities / 109

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politics of the period had serious objectives when they promoted these plans.6<> Movement organizers sent their “plans” to municipal councils throughout the republic, seeking support from “public opinion.” In these communiques, the leaders asked local politicians to “second” their political principles. This process made municipal intervention in national politics one of the salient characteristics of nineteenth-century Mexico. Pronunciamientos invited municipalities to speak for the nation.

In exchange for support, leaders of pronunciamientos often sought to address the immediate concerns of villages. In a letter written to explain Mexico’s complicated politics of disorder to the commander of the French invaders of the 1860s, Marshall Francois Bazaine, one observer noted that rebel leaders were always able “to encourage the illusions and simplicity of one or another municipality promising unrealizable rewards.”70 In the 1832 pronunciamiento, the movement’s leaders offered to fulfill one of the aspira tions of Pueblo Viejo’s merchants and open the port to international trade. Small-town Mexico became a source of support for these movements as poli ticians offered to address local demands with projects such as establishing new political jurisdictions (new municipalities, prefectures, or judgeships), tax relief, and, in the case of this region, the creation of a new state of the Huasteca. National leaders also sought to appeal to regional sentiment by supporting statehood for the Huasteca. Local politicians sometimes used national plans to attach statehood proposals. Movements for statehood were frequent, occurring in 1832,1837,1838,1852,2nd 1853, but they all failed.71

During the second decade of independent rule, Mexico entered a politi cal crisis that resulted in the abandonment of its first federal constitution and the creation of a centralist republic, that subsequently collapsed as war with the United States approached in 1846. In the twenty-five years that followed independence only one head of state finished his term in office (Guadalupe Victoria), and pronunciamientos even marred the end of his presi dency when radical politicians successfully challenged the 1828 electoral re sults.72 Political mobilizations outside of constitutional channels became the method of effecting change in the new republic. In this final section I con sider how local political actors mobilized followers around national political plans and local incentives to better understand how politics changed at the regional level during this era of upheavals.

Beginning in the late 1820s the ideological lines between radical federal ists and conservative centralists emerged and became the dividing lines asso ciated with local politics as well. To summarize national events quickly, in

A Nation of Villages / 110

1828 the hero of the insurgency, General Vicente Guerrero, carried out a successful uprising to ensure that he was elected to the presidency. Guerrero’s term was interrupted in 1830 by General Anastasio Bustamante’s conserva tive pronunciamiento.

Whereas Guerrero had been the champion of the radical federalists with strong ties to the humble segment of the population, the Bustamante gov ernment was markedly conservative in tone and presented itself as the voice of moderation against the mob. The tone of the new administration was also reflected in new electoral regulations that restricted suffrage.73 In the name of the restoration of order, the new administration began to remove state governors, effectively undermining the federalist pact. After two years of conservative administration, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, in asso ciation with prominent federalists such as Valentín Gómez Farias, organized the “Plan ofVeracruz” and successfully overthrew Bustamante’s administra tion. Once in office Santa Anna gradually moved to a centralist position, culminating in the suspension of the federal constitution in 1835.

The rapid succession of presidents in uniform and the ability of charac ters such as Santa Anna to switch sides from radical federalist to conserva tive centralist gave the impression that Mexican politics were personalist and driven by the ambition of military warlords. Although Mexicans resorted to violence and the military participated, all of the leaders acted in the name of republican institutions. The generals did not rule as military dictators, using the army in lieu of congresses and town councils. Generals were poli ticians, and civilians plotted coups along with them. Ideological issues were at stake, and the pronunciamientos forced Mexican politicians to choose be tween centralism and federalism. The coups and counterrebellions also served to define how the constitutional question related to issues that were not at first directly tied to the problem, such as voting rights, mass politics, and even anticlericalism. Finally, the divisions evident in the national events soon became burned into the political realities of small-town Mexico, including the Huasteca.

T he pronuniciamientos in the Huasteca became more violent and local society became polarized over national political questions during these years. In the events of 1828 and 1830 the towns of the region merely “seconded” the revolts in favor of Guerrero and Bustamante. This situation changed dra matically in 1832 when the “plan” against Bustamante’s administration turned into a genuine civil war. The port region of Pueblo Viejo and Tampico played an important role in the national movement, especially after General Esteban

The Illusions of Municipalities / h i

Moctezuma, an officer with federalist connections and a member of a landowning family from the Huasteca Potosina, joined the fray. One of the critical issues that General Moctezuma resurrected to win local support was the creation of a Huastccan state, which would also have increased autonomy as a “free and sovereign” participant in a federalist system.74 Evidently, the call for statehood appealed to the prefect of Huejutla, Ignacio Martinez, who had previously proclaimed his loyalty to Bustamante. He joined the rebel lion on 16 April 1832 and began to solicit other towns in the district. The quickest to “second” Huejutla were not Huejutla district towns but the in digenous towns of Tamazunchale, Xilitla, and Chalpulhuacán. All of these communities lay outside of Huejutla’s jurisdiction and joined over the oppo sition of their own prefects. Chalpulhuacán revolted only after its prefect, who resided in the mestizo town of Jacala, declared his loyalty to Bustamante. The bustamantista subprefect of Jacala wrote the state capital begging for assistance to put down the revolt since the Chalpulhuacán Indians were “people without civilization or politics” and would destroy Jacala if they were not stopped.75 These events suggest that the villagers made an alliance with Huejutla against their immediate superiors for reasons of local geography.

Town councils and prefects promoted the rebellions, raising the men and propagating the rebel message throughout the region. Several interesting geographic patterns emerged during these events that were to remain con stants throughout the 1830s. Huejutla and Yahualica tended to line up be hind the federalist movements while Metztitlán and Zacualtipán tended to remain loyal to Bustamante and the centralist politicians. During the subse quent revolts in the 1830s the story repeated itself; a political line divided the eastern region federalists from the west, with its centralist ties. Not sur prisingly, tensions between head town and subject towns also appeared in the rebellions, with subject towns often dissenting from the political alle giances of their head towns.

Personalities increasingly became attached to specific ideological positions. Towns challenged prefects with the aim of placing their own favored sons in the post. Huejutla administrators such as Cristóbal Andrade and Ignacio M artinez became the local advocates of popular federalism while José Gregorio Morales and José Licona of Zacualtipán became the representa tives of the centralists. Personal ambition motivated many of the partici pants in these events. Morales challenged the federalist administrators of Zacualtipán in 1832, probably because he coveted the post of subprefect. By confronting the local federalists, he became closely tied to the centralist cause.

