Ladinos with Ladinos, Indians with Indians

Ladinos with Ladinos, Indians with Indians

Land, Labor, and Regional Ethnic Conict in the Making of Guatemala

ren e reeves

Stanford University Press Stanford, California 2006

Stanford University Press Stanford, California C 2006 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reeves, Ren . e Ladinos with Ladinos, Indians with Indians : land, labor, and regional ethnic conict in the making of Guatemala / Ren Reeves. e p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8047-5213-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. MayasGuatemalaEthnic identity. 2. MayasLand tenureGuatemala. 3. MayasGuatemalaPolitics and government. 4. Ladino (Latin American people)GuatemalaEthnic identity. 5. Ladino (Latin American people)Land tenureGuatemala. 6. Ladino (Latin American people)GuatemalaPolitics and government. 7. Land reformGuatemalaHistory. 8. Ethnic conictGuatemalaHistory. 9. Social problemsGuatemalaHistory. 10. GuatemalaEthnic relations. 11. GuatemalaSocial conditions. 12. GuatemalaPolitics and government. I. Title. F1435.3.E72R44 2006 323.1197 4207281dc22 2005033241 Original Printing 2006 Last gure below indicates year of this printing: 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 Typeset by TechBooks, New Delhi, in 10.5/12 Bembo.

Contents

List of Tables

vi vii 1

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Rewriting Guatemalas Nineteenth Century 1. The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culah a to Independence 17

2. Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict in the Formation of a Guatemalan Coffee Zone 39 3. Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 72 4. Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 103 5. From Ladino State to Ladino Nation: The Malformation of Guatemalan National Identity 136 6. Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and NationState Formation: Final Reections on Guatemalas Nineteenth Century 170 Notes and Abbreviations Index 245 195

List of Tables

1. Coffee Exports, 18531885

5 40

2. Coffee Production in Guatemala by Department, 1880 and 1887 3. Occupations of Indigenous Men by Family Position and Marital Status, ca. 1830 86 4. Clandestine Aguardiente Arrests, 18621886 120 164 5. Export Earnings and Gross Government Revenues

Acknowledgments

books, like most of lifes projects, reect the input, assistance, and cooperation of many, many people. I wish to thank some of them here, with the foreknowledge that the failings of my own memory will prevent me from giving appropriate recognition to all who deserve it. In San Juan Ostuncalco, where I carried out the bulk of the research on which this study is based, I received a warm reception and much patient indulgence from a large number of the towns municipal ofcials and employees. I would like to single out Concejal Ram n Daz, Alcalde Miguel P rez, and Luisa P rez o e e in the Treasurers Ofce. Many other municipal employees offered crucial assistance and camaraderie during the months of research in Ostuncalco. I especially would like to thank Alejandro Elias, Carlos Monterroso, Ibeth Ralda, Amilcar de Le n, Marco Antonio Tirado, and Eddy Castillo. o In Quezaltenango Francisco Cajas was most helpful and accommodating, maintaining the Archivo Hist rico de Quezaltenango against difcult o odds. Likewise, Ana de Rosario Tobar performed a similar function in the singularly important Archivo de Gobernaci n de Quezaltenango with no apo preciable budget and in addition to all of her other duties. Rainer Hostnig, formerly regional coordinator for Guatemala and El Salvador of the Instituto para la Cooperaci n Internacional de Viena, Austria, and now based o in Peru, pointed me to many key sources on Ostuncalco housed within the Archivo General de Centro Am rica (AGCA), and later he single-handedly e published virtually the entire documentary record of Mam Quezaltenango. In Guatemala City a number of archivists, employees, and students of history associated with the AGCA were indispensable to my research. I would like to acknowledge Liseth Jmenez, Ana Carla Ericastillo, and Margarita Garca L pez. Thanks also to H ctor Aurelio Concoh Chet of the o e a Archivo Hist rico Arquidiocesano, and to Arely Mendoza, directora of the o

viii Acknowledgments Biblioteca Cesar Bra as. In Antigua the staff of the Centro de Investigaciones n Regionales de Mesoam rica aided my research efforts immeasurably, and I e always looked forward to visiting them on the journey from Quezaltenango to Guatemala City and vice versa. Many North American-based colleagues and friends aided this project. I owe an intellectual debt to Florencia Mallon, Francisco Scarano, and Steve Stern at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which I will never adequately repay. Florencia was beyond generous in helping to see this manuscript through to publication. In one way or another Ana Patricia Alvarenga, Nancy Appelbaum, Blenda Feminias, Eileen Findlay, Greg Grandin, Ann Jefferson, Anne MacPherson, Patrick McNamara, and Karin Rosemblatt, inuenced the present shape of this work. Hopefully, from their vantage point, for the better. Jorge Gonz lez, Todd Little-Siebold, and Chris Lutz all shared their a knowledge of Guatemala with me, and provided crucial advice and encouragement when it was needed. Both Greg Grandin and Peter Guardino read drafts of this manuscript and responded with helpful, constructive ways to improve it. I hope the results are not disappointing. Finally, my colleagues at Fitchburg State College have provided the most welcoming and supportive environment that one could hope for when navigating the complexities of a new teaching career and continued scholarship. Over the years I have received research funding from the Latin American and Iberian Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Fulbright-Hays Program at the U.S. Department of Education. A Ruth Butler Grant from Fitchburg State College provided funding for the maps. Finally, I wish to thank my family and friends for never forgetting to ask about that nebulous research project that would, someday, reach publication. My parents will be proud, I know, even if it does not make the best-seller list. I dedicate this book to Deb and Rowan, the two people whose lives have been most touched by this project, and without whose spark and care I would have been hard-pressed to nish it.

El Petn

Alta Verapaz

lzabal

Huehuetenango San Marcos

El Quich

Totonicapn Solol

Baja Verapaz
El Progreso

Zacapa
Chiquimula

Quezaltenango

Chimaltenango
Guatemala

Jalapa

Retalhuleu

Suchitenquez

Sacatepquez

Jutiapa Escuintla
Santa Rosa

San Cristbal Cabricn Huitn San Vicente Buenabaj Sibilia Palestina de los Altos Cajol San Carlos Sija San Francisco La Unin Olintepeque San Mateo Salcaj

San Miguel Sigil San Juan Ostuncalco Concepcin Chiquirichapa San Martn Sacatepquez

Quezaltenango Cantel Almolonga La Esperanza Zunil

Colomba Coatepeque Flores Costa Cuca Gnova

Santa Mara de Jess El Palmar

map 1. Department of Quezaltenango, Twentieth-Century Municipalities

Zaculeu San Miguel Ixtahuacn

Huehuetenango

Soconusco

San Antonio Sac.

Cabricn Huitn San Antonio Bobs Ro Cajol

Momostenango Samal

Santa Mara Chiquimula 2100 m

San Pedro Sac. San Marcos Naranjo

San Cristbal Totonicapn

San Miguel Totonicapn

Sigil Qstuncalco Chiquirichapa San Martn Volcn Siete Orejas

Ro Sigil

Cerro Cacaix

Quezaltenango San Mateo

Soconusco

Ro

Coatepeque

Volcn Santa Mara

2100 m

San Felipe

Ro Naranjo

San Martin Zapotitln Retalhuleu

1200 m 600 m

300 m 150 m

Ro Samal Pacific Ocean

Town or City Areas over 3000 m Border with Mexico Approximately 10 Kilometers

map 2. The Political District of San Juan Ostuncalco, ca. 1870

2100 m 1200 m Ro

Naranjo

Ostuncalco Chiquirichapa San Martn Talcanac Quezaltenango

600 m 300 m Ro Naranjo Coatepeque Las Maras Ro

Ro Nil

Ro

El Zapote 150 m Nil Taltute El Asintal

El Palmar

Ocosito

2100 m

1200 m

San Felipe 600 m

Ro Ocosito

Ro Retalhuleu 300 m

Town or City Area over 3000 m Ejido of San Martn (approx. boundary) Costa Cuca Xolgitz Chuv Approximately 10 Kilometers

150 m

Ro Samal

map 3. Quezaltenangos Costa Cuca, ca. 1850

Introduction: Rewriting Guatemalas Nineteenth Century

on the afternoon of march 8, 1837, several thousand Mayan residents from the Mam towns of Quezaltenango gathered in San Juan Ostuncalco to demonstrate their opposition to newly appointed circuit judge F lix Morales. e Initially the protesters amassed in front of the interim circuit courthouse, where they confronted Morales with their grievances. When the apprehensive judge attempted to excuse himself from the increasingly heated discussion, however, he was pursued into the nearby quarters of two appellate-level court ofcersJustice Lus C rdenas and Fiscal Manuel Riverawho were a visiting from Quezaltenango. There, despite the intervention of Ostuncalcos parish priest, the encircling crowd began to taunt and jab all three of the beleaguered judicial ofcials. Rivera and C rdenas endeavored to ee the house a on horseback, but in the process the latter was knocked from the saddle. As Rivera raced from the scene, C rdenas fell to the ground, the force of the a descent sending him into unconsciousness. Only the efforts of the parish priest kept the justice from further harm. Judge Morales, meanwhile, barricaded himself inside C rdenas bedroom, a where he remained until his pursuers broke through the door and dragged him to the town jail. The rebels freed the existing prisoners, and then shackled the judge. Not content to leave matters there, however, they returned to inict additional torture . . . , or at least that was how Morales saw it. According to the judge, they removed the shackles and placed me in stocks, where I found myself sentenced to death each time that [my captors] felt compelled to make such a pronouncement, which occurred every minute over the course of the entire night. . . .1 Before the fatal sentence could be imposed, however, Morales was rescued by a force of about forty ladinos from San Marcos, who entered Ostuncalco early the following day. After

2 Introduction much delicate negotiation the rescuers persuaded the rebels to release the captive judge into their custody so that he could be tried for his crimes before the proper authorities. The rescue force conducted me with all the demonstrations of a dangerous criminal to deceive the [crowd], recalled Morales. But even so, the tumult accompanied the escort for nearly two leagues . . . , insulting them, and hurling stones furiously, from which many were injured.2 So began the rst of a wave of rebellions that swept more than thirty [Guatemalan] Indian villages in mid-1837, according to the count of historian Mario Rodrguez.3 The factors and perceived injustices that precipitated such a widely dispersed eruption of largely spontaneous and uncoordinated uprisings were legion, yet nearly all of them could be traced, in one way or another, back to the Liberal factions that had dominated Guatemala City and Guatemalas incipient postcolonial state since the late 1820s. Under the activist administration of Mariano G lvez in particular, the state implemented a a series of dramatic reforms culminating with the notorious Livingston Codes. Few aspects of Guatemalan society were left untouched by G lvezs ambitious a reform project. The Livingston Codes, for example, overhauled the entire judicial system, in the process completely redening communitystate relations. Local political autonomy was greatly diminished, and special legal channels that had privileged indigenous access to the courts were abolished. In addition, Liberal reformers discouraged various outward manifestations of Mayan culture, among other things eroding the legal foundations of corporate landholdingthe predominant form among the indigenous majority. They also increased taxes and ceded vast expanses of national territory to foreign entrepreneurs in the name of fostering economic growth, promoting European immigration, and modernizing Guatemalas purportedly backward populace. Needless to say, the Liberal reform project alienated many in a land where the stability and continuity of Spanish colonialism remained a compelling memory. Although the uprising of Quezaltenangos Mam communities, centered in San Juan Ostuncalco, was crushed less than three weeks after it had begun, subsequent rebellions were not so easily dispatched. Those that erupted to the east of the national capitalGuatemala Citycoalesced into a sustained and effective popular insurgency in large part because the regions history of mestizaje and hacienda formation made cross-ethnic and crossclass alliances much more possible than in the west, where regional ethnic antagonism prevented indigenousladino coalition building, and the lack of wealthy landowners with large, subservient labor forces inhibited the emergence of clientelistic, regionally based political and social movements. This eastern-based insurgency, which came to be known as the Carrera Revolt, eventually toppled the countrys postcolonial Liberal state, and established

Introduction 3

peasant-turned-rebel leader Rafael Carrera as the kingpin of Guatemalan politics. Carrera instructed his allies to countermand the offending Liberal reforms and to restore the colonial-era laws that had protected the indigenous majority, beginning a thirty-year period of a nearly unbroken Conservativepopular rule. Fast forward to June 30, 1871. On that day Liberal rebel Justo Runo Barrios led his troops unopposed into Guatemala City after routing Conservative forces just west of the capital. His triumphal entrance marked not only the denitive defeat of Guatemalan Conservatives, but also the start of another round of sweeping Liberal reforms designed to revolutionize the nations economy and society. These reforms included the terrenos baldos laws of 1873 and 1874, which instructed Quezaltenangos jefe poltico to auc tion off the departments fertile coffee lands to the highest bidder while simultaneously refusing any special consideration for the large number of subsistence cultivators who already used the area.4 They also included the infamous decrees 170 and 177, which called for privatizing communally held property and press-ganging unindentured rural laborers, respectively.5 Surprisingly, this reform project did not break apart on the anvil of popular opposition as occurred in the late 1830s, nor was Barrios, or the Liberals more generally, driven from ofce by widespread, sustained insurrection. Instead, the Liberal Reformaas it has come to be calledsurvived to leave its legacy for the twentieth century.6 But why? What had changed from the 1830s to the 1870s to make a repeat of the Carrera Revolt improbable in the face of such apparently similar reforms? Was it that the Reforma-era Liberal state possessed a much more formidable and effective repressive apparatus? Or did the same depth and breadth of popular outrage that had greeted, and ultimately shattered, the rst generation of Liberal reforms simply fail to materialize during the 1870s and 1880s? Juxtaposing the Carrera Revolt with the Liberal Reforma demands that questions such as these be addressed because it points to the potential, rather than the impossibility, for popular mobilization to challenge effectively and offer alternatives to elite designs. Simultaneously, such a comparison denies presumptions of Liberalisms inevitability. Instead, it challenges us to explain the Liberal Reformas success in light of how popular sectors had so thoroughly defeated the earlier reform project. Unfortunately, most existing narratives of Guatemalas nineteenth century fail even to recognize, never mind address, the paradox or explanatory problem posed by the Liberal Reforma. Instead, their authors are lulled by the overwhelming preponderance of Liberal opinion into accepting the Reforma as a resumption of the countrys fated historical trajectory after the aberrant detour represented by the Carrera Revolt and the Conservative interregnum. For much the same reason, few authors question the fundamental outline of

4 Introduction Guatemalas nineteenth century sketched by Liberal intellectuals and ideologues. In this scenario, Liberalism was the progressive force that overcame much Conservative and popular foot-dragging to lead Guatemala down the road to North Atlantic-style development. Despite the initial setback of the 1830s, Liberal reformers returned with a vengeance in 1871, implementing sweeping changes in land tenure, labor relations, and the state.7 Recent revisionists have correctly disputed the meaning of the Reforma for Guatemalas social and economic development by challenging Liberal notions of progressasking the question Progress for whom? for example. And although they have turned conventional wisdom on its head by inverting Liberal depictions of Barrios the hero and Carrera the barbarian, they still have not gone far enough in challenging the basic contours of the Liberal paradigm. Principally, revisionists continue to agree with Liberal partisans and commentators of years past who heralded 1871 as the start of a decade of unprecedented, even revolutionary, change. For good or bad, it seems, the Reforma was the watershed event of Guatemalas postcolonial nineteenth century.8 Perhaps the most signicant achievement attributed to the Liberal reforms of the 1870s is that they established the necessary conditions for coffee to become the produit moteur of the Guatemalan economy. Indeed, in the minds of many authors, the Reforma is synonymous with a dramatic expansion of coffee production. Yet how accurate is such an association? Let us briey review the details of coffee cultivation in Guatemala over the course of the nineteenth century. In particular, let us examine coffees emergence as the countrys economic mainstay and most important agricultural export.9 Coffee has been cultivated on a consistent basis in Guatemala from at least the mid-1830s. This early period is often neglected in terms of the magnitude of production because the rst coffee exports were not recorded until 1853. Apart from the export data compiled by the states Customs Administration, there is little additional evidence by which to calculate annual production. Yet the absence of such information in the early years does not mean that harvests were insignicant. Rather, annual production was directed toward meeting the growing demand for coffee that existed within the country itself. Even after Guatemala already had begun to ship coffee abroad, for instance, its domestic market consumed the lions share of El Salvadors rst exports, which amounted to nearly ninety thousand pounds in 185556.10 Still, given the difculties associated with trying to determine the magnitude of Guatemalan coffee production prior to 1853, let us turn to the export gures that exist for the subsequent decades (see Table 1). The export data demonstrate that coffee production grew consistently from the mid-1850s to the mid-1880s. In other words, expansion began well before 1871, and in this sense, the year of the so-called Liberal revolution

Introduction 5

table 1. Coffee Exports, 18531885

Year Pounds Increase % Increase

1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885

5,000 800 9,500 14,500 17,000 10,400 47,355 155,689 558,866 1,207,415 2,026,468 1,628,979 2,242,872 3,253,064 3,465,650 7,505,102 7,183,887 11,322,982 13,121,293 13,913,779 15,050,668 16,158,381 16,195,900 20,740,017 20,993,476 20,935,877 26,228,213 28,976,267 26,037,289 31,327,156 40,406,939 37,130,600 52,031,815

4,200 8,700 5,000 2,500 6,600 36,955 108,334 403,177 648,549 819,053 397,489 613,893 1,010,192 212,586 4,039,452 321,215 4,139,095 1,798,311 792,486 1,136,889 1,107,713 37,519 4,544,117 253,459 57,599 5,292,336 2,748,054 2,938,978 5,289,867 9,079,783 3,276,339 14,901,215

84.0 1087.5 52.6 17.2 38.8 355.3 228.8 259.0 116.0 67.8 19.6 37.7 45.0 6.5 116.6 4.3 57.6 15.9 6.0 8.2 7.4 0.2 28.1 1.2 0.3 25.3 10.5 10.1 20.3 29.0 8.1 40.1

Sources (by year): 185356, 186774, 187683, and 1885, Manuel Rubio S nchez, Historia del a comercio del caf en Guatemala. Siglos XVIIIXIX, parts 2 and 3, ASGHG 51 (1978): 124204, e and 52 (1979): 110127; 18591866, Michael J. Biechler, The Coffee Industry of Guatemala: A Geographic Analysis (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1970), 265; 1875 and 1884, David J. McCreery, Coffee and Class: The Structure of Development in Liberal Guatemala, HAHR 56 (August 1976): 485. The years 185758 were estimated from export earnings reported by Ignacio Sols, Memorias de la Casa de Moneda de Guatemala y del desarrollo econmico del pas o (Guatemala: Ministerio de Finanzas de Guatemala, 1979), 844, and an approximate price per pound of 0.10 pesos calculated from 1856 and 1859. I have highlighted 1870 to indicate the year that coffee surpassed cochineal as Guatemalas single most important export. On this point see Ralph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 1821-1871 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 379, 383.

6 Introduction hardly stands out. Indeed, by 1870, coffee already had become Guatemalas single largest export earner, surpassing even cochineal. Considered in terms of average annual growth rates, coffee exports increased at well over 100 percent per year between 1853 and 1871. They grew at little more than 10 percent per year from 1872 to 1885. Even in absolute rather than relative terms, annual growth by the end of the 1860s mirrored gures from the late 1870s and 1880s. In both 1868 and 1870, for example, exports grew by over four million pounds, a feat that was not repeated again until 1976 and 1979. If not for the military disruption of 1871, and the regime change that followed, it is quite likely that export gures would have continued to grow by several million pounds annually through the early 1870s as well as beyond. Thus, when viewed from the standpoint of coffee production, 1871 does not appear to have been much of a watershed event at all. The health of Guatemalas coffee industry would seem to have been assured well before it received all of the supposed benets that most authors attribute to the Liberal Reforma. The results of this cursory analysis of coffee export data are surprising because a central pillar of the Reforma-as-revolution perspective is the close association of Guatemalas Liberals with the period of rapid coffee growth. As we just saw, however, coffee export gures indicate that this pillar may be standing on shaky ground. Could the same be true for other pillars of the Reforma-as-revolution perspective? Might the dramatic rise in coffee production prior to 1871, for example, suggest a concomitant transformation of indigenous community land into privately held agricultural production units, and indigenous peasants into seasonal wage laborers? Perhaps the Liberal Revolution of 1871 was not such a revolution after all. Perhaps, if revolutionary change did mark Guatemalan society during the nineteenth century, and coffee was at the heart of it, then the Liberal reforms were more capstone than cornerstone in the process.11 If such a reinterpretation is accurate, then it was Conservatives, not Liberals, who presided over the most important transformations of the nineteenth century, even if they were not themselves the intellectual authors, and Guatemala thus joins a host of other Latin American nations and regions that implemented Liberal-oriented development policies under the direction of Conservative authorities.12 To assert that Rafael Carrera and his Conservative camarilla, rather than Reforma-era Liberals, dealt a fatal and irreversible blow to the indigenous communities of Guatemalas potential coffee zones is to challenge two interrelated interpretations of the nineteenth century that prevail in the historiography of Guatemala. First, such an assertion questions the work of revisionists, who, over the past two decades or so, have painted a more favorable portrait of Rafael Carrera. E. Bradford Burns is among the earliest and best-known proponents of Carrera as a champion of the underclass rather than a reactionary

Introduction 7

despot.13 And although it is certainly true that various aspects of Carreras rule needed to be recuperated from the weight of Liberal mischaracterizations, his purported sympathy for indigenous communities has been overstated greatly by Burns and other revisionists. Secondly, my take on Carrera and the Conservatives diminishes the importance of post-1871 Liberal legislation and disputes the notion that the Reforma constituted the key moment in nineteenth-century Guatemala. Supporters and detractors of Guatemalan Liberalism alike perhaps have been too quick to accept the triumphalism and greatly inated claims of the contemporary Liberals themselves.14 Several revisionist works on the period have begun to recognize the need for a reconsideration of these issues. David McCreery suggested such a possibility as early as 1983 when he wrote that [r]ural Guatemalan communities did not suffer the sweeping land conscations that characterized some late nineteenth-century Liberal regimes.15 McCreerys argument, which he makes most forcefully in the more recently published Rural Guatemala, is that unlike countries such as El Salvador, where community lands were more successfully legislated out of existence, in Guatemala many indigenous towns were able to retain signicant landholdings long after the Liberal Revolution.16 Indeed, in some cases Liberal authorities actually helped communities protect and even expand their land base.17 Although this challenge to traditional accounts of the Reforma period differs signicantly from the one that I pose above, it provides a nuanced and necessary corrective to our understanding of Guatemalas post-1871 Liberals and the policies they pursued. J. C. Cambranes is another of the revisionist pioneers whose work has helped to demystify Guatemalas nineteenth century. In particular, his 1985 study of land tenure during the Conservative years helps put the lie to Carreras supposed bias in favor of the indigenous community. As Cambranes notes, The Conservative Government permitted agrarian redistribution in Guatemala by fostering the handing over of land to private parties, which by law belonged to the peasant communities. . . . [T]he sympathy displayed by the Conservatives . . . with respect to the demands and complaints made by the rural population, was more apparent than real.18 By presenting a less romanticized view of Carrera, Cambranes helps to tear down the great divide between Conservative and Liberal rule that marks many other scholarly treatments of the period. More recently, emerging in the early 1990s, a new wave of scholarship has begun to question seriously the Conservative/Liberal duality present in much of the existing literature. Examples include Ralph Lee Woodwards monumental social history of the Carrera years, Jorge Gonz lez dissertation on a Central Americas ephemeral Los Altos state, McCreerys Rural Guatemala, and Robert Williams comparative investigation of state formation in the

8 Introduction ve Central American republics.19 Two additional worksone by Wayne Clegern, another by Lowell Gudmundson and H ctor Lindo-Fuentesissue e particularly explicit challenges to the bipolar characterization of Guatemalas Conservative and Liberal regimes.20 The consensus of this new revisionism is that far from marking a 180-degree reversal, some important aspects of the Reforma were foreshadowed by trends in Conservative policy. Although most of the aforementioned revisionists still would assert that the Conservative period did not see a signicant shift toward Liberal policies until after the death of Carrera in 1865, they acknowledge some telling prior exceptions, particularly in the case of land tenure.21 Woodward, for example, notes that By the 1860s . . . and sometimes even earlier, we nd the Ministry of Gobernaci n sometimes siding with Ladino coffee planters encroaching o on Indian ejidos.22 Clegern is even more emphatic: It is well documented that from the early 1850s on the coffee revolution had unleashed massive encroachments on village lands. . . . It is also documented that in large measure both Carrera and Cerna turned a deaf ear to village complaints, both having committed themselves to developing the coffee culture.23 Only Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes, however, go so far as to argue that the Liberal reforms only formalized a situation long in the making:
[W]e downgrade the signicance of the reform movement of the 1870s as a turning point in the economic, political, and social history of Central America, however great its historiographic and ideological signicance for Liberal historians and statesmen thereafter . . . [N]o longer can one seriously argue that coffee and Liberalism were synonymous in Central America. Coffee allowed for a second coming of Liberalism, to be sure, but proexport policies were anything but a Liberal monopoly.24

As I will demonstrate in this study, the evidence from western Guatemala supports such a contentious assertion. The main difference between Liberals and Conservatives, particularly with regard to matters of economic development, was not fundamental beliefs but strategy. The core group of western Liberals that backed the insurgency of 186871 and the subsequent Liberal Reforma was motivated more by regionalist resentmentwhat Jorge Gonz lez calls situational Liberalismthan a fundamental ideological or a even programmatic disagreement with Guatemala City Conservatives.25 The historiographical postulates that Conservatives desired to protect Mayan lands whereas Liberals coveted them, and that Conservatives desired to preserve the peasant status of the Mayan population whereas Liberals pushed for proletarianization are unfounded. Conservative authorities simply viewed a wholesale attack on Mayan society to be foolhardy. In contrast to Liberals, whether they hailed from Guatemala City or the western provinces, Conservatives were not as inclined to use the state in an activist manner. Instead they presided over a slower, piecemeal, but ultimately much more effective dismantling of

Introduction 9

indigenous communities from the 1840s onward and with little deviation, at least when it came to Guatemalas fertile Pacic coast. McCreerys characterization of the Reforma in fact applies equally well to the Conservative interlude. The greater a regions commercial agricultural potential, and the more important the ladino who desired to exploit it, the more likely it was that the state would intervene to weaken or dismantle the autonomy of the respective regions indigenous communities.26 This is not to say that Liberals and Conservatives were indistinguishable from one another. First and foremost, they deeply disagreed over the Catholic Church. Conservatives generally desired to maintain the Church as a signicant cultural and social actor, whereas Liberals generally opposed any institutional competition with the state, hoping to replace important Church functions with an expanded state apparatus. To this disagreement, secondgeneration Liberals from the western highlands added their regionalist resentment of capital-city privileges, which they attributed to conservatism. As manifested by the failed separatist project of the 1830s and 1840sthe short-lived state of Los Altosprovincial Liberals desired to diminish the political prerogatives of the Guatemala City elite, prerogatives that allowed the latter to impose monopolies and other trade restrictions that funneled much of the regions commerce through one or two ofcial ports and a handful of capitalino merchants and their allies. Lastly, Conservatives and Liberals disagreed over how to conceptualize the countrys indigenous majority. In essence, the conict pitted Conservative caste-based hierarchalism against Liberal universality. Conservatives held a racialized or biologically deterministic view of society, in which the Maya were considered a distinct class of citizens because of their supposedly stunted intellect. Legally speaking, the Conservatives treated indigenous people as wards of the state. Liberals, by contrast, believed that the Indian problem was more cultural in nature. Mayan failure to conform to modernity had little to do with biology, and everything to do their implacable resistance to change and a stubborn determination to retain their distinctive culture and identity. Caste hierarchy had to be ended, then, not simply because Liberalism demanded formal equality before the law, but also because caste-based legal distinctions were viewed as tantamount to helping the indigenous majority resist further ladinization (read: modernization). In sum, Conservatives preferred to usurp indigenous lands and exploit indigenous labor under the logic of caste hierarchy and paternalism, whereas Liberals used formal, legal equality as a mechanism to do the same. As we shall see, however, if the Liberal deployment of equality worked rather well to disenfranchise indigenous land, it raised questions when placed in the context of forced indigenous labor, and generated contradictions that doomed the process of Guatemalan state formation.

10 Introduction Indeed, it is probably a mistake to assume that western Liberals ever conceptualized state formation in ethnically inclusive terms. As the leaders of the new economic center of the country, they believed that they deserved direct access to the halls of government. As ladinos, the vehicle by which they would cement their hold on that government was the creation of a ladino national identity that would unite less privileged sectors of the nonindigenous population against the foil of Mayan backwardness.27 Their goal was to establish a nation in which western ladinos would be on an equal footing with capitalino elites, many of them Creoles, and in which the state would be directly under their control as they dealt with the regional Mayan majority. Equality, for these provincial Liberals, meant equal access to the state by all political subjects. And just as was true in British North America at the time of the anticolonial struggle there, the category of political subject did not include indigenous Americans. The big difference in Guatemala, however, was that the dividing line between indigenous and nonindigenous was cultural rather than biological. Acculturated Maya could be brought into the body politic by becoming ladinos. Those who refused, however, to shed their attachment to the community of their birth, to forfeit their corporate land rights, to acquiesce before the inux of ladino outsiders who had been entering the western region since the late eighteenth century, could not be citizens in Liberal Guatemala. Ladino nationalism had been forged on the anvil of Mayan resistance to the ladino presence in the west, and the antagonism toward indigenous insularity on which it was based had only grown stronger over the course of the nineteenth century. In 1821 Nicolas Juares, an indigenous resident of Concepci n Chiquirichapa, expressed the following sentiment, widespread o throughout the Mam communities west of Quezaltenango: We do not want a ladino to enter our area. Ladinos with ladinos, Indians with Indians.28 By 1871, as they readied to take state power, western Ladinos had developed an understanding of nationalism that was almost a mirror image: theirs was to be a Ladino nation, and Mayan peoples would not be allowed to enter unless they checked their cultural identities at the border. This study represents a twofold reevaluation of Guatemalas nineteenth century. At the broadest level it is an attempt to place Guatemalas rural, subaltern majority rmly at the center of the countrys national-level political narrative by addressing the paradox posed earlier in this introduction. Why did popular sectors reject and destroy one Liberal reform project only to acquiesce to another? At a more concrete level, it is a bottom-up examinationin both social and geopolitical termsof the meaning and impact of Liberalism and Conservatism in Guatemala. That is, the studys focus is subaltern, but also regional. The region is southwestern Guatemala, centered in the political

Introduction 11

district of San Juan Ostuncalco, as I will describe below, but also including signicant segments of the Kiche highlands and coast in the present-day departments of Quezaltenango, Totonicap n, Retalhuleu, and Suchitep quez. a e Given the ethnic composition and political dynamics of western Guatemala during this period, such a regional focus implies that the subaltern subjects of the study are primarily Mayan. Unfortunately, however, it was not as easy as one might expect to uncover the voices of indigenous Guatemalans, never mind documents produced by their own hand. After several months organizing two of the regions municipal-cum-district archives, literally with a wheelbarrow and shovel, it became clear that ladinos had generated most of the documents at the subdepartmental level that had not completely turned to dust.29 Even documents that contained oral testimony or petitions from the Mayan majority usually were written by a ladino scribe in one capacity or another. Nonetheless, despite the predominance of nonindigenous sources, it was frequently possible to nd at least some record of the actions and opinions of indigenous community leaders as a bodythe municipalidad y principales del com n, for exampleif not of particular individuals. u Had Mayan-authored documents been more plentiful, it still would not be inconsistent to include ladino voices in an investigation of nineteenthcentury subalterns in western Guatemala. First of all, acknowledging the ethnic divide that separated indigenous from nonindigenous, and that consistently subordinated the former to the latter, especially in the west, does not deny the existence of many poor, disenfranchised, and yes, subaltern, ladinos in the department of Quezaltenango during this time. Even some of San Juan Ostuncalcos nonindigenous political leaders arguably could have been considered subaltern from the standpoint of the departmental capital and regional elites, let alone Guatemala City.30 Secondly, as practitioners of subaltern studies suggest, it is impossible to analyze subaltern groups in complete isolation from those that are dominant. The very category of subaltern is fundamentally relational, and cannot be understood without some consideration of its opposite, or at least, of the interactions and practices that link subalterns and elites together in their unequal embrace.31 In sum, then, this work employs a range of documentary perspectives to plumb subaltern experiences in western Guatemala over the course of the nineteenth century. My goal is to demonstrate in concrete ways how state policy, both Liberal and Conservative, challenged, limited, and was perceived by the rural folk who inhabited the region of study. In addition, I have attempted to uncover why rural subalterns chose to respond as they did, and how their responses, whether quotidian or extraordinaryincluding collaboration as well as indifference, everyday forms of resistance as well as rebellionin turn challenged and shaped the state. As such, this book joins

12 Introduction a host of recent works on Mexico, Central America, and the Andes, that trace the connection between regionaloften ruraltensions and movements and national-level political developments.32 In addition, like some of these works, this study uncovers the linkages between local ethnic identities and conicts and the national-level policies and processes that dened citizenship and contributed to the formation of national identity. Not only has this focus on the subalternstate nexus in a specic region allowed me to present a more accurate picture of what Liberals and Conservatives and their respective policies meant for rural dwellers nationwide, but it also has convinced me that the existing narrative of Guatemalas national-level politics in the nineteenth century is fundamentally awed. In many ways this book is an attempt to rewrite that awed narrative based on the lived experiences of Mam Quezaltenangos rural subalterns. Chapter 1 establishes the cultural and political roots of the Mam region of the department of Quezaltenangoroughly equivalent to the nineteenthcentury political district of San Juan Ostuncalcofrom pre-Columbian times to independence. Whether San Juan Ostuncalcos role as the regions administrative seat preceded the Spanish conquest or not, the town acquired cabecera-status with the founding of a Mercedarian doctrina or missionary district in the midsixteenth century. The doctrina included the towns of Concepci n Chiquirichapa, San Martn Sacatep quez, and its namesake in the o e highlands, and Santa Mara Magdalena and Santa Catalina Retalhuleu on the coast.33 Aside from the Mercedarian priests themselves, the area was entirely indigenous. By the end of the colonial period, however, the coastal towns had withered away, additional highland municipalities had been formed at San Miguel Sig il , Santa Cruz Cajol , and San Crist bal Cabric n and ladino u a a o a populations had emerged in Ostuncalco proper, San Antonio Bob s (Sibilia), o and additional outlying areas of the parish. Despite the questionable legality of the ladino presence in Mam Quezaltenango, the Crown granted municipal status to the nonindigenous settlers of Ostuncalco and San Antonio Bob s in 1806. And when the region was established as a political district o following independence, it was Ostuncalcos ladino municipal ofcials who initially were charged with the administrative responsibilities. Beginning in 1837, however, district-level executives and judicial appointees were named by the corregidores and judges of Quezaltenango. Geographically, the political district of Ostuncalco comprised well over half the territory of the department of Quezaltenango. It stretched from San Crist bal Cabric n in the north, southward through the present-day coffee o a towns of Flores Costa Cuca, G nova, El Asintal, and Nuevo San Carlos. Ine deed, most of Quezaltenangos potential coffee land fell within Ostuncalcos administrative jurisdiction, in an area that came to be called the Costa Cuca sometime around the midnineteenth century. As property, however, almost

Introduction 13

the entirety of the so-called Costa Cuca had been titled by San Martn Sacatep quez in 1744. In Chapter 2, I trace the conversion of San Martns e municipal territory from indigenous ejido, utilized for subsistence cultivation by sanmartineros as well as the Mam residents of the districts other towns, to Guatemalas preeminent coffee zone. In addition, I compare this process with similar conversions that occurred in several nearby Kiche towns of the present-day departments of Suchitep quez and Retalhuleu. Contrary to e existing narratives of the nineteenth century, in almost all cases this conversion did not occur during the Reforma, but rather under Rafael Carrera. For it was Conservative authorities, including Carrera himself, who from the very beginning of their rule refused to use state power to guarantee the legal sanctity of corporately held indigenous piedmont and coastal property before a growing wave of invading ladino agriculturists. Instead, the Conservative state strong-armed the affected towns into accepting the unwelcome usurpers as tenants. Never mind that these tenants rarely paid the rent stipulated by law, or that they treated their rented parcels as private property with the full blessing of the state. By the time that Barrios and company retook Guatemala City in late June 1871, privatenonindigenoushands already controlled much of the costa del surs best coffee land, and coffee plantations proliferated. What did this transformation of the Costa Cuca mean for Quezaltenangos Mam subsistence farmers? The highland frontier had closed by the end of the colonial period, and with the expansion of cattle, sugar, andafter 1850 coffee estates, the lowland frontier became increasingly crowded as well. To make matters more difcult, the highland population had been growing apace since the beginning of the eighteenth century. How did aspiring peasants nd sufcient land as their own numbers enlarged and as commercial agriculture engulfed more of the lowland frontier with each passing decade? The short answer is that they did not. It became more and more difcult for rural households to depend on milpa agriculture as their primary method of subsistence. Instead they were forced to rely more heavily on other activities to meet their needs, including petty commodity production and trade and working for a wage. Chapter 3 explores the expansion of this last alternativepaid laborin Mam Quezaltenango over the course of the nineteenth century, as well as its historic relationship to debt and credit since the days of the colonial repartimientos, and the ever-constant state policies that attempted to enforce debtfor-labor contracts while simultaneously enlarging the workforce through extraeconomic coercion. Although it is true, as the existing literature contends, that indebted labor and forced work brigades proliferated in the last decades of the nineteenth century, this proliferation did not begin with the Reforma, at least not in the Costa Cuca. Rather, indebted labor expanded alongside commercial agriculture in the wake of the state-sanctioned assault

14 Introduction on San Martns community property that began in the 1830s and that contin ued through the 1870s, receiving an additional boost shortly after midcentury with the establishment of the rst coffee plantations. More overtly coercive methods became commonplace when the Conservative state reintroduced conscripted labor drafts or mandamientos around 1858. Despite bold proclamations, then, Liberal policies resembled quite closely the coercive measures of their Conservative predecessors. The only saving grace for the regions Mam population was that the demand for labor on the coastal plantations remained extreme at a time when neither Conservative nor Liberal authorities were able to enforce debt contracts with much consistency. In the face of intense competition among nqueros to recruit and maintain a workforce, at least some of those who turned to plantation labor were able to defend their autonomy despite the openly coercive legal environment, and to demand additional wages regardless of how much they already owed and to whom. Besides wage income, many of the households in Mam Quezaltenango relied on the manufacture and sale of petty commodities as part of a diversied subsistence strategy. Unfortunately, the true extent of these activities cannot be accurately gauged due to the inadequacies of the existing demographic record. Small-scale production and trade escaped the census-takers eye, when it was not simply ignored outright, because it was conducted informally and frequently by women and children. Thus, for example, although some census data indicate that Mayan men produced wool and woolen textiles, we can only guess from our knowledge of the eighteenth-century repartimientos that indigenous women probably played an important role as well. One surprising exception to the dearth of information on womens economic endeavors was the production and sale of illegal rum or aguardiente clandestino. Ofcials at all levels documented this activity with rare zeal precisely because of its proscribed status. Chapter 4 elaborates the conict that emerged in western Quezaltenango as Conservative ofcials dedicated greater and greater resources to repressing this booming cottage industry. Women suffered most directly from the states heavy-handedness because they were the primary distillers and vendors, regardless of their ethnicity. Male indigenous leaders, however, also came to harbor a special resentment toward the states repressive alcohol policy because it authorized increased ladino intervention within their administrative jurisdictions. Hence, when Liberal rebels announced their intention to abolish all restrictions on the production and sale of aguardiente, women as well as men, Maya as well as ladino, probably nodded their heads in agreement. This, along with popular disillusionment at Conservative land and labor policies, may help explain why Barrios and his companions had such an easy time retaking Guatemala City in 1871. There was little popular mobilization on behalf of Vicente Cerna, Carreras handpicked successor.

Introduction 15

Once in power, Reforma-era Liberals pursued a multipronged strategy for keeping themselves there. Chapter 5 details how they aggressively cultivated their nonindigenous supporters in the west with land grants and other perks. In addition, they consolidated their power base throughout the country by celebrating ladinos as the bearers of national progress and, hence, the true citizens of Guatemala. Although this vision of the nation necessarily excluded the indigenous majority, it still implied a strengthening of the states ties among a signicant minority. Moreover, privileging subaltern ladinos over the Maya further damaged the potential for multiethnic popular opposition. At the same time, post-1870 Liberals were not opposed to eschewing the inexibility that had served their ideological forebears so poorly in relations with indigenous communities. Taking a page from Conservative rulers, Barrios and company exhibited a remarkable pragmatism, discarding Liberal principles when expedient and doling out a combination of repression and rewards to divide Mayan loyalties while isolating unyielding opponents. In the end, however, Reforma-era Liberals maintained their hold on power in no small part because they had taken control of the state at an extremely auspicious moment in the nineteenth century. Conservatives, and Rafael Carrera in particular, had restored a degree of legitimacy to Guatemala City that was sorely lacking in the immediate postcolonial years. State institutions, including the administrative and military apparatuses, were larger and stronger than ever before, and revenues had just begun a period of unprecedented growth. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Reforma did not loom in the popular imagination as a harbinger of impending disaster. Most of the disruptive changes in land tenure, labor relations, and local politics already were well underway, facilitated by Conservative authorities over the preceding three decades. Second-generation Liberals succeeded where Mariano G lvez had failed precisely because they did not introduce radical a reform so much as cement on Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes metaphorical capstone.

chapter

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culah to Independence a

san juan ostuncalcos parish church rises starkly into the radiant blue sky of Guatemalas western highlands, an austere reminder of the towns colonial past, when it served as the religious center for all the Mam communities of the Quezaltenango region. During the nineteenth century, Ostuncalcos expansive religious jurisdiction was paralleled by broader administrative and judicial powers, acquired when the town was designated the cabecera of a political district soon after independence. In subsequent decades Ostuncalco was variously home to an assistant jefe poltico or corregidor, a circuit court and judge, a juez preventivo, and a political commissioner. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the political district had been eliminated, and Ostuncalco was a simple municipality once more. Over the course of the early twentieth century the towns religious reach also was reduced, although a small number of neighboring communities remain part of the parish even today. Ostuncalcos rise and fall from municipality to political district and back again is largely the story of ethnicity and state formation in western Guatemala during the nineteenth century. Late in the colonial period the town became a center of ladino settlement in an otherwise indigenous zone, and as such it acquired increased importance in the eyes of the state. Formal recognition of this fact came in 1806, when colonial authorities granted Ostuncalcos ladinos permission to form their own municipal council alongside the preexisting indigenous one, established back in the sixteenth century. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the late colonial and early postcolonial states turned to these new ladino governing councils as they endeavored to expand their presence in the overwhelmingly indigenous western hinterlands. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, however, given the proliferation of ladino

18 Chapter 1 municipalities, the ethnic signicance of Ostuncalco and other early ladino centers diminished, and thus the state moved to end their supramunicipal powers. In the case of Ostuncalco, however, ladino state formation is only part of the story of why the town had inordinate religious and political importance when compared to its Mam neighbors. Indeed, Ostuncalcos prominence among the Mam Maya towns of Quezaltenango predated the inux of ladinos in the late colonial era, and may well have been why ladinos chose to migrate there in the rst place. To explain Ostuncalcos historical signicance among the Mam of western Quezaltenango it is necessary to consider the towns development over a period of several centuries. It is to this process that I now turn.

The Political and Cultural Origins of Mam Quezaltenango

On September 15, 1583, a group of enraged Kiche Maya from Quezaltenango entered elds cultivated by their Mam neighbors in the foothills of the volcano Siete Orejas de la Culebra. According to witnesses from San Juan Ostuncalco, the Kiche harassed and beat up all of the [Mam] Indians that they found. . . . One poor fellow named Nicol s, they tossed a in the river . . . pushing him in and pulling him out of the water until the point of death. Not content with this, the witnesses continued, the Kiche rampaged through the milpas of corn that the [Mam] Indians of the town of Ostuncalco and its estancia [Concepci n Chiquirichapa] had o there . . . cutting down and destroying much of [it]. . . .1 Representatives of Ostuncalco and its estancia Chiquirichapa quickly brought charges against the Kiche of Quezaltenango before Guatemalas Royal Audiencia, demanding that the guilty be punished. The legal proceedings that resulted are one of the few sketches of conquest-era MamKiche relations that are known to exist. Anthropologist Robert Carmack has called the Mam-authored portion of these proceedings the Ttulo Mam, and he notes that it is the only early Mam document extant.2 Aside from this source, all of our knowledge of the Mam Maya people in the years before and immediately after the Spanish conquest derives from a handful of testaments and reports produced primarily by the Kiche or by Spaniards in the second half of the sixteenth century, and from an even smaller number of archaeological studies. Ostuncalcos leaders began the Ttulo Mam by asserting their historic claim to the entire Ro Samal valley, from its headwaters in northern a Quezaltenango all the way to the Pacic Ocean.3 This was the land that their ancestors had peaceably possessed, and to which they were the rightful heirs. But the Aches [Kiche] of Utatl n province, being ambitious and a

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culah to Independence 19 a

inclined to action and warfare . . . , forced us to retreat from the plains [of Quezaltenango], where we were living, to the high mountains where we built fortications. As luck would have it, however, within a few years after we lefttenGod was served by the arrival of the Christians and the adelantado Don Pedro de Alvarado . . . to convert and to reduce this people to the faith of Jesus Christ and the royal dominion of the Crown of Spain. We and our forbears, continued Ostuncalcos leaders, welcomed them [the Spaniards] and served them without fail as was right, but also in order to seek [Alvarados] help . . . to deliver us from the vexations and harassment of the Aches [Kiche] and to restore our lands that they tyrannically had taken from us a short time before.4 According to the Ttulo Mam, then, when Pedro de Alvarado entered Guatemalas western highlands for the rst time in early 1524, Mam control over the present-day valley of Quezaltenango had only recently been challenged. Ostuncalcos inhabitants remembered well how the Kiche had driven them from the valley of Quezaltenango by military force. They were quite willing, therefore, to help the Spanish invaders subjugate their historic enemies. We descended to the plains and with the favor of God, we defeated the Aches and they abandoned our lands with much loss of life . . . and thus we were left as the quiet and peaceful masters of our [former] territory. Unfortunately for the Mam, however, Alvarado quickly betrayed their service to him. The adelantado ordered us to allow the [Kiche] to populate . . . the location where Quezaltenango is now . . . [despite] our having protested that these are our lands. In the end, the Mam acquiesced to the conquistadors demands because the Kiche were his Indians, and part of his encomienda, and to avoid any negative repercussions, since he was such a powerful man and lord of the entire land. . . .5 And so Mam-Kiche rivalry took a new form within the framework of the Spanish Empire. The two antagonists continued to wrestle over the territory that lay between them, but now their contest was refereed by Spanish administrators and judicial ofcials. The violent events of 1583 were only the latest round in a series of disputes that had marked the preceding decades of the sixteenth century; disputes that arose, according to the Mam leaders of Ostuncalco, because as the said Aches are numerous, they have continued spreading out. Unfortunately for the Mam, however, the Spanish courts did not always nd their claims of Kiche expansionism very compelling. Ruling in response to a Kiche complaint against Ostuncalco in the mid-1550s, for example, Guatemalas Audiencia ordered Mam leaders not to disturb or to bother the Indians or naturales of the said town of Quezaltenango in the possession of the lands that [they] now have. . . .6 In Ostuncalcos petition of September 1583, Mam leaders asserted that they had territorial rights to the area where Quezaltenangos residents had

20 Chapter 1 attacked cultivators from Ostuncalco and Chiquirichapa, and that this had been afrmed in the early 1560s by one of the Audiencias own judges, an oidor who they referred to as doctor Meja. They had called upon the judge to determine the boundary between their lands and those of the Kiche after the latter had established a cacao settlement called San Luis on Mam coastal territory near the town of Santa Catalina Retalhuleu. Doctor Mejas solution had been to demarcate a boundary line halfway between Ostuncalco and Quezaltenango, approximately one league east of the former and one league west of the latter.7 In the view of Ostuncalcos leaders this division placed the disputed area where Quezaltenangos residents had beaten the Mam cultivators rmly within their control.8 Quezaltenangos representative agreed that the line separating Kiche territory from Mam lands to the west had been established earlier in the century, but he did not hark back to the boundary demarcation that oidor Meja had carried out ca. 1561. Rather, he invoked the Adelantado Pedro de Alvarado as the person who [had] apportioned the land to [the Kiche] by command and order of His Majesty. Alvarado had erected a cross as a signal or marker . . . so that each town would know its boundaries and jurisdiction. . . . Although he had placed the cross more than a league from where Ostuncalco el viejo was located, apparently the town had since been moved to the east, because now the marker sat on a line of hills just ahead of . . . Ostuncalco el nuevo. . . . In other words, most of the territory that separated Quezaltenango from San Juan Ostuncalco in 1583 already pertained to the Kiche. Mam leaders disputed the tale of Alvarados cross, claiming that the conquistador had never even visited the area where it was alleged to have been placed, but apparently the Kiche version of events was more convincing to royal ofcials. In early 1584 Guatemalas Audiencia declared that the two leagues separating Quezaltenango from Ostuncalco had not been apportioned evenly, but rather that the boundary fell 1.5 leagues west of the former town, and 0.5 leagues east of the latter.9 The extent to which every detail of the Ttulo Mam accurately reects historical events and circumstances is difcult to determine. The Audiencias 1584 ruling in favor of Quezaltenango certainly casts doubt on Mam recollections of earlier boundary adjudications, although it may be that the judges were more concerned with providing for the subsistence needs of differently sized communities than with strictly adhering to legal precedent. With regard to the Spanish conquest, Mam claims that they helped Alvarado drive the Kiche from Quezaltenango cannot be veried given the dearth of potentially corroborating archival evidence. There would have been ample reason, however, for Ostuncalcos leaders to believe that they might gain legitimacy in their struggle with the Kiche by exaggerating the level of their involvement in the adelantados exploits.

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culah to Independence 21 a

Leaving aside the minutia of specic boundary disputes and legal battles, what about the larger claims staked out in the Ttulo Mam? Had the Mam once inhabited much of the Samal river basin? Did the Kiche expel them a from the valley of Quezaltenango? These claims indeed are corroborated by the documentary and archeological evidence. The Kiche themselves concede this point in their response to the Ttulo Mam. According to Quezaltenangos representative,
[I]t is notorious that the [Kiche] came from Utatl n to settle this land. [I]n heathen a times one group warred with another, and those best able to dispossess and take the land from those who ed . . . were the victors, and they had and possessed [the land] as their own. [T]hus in heathen times [the Kiche] had a war with [the Mam] in which they were made to ee, and [the Kiche] took and won from them the land by force of arms, and cornered them where they were when the Adelantado Don Pedro de Alvarado came with the rest of the Spaniards. . . .10

In addition to this response to the Ttulo Mam, several Kiche ttulos also recount successive waves of Kiche expansion prior to the Spanish a conquest.11 Utatl ns rst signicant usurpation of Mam territory may have begun as early as 1300, although it probably did not occur until after 1375. Carmack dates the invasion to the reign of Kucamatz (13751425), whereas anthropologist Adri n Recinos points to the early years of Quikabs rule a (14251475).12 Regardless of the exact date, it is clear that the Kiche conquered a large swath of highland territory in what was to be the rst of several military campaigns against the Mam. They took the valleys of Totonicap n and Quezaltenango as well as the areas that correspond to the a present-day towns of Momostenango, Santa Mara Chiquimula, Santa Cata rina Ixtahuac n, Cantel, Zunil, Almolonga, Ostuncalco, Sibilia, Huit n and a a San Miguel Ixtahuac n.13 a Under Quikab, the Kiche conquered Zaculeu, the most important stronghold of the northern Mam, and left behind a contingent of nobles to rule over the new tributaries.14 They also attacked south again, vanquishing a large Mam settlement near the volcano Santa Mara, and then moved on to the coast where they took several towns along the Ro Samal . a The conquered peoples ceded the Kiche the entire coastal strip westward to the border of Soconusco. Quikab established military outposts in several locations along the Kiche-Mam border, including Momostenango and Quezaltenango, but nevertheless, Utatl ns hold on this vast area began to slip a near the end of the fteenth century. According to Carmack, even provincial Kiche groups began to chafe under Utatl ns yoke. Thus subsequent milia tary campaigns were launched to reestablish dominance over such outlying areas as northern and western Momostenango as well as the coastal region that stretched west from the Ro Samal into Soconusco.15 a

22 Chapter 1 Together the Kiche ttulos establish that Utatl n was able to conquer a the entire eastern strip of the Mam region south of the Cuchumatanes, as well as the entire Mam coastal zone. Less clear is what happened to the defeated populations, or what sort of relationship developed between the two groups in the conquered areas. Perhaps the most clear-cut case is that of the northern Mam stronghold of Zaculeu. Utatl n placed Zaculeu in a a subordinate tributary relationship, and apparently imposed a permanent stratum of Kiche rulers.16 In the region immediately west of the central Kiche, it appears that local people were either pushed out to make way for Kiche demographic expansion, or that they were completely assimilated by the victors.17 A little further south and west, the valley of Quezaltenango suffered two Kiche military campaigns, suggesting an interim period during which the native Mam continued to resist complete subjugation or complete expulsion.18 Although Carmack asserts that the valleys Mam inhabitants were made tributaries by the Kiche, it is not clear under what circumstances this occurred.19 I have not encountered any reference to the Mam people that clearly locates them in the valley of Quezaltenango during the rst decade following the Spanish invasion, with the possible exception of the far western corner. Based on the Ttulo Mam and the response of Quezaltenangos leaders, I would suggest that most, if not all, of the Mam were driven from the area as the Kiche colonized the zone.20 On the south coast various Kiche ttulos indicate the presence of Kiche or Kiche allies on the eastern banks of the Ro Samal , an area called a a Zapotitl n.21 West of the Ro Samal , however, all the way to Soconusco, a was an ambiguous territory. Although the Kiche invaded this area at least once in the late fteenth century, there is no evidence to suggest that they were able to impose a lasting tributary relationship on the towns of the region.22 In sum, the Kiche were able to dominate the former Mam areas of Zaculeu south to the valley of Quezaltenango. North, West, and South of this territory, however, their control was inconsistent and may have corresponded to brief military incursions.23 In the case of the Quezaltenango region, Ostuncalcos leaders stated that they were forced to abandon their settlements on the valley oor and to seek refuge in the mountains, where they built defensive fortications. Presumably they were referring to the mountains that surround the western end of the valley. This would make sense given Kiche claims that Ostuncalco el viejo had been situated approximately one league west of its present location, placing the old town center somewhere in the high valleys directly north of the volcanoes Cacaix and Lacand n. The Mam o remained in their mountainous strongholds until the arrival of the Spaniards. At that point, if we are to believe the Mam account, they played an active role in helping the Spaniards defeat the Kiche forces amassed in the valley. Rather than returning their historic lands, however, Pedro de Alvarado

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culah to Independence 23 a

forced the Mam to allow the Kiche to repopulate the valley at the site of present-day Quezaltenango.24 Shortly thereafter, Alvarado granted the entire southern Mam region in a single encomienda to fellow conquistador and a close associate Pedro Portocarrero. Called Sacatep quez and Ostuncalco after its two main e towns, this was the largest encomienda in all Guatemala, and among the n most valuable.25 It passed on to Portocarreros wife Do a Leonor de Alvarado in the late 1530s following her husbands death and a brief power struggle that pitted her father, the adelantado Pedro de Alvarado, against rival encomenderos. In 1541 Do a Leonor remarried to Guatemalas interim govern nor, Francisco de la Cueva, and the encomienda remained under their control through the 1580s, when it was inherited by their son. Although some sources indicate that Ostuncalco was transferred to Crown control as early as 1589, other evidence suggests that at least some of the towns residents continued to be apportioned in encomienda well into the late seventeenth century.26 Like most of far western and northern Guatemala, Ostuncalco was placed under the administration of the Order of Mercy by the second half of the sixteenth century, where it remained until the parish was secularized in 1768. Francisco Fuentes y Guzm n claims that Mercedarian friars actually estaba lished a mission there in 1538. Whatever the exact date, however, they subsequently reduced Ostuncalco el viejo from its mountainous stronghold to the valley oor and the site of the present-day town. The new location, referred to by the Kiche as nuevo Ostuncalco in their 1583 response to the Ttulo Mam, was approximately one league closer to Quezaltenango. Although the Mam did not regain more of their former territory with this move, they do not appear to have opposed what must have been an otherwise disruptive process, perhaps because they approved of having the political center of their population relocated to the valley that they had once dominated.27 That said, in the long term Ostuncalcos inhabitants did not abide congregacin in the new town center. Instead, they opted for a more dispersed o network of smaller settlements that by the end of the colonial period had formed the basis for Quezaltenangos several additional Mam municipalities as well as many of Ostuncalcos present-day hamlets or cantones. The dynamics of this dispersion probably reected some combination of the following three processes. First, segments of the Mam, perhaps linked by real or ctive kinship, may have desired to stake out or resettle territory that they had lost to the Kiche during the fourteenth or fteenth century. Similarly, particular Mam clans may have retraced the path of congracacin itself, reinhabiting areas o from which they had been removed by Spanish missionaries in the aftermath of the conquest. Finally, the dispersion probably also reected the exigencies of peasant agriculture as families decided more or less in piecemeal fashion to move closer to their subsistence base. Whatever the exact mechanism, however, as early as the late sixteenth-century archival documents mention

24 Chapter 1 two additional Mam settlements bordering Ostuncalco in the mountains to the south, the estancias sujetas Concepci n Chiquirichapa and San Martn o Sacatep quez.28 By the early seventeenth-century indigenous ofcials also e presented evidence of a northward dispersion, stating that at a location called San Crist bal Cabric n, well over 30 km to the north, twelve Indians [and o a their families] . . . from this said town of Ostuncalco . . . have the majority of their milpas and a limestone operation [calera]. Said Indians have moved there to process the limestone and to tend said milpas.29 Ostuncalcos highland estancias sujetas grew in number, and eventually in size, over the course of the colonial period, splitting off to form independent municipalities throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Concepci n Chiquirichapa and San Martn Sacatep quez were o e both considered separate towns by the late seventeenth century, as was San u a Crist bal Cabric n.30 The entangled histories of San Miguel Sig il and o a Santa Cruz Cajol offer a somewhat more complicated example. Although a San Miguel received mention as early as 1632, it did not show up in the documentation with regularity until the late 1600s, and then as an estancia of Chiquirichapa. Following a thirty-year absence from the tribute roles, it resurfaced in 1728 as the Parcialidad de San Miguel. A little before the midcentury, however, Spanish ofcials started to confuse the town with another indigenous settlement further to the north, the precursor of Santa Cruz Cajol . The two places were not clearly differentiated, at least a in Spanish minds, until ca. 1775. Although I would cautiously suggest that San Miguel achieved autonomous status during the 1740s, Cajol remained a a paraje of Ostuncalco until 1790.31 Santa Cruz Cajol was a rather ambiguous entity in the late eighteenth and a early nineteenth centuries, just as Ostuncalco had been before its erstwhile estancias delineated the towns boundaries by breaking away to form separate municipalities. Indeed, Cajol emerged amidst charges that its residents were a invading the lands of San Miguel Sig il and San Juan Olintepeque. The new u a town consisted mostly of people from Ostuncalco and Chiquirichapa who had been forced to go in search of their own lands to the north of Ostuncalco and San Miguel Sig il . Like Ostuncalco before it, Cajol s tributaries u a a stretched as far north as Cabric n, to the parajes of Huit n, Paxoj, Vixben, a a and Xacan . These parajes were administered by Cajol s municipal authoria a ties until the late 1860s, when Huit n achieved independent municipal status a and gained administrative jurisdiction over Paxoj and Vixben.32

Highland Mam Society and the Costa del Sur

By the end of the eighteenth century, Quezaltenango counted ve Mam towns in addition to San Juan Ostuncalco. The emergence of these communities over the course of the colonial period reected the demographic

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culah to Independence 25 a

dispersion and expansion of the population that Spanish colonial authorities originally had concentrated in or near San Juan Ostuncalco. I have suggested that this migration of Mam peoples from Ostuncalco to the surrounding lands represented a return to areas that they had occupied at some time in the past. A similar process of reoccupation occurred to the south of the valley of Quezaltenango and the tierras fras that surrounded it, in the coastal piedmont and tropical plains that stretched to the Pacic Ocean below. The highland Mam communities of southwestern Guatemala had an enduring relationship with the adjacent coastal region. Early Kiche testimonies, produced to bolster the territorial pretensions of the postconquest Kiche elite, indicate that present-day Guatemalas westernmost coastal region pertained to the Mam in pre-Columbian times. Sixteenth and early seventeenth century testimony from various Mam authorities provides additional evidence of historical ties to the Pacic lowlands, particularly those west of the Ro Samal . The report of Spaniard Diego Garc s (ca. 1570), a e alcalde mayor of Zapotitl n, corroborates Mam claims that San Juan Ostuna calco and San Pedro Sacatep quezthe two major highland Mam centers e located in southwestern Guatemalamaintained several coastal estancias y sujetos into the late sixteenth century. Santa Catalina Retalhuleu and Santa Mara Magdalena were the most prominent of those with ties to Ostuncalco, although the coastal settlements of Nejapa Tepintepeque and San G ronimo e Cuyamesumba also were said to have been under the towns control.33 The genesis of these coastal dependencies, as well as their exact relationship to the highland centers, remains unclear. Information from neighboring indigenous societies, however, as well as other evidence from the colonial period, is suggestive. Residents of the piedmont and lowland colonies of Santiago Atitl n, the Tzutujil capital, reported in the late sixteenth century a that their ancestors had originated from Atitl n prior to the Spanish cona quest, and that for as long as they could remember their communities had paid tribute to the highland capital in the form of cacao and other tropical products. These informants recalled that Altitl ns elite had maintained a cacao estates in the lowland colonies, and they claimed that many highland inhabitants continued to tend cacao groves from which they derived their livelihood and the resources to pay crown tribute. In addition, the informants noted that prior to the Spanish conquest the inhabitants of Atitl ns colonies a had been much greater in number, and had lived in a more dispersed fashion throughout the piedmont and lowland jungle.34 Tzutujil accounts of the historical relationship between highland indigenous political centers and coastal settlements are reinforced by the writings of sixteenth-century Spanish observers. Alcalde Mayor Diego Garc s afrmed e that the residents of Santiago Atitl n kept cacao groves in the coastal colonies, a and he noted that the lowland settlements also produced cotton and corn in signicant quantities. Juan de Pineda, in his 1594 Descripci n de la o

26 Chapter 1 Provincia de Guatemala, gave similar evidence for the Kiche of Quezaltenango, who maintained cacao plantations in two coastal estancias. According to Pineda, most of the sierra towns situated along the Pacic rim had commercial and familial ties with the coastal settlements below, regardless of whether they continued to exercise formal administrative or political control. Highland residents traveled to the coast to sell their crops and goods in exchange for cacao, cotton, and other hotland products that were consumed directly or resold for a prot.35 Based on these accounts, it is quite likely that highland Mam communities also established lowland colonies in pre-Columbian times in order to maintain control over coastal territory, and, in particular, the cacao groves located therein. Writing ca. 1570, Garc s noted that certain of Ostuncalcos e residents controlled cacao groves in the towns coastal estancias. Highland residents probably migrated to the coast to grow food crops and to gather and cultivate tropical products, whether permanently or on a seasonal basis that corresponded to periods of slack-time in the highland milpa cycle. Coastal territory would have allowed highlanders to acquire both luxury items and basic necessities year-round and thus would have helped to maintain the burgeoning sierra population of the late pre-Columbian era.36 Similar to the Tzutujil communities, highland Mam centers probably extracted resources from their lowland estancias through trade and tribute as well as the direct cultivation of coastal land by highland residents. In addition, highland elites may have maintained cacao estates that presumably were worked in the manner of Mexican cacicazgos. Resident serfs or mayeques would have tended the cacao groves and paid a substantial portion of the harvest directly to the estate owner.37 Sometime between the report of Alcalde Mayor Garc s, approximately e 1570, and the second decade of the seventeenth century, the coastal estancias of Ostuncalco and San Pedro Sacatep quez were granted independent mue nicipal status. Garc s had complained of the difculties that beset the lowland e Mam settlements because they were required to pay tribute to the crown by way of the highland cabildos. He wrote Guatemalas Audiencia that the estancia Santa Catalina is fteen leagues from Ostuncalco, and [yet] it goes there with its tribute, something that is not just nor should it be permitted.38 Whether or not the Audiencia was swayed by Garc s advice alone, witnesses e reported in 1617 that several years earlier the former estancias had pressed for, and been granted, administrative autonomy from Ostuncalco and San Pedro Sacatep quez. The independent communities were transferred from e the jurisdiction of Quezaltenango to Suchitep quez for the purposes of e administration and tribute collection.39 In marked contrast to the rest of Guatemala, evidence indicates that western coastal settlements, including the Mam estancias, began to experience a

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culah to Independence 27 a

temporary demographic recovery near the end of the sixteenth century. This recovery appears to have been based on the growing inux of highland residents who sought to partake in the continuing protability of Guatemalas cacao economy. Although the heyday for Mesoam rican cacao had long e since passed, Suchitep quez still supplied signicant quantities to Mexico e City through the rst half of the seventeenth century, surpassing even Soconusco by the 1630s. Garc s, as well as later commentators, lamented e the fact that many highland Mam were obliged to journey to the Pacic lowlands to purchase the cacao and cotton necessary to satisfy their tribute payments to the crown. In the process, migrants established concubines and second households in the coastal communities, and some even took up residence in them permanently.40 Although such relocation must have made it easier to collect the much sought after lowland commodities, it also may have allowed migrants to lessen or even escape the burden of tribute by assuming forastero status. For much of the colonial period forasteros were exempted from paying tribute in their place of residence because they continued to be included in the tribute roll of their community of origin. Aided by distance and difcult terrain, many forasteros found it possible to avoid tribute obligations altogether. Regardless of why it occurred, however, migration probably accounts for early seventeenth century observations that the Mams lowland dependencies had gained population over the course of the sixteenth century, in marked contrast to the population decline noted for Guatemala as a whole.41 Sometime in the second half of the seventeenth century, however, coastal demographic trends reversed course. Once again, cacao appears to have played a determining role. Although competition from South American producers had eroded Mesoam rican cacao exports since the 1620s, a surge e in Venezuelan production around the midcentury spelled imminent collapse. As a result, cacaos promise no longer compelled highlanders to seek out the coast, and even lowland residents may have decided to move elsewhere in the face of severe economic downturn. In sum, highland migration no longer offset nor obscured the high mortality rates that characterized sixteenthand seventeenth-century Guatemala, and, as a result, the population of the former estancias plummeted dramatically.42 Two examples illustrate the contours of this decline. Santa Catalina Retalhuleu, one of Ostuncalcos former estancias, counted 400 almas de confesi n, or roughly 500 people, near o the end of the sixteenth century.43 In 1770, however, Guatemalas Bishop Pedro Cort s y Larraz estimated only 278 residents. By 1806 the town was e abandoned.44 Santa Mara Magdalena, another of Ostuncalcos erstwhile sujetos, was described as extinguido by 1712.45 From the midseventeenth century onward, then, the coastal communities began their precipitous demographic decline, and one by one they were

28 Chapter 1 abandoned. During this same period, however, the highland Mam towns began a slow demographic recovery. They also began to show a renewed interest in exploiting the lowland region that historically had been under their control. The rst towns to manifest their interest in an explicit manner were San Martn Sacatep quez and Concepci n Chiquirichapa, them e o selves former highland estancias of Ostuncalco. Together, they purchased over twenty caballeras of coastal land in 1712, near the abandoned community of Santa Mara Magdalena.46 Then, in 1744, San Martn successfully titled a much greater area that included a large swath of coastal piedmont abutting the community to the south, as well as the tierras fras that surrounded the town center itself. Residents of San Martn had been using the piedmont land informally for an unspecied number of years, and they considered it a part of the communitys ejido or territory. The agrimensor who surveyed the boundary markers, Juan Antonio del Bosque y Artiaga, estimated that the circumscribed area contained 346 caballeras. Due to the inaccuracies of eighteenth-century surveying methods, however, later revisions found an as tounding 1,085 caballeras, or nearly 500 sq. km.47 San Martn unknowingly had titled a majority portion of the potential coffee lands in what would become, after independence, the department of Quezaltenango. Although San Martn and, to a lesser degree, Chiquirichapa were the only highland Mam towns to aggressively title land in what had once been Mam coastal territory, all of the communities with origins in Ostuncalco made use of the Pacic lowlands by the late colonial period. Some highlanders migrated regularly on a short-term basis to hunt the coastal forests, or to collect fruits and other tropical items to sell in their home communities or in the markets of Quezaltenango. Others migrated for longer periods of time, taking advantage of the coastal climate and ecology to pasture their sheep and/or cultivate corn during the highland dry season. Some migrants made the trip only infrequently, for example, during a bad harvest year, whereas others did so annually. Then there were those highlanders who settled the coast more or less permanently, maintaining lowland milpas on a yearround basis. Although the majority of this latter group probably originated in San Martn and Chiquirichapa, some hailed from San Juan Ostuncalco as well.48 The resurgence in highland migration to the coast did not reverse the continuing disintegration of Ostuncalcos former lowland estancias like Santa Catalina Retalhuleu and Santa Mara Magdalena, perhaps because the lat ters cacao groves were no longer the target of this new wave of immigrants. Instead of cacao, the resurgence was fueled by an increasing need to complement highland milpa production with the additional one or two growing seasons made possible by the coastal environment. Thus the new migrants did not integrate themselves into the old piedmont estancias that colonial ofcials

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culah to Independence 29 a

had separated from the highlands towns, but rather initiated a new series of informal, loosely agglutinated settlements while continuing to participate in the cultural and political structures of their highland home communities. Even well into the nineteenth century this burgeoning population of transplanted highlanders had no interest in severing ties with the communities of origin. In this way the new settlements replicated the demographic pattern of the pre-Columbian estancias and their relationship to highland authorities.

Ladino Penetration of Mam Quezaltenango

The indigenous population was not the only one expanding geographically and eventually numerically over the course of the colonial period. Ladinos began establishing haciendas in the interstices of Quezaltenangos Mam towns from at least as early as the seventeenth century. By 1749 a handful had settled in Ostuncalco proper itself, despite Crown prohibitions against Spaniards or mestizos living in indigenous towns.49 This number grew to over 250 before the end of the century, and in 1806, due to their relatively large numbers, Ostuncalcos ladinos were authorized to form their own municipal government alongside that of the indigenous populace. Thus began the towns dual-municipality tradition that lasted well into the 1900s.50 The ladino haciendas, too, often developed into larger settlements, or Valles. On Ostuncalcos northeastern periphery the Valle de Sija was said to have 60 almas de confesi n in 1688.51 Another, the Valle de o Bobos, emerged due north of the town proper, but south of Cabric n and a the paraje of Huit n, thus splitting greater Ostuncalco in two. The lands a of San Antonio Bob s, as it came to be called, were originally titled in 1653 o by two Spaniards. The area was still being described as a simple hacienda as late as 1770. That same year Archbishop Cort s y Larraz estimated Bob s e o population at fteen families or eighty individuals. Within three decades the Valles populace had risen to 269, sufcient to meet the requirements of a municipality, and thus, in 1806, it too was granted legal municipal status.52 In addition to the two Valles of Sija and Bob s, the haciendas Veinte Palos, o Los Granados, Zacualpa, Las Manzanas, and Macl n were established to the e north and west of Ostuncalco and the surrounding Mam towns. Macl n, e like Sija and Bob s, also achieved the status of Valle and then Pueblo.53 o The Mam towns resisted the formation of these ladino haciendas and settlements, which they viewed as encroachments on lands that had pertained to their communities since time immemorial. Unfortunately, however, as the number of haciendas that achieved municipal status demonstrates, they frequently were unsuccessful. In addition, the sixteenth-century battle that introduced this chapter, and which had pitted Ostuncalco against Quezaltenango, resurfaced again in the late colonial period as a boundary

30 Chapter 1 dispute primarily between San Mateo, a Kiche offshoot of Quezaltenango, and Chiquirichapa, although both of the former towns continued to be involved.54 Another area of Mam-Kiche contention was the eastern periphery of Cajol s parajes Huit n and Paxoj. Buenabaj, an aldea of Momostenango, a a along with the Mejas of San Crist bal Totonicap nall Kichealso o a claimed the disputed lands. Then there were the conicts that emerged among the Mam towns themselves. Cabric n challenged Cajol s possession a a of the parajes Xacan and Vixben, as well as Huit n.55 And from the early a a eighteenth century Chiquirichapa pushed royal ofcials to allow them to split their municipal lands from Ostuncalcos, rather than maintaining them as a single common ejido.56 The most heated conict between southern Mam towns, however, was over the territorial boundaries of Ostuncalco and San Pedro Sacatep quez to the west. This dispute frequently involved the e other Mam communities as well, because both Ostuncalco and San Pedro presumed to dominate the smaller indigenous towns that had emerged on their respective peripheries.57 Following independence, the costa del sur also became a major theater in the struggle over land that marked Mam Quezaltenango. The battle lines that had been drawn between Mam communities and ladino invaders in the tierras fras over the course of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries now began to extend to the piedmont and coastal plains that stretched south from San Martn Sacatep quez. Throughout the late colonial and independence e periods the highland Mam had increased their reliance on the coast in order to meet their subsistence needs. By 1836 even Cabric n, the northern-most a Mam town in the district of Ostuncalco, was involved to such an extent that it could not respond to an inquiry from the departmental governor because its ofcials were on the coast out of necessity.58 San Martns municipality complained on several occasions about the residents of neighboring communities who were using its coastal lands without permission and, worse yet, challenging the towns legal claims. The latter problem was attributed in particular to the ladinos of Ostuncalco who had begun to establish cattle ranches and sugar trapiches on costa lands with increasing frequency in the last decade of colonial rule.59 Ladino penetration of San Martn Sacatep quezs coastal territory during e this period occurred within the context of a general move by ladinos from the Quezaltenango-San Marcos highland zone into the western Pacic lowlands as the colonial era came to a close.60 The region between the Ro Naranjo and the Ro Samal which included San Martns ejidowas subject to a a spate of denunciations from the 1780s onward.61 The pace merely quickened following independence. In the area just described, at least twenty-ve denunciations were led in the decade preceding 1837 alone.62 This gure

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culah to Independence 31 a

is almost certainly incomplete, and probably vastly underrepresents the true number of denunciations that occurred by the late 1830s. During its initial phase, the increase in ladino denunciations of coastal lands probably resulted from three interrelated trends. The rst of these was the expansion of Quezaltenangos regional economycentered in the city of Quezaltenango itselfthroughout the second half of the eighteenth century. Although unimportant in terms of exports to Spain, the southwestern highlands became a signicant supplier of food stuffs, especially wheat, as well as cotton and woolen textiles, to the rest of the isthmus, and in particular, to the enclaves that produced dyes and other items for interoceanic trade. By the 1790s Quezaltenango was arguably the most important textile center in all of Guatemala.63 Ostuncalco and the surrounding Mam towns appear to have participated in the expansion by supplying wheat, lamb, wool, and cotton and woolen thread and weavings to Quezaltenangos Corregidor as part of their tribute and repartimiento obligations. Community residents also sold these goods directly in the markets of Quezaltenango. Among Ostuncalcos ladino residents, an 1811 census revealed that over 50 percent of the economically active males were engaged in the production of wool or woolen textiles. Regional economic expansion coincided with an inux of ladinos from the environs of Guatemalas capital, Santiago de los Caballeros. Their numbers grew especially quickly following the earthquakes that devastated Santiago in 1773, and the establishment of a new capital, Guatemala City, in 1776.64 Aside from the city of Quezaltenango itself, the incipient ladino communities of Salcaj , San Carlos Sija, and San Marcos also experienced a rapid growth. It is during this period, as well, that Ostuncalcos ladino population increased from a little more than a dozen, to nearly three hundred, and that the ladino settlement of San Antonio Bob s emerged in the interstices o of Ostuncalcos northern indigenous towns.65 A third trend that paralleled regional economic expansion and signicant ladino immigration was the growth of aguardiente production. The city of Quezaltenango, for example, experienced a rapid proliferation of aguardiente producers and vendors during the second half of the eighteenth century, despite crown restrictions on alcohol distillation and sales. Their ranks included ladinos and indgenas, women and men, subaltern and elite, and as they increased in number, so did the demand for raw sugar, the main ingredient of aguardiente.66 Although Ostuncalcos aguardiente industry does not appear to have ourished as early as Quezaltenangos, there is evidence of its existence by the end of the colonial period.67 These three trendsa growing local market for alcohol, substantial ladino immigration, and regional economic expansionimpelled increasing numbers of ladinos to seek their fortunes on the coast. Both sugar and cotton, inputs of aguardiente and textile manufacturing, respectively, required a

32 Chapter 1 tropical environment for their cultivation. Cattle, although not restricted to the coast by climatic factors, could be pastured there most protably because of the vast tracts of lush vegetation, relatively unbroken either by a dry season, or by cultivated areas or settlements. Fodder was never a problem, and labor costs were kept to a minimum, because herds grazed and roamed freely. In sum, by the end of the eighteenth century, more and more ladinos laid claim to coastal lands with the intention of supplying the nearby highland population centers with sugar, cotton, and cattle.68 The appearance in Guatemala of low-priced cotton textiles from Britain at the end of the 1790s signaled the beginning of a gradual slowdown for Quezaltenangos regional economy. During the rst decades of the nineteenth century, stagnation replaced economic expansion. Highland spinners and weavers who specialized in cotton were hardest hit, though woolen textiles also suffered.69 Nevertheless, this economic slowdown does not seem to have dampened the ladino appetite for coastal land. Denunciations persisted and, in the immediate aftermath of independence, even increased. The evidence from Ostuncalco suggests that the regions ladino population continued to grow apace, as did local demand for aguardiente, and this may help to explain why, despite a wounded textile industry, ladino interest in the coast did not abate. Although many of Ostuncalcos ladinos persisted in raising sheep and producing wool through at least the 1830s, and probably until the midcentury, they increasingly also turned their attention to cultivating and milling sugar on the coast.70

The Struggle over Indigenous Community Land and the Denition of Ejido
Another important factor that probably helped to elevate the number of land claims on the coast, despite the decline of Quezaltenangos regional textile industry, is the changes that were made to the laws governing land tenure between 1813 and 1835. The C diz Cortes and, following independence, a Liberal reformers, attempted to promote land privatization by repeatedly exhorting regional and local authorities to sell off all untitled areas that did not pertain explicitly to a particular communitys ejido. Individuals or corporationssuch as municipalities or cofradasthat had settled, or other wise utilized, so-called terrenos baldos without obtaining a proper title would be subject to conscation and eviction. Underlying these measures was a minimalist denition of the term ejido that had serious implications for indigenous community landholding because it denied the equivalence that indigenous authorities assigned to municipal and ejido boundaries. In addition, reformers dramatically lowered land prices from approximately thirteen pesos per caballera to a maximum price of four in order to promote private acquisitions.71

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culah to Independence 33 a

For most of the colonial period, ambiguities in crown law had provided grounds for widely divergent views of the community ejido. On paper, statutes described the ejido as an area that comprised one square league, or approximately thirty eight caballeras.72 Indigenous authorities, however, generally ignored the one-square-league denition employed by the crown. Instead, they insisted that their ejido comprised all of the land within the towns administrative boundaries. Although some portions were reserved for communal use, and others were allotted for individual or family use, ultimately all of the towns territory was considered to be the exclusive patrimony of the community and its residents. This discrepancy between the letter of the law and on-the-ground practices was possible because the crown also guaranteed each community the right to whatever subsistence lands were needed in addition to the ejido itself. Where municipal authorities tended to see a single ejido, royal ofcials perceived a combination of ejido and other lands used by community residents for subsistence purposes. In either case, the entire territory qualied for protection against outside purchase or usurpation.73 The problem that emerged, however, was how to determine a particular communitys subsistence needs. Indigenous representatives argued that historical use and occupation were sufcient to prove need. Local royal ofcials, on the other hand, intent on pushing through composiciones, particularly those of family members, friends, and business associates, attempted to claim that much of the land over and above one square league was excessive and unnecessary for community subsistence. Despite these problems of interpretation, however, and the potential for favoritism and corruption on the part of royal ofcials, crown law did at least offer a modicum of protection for extraejido community territory, and this was what the legal reforms of the C diz Cortes, and succeeding a republican governments, aimed to eliminate. By withdrawing ofcial support for untitled community territory in excess of the ejido proper, reformers hoped to make it easier for private individuals to title land in indigenous communities, be they residents or outsiders. In fact, however, the post-1813 legislation merely displaced the point of contention from the question of how to dene a community ejido, to what constituted legal title. Many communities had taken advantage of the colonial-era statutes that allowed them to title nonejido subsistence lands. Indeed, many communities had titled more or less their entire municipal territory. Were these titles still valid after 1813, even though they had been granted at a time when communities were allowed to claim legal right to territory that had not been composed or purchased outright? The complexities of this situation are illustrated by the case of the jointly titled ejido of Ostuncalco, Chiquirichapa, Sig il , and Cajol . In 1744 the u a a four towns titled an ejido of 259 caballeras. Upon remeasurement in 1816,

34 Chapter 1 the circumscribed area actually was found to contain 513 caballeras.74 As one crown ofcial remarked, even if all four towns were granted an ejido of one square league, for a combined total of approximately 155 caballeras, this would remain well below the hundreds of caballeras that had been titled. Yet it did not appear that the excess had ever been paid for or otherwise composed, despite the fact that a title did, indeed, exist.75 Aside from failing to resolve the ambiguities inherent in colonial-era land laws, the post-1813 legislation posed its own particular difculties. Consider the statutes of the early 1830s that established a contribuci n territorial or o land tax to replace the church-run diezmo. Under the new tax regulations, all properties, including those held by communities, had to be registered. Property-holders were called on to present their titles, measurements, or whatever documentation they possessed, to demonstrate legal ownership and to establish the amount of land in question. As a check against noncompliance, the statutes proclaimed that all unregistered properties would revert to state control as terrenos baldos. The problem, however, was that compli ance could mean a heavy tax burden, particularly on municipalities that had titled large areas. Although an exemption was allowed for ejidos, provided a community could demonstrate nancial hardship, the law specically limited an ejido to one square league, or approximately thirty eight caballeras.76 Indigenous communities, then, were stuck between a rock and a hard place: if they divulged the full extent of their territory they would be saddled with an astronomical tax burden. Ostuncalco and the three other Mam towns, for example, would have been liable for paying the contribuci n territoo rial on at least 358 caballeras, at an annual cost of 179 pesos. The other option, however, was no better: to risk that titled community land would be reclassied as terreno baldo. Records from 1834 and 1835 suggest that this is precisely what most indigenous towns probably did. In the departments of Quezaltenango, Totonicap n, and Solol , for example, 93 of the 126 towns a a did not register their land as mandated by the new tax laws.77 Some of the ambiguities in the late-colonial and early-republican legislation were cleared up in 1836 with two new laws that simply ended the ban on selling ejido land. The new laws authorized municipal governments to sell off portions of their ejido as a means to raise funds for public works projects. In addition, and probably even more upsetting to indigenous communities, anyone who currently rented ejido land could now purchase it, regardless of their ethnicity or place of residence.78 This latter stipulation built on earlier statutes that permitted ejido usage by ladino newcomers, and authorized censo rental of ejido land to noncommunity members more generally.79 As a result of these new laws the discrepancy between legal and indigenous conceptualizations of the community ejido lost much of its signicance. Now it no longer mattered if community land had been titled or not, or whether

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culah to Independence 35 a

it legally could be construed to be an ejido, because this status had ceased to afford legal protection against nonindgenas. The result of the new laws, according to Quezaltenangos departmental chief, was an impressive increase in land denunciations.80 In sum, then, the reform legislation of the late-colonial and earlyrepublican periods fed ladino aspirations for land, even if it did not entirely simplify the complex web of laws regarding land tenure. Colonial-era regulations, although far from perfect, had offered indigenous communities at least a modicum of legal protection. The dismantling of these regulations increased the potential for ladinos and noncommunity members to acquire property from municipal holdings. Nowhere is this potential made clearer than in the Pacic piedmont and lowlands that lay to the south and west of San Martn Sacatep quez, a topic that will be explored in greater detail in e chapter 2.

The Roots of Nineteenth-Century Land Conict: Toward an Explanation

In this chapter I have outlined two interrelated trends in the political demography of the Mam region of highland Quezaltenango. The rst is the establishment of an increasing number of independent municipalities indigenous and ladinoin the centuries following the Spanish conquest. I have suggested that all of the indigenous towns began as estancias sujetas, if not direct offshoots, of San Juan Ostuncalco. A second trend is the growing frequency of land and boundary disputes between indigenous and ladino settlements, and among the indigenous municipalities themselves. By the early nineteenth century these conicts had become commonplace. Taken together, these two trends indicate yet another: the sharp decline of vacant agricultural lands in the tierras fras of Quezaltenango during the late colonial pe riod. By independence the regions internal frontier had largely disappeared. The idea of a land shortage should come as no surprise to those familiar with the historiography of Guatemalas nineteenth century. The chronology that I suggest for the onset of this shortage, however, may give rise to some skepticism. Much of the literature does not recognize that in the years prior to 1871 indigenous communities suffered substantial territorial losses in frequent land disputes with ladinos, nor that increasing numbers of rural dwellers were forced to undertake an ever-widening search for agricultural lands. Indeed, some authors propose the years 18001880 as a sort of heyday for the indigenous community, cut short by Barrios agrarian legislation.81 Another reason for skepticism lies in the fact that for most of the nineteenth century, if one views Guatemala as a whole, there still existed large uncultivated expanses with very few people. This was the case, for example,

36 Chapter 1 with the Pacic piedmont and coast. How, then, can one speak of intense land pressures in early nineteenth-century Guatemala? Differences in focus and scope explain this apparent contradiction. My argument in this chapter is restricted to the highlands, and, more specically, to western Quezaltenango. That is where indigenous and ladino settlements alike had expanded to ll what remained of the highland frontier. As I will demonstrate in the chapter that follows, the relatively open terrain of the boca costa or piedmont and Pacic lowlands became the new agricultural frontier, partially mitigating the problem of inadequate tierras fras. In addition, however, the new frontier also became a new locus of conict over land, and it was here that indigenous communities suffered some of their most devastating losses during the nineteenth century. Finally there is the apparent objection posed by demographic studies that conclude Guatemalas population did not return to pre-Columbian levels until the twentieth century.82 My own estimates for Ostuncalco suggest that the preconquest population of approximately 40,000 was attained slightly earlier, probably by the 1860s.83 In 1821, by contrast, the area counted little more than 9,000 people. Given this relatively small number, why so many complaints of insufcient land? Why the myriad disputes? These questions are themselves based on the premise that the preconquest populace, despite its relatively large size, was able to reproduce itself under more favorable conditions. Such a claim is hard to substantiate and requires an in-depth comparison of land use and agricultural productivity before and after the Spanish invasion. Studies of this kind are markedly absent from the historiography of Guatemala. Nevertheless, what little scholarly attention has been focused on this point indicates that pre-Columbian social organization and agricultural techniques may have been better suited for the reproduction of a large population. Murdo MacLeod is one of the few authors to approach this issue even speculatively. In his now classic Spanish Central America he suggests that preconquest agricultural techniques and settlement patterns were able to support a large population. Irrigation, intensive and specialized crop planting, the rotation of cultivated areas through multiyear fallow periods, and a dispersed rather than nucleated populace combined to sustain Guatemalas numerous peoples. Spanish interventions such as wheat and livestock, by contrast, lowered agricultural productivity. The policy of congregacin concentrated o people away from their agricultural lands. Composicin discouraged commuo nities from leaving agricultural lands fallow, a necessary step in maintaining fertility and lessening erosion, and in general diminished community territory by facilitating outside encroachment. These trends became especially problematic during the late seventeenth century as Guatemalas western highland population began to grow intermittently. Some communities challenged

The Transformation of Mam Quezaltenango from Culah to Independence 37 a

ladino control of nearby areas in an attempt to satisfy their increasing subsistence requirements. As this route often ended in failure, however, they found themselves face-to-face with other communities in the scramble for sufcient agricultural lands.84 Geographer Thomas Veblen is probably the only scholar who has tackled the question of population and agricultural subsistence in Guatemala in greater detail than MacLeod. His investigation of the area composing present-day Totonicap n points in the direction that future demographic/ a environmental studies should take.85 Veblen explores the social-ecological nexus of pre- and post-Colombian populations and reaches conclusions that reinforce and extend MacLeods tentative ndings. His research indicates, for example, that by the end of the eighteenth century land pressure in Totonicap n was high, manifesting itself as constant intercommunity bounda ary disputes. Perhaps even more importantly, however, Veblen gives a more thorough accounting of why such pressures existed even though the population was less than 50 percent of the preconquest level. He points to several interconnected factors. Like MacLeod, Veblen highlights the negative impact of wheat. Although wheat can be grown at slightly higher altitudes than corn, allowing for a greater overall area of cultivation, its yield is much smaller. Furthermore, in practice, wheat was frequently planted not at the higher, marginal elevations, but on fertile valley oors where it displaced the more productive indigenous milpas centered around corn. This was true of the Valleys of Totonicap n and Quezaltenango. Ladinos migrated to the area a in ever-increasing numbers to pursue wheat cultivation on the ejido lands of nearby indigenous communities. Indigenous communities themselves were induced to plant the grain by demands that tribute be paid in wheat.86 Veblen also provides a more detailed look at the problems associated with the introduction of livestock. To begin with, livestock produces far fewer calories per unit of area than do food crops. In the case of Totonicap n, and a Guatemala more generally, however, this was compounded by the fact that much of the livestock was not being raised for food at all, but rather for wool. Production of wool was encouraged by tribute demands for woolen thread and weavings, and by the seventeenth century it had begun to replace cotton as a source of clothing fabric in the highlands. Note that cotton, unlike sheep, does not compete with highland crops for land because it derives entirely from the coast. By 1740 every town in Totonicap n was engaged in raising a sheep. Like wheat, sheep also supplanted traditional milpa cultivation on Totonicap ns fertile valley oor. Areas of Totonicap n outside the central a a valley that had once been noted for their fertility, despite more marginal soils, suffered severe erosion from overgrazing during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and today are considered almost barren. In sum, writes Veblen, It is evident that at the end of the colonial period, a population of

38 Chapter 1 only 30,000 to 40,000 in the Partido de Totonicap n did not nd the land a resources sufciently ample to support itself.87 Turning back, now, to the case of Ostuncalco, I will offer some tentative observations and hypotheses based largely on the political demography provided in the rst half of this chapter. The evidence suggests that Ostuncalco was reduced to its present location sometime in the early- to midsixteenth century.88 This shift of the population center, along with the massive disease-induced decline that accompanied the Spanish conquest, left large areas of formerly settled and cultivated land to the north and west wide open. Ostuncalcos population reoccupied the area over the course of the late sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. So too did ladino ranchers. Especially in the later years, this reoccupation probably reected the shift from population decline to population growth among native peoples. It may have also reected, however, the deterioration in soil productivity engendered by Spanish agricultural techniques and policies. Congregacin, for example, o by grouping together dispersed settlements, created small pockets with articially high population densities. This may have discouraged the extensive system of agriculture based on rotating cultivation. Composicin, as MacLeod o suggests, could have given added impetus to such a tendency since lands left fallow too long were sometimes swallowed up by ladino hacendados.89 Evidence of cattle raising in the Ostuncalco area dates from 1549. Encomendero Francisco de la Cueva employed fourteen indgenas to care for his livestock.90 Wheat cultivation and sheep herding were present at least as early as 1690.91 All of these endeavors, as has already been discussed, are far less efcient than traditional milpa agriculture. Moreover, their products were sometimes destined for tribute payments rather than local consumption. The combined effects of soil damage from grazing and more intensive agriculture, and less efcient food production due to wheat cultivation and livestock husbandry, forced Ostuncalcos residents to search farther and farther aeld for suitable land despite a slow population recovery. As they did so, they ran into ladino cultivators and ranchers who had settled former Mam lands and established expansive haciendas. Boundary conicts and property disputes became endemic, not just between Maya and ladino, but also between Mam and Kiche, and among and within the Mam communities themselves. Thus Quezaltenangos Mam people resorted in larger and larger numbers to an outlet that had proved reliable in earlier times of need: the Pacic piedmont and coast. Yet as we shall see in the chapter that follows, their access to the coastal zone also became increasingly difcult with the passage of time.

chapter

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict in the Formation of a Guatemalan Coffee Zone

the liberal revolution of 1871 has become synonymous with dramatic changes in land tenure, labor relations, and agricultural production in much of the literature on Guatemalas nineteenth century. The leaders of the revolution, most notably Justo Runo Barrios, are either credited or blamed, depending on the authors perspective, for initiating the Reforma, a fteenyear period of sweeping legal reforms that supposedly separated indigenous communities from their land, and then forced newly disenfranchised community members to enter the coffee workforce. In brief, Barrios and his fellow revolutionaries are believed to have established the conditions that made possible Guatemalas transition to a coffee economy.1 But did they? By 1880 Quezaltenangos Costa Cuca region had become the most productive coffee zone in all of Guatemala (see Table 2).2 As such, it epitomized the goals as well as the success of the Liberal Reforma. Yet as I will show over the course of this chapter, the transformation in land tenure and agriculture that allowed the Costa Cuca to achieve these dramatic production levels had little to do with post-1870 Liberal reforms. Instead, the roots of this process trace back to the 1830s and 1840s, the years of transition between the rst generation of Liberal reformers and their Conservative-popular successors, and well before coffee had been introduced to Guatemalas western Pacic piedmont. At that time almost the entirety of the Costa Cucanearly 500 sq. kmconstituted the ejido of San Martn Sacatep quez, a Mam Maya town located in the political district of San Juan e Ostuncalco.3 The push to open this area to ladino agriculturists, and commercially oriented agriculture more generally, found its initial raison detre

40 Chapter 2 table 2. Coffee Production in Guatemala by Department, 1880 and 1887

Year 1880 Trees Planted Coffee Harvested (in quintales) Trees Planted Year 1887 Coffee Harvested (in quintales)

Department

Alta Verapaz Amatitl n a Baja Verapaz Chimaltenango Chiquimula Escuintla Guatemala Huehuetenango Jalapa Jutiapa Pet n e Quezaltenango Quich e Retalhuleu Sacatep quez e San Marcos Santa Rosa Solol a Suchitep quez e Zacapa

6,584,992 1,169,956 5,167,278 781,203 15,446 87,855 141,380 20,478 6,913,294 6,575 2,847,625 3,277,943 3,023,119 2,320,827 4,077,719 44,497

52,244 1,591 51,669 4,287 706 420 620 264 68,798 28,778 49,284 25,863 19,097 39,124 538

4,145,011 5,949,208 2,002,257 3,713,200 989,545 5,636,353 760,598 625,276 30,246 140,000 18,823 8,229,542 5,289,541 4,915,300 11,699,480 4,667,790 2,830,829 5,054,389 56,746

18,351.9 27,329.2 1,279.9 24,968.5 3,982.4 38,696.4 3,011.7 20,479.4 147.4 104.5 138.0 155,537.8 45,190.2 38,051.0 133,480.0 3,382.0 50,777.4 89,357.0 810.3

Sources: The information for 1880 is found in Augusto Cazali Avila, El desarrollo del cultivo del caf y su inuencia en el regimen del trabajo agrcola epoca de la Reforma Liberal (1871 e 1885), Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos 2 (1975): 5659, under the heading Estadsticas sobre la producci n del caf (1880). The information for 1887 comes from a document entitled o e Producci n de caf habida en cada Departamento de la Rep blica, durante el a o de 1887, o e u n dated November 1888, and transcribed in Jorge Luj n Mu oz, Economa de Guatemala 1750 a n 1940: antologa de lecturas y materiales, 2 tomos (Guatemala: Universidad de San Carlos, 1980), 1:207. Data from the two highest coffee producing departments in 1880 and 1887 have been highlighted. A quintal equals 100 lbs.

in sugar and cattle, and in sum, it predated both coffee and the Liberal Reforma. As the case of Quezaltenangos Costa Cuca will show, this push to appropriate indigenous land from the 1830s onward was aided by the conicts and rivalries that rent indigenous communities themselves. Although scholars have sometimes treated indigenous communities as unied, cohesive entities unsullied by politics or the messiness of factional maneuvering, in fact, internal divisions were common, and they could have dire consequences for a towns ability to preserve its historical land base. This was certainly true

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 41

for San Martn Sacatep quez. Although most sanmartineros eventually came e to oppose the presence of ladinos within the municipal territory, others were more ambivalent, mindful that lucrative nancial rewards might accrue to the towns impoverished coffers, as well as to their own pockets, if outsiders were allowed to remain on community land. This ambivalence, coupled with persistent and unremitting state support for commercial agriculture on indigenous community land, is what nally brought San Martn into an uneasy coexistence with the ladino usurpers that the state euphemistically referred to as tenants. This chapter will begin to address the paradox raised at the start of the book: why did popular sectors react so differently to the two generations of Liberal reformers, given the apparent similarity of their reform projects? Why was the rst round of reforms crushed by a massive, sustained insurrection, whereas the second round encountered only sporadic armed resistance? Again, the answer lies, at least in part, in the fact that the second, or post1871, generation of Liberals did not initiate a revolutionary transformation in land tenure. Rather, the body of laws that comprised the Reforma was a de jure recognition of changes that had been legislated by the rst generation of Liberal reformers in the 1830s, and implemented largely by Conservative authorities in the decades leading up to 1871. As historian David McCreery has noted, it was precisely the years of Conservative rulethe middle third of the nineteenth centurythat experienced the greatest number of rebellions. By the time of the Reforma, popular resistance no longer manifested itself as violent opposition with such frequency.4 In short, what I intend to demonstrate is that Conservative authorities, not Liberals, broke the indigenous hold on the fertile lands of Guatemalas western Pacic coast. Such an endeavor requires an understanding of community claims to the coastal region, followed by a detailed examination of how those claims were subverted.

The Ejido of San Martn Sacatepquez on the e Eve of the Carrera Revolt
By the 1830s a substantial number of ladinos from Ostuncalco, Quezaltenango, and other highland population centers had occupied, denounced, or otherwise begun to exploit lands located in the historically Mam region of the costa del sur. Although those of modest means limited themselves to planting corn and other food crops on a small scale, their wealthier cohorts established livestock ranches and sugar trapiches. Indeed, the rst was often predicated on the second, because sugar cultivation and production required a number of draft animals to harvest and transport the cane and to run the mill.5 Sometime around 1838 or 1839 Ostuncalcos ladino municipality was

42 Chapter 2 obliged to establish an alcalde auxiliar for the area because so many of the ladino townspeople resided there at least part of the year. The most important task of the new ofcial, other than keeping order among a populace supposedly prone to excesses, was to collect the national head tax from among the trapiches of the region.6 The stretch of costa land to which so many of Ostuncalcos residents had migrated, however, and to which the new alcalde auxiliar had been given administrative responsibility, did not pertain to Ostuncalco at all. Only a very narrow slice of the town even dipped toward the coast, and it was subject to frequent challenges, legal and otherwise, from San Pedro Sacatep quez. e Rather, the area under the new alcaldes jurisdiction sat squarely within the municipal boundaries of San Martn Sacatep quez, and it comprised the rich e piedmont land that would come to be known as the Costa Cuca. What was San Martns response to the growing number of ladino ranches and trapiches that had been established within its territory? Did the town object to the administrative pretensions of Ostuncalcos ladino municipalidad? Or did it derive some sort of advantage from the ladino presence? In particular, for example, did San Martn have a history of generating income by renting community land to nonresidents? Based on the documentary evidence, the answer to these last two questions appears to be no. That is, the inux of ladinos from Ostuncalco, Quezaltenango, and elsewhere, that began soon after the turn of the century, was not initiated, nor was it viewed as a positive development, by community leaders or residents. Rather, the inux was tolerated, at least until the late 1830s, because municipal ofcials lacked the documentation that they believed they needed to mount an effective court challenge to the intruders. Unfortunately, wrote the self-described com n u de Principales and other vecinos of the town of San Martin Sacatep quez e in early 1841, our forefathers lost the title of the composed lands and ejido of our town, and for many years we were without it. . . . During such time, there were created, with our permission, some farms, which we could not make pay [a rental fee] because we lacked the documents that guaranteed us [our property rights].7 Additional detail is provided by the brief that San Martns legal represen tative or apoderado, Juan Bautista Flores, submitted to the central government in December 1841. According to Flores, the com n [of San Martn], my u client, . . . declared the loss of its titles in a re that occurred the year of 1811, leaving behind only a notebook containing the original records of the measurement that agrimensor Juan Antonio del Bosque had conducted in 1744. It was in this context that some ladinos from Ostuncalco, . . . taking advantage of the ignorance of the indgenas, and of their negligence, introduced themselves on the land [of San Martn] with no more title than their general inclination to acquire land with little or no work.8

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 43

This last claim, in particular, is corroborated implicitly by the documents generated by the ladino interlopers themselves. In the area called Santa Ana Pie de la Cuesta, stated M ximo Castillo in a typical testimony, located a on the lands of the town of San Martn, I possess three trapiches . . . [that I established] more than twelve years ago [ca. 1826], having cultivated the land since then with the understanding that it was baldo. Moreover, I have made several denuncias, which have had no effect, in the rst instance for lack of an agrimensor, and thereafter due to the opposition . . . of San Martn.9 Neither Castillo nor any of the other ladinos claimed to have occupied the land that they exploited within San Martns municipal territory as part of a rental agreement, at least not prior to 1839. Indeed, all of them denied that the land even had pertained to San Martn at the time that they initially had occupied it. Rather, the ladinos insisted that originally their possessions had been so-called terrenos baldos, and thus they had denounced them on one or more occasions in an attempt to gain formal legal ownership, especially following the spate of land reform laws that issued from the state beginning in the early-1830s. Not until 1839, when it became clear that San Martn really did have a compelling legal claim to the area in question, did the ladino squatters enter into rental agreements or other nancial arrangements with San Martns ofcials in exchange for permission to use the towns land.10 In sum, then, because San Martn had lost its ofcial land title in 1811, the towns authorities feared bringing legal suit against, or even demanding a rental fee from, the ladinos who established trapiches and ranches within the community ejido over the course of the 1810s, 1820s, and early 1830s. By the mid-1830s, however, San Martns authorities began to reconsider their options. In 1834, and then again in 1835 and 1836, they issued a series of indirect challenges to the ladino usurpations. These included using the recently passed Liberal reform laws to denounce some of the sought-after lands on the towns behalf, as well as issuing complaints of crop damage against the intruders. Finally, in 1836, municipal authorities took the bull by its horns: they embarked on a campaign to restore the communitys ofcial title so that they might dispute the usurpations once and for all.11 Why did San Martns leaders and residents decide on this new course of action, particularly in light of their earlier fears? Several factors may explain the towns change of heart. At a very general level, the ladino population of the western highlands was increasing dramatically throughout the early nineteenth century. Ostuncalcos ladinos, for example, jumped from approximately 400 in 1811 to 850 by 1840.12 And this increase was reected in their numbers within San Martns ejido. By 1841 Quezaltenangos Corregidor estimated that over 100 ladinos maintained possessions there.13 Thus, what began as a slow, if annoying, trickle in the early years, threatened to become an unmanageable torrent by the mid-1830s.