A Nation of Villages / 112

The tradition of “turncoats” that is often ascribed to local politicians is not confirmed by these events. Officials had a hard time remaining neutral. The dilemmas faced by a local opportunist may be observed in the career of Félix Arenas, the subprefect of Zacualtipán in 1832. Arenas tried to play both sides in 1832, pledging his support to the government even as he maintained cor respondence with the federalist Ignacio Martinez.76 Arenas’s loyalty was largely determined by whoever had the most troops in the area. Distrusting his duplicity, the local bustamantistas ousted him, and during subsequent years Arenas was wholly in the federalist camp, later serving that party as a Huejutla prefect. In 1834, local federalists (including Arenas) also remained loyal to their faction even after their national allies in government had col lapsed. Furthermore, there was no “live and let live” attitude toward the defeated party. Subsequent to each pronunciamiento the victors often initi ated legal proceedings against their opponents to punish abuses they com mitted during the disorders.77 Choosing sides became imperative during these events, and the side one chose had serious consequences.

After the victorious pronunciamiento of 1832 a federalist government led by Santa Anna and Gómez Farias took office. Under the influence of Gómez Farias the administration undertook ambitious reforms to limit the power of the church and the army in Mexican society. The reforms provoked vehe ment opposition, and even before they were implemented Generals Gabriel Duran and Mariano Arista organized unsuccessful rebellions against them. They had better luck in 1834 when they issued the “Plan of Cuernavaca.” From the start the movement enjoyed the tacit support of Santa Anna, and there was little doubt of its success. To use a modern term for the event, it was an “auto-golpea political-military movement organized by the chief executive to get rid of a congress that was not to his liking. By this method Santa Anna aligned himself with the more conservative elements of Mexican society and repudiated the anticlerical and antimilitary reforms that had be gun in 1833.78

While on the national level the Cuernavaca Plan was a dispute between the executive and the radical congress, it had a state and municipal dimen sion. In the State of Mexico, Santa Anna encouraged the garrison of Toluca (the state capital) to overthrow the governor and close the state legislature because of its sympathies for the federal congress.79 The new state govern ment supported the Cuernavaca Plan and even sent Arenas, then serving as prefect of Huejutla, directions to “second the said plan in all of your district.”80 Santa Anna expected that once the political change had been imposed on

The Illusions of Municipalities / 113

the capital and the national congress, the small-town politicians would fol low suit. The Huasteca events demonstrated that in spite of the strong man’s control of the army, local politicians did not simply fall into line behind him. The assault on the federal system provoked bitter ideological conflicts in rural Mexico. Local administrators refused to follow orders and endorse the plan of Cuernavaca, creating a miniature civil war in the Huejutla and Metztitlán districts. It was a repeat of the 1832 war, with Huejutla holding out for federalism and Metztitlán-Zacualtipán supporting Santa Anna.

Local political actors adopted the ideological positions of the national movements as they pushed for control of local administrative offices. This was a prominent feature of the 1833 and 1834 movements in which local centralists linked their movement with Catholic religious orthodoxy. M o rales and Licona joined with parish priests in Huazalingo and Zacualtipán (Rafael Martínez de Aragón and José Ordaz) to carry out a cultural counter revolution, ordering that municipal councils begin each meeting with a mass and that the schools teach the Catholic catechism in each town they occu pied.'1 It was a kind of armed propaganda for the conservative cause, forcing town councils to pledge their loyalty to the Catholic Church. Prefect Arenas responded to their clerical fervor by stating that the State of Mexico had never attacked the church. It seems that the anticlerical policies (or at least the anticlerical reputation) of Gómez Farias generated resentment in some of the small towns. However, it is interesting to note that some of the munici pal declarations of support for the plan of Cuernavaca specified that they were in favor of annulling only the religious reforms and not changing the form of government.82 Even the councils that supported the plan did not adhere to the anti federalist tone of the movement and modified the language of their declarations to clarify that “public opinion” remained loyal to the federal system. The church became a major issue in politics as federalists increasingly saw priests as agents of centralism. Arenas, for example, ordered the arrest of several parish priests in an attempt to stem the tide of the Cuernavaca Plan.

The conflicts were not only ideological, since they soon became entangled in the Huasteca’s political geography. As in the events of 1832, towns lined up supporting either Huejutla in the east or Metztitlán in the west as the seat of the district prefect. Huejutla tried to suppress the subprefecture of Metztitlán under the federalists, and after the triumph of the Cuernavaca Plan the conservative government rewarded its supporters by raising the sta tus of the subprefect of Metztitlán to prefect (while Huejutla was demoted

A Nation o f Villages / 114

to a subprefecture).81 Even the local parish priests divided along geographi cal lines, with the priests of Zacualtipán, Xochiacoatlán, and Huazalingo denouncing the parish priest of Huejutla as an “enemy of order” (i.c., as a supporter of the Gómez Farias government). Huejutla residents succeeded in getting the bishop of Mexico to arrest Martínez de Aragón and Jose Ordaz in September 1834 on charges of abuses that stemmed from their participa tion in the pronunciamiento.84

Control of town councils became the objective of the successive plans. Leaders of the movements overturned the councils, as in 1834 when Mo rales and Licona reinstalled the municipal officers from the 1832 Bustamante period.83 As Morales’s armed followers marched through the Huasteca vil lages, he convened community meetings to “second” their movement. The latter case also points to the limits of interpreting the popular will on the basis of municipal declarations since witnesses later denounced the coerced nature of the “votes” that Morales sponsored.86 Arenas, Morales’s federalist opponent, ordered the arrest of the councils of Yahualica and Xochiatipán when they joined the Cuernavaca Plan in 1834. Sometimes towns vacillated according to which way the wind was blowing or which armed mob was clos est. Such seems to have been the attitude of Molango during 1832 when the town switched sides in response to the arrival of competing armed factions.87 Thus, the political turmoil of the period was not an abstraction to Huastecan villagers: pronunciamiento had become the means of rearranging regional political relations.