44 Chapter 2 To San Martns residents the growing presence of ladinos on community land was alarming in and of itself. But of even greater consequence than the ladinos simple presence was the fact that their expanding numbers had a very serious, and harmful, impact on the viability of indigenous agriculture. Ladinos, unlike indigenous cultivators, were much more likely to introduce cattle into the area, either as part of a livestock ranch, or as beasts of burden necessary for harvesting and milling sugar cane. And because most cattle were allowed to roam freely, eating and trampling whatever lay in their path, the potential for livestock damage to indigenous crops increased with each new ladino enterprise. Keep in mind, as well, that the Mam population of greater Ostuncalco, and of San Martn in particular, also was expanding over this same period, implying increased indigenous reliance on coastal milpas.14 Needless to say, complaints of crop damage on the coast emerged in the 1830s and proliferated thereafter.15 The plethora of land reform legislation that marked the 1830s meant that the growing presence of ladinos within San Martns ejido had a second negative implication. Recall the earlier discussion of ladino petitions and documents that concerned coastal possessions. Like M ximo Castillo, most a ladinos exhibited a ready willingness to denounce areas within San Martn under the cover of these new reform laws. In this endeavor they were joined by regional government ofcials, eager for their own slice of the pie, and willing to engage in questionable practices to abet their own efforts, and those of their associates, to expropriate land from San Martn.16 This second implication, in particularthe overt push to formally and irreversibly dismember San Martns ejido, property by propertyunderscored for community leaders the need to recover the towns title. Each new Liberal land law moved the ladinos disingenuous assertions that they simply were occupying terrenos baldos another step closer to reality. Indeed, as the example of Castillo demonstrates, many of the ladinos who occupied San Martns ejido repeatedly denounced their informal possessions with each new round of reform legislation. This trend culminated in the potentially devastating laws of 1836, which provided a legal avenue for privatizing community ejidos.17 In response, San Martn decided to put aside its fears, and to embark on the risky process of recovering the legal title to its territory. Municipal ofcials began a community-wide collection and then, in early 1837, they sent a formal request to the state, asking for the revalidation of their lost title. Surprisingly, in what can only be characterized as a dramatic reversal of state policy, Liberal ofcials responded by quickly issuing San Martn a new title in March of that same year.18 Why would a government so intent on promoting the privatization of community ejido land extend title to an indigenous municipality for over 346 caballeras? In answer, let us turn to the events that were unfolding

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 45

simultaneously in early 1837. Less than two weeks before San Martn recov ered its title, several thousand indigenous residents of Ostuncalco and the surrounding Mam towns rebelled against the judge of Ostuncalcos newly established circuit court. The post had been created the previous year as part of the Livingston Codes, a major reorganization of the Guatemalan judicial system based on the ideas of Edward Livingston. Liberal reformers desired to rid Guatemala of what they viewed to be the retrograde inuence of Spanish colonial rule, and the Livingston Codes represented the culmination of their efforts.19 F lix Morales assumed the position of Ostuncalcos circuit judge in late e January 1837. As the rst person to ll this post, he confronted the difcult task of setting up the physical and organizational infrastructure that a circuit judge would need to exercise his duties. In addition to a census of potential jurors, something specically called for by the Livingston Codes, Morales also was charged with establishing a circuit courthouse, complete with messengers and assistants; a circuit jail; and accommodations suitable for Quezaltenangos district court justices when they brought their tribunal to Ostuncalco three times a year. The only problem was that the state did not provide Morales with the resources that he required to implement any of these projects. Instead, he was forced to enjoin the municipalities of his jurisdiction to supply the labor and funds needed for the new facilities.20 Censuses and public works projects were delicate matters in nineteenth century Guatemala, even in communities long inured to the permanent presence of higher-level state authorities, and the frequent demands that their presence implied. Ostuncalco, however, had never been in such close proximity to a direct representative of the national state. For many of the towns residents, the sole fact that a circuit court justice had been placed in their midst probably was cause for concern, never mind the alarming matter of a census, often linked to higher taxes, or the new courthouse and jail required by judge Morales. If the latter hoped to gain municipal support for embarking on these projects, he would have to proceed slowly, and with extreme caution. Instead, almost from day one, Morales studiously set about alienating local authorities, ladinos and indgenas alike, with a constant barrage of onerous demands delivered in an arrogant and abrasive manner. It should not be surprising that local residents decided to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the policies of the Liberal G lvez regime against such an a obvious and provocative target.21 Of particular concern to the Mam towns were the legislative changes that had removed barriers to the expropriation of the community ejido. They paid close attention to the conicts that were developing in San Martn and elsewhere. The states own agrimensor, Valerio Ignacio Rivas, appears to have been instrumental in alerting indigenous leaders to the danger they

46 Chapter 2 faced from unscrupulous authorities and wealthy ladinos. In particular, Rivas singled out Macario Rodas, F lix Morales superior in Quezaltenango, as a e key force behind the unscrupulous takeover of areas within San Martns ejido. When Morales ordered Ostuncalco to sell a piece of community land that abutted the church in order to pay for the construction of the new court house, he set off the rebellion. Unbeknownst to the judge, this very same area had been the subject of controversy for almost fteen years. Throughout the early 1820s the towns indigenous leaders had fought to prevent its sale, at one point even amassing hundreds of residents to block the transaction.22 In sum, the circuit judges order was the proverbial spark that set the tinder box ablaze, and on March 8, 1837, the Mam towns of western Quezaltenango erupted in conagration. Less than two weeks later, on March 21still three days before the Ostuncalco rebellion was denitively crushedthe state issued a new title for San Martn Sacatep quezs 346-caballera ejido.23 Was the e timing of the new title mere coincidence, or had the fear of popular insurrection impelled Liberal authorities to swallow their objections to community land ownership in a hurry? In contrast to Ostuncalco, Cajol , Sig il , and a u a Chiquirichapa, no direct evidence implicated San Martns authorities in the rebellion. One state ofcial speculated that perhaps the town had not participated precisely because it wished to avoid jeopardizing its petition for a new title.24 Regardless of whether or not sanmartineros involved themselves directly in the Ostuncalco rebellion, it is clear that the Liberal state could be forced to bend under the weight of public pressure. Following the events in Ostuncalco, dozens of other communities rebelled against various aspects of the Liberal reform project in what would come to be called the Carrera Revolt, and before the year was out the G lvez administration had begun a to backpedal on many key issues.25 Perhaps most importantly, the Liberal regime restored the ban on privatizing community ejidos.26 Whether because of the Ostuncalco rebellion, or a forthright commitment to the pursuit of justice, Liberal authorities reissued a title to San Martn in late March 1837. The next step for community leaders was to remeasure the towns boundaries and to reestablish deteriorated or vandalized markers. For this purpose they hired agrimensor Valerio Ignacio Rivas, as well as a legal representative, or apoderado, Jos Mara Colomo.27 e Despite this promising start, the town was unable to place an agrimensor in the eld for a full two years. The most formidable obstacle was the opposition of the ladinos who occupied parcels of land within the community ejido. This group was led by Macario Rodas, the jefe poltico of Quezaltenango during the mid-1830s, and subsequently, under the secessionist state of Los Altos, of Totonicap n.28 According to agrimensor Rivas, the sanmartineros a claimed that Rodas . . . tried to intimidate [the townspeople] by making use of third parties to tell them that the remeasurement would do nothing but

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 47

incur expenses and cause disputes with the new [ladino] possessors.29 At the same time, Rodas and his cohorts also resorted to more heavy-handed tactics. In the fall of 1837, for example, Quezaltenango notable Gertrudis Robles threatened the towns coastal milpas with a large herd of cattle just as the crops were nearing harvest. When various residents blocked the passage of Robles cattle, he denounced San Martns revolutionary character before Quezaltenangos magistrado ejecutor.30 As a result, the towns alcalde, as well as municipal secretary Miguel Ralda, a ladino from Ostuncalco, and Ostuncalcos ladino juez de paz, Perfecto Galindo, were jailed for several days before the case was thrown out for lack of evidence.31 Although such intimidation did not cause San Martn to retract its call for a remeasurement, it did help delay the process signicantly. Rivas himself was a party to these delays, fearful of the wrath of Quezaltenangos important ladinos. Early on, he resigned his commission with San Martn when ladino opposition to the remeasurement became manifest. Only persistent, energetic pleas from the apoderado, Jos Mara Colomo, as well as community e leaders, convinced the agrimensor to reverse his decision. Nevertheless, Rivas still held off on commencing the remeasurement until things died down in the wake of the Robles affair. When he nally made his way to San Martn in early March 1838, Quezaltenango already had seceded from Guatemala as the capital of the new state of Los Altos. Shortly after entering town, the agrimensor received an urgent message from Los Altos authorities ordering him to appear in Quezaltenango. San Martns leaders protested vigorously, fearing a ruse, and at one point they even prevented Rivas from leaving. In the end, however, the agrimensor was given safe passage out of town. But just as the sanmartineros had suspected, once in Quezaltenango, Rivas was promptly tossed into jail under the charge of having collaborated with rebel leader Rafael Carrera. He remained in prison for over a month before being banished from Los Altos altogether.32 Macario Rodas, meanwhile, reported to Los Altos authorities that a rebellion was imminent in San Martn. Four hundred troops were organized immediately, and placed under the command of Gertrudis Robles and Jos e Mara G lvez. By the time that the punitive expedition reached Ostuncalco, a however, San Martns ofcials already had released the agrimensor. Rivas as sured Robles and G lvez, as he passed them in Ostuncalco, that the situation a had been resolved, and that the town was nowhere near rebellion. This did not stop Robles, however, from insisting that the troops continue on anyway to intimidate the indgenas . . . so that [they] would not try again to measure their ejido.33 Apparently Robles tactic did have a chilling effect, even if it did not bury San Martns desire for a remeasurement once and for all. Community leaders refrained from pressing for another agrimensor until May 1839, more

48 Chapter 2 than a year later.34 This delay also may have been due to the fact that the towns apoderado, Jos Mara Colomo, was forced to go into hiding for an e unspecied period of time following the so-called rebellion in San Martn.35 Nevertheless, in the interim period, community leaders continued to plan for the eventuality of a remeasurement, which, they promised, nally would allow them to remove the ladinos from the towns coastal territory. Beginning sometime in 1838, and through part of 1839, a second collection was levied to pay for the expenses that were anticipated for the project. In its latter stages, the collection was overseen by San Martns rst alcalde, Pedro V squez Ysara. a All told, each of the towns households contributed twenty-one reales.36 Any number of reasons might explain why San Martn returned to petition for the remeasurement of its ejido in May 1839. Perhaps the passage of time had damped the ames of ladino antagonism. Perhaps the Los Altos regime no longer considered apoderado Colomo persona non grata. Or perhaps, with a burgeoning war chest, community leaders simply felt emboldened to risk the ire of the ladino interlopers once again. In any case, regardless of the actual reason, San Martn submitted its request for remeasurement on May 13, and this time Los Altos authorities responded with haste rather than obstacles. They immediately assigned the commission to Manuel Vargas, an agrimensor accused by Rivas of corruption and favoritism toward his wealthy ladino patrons.37 Vargas, however, refused to play along on this occasion. He rejected the appointment, thus upsetting ofcial expectations for an acceptable outcome. Instead, the commission passed to agrimensor Lorenzo Meza.38 Meza entered the eld in mid-June, but his activities soon were halted by none other than Gertrudis Robles. Presenting land titles that had been issued to him by the Liberal G lvez administration in March and April of a 1837 (the same time at which G lvez retitled San Martns territory), Robles a convinced Los Altos ofcials to suspend the remeasurement until judicial authorities could sort out the conicting claims. In response, San Martns apoderado, Jos Mara Colomo, rushed to Quezaltenango and struck a deal e with Robles. San Martn would refrain from challenging Robles possessions, under pain of a 500 peso ne, apparently in exchange for the latter allowing the remeasurement to resume immediately.39 State ofcials then reversed their earlier call for a suspension, and instructed Meza to push on. They also advised Robles, and any other ladinos who believed themselves affected by the remeasurement, that their respective possessions would not be prejudiced until each case had been reviewed on an individual basis. Over the next several weeks, a number of additional ladino claimants appeared before the Los Altos state to demand protection for their possessions.40 As agrimensor Mezas survey progressed, however, demonstrating clearly that San Martns ejido encompassed the entirety of the disputed area, the claimants also negotiated separate accords with community ofcials. They

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 49

agreed to supplement the towns coffers with rental fees and ad hoc payments as long as San Martn refrained from challenging their possessions. It is unclear whether the initial impetus for these accords emanated from within ladino or indigenous ranks, or how many indigenous leaders, or commoners, for that matter, knew that a modus vivendi had been reached, and on what terms, with the ladino interlopers. San Martns governor, Andr s Paz, and e the towns apoderado, Jos Mara Colomo, are named most frequently in the e agreements, although municipal secretary Miguel Raldaa ladinoalso is mentioned, as are the municipalidad and alcaldes of 1839, in generic terms, and one or two additional individuals, presumably principales.41 The example of Manuel Orellana, although not necessarily representative, sheds light on the process by which the indigenousladino accords were reached. Orellana inherited a sugar trapiche from Ostuncalcos parish priest, Jos Mara Orellana, ca. 1835.42 Named El Aguacate, the trapiche was located e within the coastal territory of San Martn Sacatep quez, and appears to have e been established during the early 1810s. Orellana continued to operate the trapiche following Padre Jos Maras death, during the period when crop e damage from ladino-owned cattle such as his prompted San Martn to pursue the retitling and remeasurement of its ejido described above. Sometime in late 1839, probably December, Orellana approached the towns governor, Andr s e Paz, when the latter happened by El Aguacate in the company of municipal secretary Miguel Ralda and interpreter Francisco Peres. He asked Paz if he alone had the authority to delineate . . . the properties that the ladinos held in the lands of the town of San Martn, and if not, would he please convey [Orellanas request] to the Municipalidad . . . so that they might delineate his property [in exchange for] an annual rent, or for Orellanas promise to contribute nancially to community-wide collections like any other son of the town. [E]very year the municipal ofcials change, Orellana concluded, and I do not want to be in conict with each Municipalidad over the land.43 Paz responded, according to Orellana, that the town was quite happy with what he had suggested, and that they would consider him like a criado [dependent] of San Martn, and that he would be able to possess the property called El Aguacate without being harmed . . . since he would be respected by all the town. . . . Moreover, Paz assured Orellana, as governor, he alone could demarcate the boundaries of the property . . . without need of the Municipalidad.44 Evidently, Orellana remained skeptical of this last claim, because he continued to press Paz to involve the latter body. At this point secretary Ralda interjected that in the name of said Municipalidad, Orellana indeed was recognized as a criado of San Martn, and all he had to do at the moment was fork over one peso for church repairs.45 Sometime later, although again, Orellana does not specify the date, the alcaldes, accompanied by many individuals of the town of San Martn,

50 Chapter 2 arrived at El Aguacate to collect an additional ten pesos. Presumably, their intention was to cement the deal worked out earlier between governor Paz and Orellana. Finding the latter absent, however, they informed Orellanas wife that he should pay ten pesos to apoderado Colomo as soon as possible to secure the status of El Aguacate. This Orellana did on January 2, 1840.46

Community Land under Conservative Rule (Or, How San Martn Lost Its Ejido)
Agrimensor Meza nished his remeasurement in late October 1839. He found that Juan Antonio del Bosque had made many errors when he calculated the size of San Martns territory in 1744. Although this should not be surprising, the cumulative magnitude of the errors dees imagination. Mezas nal tally of 1,085 caballeras is over three times del Bosques original estimate. Nevertheless, the agrimensor concluded that San Martn held legal title to the entire area despite the fact that its true size had never been known. He turned in his report to the Los Altos government, where it was placed before the ofcial revisor or inspector, Juan Jos Flores, to be checked for accuracy. Flores e completed his review by early February 1840, and San Martn retrieved its land title and accompanying documents sometime thereafter.47 The fortunes of the state of Los Altos, meanwhile, went from bad to nonexistent. Rafael Carreras successful conquest of Guatemala City in early 1839, far from diminishing the threat posed by the secessionist states former suzerain, merely reinforced the likelihood of a future invasion. At the same time, Los Altos authorities found it more difcult, with each passing day, to maintain control over the indigenous communities that fell within their own, self-proclaimed, national boundaries. Indeed, it is not clear that Carreras military victory over Los Altos troops at Solol on January 26, 1840 a was necessary to seal the secessionists downfall. Quezaltenangos indigenous municipalidad, along with those of several surrounding communities, rose up against Los Altos ofcials, and proclaimed their support for Guatemala and the rebel leader turned kingpin, almost as soon as the citys defensive forces had left to repel Carreras imminent invasion.48 Thus, by the time that San Martn could have begun acting on the results of Mezas remeasurement, the townand indeed, all of Guatemalahad been reunited under Conservative authorities and the de facto rule of Rafael Carrera. What were the implications of this political turn of eventsof the defeat of Guatemalan Liberalism, as well as of the state of Los Altosfor the indigenous petitioners of San Martn? Had their situation improved simply by virtue of Carreras victory? Almost all of the literature on Guatemalas nineteenth century would answer this question in the afrmative. By comparing Liberal and Conservative policies, not only in terms of their own

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 51

rhetoric, but more importantly, in light of their actual impact on particular people and places, we can test the accuracy of this historiographical claim. Recall that even before Carreras triumph, popular pressure had forced the Liberal state to backpedal in its efforts to reform land tenure legislation. The law of November 1837 restored ofcial protection to the community ejido, and explicitly restricted baldosareas eligible for denunciation and privatizationto the former category of realengos, or crown lands that had never pertained to a community, corporation, or individual. In addition, the law no longer sought to specify how communities had to administer their ejido. For example, communities no longer were obliged to rent ejido land to noncommunity members.49 Carrera evidently found the intent of the November 1837 law sufciently supportive of community land rights, because he never altered it signicantly at any time during his rule.50 Given this new, apparently sympathetic climate, how did San Martn plan to proceed? What would it do about the recurrent crop damage inicted by ladino-owned livestock? More to the point, how would the town reconcile the existence of ladino possessions within its municipal borders? Part of the problem in answering these questions lies with how we conceptualize San Martn itself. In contrast, perhaps, to the image projected by Eric Wolf s closed corporate peasant community, San Martn was not a unied, or ganic whole that acted with singular purpose or reexive cohesion.51 Rather, it was a municipality of some two to three thousand people whose cohesiveness, when operative at all, was the end result of political struggles that submerged and repressed dissent while building alliances from disparate, and frequently antagonistic, factions. Thus, although the shared culture, ethnicity, and history of San Martns inhabitants might lull state administrators and visiting anthropologists alike into believing that they acted with an inherent or natural unanimity, the very elements that bound the community together also provided the foundation and the weapons for tearing it apart.52 In answer to the questions posed above, then, not all sanmartineros agreed on what to do next, now that the town had recovered its lost land title, and remeasured and demarcated its territorial boundaries. Despite earlier promises to use the new documentation to remove outsiders from community land, governor Paz and a handful of involved or allied principales, including former rst alcalde Pedro V squez Ysara, appear to have been a satised with doing nothing at all apart from adhering to the vague status quo that they had negotiated with the ladino squatters. The latter would be allowed to remain in exchange for nancial contributions and, as before, crop damage would be investigated on an ad hoc basis, particularly if the public demanded it. Paz and his associates had no intention of challenging the continued presence of ladino benefactors who had paid several hundred

52 Chapter 2 pesos toward remeasuring the communitys territory and, conversely, insuring themselves against eviction.53 Throughout the remainder of 1840, in the wake of Carreras rise to power, and the fall of Los Altos, San Martn remained outwardly calm. Perhaps a substantial portion of the towns inhabitants abided their governors decision to do nothing with the recovered land title and the results of Mezas remeasurement. Or perhaps, as some evidence suggests, they simply were never informed about his change of heart. Instead, they waited, wondering when would the governor begin the process of kicking out the ladino intruders? As 1840 turned into 1841, patience began to wear thin. Several interrelated factors spurred growing frustration with the governors inaction. First, ladino-owned livestock continued to damage indigenous milpas, but now Paz no longer exhibited much enthusiasm for investigating the charges. Among the most insensitive and agrant violators were some of the very men with whom he and the municipal ofcers of 1839 had made nancial arrangements. These ladinos brushed aside demands to fence their cattle or provide restitution by arguing that the destroyed crops had been planted on land that they had purchased from San Martns governor and municipal of cials. In other words, it was not the ranchers and trapicheros who were at fault, but rather the indigenous cultivators, for establishing their milpas on ladino-owned land, within easy reach of foraging cattle.54 The problem with this line of reasoning, however, was that instead of exculpating the guilty parties, it placed them squarely at the center of a second, related, controversy by exposing their behind-the-scenes negotiations with the governor and his associates. Worse still, the ladinos inept defense was based on the inammatory claim that Paz et al had sold them community land outright. Although this claim does not appear to have any basis in the documentary evidence, a signicant number of sanmartineros found it credible. Even among those who did not, however, the governors less-than-open manner of conducting town businessexemplied by his failure to consult the wider community before making nancial deals with the ladino squattershad become unacceptable. In the words of principal Andr s V squez, e a
unlike . . . [other governors, who] call together the principales and residents of the town to consult with them about everything, [Paz] does not involve the town at all. [O]n the issue of [community] lands, he has not consulted with [us] about anything, nor has he informed the town about their status. [F]rom the rumors people know that the ladinos have given money, but the governor has not told anybody whether it is loaned or on account of the lands.55

What bothered a growing segment of San Martns populace, then, was not just that governor Paz had threatened the integrity of their ejido by treating with ladino squatters, but that in making this decision he had neglected to

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 53

involve or even inform many of the towns leaders as well as the community as a whole. The sense of betrayal was reinforced by persistent rumors that Paz and company had skimmed off some of the monies that they had collected to pay for the remeasurement and associated legal fees. Nor was it allayed by the increasingly frequent binges of Paz and former rst alcalde Pedro V squez a Ysara, or the revealing recriminations that the two men showered upon one another as their intoxicated cheer degenerated into angry squabbling. According to principales Andr s and Martn V squez, various townspeople e a had heard the governor say to Pedro V squez that he is a thief [because] a he has the towns money, and V squez say to the governor that he, too, is a a thief, because he is asking for money from the ladinos for the land. After listening to the drunken pair shout publicly that both have money that they collected for the land remeasurement . . . the residents say no wonder nothing has resulted from remeasuring the land, since their money . . . still may be in the hands of the governor and Pedro V squez.56 a Crop damage, land sales, secret agreements, embezzlement, drunken debauchery . . . by early 1841 there were ample reasons for community residents to be concerned, and to speculate, about why governor Paz did not challenge the ladino squatters now that the towns ejido had been retitled and remeasured. A number of dissident principales, led most forcefully by Antonio P res, and including several past and even present elected municie pal ofcers, openly questioned his failure to act.57 They proclaimed that the only way truly to safeguard the communityagainst both crop damage and land usurpationwas to expel all ladinos from the town with the utmost haste. Tensions mounted as more and more sanmartineros reached the same conclusion. Finally, on April 7, the conict came to a head. A large crowd sought out and threatened governor Paz and his like-minded companions. Although no physical harm actually came to them, the governor was shaken nonetheless, particularly by the calls for his resignation.58 Both factions then petitioned the Corregidor of Quezaltenango, Francisco C scara, to punish the other. The governor and his associates pressed C scara a a to round up Antonio and Nicolas P res, Diego Ju res, and Martn V squez e a a for having incited the uprising . . . [of] the greater part of the town in order to achieve our destruction. . . . These restless enemies of the public good . . . menace us with death if we do not comply with their petitions to expel the ladino renters of our lands, who annually satisfy their corresponding quotas without any fault whatsoever. . . . We cannot, nor should we, concluded the governor, deprive the tenant of the [land] as long as he fullls his obligation.59
The conspirators, meanwhile, called on the Corregidor to relieve the town of the governor and his accomplices, because they . . . cannot govern . . . without committing offenses and disturbances. . . . The drunkenness of the Governor and Principales

54 Chapter 2
who accompany him continues day and night . . . without doubt, with money that they request from the [ladino] agriculturists, an evil that we wish to avoid so that, in short, no part of our land ends up being alienated without our knowledge. . . .

In addition, the petitioners continued, the Governor and his companions should be ordered, along with the Apoderado and the Secretary, to render before [the Corregidor] the accounts of income and expenses [related to the land remeasurement], specifying which ladinos made a contribution, for how much, and under what conditions.60 C scara immediately called on his lieutenant in Ostuncalcoencargado a M ximo Castillo Ocampoto investigate the conict. After questioning a witnesses for both factions, as well as at least one of the ladinos who was involved in the case, the encargado returned his report to the Corregidor. To begin, Castillo wrote, impartial witnesses cannot be found because it is the com n itself that stands against the Governor and principal Pedro V squez. u a Only four menof whom three were lay religious ofcialsagreed to testify on behalf of the governor.61 As for those who identied with the so-called rebels, the encargado reiterated, if all of these were questioned, there would be no end because the entire com n is in agreement against the Governor u and V squez. . . .62 a With regard to [the charges that] the com n puts forward in its petiu tion, Castillo continued, the only exaggeration . . . is when they say that the Governor is drunk day and night. This is not so, although it is true that he frequently gets drunk with Pedro V squez. Otherwise, the encargado concluded, a the oppositions allegations are all true. The governor does not keep public order, and his intoxicated revelry with the former rst alcalde only helps to encourage the introduction of contraband Aguardiente [into the town], something that the com n will not tolerate, and for which reason even the u women stand against him. In reference to the monies that the ladino agriculturists paid to governor Paz and apoderado Colomo, some have given this without all of the com n being informed, and in the interest of perpetuating u their respective possessions without being challenged by the indgenas. More over, some of the [contributions] were not disclosed in the contracts that were signed between the two parties. Finally, on the topic of crop damage, the encargado wrote, some [ladino] agriculturists imprudently have not wanted to pay the indgenas for the injury that their livestock have caused them. . . .63 As for the charges leveled against the rebels by the governor and his associates, Castillo found them baseless. They are all false without a doubt, he wrote, a conclusion amply supported not only by the testimony taken between April 20 and May 8, but also by the additional documentation that both preceded and followed the so-called uprising of early 1841. There was no evidence of any rental agreement or nancial quid pro quo between

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 55

San Martn and the ladino interlopers until mid-1839, after agrimensor Meza already had commenced remeasuring the communitys ejido. And the ad hoc payments made between September 1839 and January 1840 hardly could be construed as annual rental quotas.64 Nevertheless, after completely rejecting the veracity of the governors claims, Castillo ended his report with a series of recommendations that incorporated the basic substance of the formers argument, at least where it concerned the ladino usurpers. To oblige the ladinos to vacate [San Martns] lands would not be just, he wrote the Corregidor, because they have large ncas on them, which they established with the knowledge of the indgenas many year ago. Thus, in addition to deposing governor Paz, as well as ordering him, along with former rst alcalde V squez and apoderado Colomo, a to account for the money they had collected from ladinos and indgenas alike, Castillo suggested that the Corregidor force the town to send its land documents to the capital for further scrutiny. If the Supreme Government decided to accept the veracity of San Martns claims vis-` -vis the vast ter a ritory in question, then it also should oblige community ofcials to accept an agreement with the [ladino] agriculturists, allowing them to continue cultivating their ncas for a just and moderate rent [and the promise] not to cause harm to the indgenas.65 Perhaps from the perspective of the ladinos involved, ofcials and nonofcials alike, the encargados judgment appeared even-handed and reasonable. He openly acknowledged the veracity of the testimony given by sanmartineros opposed to compromise with the ladino agriculturists. He accepted that San Martns governor, former municipal ofcials, and the apoderado had made questionable, behind-the-scenes deals with ladinos who wished to avoid as much public scrutiny as possible. He also accepted that some of the ladino agriculturists had attempted to avoid paying for the damages that were caused by their livestock. To remedy the situation, the encargado called on the Corregidor to force the embezzling ofcials to pay up, and to make sure that in the future the ladino nqueros would pay an annual rent for the use of San Martns land and that they would prevent their livestock from destroying any more crops. From the perspective of San Martns indigenous opposition, however, encargado Castillos ndings simply reinforced the suspicion that local ladino ofcials were incapable of impartiality in disputes between ladinos and indgenas. On the one hand, the encargado recognized the surreptitious man ner in which ladino nqueros had attempted to maintain their possessions and the callous disregard they had exhibited at the destruction caused by their livestock. On the other hand, his proposed remedy gave indigenous plaintiffs little reason to believe that their problems would be resolved. The practical difculties alone in enforcing annual rental payments and a moratorium on

56 Chapter 2 future crop damage by ladino-owned livestock rendered the encargados recommendations unrealistic and naive at best. Add the fact that many ladinos still denied any wrongdoing, and the historical record of ladino indifference in the face of indigenous complaints, and the potential for a resolution along the lines envisioned by the encargado diminished to nil. Indeed, it was precisely the historical framework that Castillo had to ignore, because it directly challenged the appropriateness of his recommendations while simultaneously providing ample grounds to evict the ladinos from San Martns territory. Although it appears to have been true, for example, that some ladino possessions originally were established with the knowledge of San Martns authorities, this had been contingent upon the latters fear that any legal challenge would be difcult due to the destruction of the towns title by re, and in lieu of the remeasurement and retitling that nally occurred between 1837 and 1839. In addition, whether established with San Martins permission or not, ladino nqueros had engaged in various tactics over the years to challenge the legal basis of San Martns territory and to ap propriate it for themselves. In light of this historical precedence, it appeared obvious to San Martns indigenous plaintiffs that the continued presence of ladinos within their boundaries posed a danger to the integrity of the towns territory. Castillo, however, remained studiously oblivious. Perhaps the encargados obliviousness was reinforced by his own ties to San Martns coastal land. According to the indigenous opposition, the encargado himself maintained four estates there. In sum, he could not acknowledge that the combination of San Martns well-documented property rights to the Costa Cuca, and the historical precedence of ladino attempts to abrogate these rights, justied more dramatic state actioneven eviction of the offending ladinoswithout risking the loss of his own possessions.66 Corregidor C scara responded to encargado Castillos recommendations a by deposing San Martns governor and by ordering the municipalidad to re turn a slate of new candidates from which he would choose a successor.67 Predictably, however, many residents were completely unsatised with these measures. Public sentiment had gelled around the demand for the complete expulsion of all ladinos. On May 24 leaders of the dissident faction sent off another petition, but this time they bypassed the Corregidor and went straight to the president. The petition repeated past grievances of crop damage and corruption, but in addition a new charge was leveled: ladino squatters were now attempting to use violence against individual community members who were active in organizing the opposition. The only acceptable solution, the petitioners concluded, was to order all ladinos off San Martns land. More over, they added, although the Corregidor already had been informed of their demand, he had done nothing about it.68 San Martns petition never actually made it to the president. It was sent to the ofce of the Fiscal, and from there back to the Corregidor. The latter

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 57

interviewed several additional ladino litigants, and led a report in late June. Unfortunately for San Martn, the Corregidors interpretation of events was based even more rmly in ignorance, or a willful disregard for the facts, than the encargados. At least the encargado had recognized that because of the 1744 measurement San Martns ejido predated the title issued by the Liberal state in 1837. The Corregidor, by contrast, repeated the assertions of the ladino usurpers. He stated that when the ladinos rst began to utilize the coastal lands they were considered terrenos baldos. In the Corregidors view, San Martn had not had control of the disputed area prior to 1837. Even after that date, he argued, the town only had rights to 346 caballeras. There was no way that San Martn could claim the additional 700 caballeras measured by Lorenzo Meza in 1839.69 After receiving the Corregidors report, the Fiscal agreed that San Martn did not have a legal right to the entire 1,085 caballeras measured by Meza. Like the encargado, however, the Fiscal clearly believed that the 346 caballeras retitled by San Martn in 1837 had constituted community territory from the time of del Bosques 1744 measurement. As for the additional 700 caballeras, that was another matter. The town would have to pay the state for the amount of land over the original 346 caballeras in order to retain legal possession. If San Martn chose this route, the Fiscal warned, then it would be almost impossible to force the town to part with any land at all. In either case, the Fiscal predicted a difcult struggle, and he advised the Corregidor that it probably would be far easier to convince the sanmartineros not to expel the ladinos than to try to disabuse them of their belief that every one of the 1,085 caballeras measured in 1839 pertained to their community. Why did it matter if San Martn continued to count the disputed area as a part of its municipal territory, the Fiscal asked, as long as the ladinos were allowed to remain? In conclusion, he suggested that the Corregidor propose the following arrangement. San Martn would permit ladinos to use its land in exchange for formal recognition of the towns legal claim, a rental contract specifying the size and annual fee of each property, and a promise from each tenant to fence their livestock where necessary.70 San Martns new apoderado, Juan Bautista Flores, delivered San Martns re jection of the Fiscals proposal on August 2, 1841. Town authorities adamantly opposed the continued presence of ladinos on community land, and they continued to appeal directly to Rafael Carrera and the president to intervene on their behalf. In December 1841 apoderado Flores addressed state ofcials with an especially clear and reasoned justication for the communitys demands. He began with Juan Antonio del Bosques 1744 measurement of San Martns ejido. The importance of this document, Flores wrote, was not the actual amount of land that had been measured, but rather that del Bosque had established the validity of the towns historical boundaries. After the restoration of its title in 1837, he continued, San Martn resolved to

58 Chapter 2 remeasure its territory to see which ladinos in fact were usurping its land. Using newer, more accurate techniques, agrimensor Lorenzo Meza counted 1,085 caballeras within the area that del Bosque originally had estimated at 346. Although such a difference might seem difcult to believe, Mezas notes make clear that his survey did not deviate from the boundaries followed by del Bosque in 1744. The only difference between the two measurements was in how the area of the circumscribed territory had been calculated. In other words, it was incorrect for the Corregidor and Fiscal to speak of 700 excess caballeras. These caballeras had been present within San Martns boundaries all along. They simply had never been counted accurately.71 In response to Flores petition on behalf of the town, the Fiscal recommended that the government wash its hands of the case. If San Martn insisted on trying to expel the ladinos, he wrote in late January, it would have to appeal to the courts to determine the legality of abrogating the contracts that Governor Paz et al had signed with the ladino agriculturists. The Fiscals ruling was forwarded to Quezaltenangos Corregidor in a presidential decree dated April 18, 1842:
Given that it is not within the province of the Executive Power to make the determination requested by the com n of the town of San Martn Sacatep quez, since u e whether or not the contracts are invalid or binding, or whether they are or are not rescindable, are points of justice that correspond to the Tribunals, the Government, in conformity with the recommendations of the Fiscal, agrees: that the com n of u [San Martn] should appear . . . before the Court of First Instance of Quezaltenango to determine its legal rights.

C scara informed municipal ofcials and ladino squatters alike of the gova ernments decision, and returned to each their respective documentation in anticipation of the legal battle to come.72

Quezaltenangos Costa Cuca: From Indigenous Ejido to Lucrative Coffee Zone

Unfortunately, this is where the ofcial record of the dispute ends. Testimony presented during a subsequent crop damage suit suggests that San Martn in deed did pursue the case in Quezaltenangos court of rst instance, and that the court upheld the binding nature of at least some of the agreements that had been negotiated between Paz and the ladino usurpers. Still, this evidence is far from denitive, and the exact details of how San Martns legal battle concluded remain unclear.73 What is clear, however, is that ladino exploitation of San Martns territory continued to grow over the next sev eral decades. In 1841 Quezaltenangos Corregidor had claimed that there were upwards of one hundred ladinos cultivating sugar cane and raising

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 59

livestock on the communitys land. By 1856 there were eighty two ladinos from Ostuncalco alone actually residing in San Martn.74 Unlike the Corregidors 1841 estimate, this gure did not include ladinos originating outside Ostuncalco, nor did it count seasonal migrants or the laborers and other employees who staffed the lowland trapiches and haciendas. The signicant size of the latter group, in particular, is suggested by the attention that Ostuncalcos Padre Martn Burbano de Lara paid to it as early as 1850. He feared for the miserable and scandalous state in which he believed that the trapiche workers lived, and he petitioned Ostuncalcos ladino municipalidad to order its alcaldes auxiliares on the coast to instill the lowland underclass with the fear of god and respect for authority.75 Two years later Burbano began tithe collections among coastal ladinos.76 Some of the ladinos with haciendas, trapiches, or residences on San Martns land served with frequency in Ostuncalcos ladino municipalidad.77 Even so, the latter body complained bitterly throughout the early 1850s about townspeople who had forsaken Ostuncalco for the coast. The municipalidads chief complaint was that tax collection became much more burdensome and time consuming. Evidently, many of the ladinos who moved to settle and farm the vast expanse of San Martns community lands believed that they had left the law behind. As a result they simply refused to pay their taxes. Soldiers had to be sent on more than one occasion to establish the authority of the alcaldes auxiliares to collect them.78 By 1863 fully 75 of Ostuncalcos 275 ladino taxpayersmale heads-of-householdlived on the coast.79 Ostuncalcos ladino municipalidad was not the only government body that encountered difculties due to the large number of ladinos who had migrated to the coast. Complaints issued from other quarters as well. In early 1863 the departmental military commander admonished his subordinate in Ostuncalco for allowing over 100 members of the towns militia unit to be on the coast simultaneously. The local commander had failed to muster even 25 percent of his forces for the last four weekly drills.80 The militia commander of the ladino town San Antonio Bob s also encountered simo ilar problems. His repeated attempts to force the return of militia members presently cultivating the coastal territory of San Martn were, in his words, easily mocked.81 Several administrative developments also indicate a burgeoning ladino population within San Martns community land from the 1840s onward. First, the number of alcaldes auxiliares and regidores was increased from one to two sometime in the mid-1840s, reecting the creation of a new administrative subdistrict within the area. By the 1860s the number of administrative districts had increased to ve, and each alcalde auxiliar was assigned not one, but two regidores to assist him. Whereas Ostuncalcos ladino municipalidad had named these ofcials in the past, now they were appointed directly by

60 Chapter 2 the sub-Corregidor.82 Some of the settlements mentioned in these districts developed into the coffee towns of Colomba, Flores Costa Cuca, G nova, e and El Asintal.83 Another revealing administrative development was the initiation of maintenance operations on the roads that connected San Martns coastal districts to Ostuncalco, Coatepeque, and Retalhuleu. Ostuncalcos ladino municipalidad was instructed to name commissioners for all of the highland communities, Mam and ladino alike, that corresponded to the district of Ostuncalco.84 Each commissioner was responsible for recruiting a work crew from his respective town to maintain a particular section of the roadway between coast and highlands. On the coast itself, hacienda and trapiche owners were ordered to maintain the roads that abutted their lands. Finally, in 1866, a construction project was undertaken to improve the road connecting Ostuncalco with Retalhuleu by way of San Martn. Although slow to start, rotating crews were at work before the end of the decade. Between March 1869 and May 1871, over 600 laborers passed through a week-long shift on the project.85 One nal event helps to demonstrate the growth of a permanent population, both ladino and indigenous, within San Martns coastal territory. In late 1855 Governor Nicol s P res, elected municipal ofcers, and more than a e a dozen principales authorized the formation of a new town on one square league of community land near the present-day site of Colomba, at a location called San Jos Pie de la Cuesta.86 According to Quezaltenangos Corregidor, e the new town was needed because more than 1,000 inhabitants of . . . San Martn, Concepci n and Ostuncalco . . . live dispersed throughout the wilds o of the southern slopes that descend toward the Pacic Ocean. They commit all the excesses consistent with the frontier lifestyle that they have adopted in order to evade . . . the police and social order. As a result, the Corregidor concluded, it was necessary to concentrate or reduce them to a single population center where they could be better administered and supervised.87 Ostuncalcos parish priest Martn Burbano also gave crucial backing to this idea because of his proclaimed concern for the state of moral decay in which coastal inhabitants were reputed to be living. Earlier in the year, in anticipation of the new town, he had solicited permission from Guatemalas Archbishop Francisco de Paula Garca Pel ez to erect a church at the pro a jected locale. Another important supporter was San Martns own municipal secretary Miguel Ralda, a ladino from Ostuncalco. Ralda had played a lessthan wholesome role in the agreements of late 1839 and early 1840 that had facilitated ladino squatters in obtaining de facto control of community territory. This time around he apparently was instrumental in convincing San Martns municipalidad to contribute land for the new towns ejido.88 Nevertheless, opinion within San Martn as a whole was far from united. Although the governor supported the project, as did the elected ofcials of

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 61

1855, and several additional principales, many others did not. And whether by chance or by design, the proposal to establish a new municipality on land donated by San Martn, deep within community territory, coincided with a resurgence in frustration over the continued inux of outsiders onto town land. During the previous year municipal ofcials had complained to the Corregidor on more than one occasion about the advances of ladino agriculturists onto the lands of [the] town, occupying them with their crops without obtaining the consent and permission of [the] Municipality and e com n. . . . 89 In addition, evidence surfaced that governor P res and secu retary Ralda had authorized a number of Kiche Maya from San Sebasti n a to cultivate community territory. When the governor and municipalidad proposed regularizing the continuing invasions with formal rental contracts, the opposition went public. P res wrote Ostuncalcos juez preventivo on June 22 e that he and the municipal ofcers had suspected a conspiracy against them for some time, and that the previous evening Manuel Ramres and several compa eros had attempted to assemble the town in order to take away n [their] staffs of ofce. Ramres, for his part, called P res et al thieves, and e charged them with selling the lands of the Costa.90 Although the case against Ramres eventually was dropped, the opposition to governor P res continued, and he resigned his post in October 1856. His e replacement, Francisco G sman, immediately embarked on an energetic u campaign to rid San Martn of sansebastianos, and, subsequently, to crush the still-embryonic town of San Jos Pie de la Cuesta.91 Petitioning President e Rafael Carrera in March 1857, G sman and the elected municipalidad stated u that although it is true that their predecessors had agreed to the formation of a new town within community territory, due to their ignorance and rusticity they had failed to recognize all of the ramications of such a project. [D]espite our opposition, and that of the town of Chiquirichapa, the authors wrote, the project continues to be pushed forward by the likes of Padre Burbano and the ladinos of Sija, [San Marcos], and other towns, who have established themselves on our land in an effort to rob it from us. Our resistance is not unfounded or capricious, but based on the reasonable suspicion that once established there, said [town] will go on expanding, and in time the new inhabitants will take control of all of the land that now pertains to us.92 After unsuccessfully attempting to reconvince San Martns authorities of the projects utility, the Corregidor reluctantly conceded defeat. In this instance San Martn won a small victory. Nevertheless, the Fiscals subsequent report to the Minister of the Interior reveals much about the Conservative states position vis-` -vis San Martns efforts, and those of the indigenous a populace more generally, to retain control of community land. Although the Fiscal advised the minister to forget about a new town for the time being,

62 Chapter 2 he did not believe that the idea deserved to be abandoned altogether. According to Padre Burbano, the Fiscal wrote, the retraction of [San Martns] Municipal ofcials is due to the present Governor of the town. . . . Thus, he concluded, the Corregidor should be instructed to watch for some future moment when the project might be implemented with less resistance.93 In sum, the decades following San Martns initial attempts to rid its ter ritory of ladino usurpers were marked, instead, by the latters continued demographic growth. Neither the Conservative state nor Rafael Carrera sided with the town despite a supposed desire to protect indigenous community interests. Although Conservative authorities did not revoke San Martns ti tle, they essentially disregarded its legal signicance. Thus, instead of backing the title with the force of law, Conservative authorities bestowed de facto property rights on the land claims of the ladino squatters who had surreptitiously invaded the towns ejido. State sanction allowed the squatters to treat their claims as virtual private property, buying and selling them at will, and passing them down to their children when they died.94 Certainly these quasi-property owners would have preferred outright legal title. In practical terms, however, legal title was not nearly as important to the sanctity of their possessions as the implicit commitment made by the state when it refused to enforce San Martns property rights. The only way that San Martns historic and legal rights to its community territory were recognized at all was in the annual rental payments that the ladino squatters apparently were supposed to pay the municipalidad. This stipulation had been part of the Fiscals proposal in 1841. All available evidence, however, suggests that at best these payments were made on an infrequent, piecemeal basis. At worst, they were not made at all, or they degenerated into the occasional bribery of municipal ofcials. Thus even this partial acknowledgment of the legality with which San Martn possessed its community lands was little more than a half-hearted attempt by the government to placate the towns disgruntled populace.95 What conclusions can be drawn from the experiences of San Martn, and Greater Ostuncalco more generally, in the pre-Reforma years of the nineteenth century? First, Liberal policy and legislation prior to 1837 was viewed negatively by many indigenous communities and did engender uprisings and other forms of resistance. The rebellion in Ostuncalco, and those that followed around the country, forced Liberal authorities to revoke some of the most hated laws even before Rafael Carreras rst invasion of Guatemala City in February 1838. The statutes that had broadly dismantled the protection of community lands, for example, were essentially reversed in November 1837. Second, despite these legislative changes, and despite Carreras denitive victory over Liberal forces, and his defeat of the state of Los Altos, ladino invasions that focused on indigenous coastal lands still went largely unchecked,

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 63

and in fact continued apace. Without the conspicuous banner of blanket legislation, the new regime was more successful than its Liberal predecessor at allowing ladino agriculturists to appropriate key agricultural lands from particular indigenous communities. Although towns with primarily highland territory may well have enjoyed full protection under the law, and perhaps even the benet of the doubt from Conservative authorities, a two-tiered set of legal standards applied on the coast. Ladino holdings, despite their illegal origins, and despite their location on lands to which indigenous communities held legal title, were essentially inalienable. Indigenous properties, by contrast, whether legally documented or not, were unprotected by the state and could be appropriated by others. In sum, then, well before the Liberal Revolution of 1871, or the death of Rafael Carrera in 1865, or even the introduction of coffee into the western piedmont in the 1850s, the Conservative state had dealt a decisive blow to indigenous control of the fertile south coastGuatemalas prime agricultural region. As the case of San Martn demonstrates, however, Carrera and his Conservative allies could not have succeeded so easily without the internal political struggles that split indigenous communities from within. Although many of San Martns residents and leaders eventually opposed the presence of outsiders within municipal territory, others were lured by the nancial rewards that promised to accrue to the town, and to themselves personally, if the outsiders were allowed to remain. This cleavage, coupled with unrelenting state support for the ladino agriculturists, is what nally brought San Martn into an uneasy modus vivendi with its newfound renters.

San Martn in Comparative Context: The Example of San Felipe and Western Suchitepquez e
In terms of land area, San Martns nearly 500 sq. km territory represented a signicant segment of Guatemalas Pacic coast. In terms of the economy and society, the towns massive ejido became the site of Quezaltenangos Costa Cuca, one of Guatemalas most productive coffee regions. In sum, San Martn certainly serves as an important example of how Guatemalas indigenous communities fared during the nineteenth century. By itself, however, this single example may provide a misleading basis from which to generalize about the whole of Guatemala. To explore the extent to which San Martns experiences under the Conservative state were anomalous, or, conversely, representative of broader trends, let us turn to the four indigenous towns due east of the Costa Cuca: San Felipe, San Martn Zapotitl n, San Sebasti n, and a a El Palmar. Although I will focus primarily on the rstSan Felipe, the three other towns will emerge as important players in the events and developments that marked the region during the midnineteenth century.

64 Chapter 2 Presently San Felipe, San Martn Zapotitl n, and San Sebasti n are located a a in the department of Retalhuleu, but for most of the nineteenth century they belonged to Suchitep quez.96 Indigenous ttulos written in the decades e following the Spanish invasion indicate that all three towns fell within the boundaries of what was once the Kiche empire, although only San Felipe and San Martn are mentioned by name as having preconquest roots.97 In deed, San Felipe in particular probably developed as an estancia of the Kiche settlement corresponding to present-day Quezaltenango.98 As was true of many coastal communities, however, San Felipe and San Martn both decreased in population throughout the colonial period. According to historian Adrian Van Oss, the two towns were empty of people by 1776 and 1806, respectively.99 Sometime thereafter indigenous residents of the highland Kiche community Zunil began to repopulate the sites. In the case of San Felipe, they titled an ejido of about thirty-eight caballeras and used it for their milpas and for grazing livestock, much as the highland Mam towns around Ostuncalco used the ejido of San Martn Sacatep quez.100 e In contrast to the above-mentioned three communities, El Palmar pertains to the department of Quezaltenango. During the nineteenth century there was some confusion regarding this point because the site was originally settled by indigenous residents of Momostenango, Totonicap n, and it a continued to rely on the latter towns municipal authorities until the 1860s. Nevertheless, by 1864 Quezaltenangos Corregidor insisted that the com munity fell within his jurisdiction.101 Unlike San Felipe and San Martn Zapotitl n, there is no evidence of El Palmar in the preconquest period, a nor is there much to suggest that it existed prior to the early-nineteenth century. Although residents of Momostenango claimed that they had been cultivating and seasonally inhabiting the location since time immemorial, the rst documents to mention the site date from the 1830s. These indicate that Momostenango requested title to the area as early as 1832, suggesting that it may have been settled, if only on a temporary basis, sometime in the preceding two or three decades.102 Returning to the example of San Felipe, ladinos from San Antonio Suchitep quez, and possibly other towns, began to occupy community lands e over the course of the mid-nineteenth century, and perhaps as early as the 1830s. Like the ladinos of Ostuncalco and elsewhere who were invading San Martn Sacatep quezs coastal ejido, they probably engaged in sugar pro e duction and cattle ranching. Unlike the former, however, their numbers remained small until 1853, when a decree issued by the Carrera government authorized bounties for coffee cultivation and production. Planters were offered a one-time bonus of twenty-ve pesos for each 1,000 trees planted. In addition, they were promised two pesos for each quintal of coffee exported annually.103 As a result of this decree, the ladino presence in San Felipe increased dramatically, and so too did the conict over land.104

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 65

The problem confronted by the newly arrived, aspiring coffee planters was how to gain access to land that already belonged to the indigenous community. Although the details are somewhat unclear, it appears that they pursued two avenues toward this end. The indigenous municipalidad was not entirely adverse to permitting the ladino newcomers a small portion of community ejido on which to establish subsistence milpas, and, initially at least, they authorized a number of such plots. The ladinos returned the favor, however, by clandestinely cultivating coffee trees among their food crops. They also conspired to form their own municipalidad, perhaps because the plots that they were offered were smaller than they desired, or because indigenous ofcials, upon discovering the duplicity of their new neighbors, refused to turn over any more land in this manner. Regardless, the ladino council, once formed, proceeded to appropriate large areas of community land for the incipient coffee planters despite the fact that its very existence had not yet been ratied, and thus, that it lacked all legal right to engage in any activity whatsoever.105 San Felipes Kiche residents were outraged at these attempts to usurp their territory and the political authority of their own municipalidad. As early as 1858 they responded to illegal encroachments by destroying coffee trees. They also petitioned the government for protection on numerous occasions, although before long they came to view the Corregidor himself as part of the problem. They complained that not only were the ladinos conceding community land illegally, but that they also were taking control of such areas of municipal administration as the jail and tax collection. Finally, the petitioners lamented, hardly any of the ladinos who received concessions of ejido land paid their rent.106 At around the same time San Martn Zapotitl n also began to complain a of outside encroachment. Since the late 1850s, if not before, ladinos had been soliciting the Corregidor for permission to cultivate the towns ejido via rental contract. Although it does not appear that permission was ever granted, this did not stop the ladino inux. San Martns ofcials wrote that ladino coffee plantations were proliferating and that the communitys own subsistence milpas were being devastated by the latters unfenced cattle. They requested state sanction to remove the offending livestock, destroy the coffee trees, and expel all ladinos from their community.107 Unfortunately, the governments response to these petitions was equivocal at best. The Corregidor, for his part, did not address the issue; rather, he attributed the conict to agitators from Momostenango and El Palmar who, he claimed, were stirring up trouble throughout the indigenous towns of the coast. Even so, he hardly deserves all the blame for the fact that little was done to protect the legal rights of the regions indigenous residents. Regarding San Felipes complaints, state ofcials at all levels recognized the illegitimacy of the ladinos municipalidad as well as the surreptitious manner in which they

66 Chapter 2 had acquired town land. In addition, ofcials acknowledged that almost to a person the ladinos were not paying the annual rental fee required of them. Nevertheless, nothing was done to return community land, and efforts to enforce ejido rental laws were little more than cosmetic. As a rule, although indigenous authorities were forced to replace coffee trees they destroyed in self-defense, the ladinos continued their illegal appropriations with no fear of state reprisal whatsoever.108 The point of no return on the road to a violent showdown was passed as 1862 came to a close. Under the auspices of the Corregidor, San Felipes indigenous ofcials agreed to allow the towns ladinos to retain the land that they had acquired so far, as long as they complied with the following stipulations. First, each ladino who possessed community land had to declare their possession before the indigenous municipalidad, and promise to pay the rental assessed given the size of the area in question. Second, no land held under these terms could be sold without prior permission from said municipalidad. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there could be no expansion of coffee cultivation, nor could new plantations be established, without the express permission of indigenous authorities.109 The accord was signed by representatives of both municipalidades on December 19, 1862. In less than a week, however, the ladinos were already chang at the restriction on coffee expansion. The ladino alcalde complained to the Corregidor that indigenous ofcials had not approved any new coffee planting in the short time already elapsed. This was well within the terms of the accord, however, and he was forced to admit that the indgenas had done nothing to abridge any of the agreed upon stipulations. Nevertheless, he urged the Corregidor to authorize new concessions for coffee cultivation. The Corregidor agreed.110 Given their complete abandonment by departmental and central government authorities, it is not surprising that San Felipe, along with the other indigenous towns of the region, began to formulate plans for a widespread rebellion. By August 1863 the Corregidor of Suchitep quez reported rumors e that indgenas from the nearby towns of El Palmar and San Sebasti n were a conspiring to attack area ladinos. Shortly thereafter, a group of palmare os n destroyed several coffee plantations in San Felipe.111 Even more alarming rumors surfaced in January 1864. Indgenas from San Sebasti n, El Palmar, San a Felipe, San Martn Zapotitl n, and a number of other towns were believed a to be plotting against the ladinos of Retalhuleu. The Corregidor invaded San Sebasti n preemptively, and, after several tense days, the incipient rebela lion stalled, but not without several fatalities and much damage. Indigenous leaders from most of the involved towns were implicated. Quezaltenangos Corregidor, Narciso Pacheco, who had been sent to San Sebasti n with rea inforcements, concluded that the main impetus behind the rebellion was

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 67

indigenous resentment at the establishment of coffee plantations on community land.112 Unfortunately for San Felipe and the other Kiche towns immediately to the east of the Costa Cuca, the rebellion against ladino cafetaleros ended in failure. In fact, however, it probably never had much of a chance anyway. There was little left that the uprising could have salvaged, even assuming a more successful military campaign on the part of the rebels. As David McCreery concludes, In fact, the communities had already lost and soon were in full retreat. Some of the Indian ofcials themselves now seized the opportunity to acquire town land and become coffee producers, and the priest of San Felipe was openly siding with progress.113 Of all the towns involved, it would appear that only El Palmar had acted somewhat preemptively. That is, although evidence from the other three, especially San Felipe, indicates a signicant ladino presence and a substantial land loss by the early 1860s, the documentation for El Palmar suggests that aside from a handful of cases the community did not suffer such deprivations prior to the 1870s.114 Let us return to the question that began this section: do the cases of San Felipe, El Palmar, San Martn Zapotitl n, and San Sebasti n help to a a resolve the problem of San Martn Sacatep quez representativeness, partic e ularly within the context of Guatemalas Pacic coast? Clearly they do. First, they demonstrate that the experience of San Martn Sacatep quez under e Rafael Carrera and his Conservative cohorts was not anomalous. San Felipe, San Martn Zapotitl n, and San Sebasti n all lost large quantities of land dur a a ing Carreras reign. More importantly, state ofcials effectively challenged the control that these indigenous communities had held over their respective territories, whether legally titled or not. Indeed, it was this loss of the battle for state support, rather than legal control over a particular parcel or quantity of land, that spelled defeat for the indigenous communities. On the other hand, these examples demonstrate that San Martn Sacatep quez was not entirely representative, either. Although many other e towns did lose land under Carrera, typically their battles postdated that of San Martn by a decade or more, and were tied more directly to the entrance of coffee on Guatemalas Pacic coast. In that sense, San Martn Sacatep quez e was a harbinger of the future. This suggests a second conclusion: some coastal communities lost land before others because ladino demand for their land, and community resistance to such demands, was uneven, not because the state gave preferential treatment to one coastal community over another. That said, it also may be true that where ladino demand was low the state was more willing to countenance the letter of the law and thus offer a modicum of protection. El Palmar is a case in point. Without diminishing the communitys agency or the efcacy of its energetic resistance, available evidence suggests that it did not have to fend off anywhere near the onslaught experienced by

68 Chapter 2 the other towns considered here, at least not before the 1870s. Moreover, in the few cases of outside encroachment that were brought before the state prior to 1871, it seems that the intruder was repulsed. Perhaps this reected, at least in part, the fact that El Palmars authorities had already expelled the individual, presenting state ofcials with a fait accompli.115 In sum, the examples discussed here demonstrate that at a minimum the Conservative state was not nearly as protective of indigenous communities as most studies would have us believe. Furthermore, these examples, which document state support for ladino appropriation of indigenous ejidos from the early 1840s through the 1860s, indicate that this phenomenon was not conned to the rule of Vicente Cerna alone, nor to the last years of Rafael Carrera or even the period following the introduction of coffee to the Pacic coast. Rather, state-backed ladino appropriation of indigenous community land was present from the very beginning of the Conservative era. The main difference between Liberals and Conservatives, then, was not fundamental beliefs but strategy. Conservative authorities simply viewed a wholesale attack on community lands to be foolhardy. Instead they presided over a slower, piecemeal, but ultimately much more effective, alienation of these same lands from the 1840s onward and with little deviation, at least when it came to the fertile slopes of the Pacic coast. McCreerys characterization of the Reforma in fact applies equally well to the Conservative interlude. The greater potential an area had to produce agricultural wealth, and the more important the ladino usurper was in the eyes of government ofcials and the elite more generally, the less likely it was that the community being despoiled would receive state support in expelling the trespasser.116 In addition to avoiding the widespread scare that would have resulted from the pronouncement of a blanket expropriation of community lands, Conservative authorities also saw little to be gained by openly derogating the land titles of specic communities threatened by ladino encroachment. As the government Fiscal commented in 1841, did it really matter whether San Martn Sacatep quez was allowed to maintain legal title to 1,085 caballeras if e the town was unable to bar ladinos from exploiting the area? Yet it is precisely the continued existence of community titles that has led historians excessively preoccupied with the legal formalities of privatization and private property more generally to overlook the signicance of untitled ladino appropriations. What did it matter if indigenous communities retained de jure claims to an area when de facto control, including the right to improve, sell or bequeath, and retain all prots derived from said area, had passed to ladino outsiders with the full knowledge and backing of the state? Indeed, at a time when the idea of private land ownership was not widely accepted by rural Guatemalans, was state sanction not more important than a piece of paper?117

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 69

Guatemalas Conservatives, despite the letter of the law, supported the virtual privatization of indigenous lands by ladinos, where and when it occurred, from the very beginning of their rule. In fact, very little positive action was required of them to facilitate such an outcome. They simply refused to employ state power to prevent the usurpation of legally titled community land; to enforce the rental contracts under which these usurpations ostensibly occurred; to intervene when these illegally usurped lands were bought and sold without the permission of the community to which they ofcially pertained; and to stymie the explosive expansion of coffee cultivation undertaken during the 1850s and 1860s against the express wishes of the indigenous municipalidades. Moreover, when Conservative authorities did use state power, they employed it to crush indigenous resistance and to protect the ladino usurpers. In sum, the move to convert community lands into commercially oriented production units began well before the Liberals declared their apparently sweeping reforms in the 1870s, well before Vicente Cerna took ofce in 1865, and even before coffee made its grand entrance in the mid-1850s.