Pedro Carrion, the prefect who came to power as a result of the plan of Cuernavaca, dismissed popular participation in the conflicts. He believed that the people adhered only “to the personages and not the causes.”88This common description of nineteenth-century politics obscures the issues of power that were often described in personalist terms. T he question of where a prefecture or a municipality has its seat may seem an insignificant issue to modern observers, but local governments controlled key economic resources at the center of peasant life. Access to courts, assuring a favorable hearing in civil disputes, and guaranteeing that a friendly patron continued guiding the interests of one’s home town seem to have come into villagers’ calculations during the upheavals of the thirties. Competing factions made frequent prom ises in an effort to build coalitions strong enough to overcome their oppo nents. Pronunciamientos were by no means mass movements, but they in troduced villagers to the process of armed politics and also elevated the role of local government in the political voice of the nation.

The Illusions of Municipalities / 115

The national politics of violence became part of the political memory of the towns. Villagers remembered the political affiliations of the local leader ship and used that knowledge to their advantage. In 1838, when villagers in Ilmatlán became embroiled in a dispute over taxes with the alcalde of Chicontepec, Juan Maria Meriotegui, they sought to win the sympathy of the conservative governor by accusing Meriotegui of having been a radical federalist for his role in the 1832 revolt against the Bustamante government.89 Villagers learned the value of political allegiances and that political leverage could be won by participating in national politics.

Pronunciamientos sought the support of municipal governments because they gave them political legitimacy. Town councils became the unofficial or gans of “public opinion” from the earliest days of the War of Independence. Hispanic legal tradition saw town councils as the original organs of popular sovereignty, so it was quite natural for politicians to appeal to the councils when they sought to rewrite the social contract. Timothy Anna has noted that the Federal Republic constructed its sovereignty as a series of concen tric circles with the pueblos at the center.90 When town councils spoke in “the name of the patria”91 during a pronunciamiento, it was not hyperbole. The councils claimed the constitutive role that existed in Hispanic law and Mexican political practice. During the 1830s the popularization of “public opinion” occurred. Indigenous villagers found that they, too, could express their desires in the context of national political movements by influencing municipal institutions they knew intimately. The fact that pronunciamientos relied on town councils to propagate their movements also explains why poli ticians concerned about social disorder sought to limit the number of mu nicipalities. By supporting revolts, town councils assumed powers similar to those of a constituent assembly: they claimed the right to construct the state, not just administer its dictates.

Pronunciamientos gave peasants and rancheros ample evidence of inter nal elite discord. Contending groups of merchants and landowners struggled for control of political offices. As regional political actors formed alliances, national political divisions came to have concrete and personal meanings in the countryside. On one level, elite conflict had its origins in the fragmented nature of the colonial elite. Stevens suggests that royal policy “promoted and controlled social discord to maintain royal power,” which in turn im peded the formation of a united ruling class.92 But in more immediate terms divisions also thrived in the lowlands because the elite was economically weak and geographically diffuse. The limitations of the men at the pinnacle of

A Nation of Villages / 116

lowland society were exacerbated because they did not defer to any one eco nomic “center.” Men of means lived on their estates or in the small towns of the region (none of which exceeded ten thousand inhabitants), and as a re sult few saw any reason to cede authority to a regional center.93 Unlike the wealthy elite that dominated the sugar estates of Morelos, landowners in the Huasteca were slow to form a united front to press their own interests.

The failure of the local elite to create a state to represent their region is perplexing, raising questions about how the inhabitants thought about poli tics and identity. While it was easy to mobilize around municipal politics and even district-level political ties, Huasteca-wide movements were rare. It is revealing that perhaps the only regionwide movement to emerge during the early republic was the “caste war” that spread across the state boundaries of Veracruz, Puebla, Mexico, and San Luis Potosí. Even here, as we shall sec, the movement followed different rhythms in different parts of the Huasteca. The landlords and merchants failed to sustain a statehood movement, and no populist caudillo emerged to lead one from below. The creation of the State of Guerrero, described by Peter Guardino, demonstrates that a popu list alternative of state formation was not impossible.94 Nor can we say that a Huastccan caudillo (of any political persuasion) emerged to impose his will over the entire region. Thus, while different groups pushed for the forma tion of a new state or lobbied for increased commercial opportunities, intraelitc competition caused the projects to fail. In spite of their close kinship ties and economic similarities, the great landlords failed to coalesce around a com mon project or even agree to a common caudillo.95

One element that may have inhibited caudillo development was the ab sence of a preexisting provincial government. As Charles Walker has pointed out, the conservative caudillo Agustín Gamarra of Cuzco relied not only on the historic memory of Cuzco’s regional status, but also skillfully used the preexisting machinery of the state to solidify his authority and promote a regional project.% Another model of caudillo creation, in which a politician cultivates a following among the masses, also failed to materialize.

Conclusions

The War of Independence ended in a stalemate that granted concessions to the insurgents but left the power of the local royalists intact. The constitu tionalism that the Huastecos embraced did not usher in an era of direct popu lar rule. Furthermore, as Guardino has argued, the emergence of centralism

The Illusions of Municipalities / 117

saw a systematic effort to limit the effects of a broad franchise and the prolif eration of town councils.97 Members of the colonial merchant and landown ing class generally controlled the most important offices, especially those of prefect (or jefe politico).

In spite of the vitality of the local ruling class, the new order cannot be dismissed as merely neocolonial domination. Villagers survived and success fully frustrated the centralist project utilizing the new tools of republican citizenship and the traditional mechanisms of peasant resistance. These may be observed in the villagers’ ability to retain informal communal organiza tions in the shadow of the new constitutional order, what Hernández Chávez called the persistence of “usos y costumbres.” The repúblicas de indios did not disappear; rather, they moved to the hinterlands of the municipalities where peasant agricultural production followed customary patterns. “Ex república” officials acted as spokesmen to defend the interest of the village. It was true, as the minister of relations Bocanegra noted in 1829, that indig enous villagers did not reap many benefits from the end of colonial rule. But Bocanegra was not aware that the villagers were capable of defending them selves from the worst effects of the end of colonial paternalism.

Although indigenous actors were bolstered by village traditions, they did not turn their back on the hard-won gains of the insurgency. The political opening under constitutional rule promised villagers new opportunities for political expression, and they infused their protests with the language of citizenship. The indigenous people who signed the complaints using titles of principal or elder (viejos) framed their critique in terms of their rights as citizens to consent to taxation. This is a process that becomes even more evident in the regionwidc popular uprisings of the 1830s and 1840s.

Perhaps one of the most critical shifts from the colonial period was the ease with which all political actors used violence after 1810. The shift in village politics was not just about discourse, it was also about the ability to resort to force. Rioters of the eighteenth century sought ways to downplay their acts of violent defiance. Such subterfuge was no longer necessary after independence.

Independence created a new environment in which regional and village political disputes became resolutely tied to national politics. The dizzying history of pronunciamiento and counter-pronunciamiento demonstrates that elite political divisions penetrated the fabric of local society. Factionalism offered new avenues for political influence even when centralists sought to close off formal channels for voicing popular opinion. The militarized politics

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of the pronunciamiento gave villagers opportunities to wield informal influence as the divisions within the regional elite created a situation where politicians sought out supporters in the hinterland hamlets. The failure of the would-be ruling elite to agree about power sharing or even about the creation of a state of the Huasteca points to a severe limitation to neocolonial domination. There was no shortage of potential patrons for political dissi dents in the villages of the Huasteca. Factionalism made the use of violence and new political discourse a natural addition to the political repertoire of village rebels. In the next two chapters I will explore the effort to create regionwide political movements from below and will show how Huasteca peasants used the lessons of the disorderly events of the 1830s to their own advantage.

The Illusions of Municipalities / 119

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

8 September 1829, BCEM, 1829/330/54/8-8r. The resolution ordered primary schools to be established in every municipality, without providing specific funds to support the schools, a classic solution oiTcrcd by liberals and radicals to the “Indian problem” during the period.

3. The commander of the civic militia of Huejutla reported that his militiamen willingly marched against the Spaniards in Tampico without a single desertion (Jose Maria Arenas, 4 November 1829, BCEM, 1829/355/55/5-6).

4. Significantly the Jefe Politico Antonio Casados reported that the civic militia of the pueblos of the district of Panuco immediately mobilized and repulsed the Spaniards’ attempt to move inland (8 August 1829, AGN-G, leg. 99, exp. 1, fol. 1).

5. This is also the problem at the center of Mark Thumcr’s study of Andean societies in nineteenth-century Peru, F ro m T w o R epublics to O ne D iv id e d : C o n tra d ictio n s o f P o stcolonial N a tio n m a k m g in A n d e a n P eru (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 16-17 and passim.

6. In many ways Iturbidc’s independence movement reproduced on a eolonywide scale the ambiguities of the armed truce that ended the war. Iturbidc made concessions not only to insurgents but also to those attached to the liberal Constitution of Cádiz (Anna, Forging M exico , 68-82; Ortiz Escamilla, G u e rra y gobierno, 147, 151, 154).

7. Examples of this formulation may be found in Von Mentz, Pueblos de indios, 56; Manuel Ferrer Muñoz, “Pueblos indígenas en Mexico en cl siglo XIX: La igualdad jurídica, ¿Eficaz sustituto del tutclajc tradicional?” in L o s pueblos indios y e l p a rtta g u a s de la independencia de A léxico, ed. Manuel Ferrer Muñoz (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1999), 101-2; or Rina Ortiz Peralta, “Inexistentes por decreto: Disposiciones legislativas sobre los pueblos de indios en el siglo XIX. El caso de Hidalgo,” in Indio, nación y c o m u n id a d en el M é x ic o d e l siglo X I X , Antonio Escobar Ohmstede, ed. (Mexico City: C.I.E.S.A.S, 1994), 160- 68.

8. Scott, D o m in a tio n a n d Resistance, 90-96. Scott also points out that the subaltern classes often had a better understanding of the ruling ideology than the dominant class had of popu lar ideologies.

9. An example of the reevaluation of pronunciamientos may be found in Josefina Zoraida Vázquez, “Political Plans and Collaboration between Civilians and the Military, 1821-1846,” B u lle tin o f L a t i n A m e r ic a n R esearch 15:1 (1996): 19-38. Sec Annino, “Cádiz y la revolución territorial,” 178, where he points out that the new town councils made military caudillos possible.

10. Annino, “Cádiz y la revolución territorial,” 209-to. Article 3 to of the Spanish Consti tution established councils in towns with a population of one thousand “souls” or more.

11. AGN-A, vol. 183, exp. 41. The subdelégate Femando de la Vega supported the cre ation of town councils in sujeto communities in the district, hoping to use them as an admin istrative tool; see “acta de elección Maquixtcpetla, 17 de septiembre de 1813.”

12. “Decreto número 43 de 17 de marzo de 1825 Creación de Ayuntamientos,” in C L D V ; Article 159 of the constitución política del Estado de México (1827), in C onstituciones d e l E s ta d o de M é x i c o 1 8 2 7 , 1 8 6 1 , 1 8 7 0 , 1 9 1 7 , ed. Mario Colin (Mexico City: Biblioteca Enciclopédica del Estado de México, 1974), 42.

13. Guy P. C. Thomson, “Pueblos de Indios and Pueblos de Ciudadanos. Constitutional Bilingualism in 19th Century Mexico.” Paper presented to the Workshop on Political Culture and Ideology in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Mexico, St. Anthony’s College, Oxford,

N o t e s to P a g e s 9 4 - 9 7 / 2 0 2

2 May 1997, 12. Scott also describes the “duality” of popular political identities in D o m in a tio n a n d Resistance, 109. Annino’s description of nineteenth-century syncretism is also appro priate.

14. On the plan de Iguala and the role of municipalities, see Anna, F orging M e xico , 81-83, 88-8g.

15. See Hernández Chávez, L a tra d ició n republicana, 33-38; Antonio Escobar Ohmstedc, “La conformación y las luchas por el poder en las Huastecas, 1821-53,” S ecu e n cia 36 (nueva época) (1996), 11-14; aRd by same author, “Del gobierno indígena al Ayuntamiento constitucional en las Huastecas hidalgucnsc y vcracruzana, 1780-1853,” M S / E M 12:1 (win ter 1996): 13-17. Annino describes these divergent points of view as a conflict between “pes simist” and “optimist” visions of the postindepcndcncc landscape (Antonio Annino, “Nuevas perspectivas para una vieja pregunta,” in E l p rim e r liberalism o m exicano, 1 8 0 8 1855, Maricel Fonseca, coordinadora (México City: INAH, 1995] 46-51).

16. See, for example, the petition signed by “los jueces de paz de las visitas y rancherías de la comprensión de esta cabecera, el gobernador de indígenas de la misma por si y a nombre del común,” Huazalingo, 20 February 1839, BCEM, 1842/103/118/4.