Conclusions
The historiography of nineteenth-century Guatemala is marked by two persistent problems. The rst concerns how scholars have conceptualized and juxtaposed the Conservative and Liberal eras. When David McCreery writes that the Conservative state generally sustained the claims of communities, he is well within the mainstream of current historical opinion. Conservativeera legislation made it difcult for individuals to title land in indigenous communities, the story goes, and thus the private appropriation of such land must have been insignicant until after 1871.118 This problematic interpretation of Guatemalas nineteenth century is compounded by another: the historiographical emphasis on coffee as the motor force behind the transformation of rural society, and in particular, the conversion of community land to private property. Even Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes, intent on downgrad[ing] the signicance of the reform movement of the 1870s as a turning point in the economic, political, and social history of Central America, nevertheless proclaim coffees revolutionizing role.119 And because coffee exports do not begin in earnest until the 1850s, or surpass cochineal until 1870, most scholars continue to believe that signicant changes in land tenure were conned to the late nineteenth century, particularly to the years of Liberal rule. The case of San Martn Sacatep quez, however, suggests that as early as e 1841well before coffee reached the areaConservative ofcials systematically refused to enforce documented community claims to land that was

70 Chapter 2 utilized by ladinos for state-favored products such as sugar or cattle. True, Conservatives did not call for the blanket transformation of community land into private property as had their Liberal predecessors; but that is because the Guatemalan state was too weak to defend itself from the popular backlash against such a policy. Recall that it was the Liberals themselves, in late 1837, who reversed their earlier land legislation in a last ditch effort at selfpreservation. Instead, Conservative authorities simply turned a blind eye as ladino after ladino invaded the coastal territory of indigenous towns, sometimes, as the case of San Martn Sacatep quez demonstrates, with the sup e port, or at least collusion, of certain municipal ofcials. In effect, the state left the difcult task of transforming indigenous community land into commercial agricultural enterprises to the cumulative efforts of those individuals and sectors within civil society who desired the transformation in the rst place. When, in response, affected towns sometimes threatened to take the law into their own hands, then, and only then, did the state resort to the use of coercion. I believe that this type of low-key policy would have been necessary regardless of which groupLiberals or Conservativeshad retained control of the state after the Carrera revolt. In sum, the dramatic changes reected by Reforma-era land legislation were all too real. But if the examples of Quezaltenangos Costa Cuca and western Suchitep quez are at all representative, then they were changes that e had largely taken place. The very communities believed to have suffered the most under the Liberal reformsthose within the prime agricultural zone of the Pacic coastdid not, in fact, have much left to lose. In this sense the case of El Palmar was the exception rather than the rule. It is the one town studied here which does not appear to have lost a signicant land area prior to the Reforma. Returning for a moment to the 1830s, one can understand why the rst round of Liberal reforms appeared to be such a threat despite the chronic weakness of the state at that time. Before then, most towns had not faced signicant challenges to the very foundation of their territorial integrity even if they had been involved in disputes with neighboring hacendados and other indigenous communities. A belief in the inviolability of community land persisted unshaken. During the 1830s, however, ladino encroachment into coastal communities began in earnest. Within this context the intent and rhetoric of the new Liberal legislation represented an untenable escalation even if the states ability to make good on its threat was only as great as the number of individual ladinos who were willing to carry it out. Whether we focus on the Conservative interlude or the Reforma years, the highland territory of most indigenous communities probably fared better than its lowland counterpart precisely because the former was unsuitable for the most lucrative agricultural commodities. Within the highland zone, for example, indigenous communities as a whole, as well as individual residents,

Disputing Property: National Politics and Local Ethnic Conict 71

sometimes succeeded in using the new Reforma-era regulations to secure the validity of their own claims to community land.120 Nevertheless, there is no doubt that even highland towns such as Ostuncalco and its Mam neighbors to the north, which had few legal ties to the coast, found it increasingly difcult to rely on milpa agriculture for their subsistence as the Costa Cuca became less and less accessible to them. The highland frontier had closed long ago, and San Martns inability to slow the inux of ladinos or the expansion of commercial agriculture meant that the coastal frontier, too, would soon be a thing of the past. As I will demonstrate in Chapter 3, the outlet to which residents of the highland Mam towns turned in increasing numbers was wage employment on the coastal plantations. Indeed, it was no coincidence that a growing demand for labor within an expanding commercial agricultural sector paralleled the slow closure of the coastal frontier. This demand for labor somewhat softened the blow caused by the transformation of coastal lands from milpas into ncas.

chapter

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture

excelentisimo se nor president:

At nine oclock this morning the indigenous municipalidad and principales of [Ostuncalco], together with the alcaldes auxiliares and com n of Pie de la Cuesta de la Laja u [an aldea of Ostuncalco], presented themselves before me, stating that for the past three years they have been working on opening the road from Quezaltenango to [the coast] and that they are tired of continuing with the project, of sending 160 men every 2 months. . . . They and their families have suffered many problems on account of the weekly labor rotation that each head of household is required to fulll, leaving behind wives and children to suffer from hunger, such that they have acquired large debts and have been made homeless, renting their elds and houses to others; or they have had to sell the labor of their children to pay for the familys necessities while their fathers work on the aforementioned road project. . . .1

The Reforma-as-revolution perspective rests on a belief that, for better or worse, the Liberals who took state power in 1871 imposed sweeping changes on Guatemalan society and engendered a dramatic break with the colonialera institutions and elite sensibilities that had dominated the previous threeand-a-half decades. Two developments frequently attributed to Barrios and his cohorts are the widespread expropriation of indigenous community lands and the rapid expansion of coffee production. Both of these topics were addressed in the preceding chapter. Here I will focus on a third development thought to have resulted from the policies initiated during the 1870s: a qualitative increase in coercive labor relations. Many authors, spanning several decades, have proposed that the forcible recruitment of workers through debt contracts or other extraeconomic mechanisms ourished under Liberal tutelage after 1871. Prior to that point,

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 73

by contrast, during the period of Conservative rule, Guatemalas rural poor is believed to have been largely unencumbered by coercive labor practices. David McCreerys recent and favorable comments on Oliver LaFarges 1940 Sequence of Cultures article illustrate the strength and longevity of such an interpretation. According to McCreery, LaFarge argued that the years between 1800 and 1880 constituted something of a golden age for the indigenous communities of highland Guatemala because of the weakened condition of the late colonial and independence states and of a stagnant cash and export economy that had little need of the land or labor of most of the Indian communities.2 A similar appraisal, also based partly on LaFarge, is given by historical geographer W. George Lovell. The Conservative regimes of the midcentury, writes Lovell, particularly when headed by peasant populist Jos Rafael Carrera, effectively undid the reforms carried out by the e preceding Liberal administration of Mariano G lvez and created a stable, a paternalist state founded on restored Hispanic institutions. The subsequent policies of Justo Runo Barrios, by contrast, entailed both an attack on native land and an assault on native labor. . . . For the Maya of Guatemala, the [post-1871] Liberal Reforms were the equivalent of what the events leading up to the Caste War became for the Maya of Yucat nboth initiated a a second cycle of conquest.3 Keeping in mind the scholarly consensus on Guatemalas nineteenth century, consider the passage that began this chapter. It comes from a petition that Ostuncalcos indigenous gobernador addressed to the president of Guatemala on behalf of the community. As one might expect, the petition ended with a plea to relieve the towns indigenous residents of the onerous burden of the road project. In particular, the gobernador went on to request that the president order a three-year suspension. Although he probably exaggerated the direct link between forced participation in the road project, and the various ills ascribed to it, he was not exaggerating the hardships that the Mam people of western Quezaltenango faced in their daily lives. Aside from the rotating labor drafts, it was all too common for a familys immediate subsistence needs to require that they exchange the use of their milpa, or the labor of their children, for a few bushels of wheat or corn. What may come as something of a surprise to the reader, however, is the fact that this petition was submitted on February 26, 1861, and described conditions existing well over ten years before the Liberal returned to power, and almost twenty years before the Liberals imposed regulations specifying the use of forced labor drafts.4 In presenting this example my aim is not to completely reject the scholarly consensus described earlier. There is no doubt that Justo Runo Barrios intended a dramatic harnessing of indigenous labor for commercial agriculture, and it cannot be denied that the web of labor coercion grew to entangle more people, in both absolute and relative terms, in the decades after 1871.

74 Chapter 3 Nevertheless, as I will make abundantly clear, both debt peonage and forced labor drafts were common, and increasing in importance, well before the Liberal resurgence. In western Quezaltenango, for example, debt peonage was widespread by the midcentury, and forced labor drafts or mandamientos occurred with increasing frequency during the tenure of both Carrera and his successor, Vicente Cerna. In addition, intent does not automatically translate into reality, and Barrios revamping of existing labor relations took several years to implement. Even then, as McCreery has shown, his coercive measures were not nearly as effective or starkly repressive as they appeared on paper.5 The state was simply too weak, and the possibilities for noncompliance too great. In sum, debt operated during the 1870s and 1880s much as it had in the two or three decades preceding 1871: primarily as an inducement in a highly competitive labor environment, rather than as a method of entrapment in an efciently operating police state. Forced labor expanded under Liberal tutelage, but it had been expanding since the 1850s at least. To suggest that the post-1871 labor regime was not as harsh as some authors have implied is not to deny that such measures were fundamentally unjust or that their goal was to facilitate the exploitation of one social class for the benet of another. But just as the Conservative state found it difcult to enforce debt contracts with much regularity, so too did its Liberal successor. The Liberals overhaul of the legal codes surrounding labor and debt were not watertight. Although the state certainly was stronger under their tutelage, the demands on its repressive apparatus were also greater as the number of indebted workers increased. On one hand, if a planter, or the state, or both, desired to single out a recalcitrant laborer, they clearly had the potential to make life miserable. Some people simply could not escape the nexus of debt and planterstate repression even when they so desired. On the other hand, as long as the labor supply did not overwhelm the demand, and as long as the state was stretched too thin to do more than target a small number of noncompliant debtors, the space existed for people to negotiate the conditions under which they toiled. The fact that greater and greater numbers entered debt-for-labor contracts is not so much due to the success of extraeconomic coercion as the decreasing ability of highland milpa agriculture to provide exclusively for a rural familys subsistence. Growing numbers of indigenous people were entering the debt cycle for purely economic reasons, yet this did not preclude eeing a particularly severe patrn, nor spending less time o on the nca than the patrn desired. A general inability to escape peonage o altogether, however, reected subsistence requirements rather than the long arm of the law. A central goal of this chapter, then, is to recontextualize the history of labor in Guatemalas nineteenth century so that 1871 no longer bursts forth as a great historical rupture, but rather emerges as part of an established

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 75

continuum. Aside from providing a useful corrective to the Reforma-asrevolution perspective, this recontextualization will also contribute to a better understanding of why resistance to the second generation of Liberal reforms did not develop along the lines of the Carrera revolt. First of all, the growing turn toward wage labor among highland residents roughly paralleled increased planter demand. A large number of those who migrated to the coastal coffee ncas did so out of necessity, not because they had been tricked or roped into an unending cycle of debt peonage. Secondly, the post-1871 labor statutes did not represent the qualitative shift in exploitation and repression that they implied on paper. Popular sectors still retained the space within which to resist planter and state claims on their labor and to effect an outcome more amenable to their own necessities. Finally, the new regulations and bureaucratic linkages that evolved as the state attempted to further develop its organizational and coercive capacity vis-` -vis an expanding labor force provided lucrative possibilities for local ofa cials and those involved in municipal governing apparatuses. This was true of indigenous as well as ladino municipalidades. Ultimately, whether planters wanted state help in recruiting labor, or enforcing debt contracts, they had to purchase such assistance from representatives at the local level. Frequently there was no other way to mobilize the state apparatus than by paying for it oneself.

The Relationship between Debt and Labor before 1871

The rst step toward an explanation of why the Liberal reforms of the 1870s did not signify a watershed in nineteenth century labor relations is to place them within the context of the preceding decades. Was the unfree labor regime that we have come to associate with the Reforma really a Liberal invention, a reformulation of colonial-era practices with little precedence in the nineteenth century? Or, conversely, did the efforts of Barrios and his cohorts to step up the enforcement of labor contracts and to expand the overall labor force signify a continuation of already established practices? In this section I will demonstrate the latter. Debt peonage ourished prior to 1871, and forced labor drafts, or mandamientos, grew in importance after the midcentury even though Conservative authorities usually did not employ them as widely as their Liberal successors. Viewed from this perspective, the Reforma neither initiated labor coercion nor qualitatively transformed its conditions. Rather, it helped to speed an expansion of existing labor relations that was already underway. debt and the rural economy Regardless of whether one focuses on Guatemalas nineteenth century before or after 1871, the practice of paying labor in advance of the work was

76 Chapter 3 widespread. Simply put, most people who worked for pay did so to compensate for wages, or goods, already received. Perhaps this helps to explain why coercion and work seem inextricably linked in Guatemalan history. Because labor was paid in advance, economic necessity did not always serve to impose workforce discipline, at least not in the short-run. And where necessity failed, employers and the state often attempted to substitute violence in its stead. The fact that worker resistance remained ubiquitous, however, suggests that ecological and social factors favored labor with certain advantages vis-` -vis a capital. It also suggests that the continuing practice of pay advances may have been a reection of labors relative advantage rather than its submission to planter control.6 This custom of working to pay off money or goods received probably had its roots in the repartimientos of the colonial period. McCreery notes, with regard to the repartimientos de brazos or colonial-era forced labor drafts, that they generally were preceded by a pay advance for each of the workers.7 The effect of the repartimientos de mercancas, which were used by colonial ofcials to enrich themselves as well as force indigenous communities to pay their tribute to the Crown, was quite similar. Quezaltenangos Corregidor, for example, distributed bales of cotton, hoes, bolts of rough cloth, and money to each indigenous community of his jurisdiction when they came to make their biannual tribute payments. Six months later, at the time the next payment was due, the community delivered the cotton as spun thread and thereby discharged its tribute obligation in addition to the cost of the hoes and rough cloth that had been received previously. As for the money that had been distributed, it was repaid in some combination of woolen thread, sheep, or wheat. In effect, the Corregidor indebted indigenous laborers by forcing cash on community ofcials, and through them, on community residents, who thus were obligated to supply items that derived from their labor: sheep from the ocks they tended; woolen thread from their sheep; and wheat from their elds. The Corregidor then converted these goods into money. Because the market value of sheep, woolen thread, and wheat was much greater than the amount for which the Corregidor credited the community, he was able to line his own pockets with the surplus.8 To better understand the relationship between debt and labor that prevailed in the nineteenth century it is helpful to rst understand how debt functioned in the rural communityits importance in daily lifeduring this period. The municipal archive of San Juan Ostuncalco contains information on several hundred debt agreements made over the course of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, however, the details are too inconsistent to support a rigorous analysis of debt from one year to the next. Such an analysis would not be very representative anyway because most agreements, especially those

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 77

that involved small amounts of money and exclusively indigenous parties, were probably dealt with by the indigenous municipalidad and never made it into the records of the towns ladino ofcials unless a dispute arose which the former could not resolve. Keeping these qualications in mind, I will nevertheless suggest some tentative observations, based on the extant documentation, about how debt operated in the Mam region of Quezaltenango in the years leading up to 1871.9 Transactions in which goods, services, or money, were offered on credit were common in the Ostuncalco area from the very rst decades of the nineteenth century. Most debts, by far, whether the borrower was indigenous or ladino, were associated with wheat or corn. Sometimes the debtor accepted money or goods against the future delivery of wheat or corn to the creditor based on an anticipated harvest. On other occasions the debtor simply purchased said grains on credit. Additional reasons for assuming debt that were mentioned with some regularity include buying other agricultural commodities, such as rice, panela, cotton, or coffee, or paying for church-related exactions, marriage expenses, health care, or release from the town jail. Most debts were assumed in the months of March through July, and this no doubt reected the agricultural cycle on which the local economy was based.10 Typically, corn and wheat are harvested as early as September and as late as February in Guatemalas western highlands. Woodwards reconstruction of commodity prices for Guatemala City during the midnineteenth century shows that corn and wheat prices rose substantially in May and remained high through September.11 If this same pattern held for the western part of the country, then perhaps the increased debt levels from March to July indicated the efforts of debtors to stockpile grain ahead of the price curve, whether for internal consumption, seed, or resale at a later date at a higher price. Conversely, the higher debt observed during these months also may have reected the activity of creditors who desired to secure cultivators future harvests at below-market prices. Three parties were normally involved in a debt contract: the creditor, the borrower, and the borrowers ador or guarantor. A breakdown of these parties by gender and ethnicity suggests some interesting, if tentative, conclusions. First, women made up a signicant segment of creditors, as well as debtors, although they were nearly absent from the category of ador. For example, of the debt agreements recorded by Ostuncalcos ladino alcalde, women accounted for almost 29% of the creditors whose gender could be determined.12 As I will show in Chapter 4, this may have been the case because they lled such a pivotal role in the commercial life of the community. Women frequently worked as store keepers and market vendors, and, moreover, they were far and above the biggest sellers of aguardiente. By contrast, their absence from the category of ador might reect a social

78 Chapter 3 bias against having women serve in such a legal capacity. It also might have resulted because the position of ador was sometimes used to accumulate the loans of other creditors as a form of investment, and apparently this sort of nancial dealing was strictly a male province. Whatever the reason, adores were almost exclusively men.13 A second observation that stems from the perusal of debt contract signatories is that Ostuncalcos Mam residents, far from remaining outside the market economy, were integrally involved. On one hand, they comprised a majority of debtors, even in the record books of the ladino alcaldes, and not simply for reasons of immediate personal consumption. The commercial focus of their transactions is suggested by the number of debts that involved wheat, an item which generally is not consumed in Mayan households even to this day. In some cases debt reected the market orientation of indigenous wheat producers who accepted advances against future harvests. In other cases debt resulted when an indigenous trader purchased wheat with the aim of subsequently reselling it, perhaps in a distant market. Both of these practices had roots in the colonial period. With regard to the rst, the eighteenth century repartimientos imposed by Quezaltenangos Corregidor included monies advanced to the corregimientos indigenous communities in exchange for their extorted promise to turn over wheat harvests at belowmarket values.14 With regard to the second, historian Chris Lutz, in his study of Santiago de Guatemala, concludes that indigenous producers and merchants were among the most important suppliers of wheat to the capital city throughout the colonial period. Aside from Santiagos immediate vicinity, many hailed from the regions of Quezaltenango and Totonicap n, where, a according to Lutz, [t]he cultivation of wheat . . . appears to have been even more common than in the vicinity of Santiago. By transporting grain to the capital, they hoped to obtain the best price.15 On the other hand, the market orientation of Ostuncalcos Mam residents also is indicated by their roles as creditors and adores. In a large majority of the cases where ethnicity could be determined, indigenous adores backed indigenous debtors. Often the two parties were linked by family ties. The fact that some adores reappeared time and again, however, may indicate that their interest in guaranteeing debt was remunerative as well as familial. Aside from their ability to extract additional concessions from the debtor, they also provided a service to the creditor. This was particularly true if the creditor was ladino and, therefore, unable to capitalize on ethnic or kinship ties to ensure the successful recovery of a loan. Perhaps this helps account for the prevalence of indigenous adores. They could make a lucrative enterprise out of a ladino creditors difculties. Within the record books of the ladino alcalde indigenous creditors were greatly outnumbered by their ladino counterparts. Nevertheless, even in this

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 79

source, prone as it was to underrepresenting indigenous activity, more than one out of every ve creditors of identiable ethnicity was Mayan. Other documents indicate that indigenous cofradas were a signicant lend ing source.16 The same was true of the ladino cofradas, sometimes called hermandades.17 Evidence suggests that several members or brothers would divide up the cofradas capital, agreeing to generate a specied return on their respective portion, e.g., one real per peso annually, or about twelve percent.18 Generally this appears to have been done by loaning the money out. After paying the cofrada its annual return, members were allowed to keep the remainder of whatever they had collected on the loans. Frequently, however, the brothers ended up indebting themselves to the cofrada. Either they could not generate the expected return, or they ended up spending some of the principal with which they had been entrusted.19 Under normal circumstances, i.e., when debt default was not impending, a debtor would repay the creditor in one of several ways. If the latter was the producer or vender of the item exchanged for debt, then monetary or in-kind payment usually sufced. For example, if a person purchased three fanegas of wheat on credit, they probably could pay it back with three fanegas plus whatever additional amount was required as interest. Sometimes, however, debt agreements stipulated that repayment should take another form. This frequently occurred when a creditor desired to ensure the future delivery of some commodity or service. For instance, advance payment might be offered to secure a portion of an upcoming wheat or coffee crop.20 Likewise, cash or grain might be extended on credit for the promise of labor at some later date. The exchange of money or goods for a pledge of future work was endemic to the nineteenth century from at least the end of the colonial period. Simply stated, laborers were almost always paid in advance for their services. Daily wages were calculated at anywhere from a third of a real to two reales in the decades prior to the 1870s.21 By the early 1860s a daily wage of 1.5 reales was typical.22 The time allotted to work off a particular debt or advance varied according to the amount of money involved and the workers daily wage. Although it usually did not exceed two years, even this gure is somewhat misleading because it was not uncommon for employers to be obliged to advance additional monies to their workers despite the fact that previous advances had not yet been repaid. In other words, whatever time frame had been stipulated at the outset of a debt agreement often became irrelevant.23 During the rst three decades of the nineteenth century indebted workers appear to have been employed primarily in highland enterprises that focused on wheat and livestock.24 The coast, by contrast, does not seem to have been important in terms of the demand for labor at this time, despite the presence there of both livestock and sugar.25 By the 1830s, however, sugar began to wax, and available evidence suggests that it involved ever increasing

80 Chapter 3 numbers of workers through the 1840s and 1850s.26 Coffees introduction ca. 1858 built on this trend. As a result, the following decade witnessed an even more dramatic growth in the size of the wage labor force.27 Indeed, it is possible that during the 1860s the coastal endeavors of sugar and coffee may have surpassed their highland counterparts as a source of employment for the indebted workers of western Quezaltenango. the enforcement of debt agreements C. Father Priest Jos Mara Orellana: e
Mateo Gomes, resident of the town of San Juan Ostuncalco, prostrate at the feet of my Se or Parish Priest, I ask and beg you to please see t to attend to my short petition. n It regards a debt that my father Manuel Gomes owes to C. Jos Pascual Monroy e of twenty seven pesos. Of this quantity, fourteen pesos have already been paid to [Monroy] and thirteen remain outstanding. . . . My father has suffered imprisonment for the past two and a half months . . . and he was put there without any hearing at all. Now my wife has been captured pending the repayment of the remaining [amount]. I am not the one who accepted this debt, and yet now I am being forced to pay for my father. I will not be able to do this very quickly because, in the rst place, I hold a position within the cofrada, and also because I am poor and I must support my family. That is why I ask and beg my Se or Priest to see t . . . [to help n me gain] . . . some extra time in which to pay the above-mentioned quantity to the Se or 1st Alcalde. . . . This is what I beg the benign heart of my Se or Priest to do n n for one of his poor parishioners who has nowhere to turn for help except God and Your Grace. . . .28

As I have illustrated, debts could be repaid with money, in goods, such as grain, or with the promise of future labor. If, however, a debtor was delinquent, or defaulted altogether, creditors had several options at their disposal. As the document quoted immediately above illustrates, they could request that municipal ofcials incarcerate the debtor to force payment of the balance due. They could even go so far as to have members of the debtors extended family imprisoned. In the case of Manuel Gomes, local authorities jailed his daughter-in-law. More commonly, however, this punishment was visited upon the debtors wife, as happened to Catarina Bail in 1856. Bails husband, Sebasti n Das, had died of viruela the previous year, leaving an outstanda ing debt with his erstwhile employer, Francisco Acav l of neighboring San a Mateo. Acav l conscated several acres of grain that Das had planted prior a to his death, and then had Bail jailed to force her to pay the remainder. After being released, Bail returned home only to nd that she had to beg posada from her neighbors because Acav l had thrown her out of her house.29 a In addition to jailing a debtors relatives, creditors might also request that local authorities employ corporal punishment against the recalcitrant borrower. Alejandro Cabrera recounted his disturbing story to the Gefe

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 81

Departamental of Quezaltenango in 1824. A resident of Chiquirichapa, Cabrera owed ve pesos to Juan Romero of Ostuncalco. In an effort to help the latter recover the debt, Ostuncalcos alcaldes imprisoned Cabrera for six days and whipped him 25 times. Next they imprisoned his sister Magdalena for nine days. When that did not produce the desired outcome they imprisoned Cabreras brother, Nicolas, who was still in jail at the time the complaint was made.30 These examples, and there are many others, show that one need not focus on the stereotypical ladino coffee planter of the 1870s, 1880s or 1890s to encounter the abuses highlighted by David McCreerys work on debt peonage. The practice of requiring one family member to pay off anothers debt, for instance, was clearly typical of the entire nineteenth century.31 Creditors, whether ladino or indigenous, individual or collective (e.g., a cofrada), could often count on the ruthless collaboration of local ofcials as they attempted to recover their due. Interestingly, however, although incarceration and corporal punishment were commonly used to recover delinquent debt, the legality of these methods was somewhat dubious.32 Conservative and Liberal authorities alike frequently admonished municipal ofcials for jailing a debtors relatives. This practice does not appear to have been legal at any time during the nineteenth century. Even the debtors themselves were not supposed to be jailed unless fraud could be proven. If that were the case, they could still be held only for a maximum of thirty two hours unless an arrest warrant was issued by the Court of First Instance in Quezaltenango. Yet as McCreery notes for the post-1870 period, the fact that these practices were prohibited by law did not prevent local authorities from employing them.33 debt and community land In addition to incarceration and corporal punishment, property foreclosure was also a frequent means used to recover a delinquent debt. Indeed, Lorenzo Mendoza complained that after borrowing ten pesos from the Cofrada del Rosario it had sold his two houses and the surrounding land while he was out of town.34 Cases like that of Mendoza were all too common. Debtors and adores frequently pledged their houses, land, or other property to secure a credit agreement, and when they could not repay foreclosure was often the result. The implications of this for our understanding of indigenous community land use are important. The fact that the alienation of land was a normal consequence of debt default reinforces the idea that indigenous communities did not conceptualize their ejido as a predominantly common space. Although many communities reserved a portion of their ejido for common use, especially grazing and natural resource gathering, the bulk of it was held by individual families or extended family units and would have appeared to the present-day observer as virtual private property. As the

82 Chapter 3 example of Mendoza and many others makes clear, these holdings were not only inheritable, they were also alienable. Thus, I would suggest that the ejido was conceived of in historically patrimonial and political terms. It was the geographic space that had been occupied by the communitys ancestors and administered by the communitys recognized authorities, whether Mayan nobles or postconquest principales. Indeed, this area usually had some relation to the remembered preconquest territory, even if the link was tenuous due to the warfare and dislocation associated with the Spanish invasion and early colonial-era policies such as congregacin. The only corporate element of this conceptualization was that o community territory belonged to community members as a peopleit was their patrimonymuch in the way that national territory belongs to a particular citizenry. Overt threats to the ejidos integrity, such as boundary contestations or the denunciation of land by outsiders, as I have demonstrated in earlier chapters, met with vociferous, unremitting opposition. This was true whether the outsiders were indigenous or ladino. The transfer of land via debt foreclosure, however, was another matter. Indeed, the role of debt was quite likely crucial in explaining how Ostuncalcos ladinos ever acquired land in any of the Mam towns of the region. Borrower default, in the case of indigenous debtors and ladino creditors, allowed the latter to gain access to the very ejido lands from which they were ostensibly barred as they entered the region of western Quezaltenango in increasing numbers from the late-eighteenth century onward. Certainly there was still opposition. However, it appears that challenges generally did not arise unless the site being transferred was located in a paraje that had had little prior contact with ladinos, and as long as the ladino in question was not viewed with particular hostility.35 Several considerations may explain why interethnic land transfers via debt were allowed to proceed even though outright purchases were rejected. First, the way in which ladinos traditionally attempted to acquire land was usually a direct challenge to a communitys territorial claims and often involved an extensive area. Prospective buyers, rather than searching for a willing seller or settling for a small plot, tended to denounce large swathes of land as terreno baldo even though they were, in fact, under use and might entail the displacement of dozens of indigenous cultivators. Clearly, such attempts were seen as an affront to the entire community and they were energetically resisted. Debt foreclosure, by contrast, proceeded one small plot at a time, and only the defaulting debtor was dispossessed. The validity of community claims to the area in question were not overtly challenged. Second, even though indigenous land owners consistently might balk at the very notion of selling their land outright, regardless of how dire the straits in which they lived, they were apparently more willing to take the gamble implied by debt.

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 83

They did not plan on the possibility of foreclosure. Finally, indigenous society was probably just too dependent on credit, both internally and as a link to things ladino, to ban outright all property transfers that resulted when a debt was not repaid. Precisely because indigenous community members viewed debt as a legitimate transaction, a normal part of life within Mayan society itself, they may well have placed much of the responsibility for property foreclosures with the defaulting debtors themselves. debt and unfree labor Debt was clearly an important part of community life in western Quezaltenango throughout the nineteenth century. Like money, debt traced a web of exchange relations that tied together various aspects of the rural economy. Unlike money, however, debt implied a transaction in which the obligation of one party, the debtor, was not satised immediately. Indeed, debt introduced the risk that the debtors obligation might not be satised at all, and that the transaction would remain incomplete. Normally, of course, the reverse was true. Ethnic and family ties often bound creditor and debtor in a way that made noncompliance difcult. The threat of property foreclosure, at least for those who had claims to property, was probably quite effective at discouraging delinquency and default. Furthermore, community and higher-level state authorities were not adverse to applying force when they believed it would help a creditor recover a bad debt.36 They employed various coercive measures toward this end, including the incarceration and corporal punishment described in detail earlier. Given the prevalence with which debt was used to hire workers, what were the ramications of debt-associated coercion on labor conditions overall? If Guatemalan labor was horribly exploited, was this directly attributable to the inuence of debt? Did the sum of debt and labor equal bondage, or some other form of unfree labor? Was debt the bait that allowed an employer to hook an employee into a lifetime of inescapable servitude, or was it simply a means to recruit workers at a time when demand for labor was high? The answers to these questions have important implications for our understanding of Guatemalan history. For if debt did facilitate extreme labor exploitation, then the expansion of indebted labor over the course of the nineteenth century may well have contributed to a concomitant deterioration of living conditions during the same period. If, on the other hand, debt was the consequence of a weak state and an ineffective coercive apparatus in the face of high demand for labor, then perhaps the fact that more and more people became indebted was less a sign of their further immiseration than a calculated decision to pursue wage employment for a proportion of their subsistence needs. Indeed, plantation wages may have provided a relatively decent income during a century when new areas for highland milpa

84 Chapter 3 agriculture were increasingly scarce in regions like western Quezaltenango, and when the coastal frontier, although still far from closed, became increasingly dominated by ladino planters. The wages that land-poor community residents earned on coastal plantations, although meager, may have been an improvement when viewed in this context. Such a possibility is suggested by several authors who observed Guatemala rst-hand in the early part of the twentieth century. According to anthropologist Morris Siegel, for example, writing on the northern Cuchumat n region of Huehuetenango, because a of the growth of coffee cultivation in these parts, the means of attaining self-sufciency has increased: a few seasons work on a plantation provides funds to buy ground and build a house.37 The relationship between debt and labor, and the associated issue of extraeconomic coercion, have important implications for debates, past and present, over labor recruitment, Latin American development, and the nature of capitalism more generally. Dependentistas have suggested that ve centuries of capitalism are to blame for Latin Americas contemporary poverty. Others argue that the problem is a deeply rooted precapitalist past, the vestiges of whichincluding various forms of coerced laborcontinued to articulate with capitalism as late as the twentieth century.38 A key point of disagreement that emerges from this intellectual sparring is over how to dene capitalism in the rst place. Should a free wage labor market be considered the litmus test for capitalist relations of production?39 This question, in turn, has generated subsequent discussion over what, exactly, constitutes free wage labor.40 Alan Knights 1986 essay on peonage in Mexico, in which he proposes a tripartite division of indebted labor, is a good example of the direction taken by the debate. Rather than accepting that all indebted labor was equally unfree, and hence tantamount to the existence of noncapitalist relations of production, Knight distinguishes three categories of debt peonage: proletarian peonage, traditional peonage, and classic debt servitude. Proletarian peonage is characterized by Knight as free wage labour linked to the payment of cash advances (a system associated with the creation of an incipient proletariat).41 He points to the example of the Peruvian enganche, in which indigenous highlanders normally uninterested by the prospect of wage labor nevertheless agreed to work when presented with a lump-sum cash advance. Although this system sometimes involved extraeconomic coercion at its inception, voluntarist participation usually predominated before long. Traditional peonage represented the form in which workers often resided on a single hacienda for most of their entire lives. It was the most common and longest lasting variety of peonage, and Knight locates its heyday, at least for Mexico, in the colonial period. Labor immobility usually was

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 85

for lack of a better alternative rather than extraeconomic coercion, and debt continued to function more as a perk rather than a bond.42 Classic debt servitude, states Knight, was unmistakably servile and coercive, representing a new and calculating response to enhanced market demand in the later nineteenth century, and reproducing aspects of chattel slavery despite the prior, formal abolition of slavery. This form of debt peonage was the classic or stereotypical variety that US authors such as John Kenneth Turner wrote about to horried home audiences. Once involved, a worker had little chance of escaping regardless of his/her desires, the real or imagined level of debt, or the legality of the situation.43 The underlying point of Knights typography is to make clear that not all peonage was based entirely or even primarily on extraeconomic coercion. Economic inducements were often crucial to its functioning, and indebted labor often had a signicant degree of mobility. Simply put, some forms of peonage were not inherently anticapitalist, but may indeed have been precursors to capitalist proletarianization.44 Within the context of Knights typography, how should the role of debt in western Quezaltenango be interpreted? Was it simply a tool used by employers to decrease labor mobility, contributing to unfree relations of production? Or was debt a costly tradition to which employers were forced to adhere if they desired to lure workers in a tight labor environment? In other words, was debt imposed on workers, or did they impose it on employers as a condition of their employment? Were the two positions mutually exclusive? Moreover, how did the passage of time and changing circumstances affect the debtlabor equation? Before beginning to tackle questions such as these it should be pointed out that life was not easy for Guatemalas rural populace during the nineteenth century. If the Mam communities in the district of Ostuncalco are at all representative, most inhabitants looked forward to a life of unrelenting manualprimarily agriculturallabor.45 Poorer and lessfortunate residents increasingly were unable to acquire productive milpa land sufcient for their livelihood. Even families still in possession of adequate arable land found that injury, illness, and unfavorable weather held potentially life-threatening consequences.46 Community members turned to debt to survive disaster, to tide them over from one harvest to the next, and to rent or buy milpa lands that they could not afford outright. They also turned to wage labor in growing numbers as an alternate, if far from ideal, means of meeting their subsistence needs. Expanding coastal agricultural enterprises, mainly sugar trapiches and cattle ranches, employed a growing number of highland residents from the 1830s onward. This expansion became even more dramatic with the introduction of coffee cultivation to the area in the late 1850s. In sum, the number of people engaged in wage labor grew substantially from the beginning of the century, and debtthat is, advances

86 Chapter 3 on wagesremained at the center of the relationship between worker and employer. For the rst half of the nineteenth century debts ubiquity seems to indicate that both workers and employers desired to make arrangements predicated on the advance payment of wages. This may have reected longstanding custom, or perhaps the perception by both parties that such an exchange was to their advantage. Labor was less likely to go unpaid, and employers gained a modicum of certainty that their workforce would remain for the period specied. On the other hand, the real effectiveness of debt in limiting labor mobility during this period is open to question. Except situations where employer and employee were linked by kinship, allowing for an additional degree of unfreedom to be imposed, debt in general does not appear to have initiated a lifetime of entrapment.47 Data from the 1830 census suggest that a signicant number of indigenous men worked as day laborers only for those years corresponding to early adulthood. Day laborers, or jornaleros, were on average almost eight years younger than labradores, or peasant producers, and they included a much greater number of unmarried men and men who still lived with their parents (see Table 3).48 When considered by family position, for example, jornaleros were more likely to be dependent sons than heads-of-household (43 to 40 percent). Conversely, among the ranks of labradores, dependent sons were greatly outnumbered by household heads (15 vs. 71 percent). In terms of marital status, a surprising number of table 3. Occupations of Indigenous Men by Family Position and Marital Status, ca. 1830
All Job Types % Jornaleros % Labradores % Laneros %

Totals

934

100 320 61 128 24 136 15 56 78 186 14 98 6 30 1 6

34 607 40 433 43 91 18 83 58 540 31 35 9 29 2 3

65 5 71 4 15 0 14 1 89 6 5 0 5 0 0 0

1 80 0 20 100 0 0 0

Breakdown by family position Heads of household 567 Sons 227 All others 140 Breakdown by marital status Married 732 Single 133 Widowed 60 All others 9

Sources: AMSJO, Padr n General. Departamento de Quesaltenango. Municipalidad de o Ostuncalco, 1 agosto 1830.

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 87

jornaleros were single (31 percent), and most were between 15 and 20 years of age. Labradores, by contrast, were overwhelmingly married (89 percent), and much older (37 years) even than their jornalero counterparts (30.6 years). These gures probably reected the lifecycle of young indigenous males at a time of growing land insufciency. Prior to acquiring their fathers holdings they were forced to work for pay to contribute toward the familys or their own subsistence. What needs to be stressed, however, is that regardless of debt, many men remained jornaleros only temporarily. Upon inheritance a signicant number of them entered the ranks of labradores.49 There is also ample anecdotal evidence to indicate that workers often left their employers even before the agreed-upon period of employment had elapsed.50 Interestingly, the expansion of commercially oriented agriculture on the coast, beginning in the 1830s and picking up steam in the 1850s, seems to have furthered, rather than diminished, this trend. Complaints against delinquent workers increased during these decades, and most originated from the newly established coastal enterprises.51 The relatively large distance between highland and lowland zones probably facilitated worker resistance in several ways. Creditors who resided on the coast, or who did not hail from Ostuncalco at all, encountered added difculties in pressing their case with local authorities. The coast was after all a frontier, and ladino municipal authority reached it only with great difculty. Even in cases where indigenous adores had been procured, family and ethnic bonds lost a degree of the immediacy that made them so compelling when stretched between highland and coast.52 Another factor that workers used with increasing efcacy to evade debt contracts was the growing competition among coastal employers to attract and maintain a labor force. Workers hopped from patr n to patr n, searching o o for more favorable working conditions and terms of remuneration. Even when they came with bad recommendations, other employers accepted them readily, agreeing to pay for their previously accumulated debts. In this way workers were able to forestall debt repayment, to bid up pay advances, and, to a degree, preserve their mobility.53 I would suggest, in hindsight, that relative to employers, labor had a very signicant role in imposing, and maintaining, the custom of pay advances in the pre-1871 period. The demand for workers was great from the beginning of the century, and it apparently increased with each passing decade. This would seem to indicate that labor had an initial advantage in its relations with employers. Yet even if the ramications of this advantage are hard to gauge, several additional factors highlight labors role in establishing and perpetuating the debt-for-labor system. First, workers had ample reason to demand up-front pay. As I noted earlier, advance wages were a ubiquitous

88 Chapter 3 element of wage labor agreements. Nevertheless, there were occasions when workers continued to work past the point stipulated by the initial contract. In the very few cases of this I encountered, the employer inevitably attempted to underpay the employee.54 Second, the expansion of employment opportunities among coastal enterprises was paralleled by a concomitant expansion in the number of complaints against mozos fugos. Workers apparently were challenging the terms of their debt agreements with growing frequency and success. Conversely, employer efforts to enforce these agreements were increasingly ineffective. Yet rather than minimize their losses, employers responded by offering larger and larger advances in an attempt to lure and preserve their workforce. The extent to which employers were forced into what amounted to a bidding war amongst themselves is illustrated by the especially revealing example of the workers of nca Desamparagos, ca. 1869. Although they were already indebted to the nca, they returned to their homes in San Miguel Sig il and u a refused to come back until they were offered an additional advance. What is more, they apparently were supported in their demand by the towns municipal ofcials who viewed it as normal part of the system.55 In sum, then, despite the coercive mechanisms associated with debt, labor mobility was never in danger of being eliminated in the pre-1871 period. Planters were still forced to offer ever larger inducements to recruit a workforce, even if the actual daily wage they paid remained relatively unchanged. If we reconsider Knights typology, neither proletarian peonage nor traditional peonage are satisfactory in describing the situation that prevailed in the highlands of western Guatemala. Instead, labor practices in the region combined aspects of both categories. Like traditional peonage, which Knight associates with the colonial hacienda, indebted labor in western Guatemala emerged well before independence, and cash advances operated as more of an inducement that a bond. . . .56 Yet unlike traditional peonage, the hacienda was not its raison detre. As David McCreery notes, when compared against Latin America as a whole, few of Guatemalas haciendas would have been considered large, and the majority of them were located in the east of the country, nowhere near Quezaltenango. Most of the agricultural units bordering Ostuncalco and its environs that might have qualied as haciendas had either developed into ladino settlements or devolved into a state of abandonment by the nineteenth century. Instead, small farms proliferated regardless of whether the proprietor was ladino or indigenous.57 In keeping with Knights more proletarian version of peonage, most farms in the western highlands appear to have relied on temporary laborers, although some did employ resident peones. Debt usually did not initiate a lifelong or even multiyear cycle of servitudewhether of a more voluntarist

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 89

or coerced natureand workers pursued subsequent paid labor, once their contract had been fullled, as the exigencies of their lives demanded. Unlike Knights proletarian peonage, however, the practice of labor advances that existed in western Guatemala does not appear to have been an interim step in the march to proletarianization. The 1840s marked a transition in labor organization as the rise of coastal enterprises, beginning in the previous decade, initiated important changes in the proletarian/traditional amalgam just described. In general terms the transformation moved production relations away from traditional toward proletarian peonage. Nevertheless, this shift did not signal an attempt on the part of capital to encourage the proletarianization of the workforce. Far from it. Planters simply desired to utilize the debt peonage system of the highlands for their coastal operations. As I already have tried to show, however, this opened up additional space for resistance on the part of labor. Workers insisted on their mobility, and in so doing forced employers to compete ercely amongst themselves for an adequate, stable workforce. It was labor, not capital, that pushed production relations more fully toward the proletarian peonage variant from the 1840s onward.

mandamientos in the conservative period Of nal consideration, before moving on to the post-1870 Liberal reforms, are the mandamientos, or forced labor drafts, implemented by Conservative ofcials beginning in the late 1850s. It should be noted that Conservative regulations had authorized forced labor from the start. The comprehensive law of October 2,1839, which treated everything from indigenous governors to departmental administration, directed Corregidors to accept solicitations for workers from agricultural enterprises in their respective jurisdiction. Requests were to be lled with known vagrants and anyone else who could not prove gainful employment.58 Whether or not these or any other forced labor provisions were enforced anywhere in Guatemala prior to the midcentury remains unclear. Evidence from the district of Ostuncalco suggests that they were not. As the 1850s drew to a close, however, forced labor drafts went from being anomalous to commonplace. Between 1859 and 1870 mandamientos were instituted in the departments of Verapaz (1859), Sacatep quez (1864), e Suchitep quez (1864), and San Marcos (1870) to supply labor to agricultural e enterprises, primarily coffee plantations.59 In Ostuncalco and vicinity, by contrast, mandamientos were initiated for another, although related, purpose. Beginning in 1858 they were employed to provide labor for the construction of a cart road connecting Quezaltenango to the rich agricultural lands of the Pacic coast. Mandamiento contingents from the Mam towns toiled on this project through 1869, after which point they were reassigned to the task

90 Chapter 3 of building another camino carretero between Ostuncalco and the Costa Cuca.60 Although these mandamientos did not involve workers in agricultural production directly, the hardships they entailed were felt just as keenly. The petition which opens this chapter makes that point abundantly clear, and it was but one of several complaints and myriad acts of passive resistance that continued through to the very end of Conservative rule in June 1871.61 In the face of this continued noncompliance government ofcials tried time and again to convince the affected communities that the roads, once completed, would contribute immeasurably to the common good. Indigenous leaders and residents remained unpersuaded. Referring to the Costa Cuca project, San Martns indigenous ofcials wrote the President that they could not be obliged to build a road in which there was the risk that community residents would die. . . . The men who have ncas on the Coast want the road to be built . . . to help them make money from their coffee plantations while we, the natives, waste our days and time.62 Chiquirichapas leaders were equally clear about the true nature of the road project. They rightly charged that the road would only benet the landowners who have coffee ncas in the area. . . . We have no need for cart tracks or carts to transport our wretched harvests. The capitalists of Quezaltenango are the only ones who will prot from this undertaking.63 In the end Conservative authorities resorted to the threat, and use, of force to obtain indigenous participation. Simply put, they were as committed to the road project as any of their Liberal successors. For example, troops from Quezaltenango jailed Chiquirichapas ofcials both immediately before and after they issued the manifesto quoted from above.64 What the Conservative state could not prevent, however, were the continual shortfalls that plagued the projects workforce. As often as not the weekly mandamiento contingents sent by each town were either smaller, or they stayed for less time, than requested. Even so, I conservatively estimate that slightly more than 17,000 weekly mandamiento positions were lled by the towns of the district of Ostuncalco between 1859 and 1870. This gure breaks down to one mandamiento contingent of about 26 men for every week of the twelve years under consideration. Note, as well, that the QuezaltenangoPacic coast road project was also serviced by workers drawn from the rest of Quezaltenango department, and even as far away as the department of Solol .65 a Interestingly, in contrast to those who labored under debt contracts, mandamiento workers were not paid until after they had completed their service, at least during the Conservative period.66 As we shall see this was not the case during the subsequent decades of Liberal rule. The different times at which indebted and mandamiento labor were paid may be explained by the fact that there was little negotiation involved in the recruitment of mandamiento labor

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 91

given the Conservative states readiness to use violence against municipal ofcials who were unwilling to offer up their residents for service. The threat of military force, translated through community leaders, obligated individuals to perform a week of work on the road project prior to receiving their customary pay advance. Surprisingly, in spite of the repression, resistance on the part of the Mam towns was instrumental in convincing the state to propose a threefold increase in mandamiento wages in 1861, from one-half to one-and-a-half reales per day.67 In conclusion, the Conservative state was moving toward mandamiento labor well before the Liberal reforms of the post-1870 era. Although debt did not become a part of the mandamiento recruitment process under Conservative rule, at least not in the department of Quezaltenango, the Conservative mandamiento presaged later Liberal policies in important ways and served as the foundation on which the Liberals raised their own version of the forced labor draft. Meanwhile, at the very time that Conservative authorities ushered in this extreme form of labor recruitment, indebted labor was undergoing a subtle transformation toward less coerced relations of production. Perhaps the fact that these developments paralleled one another was no coincidence. Indeed, the infamous Liberal labor code of 1877, which included a new and refurbished mandamiento, responded to planter complaints of an ill-disciplined workforce.68

Post-1870 Labor Relations in Broader Historical Context

To explain why the Liberal reforms of 1871 did not meet with the groundswell of violent resistance that emerged in the wake of earlier Liberal reforms, it is useful to go beyond legal discourse and to examine concrete examples of the impact of these reforms within the context of the social relations that preceded them. That is why I have attempted to reconstruct and outline some of the prominent trends that marked the rst several decades of the nineteenth century. With regard to production relations, I have tried to demonstrate that debt peonage, a phenomenon that most investigators believe was largely absent from the pre-1871 years and which they normally attribute to Barrios and the Liberals, was in fact well-established from even before independence.69 Mandamiento labor, too, was employed with increasing frequency by the late 1850s, well before the death of Rafael Carrera and the subsequent crumbling of the Conservative regime. When viewed alongside the preceding several decades, then, post-1870 Liberal reforms and the production relations they encouraged do not represent nearly the sea-change that has been presumed. The remainder of my explanation, now that the historical context has been established, rests on an examination of the reforms themselves. It is my

92 Chapter 3 contention that these apparently draconian statutes, upon closer inspection, were not so draconian after all. This was not for lack of intent on the part of their Liberal authors. The shift in the latter half of the Conservative period toward proletarian peonage, to borrow Knights terminology, was viewed as a serious problem among planters, and ofcials of the newly established Liberal state were keenly aware of it. They endeavored to limit labors mobility by revamping the enforcement of debt contracts and, eventually, by issuing decree 177. In other words, the Liberals attempted to roll back the movement toward a free labor market by heightening the level of coercion. Happily, they were not entirely successful, at least not for most of the remainder of the nineteenth century. Subaltern resistance continued to prevail against the Liberals best laid plans. In sum, the post-1870 reforms did not greatly intensify the burden of an already burdened working populace. revamping the enforcement of debt contracts Planter complaints of labor recalcitrance grew especially frequent as the Conservative era came to a close. Most of these complaints were generated by the sugar and coffee enterprises of the coast. Although any number of reasons might explain why labor was better able to challenge planter dominance from the midcentury onward, I earlier identied two factors that I believe were largely responsible for the trend. The rst factor is the relatively large distances that now separated the location of employment from the social and cultural milieu of the worker. Municipal government and kin units alike probably found it increasingly difcult to exercise their authority when it was stretched across the rocky precipices of the Pacic piedmont. The second factor is the increasing competition that emerged among planters in their efforts to obtain and hold a workforce. Conservative authorities responded to these complaints with several initiatives. As I outlined in Chapter 2, they reorganized municipal and regional administrative and judicial apparatuses several times in an attempt to strengthen state control over the burgeoning population of the Costa Cuca, as well as to effect greater compliance with existing laws more generally. By the end of the Conservative period, for example, the growing number of alcaldes auxiliares that were established on the coast appears to have been devoting a large portion of their time jailing and ning area residents for debt default and theft.70 In addition, Conservative authorities also considered rewriting the statutes that encompassed debt contracts. Although efforts at the national level were stymied by differences of opinion among the participants, and eventually by the Liberal insurgency, piecemeal efforts bore fruit in some of the departments. Woodward notes, for example, that the Corregidor of San Marcos imposed a new labor code in December 1870. Among the articles contained

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 93

therein were stipulations imposing a virtual passbook system on workers. Before being hired by any planter they had to provide documentation from previous employers or from their municipal alcalde attesting to their solvency.71 Interestingly, early Liberal efforts proceeded along much the same lines. The labor code issued by Barrios in 1874, which resulted from the complaints of south coast planters, reiterated the proof-of-solvency requirement. In addition, in an apparent effort to limit competition among employers, it threatened nes of up to 100 pesos on anyone who hired workers without following the proof-of-solvency guidelines.72 The rst nation-wide provisions for mandamientos were issued in late 1876, only ve months before the infamous decree 177. Jefes departamentales were ordered to assist planters in overcoming the negligence of the indigenous class, . . . with its propensity for deception, by commanding indigenous community ofcials to supply labor to agriculturists in their vicinities.73 Individual enterprises were authorized to receive as many as fty or even 100 workers if the size of their operations warranted such a workforce. The duration of each contingent was two weeks, and pay was provided at the start. Planters could request subsequent contingents if the task remained incomplete. Finally, jefes departamentales were directed to throw the full weight of the law against any individual who did not cooperate fully with these provisions.74 Decree 177 was a culmination of the two approaches discussed above: the mandamiento and debt peonage. As such it combined the core elements of the 1876 mandamiento circular with the debt-enforcement aspects of earlier labor codes, albeit with some important modications and additions. For starters, the decree made outright reference to passbooks or libretos. Every worker was obliged to carry one to prove their solvency or conversely their indebtedness. To combat competition for laborers among agricultural enterprises both planters and workers were admonished not to offer or accept pay advances unless previous contracts had been satised. Indebted workers could not travel freely during the period in which they were supposed to be working without written permission. Solvent workers, on the other hand, were subject to the mandamiento. Planters could request mandamiento contingents of up to sixty men for periods of one, two, or four weeks, but they had to provide one-half of each workers salary in advance.75 resistance revisited How did the new labor legislation affect workforce discipline? Was labor mobility hobbled once and for all? Despite the effective-sounding provisions of these Liberal reforms, the documentary evidence indicates that workers still moved about with apparent ease, disregarding their contracts and playing one patrn off another to gain the best outcome for themselves. Planters o continued to ignore the stipulations against hiring already-indebted labor and

94 Chapter 3 they continued to pay out larger and larger sums to keep the workers they had. As long as the demand for labor outpaced the supply, as it seems it did for most of the nineteenth century, Liberal efforts went largely unrewarded. The municipal archive of San Juan Ostuncalco contains numerous complaints of fugitive workers or mozos fugos dating from 1871 to 1897. Planters typically wrote to request the help of municipal ofcials in capturing one or several workers who had either ed the nca before fullling the terms of their debt contract or who had accepted a pay advance but never appeared at the nca to pay it off.76 Some workers received permission for a shortterm absence only to ee under its temporary cover, whereas others, sent to investigate the whereabouts of mozos fugos, would themselves disappear.77 In addition, labor mobility is suggested by a review of the nca workforce lists that exist in the Archivo de Gobernaci n de Quezaltenango for the early o 1890s. Five of the several dozen ncas that submitted such lists did so both in 1892 and 1894, allowing their workforces to be compared over time. Their turnover rates for the two-year period ranged from 27 to 62 percent of the entire workforce. When considered together, only about one out of every two workers present in 1892 remained in 1894.78 In the face of revamped legal codes aimed at imposing discipline on the labor force, resistance and ight continued with even greater frequency. Apparently the two factors discussed earlier that facilitated worker mobilitythe disjuncture between labors place of residence and place of production, and internca labor competitionwere hardly affected by the new regulations. Relatively large distances still diminished the effectiveness of kin and politicaladministrative linkages. Aside from reforming labor statutes, Liberal ofcials attempted to deal with the problem of geographic separation by reorganizing administrative jurisdictions. They began their efforts where their Conservative predecessors had left off. Before the end of 1871 the Costa Cuca was given its own political commissioner or comisionado poltico. Shortly thereafter the numerous alcaldes auxiliares who peppered the coastal zone were placed under his direct authority, and by 1874 the area had been completely removed from Ostuncalcos jurisdiction.79 Nevertheless, a complaint by several dozen planters in 1879 indicates that the new position had done little to deal with the perceived problem of an undisciplined labor force. According to the planters, the great distance that still separated them from the comisionado poltico of the Costa Cuca meant that his actions are ineffectual the majority of the time. When a mozo ees or commits a crime it almost always goes unpunished because . . . [the comisionado] is located one days journey from our ncas. . . .80 Another tack pursued by Liberal ofcials to impose discipline on labor, and the Costa Cucas resident population more generally, was the establishment of a ladino-dominated municipalidad in the heart of the piedmont. Conservative

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 95

authorities had attempted a similar project for much the same reasons nearly two decades earlier at San Jos Pie de la Cuesta. At that time, however, e San Martns claim to the area could not be ignored completely, and, in any case, the town unwaveringly resisted the idea.81 Although Liberal efforts were more successful, they too were hampered for several years by various logistical problems and by the complaints of ladinos who feared that the new town would jeopardize their possessions. Not until 1889, fully fteen years after the rst call had been issued, and well over three decades since the Conservative state had come up with the idea, was a new townColomba Floridaformed in the Costa Cuca.82 Meanwhile, competition among planters to recruit and retain a sufcient workforce was impelled to new heights by the evergrowing demand for labor. Despite the oft-repeated provisions against hiring already indebted workers, planters did so indiscriminately.83 Employers who were not content to let fugitives come to them set about encouraging worker ight by sending recruiters to lure away other ncas laborers with tempting pay advances.84 Several planters complained that the states own agents, recruiting for the south coast railroad project, entered their ncas offering lucrative pay advances and salaries well above the prevailing daily wage to all who would accompany them.85 No potential worker was undesirable, no matter what he or she had done to avoid complying with an earlier employers demands or the general legal framework governing indebted labor contracts. Fincas routinely bailed out imprisoned workers, going so far as to hire those who had been remanded to jail by their previous patrones.86 Even attacking the mayordomo did not place a worker beyond the pale. Just a few days after Nicolas Salas, Pedro L pes, and Juan Gimenes were imprisoned for o cornering Joaqun Ocheyta, manager of nca San Ysidro, with an ax and a machete, Ostuncalcos municipal ofcials received a note from Francisco Robles L pez requesting permission to remove said workers from the town o jail to his plantation.87 As a result of these practices, the cumulative debt of many individuals rose to a level that would have been difcult to repay even in a lifetime. An 1894 survey of 1,691 workers at seventy ncas in Quezaltenangos piedmont showed an average debt of 91.59 pesos. By 1897 the eleven ncas in Las Barrancas, a narrow strip of hotland within Ostuncalcos municipal territory, recorded an average debt of 135.83 pesos among their 210 workers. Both surveys recorded debts of over 200 pesos with frequency, and some reached beyond 1000. To give an idea of what these debt amounts represented, the 1894 average of 91.59 pesos would have required over 224 days of unbroken work to be repaid. Add in nonwork days for estas, ferias, and illness, the additional debt accrued for living and other expenses during the 224 days of work, and the fact that many workers were only seasonal, and the result was

96 Chapter 3 that several years would have been required to repay even the average debt in 1894.88 Perhaps debt repayment was not foremost on the minds of Quezaltenangos agricultural laborers. According to the Ministro de Fomento, writing to Quezaltenangos jefe poltico, the residents of many indigenous towns ac cepted one pay advance after another. They would work off part of the most recent advance although ignoring earlier ones and although continuing to accept additional monies from other sources.89 Viewed from this perspective, burgeoning debts were not a manifestation of capitals success in tying down labor for life, but rather of labors ability to subvert the designs of capital to improve an otherwise difcult existence. To the extent that labor did not pay back a signicant portion of its accumulated debt, the balance was, in essence, part of its wage.90 Thus although Woodward notes that formal salaries stayed about even with corn prices for the second half of the nineteenth century, debt levels appear to have risen during this period.91 Although denitive numbers are hard to come by for the pre-1871 years, worker debts rarely exceeded twenty pesos whereas daily wages ranged from about one and a half to two reales. Considered in terms of days worked, a debt of twenty pesos would have required about 107 days to be repaid, assuming the smaller daily wage of one and a half reales. This is less than half the 224 days required to pay off the average debt in 1894, at a wage of three reales. In sum, although a workers formal salary did not purchase any more corn in the 1890s than it had in the 1860s, the amount of credit at a workers disposal more than doubled, an increase corresponding to over one hundred days wage.92 the impact of the liberal mandamiento The Liberal mandamiento, unlike its Conservative precursor, directly augmented the agricultural labor force of Quezaltenangos Costa Cuca. As such, its impact on the labor force, and debt peonage, must be scrutinized. Did it serve to propel indigenous small-holders into the ranks of indebted laborers because proof of debt offered the possibility of exemption from mandamiento service? Did it impose a degree of unfreedom that had been unknown during earlier decades of Conservative rule? Or was the mandamiento, like many of the other supposedly Liberal innovations, no more than an extension of already existing practices? An answer to these questions must begin with an explanation of how the Liberal mandamiento operated. Decree 177 directed a planter who desired a mandamiento to place a request with the departments jefe poltico. Assuming that the request was granted, the jefe poltico would designate a community from which the mandamiento was to be drawn as well as the size of the contingent (not to exceed sixty men). Before receiving the mandamiento, the planter was expected to pay the municipalidad of the designated community a