17. Rugeley, Y u c a ta n ’s M a y a P ea sa n try, 94-95, finds similar processes in the Yucatán. 18. AJH, 1836 “Petition of Juan Argúmedo en representación del común de naturales de

Santa Ursula Huitzilingo [sic].” Individuals with the titles of gobernador, pasados, or principales often signed these documents. The “jueces de paz, viejos y demás prinicpalcs. . . ” initiated a petition from the sujetos of Huazalingo in 1840; see petition 30 April 1840, BCEM, 1842/91/118/ 1 -5 V , 6-8v, io -itv .

19. Petition of “los jueces de paz y viejos con los demás naturales de . . . Huazalingo,” 4 April 1840, BCEM, 1842/91/118/6. Thomson also finds that sujeto communities retained the political apparatus of Indian control in the mountains of Puebla (Guy P. C. Thomson, “Agrarian Conflict in the Municipality of Cuetzalán [Sierra de Puebla]: The Rise and Fall of ‘Pala’ Agustín Dicguillo, 1861-1894,” H A H R 71, no. 2 [May 1991]: 216-17).

20. Petition of “los jueces de paz y viejos con los demás naturales,” Huazalingo,” 30 April 1840, BCEM, 1842/103/118/fol. 6v. For more examples of colonial titles surviving after independence, sec, “Poder del común de indígenas de San Felipe,” 20 May 1835, AJH, 1835; and “Poder que otorgan los indígenas y el juez sclador de San Miguel, Antonio de San Juan . . . a favor de Don José Maria Avila,” 30 September 1853, AJH, 1853, fols. 15-16.

21. Powell, for example, once suggested that as late as 1856 Indian villagers were not aware of the fact that Mexico had become independent (T. G. Powell, “Los liberales, cl campesinado indígena y los problemas agrarios durante la Reforma,” H isto ria M e x ic a n a 24, no. i (1972]: 658)!

22. Guy P. C. Thomson and David G. LaFrancc, P a trio tism , P olitics, a n d P o p u la r L ib e ra l ism in N in e te e n th - C e n tu r y M e x ic o : J u a n F rancisco L u c a s a n d th e P uebla S ie r r a (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1999), 11-13, describes the continued use of labor drafts in the early republican period, Rugeley, Y u c a ta n 's M a y a P e a sa n try , 68.

23. Petition against the alcalde primero of Huazalingo, 7 November 1820, BCEM, 1820/ 60/2/7. The constitutional article 338 specified that the legislative branch must approve all contributions. The petitioners thus argued that “customary” taxes were not legitimate be cause they had not been approved. Gómez Escalante suspended Alarcon from his post after

N o t e s t o P a g e s 9 8 - 1 0 0 / 2 0 3

the provincial legislature investigated. The signatories included the regidores of San Juan, Tlamamala, Santo Tomás, and San Pedro Huazalingo.

24. Rugeley, Y u c a ta n 's M a y a P ea sa n try, 47-48. 25. Hernández Chavez, L a tra d ició n republicana, 38; also seen in Rugeley, Y u c a ta n 's M a y a

P ea sa n try, 39. 26. Petition “Los jueces de paz de visitas,” Yahualica, 20 February 1839, BCEM, 1842/

103/118/4. The tax was similar to the real de comunidad of the colonial period, a half-real head tax.

27. The indigenous leaders used the recent order by the state Junta de Instrucción Pública that schools be established “wherever they are judged necessary” (BCEM, 1842/103/1 tSA^v).

28. The villagers described themselves as “indigenous justices of the peace and other principales.” They also protested the fines and imprisonment suffered by villagers who had failed to pay the tax (“Petition to the Junta departamental from los jueces de paz indígenas y demás principales de los pueblos de Husalingo [sic] sujetos a .. .Yahualica,” n.d.Thc prefect’s note in margin is dated 3 May 1840, BCEM 1842/91/118/1).

29. Petition to the Junta departamental from “los jueces de paz indígenas y demás principales de los pueblos de Huazalingo sujetos a . . . Yahualica,” n.d. BCEM, 1842/91/118/3.

30. The term used—“Negros bozales”— was a colonial term used to refer to non-Chris tian slaves recently brought from Africa. Again the petitioners use the language of slavery to indict the republican regime (See petition BCEM, 1842/91/118/3). Allegedly, the secretary of the council also slighted the indígenas because he “refused to give paper to Indians to write our children while he gives it to the gente de razón.”

31. From the same petition cited above, BCEM, 1842/91/118/7v. 32. Prefect ofMetztitlán, Manuel Maria Carmona, 20 January 1841, AHEM, 075.1/149/

17/fol. 20. Although an earlier report called the petition “justified,” Carmona described del Rosal as “the only mover behind the continuous complaints of the natives of Huazalingo” (8 January 1841, fol. 17V).

33. Meyer, P roblem as campesinos, 29-33; Reina, R ebeliones, 16. 34. Tutino, F ro m In su rre ctio n to R e v o lu tio n , 229-38. Although this term is appropriate for

the more densely populated Huasteca Hidalgucnsc, in Papantla, as Kouri points out, there had been no “compression” in the eighteenth century. Even in the densely populated regions, Escobar found that the pueblos were very effective in defending their territory (“Los pueblos indios,” 58-59).

35. Kouri, B usiness o f th e L a n d , 121-24, 132-33, and passim. 36. “Venta de la Hacienda de Buena Vista, November 7,1826 a los ciudadanos dcTemapache

(esto es a los que se titulaban naturales de dicho pueblo),” Tcmapache, ACAM, cxp. 341, fols. 49 5<>-

37. “Informe del registro de Propiedad sobre el predeio ‘El Nopal,’” ACAM, cxp. 1235; and “Informe correspondiente al poblado de Poza Azul, Ixcatepcc,” 30 July 1932, ACAM, 1188-A.

38. Andres Vega, 14 December 1879, alcalde de Coxquihui to Jefe político de Papantla, AGEV, Gobernación, “Comaltcco,” fol. 50.

39. AGEV, ACAM, vol. 50, fol. 21, “Misantla”; and vol. 619, “Tuxpan.” 40. Victoria’s heirs later sold the huge estates to the municipality of Tuxpan (Compra de

Notes to Pages 100-103 /204

las haciendas Asunción y Santiago de la Pena," Tuxpan, ACAM, cxp. 619; Filiberta Gómez, T u x p a ti: C o m e tid o y P oder en e l S ig lo X I X (Jalapa: IVEC, 1999], 36-41, 79-96).