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 97

fee for each worker plus one half of each workers salary for the entire period of the mandamiento (one to four weeks). The latter amount was distributed to various municipal ofcials, usually alcaldes auxiliares or their assistants, for disbursement to the male population at large in the form of an habilitacin o or pay advance. Although the auxiliares preferred to nd willing takers, they frequently had to use considerable coercion to force the habilitaciones upon their recipients.93 The Liberal state ofcially introduced the mandamiento to Quezaltenango with its circular of early November 1876, and then again, with decree 177 in April 1877. Nevertheless, it seems that the mandamiento did not become fully operational for several years. In October 1877 the Ministro de Fomento directed all jefes polticos to disregard the mandamiento provisions of decree 177 because some employers were abusing them. This suspension was slated to last until the abuses were investigated fully. A little over one year later Barrios personally reiterated the ban on mandamientos to the jefe poltico of Quezal tenango, indicating that the matter apparently still had not been resolved.94 Evidence from the Mam towns suggests that barring a brief period in 1879, the mandamiento was not introduced with consistency until 1883, and that it became heavier toward the end of the decade and into the early 1890s. This conclusion is roughly corroborated by documents found in the Archivo Municipal de Momostenango that concern the named town as well as San Bartolo Aguas Calientes. There too, the mandamiento did not begin with any consistency until late 1882/early 1883, and requests grew more frequent from 1888 onward.95 Unfortunately, a comparison of Liberal and Conservative mandamientos is no easy matter due to the difculty of determining how many men were actually affected. Contingents rarely comprised the number of individuals requested, and it was not uncommon for requests to go unlled altogether.96 For this reason the best that can be accomplished is a comparison of short time periods selected because of the apparent completeness of the corresponding documentation. Moreover, unless otherwise indicated by the evidence, the number of individuals requested must be taken at face value. With this in mind I have identied October 1888 and September 1892 for comparison with the monthly average for 1859. Ostuncalco received mandamiento requests totaling 125 and 75 men, respectively, for the two months specied. The rst value, however, should be reduced by fty because one of the ftyperson contingents solicited was not sent. Thus seventy-ve individuals from Ostuncalco are assumed to have served in mandamientos during each month. In 1859, by contrast, the monthly average for Ostuncalco was approximately forty-seven workers.97 The next step is to relate these values to their respective populations. Once again, however, numerous problems prevent a straightforward comparison.98

98 Chapter 3 The best estimate for this endeavor is probably Horsts gure of 26,000 for the entire population of Mam Quezaltenango in 1859.99 By extrapolating from the censuses of 1880 and 1893, the same area held approximately 50,000 residents in 1890. Taking up the mandamiento gures derived above, this means that the percentage of the population involved in mandamientos actually may have been less in the 1888/1892 period (0.15%) than in 1859 (0.18%).100 If the sweep of the Liberal mandamiento does not seem to have been any greater than its Conservative precursor, at least in per capita terms, what was its effect on agricultural production? Did mandamiento labor represent a substantial boost to coastal planters? Certainly it did not hurt. Yet evidence from the municipal archives of Ostuncalco and Momostenango, and the departmental archive of Quezaltenango, indicates that government ofcials, not planters in general, may have been among the most consistent beneciaries of the mandamiento. Of the 217 mandamiento requests I located in these archives for the years 1882 through 1893, at least fty-eight were to service plantations owned by Liberal authorities or members of their close family.101 Moreover, a comparison of the size of these requests reveals an even more startling outcome. The size of 199 of the 217 requested contingents was listed, with a sum total of 7813 workers. Fully 62 percent, or 4844 of these workers, were directed to ofcial-owned ncas or those of their relatives. Resistance to the Liberal mandamientos was rampant. Municipal ofcials often did not, or could not, recruit the number of individuals requested for a particular contingent. Occasionally they simply ignored mandamiento requests altogether.102 Workers, on the other hand, were adept at falsifying libretos for the purpose of avoiding mandamientos, if the complaints of Liberal ofcials are to be believed. Ostuncalcos ladino alcalde maintained that this may have been why it was increasingly difcult to ll all of the mandamientos solicited.103 Another practice, with parallels to the realm of debt peonage, was the acceptance of mandamiento habilitaciones by workers who were already indebted, sometimes to the very nca that issued the mandamiento request.104 In the end, a good measure of the effectiveness of this resistance was its impact on the actual amounts paid to mandamiento workers. Evidence from Ostuncalco and Momostenango indicates that after several years in which worker remuneration remained relatively stable, the early 1890s experienced increases of two varieties. First, the daily wage paid to mandamiento labor rose from two to three, and sometimes four, reales. Second, the travel allowance paid to each worker increased from one to two pesos. Interestingly, the documentation suggests that municipal governments were important in calling for these increases. Chiquirichapas municipalidad, for example, wrote the jefe poltico in 1892 of its intention to reject a mandamiento request from a planter who refused to pay the prevailing rate of three reales per day.105

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 99

Conclusions
In his 1986 article on Mexican peonage, Alan Knight characterizes Guatemalan labor relations during the second half of the nineteenth century as highly coercive. With regard to the peonage typology put forth in said article, Knight considers Guatemala an example of the classic debt servitude variant from which there was little chance of escape.106 What I hope to have demonstrated in this chapter is that such a description is at best only marginally accurate. During the last two decades of Conservative rule labor began to move toward a strictly proletarian peonage in which subsistence, rather than extraeconomic coercion, was the primary motivating factor. The growth of coastal plantation agriculturerst sugar and then coffeefacilitated, rather than diminished, labor mobility. The states capacity to administer frontier areas such as the Costa Cuca was minimal and internca competition for workers only exacerbated an already tight labor environment. Conservative authorities and their Liberal successors attempted to counteract this trend by injecting production relations with a strong dose of coercion. Among other things they revamped the enforcement of debt contracts and resurrected the mandamiento. Had these measures functioned in the manner described by the legal discourse perhaps Knights characterization would not be so far off base. In fact, however, the evidence suggests quite the contrary. The tendency toward increased mobility on the part of indebted workers was not signicantly hampered. The reason for this divergence of opinion does not derive from irreconcilable approaches, but rather from our respective sources. As a work of synthesis Knights piece necessarily relies on a secondary reading of other scholars research. Specically, Knight draws on historian David McCreerys early interpretation of Guatemalan labor relations, the most rigorous and informative published source on the topic at that time.107 Given its pioneering nature, however, McCreerys work was understandably captivated by the extreme coercion that appeared endemic if one coupled the discourse of Guatemalan legal statutes with the numerous examples of abuse extant in archival sources. Although McCreery simultaneously hinted at the pervasiveness of subaltern resistance, it is not until much more recently that his interpretation of Guatemalan labor gives such resistance the weight that it deserves. In contrast to his earlier work, McCreery writes in 1994 that Indebted labor was common, but the power of the state and the hacendados was insufcient to qualify this as debt peonage. More properly it should be seen as a form of competition among employers from which the workers sometimes beneted.108 This is a far cry from Knights perception that Guatemalan production relations typied the classical debt servitude category of peonage, one reminiscent of chattel slavery.109

100 Chapter 3 Returning to the central paradox of this bookhow to explain the success of a post-1870 Liberal project so apparently at odds with popular aspirations the problem with previous interpretations of Guatemalas nineteenth century is twofold. In an attempt to differentiate between the Conservative and Liberal regimes the existing literature simultaneously exaggerates the formers paternalism and the latters ruthless efciency. Thus, for example, Rafael Carrera is credited with protecting indigenous community land when, at least in the case of towns with territory in the Pacic piedmont, he did nothing of the sort. Likewise, the claim that he resisted the expansion of indebted labor is atly contradicted by the evidence from western Quezaltenango where all labor was of the indebted variety. The expansion of labor in general, both before and after 1871, necessarily implied an expansion of debt and indebted laborers. Even the mandamiento, which exemplies the more extreme variety of labor coercion, was employed with increasing frequency during Carreras later years. Although it may be true that Carrera did not champion these efforts with the rhetoric of his Liberal successors, he did not thwart them either. With regard to the post-1870 period, most authors believe that the Reforma marked a dramatic departure from the preceding decades. The Liberals are typically lauded or blamed for the wholesale disenfranchisement of indigenous communities and for promoting the spread of indebted and forced labor like wild re across the highlands. Clearly, however, this view is something less than accurate if many indigenous communities had already lost their land and if the custom of pay advances and the use of mandamientos already proliferated under Conservative rule. McCreerys work buttresses such a conclusion by emphasizing the pragmatism of Liberal leaders and by illuminating how popular resistance persisted despite Liberal efforts to quash it. Just as Barrios and his cohorts did not attempt a blanket appropriation of existing indigenous community land, legal discourse notwithstanding, McCreery also demonstrates that workers continued to evade their debt contracts during the Reforma, often with virtual impunity. In terms of the mandamiento, my research indicates that forced laborin the form of the mandamientosactually may have declined after 1871 as a percentage of the overall population. Moreover, I show that the Liberal state evinced a marked preference for employing labor drafts to work the ncas of government ofcials and their relatives and close associates, rather than for the benet of coffee planters or the coffee economy generally. In this sense, then, the Reforma represented not the culmination of an enlightened or modernizing liberalism, but a disguised reinvention of the spoils system and patronage politics. In sum, if indigenous communities did not resist second-generation liberalism with the same energy and fury with which they participated in the Carrera revolt, this was at least partly because the new regime did not impose a signicantly different project from its predecessor. Like the Conservatives,

Debt, Labor Coercion, and the Expansion of Commercial Agriculture 101

the Liberals were most interested in privatizing community lands with the greatest potential for commercial activity. As the Costa Cuca demonstrates, such lands already had been detached from particular communities and were well on their way to wholesale privatization by 1871. Like the Conservatives, the Liberals attempted to use coercion to reimpose labor discipline with little additional success, at least not during the nineteenth century. Labor mobility persisted and worker pay, if salary and debt are considered together, continued to rise in comparison to corn prices. Yet this is only part of the story. An additional reason many indigenous towns did not help to reenact the Carrera revolt is that they were able to carve out a more or less acceptable alternative to highland milpa agriculture over the course of the nineteenth century. Even before independence Quezaltenangos Mam residents had been utilizing coastal land as well as debt contracts of one form or another, including credit-for-labor arrangements, to support their families. Although the expansion of commercially oriented agriculture placed increasing pressure on the arable regions of the coast, it also brought about new opportunities for wage employment. Indeed, the constant labor shortage that appears to have marked most of the nineteenth century suggests that the demand for labor consistently outpaced the number of people for whom milpa production, whether of the highland or lowland variety, was no longer a viable or satisfactory means of subsistence. By the end of the Conservative period the interrelated and mutually reinforcing factors of labor scarcity, subaltern resistance, and internca competition for workers allowed labor as a group to better the material rewards it received for its efforts. This balance of forces persisted into the Liberal era despite frequent intimidation and abuse and a decade-long, concerted effort by planters and their promoters within the Conservative and Liberal states to ensure a servile labor force by eliminating worker mobility. One last example illustrates the extent to which indigenous communities were able to nd advantage in a system ostensibly designed to ensure their subjugation. As should be clear by now, workers continually abrogated the terms of their debt contracts with little fear that some other planter would refuse to employ them at a later time. Despite repeated complaints to this effect, the state was too weak to provide the resources necessary for more rigorous enforcement. Indeed, the main burden of tracking down and punishing fugitive or otherwise noncompliant workers often fell to municipal governments singularly ill-equipped for the task. Only a handful of local ofcials received any sort of regular salary from the municipal treasury. So where was the personnel to investigate the innumerable cases of mozos fugos, and how were they remunerated? For the Mam region of Quezaltenango, the answer lies with the auxiliary ofcials and their assistants, both regidores and mayores, who were primarily

102 Chapter 3 indigenous. When planters asked the state for help to pursue fugitive workers their requests were forwarded to the auxiliares of the paraje or cantn from o which the escapee was thought to originate. Moreover, when fugitives were remanded to jail or back to the nca to which they were indebted, it was under the care of these authorities. The catch, however, was that such assistance did not come free. Planters found themselves having to pay for the services of each auxiliary ofcial who endeavored on their behalf. In essence, then, where the machinery to enforce debt contracts existed at all, it only functioned for those with the nancial resources to lubricate it sufciently. And although it is hard to tell exactly how well the individuals who staffed this apparatus were remunerated, in the case of Ostuncalco alone, their numbers grew to well over one hundred by the late 1880s, all of whom were temporarily exempt from repaying their debts or serving in mandamientos. In sum, then, some indigenous community members were able to use the cover of the Liberals own policies to carve out a space from which to stall planter claims to their labor while simultaneously earning an income.110 This outcome, unanticipated by Barrios and his fellow reformers, demonstrates once again how everyday Guatemalans reshaped the contours of a system designed to guarantee their immiseration.

chapter

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule

there is no doubt that Rafael Carrera was distrusted by much of the Guatemalan elite, especially in the early years of his rule. It would not be difcult to argue that their distrust was sometimes justied. His order to execute the members of Quezaltenangos ladino municipal government or municipalidad in March of 1841 comes to mind.1 Conversely, Guatemalas rural poor, indigenous and non-indigenous alike, tended to idealize the former rebel leader. He consistently was met by plebeian throngs wherever he traveled, and after his death even liberal rebels attempted to gain popular support by invoking his name.2 Nevertheless, I believe that by the time Rafael Carrera died in 1865 he had lost much of the mass support previously won through his guerrilla-style campaign against the liberal injustices of the 1830s. This is not to say that his image now sparked popular revulsion; quite the contrary. Still, the insurgencies of the 1860s that challenged conservative domination of the state did not reect elite dissatisfaction alone. They also indicated growing popular rejection of the liberal-like trajectory taken by Carrera and his successors. If Carrera personally escaped much of the blame, his ministers and administrators did not. The conservative camarilla that surrounded him for most of his rule does not appear to have beneted from its close association with the popular gure. Indeed, Carreras hand-picked successor was ousted from power barely six years after the former rebel leaders death, and there is little evidence of popular mobilization on his behalf.3 The fact that mass uprisings did not materialize before the prospect of an impending liberal victory does not mean that Guatemalas subaltern majority had defected en masse to the new cause. Instead, widespread popular ambivalence was the key to conservative defeat and liberal triumph. As Chapters 2 and 3 demonstrate, plebeian residents of rural communities had many reasons

104 Chapter 4 to doubt the intentions of Carrera and his conservative allies. Legalities aside, Carrera stood by while community lands were taken by outsiders, and, as the cases of San Martn Sacatep quez and San Felipe demonstrate, conservative e bureaucrats went so far as to facilitate such illegal usurpation. With regard to labor, the Carrera regime worked to enforce debt contracts and imposed a forced-labor regimen every bit as harsh as his liberal successors, if somewhat less far-reaching. In sum, the Maya cultivators and laborers who inhabited the densely populated mountain strip that formed the backbone of the country and that paralleled the fertile agricultural lands of the Pacic piedmont and coast had little reason to put their lives in the balance as Conservative Vicente Cerna tottered on the brink of defeat in 1871. Carreras land and labor policies aside, a third factor encouraging subaltern resentment was his regimes changing stance toward alcohol. It would be an understatement to say that the vast majority of Guatemalans hated the system of monopolies and licenses that governed alcohol production and sale throughout the nineteenth century, regardless of who was in power. During the rst few years of Carreras rule, however, his monopoly system actually was quite well received by some because it included a complete ban on alcohol in indigenous communities. Although monopoly towns still chafed at the restrictive policies just as they had in the past, residents of the indigenous dry towns generally supported the return to colonial-era regulations that abolished alcohol in their communities. All of this changed, however, when the Conservative state began to expand the monopoly from a handful of provincial capitals and commercial centers to a greater and greater number of formerly dry towns. With the incorporation of each new locale, a growing number of Maya joined Ladino in opposing alcohol regulations. Liberal rebels may well have gained grudging respect from both sectors of the populace with their call to eliminate the alcohol monopoly. To understand why requires a ground-level examination of the role of alcohol in the economy of the western highlands, and in particular, of the specic ways that alcohol production and sale meshed with the gendered division of labor to provide a signicant source of income for many Guatemalan households.4

Women in the Rural Economy

On the evening of 22 October 1854, San Juan Ostuncalcos Juez Preventivo Manuel Larrave set out to capture fugitives Cayetano and Matilde Ralda for masterminding an uprising that had challenged his authority on July 31st of that year. In addition to three soldiers, Judge Larrave ordered along the ranking councilmember, or regidor decano, of Ostuncalcos ladino municipal government. Apparently, Larrave was not very familiar with the town, and thus he needed councilman Galindo to serve as his guide. To borrow

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 105

Galindos words, the District Judge told me that I should show him the house of Cayetano Ralda, and that I should take him there by the easiest route. Instead, however, according to Larrave, the councilman then proceeded to do just the opposite. [I]nstead of leading me directly to the house of the aforementioned Raldas, the district judge wrote, [Galindo] took me on a meandering path full of ravines and gullies, surely in the hope that it would come to [the Raldas] attention that I was making the rounds and giving them time to escape, as occurred.5 Needless to say, Judge Larrave was more than a little annoyed when he realized that his treacherous, nighttime journey over Ostuncalcos twisted and unfamiliar footpaths had been for naught. Sometime around 11 p.m., still smarting after a particularly nasty fall, he recognized the regidors deception, and, without thinking, he drew his sword and struck Galindo with the at of his blade. The regidor swiftly returned the gesture, and because I did not expect the [counter-] attack, the judge stated, he succeeded in landing the rst [blow] on my left ear. . . . After a brief duel, Galindo ran from the scene, but Larraves military escort quickly captured and disarmed the Councilman. He was led to jail, literally, at the point of Judge Larraves sword, which the latter used to poke and prod the councilman as they made their way back to the center of town. Although Larrave attempted to downplay his harsh treatment of Galindo, his written testimony was hardly reassuring. I did not strike [the Councilman] except [with the at of my blade], the judge proclaimed, because if I had used the edge, as he says [I did], he would be dead. . . .6 Putting aside Judge Larraves bravado, and the highly charged images of the swordght and the subsequent capture of councilman Galindo, a perplexing question remains. Why did Ostuncalcos regidor decano risk his reputation, his ofce, and possibly his life, to protect two fugitive rebels? Could it be that he, and perhaps other municipal ofcials as well, simply resented state interferenceembodied by the presence of the district judgein local, community affairs? Or was the story more complicated than that? Larrave included a number of additional details in his testimony that help explain the actions of Leandro Galindo. According to Larrave, Galindo was by no means a disinterested party when it came to the Raldas. Describing fugitives Cayetano and Matilde Ralda, the judge wrote that both offenders are very close relatives of Irinea Ralda, the concubine of Regidor Galindo. Moreover, Galindo was the very same person, who, nding himself in the house of the aforementioned concubine on the night before the uprising of [July 31st], drew his sword against the soldiers and alcohol police, preventing them from taking [Irinea] Ralda to jail as a clandestinista, or trafcker in illegal rum. It was Galindos armed standoff with the alcohol police, the district judge concluded, which gave rise to the [subsequent] uprising led by Cayetano and Matilde Ralda.7

106 Chapter 4 In sum, Larraves testimony revealed Councilman Galindo to be a prominent strand in the shadowy web of illicit relations and kinship ties that bound together Ostuncalcos gendered, informal, and to a signicant degree underground, economy. It was no coincidence that Galindo resented the interference of the district judge in community affairs given his intimacy with a notorious purveyor of illegal aguardiente or rum. And if the ranking councilmans sentiments were at all representative of Ostuncalcos remaining municipal ofceholders, then local authorities do not appear to have viewed the offending beverage in quite the same light as their political superiors. Nor was it a coincidence that Cayetano and Matilde Ralda, as well as scores of community residents, sympathized with Irinea as she was pursued by Conservative authorities, even putting their bodies on the line to riot against the alcohol police and the district judge. This outpouring of public sympathy probably reected the degree to which other inhabitants of the town participated in or directly or indirectly beneted from the illicit manufacture of alcohol. Finally, it was not a coincidence that the sole clandestinista named by Judge Larrave was a womanIrinea Ralda. State authorities at all levels commented on womens involvement in the alcohol trade precisely because of its clandestine nature. As a result, they generated a signicant amount of evidence documenting the disproportionate role that women played in producing and selling contraband rum. And even if this documentary evidence often appeared merely as an afterthought, as a backdrop to the swordghts and uprisings, still, for the sake of posterity, it was better than no evidence at all. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the documentation of womens lawful activities. The very state authorities who reported on women in the context of contraband alcohol studiously ignored their more licit endeavors. Indeed, almost across the board, the details of womens lives are missing from the historical record, hidden behind a veil of ofcial indifference that lowered only in the face of extraordinary circumstances. To make matters worse, the present-day researcher is often led astray by contemporary debates that mythologize a golden past of domesticated housewives, and by scholarly theory that proposes a gendered division of society into private (female) and public (male) spheres. According to this schema, the private or domestic sphere is a womans domain, where she attends to the immediate needs of her family. The public sphere is a mans domain, where production, commerce, and politics are carried out. Regardless of what women do in or outside of the domestic sphere, their efforts are oriented primarily toward internal consumption. Mens endeavors, however, even if they are pursued within the connes of the home, tend to be directed toward external factors such as the market.8

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 107

By contrast, I intend to show that in the case of western Guatemala women were not constrained by the walls that surrounded their houses and patios. They actively participated in various arenas of the so-called public sphere, and indeed, quite often their very survival depended on it. Although it is true that most of the documents that I encountered over the course of my research contain little overt information about women, nevertheless, sometimes the very absence of such information provides important clues about the nature of their lives. The 1830 padrn or census of San Juan Ostuncalco is one such document, o and it is a useful place to begin when attempting to reconstruct how the women of highland Guatemalaboth indigenous and ladinolived in the nineteenth century.9 Aside from gross population gures, the census lists the marital status and family position of each individual enumerated. It also counts Mayan and ladino populations separately, allowing for comparisons of household organization, marriage, and reproductive practices across ethnic boundaries. All told, 1,024 households or 5,293 people were included in the census. Of the 143 ladino and 881 indigenous households, nearly three quarters were nuclear.10 Extended families of two to six related couples made up an additional 16 percent of indigenous households, and nearly 30 percent of the indigenous population. Thus, although extended families were far less numerous than their nuclear counterparts, they averaged more than nine members, and this was the key to their relative weight in terms of overall population.11 In addition, extended families were agnatic almost to the very last one. That is, they were based on male descent, and married couples were linked to the household by way of sons or brothers of the patriarch, rather than daughters, sisters, or relatives of the matriarch.12 Perhaps unsurprisingly, women led well over half of the consanguineal and non-family households, whether indigenous (51 vs. 37) or ladino (24 vs. 8). This is reected by their predominance among unmarried household heads (solteras/os) and household heads whose spouses had died (widows/ers). Within the Mam segment of the populace, ninety-four households were led by solteras and widows, compared to the fty eight led by their male counterparts. Among ladinos the disparity was even more pronounced. Soltera- and widow-headed households (24) outnumbered soltero and widower households (7) by over three to one. In total, then, 118 of Ostuncalcos 1,024 households were headed by women. Like other documents of its time, the 1830 padrn reects contempoo rary biases and introduces problems of interpretation. Although the padrn o includes occupational data for adult men, for example, it simultaneously neglects to describe the economic endeavors of women, seemingly conrming the public/private model of society outlined above. Perhaps the censustaker specied no particular occupational categories for women because they

108 Chapter 4 engaged in strictly domestic affairs. Yet if this gendered division of labor and social space held for Ostuncalco, then how did the 118 female-headed households enumerated in the 1830 census subsist? Even excepting all of those households that included a male relative fteen years or older, thirty-seven remain. That is, in 1830 Ostuncalco had thirty-seven households headed by women that did not include a single adult male. Twenty-eight of these households were indigenous. Could property ownership have accounted for the subsistence of these female-headed households? Perhaps in some of the cases, particularly when the household was headed by a ladina. Various sources document the prevalence of land ownership among Ostuncalcos ladinas.13 Anthropologist Robert Carmack, writing on the nearby town of Momostenango in the eighteenth century, notes that a high proportion of Spanish ranches . . . were headed by women. . . .14 When it came to indigenous women, however, land inheritance and property claims were far less certain. Continuing on with Momostenango, Carmack states that as a general rule [d]aughters were not expected to inherit property. . . . Inheritance of land was patrilineal, and land property was divided equally among sons.15 A similar pattern is described by other anthropologists for the Cuchumat n towns of San Miguel Acat n, a a Santiago Chimaltenango, Santa Eulalia, and to a lesser extent, Jacaltenango, during the 1920s and 1930s.16 In other words, evidence from other parts of Guatemalas western highlands would seem to rule out the likelihood that property ownership served as a signicant source of income or subsistence for Ostuncalcos indigenous female-headed households. At a demographic level the 1830 padrn provides additional evidence for o such a conclusion. It documents the near ubiquity of patrilocal residence among Ostuncalcos households, a common characteristic of patrilineal inheritance rules. Only one son-in-law or yerno is identied outright, although another two dependent men appear to have been married to daughters of household heads. As for brothers-in-law, or cu ados, again, the padrn only n o species one. Although several other dependent men may have qualied as cu ados, in every case they were members of households headed by widows, n and their connection to the family would have been through the widows deceased husband. At an anecdotal level, Mam women appear to have encountered at least two obstacles that hampered their acquisition of property through inheritance. First, it was accepted practice for indigenous fathers to bequeath their portion of the community ejido to their male children. Carmacks description of Momostenango seems to t Quezaltenangos Mam communities equally well. In the case of daughters, municipal authorities could and did intervene to block inheritance transfers and to repossess the land in question. According to Mara Vasques, for example, writing Ostuncalcos Juez

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 109

Preventivo in 1864, San Martns ofcials had refused to sanction the inheri tance of forty cuerdas that her deceased husband Miguel Peres had bequeathed to their daughter Juana, because she is a woman, and the disqualication of being a women is sufcient reason to lose all paternal inheritance.17 Even leaving aside the opposition of municipal authorities, however, land inheritance by daughters also was challenged by sons and other potential male heirs. Casimira Marroqun had hoped to inherit an equal share of her fathers nu merous properties. Instead, her brother Francisco, as a man, took everything there is. Casimira, for being a women, ended up with only ve cuerdas of land. When she confronted Francisco, he responded that as a woman, [she] had no legal right to question how their fathers property had been divided.18 In sum, indigenous women could only hope to inherit signicant property in the absence of a potential male heir and if the property was not subject to the authority of community ofcialsperhaps because it had been purchased.19 The most surprising thing about the petitions of Juana Peres and Casimira Marroqun is that they even exist at all. The case of Casimira is particularly intriguing because it begs the question why an indigenous woman would ever harbor expectations of inheriting an equal portion of her fathers property. Perhaps the indigenous tradition of strict patrilineal inheritance was not as automatic or consensual as some of the sourcesfor example, the 1830 padrnseem to imply. And while Mam women probably had never accepted o this or any other manifestation of male privilege without resistance, it appears that their propensity and ability to challenge patrilineal inheritance increased after mid-century. The scant evidence of such resistance dates from the 1860s onward, as does the more plentiful evidence of indigenous female property ownership generally. Although any number of completely unrelated factors might account for this chronology, including the idiosyncrasies of document preservation, nevertheless, I believe that three interrelated trends probably contributed to the growth and success of efforts by Mam women to attain property rights as the nineteenth century matured. From the 1750s forward the Mam region of Quezaltenango experienced a growing inux of ladinos. Some settled within Ostuncalcos town proper, while others colonized the interstices of the Mam communities, and, eventually, established towns of their own. Although Ostuncalcos ladino residents numbered less than 300 at the start of the nineteenth century, their population climbed to nearly 2,000 by the end.20 Given that ladinas could, and did, inherit property, the general expansion of ladinos would have precipitated a corresponding proliferation of female-owned properties in Ostuncalco. This is the rst factor that might help explain why indigenous women began to challenge the rigid inheritance rules of Mam society when they did. In light of growing ladina property ownership throughout the nineteenth century, Mam women may have increasingly questioned their own relative exclusion.

110 Chapter 4 Aside from serving as a point of comparison for indigenous women, Ostuncalcos growing ladino population appears to have provided an actual mechanism by which patrilineal inheritance could be opposed. In 1806 the crown authorized Ostuncalcos ladino residents to form their own municipal governing body independent of the towns existing indigenous ofcials.21 Then, beginning in the late-1830s, Ostuncalco was designated as a regional judicial seat.22 Given clear state preference for ladino authorities, each of these developments created a new venue in which dissatised Mam plaintiffs could appeal and possibly preempt the decisions of their own municipalidad. And when coupled with evidence that ladino authorities did not automatically disqualify indigenous women from inheriting property, particularly in the absence of a testament that stated otherwise, the signicance for gender and property rights among the Mam becomes clear. Mara Vasques, for instance, expressed an acute awareness of how gender subordination had been used to justify the disinheritance of her daughter when she petitioned Ostuncalcos Juez Preventivo to overturn the decision of San Martns alcaldes. Interestingly, however, rather than reject such subordination outright, she sought to use her daughters inferior status to gain the judges sympathy. It is like this, Se or n Juez. . . . [T]hose who live by plundering others would like to invalidate some things that should be sacred, like the possessions, large and small, that our parents leave to us. On the other hand, . . . I know that divine and human laws advocate on behalf of the weak.23 Although the outcome of Maras petition is unclear, Casimira Marroquns brother Francisco voluntarily increased his sisters share of their deceased fathers property from ve to eight cuerdas plus several head of livestock when faced with the threat that ladino ofcials might intervene.24 Apparently he feared that their intervention offered at least the potential for Casimira to obtain a more favorable division of property. Additional evidence for the claim that nineteenth century developments opened the door for Mam women to challenge patrilineal inheritance is found in a third factor that appears to have aided and encouraged their efforts. Following the liberal resumption of power in 1871, Barrios and his cohorts implemented several measures aimed at promoting and facilitating individual land titling. Mam women took advantage of these measures, though in much smaller numbers than ladinas. For example, they submitted ten of the two hundred ttulos supletorios directed to Ostuncalcos ladino municipalidad be tween 1878 and 1889. Another forty-eight originated with ladinas.25 Other evidence of land ownership among indigenous women under liberal rule is found in the agricultural censuses that were carried out during the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. These surveys indicate that indigenous women held numerous agricultural properties in the latter decades of the nineteenth century.26 In effect, Mam women were able to play the state off their own societys tradition of patrilineal inheritance. They took advantage of the nineteenth

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 111

century expansion of ladino-controlled administrative and legal structures that culminated in the liberal reforms of the post-1870 years. That said, it is unlikely a signicant number of indigenous female household heads held property as early as 1830. The factors discussed above that appear to have encouraged and facilitated their efforts were still relatively unimportant or had yet to be established. Moreover, almost all of the evidence for property ownership among Mam women dates from the 1860s and thereafter. The question that remains, then, is how single women in households with no adult male relatives survived in lieu of property ownership. All answers point to one fact: the women of Ostuncalco, single or married, engaged in much more than just producing for the immediate consumption of their own household, and in their efforts to sustain themselves and their family they inhabited numerous public arenas. Markets, for example, appear to have been the province of women. Evidence for Guatemala as a whole indicates that women made up the majority of market vendors as well as buyers. British traveler Robert Dunlop, visiting Guatemala in the mid-1840s, observed that subaltern women, not men, transported their familys agricultural surplus to market, sold it, and in addition, made all necessary purchases. Similarly, J. W. Boddam-Whetham encountered a steady stream of primarily indigenous market-women carrying all manner of items to and from the commercial centers of Guatemala City and Quezaltenango during his circuit of the country ca. 187576. And Helen Sanborn, on a visit to Guatemala Citys central market during the mid1880s, wrote that it was occupied by the Indian women, selling all sorts of provisions . . . and young market girls with baskets on their heads, whose business it is to carry your purchases for you. During a stay in Jacaltenango in 1927 Oliver LaFarge noted that [i]t is the women who sell goods in the local market, and often they, alone or accompanied by their men, who go to the neighboring fairs to trade.27 Tax and Hinshaw, commenting on the indigenous communities of Guatemalas mid-western highlands after years of experience there, claim that in most communities the women do all the routine purchasing of family needs and often do the selling of manufactured goods and produce as well.28 Sufce it to say that even today a visitor to any one of Guatemalas many markets will notice a preponderance of female vendors and buyers. In the case of Ostuncalco I found no documentation that directly and explicitly conrmed the importance of women in the local marketplace. I did, however, encounter overwhelming evidence that they were key players in various commercial and productive enterprises. In 1851, for example, when the ladino municipalidad decided to auction off four spaces within the town ofce building to be used as storefronts, three of the four successful bidders were womentwo ladinas and one indgena.29 When it came to

112 Chapter 4 the production and sale of aguardiente,30 as well, women of both ethnic groups played a key role. The abundance of documentation substantiating their centrality to this activity is explained largely by the fact that because most aguardiente was illegal, it drew a good deal of attention from ofcials at all levels of the state.31 Women were also a signicant source of credit, as was described in Chapter 3. Although ladinas appear to have been more involved than indigenous women, this may reect, at least partly, the ethnic bias of the sources. The record books of the ladino authorities were much more likely to include debt transactions involving ladinos. Even so, it is clear that Mam women did lend money, and that they sometimes served as adoras to Mam debtors.32 Moreover, because credit transactions were often indicative of a primary transactionthe purchase of wheat, sugar, or some other itemwhich was facilitated by the extension of credit, creditorsregardless of their gender or ethnicityfrequently were also vendors.33 If the observations of the travel writers and anthropologists discussed above are at all representative, then indigenous women throughout Guatemala devoted a large portion of their day to food preparation and clothes washing, directed both toward the home and toward the market.34 Although the evidence from Ostuncalco is limited to the occasional anecdote, it suggests that Mam women were no different.35 With regard to textiles, historical precedence makes clear that indigenous women were the primary producers of cotton thread. Under the infamous repartimientos de mercancas of the colonial period, the women of Ostuncalco received bales of cotton from the Corregidor of Quezaltenango that they then spun. The Corregidor credited them two reales per pound of thread, and this money was applied toward the communitys tribute requirements as well as toward satisfying other items that were imposed on the community by way of the repartimiento. In addition, Ostuncalcos female spinners sold some of their product in the markets of Quezaltenango and beyond, a practice that continued into the nineteenth century.36 Aside from cotton thread, wool and woolen textiles were also produced in Ostuncalco. Unfortunately, however, little direct evidence distinguishes whether this was primarily a female or male activity. From the 1830 padrn it is o clear that a large percentage of ladino men were involved. Yet this same document fails to likewise credit more than a small handful of indigenous men, despite the fact that various sources ascribed a brisk trade in wool, and woolen thread, cloth, and clothing to Ostuncalcos Mam inhabitants. Is this because indigenous women, rather than men, were the source of this commerce? Perhaps in the case of wool and wool thread, but with regard to weaving, much of the anthropological literature attributes this strictly to men. Tax and Hinshaw take this position, as do McBryde and Carmack. Commenting

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 113

on Momostenango, the Mam towns eastern neighbor, Carmack writes that during the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Kiche women and children cleaned, carded, and spun the wool upon which the towns famed indigenous wool and weaving enterprises were based. Men, however, were the sole weavers.37 Other anthropologists provide a more contradictory view of how gender relations and textile manufacturing intersected. LaFarge, for example, attests to variations in the gendered division of textile production across geographic areas. He claims that in Jacaltenango and San Miguel Acat n, women wove a both cotton and wool, while men were not involved in either pursuit. In Todos Santos Cuchumat n and Santa Eulalia, by contrast, the so-called traa ditional division of textile labor prevailed. Women concentrated their efforts on cotton, and men worked solely with wool. More recent work by Tracy Ehlers demonstrates that labor divisions based on gender sometimes vary over time as well as space. Ehlers found that in the case of San Antonio Palop , o weaving went from being a female-dominated eld to a male-dominated eld in the space of just a few years. Textile specialist Cherri Pancake also cautions against accepting rigid divisions of labor based on gender. After investigating several facets of textile production that were thought to have been segregated along gender lines, Pancake has found that some of these supposed divisions were little more than inaccurate stereotypes.38 In sum, what can be said for the case of Ostuncalco? Ample comparative evidence suggests that women probably played a central role in wool and wool thread production, cleaning, carding, and spinning. Whether they wove the wool too is difcult to ascertain. One additional activity that appears to have involved an increasing number of Ostuncalcos women, particularly indigenous women, from the late-1850s onward, is the harvesting and processing of coffee. Writing about Guatemala as a whole, historian David McCreery describes womens participation in coffee production this way:
From the earliest days of coffee growing in Guatemala, the ncas contracted women and children, sometimes to handle special tasks and to compensate for labor shortages, and also because they could be paid lower wages. When the crop was rst developing, landowners employed women from nearby villages as day laborers to pick and sort the crop. . . . However, as the crop expanded and the demand for labor drew more men into coffee labor, the situation of women changed. Women continued to do the hand sorting required to extract the damaged or withered beans, but more of them now worked the harvest along with the men of their family, contributing to the tasks credited to the mans account.39

Records left by contemporary observers corroborate various elements of McCreerys sketch, but they also demonstrate that when considered separately, concrete examples could diverge in signicant ways from his

114 Chapter 4 composite. Consider, for example, the observations of Helen Sanborn, a visitor to Guatemala during the mid-1880s. In keeping with McCreerys assessment, Sanborn found that women and girls harvested and processed coffee at half the daily wage earned by male agricultural workers. In contrast to McCreery, however, she also found that men were not involved in either of these two activities. Instead, they were employed exclusively for cultivation. The photographs of Eadweard Muybridge, who passed through Guatemala several years before Sanborn, tell a slightly different story. His photographs consistently show that among the ncas of the western piedmont, women did the picking and men the cultivation. But they also reect a predominance of male labor in processing as well. This does not accord with Sanborns observations. A third perspective is represented in J. W. Boddam-Whethams account of his short stay at the nca Mercedes, in Quezaltenangos Costa Cuca, during the mid-1870s. He noted that not only did women and children harvest coffee, but they also performed tasks associated with its cultivation, for example, weeding and mulching.40 Despite the dissimilarities among each of these accounts, they all point to the signicant involvement of women in coffee production. And at least with regard to the harvest, they are all in agreement: women picked coffee. Apparently, depending on the nca, they also may have participated in processing the bean, and/or in cultivating the tree. Returning to the specic case of Ostuncalco, BoddamWhethams commentary is particularly helpful because it provides evidence that the ncas of the Costa Cuca, the primary destination for Ostuncalcos coffee laborers, were no exception to the general pattern of women in coffee production. This perception is bolstered by a number of archival sources that document the presence of Mam women from Ostuncalco and surrounding towns on the coffee plantations of the Costa Cuca. Some of the sources show that women held labor contracts independent of men, for which they alone apparently were responsible.41 Other sources conrm McCreerys claim that women, indeed, entire families, were often expected to contribute to the efforts of the male household head, and that they were included under the terms of his contract.42 Sometimes, however, planters desired to locate a male workers spouse or family on the nca simply because this was one more way to encourage labor discipline. In other words, spouses and other family members were not always viewed as potential laborers. Jorge Reed wrote Ostuncalcos rst alcalde from the nca Nueva Austria to request his assistance in making Tiburcia P rez join her husband, Juan Romero, on the nca. Romero cannot work, e stated Reed, unless his wife comes to care for him. Visiting ones family was among the most common reasons for which workers requested permission to leave the nca, and it was also a very common excuse given by fugitive workers for why they had failed to abide by their contract. Pressuring spouses to accompany their husbands was one way to avoid this disruption

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 115

completely. If nothing else, at least the excuse visiting family was no longer available. In addition, on a more purely practical level, the presence of ones family decreased mobility and made ight that much more difcult.43 So far our effort to uncover the economic activities of Ostuncalcos women has required no small amount of extrapolation and, to some degree, guesswork. The 1830 padrn simply ignored womens occupations altogether. o What about the censos generales of 1880 and 1893? Surprisingly, these two sources indicate at least some of the endeavors in which women engaged in the later part of the nineteenth century. The 1880 census lists several female occupations, ve of which included women from Ostuncalco: seventeen cigar and cigarette rollers (cigarreras y pureras); twenty-one cooks (cocineras); twenty-two seamstresses (costureras); eighty-seven spinners (hilanderas); and ve tortilla makers (tortilleras).44 Unfortunately, changes in occupational categories in the 1893 census make a direct comparison with the 1880 data difcult. Only three of the ve occupations discussed above are still listed at this later date: cigarreras y pureras climbed to eighty-four; seamstresses jumped from twenty-one to seventy-three; and tortilleras dropped to zero. Cooks were appended to the occupational category of servants (sirvientes), making it impossible to ascertain their true number. Together, however, these two groups comprised twentynine individuals, most of whom probably were women. As for hilanderas or female spinners, they simply were eliminated as a category. Instead, the 1893 census created a new grouping of hilanderos or male spinners, and weavers (tejedores).45 Additional female occupations included laundresses (nine), a shopkeeper, and a vegetable seller. The information contained in these two censos, though helpful, still leaves us with a picture of womens subsistence activities that is far from complete. To put this in perspective, let us reconsider the 1880 data. Altogether, ve female categories were listed. They included 152 women. Yet according to the 1880 census, Ostuncalco counted 3905 females. Discounting those below the age of fteen, the total of adult women remains approximately 1943.46 In other words, the two censos generales do not give us an idea of what the vast majority of women in Ostuncalco were doing. Moreover, if the male occupational data is at all indicative, then the tendency probably was to place less emphasis on the activities of indigenous women than ladinas, particularly if the former lived outside the town center and did not interact with ladinos on a regular basis.

Aguardiente in the Rural Economy

The women of Ostuncalco engaged in a wide variety of economic enterprises as they strove to provide for themselves and their families: selling and trading; textile production; clothes washing; food preparation; and wage

116 Chapter 4 labor, particularly on the piedmont coffee plantations. One of the most important of these enterprises, in terms of the sheer number of individuals involved, was the production and sale of aguardiente. Although the earlier discussion only hinted at aguardientes signicance, I believe that making and selling this beverage, along with the associated input industries of cane cultivation and sugar milling, comprised the motor force of Ostuncalcos economy from the 1840s to the 1860s. Even after 1870, the year that coffee emerged as Guatemalas single largest export earner, aguardiente remained an important component of the local economy and continued to underwrite a signicant proportion of the national budget.47 Indeed, according to David McCreery, Liberal rebels quickly were forced to renege on their promised free-trade policy toward alcohol precisely because it deprived the state of much needed revenue.48 Within months of their victory in late June 1871, and the abolition of the hated monopoly system, Reforma-era Liberals attempted to recuperate the lost income by imposing a series of increasingly harsh restrictions on aguardiente production and commerce reminiscent of Conservative rule.49 The central, overriding factor that must be kept in mind when considering the development of Ostuncalcos aguardiente industry over the course of the nineteenth century is that most aguardiente was produced and sold illegally, regardless of who controlled Guatemala City.50 As I will explain in more detail below, both the colonial and national states severely restricted the industry in an attempt to benet from the revenues. Granting that the Guatemalan state was extremely weak for most of the nineteenth century, and that community-level ofcials frequently sympathized with local producers and vendors, or were directly complicit themselves, still, there was only so far that individual producers and vendors could grow.51 Given the illegal status of the vast majority of participants, they could not afford to mimic the largescale operations of government-sanctioned aguardiente monopolists because they risked losing everything if caught. Instead, aguardiente expanded in the form of a dispersed cottage industry. Although it is impossible to come by exact gures, the number of individuals and incidents recorded in the documentation indicates that Ostuncalco and the surrounding Mam towns counted dozens of illegal aguardiente entrepreneurs, involving hundreds of people, by the second half of the nineteenth century. Other investigators of Mesoam ricas past have recognized the link bee tween womens labor and alcohol. In Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion William Taylor discusses several colonial-era restrictions on the sale of pulque in Mexico City that make clear the predominance of women among pulque vendors. According to Taylor, at the beginning of the seventeenth century royal ofcials ordered that only one respectable old woman be licensed to sell pulque for every one hundred Indians. . . . Less than thirty years later

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 117

additional statutes were issued due to the persistence of illegal pulque trading and selling. These laws banned the transport of pulque except by daylight and decreed that only two Indian women were to be licensed [to sell pulque] for each of the four Indian residential areas in Mexico City and one woman for each town within ve leagues of the city. Outside of Mexico City, in the villages of central Mexico and Oaxaca as well, Taylor found that pulque traders and vendors were usually women. Because most communities lacked formal cantinas . . . pulque and other local drinks were dispensed from the doorways of homes by a woman of the household.52 Anthropologist Christine Eber seconds Taylors view of the link between alcohol and womens work in central Mexico and Oaxaca in Women and Alcohol in a Highland Maya Town. Moreover, she extends the association to highland Chiapas. Eber cites an early-nineteenth century document from San Crist bal which states that rising tobacco prices pushed local women to o switch from cigar making to the fermentation of chicha in order to provide for their families.53 With regard to aguardiente production, Eber asserts that it arose in Chiapas during the colonial period due to the decreased demand for sugar. Local planters needed another outlet for their product, and so they promoted aguardiente consumption among the nearby indigenous communities as an alternative.54 A similar relationship between sugar and alcohol production and consumption appears to have held for colonial Guatemala as early as the mid-sixteenth century. In his study of Guatemalas central valley Julio Pinto Soria writes that alcoholic beverages based on sugar in its various forms provided a lucrative outlet for area cane cultivators. Some of the ingenios and trapiches even went so far as to pay their indigenous workers in sugar-based alcohol.55 By the last several decades of the colonial period poor mestizos, castas, and Maya had joined Spaniards in cultivating cane and producing sugar, usually in its raw form (panela). Perhaps even more than before, particularly in the case of the later generations of small-scale cultivators, much of the sugar produced was earmarked for the manufacture of illegal alcohol.56 Sufce it to say, then, that by the late-eighteenth century clandestine alcohol production based on sugarcane had become widespread. Pinto Soria describes the case of sixty indgenas from Colotenango, Huehuetenango, who in 1780 used a hand-powered mill to convert their cane into home brew.57 And whether a community was primarily indigenous or ladino, local ofcials often were complicit. In the case of indigenous communities in particular, David McCreery reports that cofradas were central gures in the production of clandestine aguardiente.58 A similar narrative holds for Quezaltenango and vicinity. According to historian Jorge Gonz lez Alzate, as the eighteenth century came to a close a local Spaniards began to establish trapiches in the piedmont zone south of

118 Chapter 4 the city in order to supply raw sugar to the growing number of aguardiente manufacturers in Quezaltenango. Much as was true for Guatemala as a whole, these manufacturers ran the gamut from the relatively well-off to poor mestizos and indgenas. Indeed, the Crowns imposition of monopoly restrictions on aguardiente production in Quezaltenango in 1785 was met by erce resistance from all sectors of the populace, up to and including the Corregidor himself. When rebellion broke out the following year it included not only a large number of indigenous Quezaltecos but also members of the ladino militia. Later on, as the citys ladino elite agitated for independence, they were obliged to promise an end to the hated alcohol monopoly, among other things, to gain Maya support for Iturbides Plan de Iguala.59 Evidence from Ostuncalco and the other Mam towns from the rst several decades of the nineteenth century also points up the relationship between sugarcane cultivation and aguardiente production. By the late colonial period the piedmont south of Ostuncalco, which pertained to the ejido of San Martn Sacatep quezthe area that came to be known as the Costa e Cucahad become a magnet for those who desired to try their hand at sugar. Though most of the aspiring planters appear to have been ladinos from Ostuncalco and Quezaltenango, indigenous cane cultivators probably were more numerous than the occasional off-hand reference suggests.60 During the 1820s and 1830s the number of ladino trapicheros multiplied. As of 1841 Quezaltenangos Corregidor claimed that there were over one hundred ladino cultivators in the area. Despite the fact that all of them were situated on land belonging to San Martn, the 8,000 arrobas61 of raw sugar they produced in 1840 were attributed to Ostuncalco.62 In terms of how much land these trapiches cultivated, how much sugar they produced, or their market value, none was large by any standards. Most probably cultivated less than the one-eighth caballera or approximately 150 cuerdas ascribed by Pinto Soria to the typical trapiche of Guatemalas hinterland in the previous century.63 An 1841 inventory of Nicolas Castillos trapiche, for example, listed only 134 cuerdas planted in sugarcane. Property values almost certainly never reached higher than several thousand pesos. The trapiche Santa Teresa el Asintal, with 24 cuerdas in cane, was valued at 917 pesos, also in 1841. This represents a tiny sum, of course, when compared to Fuentes y Guzm ns estimate of 600,000 pesos for some of the ingenios that a operated in Guatemalas central valley during the colonial period.64 As for overall production, the 8,000 arroba gure cited above for all of Ostuncalco (i.e., the Costa Cuca) was more than equaled by four or ve of the ingenios located in Guatemalas central valley. The countrys largest mill, the ingenio San Ger nimo, generated 7,200 arrobas of sugar each year all by itself.65 o Nevertheless, when considered in the context of agricultural statistics from later in the century, Ostuncalcos annual sugar production of 8,000

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 119

arrobas in 1840 signied an important beginning. Nearly forty years later, in 1877, the Costa Cucas sugar output had risen to only 28,860 arrobas, less than a four-fold increase. Ten years after that, the entire department of Quezaltenangothat is, El Palmar and Coatepeque in addition to the Costa Cucawhich was listed as Guatemalas third largest sugar producer, still only generated 48,109 arrobas.66 In terms of labor, the trapiches associated with Ostuncalco in the 1830s and 1840s probably employed hundreds of people all told. Although the evidence is far from conclusive on this point, it certainly is suggestive. In one document, dating from 1837, Feliciano Reyes of the San Carlos Sija military base wrote Ostuncalcos rst alcalde Gregorio Castillo that he knew for certain that in those areas of the coast in which the inhabitants have their farms and trapiches there can be found many deserters and soldiers from the accompanying list. Reyes concluded by enjoining Castillo to see that said laborers were returned to his command.67 The 1841 inventory of Nicolas Castillos trapiche, discussed above, included a ranchera de mozos or workers encampment. In addition, several other documents spanning the period from the early 1830s to the early 1840s make reference to the workforces of various trapiches.68 Aguardiente production, meanwhile, was also emerging as an important activity, probably as early as the turn of the century, if not before. Regardless of when aguardiente was rst introduced, however, by the 1820s it was common in Ostuncalco and the other Mam towns.69 And over the next several decades the industry thrived and developed into a major component of the local economy. Although men participated in this expansion as producers and sellers, most were involved at the point of consumption. Women, by contrast, though also a signicant proportion of consumers, dominated among producers and sellers. This was true of the entire post-independence nineteenth century, and it was true for both the legal and illegal facets of the industry. Even when men were listed as legal holders of the government monopoly for a particular area, existing evidence suggests that womentypically their wivesactually managed the operation.70 In terms of ethnicity, the documentation would seem to indicate that Ostuncalcos ladinos were more involved in the aguardiente industry than their indigenous neighbors or the inhabitants of the surrounding Mam towns. This is true particularly if one focuses on legally sanctioned producers and sellers. Purchasing a government monopoly or license required a substantial amount of money, something that placed above-ground participation in the lucrative business outside the purview of the Mayan majority. Even when only illegal or clandestine aguardiente is considered, however, ladinos still appear with greater relative and absolute frequency than indgenas in the doc umentation compiled by Ostuncalcos ladino municipalidad and higher level state authorities. The most straightforward explanation for this surprising

120 Chapter 4 table 4. Clandestine Aguardiente Arrests, 18621886

Number % of Total % of Gender % of Ethnicity

Total arrests Women Men Women of indeterminable ethnicity Indigenous Women Ladino Women Men of indeterminable ethnicity Indigenous Men Ladino Men

813 629 184 260 160 209 63 55 66

100 77.4 22.6 32.0 19.7 25.7 7.7 6.8 8.1

41.3 25.4 33.2 34.2 29.9 35.9

80.5 74.4 76.0 19.5 25.6 24.0

Sources: AMSJO, Procesos Judiciales (criminales), a os 18601885; Correspondencia a os n n 18641870, 1875, 18771880, 1886.

ndinggiven the small size of the regional ladino populationis that such a high percentage of ladinos was involved in distilling and dispensing clandestine aguardiente that even in absolute or real terms they outnumbered their indigenous counterparts and thus were more likely to be apprehended. To illustrate these conclusions I have tabulated arrests involving clandestine aguardiente found in the records kept by Ostuncalcos ladino ofcials (see Table 4). The most consistent documentation dates from 1862 to 1886, and thus these years were included in the tabulation. Arrests ranged from a high of 109 in 1865, to a low of 9 in 1873. Because there were no records of aguardiente arrests for 1863, 1871, 1876, and 188385, the total of 813 is almost certainly a vast undercounting. Even where documentation does exist, it probably was far from complete for any given year. Nevertheless, despite these deciencies, the table demonstrates overwhelmingly that women were involved in illegal aguardiente activity to a much greater extent than men. In terms of ethnicity, though, the data is less than conclusive. It does not require a stretch of the imagination, in light of the incomplete documentation, to suggest that indigenous aguardiente producers and venders well may have outnumbered their ladino counterparts, at least in real terms if not on a per capita basis. The relatively small distance separating Mayan (215) and ladino clandestinistas (275) easily could be closed by new evidence or if a slightly greater proportion of the apprehended individuals of unknown ethnicity (323) turned out to be indigenous. This reasoning does not even take into account the probable bias of the sources toward the inclusion of ladinos over indgenas. Indeed, there is am ple reason to believe that the records produced by ladino ofcials of all levels

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 121

were biased toward the activities of other ladinos. For example, illegal ladino enterprises probably were detected on a per capita basis with much greater frequency than illegal indigenous operations. This makes perfect sense given the spatial and ethnic dimensions of the states administrative apparatus. Only Ostuncalco counted the permanent presence of any ladino ofcials at all, whether in the form of the ladino municipalidad, of higher state authorities (recall the assistant Corregidor and the Juez Preventivo), or the Church. In other words, because most ladino producers of clandestine aguardiente resided in Ostuncalco proper, they were located directly under the noses of the very authorities who were most likely to investigate contraband. Just as important, these were the very authorities most likely to leave a paper trail that later investigators, myself included, would be able to follow. Most of the Mam communities, by contrast, had no permanent ladino ofcials, and little direct contact with those of Ostuncalco. Even within Ostuncalco itself, while most ladinos resided in the town center, close to municipal and other authorities, the greatest concentration of indigenous residents, as a proportion of the towns population, was located in the surrounding aldeas. In sum, because Mam producers and vendors of clandestine aguardiente were much less likely to be noticed by ladino authorities, the existing documentation almost certainly underrepresents the true signicance of their illegal enterprises. Thus, although a larger percentage of ladinos may have been involved in the illicit aguardiente trade, it is highly unlikely that they outnumbered indigenous clandestinistas in absolute or real terms. The relative scarcity of indigenous names within administrative and judicial records appears to have been reinforced by the propensity of Mayan authorities, when compared to their local ladino counterparts, to shield illegal aguardiente operations. With the exception of Ostuncalcos indigenous ofcials, the districts Mam municipalidades had more leeway to enforce contraband provisions as they desired, or as their constituencies demanded, because they were geographically removed from the immediate supervision of the Juez Preventivo.71 Moreover, as a general rule, indigenous municipalidades tended to view outside interference in the governing of their communities as unwarranted and illegitimate intrusions into their own internal affairs. Intoxication was a central part of their ceremonies and celebrations, and, likewise, cofradas and municipal authorities were important suppliers of alcoholic beverages.72 Sufce it to say that Mam community ofcials were loath to abide by state-imposed restrictions on the production and consumption of aguardiente, and, on occasion, they openly asserted their refusal to do so.73 That said, ladino authorities were not immune from the temptation presented by the illegal drink. Numerous documents demonstrate that members of Ostuncalcos ladino municipalidad countenanced clandestine activities, and some show that they were involved directly.74 Still, in contrast

122 Chapter 4 to the surrounding Mam communities, Ostuncalcos ladino municipalidad had to contend with the constant, immediate oversight of an assistant Corregidor, and later, Juez Preventivo, from the early 1840s onward.75 The Corregidor/Juez Preventivos permanent presence in the towns centerin the midst of Ostuncalcos ladino inhabitantsand the fact that he himself was a ladino, reinforced his predisposition to keep a close watch over the non-indigenous municipal government and its constituents. The activities of indigenous residents outside the town centerin Ostuncalcos numerous rural hamlets, or in the neighboring Mam townswere of secondary importance. The frequency with which ladino contraband was detected in contrast to indigenous contraband also may be explained in part by the relatively large size of ladino enterprises compared to their indigenous counterparts. That is, some ladinos may have distilled and sold clandestine aguardiente on such a scale that their operations gained notoriety and, as a result, attracted ofcial scrutiny. Return, for a moment, to the details of coastal sugarcane production. The largest growers appear to have been ladinos. What did they do with their sugar, once prepared? The most obvious answer is that they sold it. The appetite for sugar among the clandestine aguardiente producers of Ostuncalco and surrounding towns must have been substantial. In addition, the markets of Quezaltenango appear to have been an important destination.76 A second possibility, aside from local markets, is that coastal sugarcane growers converted their product into aguardiente themselves or with the help of their family. Sometimes, for example, growers distilled and sold alcohol at their trapiche.77 In other cases, however, they transported the sugar to Ostuncalco where family members, especially spouses, fermented, distilled, and sold the resulting aguardiente.78 Either way, this vertical integration of trapiche and distillery may have inclined some of the larger cane cultivators to produce and sell otherwise incautious quantities of alcohol to dispose of their burgeoning sugar supply. There are multiple reasons to conclude that Mam residents throughout the political district of Ostuncalco outnumbered ladinos as producers and sellers of clandestine aguardiente in absolute numbers, if not as a proportion of their respective ethnic population. With regard to gender, however, Table 4 unequivocally demonstrates that women outnumbered men. If women did not inhabit public spaces with the same frequency that men did, as the public/private spheres model suggests, then perhaps this was because they brought the public space into their homefor example, by operating clandestine taverns. Thus, when Francisco Castillo vented his rage because the Monroy residence had no more aguardiente to sell, it was Silveria Sols, six months pregnant, not her husband, Marcos Monroy, who Castillo seized and dragged about by the hair, kicking her all the while.79

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 123

Gender, Ethnicity, and National Aguardiente Policy

It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of aguardiente for the economy of Mam Quezaltenango. Cane cultivators marketed their sugar to those who distilled the beverage, and innumerable households across the breadth and width of the region supplemented their income by illegally trafcking in the substance. As I have demonstrated, women, not men, were the ones most intimately involved. From 1865 to 1868, the years for which the most complete documentation exists, at least 70 women were arrested per annum within the political district of Ostuncalco for illegally trafcking in aguardiente. If we consider the likelihood that some of the evidence, even for these years, did not survive the ravages of time, that ladino authoritiesincluding the district judgeconcentrated most of their efforts on Ostuncalcos ladino core to the exclusion of the surrounding rural areas and municipalities that counted the majority of the districts population, and that arrests probably represented only a fraction of those who engaged in illicit activity, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the true number of female clandestinistas in any given year was several times higher than the annual average of 70 reected in the surviving documentation.80 Such a large gure is reinforced by a petition submitted to Rafael Carrera in 1841 by Ynes Natureno and several other women from the neighboring city of Quezaltenango, capital of the department. Natureno et al complained to General Carrera that the only thing that the [alcohol monopoly] did was deprive one hundred [Quezalteco] families from making a living so that they perish in ruin and misery. Although the petitioners probably approximated the number of affected families for the purposes of argument, nevertheless, their claim makes clear that the aguardiente industry played a crucial role in the survival of many of the citys residents. Moreover, because the text of the document indicates that Natureno and her co-authors purposefully excluded Quezaltenangos Kiche majority from their representation, even the gure of one hundred families, however inexact in terms of ladinos, does not appear to have included numerous indigenous families that also derived signicant income from their participation in the illegal industry.81 Thus, within the department of Quezaltenango alone, even if we consider only the capital city and the district of Ostuncalco, there appear to have been hundreds of aguardiente trafckers in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. And if Quezaltenango is at all representative of Guatemala as a whole, then at any one time thousands of Guatemalan women, indigenous and ladino alike, supported themselves and their families by distilling and selling aguardiente. The vast majority of them did so illegally because monopoly statutes criminalized the participation of all but a handful of relatively wealthy

124 Chapter 4 individuals who could afford to purchase state sanction for their activities. Within this context, why did Mayan opposition to the monopolies and other state-imposed restrictions lessen in the wake of the Conservative ban on intoxicating beverages in indigenous communities that was imposed following Rafael Carreras victory over Liberal reformers in the late 1830s? And why, in the decades that followed, did the very communities that earlier had supported the ban come to echo the demand for free trade in alcohol made by ladinos and Liberal rebels? By way of an answer, I will review the legislation generated by the successive regimes that spanned Guatemalas nineteenth century to show that the apparently contradictory responses of different communities and sectors of the population were not contradictory at all. One central, fundamental goal underlay all of them: to be able to produce aguardiente unmolested by the repressive forces of the state. The manner in which a particular community determined to pursue this goal, however, differed depending on how its ethnic makeup and geographic position vis-` -vis the states administrative apa paratus intersected with the national aguardiente policy of a given moment. In general, because indigenous communities were less subject to the scrutiny of the state, they supported either a ban on aguardiente, or free trade, but not a monopoly. Both an aguardiente ban and free tradedespite appearing to be diametrically opposed policiesallowed indigenous community residents to trafc in aguardiente with little or no outside interference.82 Of course, in the case of a ban, technically the aguardiente was illegal, but this rarely mattered because ladino ofcials typically were far removed, and local indigenous leaders were fully complicit. Introduction of the monopoly system, by contrast, brought with it not only greater ladino interference but also a dramatic rise in state repression. Why? In the rst place, because monopolists were almost always ladinos from outside the community. Secondly, because the monopolists were given special powers by the state to seek out and destroy all clandestine competitors. Foremost among these were the hated aguardiente police. Ladinos, in contrast to the residents of indigenous towns, usually threw their support behind free trade. They rarely beneted from an outright ban on the aguardiente trade in indigenous communities precisely because, in most cases, they lived in towns with a signicant ladino presence. The state generally did not attempt to ban intoxicating beverages in such towns, opting instead for a monopoly. Let us examine the available evidence, both primary and secondary, beginning with the late colonial period, to see how it ts with the schematic overview just proposed. According to McCreery, up until the mideighteenth century Crown policy had been directed at the complete suppression of aguardiente. Beginning in 1753 the Crown chose the monopoly

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 125

system instead. The way the monopoly typically worked, based on archival evidence for the department of Quezaltenango during the nineteenth century, as well as published legal statutes for the same period, was that the state sold the right to produce and/or sell aguardiente in a given community to the highest bidder. Departmental capitalsfor example, Quezaltenango frequently had several monopolists simultaneously. In general, all other towns usually had only one or two. This restriction frequently appears to have been circumvented, however, through a practice of dubious legality known as subleasing, whereby the ofcial monopolist authorized several additional people to produce and dispense aguardiente. The rationale for this practice, and the reason why the state tolerated it at all, was that the sub-monopolists helped boost overall sales and thus ensured that the primary monopolist was able to meet the costly nancial obligations of her or his monopoly contract.83 McCreery states that the monopoly system was accompanied, in the early 1780s, by a ban on intoxicating beverages in indigenous communities. Interestingly, though McCreery notes much public opposition to the monopoly, he does not mention a corresponding rejection of the ban. The cofradas complained that the monopoly cut into the prots they made brewing and selling illegal alcohol at estas. Town ofcials and district governors tended to oppose taverns in their jurisdictions, and local populations rioted against these establishments, for the contradictory reasons that they were an evil inuence on the community and that they competed with local contraband alcohol.84 This last sentence, in particular, cuts to the heart of the matter. An ofcial ban on aguardiente was preferable to the monopoly because at least in the former instance state ofcials, economic elites, and plebeian masses were united in breaking the law. Once the monopoly was imposed, however, monopolists and state ofcials now had a vested interest in abolishing all clandestine competition. The monopolists, because they desired to make a prot in addition to the monthly quota that they owed to the state. Ofcials, because the monopoly became an indispensable means by which to help ll the chronically empty public coffers. Events from the city of Quezaltenango support such an interpretation. Gonz lez-Alzate makes clear that the production and sale of aguardiente a crossed all class and ethnic boundaries. Attempts to impose the monopoly system on the city in the mid-1780s were met with widespread opposition from all sectors, including a rebellion that included both indigenous and ladino participants.85 In Ostuncalco it appears that the ban on aguardiente remained throughout the late colonial period despite the fact that several hundred ladinos resided in the town.86 A similar situation almost certainly prevailed in the Mam towns because they were entirely indigenous. Nevertheless, Crown and church ofcials accused indigenous leaders and commoners alike of alcohol

126 Chapter 4 consumption and abuse throughout the colonial period, although it is not clear whether aguardiente, per se, was to blame.87 Soon after independence from Spain was declared in September of 1821, the ban on aguardiente was lifted in Ostuncalco proper, and the monopoly system was imposed.88 During the rst several years, however, local producers and vendors, with the collusion of municipal ofcials, succeeded in circumventing most of the restrictions that a more literal and rigorous implementation of the monopoly regulations would have required. According to Quezaltenangos jefe poltico or departmental governor, Jos Suasn var, their innovative manipulation of e a the aguardiente statutes led to three serious infractions of the law. First, each monopolist, of whom there appear to have been three simultaneously, sold permits that authorized numerous other individuals to participate in the trade under the pretext that they were assistants. Second, they did not limit themselves to only one point of sale per monopoly, as the law required, but instead they sold aguardiente at several locations throughout the town. Third, the monopolists supplied quantities of aguardiente to the remaining towns of the district [of Ostuncalco] where its sale is not permitted. The tolerance of these abuses, Suasn var complained, is what has fomented a the vice of drunkenness and the other resulting vices in all of the towns [of the district], but most scandalously in [Ostuncalco]. [Y]es, the streets are full of drunkards, vagrants, and smugglers, who by night bother the tranquillity and sleep of the good citizens. The laws abundantly provide for the correction of these wrongs; but the ofcials charged with supervising public conduct do not fulll their responsibilities. [Rather], they are the reef on which the most effective [laws] shatter and break apart.89 To remedy the situation, the governor demanded that within two days [Ostuncalcos] municipal ofcials should identify all of the legal monopoly posts . . . by numbering and placing the [national] coat of arms on the door. At the same time, they were ordered to seek out and destroy all of the remaining locations where aguardiente is manufactured and sold, ning all guilty parties as required by law. In addition, Suasn var continued, the a municipalidad must reconnoiter the city streets at least four times daily, between 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., especially the thoroughfares that lead to the surrounding towns. Lax or complicit ofcials, he threatened, would be punished accordingly.90 Despite the governors complaint, and despite his prescriptions for the strict enforcement of aguardiente regulations, local monopolists continued to sell subsidiary rights to interested parties for the next several years. In one particularly egregious case, dating from 1829, former rst alcalde Aniseto Lopes leased his monopoly authority to an additional thirty-one individuals (twenty-ve women and six men). What irked his accuser, Catalina Escobar, and caused her to report Lopes to Quezaltenangos departmental governor,

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 127

was not that he had sold subsidiary shares to the entire town . . . , counseling many not to purchase a [competing] monopoly because he would sell them permission [much more cheaply]. Indeed, Escobar herself had purchased subsidiary rights from Lopes. No, what bothered Escobar was that because I had been late in paying the monthly quota [of four reales or half of a peso], Lopes went before the municipalidad to make me pay. The rst alcalde called on me and forced me to pay the four reales. To make matters worse, the alcalde then kept the money destined for Lopes, and as a result the wife of said Lopes began to insult [Escobar]. All I ask, Escobar concluded to governor Corzo, is that you tell me the truth about whether this man has license to disregard the [aguardiente] regulations because he is rich. . . .91 Catalina Escobars complaint aside, it appears that in the early years of the post-independence period serious opposition to the aguardiente monopoly was avoided in Ostuncalco. On the one hand, monopolists such as Aniseto Lopes were all too willing to offer other townspeople the protection afforded by their monopoly. On the other hand, municipal authorities did little to repress these novel arrangements despite their likely illegality. Indeed, the practices of sub-leasing monopoly rights and ignoring clandestine aguardiente were mutually reinforcing. Given the high monthly cost associated with purchasing an aguardiente monopoly, proprietors could not hope to meet their nancial obligation to the state in the face of ourishing illegal competition. Unable to count on municipal ofcials to effectively repress clandestine producers and sellers, monopolists instead decided to spread their costs by recruiting erstwhile competitors as sub-proprietors.92 To borrow again from Catalina Escobars testimony, Lopes obtained the [aguardiente] monopoly for ten pesos, but the townspeople pay him more than twenty for subsidiary rights.93 By the early 1850s, as I will show, the Conservative state had instituted a more effective, if still far from perfect, apparatus for repressing clandestine aguardiente. Prior to that point, however, aguardiente policy went through several convolutions, some associated with the social upheaval and regime changes of the 1830s. First, in June 1833, the Liberal state abolished aguardiente monopolies in towns that did not produce more than 1,000 pesos for the public treasury, with the following exceptions: the districts of the Pet n, e Escuintla, Huehuetenango, and Suchitep quez, and the capital cities of the e remaining departments.94 Apparently Ostuncalco was one of the towns that saw its monopoly removed, and the measure was met with no small amount of public excitement. Indeed, support for this return to the glory days of the aguardiente ban (read: ourishing contraband trade) is documented by the overwhelming opposition that town notables expressed barely a year later when the monopoly was reinstated. During an emergency junta that included both ladino and

128 Chapter 4 indigenous authorities, as well as parish priest Jos Mara Orellana, the munice ipalidad petitioned Quezaltenangos departmental governor to continue the ban on aguardiente.
Knowing from experience the grave damages that result from the licentiousness caused by drunkenness, not only to particular families, and to the entire populace generally, but also to the public treasury, since that which the [aguardiente] monopolies contribute does not make up for the decit that they cause, delaying by many days the working and operations of agriculture, equaling the personal labor of perhaps 1000 men, [and because] this is the patrimony of the monopolies, causing incalculable damages as much physical as moral, . . . and in the end converting society into a labyrinth of beasts, which is what men are without judgment or reason, [the municipalidad] has decided to beseech the Departmental Governor . . . to take the necessary measures so that this town . . . remains exempt from . . . [the] decree of 27 May of 1834.

If, in the time that has passed since the monopoly originally was abolished, the municipalidad continued, there has been some aguardiente in this town, in the future [we] will exhaust [our] resources and keep watch with the utmost care so that [aguardiente] will disappear from Ostuncalco. Padre Orellana then endorsed the petition with a postscript of his own. [I] am in full agreement with the sentiments of the junta and municipalidad, he wrote, because the motives that they express are certain and evident, [and because I am] condent in the known zeal and activism of the present Alcalde, and that he will exhaust, as is said, all resources toward the total extinction of aguardiente in this town.95 Initially, Ostuncalcos municipalidad failed to meet its objective. As of August 1834, if not before, the monopoly was restored.96 In the medium term, however, public criticism appears to have inspired limited reform of state aguardiente policy. A series of four laws, emitted between October 1834 and August 1835, revised key aspects of the monopoly system. Among the most important revisions, towns that desired to avoid the monopoly altogether were authorized to assume payment of the monthly quota themselves. In addition, a parallel system of unlimited licenses was offered as an alternative to the monopoly. Anyone who could afford the fee, which ranged from 3 to 15 pesos per month, depending on location, could receive a license. The only potentially prohibitive aspect of this alternative was that the amount of income generated by the new licenses had to meet or exceed what would have accrued to the public treasury if a monopoly had been in force for the same area.97 As of early 1836 these changes to state aguardiente policy had been implemented among the towns of the department of Quezaltenango in the following manner. In general, the largest communities, including Ostuncalco and the city of Quezaltenango, qualied for licenses. Ostuncalco

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 129

alone counted eight license holders (ve women, three men), who each paid 4 pesos monthly. The smaller towns, by contrast, tended to have a single monopolist. Monthly quotas varied from 6 to 41 pesos, apparently depending on population and sales. For the rst time two other Mam communitiesChiquirichapa and San Martnwere incorporated into the monopoly alongside Ostuncalco. Both of them, however, opted to pay their monthly quotas of 10.5 and 10 pesos, respectively, for the remainder of the year, in order to preempt any outsiders who otherwise might have desired to acquire their monopoly rights. Only Cantel, among all the other towns of the department of Quezaltenango, similarly paid its own monopoly quota. In the rest of the Mam communities under Ostuncalcos jurisdiction, meanwhile, the ban on aguardiente remained in effect.98 Indigenous antipathy toward the aguardiente monopoly cannot be overemphasized. Although ladinos, too, had good reason to dislike the monopoly, because it restricted the lucrative potential of aguardiente production and vending to a few relatively well-off individuals, and because it justied some heavy-handed state intervention in local affairs, the opposition of indigenous communities had an ethnic component as well. They saw the monopoly as the key by which ladino outsiders could open the door to their town. Even worse, the monopoly vested the newcomers with the authority to use violence against the local populace in the name of repressing contraband. Because ladinos tended to view indigenous people through a lens of ethnic superiority, the potential for abuse of authority was great. And that is why indigenous communities sometimes opted to pay the monopoly quota themselves, despite the considerable nancial burden it implied. Both Chiquirichapa and San Martn paid their quotas for 1836. San Martn pleaded with Quezaltenangos jefe poltico to do the same again in June of 1838, even though Miguel Ralda, a ladino from Ostuncalco, had been operating the monopoly since the beginning of the year. Among other things, the towns municipalidad and principales complained, the aguardiente that Ralda sells in this unhappy town is more like cold water. As a result, when municipal ofcials offered to host a party for the principales and other important men of the town before the day of Saint Peter [June 29th], they sent a commission headed by the rst alcalde to purchase a cask of rst-rate aguardiente from Ostuncalcos monopolist. For such an important occasion, said guests required a delicate little beverage. On returning to San Martn, however, the commission members were attacked, apparently by Ralda or his henchmen, and the cask of aguardiente was destroyed. [A]ll in one voice, the petition concluded, this [municipalidad], the principales of this town, and the [ofcers] of the thirteen cofradas . . . humbly ask and implore our Jefe [poltico] to [rule] that said Miguel Ralda should no longer come to our town to sell aguardiente. . . .99

130 Chapter 4 Needless to say, Conservative efforts to reform aguardiente policy in late 1839, following Rafael Carreras assumption of state power, must have engendered a collective sigh of relief throughout Guatemala because they included a return to the ban on alcohol in indigenous towns. Moreover, in addition to the ban itself, the Conservatives disallowed taverns in populations under 10,000 people, and authorized municipal governments more generally, in combination with the local priest, to request that their respective town be exempted from the monopoly and closed to alcohol. If, however, contraband trafc ourished under such conditions, then municipal ofcials would be held accountable.100 Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that before long Ostuncalco was threatened yet again with an aguardiente monopoly. In February of 1841, barely a year after the ban had resumed, Quezaltenango treasury administrator notied the town of this fact. Two monopoly permits were to be sold at public auction at a base price of 40 pesos a month beginning March 1st. Ostuncalcos ladino rst alcalde responded that the indigenous municipalidad and principales have expressed verbally that they will not admit the monopoly in [this] town. Answering the challenge, the treasury ofcial wrote back to the ladino rst alcalde that the indigenous ofcials had no choice.
[T]he interests of the public treasury have been harmed . . . because since the past year of 1840 until the present date the clandestine production and sale of aguardiente has been tolerated in that town as is notorious and proven. It is clear that the public treasury has preference . . . over the particular interests of some residents who engage in the production and sale [of aguardiente] without contributing anything at all. . . . If the monopoly that has been sold and that is going to be established is as noxious to that populace as you indicate, then it should present [its objections] in a legal manner before the authority of the Se or Superior Intendant General of the public treasury, n rather than insolently proclaiming as fact that the monopoly will not be admitted.101

Even the presence of the monopoly, however, as I have shown, did not necessarily put an end to contraband trafc. Rather, it simply guaranteed a cut for the treasury. Indeed, the monopolists themselves appear to have played at least some role in perpetuating clandestine activity by continuing the illegal practice of selling subsidiary rights to spread the monthly quota costs. Nevertheless, they still complained repeatedly that clandestine competition made it difcult for them to meet their nancial obligations to the state. Certainly Ostuncalcos monopolists made this claim with some frequency, as did the monopolists of Chiquirichapa and San Martn, when the latter two towns were brought back into the system sometime in the late 1840s.102 In response to these problems, the state began to formulate a more forceful policy toward contraband beginning around 1850. First, it established a corps of guardsthe resguardo de aguardientewho answered directly

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 131

to treasury ofcials and the monopolists themselves, thereby circumventing uncooperative local ofcials. This new body assisted in investigating and persecuting clandestine producers and vendors. Second, the state levied new penalties on contraband and provided that a portion of the monies collected by way of nes and the sale of conscated equipment and property would serve as a reward for private citizens who helped uncover clandestine activities.103 Finally, the assistant Corregidor of Ostuncalco, originally appointed ca. 1841, was given the additional title of Juez Preventivo in 1853. This augmented his administrative authority, as the local representative of the departmental Corregidor, with judicial powers deriving from the Juez de Primera Instancia based in Quezaltenango. As both executive ofcer and judge, the assistant Corregidor/Juez Preventivo completely preempted the authority of Ostuncalcos municipal ofcers, embodied at the highest level by the rst alcalde.104 Arrests for clandestine aguardiente jumped. Although the illegal trade was never in danger of being shut down, the new measures made life far more difcult for a growing number of people.105 Complaints began to emerge indicating that the aguardiente guards consistently abused their authority and employed excessive force. They beat up drunks, injured suspects, and damaged property. It was not uncommon for them to burst into a house unannounced, brandishing weapons, and then, to smash every piece of kitchenware that possibly could have contained or been used to produce contraband alcohol.106 This was the modus operandi described by Ostuncalcos indigenous governor, Manuel Escobar, in a petition to Quezaltenangos Corregidor dated October 15, 1858. According to the governor, the guardsmen moved into the canton of Sechicul in early October, entering the houses of the [residents] with sword and pistols in hand, terrorizing them, and climbing up into their storage lofts, breaking jugs, kettles, . . . bowls, cups, griddles, and all manner of utensils used by women. . . . In some of the houses they helped themselves to food, and in others they pocketed the loose money that they stumbled across during their frenzied investigations.107 If the guardsmens behavior appears to have been counterproductive, it was. Even higher level state ofcials sometimes bemoaned their violent tendencies, after they wantonly destroyed evidence, or nearly goaded a neighborhood or an entire town into rebellion.108 Such was the case Christmas morning, 1856. Yesterday, wrote Ostuncalcos Juez Preventivo Jos Miguel e Urrutia to the Corregidor, the tranquillity of this population was almost shattered because of a mistake committed by the celadores or aguardiente police. At about 10:00 a.m., he recounted, they came to ask for my help investigating a house, and although I had serious misgivings about doing so because it was [Christmas day], I ordered them to get the assistant regidor . . . to accompany them. Later that afternoon, Urrutia continued, at

132 Chapter 4 around 1:00 p.m., approximately fty Indians confronted me, complaining that the celadores had entered the house of the cofrada of the Sweet Name of Jesus, and had broken the kettles in which they were cooking tamales for the impending celebration. When the judge went to survey the damage, he found the kitchen full of water and a pile of corn and tamales amidst the cookware shards. I realized then that the celadores, not nding the assistant [regidor], and against my orders, carried out the inspection by themselves, and, according to the Indians, caused this disturbance. It was not without some work, he concluded, that I succeeded in calming the outrage of the aforementioned Indians [by] telling them that I would inform you of what had happened so that you could order me to take appropriate action.109 Faced with increasingly repressive state policies toward clandestine aguardiente from approximately 1850 onward, popular opposition to the monopoly system persisted and grew. In early 1854 Quezaltenangos Corregidor ordered Ostuncalcos Juez Preventivo Manuel Larrave to arrest anyone who continued to oppose the measures relating to the monopoly, precipitating the events of July and October of that year described in the anecdote at the start of this chapter. On the evening of July 30th, soldiers sent to arrest Yrinea Ralda for contraband were held at sword point by her concubine Leandro Galindowho also happened to be the ladino municipalidads rst regidoruntil an angry mob chased them away empty handed the following day. Several months later, when the Juez Preventivo attempted to arrest Cayetano and Matilde Raldathe leaders of the uprisingthis same regidor led him on such a tortured route to the suspects hiding place that they had time to escape. Thus, instead of capturing the fugitives, Larrave ended up trading swordblows with Galindo before having the latter arrested and hauled off to jail.110 Relations did not improve between the Juez Preventivo and the residents of Ostuncalco. Less than a year after the uproar caused by Judge Larraves swordght with councilmember Leandro Galindo, Quezaltenangos Corregidor charged Ostuncalcos ladino mayor with tolerating conspiracies against the district judge and the towns aguardiente monopolist. I make you, and the Municipal Corporation, wrote the Corregidor, ladino as well as indigenous, responsible should anything disagreeable occur. The municipal corporation responded by complaining to President Carrera directly, and District Judge Larrave resigned shortly thereafter. The very day after Larraves resignation, in the words of Ostuncalcos ladino mayor, the better part of the populace appeared, . . . pleading with the Corporation, as protector of the people, and as eye-witness to their suffering . . . to implore [the Supreme Government] to free them of the monopoly. . . . Needless to say, municipal ofcials wasted no time in drafting a petition, putting the case before the Supreme Government so that it could decide on the appropriate solution.111

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 133

Not only was the petition denied, however, but a little less than two months later the Corregidor informed the new district judge that he was to completely disband Ostuncalcos ladino corporation as of December 31st. For the next six years, until January 1862, a series of district judges administered the town with the help of indigenous authorities, several ladino assistants, and the notorious aguardiente police.112 Although this was perhaps the worst crisis that developed in Ostuncalco as a result of state efforts to enforce the aguardiente monopoly, signicant tension marked the remainder of the Conservative period. Within months after the elimination of the ladino municipalidad indigenous authorities began to issue complaints against monopolist Ramualdo Pacheco and the new Juez Preventivo. The latter resigned, barely a year after his predecessor, sometime in early 1857.113 The aguardiente guards, too, continued to be a source of public resentment. Indeed, before this hated enemy even inter-ethnic animosities could be forgotten, if only temporarily. In the aldea of El Suj, where the resguardo had gone to carry out inspections in search of contraband aguardiente, they were attacked by several ladinos, who, according to Quezaltenangos Corregidor Narciso Pacheco, had been incited by the Indians of the area. Subsequent to the attack the indigenous residents hid the offending ladinos to help them elude capture. The same Resguardo is going to inspect [El Suj] once again, the corregidor wrote Ostuncalcos Juez Preventivo, and because the aforementioned ladinos undoubtedly remain there, and because at the instigation of the Indians they will want to drive out the guards once again, I am sending you [an additional] ten men from this garrison so that you personally can go to the area, stationing yourself in a place where you can see but not be seen, ready to capture all of the ladinos who might appear and making sure that nobody escapes. . . .114 Little by little the Mam Maya towns surrounding Ostuncalco also were placed under the monopoly system. As I noted above, Chiquirichapa and San Martn were reintroduced sometime in the late 1840s. San Crist bal Cabric n o a was assigned a monopoly in the mid 1850s, and, by 1863, if not before, both San Miguel Sig il and Santa Cruz Cajol also were incorporated.115 All of u a a these communities expressed their distaste for the aguardiente monopoly in one form or another, from petitions to conspiracy and violence. Wherever the monopoly went, it seems, unhappiness and unrest were sure to follow. As a general rule, most of the Mam communities complained that the monopolists did not abide by the regulations that governed the hours and days of their operation. Drunkenness and debauchery were allowed to continue all night, for example, because the monopolists failed to close their doors at 6:00 p.m. each evening. Numerous problems, including dozens of alcohol-related deaths, were blamed on their negligence. The monopolists, for their part, argued that harassment and uncooperative customers regularly prevented

134 Chapter 4 them from closing at the appointed hour. When they did attempt to close on time the rabble that assembled outside their establishments sometimes went so far as to break or burn their doors down.116 More specic problems also proliferated. Ofcials from Cabric n and a Sig il charged that the monopolists of their respective towns had used their u a new positions to gain access to community land. The Municipalidad, Principales and Comun of Sig il wrote Ostuncalcos Juez Preventivo that for u a a long time Rosario Minera, a [ladina] from Quezaltenango, has administered the aguardiente monopoly of our town. During this period, they complained, we have suffered continuous vexations from her and her family, appropriating for themselves the lands and properties of the Comun and of particular individuals [in exchange] for a little alcohol. In virtue of this information, and without making mention of other scandalous facts relating to Minera and family, we ask and we humbly beg, Se or Judge, that you see n t to make the aforementioned Se ora and family leave our town. . . .117 n Cabric ns governor and municipalidad made a similar request to the a Juez Preventivo concerning their monopolist, Nemecio Toledo. Also from Quezaltenango, Toledo, like Minera, had managed to acquire land that pertained to the community ejido. It is not clear if the acquisitions had involved aguardiente directly, as appears to have been true in Sig il , or whether u a Toledo simply purchased the properties outright once he moved to town. Regardless of the details, however, community ofcials were adamant that the monopolist had to go. We do not like Toledo, they wrote. Please order him to remove his cattle from our land and to vacate our town.118 Chiquirichapas authorities lamented the violence visited upon their residents by the monopolists and the aguardiente guards. The 1857 testimony of the towns second alcalde and the municipal secretary, aside from documenting one such instance, suggests that popular animosity toward the repressive monopoly system was prevalent among all sectors of the community. The alcalde and the secretary had witnessed the local monopolist and an aguardiente guard striking two drunken menBaltazar Sanchez and Pedro Juareswith the ats of their swords. When asked by Ostuncalcos Juez Preventivo if this had been an isolated incident, or if the celadores had committed other offenses of this nature, both ofcials responded that they had done even worse. To borrow the words of Chiquirichapas alcalde, the guardsmen were notorious for entering the cofradas en masse and without any consideration for the fact that there are indigenous principales and even [municipal] authorities present, they beat them because they block the guards entrance to . . . the house.119 San Martns community leaders also repeatedly expressed their dissat isfaction with the individuals who lled the towns monopoly. Sometimes they petitioned higher level authorities to replace the offending monopolist. At other times they manifested their disenchantment through a campaign of

Intoxicating Politics: Gender, Ethnicity, and Alcohol in the Transition to Liberal Rule 135

intimidation. Such was the case in early 1864, after Domingo Benito purchased the towns monopoly and placed Luciana Dias in charge as the administrator. [T]he indgenas of [San Martn] are harassing the aforementioned Dias, the Corregidor wrote Ostuncalcos Juez Preventivo, not wanting to recognize her as the monopolist. You are to make such indgenas understand that . . . Dias is the legitimate operator of that monopoly, forewarning them at the same time not to harass her nor to hinder her in the sale of aguardiente. It is interesting to note that this admonition from the Corregidor came less than two months after San Martns governor had been forced to resign in the face of charges that he and other indgenas of [the town had] attempted an insurrection against the monopolist and [aguardiente] guards. . . .120 In sum, residents of the district of Ostuncalco, indigenous and ladino, women and men, were more than ready to hear the Liberal rebels call for a replacement of the aguardiente monopoly by free and unrestricted trade.121 They had been denouncing and resisting the monopoly for decades, and area women, in particular, had suffered incarceration by the hundreds for their transgressions. Nor were they alone in this regard. People across Guatemala chafed at the restrictive and repressive aspects of the Conservatives aguardiente policy, and they were willing to risk a return to Liberal rule because they had grown tired of thirty-odd years of repression and harassment at the hands of the Conservative state.122 To focus on the fact that the Liberals ended up betraying their aspirationsalmost immediately re-instituting an equally oppressive aguardiente regimenmisses the point.123 Dissatisfaction with Conservative repression had never been enough to spark an outright revolution of the masses. Nor would it spark a repeat of the Carrera Revolt in the face of Liberal betrayal. Rather, opposition to the aguardiente monopoly was one more factor that helped erode popular enthusiasm for Carrera and the Conservative regimeenthusiasm that might have served to bolster Conservative fortunes in the face of the Liberal military challenge. Instead, popular sentiment was ambivalent. Indigenous communities, in particular, still sympathized with Carreras memory. But the Conservative state had hurt them in too many ways. Whether ones focus is land, labor, or aguardiente, the evidence of betrayal is overwhelming. Most of the compelling reasons to defend Conservative rule, or to fear its demise and the beginning of a Liberal era, had disappeared long before 1871.

chapter

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation: The Malformation of Guatemalan National Identity

guatemalas return to liberal rule in 1871 did not represent a watershed transformation of labor relations or land tenure. Indeed, despite the impressive urry of ambitious sounding presidential decrees and legal reforms that marked much of the 1870s and 1880s, continuity, not rupture, characterized Liberal and Conservative practices with regard to land and labor. If some regions did experience a heightened pace of property titling or an expansion of coercive workforce recruitment mechanisms during the Reforma, this was because the trends that had been initiated decades earlier continued to gather momentum and to reach new areas of the country with each passing decade. In much the same way, the growth of the state after 1870, although more impressive than previous years, did not reect a qualitative shift in priorities from Conservative to Liberal administrations, but rather the cumulative efforts of both regimes to expand state institutions and infrastructure. One important exception to this continuity between Conservative and Liberal state-building projects was the manner in which Liberals conceptualized the nation. Conservatives, echoing the colonial state before them, incorporated indigenous Guatemalans into the nation as perpetual minors, or childcitizens, simultaneously restricted from certain social and political spheres but also nominally protected from ladino predations. Post-1870 Liberals, by contrast, given their historical experience struggling with indigenous communities over land, labor, and political power in the overwhelmingly Mayan west, harbored an intense animosity toward the indigenous majority, and they desired to exclude them from the privileges and rights associated with citizenshipeven a restricted citizenshipwhenever possible. Henceforth, Guatemala was to be a ladino nation, open to indigenous people only when

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 137

they abandoned their linguistic and cultural heritage in favor of the Spanish language and western social customs, and began to cooperate with Liberal state makers. This chapter traces the emergence of a ladino-oriented national state from the renewed Spanish and mestizo colonization of Guatemalas indigenous western region during the eighteenth century to the Liberal Reforma of the 1870s and 1880s. Prior to the late eighteenth century, the indigenous municipal council or cabildo had been the basic building block of the colonial state in the western zone. After approximately 1750, however, as the western ladino population burgeoned, a growing number of ladino municipal councils were established and incorporated into the states regional governing apparatus. By the end of the colonial period the ladino council or ayuntamiento, as it was now called, had displaced its indigenous counterpart as the medium of choice through which provincial ofcials administered the western highlands. Perhaps because of this shift toward privileging local ladinos and ladino municipal ofcers over Mayan authorities and residents, the Guatemalan state had little legitimacy among western indigenous communities once bereft of the Spanish crown. Surprisingly, however, the new republican state also lacked legitimacy among western ladinos, who lost little time in asserting their autonomy and independence when they believed that Guatemala Citys attention was diverted elsewhere. The establishment of the State of Los Altos in 1838, at the height of the Carrera revolt, epitomized the provincial sentiments of western ladinos. But it also had the effect of driving regional indigenous communities back into the arms of Guatemala City. Indeed, Mayan distrust of their regional ladino rivals helped destroy the Los Altos experiment and return the western highlands to the control of the erstwhile colonial capital. Over the next three decades Rafael Carrera rmly cemented the legitimacy of Guatemalas republican state, centered in Guatemala City, among both indigenous and ladino populations. He and his Conservative allies supported commercial agriculture and the expansion and strengthening of various state institutions, and, particularly after mid-century, his efforts were bolstered by the steady growth of treasury revenues. By the late 1860s, when western Liberals began to challenge militarily the Conservatives hold on power, there was no question of separating the west from Guatemala City. Rather, the western-based rebels desired to take control of the now-stable national state, and to use it as a vehicle for imposing their provincial and exclusionary vision of the nation on Guatemalas ethnically diverse populace as well as the capitalino elite. That the western Liberals succeeded attests to their ability to mobilize Guatemalan ladinos in support of the state. In addition, however, it also

138 Chapter 5 attests to the absence of widespread, popular mobilization of the kind that toppled Mariano G lvez and the rst generation of Liberal reformers. Partly, a this was because popular sectorsparticularly the indigenous majority did not view the Reforma as a blanket attack on their way of life. The ladino nationalism of Reforma-era western Liberals did not forcibly repress indigenous culture as the G lvez administration had attempted to do thirty a years earlier. Indeed, it was predicated on the continued existence of a large indigenous populationto serve as an exploitable labor force but also as a foil against which ladino superiority and unity could be asserted. Nor did the Reforma come packaged with a series of land reform laws that concretely disentailed indigenous community property for the very rst time. On this front post-1870 Liberals demonstrated remarkable exibility and pragmatism, in some cases even enlarging a particular towns common land. Of course, part of the reason for this occasional benevolence was that Conservative authorities already had presided over the expropriation of areas suitable for cash crops like coffee, sugar, and cotton. Finally, although income from the coffee boom hardly was distributed in an equal or even fair manner, in the context of labor shortages and expanding state institutions and infrastructure, at least some popular sectors were able to glean enough for themselves from the expanding economy to survive the dramatic social changes of the late nineteenth century without resorting to another Carrera revolt.

The Indigenous Cabildo through the Eighteenth Century: Building Block of the Colonial State
Following the conquest of the kingdoms and peoples of the New World, the Spanish crown, as well as Spaniards of varying ofcial and quasiofcial capacitiesgobernadores, alcaldes mayores, corregidores, priests, encomenderos confronted the question of how to reorganize indigenous society. For the most part, high-level political and social structures were dismantled, while at the level of the agricultural settlement or community the model nally written intoand henceforth demanded byroyal law was that of the Spanish municipio with its cabildo or town council. The cabildo itself proved only partially disruptive for non-elite Mayans because it was not all that dissimilar from preexisting local indigenous political practices, in which a relatively democratic, if highly patriarchal, decision-making body governed local affairs while under the surveillance and ultimate control of resident elites who typically represented the larger polity. Far more problematic, by contrast, was the settlement pattern or physical layout of the municipio: that of a nucleated or concentrated town, established on a grid, and anchored at its center by a literal square around which were constructed the church, cabildo

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 139

ofces, and other important municipal buildings. Because indigenous society was much less urban than its Spanish contemporary at the time of the conquest, this settlement pattern required the congregacin or reduccin of diso o persed households and hamlets that were located, quite logically, in close proximity to the cultivated areas from which they derived their subsistence. The military violence of the early sixteenth century was followed not just by the scourge of disease then, but also by the trauma associated with the reestablishment of indigenous communities along the lines of the Spanish municipio. Despite this upheaval, it would be incorrect to conclude that there was not a logic, or at least a rationale, for the dislocation that Spanish authorities imposed on native populations of the New World. Once reduced to a series of densely populated municipios, formerly dispersed peoples could be observed and controlled much more easily, as well as more easily subjected to such demands and activities as tribute payment and religious indoctrination. These outcomes often remained elusive, however, and from the standpoint of royal ofcials and religious personnel there were many failures in the effort to force indigenous society into the straightjacket of Spanish-style settlement. Some communities began to return to their former locales almost as soon as they had been relocated. Others trickled back over the longer term. In still other cases, the reduced towns simply replicated their former, dispersed style of settlement in the new location. Excepting market days, celebrations, and the activities of local government, town centers frequently were left almost vacant. For all practical purposes they returned to the status of preColumbian ceremonial and political sites, visited on religious holidays, for special gatherings, and to fulll tributary or other obligations, but otherwise inhabited only by a handful of religious or political functionaries. Qualications aside, on a formal level, at least, the Spanish municipio was well established among Guatemalas indigenous communities by the end of the sixteenth century. Its cabildo, or town council, comprised the following ofcials: an alcalde, who served both as mayor and judge, an assistant alcalde, four or more regidores or council members, and a sndico or manager/legal agent. In addition, most cabildos counted a number of messengers and assistants, referred to generically as alguaciles or mayores. Over the course of the next two centuries the cabildo melded with preexisting decision-making bodies to produce the civil hierarchy of anthropological fame, with cabildo posts signifying stepping stones on the road to a community-wide council of elder patriarchs, or principales. Although ofcially unrecognized by Spanish law, the principales represented the real power in the indigenous community, superseding the cabildo and deciding all but routine matters of day-to-day municipal administration. A number of religious ofces normally existed alongside the indigenous communitys civil hierarchy: mayordomos, maestros de coro or cantores, scals,

140 Chapter 5 and sacristans. Depending on the community and the period, these ofces also were organized into a ranked hierarchy, and may have been integrated to varying degrees with the civil posts of the municipal cabildo. In addition, aside from civil and religious ofces, particular indigenous patriarchs often wielded inordinate power due to their residual connections to the pre-Columbian state. They commonly retained control of lands that had pertained to their predecessors as estates or administrative or political jurisdictions, which they titled privately or sometimes sold off to individual Spaniards against the wishes of fellow community members. As descendants of Mayan nobles and military chiefs, these patriarchsreferred to generically as caciquesoften assumed the status of principal without serving the community through a long succession of civil or religious posts. This does not mean, however, that they were opposed to holding such ofces. Caciques were known to use their inherited status and relative afuence to monopolize the highest cabildo positions and thus further dominate local politics. If this was made difcult by royal law, which prohibited the back-to-back reelection of civil ofcers, the same could not be said for the post of the gobernador, a municipal-level super-executive appointed by corregidores and alcaldes mayores. Gobernadores served for life unless they resigned or were replaced due to malfeasance, and their power rivaled and sometimes preempted that of the entire elected cabildo. For much of the colonial period caciques and others with links to the pre-Columbian nobility dominated the post of gobernador. This appears to have been the case among the southeastern Mam centered at San Juan Ostuncalco. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at least, the regions gobernadores were referred to periodically as caciques. Two cacique families in particularMarroqun and Barrios de San Mill nlled a the post with relative frequency for much of the period. Moreover, on at least two occasions, the Barrios de San Mill n family attempted to capitalize a on its inherited privileges by privately titling community lands. In the rst instance, dating from 1600, Gabriel Barrios de San Mill n the elder titled a twelve caballeraslater estimated at well over 100called Zacualpa, which he subsequently sold off to two Spaniards from Quezaltenango. This sale gave rise to numerous disputes and recriminations over the remainder of the colonial period as Ostuncalco fought to reassert its control over the area. In the second instance, Gabriel the younger attempted to title a former livestock estancia north of Zacualpa that apparently had been maintained by the residents of San Crist bal Cabric n in support of his father. Cabric ns o a a service to Gabriel the elder, however, appears to have ended by the midseventeenth centuryperhaps due to his removal from ofce as gobernador ca. 1637. Thus, when Gabriel the younger petitioned for title to the estancia in 1664 he was strenuously opposed by Cabric ns cabildo ofcials.1 a

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 141

The Ladinization of the Colonial State: Non-Indigenous Populations and Cabildos after 1750
Until the eighteenth century, the indigenous municipio served as the foundation of colonial society within the Kingdom of Guatemala. Its ofcials exercised direct control over the vast majority of the inhabited territory that comprised the kingdom, and it is through indigenous municipal ofcials that royal authorities governed. Over the course of the eighteenth century, however, the calculus of Crown rule was altered by the demographic expansion of ladinos within traditionally indigenous zonesfor example, the western highland region. This trend received added impetus from a succession of earthquakes that destroyed Guatemalas colonial seat, Santiago de los Caballeros, during the 1770s, and prompted a mass exodus of ladinos toward the indigenous hinterlands in the west. Ladino migrants to the south of the western region formed what historians David McCreery and Arturo Taracena Arriola have called an axis of settlements by the late colonial period that stretched from San Miguel Totonicap n to the Barrio of San a Marcos and beyond. Two arcs connected these endpoints. The upper or northern arc comprised San Carlos Sija, San Antonio Bob s, Ro Blanco, o and San Lorenzosmall agricultural communities that emerged in the interstices of the surrounding indigenous towns. The lower or southern arc was composed of Salcaj , Quezaltenango, and San Juan Ostuncalco. Like San a Miguel and San Marcos, these settlements, with the exception of Salcaj , a were formed by ladino colonization of preexisting indigenous population centers. Finally, west and north of San Marcos, additional ladino settlements emerged in the indigenous towns of Tejutla, Tacan , San Pablo, and a Malacat n.2 a One surprising aspect of this movement of ladinos from Guatemalas capital and its environs to the indigenous west is that it was, by and large, illegal. Not in the sense that the Crown specically outlawed westward migration, but rather from the standpoint that non-Mayansbe they Spaniards, mestizos, or people of African descentwere barred from residing in indigenous towns or from encroaching, unbidden, on indigenous land. Although there were exceptions to the residence banroyal ofcials serving in provincial or regional cabeceras, parish priests and other religious personnelthese could not account for the wave of ladinos that ooded indigenous towns during the eighteenth century. Likewise, although there were circumstances under which ladinos legally could challenge and title land utilized by indigenous communities, the success of such efforts usually had little to do with legal merit, and everything to do with the socio-economic standing and political or personal connections of the plaintiff. In sum, the growing number of ladinos who took up residence in the indigenous communities of the western

142 Chapter 5 highlands, or who staked out territory claimed by indigenous agriculturists, did so against the spirit, if not always the letter, of royal law.3 The underlying illegality of this migration led to a revealing contradiction. Despite burgeoning numbers, ladino residents could not participate, at least formally, in local politics or administration. Community elections and cabildo ofces remained restricted to the indigenous inhabitants. This is not to say that ladinos did not inuence local affairs in important ways. They did, by exploiting ties to regionally based royal ofcials, and by making alliances with, or simply intimidating, indigenous authorities. Nonetheless, they lacked an open, legitimate venue for deciding and managing their interests at the local level. This problem was nally rectied, at least from the standpoint of the regions ladinos, when the Crown began to authorize the formation of ladino municipal governments in the western highlands from the mideighteenth century onward. The rst ladino cabildo so recognized in the southern portion of the region was San Marcos in 1754, followed by Salcaj a and San Carlos Sija in 1778.4 Additional ladino councils were not authorized until the early nineteenth century, beginning with Quezaltenango in 1805, and followed by a spate of others in 1806, including San Juan Ostuncalco, San Antonio Bob s, San Lorenzo, and Tejutla.5 o By the early 1800s, then, a number of the ladino settlements that had emerged between and within the indigenous towns of Guatemalas southwestern highlands were allowed to form their own community-level governing bodies. If the settlements located in the southern portion of the region indeed could be considered to constitute a ladino axis, then a further factor now distinguished the upper and lower arcs or tiers. Because upper-tier ladinos had settled the interstices of preexisting Maya communities, their new cabildos and municipal jurisdictions were distinct from those of the surrounding indigenous towns, frequent boundary disputes notwithstanding. Lower-tier ladinos, by contrast, had settled at or alongside the very center of preexisting Mayan towns. The territorial jurisdiction of their new municipal cabildos was coterminous with those of indigenous authorities, creating a situation fraught with ambiguity and tension as the ladino bodies moved quickly to dominate their indigenous counterparts, to limit the latters autonomy and scope, and to usurp its prerogatives with regard to such things as how community lands would be exploited.6 This is how the dual-municipality system of local government emerged in Guatemalas southwestern highlands, and excepting the immediate post-independence period (ca. 182139), it persisted there in one form or another until well into the twentieth century.7 The municipal cabildo was not always the most reliable foundation for the Spanish colonial state because it had the potential to function more democratically than other political and administrative institutions of the time. In theory, at least, cabildo ofcers were elected by adult, property-holding males

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 143

from a pool of qualied candidates. All parties involved with this process, electors and candidates alike, were supposed to be local residents. In practice, higher level Spanish authorities often named cabildo ofcials, and by the seventeenth century it was common to auction off cabildo posts in the ofcially established Spanish towns. Even in indigenous towns, where elections rather than administrative appointments or auctions were the rule, the electorate typically was restricted to present and former ofceholders and other important male elders who together comprised the body of community principales. That said, the municipal cabildo still held the greatest promise for popular-based politics of any colonial-era Spanish institution, and most cabildos located outside of the vice-regal capitals and regional administrative seats probably could be characterized as quasidemocratic. This would include the majority of indigenous cabildos, almost by denition, but alsoif Guatemala serves as any guidethose ladino councils that were established toward the end of the colonial period as a result of provincial pressure.8 Even after independence, as presidents and congresses replaced viceroys, gobernadores, and audiencias, the municipal government or municipalidad remained closest to, and most inuenced by, the popular will, or at least what passed for such in Guatemalan cities and rural communities. This was true despite the fact that colonial-era electoral practices continued to be the norm for most of the nineteenth century, restricting suffrage to present and former municipal ofcials, as well as principales in the case of indigenous towns.9 As a result, depending on the issue, or the moment, municipal councils often sided with local interests, whether individual or collective, and against higher level state institutions or their particular demands. Certainly national and regional administrators often suspected municipal authoritiesboth indigenous and ladinoof disloyalty, or of disobeying or undercutting their orders. Thus, although the municipalidad served as the basic link between the state and the population at large, it played a very contradictory role: on the one hand, receiving and complying with a constant barrage of orders from higher level functionaries; and on the other, frequently adapting or even refusing to implement these orders when they contravened local sensibilities or interests or destabilized the local balance of power.10 It bears repeating that the municipalidad exhibited a janus-faced quality regardless of whether it corresponded to an indigenous or ladino population.11 Yet because regional and national state ofcials shared the Hispanic background of municipal-level ladinos, and because they were tied to the latter as kin, friends, business associates, or political allies, the state as a whole was predisposed to identify the ladino council, in contrast to its indigenous precursor, as a naturally more reliable and secureif still inconsistentally. Almost by its very existence, then, the ladino municipalidad became the vehicle of choice through which state administrators exercised their power and

144 Chapter 5 discharged their duties at the sub-regional level. Although the indigenous municipal council was not subordinated to its ladino counterpart by royal decree or early republican legislation, in actual practice it was transformed into a junior partner. The proliferation of ladino councils and the emergence of the dual-municipality system in the waning decades of the colonial period thus implied the further subjugation of indigenous society to the political authority and control of Guatemalas ladino minority. Following independence, early republicans reinforced this trend, and where indigenous people once had been able to imagine the possibility of a benevolent, if not entirely impartial, state, now they found themselves face to face with a much more overt antagonist. Not only did the republican state now operate at the local level through a proliferating number of ladino municipal councils and their ofcials, but it tended to favor and privilege those councils over the preexisting indigenous ones. This ladinization of the Guatemalan state, aside from presenting new difculties for indigenous society, corresponded to the development of regional identities among recently established provincial ladinos. For much of the colonial period separatist sentiment within the boundaries of present-day Guatemala remained submergedovershadowed by the tension that marked indigenous-Spanish relations, and subsumed within the constant power struggles that pitted conquistadors and their descendants against succeeding waves of peninsular bureaucrats.12 The growth of sizable ladino settlements well outside of Guatemalas central valley, however, particularly from the lateseventeenth century onward, established the conditions for provincial resentment of the colonial capital. The subsequent proliferation of ladino municipal councils after 1750 provided an important vehicle by which the emerging regional population could elaborate its grievances and advance its interests, both within and apart from the state. As a result of this trend, regionally based state ofcials no longer ruled over an undifferentiated (in their eyes) mass of colonial others in virtual isolation from their ethnic or caste equals alone but for a small coterie of family members, assistants, and religious personnel. Now they faced a growing constituency of Hispanic-oriented locals, and in addition to kinship and business ties, they were linked to the latter through the administrative and political channels that wove each newly established ladino cabildo into the fabric of a particular regions state apparatus. In sum, by the end of the colonial era, regional state institutions from dispersed ladino cabildos up to the ofce of the corregidor itself frequently cultivated and advanced, rather than discouraged or repressed, provincial demands that challenged the policies and authority of superiors in Guatemala City. A shared cultural opposition to indigenous society, then, did not prevent regionalist resentment of the privileged core from dividing provincial and capital-based ladinos. This antagonism was heightened further by cultural

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 145

and racial distinctions among ladinos themselves. Although capital-city elites tended to be Spaniards and creoles with close ties to royal institutions, their provincial counterparts generally included a greater proportion of mestizos and other outcasts of the colonial system. Prior to independence these distinctions among ladinos were downplayed in the face of the creole-peninsular struggle that marked the later years of Bourbon administration. Following independence, however, caste-based elitism gave regional partisans further reason to look with ambivalence and distrust at the creole republicans who commanded the heights of the economy and the central state.13

Regionalism, Ethnicity, and the Illegitimacy of the Incipient Republican State

At the start of the republican era, no region was readier than Quezaltenango to challenge the ideological, political, and economic domination of the erstwhile colonial capital, Guatemala City. Quezaltenango had existed as a corregimiento for much of the colonial period, and its jurisdiction had encompassed a large proportion of the ladino communities of the western highlands. The city itself, aside from having been cabecera of the former corregimiento, counted the largest non-indigenous population of any regional town and served as the fulcrum of the western ladino axis.14 Unsurprisingly, demands for greater political and administrative autonomy emanated most forcefully from Quezaltenangos provincial elite, who chafed at their lack of representation in Guatemala City as manifested by the prejudicial monopolies and special privileges that had been accorded the capital throughout the colonial years. They pointed to persistent state inaction in the face of the imported cotton textiles that continued to harm western producers and slow the regions economic growth as further evidence of the supremacy of capitalino interests. In addition, the Quezalteco elite lamented the failure of Guatemala City-based authorities to address adequately the regions perceived Indian problem. Western ladinos had been battling the regions tenacious Mayan communities for decades, attempting to carve out the economic and political space they believed they were due. Land in particular, was a contentious issue that gave rise to heated and even violent conict in which ethnic differences were openly acknowledged and to which the dispute over land was often attributed. If something were not done to offset the western highlands recalcitrant indigenous majority, the Quezalteco elite reasoned, then the city and its regional hinterlands would remain condemned to economic and social stagnationits rich lands untapped, its vast potential unrealized.15 Eventually, as I have described elsewhere, the advent of the Carrera Revolt provided favorable conditions for the Quezalteco elite and other western ladinos to act on their resentment toward the capital by seceding from Guatemala

146 Chapter 5 in early 1838 as the independent state of Los Altos. Well before this rebellious denouement, however, Quezaltenangos ladino elite already had begun to challenge the dominance of Guatemala City in a number of ways. One of the most notable incidents occurred shortly after Central Americas declaration of independence in September 1821. Impatient to ensure its autonomy from the former colonial capital, Quezaltenangos ladino municipal council unilaterally annexed itself to the incipient Mexican Empire of Agustn de Iturbide. Neither Guatemala City nor the Guatemalan provisional governing junta had decided on or authorized such a move, and interim political chief Gabino Ganza, the former Captain General, complained with alarm that Quezaltenangos actions, along with similar developments elsewhere in the isthmus, imposed annexation as the only alternative to Central Americas complete disintegration.16 When Guatemala City attempted to reassert its authority over the errant province early in the new year, the ladino council responded that [t]he citizens of Quezaltenango declare that in no way nor under any circumstances do they desire to recognize the Guatemalan government and that their true wish is to recognize the Mexican Empire now and forever. The standoff continued for several months, ending only with the arrival of Mexican troops under General Vicente Filsola. The General threatened Quezaltenangos ladino ofcials with forced reintegration if they refused to submit voluntarily to Guatemalan authority.17 Interestingly, Quezalteco indigenous leaders joined the ladino municipal council in declaring for the Plan de Iguala in November 1821. Moreover, several nearby indigenous towns directly answered Quezaltenangos call to support Mexican annexation of the region, and numerous other Mayan communities throughout the highlands appear to have favored such an outcome independently.18 Simply put, the indigenous majority feared the rule of Guatemalan ladinos unfettered by the moderating inuence of higher level royal ofcials based outside the region and epitomized by the king himself. The rebellion of the Indian King of Totonicap n, for example, in 1820, a provides ample evidence that the indigenous people of the western highlands did not trust Guatemala City-based ofcials or their regional subordinates to fairly and honestly implement royal policy. This distrust persisted throughout the 1820s and 1830s, as indigenous communities continued to pursue clandestine ties to Mexico and to resist and rebel against state policies that called for changes in land tenure or taxation.19 In sum, both indigenous and ladino residents of the western highland region appear to have viewed the incipient republican state with a great deal of ambivalence in the early post-independence years. At times, the specter of onerous and unpopular impositions from Guatemala City even allowed interethnic rivalry to be submerged, if only for awhile. This is exactly what occurred in late 1826, in a virtual dress rehearsal for the Carrera revolt. For