41. In this respect Victoria’s experience followed that of another insurgent-turned-presi- dent, Vicente Guerrero, who also sought to transform his political fortune into an economic one. Significantly, whereas Victoria invested in the underdeveloped lowlands, Guerrero grew frustrated with his land investments in the heavily populated and commercialized area of Chaleo in the Valley of Mexico (John Tutino, “Haciendas and Social Relations in Mexico: The Chaleo Region in the Era of Independence,” H A H R , 55, no. 3 [1975]: 512-13).

42. Kouri, “Business of the Land,” 111-14. 43. Escritura de Venta de los terrenos de Piedra Grande otorgada por los Señores Acosta a

favor del General D. Guadalupe Victoria. ♦. Santa María Asunción Misantla, 19 May 1827, in AGEV, Comisión Local Agraria, Expediente Misantla, No. 50, fol. 55. Victoria’s intermedi ary for the sale was none other than Lt. Col. Miguel Mendez, Misantla’s old insurgent leader. Typical of the lowland latifundia, the owners declared that they did not know the amount of the land but that the borders were known.

44. Minutes of the Cabildo extraordinario, Misantla, 1 April 1845, AGEV, Comisión Lo cal Agraria, Expediente Misantla, No. 50, fol. 20.

45. It is unclear from the documents who the “invaders” were or if members of the coun cil had also participated in using Piedra Grande. In their justification the council members mentioned that a substantial number of misantccos grew vanilla on the land (Ibid., fol. 22).

46. ACAM, exp. 42. Even more surprising is that during the porfiriato the owners finally settled with the “invaders,” granting them clear possession of a large portion of the land in dispute.

47. Sec Kouri’s description of the haciendas in the Papantla district, “Business of the Land,” 131-34 and passim. Villagers were not always successful. In Chiconamcl indigenous villagers lost a lawsuit against the owners of hacienda of Chintepcc after a long court case in 1835 (AJH, Año 1835, “Sobre Pagos de Renta,” 8 January 1835).

48. Powell, “Los liberales, el campesinado,” 655-56, gives a concise description of these land categories. E jidos, or common pastures for grazing, do not seem to have been important in the Huasteca.

49. For an example of such complaints sec. Petition “indígenas y vecinos dc las congregaciones del municipio de Papantla” to Gov. Teodoro Dehesa, Papantla, 13 July 1895, AGEV, Gobernación y Justicia, Tierras, Caja General 2414, Exp. titled “Comisión Ing. división de terrenos 1895-1905.”

50. Orden del 21 dc Agosto dc 1824, en CLDV, 1:104; and decreto número 37 de 2 dc diciembre dc 1826, CLDV, 1:444-49

51. Sec the rental contracts from 1835-36; the properties rented for ten to twenty pesos a year. For more examples from other towns sec the rent contracts for Yahualica, AJH, legajo 1852 fol. 1; Pahuatlán, AJH, Arrendamiento de los terrenos de común de Pahuatlán a favor dc Ramón Reyes, Año 1835 fols. 8-9; “Arbitros del muncipio dc Zacualtipán,” BCEM, 1842/ 386/123/t-42;Von Mcntz, Pueblos de indios, 66.

5 2 . Prefect José M. dc Ahedos, Mcztitlán, Oct. 21, 1 8 3 7 , BCEM 1 8 4 2 / 9 3 / 1 1 8 / 3 , 3V, 9 . Another problem for tax collectors was that even the larger landholders divided them into multiple small plots scattered throughout the property.

Notes to Pages 104-106 / 205

53- BCEM, 1842/97/118/5. 54. The municipality stated that five of the sixteen petitioners were not residents of

Tcmazola, and that one of them was a schoolboy (Ibid., tov). 55. Sec Ramona Falcon’s exploration of this issue in “Force and the Search for Consent:

The Role of the Jefaturas Políticas of Coahuila in National State Formation,” in E v e r y d a y F orm s o f S t a t e F o rm a tio n : R e v o lu tio n a n d th e N e g o tia tio n o f R u le in M o d e r n M e xico , cd. Daniel Nugent and Gilbert Joseph (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994), 119. In the State of Mexico the prefects had the legal authority to intervene in municipal land and tax affairs (Ortiz Peralta, “Inexistentes,” 164). The legal codes in Veracruz gave these officers broad powers of “supervision” over local government (sec “Ley para la organización, policía y gobierno interior del estado,” in CLDV, 1:281-85).

56. “Consulta del Ayuntamiento de Huazalingo a la diputación,” BCEM, 1822/66/8/2. The 1822 events in San Francisco, a center of dissidcncc in the eighteenth century, had their origin in 1819, when San Franciscanos participated in a tumult against the head town.

57. Letter ofTrinidad Rodriguez to the subprefect of Hucjutla,2t February i838,Yahualica, BCEM, 1838/74/89/1-23.

58. Petition “Los jueces de paz y viejos con los demás naturales de los cinco pueblos de Huazalingo . . . , ” 30 April 1840, BCEM, 1842/91/118/fols. 6-6v.

59. Agustín Viniegra, subprefect of Hucjutla, 7 November 1843, BCEM, 1843/255/128/ f-5-

60. “Aviso ai público,” 5 July 1843, BCEM, r843/191/127/f. 17-18V. 61. Agustín Viniegra, Subprefect of Hucjutla, iojuly 1843, BCEM, 1843/191/ 127/3V. 62. Ibid., fol. 6. 63. Francisco Sánchez, Hucjutla, 6 July 1843, BCEM, 1843/191/127/19. The first jus

tice of the peace of Hucjutla denied that “public tranquillity had been disturbed . . . in spite of the efTorts of said gentlemen.” Agustín Viniegra wrote that Judge Núñez “is himself the one who is disrupting the peace with his advice to the residents of Santa Cruz, Nexpan, Tetlama andVinazco that they not pay the municipal tax” (Viniegra Subprefect of Hucjutla, to July 1843, BCEM, 1843/191/127/2V). Viniegra claimed to have seen letters the judge had sent to the other visita towns asking for support in the lawsuit.

64. Schrycr, E th n ic ity a n d Class, 85-86. Note the extensive use of labor demands during the nineteenth century. Thomson and LaFrancc, P a tr io tism , P o litics a n d P o p u la r L ib era lism , 12-13, also notes that demands against labor service mobilized Indian militants in the 1850s and 1860s.