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 147

the preceding two years the population had suffered a train of burdensome exactions and policies under Guatemalas new Liberal state government, inaugurated as part of the Central American Federation. Taxes, free trade, land and cemetery reforms, and abolition of the religious fuero were just some of the Liberal-oriented measures that helped to generate discontent throughout the highlands. Then, in October 1826, political crisis forced Guatemalas state government to abandon Guatemala City for Quezaltenango. Federation President Manuel Jos Arce arrested Guatemalas chief executive, Governor Juan e Barrundia, and chased the remaining state ofcials out of the capital. Guatemalan Vice-governor Cirilo Flores reconvened the state government in Quezaltenango, where he set about to prepare for an anticipated invasion of federal troops by imposing forced loans and conscriptions on the towns already-disgruntled residents. Soldiers raided house-to-house, looking for weapons and horses to provision the defense force, and even the Church stables were looted. As news of this offense against God spread throughout the city, a multiethnic crowd of several thousand formed in front of Quezaltenangos cathedral. The vice-governor arrived with a handful of municipal ofcials to quell the unrest, but in the end the angry mob beat Flores to death, tearing him limb from limb to calls of death to the tyrant, death to the heretic, death to the thief and long live religion.20 San Juan Ostuncalcos experiences during this period do not appear to have included such overt manifestations of interethnic cooperation. They do reinforce, however, the conclusion that many sectors of the western populaceregardless of ethnicityquestioned the legitimacy of Guatemalas post-independence Liberal state. Conict between Ostuncalco and departmental authorities over taxation, for example, endemic to the 1820s and 1830s, demonstrates well this lack of legitimacy. Throughout these years Ostuncalcos indigenous and ladino municipal leaders rarely complied with state-mandated tax collections in anything but the most half-hearted manner. In 1824, for example, the jefe poltico of Quezaltenango issued several orders to Ostuncalcos rst alcalde, ladino Francisco Lopes, demanding that he collect a nation-wide donativo or donation that had been due at the beginning of April. Writing his third reminder on 8 October, the jefe poltico condemned the municipalidads lackadaisical response, complaining that as of today, neither the donativo of the Indians nor of the Ladinos has arrived.21 Departmental ofcials had similar problems collecting the national head tax or contribucin that superseded colonial-era tribute, not only in Ostuno calco but also in the surrounding Mam towns of the district. In 1830 the tax was supposed to have been collected by mid-spring, but as of late July Ostuncalcos authorities had turned over only 92 of 891 pesos. The jefe poltico threatened to send in troops on at least three separate occasions, and in

148 Chapter 5 October he ordered the municipalidad to round up all the delinquents so that the soldiers could escort them to Quezaltenango. With regard to the nearby towns of Concepci n Chiquirichapa and San Martn Sacatep quez, the jefe o e poltico still had not received their tax moneys as of late November. He di rected Ostuncalcos ladino rst alcalde Bernabe Monterrosa to remand their municipal ofcers to Quezaltenango for imprisonment.22 A little over two years later, in the spring of 1833, the jefe poltico faulted Ostuncalco once again for its proven tardiness, and the low regard [it placed] on compliance with the orders dispatched by this government . . . , the laws that govern us . . . , [and what I have] demanded of it in various notes which have gone unanswered. . . . Apparently the town still had not nished collecting the head tax for the previous two years, and the jefe poltico threatened the municipalidad with a ne of 50 pesos, to be divided among its members, if it did not comply within seven days. More than two weeks passed and the ne nally was assessed, accompanied by the threat that an additional 100 pesos would be charged the municipal ofcers if they did not quickly settle the towns delinquent tax accounts.23 Aside from the issue of taxation, Ostuncalcos Mam residents had additional reason to question the legitimacy of Guatemalas post-colonial Liberal state. Several new policies were aimed directly at decreasing the autonomy of the indigenous population vis-` -vis its ladino counterpart as well as the state a more generally. With regard to land, for example, the evidence is clear that early Liberal legislation was designed to challenge the proprietary control that Mayan communities historically had exercised over the territory within their administrative jurisdictions. Under the cover of these new laws ladino claims to the communal property of the Mam towns within Ostuncalcos orbit jumped dramatically, particularly in the fertile piedmont area.24 Liberal authorities also attempted to build on articles of the 1812 Cadz Constitution that established the legal foundation for integrated ladino-indigenous municipal councils in ethnically heterogeneous towns. Evidence for the department of Quezaltenango suggests that such integrated councils were initiated with the municipal elections that followed the restoration of the Cadz Constitution in 1820. Despite Liberal proclamations in favor of equality, integration as it was practiced meant that indigenous council members were subordinated to their ladino counterparts in the hierarchy of municipal ofces, although nothing in either the Spanish or Guatemalan constitutions explicitly required this. If Ostuncalco is any guide, for example, then the position of rst alcalde always was reserved for a ladino. Regardless, as Antonio Aguilar and Diego Agustintwo of the towns indigenous ofcialsremarked in 1826, because the municipalidad is in one body, the naturales do nothing more than listen and watch. The integrated municipalidad appears to have endured in the western highlands through the rst Liberal period and the short-lived Los Altos experiment,

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 149

until the elections of December 1840 that followed Rafael Carreras denitive victory over regional Liberals.25 Finally, in the mid-1830s, implementation of the Livingston Codes sealed indigenous opinion toward the Guatemala City-based Liberal state. Theoretically, the Livingston Codes reorganized Guatemalas legal system along more efcient, egalitarian lines. Among other things, they instituted trial by jury, established the guarantee of habeas corpus, and placed new circuit courts in towns and regions that previously had not had easy access to supra-municipal state institutions. In practice, however, these positive-sounding innovations turned out to be more of a burden than a boon for the inhabitants of the affected communities. Local residents now found themselves subjected to a much greater degree of state scrutiny and interventionusually unwanted than ever before. And in the short-run, at least, they were required to complete a whole host of infrastructural and organizational tasksrepresenting substantial outlays of time and moneybefore the new legal system could be made operational, and before they could begin to realize some of its anticipated benets.26 Ostuncalcos experiences are instructive in this regard because the town is widely believed to have struck the rst blow against the Livingston Codes, initiating the violent unrest of the late 1830s that toppled the Liberal G lvez a administration, and that brought Rafael Carrera to national attention.27 On January 20, 1837, the process of legal reform began with the arrival of the newly appointed Circuit Court Judge, F lix Morales, from San Marcos. e Morales confronted a difcult task in Ostuncalco, in large part because the town lacked the infrastructure that was required of a circuit court under the Livingston Codes. He would have to construct a courthouse and a jail, and establish accommodations for the thrice-yearly appellate visits of Quezaltenangos district court ofcialsall with local resources and local labor. In addition, Morales, and the court and the jail, would require a number of messengers and other assistants on a regular, on-going basis. None of these personnel, it appears, would be remunerated by the state, but rather they were to be provided, free of charge, by the circuits ladino and indigenous municipalidades. Finally, but no less important, Morales needed a census of the circuits potential jurors for the court to operate according to plan.28 The difculty of Morales task was compounded immeasurably by the callousness and disdain that he displayed toward Ostuncalcos municipal ofcials regardless of ethnicity. Less than forty-eight hours after arriving into town, for example, he began to criticize the municipalidad for the tardiness of its responses. He also faulted it for failing to compile a census of potential jurors. Although, according to the decree of 30 November [1836], the Gefe Departamental should have notied that Municipalidad to proceed in the formation of the lists of jurors, it appears to me that this still has not been complied with. I advise [you], Morales continued in his typically brusque

150 Chapter 5 manner, to remit me said lists, precisely formed . . . within a period of three days, and without any excuses.29 On January 30 the judge reprimanded the municipalidad for not fullling his request for a daily assistant, or mayor. Because of this, he announced punitively, I not only want you to provide me with a mayor each day, but also an alcalde auxiliar, since both are needed for the operation of this court. Simultaneously, he also demanded a bricklayer and six laborers to construct the building that would serve as the new courthouse, as well as another alcalde auxiliar to oversee their progress.30 Not even a week passed before Morales complained yet again that municipal ofcials had fallen short of his expectations. Apparently the municipalidad still had not begun to ready a house for the upcoming visit of Quezaltenangos appellate tribunal. It is strange that that [municipal] corporation should view my orders with such utter disregard, he wrote caustically, because I have told them that it is necessary to x up the house of Dolores Ocheita in order to lodge the [district] Magistrates. Either the municipalidad should name someone now to carry out this task, the judge concluded, or . . . on the contrary, I shall be compelled to pay someone . . . at your expense.31 Unsurprisingly, Morales quickly became a target of abuse. A mere ve days after his arrival, el natural Diego Gomes walked to his house, and, according to the judge, agitated by aguardiente, showered me with insults . . . , failing to show me due respect. . . . For this offense Gomes was jailed nearly two weeks, and released only after paying a hefty ne of 5 pesos.32 Needless to say, neither the judges demeanor, nor his constant, onerous demands, engendered sympathy or support from the local populace. In subsequent testimony indigenous leaders from several of the Mam towns accused him of numerous excesses. Ostuncalcos indigenous alcalde Tom s Escobar, along a with the towns principales and authorities from Santa Cruz Cajol and San a Miguel Sig il , complained that Morales endeavored to sell a much-disputed u a piece of land next to the Church, and that he had burdened them with an exploitative work regimen, jury duty, and numerous nancial exactions. To question his orders, or to fail to comply in any way, resulted in costly nes and even imprisonment: If there were any problems with the work, we, the municipal ofcials, had to suffer many insults, until it got to the point that said [judge was] menacing us with imprisonment, or with nes . . . and this has frightened us very much.33

Reestablishing the Legitimacy of the Guatemalan State: The Carrera Revolt, Los Altos, and the Indian Question
Faced with these grave injustices, the regions Mam population rebelled in early March 1837. Although a small force of ladino militiamen

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 151

effectively quelled the uprising before the month was out, the Ostuncalco rebellion marked the rst of many that swept the country in 1837, challenging the perceived illegitimacy of the Guatemalan state and the Liberal G lvez administration. These uprisings culminated in a sustained insurreca tionary movement anchored primarily south and east of Guatemala City that lasted through 1839, and which came to be known as the Carrera Revolt.34 Much to the dismay of the rebellious indigenous communities of the western highlands, the Carrera Revolt also gave western regional ladinos the cover they needed to launch their own rebellion against the authority of Guatemala City, establishing the State of Los Altos in early February 1838.35 This development, which boosted the autonomy and political power of western ladinos, was the last thing that the highland Maya had desired for their local ethnic rivals. As a result, especially after it became clear that peasant rebel leader Rafael Carrera was the new power in Guatemala City, western indigenous communities responded to the existence of Los Altos by returning their support to the Guatemalan state. In one particularly dramatic case, a distraught indigenous man from the town of Santa Catarina Ixtahuac n, a followed by many others and accompanied by an interpreter, was presented to [Guatemalas] interim chief-of-state, bathed in tears and carrying in his hands a human head that he said was that of his own son. According to the interpreter, troops from the State of Los Altos had gone to demand taxes from the town, and had resorted to the use of force, in the process killing several townspeople, including the unfortunate mans son. The Ixtahuac n a delegation ended the visit by beseeching Guatemalan authorities to protect them from the Quezaltenango-based government.36 Carreras military invasion and defeat of Los Altos in early 1840, and his decisive triumph over Francisco Moraz n shortly thereafter, cemented a not only his hold on Guatemalan politics, but also the legitimacy of an independent, republican Guatemala centered in the erstwhile colonial capital. By crushing Los Altos, Carrera projected the national state as a vehicle for challenging western ladino interests, and thus as a valuable ally for the western Maya in their struggle to resist being dominated by their nonindigenous neighbors. Moreover, by routing the activist administration of Liberal Mariano G lvez, and by blunting the advance of Central American a liberalism more generally, Carrera resurrected the possibility of continuity between divine-inspired colonial rule and Guatemalas incipient national state. Although the Spanish crown had never been an impartial mediator, neither had it served as a rubber stamp for the creole agenda. Likewise, under Carreras mantle, Guatemala City emerged as a potential brake on Liberal elites whose personal ambitions and wide-ranging reform projects threatened to rend asunder a Guatemalan social fabric already tattered from years of Bourbon experiments and the breakdown of Spanish colonialism.37

152 Chapter 5 As for the elites themselves, whether capitalino or provincial, they accepted Carreraat least in the beginninglargely based on their fear of his ability to command the subaltern castes. Carreras order to execute Quezaltenangos ladino municipal ofcers in March 1841, immediately following his decisive victory over General Moraz n, drove home the danger a of challenging his authority, and probably convinced even the most recalcitrant Liberals to forego antagonizing the rebel-turned-power broker. Over time elite fears were assuaged by the perception that Carrera also served as Guatemalas most effective bulwark against caste warfare a la Haiti, Mexico, ` or the Andes. Under Carreras leadership the Guatemalan state maintained a high degree of political and social stability when viewed within the context of the uncertainty and dislocation that had marked the preceding decades of the nineteenth century. In addition, capital-city elites came to value Carrera for his acceptance of colonial-era economic restrictions that favored their interests over those of the provinces. Even provincial elitesalthough they chafed at the privileges accorded to capital-city merchants and others reached a grudging accommodation with Carrera based on his ability to contain indigenous discontent while simultaneously promoting or at least allowing many of the reform measures that originally had been charted by earlier Liberal administrations.38 In sum, then, Carrera secured the legitimacy of Guatemalas postindependence state among most sectors of the populace: eastern mestizos; capital-city elites, especially those with a Conservative orientation; some provincial elites; and the Mayan majority. Unfortunately for the latter, however, Carreras Conservative-popular image, and his anti-Liberal symbolism, belied the reality of his policiesand those of his political subordinatesover time. Once the central states effective jurisdiction no longer was in question, Carrera gave tacit support to many of the Liberal-inspired innovations that had generated such popular animosity only a few years before. Most of these policies aimed to enhance the political power and administrative efcacy of the central state in one way or another. Some policies directly reformed or expanded existing state institutions, or created new ones. Others took a more roundabout approach: fostering economicprimarily agricultural enterprises, for example, to generate new and more lucrative sources of state revenue; or promoting greater cultural homogeneity and civic consciousness in the hopes of creating a more governable citizenry. With regard to corporately held property, for example, Rafael Carrera and his Conservative associates actively and passively facilitated the transfer of indigenous community land to outside agriculturistsusually ladinos as part of their efforts to promote the expansion of commercially oriented agriculture. Traditional products such as cattle and sugar were favored in this way, as were less established, but prospective, commodities such as coffee.

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 153

Conservative authorities generally did not abrogate legal documents and titles that established clear community rights to a particular territory. Instead, they cajoled and coerced community ofcials into ceding effective control of desirable parcels to interested entrepreneurs. Sometimes the state pushed through settlements that ratied a communitys legal title to a property, but in exchange for allowing the introduction of outside agriculturists. At other times Conservative authorities simply refused to enforce indigenous community property rights in the face of ladino incursions. In either case, however, the outcome was the same. Because the state refused to afford community property the same protections as individual propertyultimately through the use of state-sanctioned violenceindigenous towns located in prime agricultural areas lost effective control of their communal property even as their legal title or documentation remained intact. In terms of state institutions, Carrera and his ministers lost little time following up on the G lvez-inspired establishment of new administrative a judicial districts throughout the country. Sometime in late 1840 or early 1841, for example, Quezaltenangos corregidor appointed an encargado or comisionado poltico to administer the political district of Ostuncalco, an area corresponding to the former court circuit that had been designated by the now-defunct Livingston Codes. In the early 1850s the comisionado poltico also was vested with judicial powers, acquiring the additional title of juez preventivo.39 From 1839 onward several new administrative sub-regions were carved out of this district in the vast piedmont area that would come to be known as the Costa Cuca. Although almost all of this territory fell within the legal boundaries of San Martn Sacatep quez, Ostuncalcos ladino municipal e idad assumed formal responsibility for the new administrative units primarily through its appointment of one or more ladino auxiliary ofcials for each locale. By the 1860s the number of piedmont sub-regions had grown from one to ve, and each was now administered by three ladino auxiliaresan alcalde and two regidoresinstead of one. For much of this later period, as well, supervision of the Costa Cucas auxiliares was transferred from Ostuncalcos ladino municipalidad to the districts juez preventivo-comisionado poltico.40 Under Carrera, the Conservative state also encouraged the expansion of Guatemalas military forces. Anthropologist Robert Carmack discusses the emergence of indigenous militia units in Momostenango during Carreras tenure, and within the department of Quezaltenango there was a renewed effort to organize milicias urbanas among regional ladinos beginning in the early 1850s. This was not the rst time that Guatemalas post-colonial state had tried to establish militia units throughout the country. As early as 1823, shortly after the declaration of Central Americas United Provinces, authorities had directed municipal governmentsprobably focusing on those with signicant ladino populationsto form militias. Similar calls were made

154 Chapter 5 throughout the subsequent years. Yet in the western highlands, at least, outside of the departmental capitals and perhaps one or two other provincial towns, these militia units either were very short-lived, or they failed to materialize at all. Thus, for example, when faced with the Mam uprising in Ostuncalco in 1837, regional ofcials were unable to assemble the minimum 200 troops that rst-hand observers had insisted would be necessary to repress the event. After nearly two weeks of preparation they were hardpressed to come up with even half of that number, eventually amassing about eighty menprimarily milicianos, but including a handful of regular soldiersfrom the towns of Quezaltenango, San Carlos Sija, San Miguel Totonicap n, Malacat n, and Chiantla combined. As late as 1848, when dea a partmental authorities ordered Ostuncalco to muster and arm its militia for emergency detail in Quezaltenango, the towns ladino mayor responded that here in this town, there have not been militias organized, nor are there any today. With respect to weapons . . . , at no time have [we] had any.41 In contrast to previous years, the evidence from Ostuncalco and vicinity suggests that the 1850s marked a minor watershed in the organization of Guatemalan military forces. Beginning with an initial decree of August 26, 1852, regional militias multiplied and grew in number, as did the presence of regular army troops. Militias appeared in Ostuncalco, San Antonio Bob s, o and San Pedro Sacatep quez during this period, and Ostuncalcos regiment e came to include well over 100 men by the early 1860s, double the original 50 called for in 1852.42 At about this same time, the districts juez preventivo also was given command of a contingent of regular soldiers that ranged in size from 5 to 25 men depending on local circumstances.43 The ability of Quezaltenangos military commander to send a division of 700 men against the rebellious Kiche Maya of Momostenango and San Bartolo Aguas Calientes in mid-1853 demonstrates the Conservative states success in establishing and enhancing regional militia and regular army forces, particularly when considered against the pathetic performance of its Liberal precursor in 1837.44 The 1850s also appear to have been a minor watershed with regard to state-mandated and supported education. The Conservative state called for schools to be established in several of Quezaltenangos municipalities in 1851, including San Juan Ostuncalco, and the following year it issued a nation-wide decree demanding at least one school for each sex in every parish. More surprising than the decrees themselves, however, is that fact that departmental authorities followed up on them, repeatedly reminding and even threatening municipal ofcers to comply with the states educational directives.45 Although Ostuncalco had maintained a single boys school sporadically over the course of the 1840s, pressure from Quezaltenangos Corregidor helped to ensure its continuous operation from 1852 onward. School attendance

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 155

was promoted, and in some years enrollment reached well over 100 male students. Efforts to initiate a school for Ostuncalcos girls did not begin until 1855, and once again the intervention of the Corregidor was required before the plans were carried out. At the latters instigation, the girls school entered more or less continuous operation in late 1860.46 Educational goals appear to have been civic rather than vocational, in that students were trained in Christian doctrine and ethics and such disciplines as reading and writing. They did not attend school to become more effective agriculturists or to prepare for a particular trade, but rather to be educated as citizens in the classical, elitist sense of the word, imbued with an underlying set of beliefs and a particular outlook on life.47 Finally, after mid-century, the Conservative state also began to pursue a number of notable infrastructure projects. Roads and port facilities were expanded and improved, and telegraph and railroad projects eventually were initiated.48 In the case of western Guatemala, forced laborers constructed cart roads linking Quezaltenango to the ports of Retalhuleu and Ostuncalco to the Costa Cuca. Indeed, throughout the country Carrera allowed the colonial practice of forced labor drafts or mandamientos to be reintroduced with vigor, establishing a pattern that would be followed and expanded upon during the Liberal Reforma.

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation: The Reforma and the Exclusionary Implications of Western Regional Liberalism
Guatemalas Liberal rebels took power at a time of great economic and social transformation. The coffee economy was growing by leaps and bounds, land privatization proceeded apace, and wage labor proliferated as rural subalterns faced greater and greater difculties obtaining their livelihood from subsistence agriculture. Moreover, unlike their ideological forebears of the 1830s, Liberal rebels had the good fortune to inherit a state apparatus whose fundamental legitimacy was not in dispute. Indeed, even they did not challenge fundamentally the sovereignty or jurisdiction of Guatemala City, despite their origins in the ladino population centers of the western highlands, steeped in the long tradition of Los Altos regionalism. No, the western ladino quest for greater political power and recognition was no longer tied to the idea of secession, but rather to a complete takeover of the Guatemalan state. For as historian Arturo Taracena Arriola recently has pointed out, altense leaders . . . were aware that to dominate the indigenous majority, power would have to be exercised not within an altense State, but within the Republic of Guatemala. In other words, the Indian question lay at the heart of the western ladinos strategic reevaluation.49

156 Chapter 5 Apart from the issue of legitimacy, post-1870 Liberals also inherited a much stronger state than that which had existed four decades earlier. Rafael Carrera and his Conservative allies had bolstered signicantly the states ability to coerce and coopt potentially restive sectors of the population during their long rule. The post-1870 Liberals built on this success. Despite bold proclamations of revolutionary change, they eschewed the volunteerism of their Liberal predecessors and instead continued in the Conservative vein of expanding and strengthening the state while simultaneously pursuing a piecemeal, divide-and-conquer strategy that gave addedbut not reckless impetus to the economic and social transformations already well underway. Although it is true that the victorious Liberals brought a greater number of coffee planters than ever before into the highest levels of government, I do not believe that this is the most signicant or lasting legacy of the movement of 1871. The Guatemalan state already included numerous coffee planters prior to the 1870s, and even more importantly, it had been accommodating coffee interests and promoting coffee cultivation for the past two decades. There is little reason to think that Guatemala would have been less of a coffee state had the Liberal rebels failed. Indeed, perhaps the Guatemalan state would have facilitated coffees expansion and developed the coffee industry in all of its facets even more effectively had not coffee planters such as Justo Runo Barrios and Manuel Lisandro Barillas directly occupied the presidency for so many years.50 No, the most signicant impact of the Liberal military triumph of 1871 was that it allowed western ladinos to project their very specic, regional brand of liberalismwith its strident anti-indigeousnessupon the national stage. Aside from redirecting state revenues toward a wish list of western-oriented infrastructure projectsfor example, improvement of the Pacic port at Champericothe dening element of Los Altos liberalism was its complete negation of Guatemalas Mayan majority. Simply put, western Liberals denied that indigenous people were citizens, even in the limited sense of the term operative during the colonial, and subsequently Conservative, periods, when the Maya were treated as a protected class of subjectsas perpetual minors or wards of the state. From now on, ladinos would be considered the only true citizens of Guatemala, and if the Maya desired citizenship of any kind, then they would have to separate themselves from indigenous society. Otherwise, they would serve out their lives as mere fodder for the nations economic development, an outcome that suited the post-1870 Liberals in practice if not in theory. The latter were content to accept indigenous non-citizenship because it propped up Guatemalas commercial agricultural sector. Besides, to follow the lead of their Liberal forebears in pushing a more aggressive program of mass ladinization ran the risk of provoking another Carrera revolt, or, as one Liberal commentator put it, a erce collision between the cultured

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 157

society and the indigenous masses . . . of which we have unfortunately had more than one sad example.51 Reforma-era state-makers looked back at the failures of the earlier Liberal generation and concluded that it was neither practical nor desirable to include the Mayan majority in their efforts to satisfy the ction of ethnic and cultural homogeneity that lay at the core of the liberal-republican ideal.52 Western ladino attitudes toward their indigenous neighbors reected the historic antagonism that had developed between the two ethnic groups when ladinos began to colonize the western region at the start of the 18th century. Two key issues engendered this antagonism. The rst issue was land. The entire western highlands had pertained to one indigenous polity or another prior to the Spanish conquest. Following the conquest, territorial claims devolved from the defeated Mayan kingdoms to the constituent communities that had administered and exploited their immediate environs according to the rules of the larger polity, either through their own leaders indigenous to the community, or under the direction of state representatives who had been stationed at the local, community, level. This process was fraught with ambiguity, and it generated numerous conicts and disputes between communities but also within them, as rival kin groups and factions with different historical ties to the now-vanquished kingdoms challenged one another for access to particular land resources. The demographic decline that marked the sixteenth and much of the seventeenth centuries only added to the confusion because it left large areas devoid of permanent residents. Within the framework of the Spanish colonial legal system, who had legitimate claim to these areas? Was historical precedent sufcient, or did communities need to demonstrate a more physical, immediate, connection to the territory they claimed, such as the presence of a sizable, permanent population? Throughout the colonial period, but especially during the eighteenth century, growing numbers of Spaniards and mestizos invaded and settled the areas of the western mountain zone left vacant by the political disintegration and the demographic collapse of indigenous society. In doing so, the ladino newcomers challenged the historical and political claims of western indigenous towns. Conict over land became endemic. In addition, the ladinos began to seek formal recognition for their newly established communities, and over time Guatemalas royal audiencia granted ofcial municipal status to the largest of these settlements. Some Spaniards and mestizos also began to settle within the more important indigenous towns. Although the crown prohibited non-indigenous residency within indigenous communities, even these ostensibly illegal settlers eventually pushed the audiencia for municipal privileges, which they were granted at the start of the nineteenth century. As a result of this dramatic policy reversal, indigenous towns with a signicant

158 Chapter 5 ladino minorityfor example, Quezaltenango and San Juan Ostuncalco now counted two, instead of one, municipal councils administering the same territory simultaneously. Whereas a single, indigenous, council had once governed the affected town all by itself, now it had to negotiate with a competing, ladino, governing body. A second point of conict, then, that fueled the ladino/indigenous antagonism, was the question of local political power. The Mayan communities of the western highlands had been able to insist on a certain degree of autonomy within the framework of Spanish colonialism. With the onset of the eighteenth century, however, and the growing inux of Spanish and mestizo migrants, indigenous towns now faced an encircling web of ladino municipalities and ofcials that increasingly circumscribed their authority. Worse still, where indigenous councils were forced to coexist with a ladino counterpart, the challenge to indigenous autonomy came from within the community itself. Lest one conclude that the conict over political power was somehow unconnected to the conict over land discussed above, imagine the ambiguity and confusion that resulted when the status of a towns communal property was disputed by its own municipal council. This was precisely what occurred in San Juan Ostuncalco in the early 1820s. Several important ladinos, including a number of former municipal ofcials, desired to build houses in the center of town, and they petitioned the municipalidad for permission to purchase undeveloped land abutting the church for this purpose. Although the petitioners were backed by the departmental governor of Quezaltenango as well as Ostuncalcos parish priest, Jos e Mara Orellana, the municipalidad met vociferous resistance from the towns Mam ofcials, who on at least one occasion arrived with several hundred indigenous opponents to underscore popular dissatisfaction with the move. In the end, it appears that the plan remained still-born, because opposition to the sale of this same area surrounding the church emerged again in early 1837 to spark the rebellion that began the Carrera revolt. Nevertheless, ethnic tension over land remained high throughout this period, and the regions Mam residents were far from thrilled at the growing presence of ladinos in their midst. As Nicolas Juares stated in his 1821 petition to Quezaltenangos Corregidor, opposing the sale of a rural property in Ostuncalco to one of the towns ladino notables, former sndico Aniseto Lopes, [w]e do not want a ladino to enter our area. Ladinos with ladinos, Indians with Indians.53 These two points of contentionthe competition over land, and the struggle for local political supremacycomprised a single, historical antagonism that kept the indigenous and ladino populations of the western highland region locked in conict, and perpetuated a high degree of interethnic tension when compared to the rest of Guatemala at that time. Returning to the

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 159

question of the legacy of 1871, it was within this milieu that Los Altos ladinos formulated their regionalist or provincial brand of liberalism. Aside from resentment toward the privileges accorded Guatemala City as the old colonial capitala common component of provincial liberalism in Latin America Los Altos ladinos also harbored a uniquely intense hatred of their local ethnic rivals.54 In their view, the highland Maya had prevented them from realizing their full economic and political potential: they had used administrative and judicial channels to stymie ladino usurpation and exploitation of traditionally indigenous lands; they had rebelled against the G lvez administration a and the corresponding land reform laws that had aided such usurpation; and they had helped to destroy the State of Los Altos, throwing their support behind peasant rebel Rafael Carrera. In sum, Los Altos Liberals concluded, the highland Maya had done all they could to obstruct western ladino yearnings for progress and modernity, and thus they did not deserve to be treated as citizens in post-1870 Guatemala. Now to say that the Liberals who ruled Guatemala after 1870 viewed the indigenous population as unworthy of citizenship does not mean that they literally excepted them from the legal denition of the term. According to Article 8 of the 1879 constitution, Citizens are Guatemalan adults of 21 years with an income, occupation, business, or profession which provides them with the means of subsistence.55 Nor does it imply that the Liberals ignored indigenous people altogether. How could they? The Maya comprised an overwhelming majority of the countrys total population, and, more importantly, at least from the Liberals perspective, of the rural labor force. They formed the productive core of most agricultural enterprises, and they had the numbers to disrupt the political and social stability upon which the nations economic growth and development depended. The Liberals had no choice but to attempt to administer and to control this majority, not simply because coffee planters, the state, and so many others relied on indigenous labor, but also because a repeat of the Carrera revolt had to be avoided at all costs. In the process, however, western Liberals introduced a central contradiction of Guatemalan nationhood. At the same time that they proclaimed the formal equality of all citizens, rejecting the protected, infantilized legal status that Conservatives had conferred paternalistically on the indigenous majority, they continued to treat the Maya as an inferior class and to single them out with coercive state policies that were inconsistent with Liberal notions of equality. If, during the Conservative era, such unequal treatment had been justied by a legal caste system, during the Liberal Reforma it emerged as a glaring affront to constitutional claims of liberty, equality, and personal security. For if all Guatemalan citizens were guaranteed equal rights and equal protections, then the Maya either were not citizens, or they were not Guatemalans, in Liberal Guatemala.56

160 Chapter 5

Continuity, Pragmatism, and Patronage: The Foundations of Liberal Longevity

Even as they abolished the legal basis for state paternalism toward indigenous communities, then, post-1870 Liberals perpetuated various elements of the Conservatives paternalistic modus operandi. They built on Conservative practices that singled out indigenous peoples for betterment through forced labor and the abrogation of their corporate property rights, and they also continued to employ the patriarchal discourse characteristic of Conservative rule, commonly referring to the general populace, for example, as hijos del pas. Likewise, Liberal presidents continued the Conservative and even colonial-era tradition of cultivating personalistic relationships and followings. A foreign visitor to the house of President Justo Runo Barrios in early 1885 related the following scene:
In the courtyard were seventy-ve or a hundred Indians from the country, sitting and lying on the ground in the sun, waiting hours and hours and sometimes all day for a chance to pay their respects to [the president]. As soon as he came in sight every Indian rose and took off his hat. Many were satised with a mere glance, while others had some trivial complaint to offer. These complaints were often somewhat amusing, but Barrios always listened to them attentively, and with a few words and a pat on the head sent the Indian off perfectly happy. He always saw that the Indians were protected in what rights they did have, and was worshipped by them.57

Romanticization aside, the Liberals appear to have favored the more repressive aspects of paternalism when compared to their predecessors. Yet they attempted to play up their role as benevolent superiors, promoting and protecting the interests of the indigenous majority even when that same majority was too blinded by costumbre to graciously accept the assistance being offered.58 In addition, like their Conservative predecessors, the Liberals pursued a pragmatic, divide-and-conquer strategy toward indigenous towns, placating some and repressing others. In the case of land, for instance, Liberal authorities sometimes reduced the territory of one community to augment the landholdings of another. Exclusively highland communities found that the Liberal state could be convinced to protect their corporate landholdings, particularly the ejido proper, while those with ties to the fertile piedmont and coastal regions so suitable for commercial agriculture continued to be expropriated en masse. The example of San Martn Sacatep quez illustrates both outcomes. e Although the town lost approximately 1,000 caballeras of coastal land to cof fee planters and other agriculturists, Liberal ofcials allowed it to keep the territory that remained in the highlands.59 Turning to community politics, the municipal reform law of 1879 removed all legal basis for dual indigenous

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 161

and ladino municipalities in keeping with Liberal desires to rationalize the state apparatus at the local level, particularly when that meant eliminating semi-autonomous Mayan institutions. Nevertheless, as the case of San Juan Ostuncalco demonstrates, the Liberal state was not opposed to reversing itself and allowing indigenous councils to persist in some of the dual-municipality towns despite objections from local- and regional-level ladino ofcials.60 This combination of paternalism and pragmatism helps to explain the ability of post-1870 Liberals to dismantle Conservative-era judicial protections for the indigenous majoritydemoting them from the status of partial citizens or legal juveniles to non-citizenswithout provoking the kind of conagration sparked by their reform-minded progenitors in the late 1830s. Greg Grandins pathbreaking work on Quezaltenango suggests that Maya elites themselves may have helped to ensure such indigenous quiescence. Rather than rejecting western Liberals new, exclusionary polity outright, they insisted on their own inclusion, attempting to parlay their continued role as power brokers within the indigenous community and labor suppliers to the state for a class-based threshold of citizenship over which they could pass. Although their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, as Grandin notes, they did enhance their position of privilege within Mayan society and even gain some measure of economic power by the standards of regional ladino elites. More to the point, however, they simultaneously weakened the possibility of a more oppositional, mass-based response to the new Liberal state.61 Of perhaps greater signicance, many of the battles begun by the original Liberal reform generation of the 1830s were carried forward piecemeal by the Conservatives, and had been either settled or at least partially defused long before the western Liberals took power in 1871. Thus, for example, the Reforma state could not be held responsible for the large-scale disenfranchisement that had dismembered many piedmont and coastal communities in the name of expanding commercial agriculture because it had occurred on the Conservatives watch. Similarly, the new generation of Liberals could hardly take credit, or receive all of the blame, for a coercive labor regimen that had been implemented in large part by Carrera and his associates. Because of this, the western Liberals attack on the Conservative caste systemwith all of its ostensible protectionsas part of their effort to create an exclusively ladino nation, could not clearly be connected to continuing state efforts to facilitate the expropriation of indigenous community lands and the exploitation of indigenous labor. Unlike the 1830s, when the Livingston Codes, new taxes, and a succession of land reform initiatives coalesced to highlight the illegitimacy of the G lvez administration, the harmful policies of the 1870s a did not uniformly focus popular animosity toward the new generation of Liberal state-makers.

162 Chapter 5 A large measure of Liberal success in disenfranchising the indigenous majority, then, and creating a ladino nation, can be attributed to continuities in Conservative and Liberal rule. But Liberal success also rested on a number of additional factors. For example, post-1870 Liberals were able to rely on a signicantly larger core constituency of western ladinos than had existed when the ill-fated State of Los Altos was rst declared earlier in the nineteenth century.62 Moreover, by constructing Guatemalan citizenship on a foundation of non-indigenousness, the Liberals reached beyond their regional western power-base to embrace the even more numerous ladinos of the center-east. Overall, the countrys ladino population had almost doubled between the 1830s and 1880from 201,000 to 380,000, respectivelyand the new Liberal project unied non-indigenous Guatemalans, rich and poor, by asserting their historic role as the bearers of national progress and by according them a privileged position as the true citizens of the nation, in contrast to the indigenous other.63 The Liberal state embarked on a very conscious campaign to cultivate its western ladino constituency by favoring it with land grants located in the regions piedmont and coastal zones as well as in the highlands. Western ladino milicianos, in particular, beneted from Liberal land parcelings that distributed hundreds of caballeras at greatly reduced prices.64 Often the beneciaries paid only the associated surveying costs, typically amounting to no more than 20 pesos per caballera. Although this still represented a considerable sum to most Guatemalans in the late nineteenth century, nevertheless, it was well below the 500-peso minimum legally stipulated for the purchase of a caballera of prime Costa Cuca coffee land. San Juan Ostuncalcos militiamen beneted from the Liberal states largess, as did those of San Antonio Bob s. o President Barrios granted the latter town 67 caballeras at El Zapote, and Ostuncalco ladinos received more than 28 caballeras in Saquichill , both a within the Costa Cuca.65 President Barrios gave even greater consideration to the milicianos of nearby San Carlos Sija. First he granted Sija 46 caballeras of Costa Cuca land in the late 1870s. Next, as Robert Carmack describes, the president expropriated another 46 caballeras of prime highland territory from the neigh boring indigenous canton of Buenabaj, Momostenango, and distributed it to Sijas militiamen for a total sum of 1,000 pesos. Fittingly, the expropriated land was renamed Recuerdo de Barrios, and it reected the special relationship that existed between western Liberal leaders and the sije os who n served the state by repressing indigenous unrest in the surrounding towns, of which Buenabaj was just one. Santa Cruz Cajol , also a destination for a the Sija militia, subsequently suffered two back-to-back expropriations totaling more than 42 caballeras. Once again, Sijas ladino milicianos were the beneciaries.66

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 163

State Revenue Expansion in the Late Nineteenth Century

Another factor that accounts for the success of Reforma-era Liberals is the increasingly robust revenue enjoyed by the state after 1871 (see Table 5). Although coffee exports grew much more dramatically in relative terms during the 1850s and 1860s than during the 1870s and 1880s, nevertheless, as a proportion of national income, coffee remained quite small until the mid-1860s. Because of this, and because cochineal experienced a slow decline following its heyday in the mid-1850s, Conservatives faced a stagnating export sector overall, and a corresponding stagnation in state revenue, through the early 1860s. Even when coffee did begin to have a signicant impactincome to the state rose an average of more than 10 percent per year between 1865 and 1870, a gure in line with subsequent Liberal growth ratesthe results were meager when compared to the actual sums collected by Liberal authorities. Conservative revenues amounted to only 1.3 million per year from 1865 to 1870, while the Liberal state averaged more than four million annually for the period 18721883. This constantly growing income stream allowed Liberal political leaders to better the efforts of their predecessors in expanding and improving the states infrastructure and institutions, and, consequently, to regulate, administer, and repress subaltern sectorsincluding the Mayan majoritywith greater and greater efcacy. In terms of transportation, for example, the post-1870 Liberals continued Conservative efforts to improve the connections between the western highlands and the Pacic coastby refurbishing existing cart paths and establishing new onesand they also initiated railroad projects in several areas of the country. In terms of communication, the Liberals made good on Conservative plans to link western cities to the capital by telegraph. Education, as well, received greater and greater state backing, as did new health care facilities and protocols. Finally, the military also was enlarged, reaching new locales and incorporating many additional individuals. Again, this was not so much because qualitative philosophical differences separated Liberals from Conservatives, but rather because the Liberals, as a rule, had more money to work with. The expansion of the states infrastructure and institutions not only enhanced administration, surveillance, and control, but it also increased the states capacity for cooptation while simultaneously providing popular sectors with new opportunities for resistance and accommodation. The multiplication of cantonal sub-divisions within municipalities, for example, each with its own set of auxiliary ofces, placed the states administrative apparatus in closer proximity to a greater number of largely rural residents and ostensibly allowed for better management and control of the population. Yet at the same time, each of these new auxiliary posts was staffed by residents of

164 Chapter 5 table 5. Export Earnings and Gross Government Revenues

Cochineal Export Earnings $1,757,300 $985,780 $1,381,240 $1,017,270 $1,407,410 $1,222,680 $1,274,240 $788,650 $837,986 $855,838 $688,080 $975,933 $957,132 $1,068,047 $891,513 $1,266,614 $865,414 $876,025 $495,880 $498,367 $400,509 $241,013 $246,338 $181,683 $22,684 $65,387 $32,193 $45,077 $11,868 $9,200 Coffee Export Earnings $64 $744 $1,500 $1,700 $1,040 $4,680 $15,350 $53,110 $119,076 $199,830 $192,762 $265,404 $384,936 $415,878 $788,035 $790,228 $1,132,298 $1,312,129 $1,669,653 $2,408,107 $2,585,341 $2,617,278 $3,318,402 $3,358,956 $3,349,740 $4,032,269 $4,032,270 $3,645,220 $3,132,716 $4,848,833 Cochineal & Coffee Export Earnings $1,757,364 $986,524 $1,382,740 $1,018,970 $1,408,450 $1,227,360 $1,289,590 $841,760 $957,062 $1,055,668 $880,842 $1,241,337 $1,342,068 $1,483,925 $1,679,548 $2,056,842 $1,997,712 $2,188,154 $2,165,533 $2,906,474 $2,985,850 $2,858,291 $3,564,740 $3,540,639 $3,372,424 $4,097,656 $4,064,463 $3,690,297 $3,144,584 $4,858,033 Total Export Earnings $2,033,300 $1,282,891 $1,706,973 $1,615,388 $2,024,560 $1,537,835 $1,632,735 $1,106,583 $1,368,150 $1,498,311 $1,562,916 $1,833,325 $1,680,341 $1,972,950 $2,141,099 $2,497,127 $2,391,414 $2,657,716 $2,691,800 $3,363,062 $3,300,621 $3,217,345 $3,767,471 $3,773,183 $3,918,912 $4,605,633 $4,425,000 $4,084,349 $3,719,210 $5,436,302 Gross Government Revenue $869,000 $775,000 $826,000 $939,000 $897,000 $1,030,000 $950,000 $824,000 $1,019,000 $1,109,000 $887,000 $957,000 $1,084,000 $1,257,000 $1,082,000 $1,963,000 $1,546,000 $987,000 $1,771,879 $2,602,669 $2,588,829

Year

1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883

n/a n/a $4,462,032 n/a n/a n/a n/a $6,441,918 $6,624,262

Sources : Ralph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 18211871 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 379, 383, and 410; Manuel Rubio S nchez, a Historia del comercio del caf en Guatemala. Siglos XVIIIXIX, parts 2 and 3, ASGHG 51 e (1978): 125204, and 52 (1979): 110117, respectively; Thomas R. Herrick, Desarrollo econmico o y poltico de Guatemala durante el perodo de Justo Runo Barrios (18711885) (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria de Guatemala/EDUCA, 1974); Ignacio Sols, Memorias de la Casa de Moneda de Guatemala y del desarrollo econmico del pas (Guatemala: Ministerio de Finanzas de Guatemala, o 1979); Sanford Mosk, The Coffee Economy of Guatemala, 18501918: Development and Signs of Instability, Interamerican Economic Affairs 9 (Winter 1955): 12.

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 165

the incipient canton. And in the western highlands, where most rural zones were overwhelminglyif not entirelyindigenous, this meant that a growing number of Maya were being incorporated into the lower rungs of the state. Even formally ladino municipal councils in dual-municipality towns came to rely on a sizable and growing number of indigenous auxiliares. The ofcials who staffed the indigenous municipalidad and its own auxiliatura, of course, were entirely indigenous. The case of San Juan Ostuncalco is illuminating in this regard. Apart from the town center, the number of cantons grew from three to at least seven between 1871 and the late-1880s. Each canton began with one or two alcaldes and a small number of assistants or mayores. Over time, however, additional alcaldes and mayores were appointed such that any one canton counted a dozen and sometimes many more auxiliaries. The larger cantons all had four alcaldestwo indigenous and two ladinoby the end of the 1880s, and each alcalde appointed several mayores to assist him. With at least seven cantons in total, Ostuncalco probably averaged well over 100 auxiliares in any given year as the nineteenth century came to a close. An 1886 town census revealed 131 municipal ofcials, including those of the town center and the municipalidad. Of these, 95 were indigenous, 36 ladino, and at least 78 were auxiliares for the cantons. An 1895 counting of canton Palestina (El Suj) alone, by no means Ostuncalcos largest, produced 22 auxiliares, almost all of whom were indigenous.67 Although the new auxiliary positions often were quite burdensome, as was true of positions within the municipal council itself, on the other hand, they bestowed upon the ofceholder a certain degree of social prestige and political power, as well as increased opportunities for economic prot. Auxiliary ofcials became important mediators, balancing localoften ethnic concerns against the demands of the state, the municipalidad, and the town center. They could attempt to defend local interests and resist onerous demands, or conversely, they could help higher level ofcials impose timeconsuming projects or nancial exactions on a recalcitrant populace. In terms of personal gain, although most municipal postsincluding the auxiliary positionslacked a formal salary, municipal ofcials were authorized to collect fees for some of the services that they provided.68 In sum, then, the multiplication of municipal ofces that accompanied the establishment of each new cantonal sub-division meant that increasing numbers of peoplelargely rural and often indigenouswere being incorporated into the states administrative apparatus. Grandin shows convincingly for Quezaltenango that this process helped entrench the elite status of traditional indigenous leaders. Yet in towns where class differentiation was less developed, such as Ostuncalco and the surrounding Mam communities, the

166 Chapter 5 state may not have beneted as signicantly from these proliferating municipal posts. The newly appointed ofcials could use their ofces to mediate on behalf of the local populace, as well as to add to their own wealth and that of their followers. A similar outcome resulted from the expansion of the states military apparatus and its extension to new areas of the country. On the one hand, the militarys institutional growth increased the states repressive capabilities. On the other hand, it also provided opportunities for self-aggrandizement and cooptation in much the same way that the administrative expansion did. Although this appears to have worked primarily to the advantage of ladino milicianosrecall the land giveaways discussed previouslyover time indigenous sectors too began to enter the ranks of municipal militias.69 The ceaseless demand for labor of the coastal plantations and the concomitant growth of the labor force likewise opened up new arenas for resistance, negotiation, and cooptation. Municipal alcaldes, regidores, secretaries, and auxiliaresindigenous and ladino alikebecame important intermediaries in national- and department-level efforts to provide a sufcient labor force and to ensure its stability with surveillance and coercion. These ofcials played a key role in how well the labor regimen worked, and in practice they often imposed a degree of exibility and graft that contradicted the efcient, seamless operation desired by higher level state authorities. Eventually, the Liberal state was forced to incorporate into the legal code moneys for municipal ofcials and governments that helped to recruit men for the forced labor drafts or mandamientos. The infamous decree 177, for example, issued in April 1877, stipulated that planters who requested labor drafts had to pay municipal treasuries between one-half and one real for each recruited worker. They also had to provide each worker with an up-front payment not to exceed one-half of the wage for the entire period. In practice, however, this up-front payment, or habilitacin, often o amounted to much more. Moreover, planters also became accustomed to paying a special fee to the lower level municipal ofcialsgenerally auxiliares and mayores or messenger-assistantswhen they tracked down and retrieved absent or escaped workers or when they escorted workers off the plantation.70 Finally, the mediating role of municipal ofcials at all levels was reinforced by the states increasingly ambitious infrastructure development agenda, which placed additional demands on an already insufcient labor supply. Workers were needed to upgrade existing cart tracks and to build new ones, to clear the way for railroads, and to string telegraph lines between Guatemala City and the major provincial cities. The continual shortfall of laborers kept an upward pressure on wages, and the state frequently offered higher pay than the coastal plantations.71

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 167

Conclusions
The emergence of Guatemala as an exclusionary, ladino nation in the aftermath of Liberal military victory in 1871 was the culmination of a long process of state formation that had its roots in the early decades of the eighteenth century, if not before. Indeed, one could point to the very conquest itselfthe invasion and subsequent colonization of the area by Spanish soldiers of fortuneas the rst step toward ladino nationhood. Faced with an ambivalent Crown vacillating between its thirst for wealth and its desire to provide moral and political justication for the violent subjugation of an entire hemisphere, Guatemalas conquistadors lost little time in positioning themselves as the underappreciated benefactors of the new world, selessly civilizing the incorrigible indigenous populace with little recognitionand much interferencefrom royal bureaucrats and religious zealots. This combination of ethnic bigotry and self-righteousness weathered the Crowns periodic and generally half-hearted attempts to regulate creole exploitation of the indigenous majority, and gained renewed relevance among the Spanish and mestizo migrants who began to settle the indigenous hinterlands west of the capital in signicant numbers over the course of the eighteenth century. The greater the indigenous resistance, the greater the resentment on the part of the Hispanic migrants, giving rise to a regionally specic ethnic identity based on strong animosity toward the local other. The newcomers found themselves in a rather tenuous position for a number of reasons. First and foremost, their presence among the indigenous communities of the western highlands was largely illegal in terms of Crown law. As a result, aside from their frequently close ties to provincial bureaucrats, they were denied formal political representation in all but a few cases. The ladino migrants resisted their political exclusion, however, and by the end of the colonial period the crown had authorized the establishment of several non-indigenous municipal governments or ayuntamientos. In the aftermath of independence, these ayuntamientos served as the building blocks of the states administrative apparatus in the western highlands. The new republican state that emerged in the shadow of Spanish colonialism and its attendant institutionscentered in the erstwhile colonial capital of Guatemala Citysuffered from an acute lack of legitimacy. Western indigenous communities consistently challenged its authority, and even some ladino municipal councils outed its demands with regularity. Early calls for annexation to the Mexican Empire were followed by years of intermittent civil war that did not end until peasant rebel Rafael Carrera tossed out the Liberal administration of Mariano G lvez and took denitive control of the a state ca. 1840. Carrera was the rst republican leader who could claim a modicum of legitimacy across all sectors of society, whether indigenous or ladino,

168 Chapter 5 subaltern or elite. He used this legitimacy to initiate a thirty-year period of relative political stability and steady economic growth under his own nominally Conservative leadership and that of his hand-picked successor, Vicente Cerna. By the time that Guatemalan Liberals mounted a successful military challenge to Cerna, the primacy of a Guatemala City-based republican state was no longer in question. Indeed, Guatemalas western Liberals had learned the hard way that they could not pursue their regionalist plan for enlightened modernization independent of the former colonial capital. Their attempts to remove the western provinces of Los Altos from the control of Guatemala City had foundered on opposition from the regions overwhelmingly indigenous majority as well as on the refusal of Rafael Carrera and capital-city elites to accept Guatemalas dismemberment. If anything, the push for Los Altos had only made Carreras job easier, by helping to convince western indigenous communities that they would be better off under the republican sovereignty of Guatemala City rather than a more regionally based state controlled by their antagonistic ladino neighbors. Western Liberals thus realized their national vision not by charting an independent path, but rather by taking military control of the capital and commandeering the Guatemalan state. Their success in this endeavor, and their subsequent longevity, is explained largely by the fact that by the time the Liberals forcibly retook the state from their Conservative predecessors many of the planks of the Liberal agenda already had been nailed into place. The military conict between Liberals and Conservatives that marked the late 1860s and early 1870s, and all of its associated rhetorical grandstanding, masked a great deal of underlying continuity between the two parties particularly with regard to land and labor policies and support for the coffee economy more generally. By 1871 all that was left to complete the Liberal project was the diversion of a few more state dollars toward western infrastructure projects and the imposition of a ladino-centric nationhood. Otherwise, state formation in an institutional sense proceeded much as it had before, following the fortunes of an expanding export economy. Indigenous communities did not rise en masse to challenge the Liberals exclusionary redenition of the nation because it did not come as part of a blanket attack on their way of life. Rather, in the context of the nineteenth century, the post-1870 Liberal refashioning of nationhood was a late-breaking addition to the expropriation of community land and the coercive targeting of indigenous labor that had begun decades earlier under Conservative authorities. Moreover, in comparison to previous Liberal efforts to forcibly ladinize the indigenous majority, the new project of ethnic exclusion was much less intrusive, and, in the short-term at least, had more to do with building a rm power base for the state among ladinos than disenfranchising

From Ladino State to Ladino Nation 169

the Maya in new and disruptive ways. Finally, in practice, the continued expansion of the coffee economy and of the Guatemalan state opened up new spaces and possibilities for the indigenous majorityor at least a signicant number among themto offset the most harmful consequences of land privatization and labor coercion and to negotiate a marginally acceptable way of life that included the reproduction of indigenous community culture and institutions.

chapter

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and NationState Formation: Final Reections on Guatemalas Nineteenth Century

this study turns on a paradox. In the late 1830s Guatemalas popular sectors rejected Liberal reform by routing the activist administration of Mariano G lvez, and by establishing peasant rebel Rafael Carrera as the kingpin a of Guatemalan politics for the next twenty-ve years. When the popular caudillo died in 1865, however, the resulting power vacuum proved a boon to Liberal insurgents, and by mid-1871 they had vanquished Carreras Conservative heirs. Under the leadership of Justo Runo Barrios, they proceeded along the reformist path rst charted decades earlier by their ideological progenitors, ushering in Guatemalas Liberal Reforma. Yet this time around, despite some signicant opposition, popular sectors were either unwilling or unable to mount a fatal attack on the Liberal reform project. Why? That is the paradox that this study has sought to unravel. The answer, as I have shown in chapters on indigenous community land, labor relations, the politics of alcohol, and state formation, required more than simplyor even primarilyan investigation of the Liberal Reforma. That was only a part of the puzzle. Rather, to understand why Liberalism was more palatable and rebellion less likely in the 1870s than the 1830s, it was necessary to place this event in the proper historical contextone that stretched back at least to the beginning of the postcolonial era. In other words, it was necessary to undertake an on-the-ground reconstruction and comparison of the years of Liberal rule that led up to the Carrera Revolt, of the Conservative interregnum that followed, and of the post-1870 period of reform itself. The results of this endeavor were surprising. With regard to land tenure, for example, Rafael Carrera initially forced the G lvez administration to a

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and NationState Formation 171

reverse its most sweeping privatization initiatives. Shortly thereafter, however, he helped to effectively end indigenous community control over what would become the countrys most productive coffee zones. In terms of debt and more overtly coercive labor recruitment mechanisms, Carrera and his Conservative associates were every bit as pioneering as later Liberals. They were the ones who reintroduced the colonial-era mandamiento to republican Guatemala. Likewise, they also legitimated and expanded the national state, establishing a precedent for increased government intervention and activism on which Reforma-era Liberals continued to build. Ironically, earlier Liberal efforts to revamp and strengthen the state had been one of the most explosive issues fueling the insurrectionary conagration of the late 1830s. Finally, Conservative authorities alienated growing numbers of erstwhile subaltern supporters with such repressive policies as the state-run alcohol monopoly, providing opportunities for Liberal insurgents to capture the popular imagination by calling for free and open trade in distilled and fermented beverages. My goal in this conclusion is to situate the ndings of the various chapters within an explicitly conceptual discussion of rebellion to better understand why the conditions and contingencies of the late 1820s and 1830s ended in a massive and successful subaltern insurrection, whereas those of the 1870s and 1880s did not. The discussion will begin by considering the anatomy and evolution of the Carrera Revolt, and then continue with an evaluation of its genesis and subsequent success in theoretical terms. This analysis will serve as the basis for an understanding of why the Liberal Reforma did not engender a more energetic and effective popular response. Finally, in the last pages, I will consider the Reformas implications for Guatemalan state formation in the context of recent literature on Mexico and Andean South America.