65. Francisco Sánchez, Huejutla, 6 July 1843, BCEM, 1843/191/127/18V. 66. Thomson and LaFrance, P a trio tism , P olitics a n d P o p u la r L ib era lism , 229; when the

radical liberal Nahua leader in Puebla, Juan Francisco Lucas, served as jefe politico, the non- Indian residents of Zautla protested bitterly because he made them pay a tax previously levied only on Indians.

67. Ibid. Thomson and LaFrancc describe the conservative project created by Alamán to eliminate the destabilizing force of municipal politics. See also Guardino, P easants, Politics, 152-53, 160-61, and passim.

68. Barbara Tenenbaum, ‘“They WentThataway’: The Evolution of the Pronunciamiento, 1821-1856,” in P a tte r n s o f C o n ten tio n in M e x ic a n H is to r y , cd. Jaime Rodriguez O. (Scholarly

Notes to Pages 106-109 / 206

Resources Inc, Wilmington: 1992), 194; Vázquez, “Political Plans and Collaboration,” 19- 38; Anna, Forging M e xico , 248; Annino, “Cádiz y la revolución,” 178. See also Guardino, who in P easants, P olitics, 159, comments on the peasant use of pronunciamientos. Di Telia, in N a t io n a l P o p u la r P olitics, has systematically described the role of “popular mobilizes,” 73- 104, 116-20, 206-12.

69. Fowler, M e x ic o in th e A g e o f Proposals, 2 -4; and Stevens, O rigins o f In s ta b ility , 28-29. 70. Letter from Constantini to Bazainc, in D o c u m e n to s p a r a la h istoria de M é x ic o : L a

intervención fra n c esa en M é x ic o según e l archivo del M a risc a l B a za tn e, cd. Genaro García (Mexico City: Librería de la Viuda de Ch. Bouret, 1906), 18:112. When theTampico garrison revolted in 1832, for example, it used printing presses to produce multiple copies of the town’s politi cal program and then sent them out to neighboring communities. Sec AHEM, 048.4/117/ 12/11, 12,13, 69; for a response to one of these invitations to revolt, sec Ayuntamiento de Tulancingo, 24 April 1832, AHEM, 09i,6/i83/3/27V.

71. Declaration of town council of Hucjutla, iojuly 1823, AGN-H, vol. 578B, exp. 13, fol. 249; Andrade, isM ay 1826, BCEM, 1826/215/30/1. The efforts often failed owing to divi sions within the regional political elite. Antonio Escobar Ohmstede, “Las Huastecas para los huastecos. Los intentos para conformar un estado huasteco durante la primera mitad del siglo XIX,” Vetas 2, no. 4 (enero-abril 2000): 131-33, discusses several of the statehood efforts.

72. For a succinct discussion of the dizzying number of pronunciamientos of the period, see Fowler, M e x ic o in th e A g e o f P roposals, 17-32.

73. Anna, Forging M exico, 230-31; Costcloe, C e n tra l Republic, 38-39. On suffrage sec Ricard Warren, V a g ra n ts a n d C itize n s: P olitics a n d the M a sses in M e x ic o C i ty f r o m C o lo n y to R epublic (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2001) 102-3.

74. Trcns, H isto ria de V eracruz, 5:130. See AHEM, 48.4/117/12/49 for report on ad vances of rebellion in Veracruz.

75. Simultaneously, there were supporting declarations from Xilitla and Tamazunchalc Indian towns in San Luis Potosí that bordered Hucjutla (Mariano Reyna,Tula, 26 April 1832, AHEM, 091.6/183/3/39,40-41).

76. According to Licona, then the alcalde primero of Zacualtipán, “his intention was to win regardless of the revolution’s outcome.” The state government distrusted Arenas enough to order his replacement with José Ruis Trejo (23 May 1832, Toluca, AHEM, 091.6/183/3/151).

77. Losers could also use lawsuits, as seen in the complaints filed by the federalist leaders of Hucjutla against the centralist priest of Huazalingo, Martínez de Aragón.

78. Michael P. Costcloe, L a P rim era R ep ú b lica F ed era l de M é x ic o ( 1 8 2 4 - 1 8 3 5 ) (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1975), 428-33; Anna, F orging M e xico , 259.

79. On the events in Toluca, Charles F. McCunc Jr., E l E stado d e M é x ic o y la fe d e ra c ió n m exica n a , 1823 3 5 (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1978), 176-77.

80. Unsigned draft oflcttcr to prefect of Huejutla, 7 June 1834, AHEM, 091.2/178/7/172. 81. Trinidad Ballato, juez de paz de Huautla, informe dc 22 February 1838. On the events

associated with the plan dc Cuernavaca of 1834, see AHEM, 091.2/178/4/5-162, which con tains extensive reports from the different municipalities of the region. Sec also BCEM, 1842/ 83/118, fol. 5. The parish vicar of Huazalingo, Martínez de Aragón, became one of the cen tral leaders of the conservative movements; federalists later accused him of looting Huautla during the 1834 events.

Notes to Pages 1 1 0-114/ 207

8z. See, for example, the declaration ofMolango, iQjune 1834, AHEM, 091.6/178/4/37. 83. On the elimination of Mctztitlán’s subprefecture, see AHEM, 091.2/178/4/1-2,5-6.

On the switch to Mctztitlan, see the order of J. M. Coral, Toluca, 10 September 1834, BCEM, 1834/206/79/1. The order cryptically mentioned that the motive for the change was the “delicate situation” concerning “public tranquility.” Naturally, the Hucjutlcños did not ac cept the change without a fight. On 1 April 1835 the town council granted a power of attorney to Francisco González to “promote the return of the district capital to Hucjutla” (AJH, libro de 1835).

84. The provisorato metropolitano ordered the arrest and transfer to Mexico City of Martinez de Aragón and Ordaz on 9 August (Félix Osorcs, AHEM, 091.2/178/4/133). This in spite of letters from the new prefect, Pedro Carrion, documenting the good behavior of Jose Ordaz (Carrion to the secretario de relaciones del estado de México, Zacualtipán, 30 August 1834, fols. 143-44). Carrión delayed the arrests until Toluca sent a letter supporting their detention in Scptcmbcr(f. 149 and fols. 151-52). See also the arrest order (Viniergra, 14 September 1834 *n AJH, libro de 1834); it accused Martinez de Aragón of “leading an armed movement” and also of unspecified “excesses” against his parishioners.

85. Arenas, 13 June 1834, AHEM, 091.2/178/4/11. Locals were following precedents set at the national level. Warren, V agrants a n d C itiz e n s , 114-15, describes how Gómez Farias in 1833 purged the Mexico City town council and summoned the 1829 council members to replace those elected under Bustamcntc.

86. Trinidad Ballato, juez de paz de Huautla, to prefect of Hucjutla, 22 Feb. 1838, de scribes abuses committed by Morales when he occupied Huautla in 1834, especially the arbi trary arrest of the town council and the looting of the local treasury (BCEM, 1842/83/118/ 4-6; Arenas, 3 July 1834, AHEM, 091.2/178/4/14-15).

8 7 . AHEM, 9 1 . 6 / 1 8 3 / 1 8 4 V - 5 subprefect of Mctztitlan, Borromco to governor, 2 4 May 1 8 3 2 . Informe al congreso del estado d e México, 19 April 1 8 3 2 , AHEM, fol. 1 8 7 .

88. Carrión to secretary of relations, 23 August 1834, AHEM, 091.2/178/141-42. 89. “Varios indígenas de la feligresía de Santiago Ilmatlán,” 8 May 1837, AJP, legajo de

1 8 3 7 -

90. For a discussion of the role ayuntamientos in Mexican political thought see, Villoro, E l proceso ideológico; Anna, Forging M e xico , 212.

91. “Oficio dirijido por cl Ylustrc Ayuntamiento de esta ciudad al Sr. D. Esteban Moctezuma.” G a c eta de Tam pteo, 17 March 1832, BCEM, 1832/76/68/3.

92. Stevens, O rigins o f In s ta b ility , 115. 93. Lomnitz Adler, E x its f r o m th e L a b y r in th , gives an excellent description of what he calls

the “ranchero culture” of Huastccan landlords. 94. Guardino, P easants, P olitics, chapter 5, on the formation of Guerrero. 95. Ironically, the Huasteca today is often associated with caudillos in the popular press

largely because during the postrevolutionary period two charismatic (albeit disreputable) caudillos, Saturnino Ccdillo and Gonzalo N. Santos, lorded over a generous portion of the Huasteca. See Dudley Ankerson, A g r a r ia n IVarlord: S a tu r n in o C edillo a n d th e M e x ic a n R e v o lu tio n in S a n L u is P o to sí (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1984); Gonzalo N. Santos, M e m o ria s (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1986); Lomnitz Adler, E x its f r o m th e L a b y rin th , 187-201.

N o t e s to P a g e s 1 1 4 - 1 1 7 / 2 0 8

96. Charles F. Walker, S m o ld e n n g A sh e s: C u zc o a n d th e C re a tio n o f R ep u b lica n P eru, i y 8 o - ¡ 8 4 0 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), 130-45.

97. Guardino, P easants, Politics, 98-102.

Chapter 5

1. Anna, F orging M e xico , 240. Warren, V agrants a n d C itize n s, 100-105, describes the elec tion reforms adopted for the federal district and the territories. New state laws increased the property requirements to vote, severely restricting the suffrage (“Decreto 163,” 4 May 1830, CLDEV, 2: 188-201).

2. Michael Costcloc argues that the “hombres de bien,” members of the comfortable classes concerned about social order and the “excesses” of popular politics, were the driving force behind the rise of centralist politics ( C e n tr a l R e p u b lic ). Warren adds to Costeloc’s argument, pointing out how fears of a crime wave and the popular classes contributed to the decline of federalism (Warren, V a g ra n ts a n d C itize n s, gr, 105, 128).

3. Guardino, P easants, P olitics, 139-46. For a brief overview of centralist objectives and ideology, see Reynaldo Sordo Ccdcño, “El pensamiento conservador del Partido Centralista en los años treinta del siglo XIX mexicano,” ¡n E l conservadurism o m exica n o en el siglo X I X ( 1810-1910,1, cd. Humberto Morales and William Fowler (Puebla: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, University of St. Andrews, and Secretaría de Cultura Gobierno del Estado de Puebla, 1999), 135-68; Costcloc, C e n tr a l R epublic, 38-45,103.

4. Flores, R e v o lu c ió n de O la rte. This work remains the fountainhead of much of what is written about the events owing to the extensive collection of documents Fiores included from national archives. Leticia Rcina’s work (R ebeliones, 325-40) is largely derived from Flores’s account. Trcns also added some critical information in his treatment of the rebellion. H isto ria d e V eracruz, 4:79-140.

5. Elio Masferrcr, “Los factores étnicos de la rebelión totonaca de Olarte en Papantla,” C uicuilco, no. 14-15 (julio-diciembre 1984): 24-31.

6. Antonio Escobar Ohmstcde, “El movimiento olartista, origen y desarrollo, 1836-1838. Una revisión histórica,” in Procesos rurales e h istoria r e g io n a l ( S ie r r a y costa to to n a co s de V era cru z) , cd. Victoria Chcnaut (Mexico City: C.I.E.S.A.S., 1996), 51-74; sec especially 66.

7. Victoria Chcnaut, A q u e llo s que v u e la n : L o s totonacos en e l siglo X I X (Mexico City: CIESAS, 1995), 99-106.

8. “Proclamation Gen. José Antonio Mexia [sic], to the besieged forces in Bexar,” Brazoria, 15 December 1835; and “Proclamation The citizen Jose Antonio Mexia, brigadier General of the Army of the Federal Republic to his fellow countrymen,” Tampico, 15 November 1835; and J. A. Mejia to Hon. James A. Robinson 15 December 1835; these documents may be found in George Fisher, M e m o ria ls o f G eorge Fisher, la te secreta ry to th e exp e d itio n o f G en.

J o s e A n to n io M e x ia , a g a in st Tam pico, in N o v em b er, ¡ 8 j s - P re se n te d to th e F o u rth a n d F ifth

congress o f the R ep u b lic o f T exa s, p r a y in g f o r r e l ie f in f a v o r o f th e m em bers o f s a id e xp e d itio n

(Houston: Printed at the Telegraph office, 1840), 64-65, 60-61, 68. Translations by Fisher. Mejia had been sent to Texas in 1832 after the fall of the Bustamante government; while there he established friendly tics to Esteban Austin, as he was then known, who impressed him as a sincere federalist and not a secessionist. In December of 1835, when Mejia arrived in Texas

Notes to Pages 117-122/ 209