The Carrera Revolt: A Reappraisal

Most authors agree that the rst uprising of the period of upheaval and insurrection that has come to be included under the rubric of the Carrera Revolt took place in early March 1837, in the political district of San Juan Ostuncalco.1 By May uprisings had spread from the mountainous west to the mountainous east, from Guatemalas overwhelmingly indigenous Los Altos region or western highlands to La Monta a, an area immediately to the n east and south of the capital with a more signicant ladino population. It is here that the scattered and apparently spontaneous uprisings that swept the country in early 1837 began to coalesce into the coordinated and sustained armed movement that would turn back G lvezs reforms and challenge overa all Liberal control of the state. Rafael Carrera emerged as the leader of this movement early on, expanding the insurgents eld of operations east to

172 Chapter 6 the Caribbean and west into Verapaz and Sacatep quez. Ironically, although e Carreras invasion of Guatemala City in early 1838 made it possible for western ladino elites to establish the independent state of Los Altos, the altenses spared nothing for the rebel leader, and their military forces played a crucial role in his near-defeat later that fall.2 Throughout this period western indigenous communities continued to oppose and to rebel against Liberal policies and ofcials regardless of whether the latter derived their authority from Guatemala City (the state of Guatemala) or Quezaltenango (the state of Los Altos). Almost as soon as Carrera retook the capital in April 1839, however, restoring the Conservative government once and for all, these same communities began to agitate for a return to the jurisdiction of Guatemala City. Despite such sentiments, the western Maya do not appear to have had any formal agreement or alliance with the rebel caudillo until perhaps the very end of the year, as Carrera readied plans for returning the errant Los Altos provinces to the Guatemalan fold.3 In late January 1840 he completely destroyed the Los Altos military near Solol while the indigenous population of Quezaltenango a simultaneously took control of the erstwhile altense capital. Carreras triumphant entry into the defeated city two days later, before an enthusiastic and largely indigenous crowd, represented the reunication of all of Guatemala under a single, Conservative state, and ultimately, under a single, popular leader.4 Why did tensperhaps hundredsof thousands of Guatemalans risk the dangerous course of rebellion in 1837? Did implementation of the Livingston Codes, and the dramatic overhaul of the countrys judicial system that they implied, really represent such a life-altering threat? Or was it the added tension generated by the appearance of cholera in Guatemala at the beginning of the year, and the epidemic that developed in the months thereafter, which drove so many to put their lives in the balance? Perhaps the Church was to blame. Some contemporary observers believed that the religious community was actively encouraging popular opposition to the G lvez administration in a retaliation for Liberal attacks on Church property and the secularization of its important civil functions such as marriage and education, not to mention Francisco Moraz ns expulsion of Guatemalan archbishop Ram n Cas us in a o a 1829.5 Alongside the complicated question of why the Carrera Revolt began at all there is the even more surprising fact of its remarkable success. How did this popular insurrection achieve such a resounding victory after months of intense persecution at the hands of some of Central Americas foremost military strategists? Few popular movements conclude by placing one of their own at the apex of political power, never mind for so many years. Yet Rafael Carrera rode the insurrectionary wave of the late 1830s from subaltern

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and NationState Formation 173

obscurity to national prominence in a matter of months, becoming the nal arbiter of Guatemalan politics ca. 1840 until his death in 1865. In trying to reach an understanding of the Carrera Revoltwhy it began, and how it achieved such a surprising military victorya likely place to start is at the very beginning: with the uprising of several thousand Mam Maya on March 8, 1837, in the political district of San Juan Ostuncalco. What were the grievances and contingencies that gave rise to this, the rst of more than thirty apparently spontaneous indigenous rebellions that swept Guatemala that year?6 Based on petitions from leaders of the participating towns, it seems clear that the Livingston Codes were much disliked by Quezaltenangos Mam residents. Not because they had read the codes wordfor-word; indeed, the petitioners did not even mention the codes by name. Rather, the districts indigenous municipal ofcials declared their unhappiness with the Livingston Codes lived implications, which they had begun to experience on a regular basis in early 1837, the point at which Ostuncalcos new circuit court began to function. They complained of onerous nancial and labor demands associated not only with constructing a new courthouse and jail, but also with operating the new circuit court, which required numerous personnel and the creation of a functioning jury system. Ostuncalcos ofcials in particular objected to the sale of a much-disputed piece of community land to underwrite part of these costs. Finally, all of the petitioners expressed their dislike for the newly appointed circuit court judge, who they considered rash and abusive. These lived implications of the Livingston Codes, described by the districts Mam municipal authorities, were both specic and general. On one hand, they reected the peculiarities of how the codes were implemented in a particular region. On the other hand, they also pointed up the larger political and legal context in which the codes were situated. The land complaint, for example, concerned the sale of a specic parcel of community territory to help fund the new circuit court. Yet this same property tied directly into the historic struggle between Maya and non-Maya over land use and control, not only in Ostuncalco, but also throughout the country. In addition, the very practice of selling community land in this manner had only become possible with the recent spate of Liberal reform laws that were designed to facilitate the expropriation of corporately held, largely indigenous, properties. Thus, what rst appears to have been an isolated struggle over a small parcel of municipal territory actually tied into a much broader project of state-sponsored privatization, and fed deep-seated fears within indigenous society over the long-term integrity of its corporate land base, and of its very communities. Nowhere was this broader project more obvious than in the political district of San Juan Ostuncalco, which included the land-rich Mam town of

174 Chapter 6 San Martn Sacatep quez. As we saw in Chapter 2, San Martn held title to a e vast area within Guatemalas fertile piedmont zone that was utilized by all of the districts Mam towns to supplement their cold country cultivation with additional planting seasons as well as agricultural products that could only be grown in a semitropical environment. Since independence, but particularly after the Liberal legal innovations of the late 1820s and early-to-mid-1830s, San Martn had been fending off a growing invasion of ladino agriculturists from Ostuncalco proper, the city of Quezaltenango, and other regional ladino population centers. It was in this volatile context that Ostuncalcos new circuit judge proposed selling a portion of community territory to help fund the circuit court. As was true of the land sale, opposition to the circuit judge himself simultaneously highlighted the specic and general implications of the Livingston Codes. On one hand, Judge F lix Morales was exceptionally insensitive in e his treatment of the districts municipal authorities. In hindsight, he does not appear to have been well suited for the job. On the other hand, he would not have been there at all if the Livingston Codes had not erected circuit court districts throughout Guatemala, designating San Juan Ostuncalco as the cabecera or seat of one of them. Indeed, aside from the judges abrasive demeanor, and the fact that he was imposing onerous demands on the local populace, the newness of his position did not help matters. It is quite likely that the districts residents would have found his presence in Ostuncalco disconcerting even if he had not been attempting to coerce their cooperation in an ambitious infrastructure project, and ineptly at that. Indigenous municipal ofcials, if not the general population, almost certainly viewed his very appearance in their midst as a new attack on their political autonomy and another shift in the local balance of power toward ladinos and the postcolonial ladino state. In sum, municipal leaders who petitioned the state during the course of the uprising in Ostuncalco focused on injustices related to the Livingston Codes and, although only indirectly, to the Liberal-inspired land reform measures. Apparently these issues, rather than new or increased taxes, the states attack on the Church, or the cholera epidemic, were what drove Quezaltenangos Mam residents to risk their lives in the rebellion of March 1837. Elsewhere in Guatemala, however, a different constellation of factors gured in local decisions to riot or rebel. Rafael Carreras own pronouncement against the Liberal G lvez administration called for the return of the Se or a n Archbishop, re-establishment of the religious convents, and abolition of the decree that imposes a tax of two pesos per person in addition to termination of the Livingston Codes.7 Other towns rose up amidst charges that the state was trying to kill all the peasants by poisoning the waters under the pretext of administering medicine to combat the spread of cholerapart of a plan to take over their small land possessions for the foreigners and to put

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and NationState Formation 175

the artisans out of work.8 This last claim was made in reference to Liberal land grants, particularly in eastern Guatemala, intended to attract colonists and capital from northern Europe. Although in the long run few European migrants responded to such schemes, the G lvez administration signed over a large tracts of land for this purpose, and rebels in or near the affected areas considered the grants akin to treason.9 From one community or region to the next, then, local concerns and conditions intersected with administrative prerogatives and the broader political and social milieu to engender uprisings and rebellions. In answer to the question of why the Carrera Revolt occurred, there was no single causal factor such as land loss or support for the Church, or even some uniform constellation of real and supposed grievances that precipitated every violent manifestation of popular discontent. Instead, a more or less distinct if overlapping conguration of abuses and complaints mobilized popular participation in each case. It was precisely the convergence of these mobilizing factors in diverse and varied combinations throughout Guatemala at roughly the same time that made 1837 so unique, and that gave the movement its heterogeneous and irrepressible character. Thus, the very same proliferation of overlapping grievances that gave rise to the Carrera Revolt likewise contributed to its longevity and to its remarkable military success. For instance, only a handful of the numerous rebellions that marked early 1837 appear to have had a direct link to the group of insurgents that coalesced around Rafael Carrera. Yet the very occurrence of so much spontaneous unrest throughout so many parts of the country foretold of the ease with which Carrera and his associates would garner support virtually everywhere they went. In addition, the extreme explosiveness of the period kept the state in disarray, helping to deect some of the attention that might otherwise have been used to quash Carreras incipient rebel network. Even if an organized insurgency had not emerged under the leadership of Rafael Carrera in 1837, the sheer number of uprisings and rebellions that swept the country over the course of that year would have posed a formidable challenge to a state so sorely lacking in legitimacy. This lack of legitimacy also played a signicant part in the drama that ended with Carreras triumphal march into Guatemala City. Numerous communities and regions, ladino and indigenous alike, had refused to support the Guatemala City-based postcolonial state right from its very inception. As a result, tax collection was excruciatingly difcult throughout the early republican years, and with no other source of stable income, the state remained weak and moribund. Although the Liberal G lvez a administration energetically set about to remedy this situation beginning in 1831, instead it further alienated an already distrustful population, subaltern and elite alike. When rural rebellion swept the country in early

176 Chapter 6 1837, beginning with San Juan Ostuncalco on March 8, the very lack of legitimacy that had helped to precipitate the unrest now contributed to the inefcacy of the Liberal states response. Disaffected elites took advantage of the confusion in Guatemala City to defect in droves. The nearby departments of Sacatep quez, Chiquimula, and e Verapaz established rival provisional governments, whereas provincial leaders from Quezaltenango and other areas west of the capital seceded from Guatemala altogether, forming the independent state of Los Altos.10 Some members of the elite, particularly those with ties to the eastern Monta a, n also may have joined forces with Carrera, creating the very cross-class and, I would add, cross-culturalalliances that Peter Guardino has shown to have been so crucial for the notorious nineteenth-century insurgencies n of Mexicos center-south.11 The Monta a counted a signicant number of haciendas when compared to elsewhere in Guatemala and, in addition, its subaltern population was more ethnically heterogeneous and less rigidly segregated between ladino and Maya. Whatever the reason, it certainly appears that Carrera had at least some relatively wealthy patrons, and that his forces included a sizable proportion of both castas and Mayadevelopments that would have been almost unthinkable in the west, where a more pronounced ladinoindigenous antagonism made interethnic alliances among neighbors difcult.12 In a word, the Carrera Revolts irrepressibility and astonishing success is captured by French philosopher Louis Althussers notion of overdetermination. Discussing the conditions that lead to a revolutionary situation, Althusser described how a vast accumulation of contradictions comes into play in the same court, some of which are radically heterogeneous . . . but which nevertheless merge into a ruptural unity.13 Overdetermination, in his view, referred to the way that this revolutionary situation, itself a social process, . . . is constituted by the interaction of all other social processes in a social formation.14 Although I cannot vouch for the theoretical rigor with which I employ Althussers concept, I do believe that he provides a useful heuristic lens through which to view the Carrera Revolt. Because overdetermination denies any attempt to reduce the revolt, or its success, to the effects of a single process or partial subset of processes, we are obliged to acknowledge the myriad trends, actions, and contingencies that converged not only to engender Carreras spirited insurgency, but also to provide it with a hospitable environment and thus the potential to ourish.15

Popular Rebellion, Popular Quiescence: Some Theoretical Considerations

The problem of rebellionwhy it occurs, and why some snowball where others just melt awaycontinues to perplex and intrigue, a fact underscored

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and NationState Formation 177

by ongoing discussion and debate of the topic in numerous scholarly forums.16 Although Althussers notion of overdetermination may help to conceptualize the complex and multifaceted process by which rebellions gather momentum and achieve success, it does not provide a means to explore subaltern decisions to oppose the state and ruling elites with violent acts or movements. A more useful reection, in this regard, is Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugents Everyday Forms of State Formation, an edited collection of essays that confronts the empirical and theoretical challenges posed by the Mexican revolution.17 [A]ny understanding of why, men [and women] rebel, historian Alan Knight writes in his introduction to the volume, must be paralleled by an understanding of why they do not; of why subordination, inequality, abuses (all the factors that supposedly lie behind rebellion) may also coexist with quiescence (in terms of actions, not necessarily beliefs).18 And any understanding of rebellion and its absence, he concludes, is impossible without the notion of hegemony. Knights position nicely sums up advances in the study of popular resistance. Latin American scholars largely have come to agree with the likes of E. P. Thompson and James C. Scott that the question of rebellion should be investigated as part of the larger fabric of subaltern politics. Overt violence directed at the state or ruling elites must be viewed within the framework of much longer cycles of resistant adaptation in which myriad and often unnoticed subaltern efforts to challenge domination are integral to the quotidian struggle for survival.19 Uprisings and insurrections, far from being atavistic manifestations of popular rage that disrupt the otherwise harmonious ow of daily life, represent just one of the many strategies continually in play as those at the bottom seek to resist, evade, cope with, or deny their subjugation. Within this scenario, quiescence is not necessarily a sign of contentment at all. Subaltern actors well may be choosing to forego overt and attentiongrabbing acts of resistance for tactical or practical reasons, not because they are satised with the status quo. The problem, however, is to ascertain what these reasons might be. In essence, the timeless query Why rebellion? has been supplanted by an equally challenging but also complementary rejoinder: Why the absence of rebellion? And as Knight suggests, arguing that an effective system of coercion has cowed [subaltern sectors] into inaction simply does not sufce as a thorough or convincing answer in most cases. Hence the growing resort to hegemony by Latin Americanists and other students of subaltern politics as reected in the pages of the Joseph and Nugent volume.20 Unfortunately, Knights misconceptualization of hegemony as something akin to its logical inversemystication, ideological domination, false consciousnesssuggests that his answer to the question of subaltern

178 Chapter 6 quiescence is every bit as dissatisfying as those that rely on simple repression.21 Indeed, the equation of hegemony with false consciousness is one of the standard uses of the concept that Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer decry in The Great Arch, and by which James Scott justies his complete abandonment of the term in Weapons of the Weak.22 Florencia E. Mallon provides a more sensitive and useful elaboration of this complex idea in her contribution to the Joseph and Nugent volume. Mallon conceptualizes hegemony as a constant and ongoing process through which power relations are contested, legitimated, and redened at all levels of society . . . , i.e., in the family, community, social movement, institution, region, etc. In addition, she considers hegemony to be an actual end point, . . . a contract or agreement, . . . [a]n always dynamic or precarious balance [that] is reached among contesting forces. In other words, hegemony as end point is itself the result of hegemonic processes.23 Mallons denition has several important implications for the analysis of rebellion. First, because hegemony is based fundamentally on a process of continual contestation and renegotiation, it is ever changing and constantly up for grabs. In a word, hegemony is uid, and its uidity becomes doubly clear when one considers it in the context of Corrigan and Sayers conceptualization of the state. According to Sayer, in his contribution to Everyday Forms of State Formation, [t]he critical point for theories of hegemony is that [state rule] is the exact opposite of mystication or false consciousness.
This was the point of The Great Archs insistence that the state lives in and through its subjects: we were not arguing an incorporation thesis at the level of ideology or belief, but pointing to precisely the materiality of everyday forms of state formation. . . . [State] power works through the way it forcibly organizes, and divides, subjectivities, and thereby produces and reproduces quite material forms of sociality. . . . It is cynicism, not ideological incorporation, that makes this system work. . . . Individuals live the lie that is the state, and it lives through their performances. . . . [B]y their very actions [they are] afrming the power of what is sanctied. . . . Their beliefs are neither here nor there. What is demanded of them is onlyis precisely performances. . . .

This hegemony of the state, Sayer continues, is also exactly what is most fragile about the state, precisely because it does depend on people living what they much of the time know to be a lie. Every so often, people deliberately refuse to cooperate, and when this happens, all that is solid melts into air. That is the moment when hegemony is revealed for what it is: the intellectual equivalent of the emperors new clothes.24 For the very reason that hegemony is not false consciousness, then, but rather a continual struggle over power that generates the knowing, if often

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and NationState Formation 179

grudging, performance of innumerable individuals at all levels of society, there is always the potential that those living the lie will refuse to perform. Hence Sayers claim that the hegemony of the state is fragile: its apparent immutability is easily shattered by the reality of constant contestation and noncompliance. Yet the very fragility of hegemonywhat I referred to above as its uidityis also a source of strength. On one hand, it is quite possible for the state to renegotiate the terms of domination, and to incorporate challenges and deviation. On the other hand, as any political organizer can attest, a scattering of individuals refusing to perform in isolation from one another does not make an opposition movement or even a coherent resistance. Again, the issue is not one of mystication or false consciousness, but rather that the inertia of compliance is hard to overcome when such accommodations diminish and disempower their participants.25 Moreover, the very problem of hegemonywhat Mallon describes as its always dynamic or precarious balanceposes a challenge to each incipient counterhegemonic movement just as it does to the state. The differences of culture and place and the difculties of distance and material subsistence are no easy matters to overcome, and thus resistance movements tend to remain fragmented. Although this fragmentation or plurality is, as James Scott notes, a source of strength and resilience, it also means that popular resistance . . . has no unitary counterhegemony of its own to impose. . . . Thus it seeks . . . to evade, rather than to mount a more directed or fundamental challenge to the hegemony of the state.26 In sum, the concept of hegemony is particularly well suited for investigating subaltern politics. It redirects analytical attention away from a singleminded examination of high-level functionaries and the so-called political class to the nexus between governing institutions and authorities and the supposedly apolitical majority. Hegemony reminds us that political domination is a relational term that requires at least two groups: the rulers and the ruled, and that without the other, neither one would exist.27 It highlights the negotiated if not often consensual nature of such domination, with a few exceptions rejecting that repression alone can provide social stability. At the same time, hegemony also minimizes the role of false consciousness and ideological indoctrination. Instead, it privileges the subaltern capacity for informed and consequential political engagement in contrast to much conventional wisdom. Finally, in the particular case of popular rebellion, hegemony demands that we focus on the breakdown of the pact between the state and popular sectors. At what point, and for what reasons, do significant numbers of people, living what they much of the time know to be a lie, decide not to cooperate with elite designs in an increasingly coordinated and open manner?

180 Chapter 6

Dissolving the Paradox: The Carrera Revolt and the Liberal Reforma in Comparative Perspective
Let me now summarize the lessons of the Carrera Revolt within the framework of the ideas developed above. My goal will be to establish a useful baseline or point of comparison from which to discuss why it was that subaltern sectors failed to mount another successful insurrection when faced with the Liberal Reforma. The rst lesson concerns the implications of independence for the incipient postcolonial state and the indigenous majority. The years immediately following the collapse of Spanish rule constituted a unique moment in Guatemalas postconquest history. Guatemala City had been transformed from the seat of a colonial Audiencia to a republican capital, and in large part because of this its legitimacy was at an all-time low. The Maya in particular worried that the local state would no longer afford them even the modicum of impartiality that had prevailed when a distant king served as the nalif often only symbolicarbiter of political affairs. Their fears were only reinforced as Liberal partisans enacted sweeping reforms that challenged Mayan subsistence, culture, and administrative autonomy. Thus the indigenous majority began to rethink fundamentally its relationship to the state institutions and authorities centered in the erstwhile colonial capital. Simply put, the system of domination that had been negotiated over centuries of colonial rule, and that had served as the basis for the so-called Pax Hispanica, became a relic of the pastin the view of many Mayan communities, at leastonce the postcolonial era had commenced. The second lesson concerns the stability of the state in the aftermath of independence. Political elites found it difcult to unite in the power vacuum left by the withdrawal of the Spanish crown, and much of the rst postcolonial decade was marked by violence and warfare among the contesting factions. No longer able to rely on tribute, the incipient republican state also found itself simultaneously short on funds. It could not provision anything but the most modest of military forces, and its effective reach outside of Guatemala City itself was severely restricted because colonial authorities had done little to develop signicant provincial apparatuses. In sum, the coercive capacity of the central state was extremely limited. A third lesson involves the Liberal ideologues and activists who controlled the state for most of the period prior to the Carrera Revolt, and their approach to Guatemalas indigenous majority. Rather than attempting to rebuild the negotiated status quo or pact that had resulted in such remarkable stability during the centuries of Spanish rule, Liberal elites instead thumbed their noses at the colonial past and, in effect, popular sensibilities. Instead they charged headlong down the road that they believed would lead to enlightened modernization, enacting a series of increasingly disruptive reforms that

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and NationState Formation 181

attacked community land, increased taxes, diminished local political autonomy, and threatened the social role of the Catholic Church. With the compelling if idealized memory of Spanish paternalism still fresh, these reforms rocked the landscape of popular consciousness like a massive earthquake. Needless to say, the multitude of Guatemalans living the lie on which the state depended for its survival began to reconsider the reasons for doing so. A severely fragmented or plural popular resistance, held in check by the colonial states deliberative manner and paternalistic concern for nonelites, and forced to evade rather than confront Spanish military powernow contemplated more direct and open challenges to Guatemala City and republican ofcials. And over a period of weeks and months, in one of those rare historical conjunctures, popular fragmentation gave way to popular unity as spontaneous riots and uprisings became coordinated rebellions and then a prolonged insurgency. Although it would be incorrect to claim that all Guatemalan subalterns had coalesced beneath or behind a unitary counterhegemony, signicant segments came close enough to mount a directand ultimately successfulassault on the state. The problem of Guatemalas Liberal Reforma when viewed within this context is how to explain its survival despite a strong similarity to the very reform project that had spawned the Carrera Revolt in the late 1830s. Legally, both programs represented an attack on corporate land tenure and thus on the territorial integrity of most rural communities as well as on the subsistence base of many rural families. Both programs imposed new taxes, strengthened the institutions of the state, and undercut the power of the Catholic Church and its involvement in daily life. Both programs also were premised on the idea that the countrys indigenous majority was culturally, if not biologically, unsuitable for citizenship. Why, then, did the rst reform project sink on the shoals of popular insurrection, whereas the second sailed more or less smoothly into the twentieth century? Part of the answer to this question can be found by looking beyond the discursive horizon of each governments legal record to see what these two apparently similar projects signied for the popular classes of their respective historical contexts. Did the implementation of both projects represent an equally abrupt and devastating rupture with the pasta breakdown of the theory and practice of state-subaltern contestation that had developed under the Spanish crown? Or, conversely, had so much changed from the 1830s to the 1870s that the subaltern majority perceived and experienced the two reform projects in very different ways? The evidence from western Guatemala, I believe, supports the second of these two scenarios: whether we consider land, labor, or local political autonomy, it seems clear that what loomed so threatening in the immediate postindependence years had become a fait accompli by 1871. During their long rule Conservative authorities had

182 Chapter 6 succeeded where rst-generation Liberals had failed, altering the equation of statesubaltern relations by implementing much of what later Liberal generations presumed to take credit for. In the case of land, for example, Conservative rather than Reforma-era authorities made good on the efforts of rst-generation Liberals to open Quezaltenangos Costa Cuca to nonindigenous cultivation against the wishes of San Martn Sacatep quez. And San Martns unhappy encounter with sugar e and cattle in the early 1840s was merely a harbinger of what many additional Mayan communities would experience during the 1850s and 1860s, as coffee was introduced to fertile piedmont zones throughout Guatemala. Indeed, it appears that prior to the Liberal Reforma, only the indigenous residents of Huehuetenango, El Quich , and perhaps Solol , were spared the large-scale e a expropriations associated with coffees expansion. If we look at labor and community autonomy, as well, a similar panorama unfolds. Quezaltenangos Mam leaders opposed state demands to provide workers for building and operating a circuit court that they would have preferred to do without in the rst place. Over the course of the Conservative interregnum, however, state authorities regularized both the presence of a district judge as well as the use of forced labor rotations to further public works projects. Thus, by the time that Liberal rebels retook Guatemala City in 1871, district-level ofcials already served in San Juan Ostuncalco and many other areas of the country that previously had little direct contact with the state. Likewise, the infamous mandamiento was well established in the department of Quezaltenango, as well as in San Marcos, Totonicap n, a Solol , and the Verapaz. a Within this context, new forms of resistant adaptation evolved. Contracted labor of one type or another now played a signicant role in the subsistence strategies of many rural households. Under Conservative authorities, and later during the Reforma as well, workers demanded and received new extensions of credit from planters on a seasonal basis regardless of their outstanding debts, and some of them even succeeded at the risky game of accepting multiple pay advances simultaneously. The clandestine aguardiente enterprises that proliferated during the Conservative interregnum, along with the associated input industry of sugar cane cultivation and processing, also generated signicant income for many families. Finally, the growth of state revenues and of the state itself offered new opportunities for patronage and cooptation, and this trend only increased during the Reforma. If rupture well describes how the subaltern majority perceived and experienced the Liberal reforms attempted prior to 1837, then continuity is the byword for the 1870s. Although the Reforma looked every bit as ominous on paper as the earlier Liberal legislation, in contrast to the rst round of reforms it implied little more than a renewed and energized commitment to the

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and NationState Formation 183

status quo for much of the population. Historians Lowell Gudmundson and H ctor Lindo-Fuentes have described Central Americas late-nineteenthe century Liberal reforms as more capstone than cornerstone in the process of social and economic change that transformed the region in the decades after independence.28 Expanding on their imagery for the case of Guatemala, the years up to 1837 laid the foundation for this transformation, and it took shape with increasing momentum over the course of the Conservative interregnum (ca. 18401870). In keeping with the analogy, the Liberal Reforma, or capstone, was not a revolution at all, but rather the nishing touches on a project long in the building. At least in the eyes of Guatemalas popular classes, then, the rst Liberal reform project had threatened disjuncture where the second brought only more of the same. Yet this is just part of the reason that the two periods of reform met with such different outcomes. There is also the important question of the state. In 1837 the Guatemala City-based state was extremely weak, and it had little legitimacy among either subalterns or provincial elites. By 1871, however, not even historically secessionist western Liberals contested its rule. Rafael Carrera and his Conservative allies had done much to reestablish the legitimacy lost with the collapse of Spanish colonialism. Most signicantly, Carrera answered the smoldering Indian Question that had ared up during and after independence by rejecting the hated Liberal reforms, smashing the incipient state of Los Altos, and reafrming the caste foundation of Guatemalan society. In this manner he reestablished the paternalistic pact that had linked the state with the Mayan majority, even if in subsequent years this linkage was revealed to be largely symbolic. At the same time, Carrera and his political allies demonstrated to capitalino and provincial elites that they could maintain social stabilityno small thing at a time when the specter of caste warfare haunted privileged sectors throughout the Americas. In addition, Carrera and the Conservatives began slow but steady efforts to strengthen and expand the national state. Positioning judges and political commissioners at the subdepartmental level was just one of the ways that they accomplished this during their long tenure. As their resurrection of the mandamiento implies, Conservative ofcials also embarked on ambitious infrastructure projects, and they successfully pushed for the creation of new schools and militia companies outside the handful of provincial capitals to which these institutions heretofore had been restricted. When Liberal rebels retook Guatemala City in 1871, then, they inherited a much stronger state than the one that they had been forced to abandon over three decades earlier. Although Conservative leaders were unable to retain enthusiastic mass support following Carreras death in 1865probably because of their unpopular aguardiente monopoly, and because their policies toward the rural majority had disenfranchised so manythe fundamental legitimacy of the state itself no longer came into question. The Conservatives

184 Chapter 6 had greatly expanded its institutions and infrastructure, as well as its capacity for repression and cooptation. Moreover, by the late 1860s, coffee export earnings nally had begun to overshadow cochineals stagnation and decline, leading to a rapid rise in state revenue just as the Liberals marked their triumphant return to power. Flush with coffee money, they took over where their vanquished foes had left off, expanding the state with greater and greater ease. The Liberals returned to state power at an especially auspicious moment during the nineteenth century. The state was larger and stronger, and not coincidentally, as Corrigan and Sayer would remind us, it had more legitimacy than at any previous time. Unlike the unpopular G lvez administration, a which could not hide its association with a broad array of potentially disruptive reforms and innovations, Reforma-era Liberals appeared relatively distant from the policies that had been disenfranchising indigenous community members for the past three decades. Although the Liberals deliberately continued these policiesattempting, often unsuccessfully, to revamp them with new legal backingthey simply could not be blamed for the social transformation that already was well underway. And when unrest did threaten, or disputes did emerge, the new Liberal leaders eschewed the inexibility of their ideological progenitorslearning from the latters mistakesand instead adopted a more pragmatic and paternalistic approach to popular discontent reminiscent of Carrera and his Conservative associates. To summarize, by the late 1830s a number of reinforcing factors had converged to create an environment in which popular insurrection ourished. Opposition to Liberal policy was rampant, riot and rebellion left almost no region untouched, Guatemala Citys jurisdiction was rejected by provincial subalterns and elites alike, and the state lacked the nancial and military resources to mount an effective response. Simply put, the Carrera Revolt was overdetermined. Popular resistance had coalesced into a counterhegemonic force that no longer needed to evade the state, but rather could challenge it head on. During the Liberal Reforma, by contrast, there was nothing like convergence of reinforcing factors. Popular discontent remained unfocused, Guatemala Citys right to rule the rest of the country was rmly established, and the state was stronger than ever by almost any measureinstitutional, nancial, or military. As a result, the two notable examples of popular rebellion that marked the Reforma yearsone in the east, the so-called Remincheros, the other in Momostenangowere notable precisely because they stood by themselves on an otherwise empty battle eld. Unable to broaden their base of support, these rebellions were repressed and coopted into submission.29 Although popular resistance was anything but absent during the Reforma, it simply could not move beyond a fragmented or plural counterhegemony.

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and NationState Formation 185

And thus evasion of the state, not direct and open confrontation, remained the order of the day.

Guatemalan NationState Formation in Comparative Perspective

Throughout this study I have proposed the idea that continuity, not rupture, marked the transition from Conservative to Liberal rule in 1871. Although there were differences that separated Liberals from Conservativesenough to mobilize an armed movement against the Conservative state in the late 1860s most of them had little practical consequence once the Liberals controlled Guatemala City. Indeed, the core group of western elites who supported the insurrection was motivated more by provincial resentment than some deep-seated ideological or even programmatic disagreement with capitalino Conservatives. That said, two exceptions to this generalization stand out. First, Liberal attitudes toward the Catholic Church differed significantly from those of Conservatives. Liberals viewed the Church as a threat to the state but also to economic and social progress, and they desired to diminish its power. Thus, some of the earliest decrees of the Reforma were geared toward this end, abolishing all religious orders and nationalizing their property, ending the religious fuero, and declaring freedom of worship.30 The second signicant difference between Liberals and Conservatives concerned how they conceptualized Guatemalas indigenous majority. Conservatives held a racialized or biologically deterministic view of society, in which the Maya were considered a distinct class of citizens because of their supposedly stunted intellect. They could not be judged by the same standards as those of European descent, and thus they needed special protections as well as special attention and direction. Legally speaking, the Conservatives treated indigenous people as wards of the state. Liberals, by contrast, believed that the Indian problem was more cultural in nature. Perhaps this pointed up the importance of western provincial thought to Guatemalan Liberalism. Even as they bemoaned Mayan backwardness, Los Altos ladinos knew from experience that their indigenous neighbors were formidable adversaries with fully functioning minds. No, Mayan failure to conform to modernity had little to do with biology, and everything to do their implacable resistance to change and a stubborn determination to retain their distinctive culture and identity. Legal protections had to be ended, then, not simply because Liberalism demanded formal equality before the law, but also because protection was viewed as tantamount to helping the indigenous majority resist further ladinization. The problem with the Liberal approach, however, was that it did not simultaneously eliminate other statutes and policies that continued to

186 Chapter 6 stigmatize the Maya as a separate class or caste when it came to their land and their labor. Indeed, in many ways the Reforma was an attempt to refurbish such prejudicial stigmatization. National developmentthat is to say, commercial agriculturists and the statedepended on legally targeting indigenous land for usurpation and indigenous people for exploitation. These laws were deemed necessary despite their affront to formal equality, and despite the fact that they perpetuated the very political and ultimately social distinctions among Guatemalans that Liberals professed to abhor. Apparently, the Maya were to be treated as equals only when it suited the interests of the agricultural entrepreneurs. If Liberal equality and Liberal desires for a homogenized ladino citizenry impeded the planters search for prot or the states search for revenue, then they were abandoned without a second thought. And so we arrive at the contradiction that Reforma-era Liberalism posed for Guatemalan state formation. The 1879 constitution granted citizenship regardless of ethnicity, and bestowed certain rights like liberty and equality before the law to all citizens. This was in keeping with the Liberals professed desire for a modern, westernized citizenry. In fact, however, the Liberal state continued to target indigenous people as a class, to exclude them from the rights of citizenship on a regular, ongoing basis. In Liberal practice, and indeed, in Liberal thought, there was only one true citizen of Guatemala: the ladino.31 What Reforma-era Liberals did not realize was that by denying citizenship for the indigenous majority, they likewise denied the possibility of the Guatemalan nation. The malformation of Guatemala as a ladino nation is not unique in Latin America. Ethnicity continues to pose problems for the process of state formation in many parts of the region. Indeed, the violence and open warfare endemic to several contemporary Latin American republics reect the ongoing nature of the process, as well as its numerous failings up to this point. Active guerrilla movements continue in Colombia, Peru, and Mexico, and in all of these cases the states historic engagement with the indigenous population is openly acknowledged to be a source of discontent. Is it purely coincidental that Guatemala, too, has only recently concluded more than three decades of civil war in which the state committed what United Nations investigators have termed acts of genocide against the Mayan majority?32 Let us consider briey some of the recent literature on Peru, Mexico, and Central America to see how it might help us better understand the Guatemalan context. A good place to begin the comparison is with Florencia E. Mallons explicitly comparative Peasant and Nation: the Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru.33 Although I risk putting the cart before the horse, Mallons ultimate goal in this work is to help explain why these two Latin American countries both former viceregal centers of the Spanish Empirehave followed such divergent twentieth-century trajectories. What allowed the Mexican state

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and NationState Formation 187

to leave behind the constant political turnovers and crises of the nineteenth century in such marked contrast to Peru? Is it enough simply to point out that Peru did not experience anything like the Mexican Revolution, as if the cathartic explosion of popular outrage that began in 1910 singularly healed that countrys body-politic? Without downplaying the importance of this pivotal event, Mallon suggests that the relative tranquility of Mexicos twentieth centurye.g., the stability and longevity of the postrevolutionary state, unique to Latin Americacannot be understood through the lens of the 1910 revolution alone. Instead, she suggests that the revolution and its aftermath, like the events of Perus twentieth century, should be seen as the continuation of political processes that developed over the preceding postcolonial decades. At the heart of Mallons distinction between Mexico and Peru is the capacity of subaltern sectors to engage political elites and, in so doing, to insist that their agenda, or at least parts of it, be incorporated into the state. After carefully researching the nineteenth-century histories of both countries, she concludes that this kind of subaltern-elite articulation occurred much more frequently and successfully in Mexico than in Peru. Although popular involvement in national political projects ultimately was repressed and marginalized in both places prior to the twentieth century, its greater potential in Mexico was reected by the lasting impact that subalterns had on the process of state formation or reformation that began in 1910. The state that emerged over the course of the Mexican Revolution reected in important ways the demands of popular insurgents, and it included mechanisms for the ongoing incorporation of such typically marginalized groups as peasants and labor. If the increasingly technocratic orientation of the Mexican state has led to the deterioration of the postrevolutionary hegemonic pact, and hence an unprecedented level of oppositionrecall not just the 1994 Chiapas uprising but also the 1997 election of Cuauht moc C rdenas to the mayoralty of e a Mexico City and the 2000 presidential election of Vicente Foxthis should not divert our attention from the countrys distinctive twentieth-century politics when viewed in the context of Latin America. In many ways, Peasant and Nation lays the foundation for two subsequent monographs on the nineteenth-century histories of Mexico and Peru, respectively. The rst, by historian Peter Guardino, adds important detail to Mallons contention that Mexican subalterns contributed signicantly to national-level political projects during this period. Employing the notion of cross-class alliances, Guardino demonstrates how the contours of Mexicos political landscape facilitated the emergence of numerous multiclass and multiethnic opposition movements that challenged the state from a popular and regionalist perspective.34 Although most of these alliances failed to capture the executive ofce for any length of time, they succeeded in keeping the

188 Chapter 6 issues of democracy and local autonomy in the national spotlight, bolstering federalist fortunes for many years and beating back numerous attempts to centralize and consolidate the Mexican state along more hierarchical, authoritarian lines. It took powerful federalist Porrio Daz to nally impose a centralized state on his erstwhile regional allies, and even then, only after decades of careful negotiation and cooptation. One might argue that the very success of Dazs top-down centralization project, particularly in the later years, is precisely what propelled popular resistance to take the violent form that it did beginning in 1910.35 If Guardinos cross-class alliances are the key to Mexican distinctiveness because they provided a channel for regional subalterns to insinuate themselves in the elite-dominated realm of national politicsto place their agenda on the table uninvitedthen the very failure of these alliances in postcolonial Peru helps to explain that countrys unbroken legacy of popular exclusion and concomitant political instability. This is the conclusion that anthropologist Mark Thurner reaches in his recent monograph on nineteenth-century Peru, and in so doing he echoes Mallons Peasant and Nation.36 According to Thurner, the most successful example of cross-class alliance in Peruvian history was the coalition of Quechua, mestizo, and creole that had backed Inka noble Tupac Amaru II in his 1780 rebellion against the injustices of Spanish colonialism. When the state responded to the rebellion by eliminating the indigenous nobility from Andean society in recognition of its ability to mobilize the provincial population across class and caste, it greatly diminished the possibility of further cross-class alliances. Neither indigenous municipal ofcials nor local mestizos or creoles were able to ll the political, intellectual, or symbolic shoes of the extinguished Inka nobility over the course of the nineteenth century. Even top-down incorporation along the lines of Mexican indigenismo was out of the question in Peru, because lime o elites n feared that by employing symbols from the pre-Columbian era they would provoke a resurgence of Inka nationalism. Hence the politics of exclusion that, as Mallon notes, has continued in Peru with few interruptions up to the present day. Within this context, perhaps the best that can be hoped for in terms of Peruvian national identity is the antiindigenista recognition of racial and cultural hybridity described by Marisol de la Cadena in Indigenous Mestizos. If in Mexico indigenismo and mestizaje have been two sides of the same coin, in Peru, by and large, they have been distincteven contradictory entities. As de la Cadena relates, the region of Cuzco is unique in Peru for its development in the rst decades of the twentieth century of an elite-led indigenismo that rejected mestizaje just as lime o glorication of the mestizo n rejected things indigenous. Over time a reconciliation of these two ideas has resulted, at least in Cuzco, but even here, as the title of de la Cadenas book

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and NationState Formation 189

hints, it is based on a privileging of mestizo identity. Indigenous cuzque os n are formally mestizo, even if they use mestizo to identify literate and economically successful people who share indigenous cultural practices yet do not perceive themselves as miserable, a condition they consider Indian. 37 In the Central American context, Jeffrey Gould notes a similar development in Nicaragua. Here, too, a mestizo identity among indigenous Nicaraguans has not automatically precluded their ability to positively valorize indigenous history or culture even as they have sought to escape the negative connotations of being Indian.38 Yet overall, the effects of this identity have not been so benign. Rather, as in Peru, mestizo national identity has worked to deny the continued existence of indigenous peoples and to refuse them any positive role in contemporary society. Gould explains how this came about with Mexico as his explicit counterpoint. According to Gould, Nicaraguan national integration, unlike that of Mexico, did not occur until the late nineteenth century, when coffee was emerging as the countrys economic produit moteur. Local intellectuals who, if in Mexico, might have served to articulate indigenous and popular demands to larger national projects, instead became intimately tied to the expansion of coffee. And since coffee required the very land and labor defended by indigenous institutions and culture, Nicaraguas local intellectuals believed that important aspects of indigenous society had to be suppressed or dismantled. Implied, though not stated outright in Goulds account, is that this intersection of coffee and national integration was no mere coincidence. In other words, coffee wealth gave rise to the provincial intellectual class that made Nicaraguan national integration possible. In Mexico, by contrast, due to signicant regional development over the course of the colonial period, this class began to emerge in various locales well before independence. Thus, provincial elites and intellectuals were well-placed to be the protagonists along with neighboring indigenous and plebeian sectorsof the political battles that swept early nineteenth-century Mexico. And in this capacity, the former frequently allied with, rather than uniformly opposed, the latter, serving to articulate subaltern demands and aspirations into the struggle over Mexican nationhood.39 How do the Mexican, Peruvian, and Nicaraguan cases compare with that of Guatemala? Although the myth of Mexico as a mestizo democracy or a cosmic race of equals appears to have been little more than that a myththe countrys largely indigenous and mestizo majority has done a credible job of imposing a more inclusive and participatory politics on a reluctant core elite through its manipulation of cross-class alliances from independence through the Mexican Revolution and beyond. In postcolonial Peru, by contrast, such alliances have tended to be extremely tenuous when they have materialized at all, even after the emergence of an elite-led

190 Chapter 6 indigenismo in the 1920s.40 Similarly, as Gould describes, cross-classor more accurately, cross-castealliances were also the exception, rather than the rule, in Nicaragua.41 For this reason, Guatemala appears to bear a striking resemblance to the Peruvian and Nicaraguan cases. The ladino nationalism imposed by Los Altos Liberals after 1870 clearly was based on the exclusion of the indigenous majority, and that legacy continues to the present. Still, there were moments in the early nineteenth century when the potential for a more inclusive alternative was substantial, at least in contrast to Peru and Nicaragua, and in this regard Guatemala is more reminiscent of Mexico. The interethnic and cross-class alliances of the eastern monta a that propelled n Rafael Carrera to the top of Guatemalan politics evince important similarities with the movements of Guerrero and the Mexican south. In addition, Carrera succeeded in resurrecting the caste-based corporatism that had prevailed in colonial times. Although rmly rooted in a racist, hierarchal conceptualization of society, the caste system afforded Carreras indigenous supporters whether in the east or the westa degree of cultural and political autonomy because it accepted them more or less on their own terms. That is, incorporation into the body politic, however partial or circumscribed, was not tied to assimilation or the embrace of things ladino. For this reason, the Maya certainly appeared to prefer caste-based citizenship with all of its attendant problems to the universal variety offered by early nineteenth-century Liberals. Unfortunately, as we have seen, Conservative elites squandered this opportunity to pursue a constructive pact with the indigenous majority. They used the paternalistic underpinnings of caste hierarchism to justify the usurpation of indigenous land, the coercion of indigenous labor, and increased intervention in local politics and administration, rather than to bolster state support for and protection of Mayan communities. Much like Bolivia, Guatemalan Conservatives had become increasingly positivist and liberal by the second half of the nineteenth century.42 Thus, when Los Altos Liberals captured the state in 1871, their especially virulent antiindigenous stance represented merely the coup de grace for the crumbling remains of caste-based corporatism that Conservatives had resurrected three decades earlier. Leaving aside the example of Rafael Carrera, even Guatemalas more rigidly segregated west held out some potential for cross-class and cross-caste alliances in the rst decades of the nineteenth century. Unlike Nicaragua, as several recent works on Quezaltenango demonstrate, Guatemala did count a signicant provincial elite in the western Los Altos region well before coffee became king.43 Moreover, during the internal conicts that accompanied independence, this elite linked with surrounding indigenous populations in demanding incorporation into the Mexican imperium as a way to gain autonomy from Guatemala City. Yet a stable, long-term coalition was prevented from developing by the rapid fall of Iturbide in Mexico and by the

Popular Insurrection, Liberal Reform, and NationState Formation 191

subsequent decision of western ladino elites to secede from Guatemala entirely, establishing the sixth Central American state of Los Altos. Rather than ally with the Maya in order to inuence the shape of a postcolonial state based in Guatemala City, Los Altos ladinos determined to create a state of their own, one that would give them complete autonomy as well as a decisive advantage over their indigenous neighborsthe vast majority of the Los Altos population. This effort quickly transformed the latter from potential allies to vociferous opponents, for if the western Maya had disliked the idea that state power would devolve from Spain to Guatemala City preferring Mexicothey adamantly rejected its location in Quezaltenango. The subsequent collapse of Los Altos in no way diminished the antagonism between these two ethnic groups, and after the midcentury the emergence of coffee cemented its existence. Western provincials embraced coffee every bit as enthusiastically as their Nicaraguan counterparts. And as in Nicaragua, this embrace left no room for indigenous institutions or cultural practices that impeded coffees expansion. This does not mean that indigenousladino alliances were impossible in the age of coffee, only that they were unlikely to be the basis for radically moving the state in a more democratic, popular directionone that would, among other things, give greater support and autonomy to Mayan institutions and cultural practices. As Greg Grandin notes in his innovative study of Quezaltenango, the nature of cross-caste alliances had been transformed. In the early nineteenth century, linkages between ladino and Maya had reected more broadly communal, popular, interests on the part of the latter. Mayan leaders had negotiated with their ladino counterparts as community patriarchs, not a class-based elite. By the second half of the century, however, as coffee entered the picture, and as commercial agriculture in general continued to expand, narrower class interests became the basis for collaboration between indigenous and nonindigenous leaders. Cross-caste no longer implied cross-class or the incorporation of popular demands into a larger project. Indeed, according to Grandin, after 1870 a key point of agreement between Mayan and ladino elites was the desire to prevent interethnic subaltern unity.44 Simply put, class had begun to trump caste in local social relations. This makes perfect sense when one remembers that Quezaltenango is the subject of Grandins study. The city is unique in the Guatemalan context for the size of its indigenous bourgeoisie, and this provided a signicant foundation for intraclass collaboration that cut across ethnic lines.45 Outside of the city of Quezaltenango the situation was somewhat different. Here most Mayan communities were signicantly less stratied, and thus class could not serve as such a potent mechanism for creating a convergence of interests among ladino and Mayan leaders. In these areas the state had to rely more on the personal malleability of individual indigenous ofcials

192 Chapter 6 and its own capacity for cooptation and coercion to bring about interethnic collaboration. As we saw in the case of San Juan Ostuncalco, the expansion of state institutions and revenues after the midcentury made this kind of collaboration more possible. By the 1880s and 1890s, hundreds of Mam sanjuaneros were incorporated into the local state apparatus, cooperating with their ladino superiors in administering the town. Still, these Mam ofcials were less dependable allies than the Kiche elite of Quezaltenango. Without a common class perspective to inform their actions, Mam authorities often used their positions within the state to sidetrack or vitiate ladino goals and commands. What they most certainly did not do, however, was transform the state from the inside out to create a governing apparatus more amenable to indigenous interests. For a variety of reasons, then, the potential for the kind of cross-class (and caste) alliances analyzed by Guardino in the Mexican case, and referred to by Gould as a counterpoint to Nicaragua, was much reduced in Guatemala after 1870. Among the Maya, class stratication over the preceding decades had tempered indigenous leaders as proponents of the kinds of communal demands that might have fueled a potent, populist opposition movement. In any case, elite western ladinos were no longer the provincial malcontents of the early 1800s who had sought to alter or overthrow the state. After 1870 they controlled it. Now, when they pursued cross-caste ties, it was to further their personal enterprises or generally reinforce the status quo rather than establish an antistate opposition or insurgency. Ladino chauvinism had become the substance of Guatemalan national identity, and few ladinos were inclined to consider indigenous peoples or their culture as anything more than a necessary evil. In such an environment, Mexican-style indigenismo the integration of a more sympathetic evaluation of Mayan history and its contemporary cultural practices into the national self-imagewas no more likely to emerge than in Peru or Nicaragua. Perhaps this helps to explain why the ideas of Miguel Angel Asturias, Guatemalas most famous indigenista, were so thoroughly assimilationist. Perhaps this also helps to explain why, despite his racist assumptions and patronizing prescriptions, Asturias did not always feel welcome in the country of his birth, spending signicant portions of his life abroad. For he genuinely desired to end the suffering and exploitation of the countrys Mayan populationsomething that most elite Guatemalans refused to contemplate.46 They could not conceive of a more inclusive politics through assimilation or otherwise. They feared the indigenous majority too deeply, and preferred to jeopardize the nation rather than risk their own political prerogatives.

Reference Matter

Notes and Abbreviations

archival sources

agca:

Archivo General de Centro Am rica. e A Colonial section B Republican section C Congreso ST Secci n de Tierras, organized by department o agq: Archivo de Gobernaci n de Quezaltenango. Citations refer to hojas o sueltas unless otherwise indicated. aha: Archivo Hist rico Arqidiocesano Francisco Paula Garca Pel ez. Cited o a archive sections include Cartas and Padr n de Pueblos. Bulto or o packet years for Cartas correspond to the date of the cited document and are not indicated unless the document is undated or located within a bulto of a different year. ahq: Archivo Hist rico de Quezaltenango. Cited archive sections include o Miscel neo and Libros de Actas. Bulto or packet years for Miscel neo a a documents correspond to the date of the cited document and are not indicated unless the document is undated or located within a bulto of a different year. ahpo: Archivo Hist rico Parroquial de San Juan Ostuncalco. Citations refer to o hojas sueltas unless otherwise indicated. amm: Archivo Municipal de Momostenango. Citations do not indicate the bulto or packet yearassumed to correspond to the date of the cited documentunless the document is undated or located within a bulto of a different year. amsjo: Archivo Municipal de San Juan Ostuncalco. Citations do not indicate the archive sectionassumed to be Correspondenciaunless the cited document pertains to Procesos judiciales (criminales) or Ttulos supletorios. Bulto or packet years correspond to the date of the cited

196 Notes to Introduction

document and are not indicated unless the document is undated or located within a bulto of a different year. expediente. legajo. paquete.

exp.: leg.: paq.:

published primary sources & journals

asghg: Anales de la Sociedad de Geografa e Historia de Guatemala. bagg: Boletn del Archivo General del Gobierno. cg: Luis Mari as Otero. Las Constituciones de Guatemala. Madrid: Instituto de n Estudios Polticos, 1958. csjo: Hostnig, Rainer, comp. El Curato de San Juan Ostuncalco. 2 tomos. Quezaltenango: Centro de Capacitaci n e Investigaci n Campesina, 1993 o o & 1995. dgm: Cort s y Larraz, Pedro. Descripcin Geogr co-Moral de la Dicesis de e o a o Goathemala. Vol. 20, Biblioteca Goathemala de la Sociedad de Geografa e Historia. Guatemala: Tipografa Nacional, 1958. eten: Hostnig, Rainer, comp. Esta tierra es nuestra: compendio de fuentes histricas o sobre denuncias, medidas y remedidas, composiciones, titulaciones, usurpaciones, desmembraciones, litigios, transacciones y remates de tierra (A os 15551952). n 2 tomos. Quezaltenango: Centro de Capacitaci n e Investigaci n o o Campesina, 1997. hahr: Hispanic American Historical Review. larr: Latin American Research Review. lig: Jorge Skinner-Klee, comp. Legislacin indigenista de Guatemala. Mexico: o Instituto Indigenista Interamericano, 1954. rf: Fuentes y Guzm n, Francisco A. Recordacin orida, discurso historial y a o demostracin natural, material, militar y poltica del reyno de Guatemala. Vols. o 68, Biblioteca Goathemala de la Sociedad de Geografa e Historia. Guatemala: Tipografa Nacional, 1933. rla: Recopilacin de Leyes Agrarias. Guatemala: Tipogr co La Uni n, 1890. o a o rlg: Pineda de Mont, Manuel, comp. Recopilacin de las leyes de Guatemala. o 3 tomos. Guatemala: Imprenta de la Paz, 1871. rlrg: Recopilacin de las leyes emitidas por el gobierno democr tico de la Rep blica de o a u Guatemala. Continuous volumes, multiple editors and publishers. Guatemala City, 1874. rlri: Recopilacin de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias. 3 tomos. Madrid: La Viuda o de D. Joaqun Ibarra, 1791.
notes to introduction

1. AGCA B, leg. 3266, exp. 69381. 2. AGCA B, leg. 3266, exps. 69370, 69381, 69383, 69384, 69386, and 69387; AHQ Libros de Actas, Libro N mero 17: Principiado el 4 de Octubre de 1836; u

Notes to Introduction 197 Terminado el 1o. de Abril de 1837, 8 marzo 1837. The quotation is from AGCA B, leg. 3266, exp. 69381. Although various published sources list the beginning of the revolt as March 6, my reading of the existing archival evidence indicates that March 8 was the starting date. See, for instance, Alejandro Marure, Efemerides de los hechos notables acaecidos en la republica de Centro America desde el a o de 1821 hasta el de 1842 n (Guatemala: Ministerio de Educaci n, 1956 [1885]), 151; and Lorenzo Mont far, o u Rese a histrica de Centroamrica, 7 tomos (Guatemala, 18781887), 2:339349. n o e 3. A Palmerstonian Diplomat in Central America: Frederick Chateld, Esq. (Tucson: University of Arizona, 1964), 138. 4. RLA, 22 julio 1873, 8586, and 13 mayo 1874, 86; RLRG, 17 octubre 1873, 201202. 5. RLA, Decreto Num. 170, 8 enero 1877, 9093; LIG, Decreto Gubernativo No. 177, 3 abril 1877, 3542. The latter is also referred to as the Reglamento de jornaleros. 6. Ralph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 18211871 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 347. 7. On the Liberal orientation of much of the Guatemalan historiography, see Lowell Gudmundson and H ctor Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 18211871: Libe eralism before Liberal Reform (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1995), 15; Todd Little-Siebold, Guatemala and the Dream of a Nation: National Policy and Regional Practice in the Liberal Era, 18711945 (Chiquimula, San Marcos) (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1995), 57; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, xiv. On Latin America generally, including Guatemala, see E. Bradford Burns, Ideology in Nineteenth-Century Latin American Historiography, HAHR 58 (August 1978): 409431, and The Poverty of Progress: Latin America in the 19th Century (Berkeley: University of California, 1980), 4150, 98, 106, 147. Anthropologist Carol A. Smith is one of the few students of Guatemalas nineteenth century who attempts to explain the Liberal Reforma in light of the Carrera Revolt. See her Failed Nationalist Movements in 19th-Century Guatemala: A Parable for the Third World, in Nationalist Ideologies and the Production of National Cultures, ed. Richard G. Fox (Washington, D. C.: American Anthropological Association, 1990), 148177, and Origins of the National Question in Guatemala: A Hypothesis, in Guatemalan Indians and the State, 15401988, ed. Carol A. Smith (Austin: University of Texas, 1990), 7295. 8. On the Liberal underpinnings of even the revisionists, see Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 23, 79, and 8182. Revisionist interpretations of Rafael Carrera, in particular, are found in Burns, Poverty of Progress, 96105; Smith, Failed Nationalist Movements, and Origins of the National Question, and Smith and Jeff Boyer, Central America since 1979, Annual Review in Anthropology 16 (1987): 207; Robert G. Williams, States and Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise of National Governments in Central America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1994), 56 and passim; and Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 422423. 9. Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes note this association in Central America, 93. Cf. Steven Paul Palmer, A Liberal Discipline: Inventing Nations in Guatemala and Costa Rica, 18701900 (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1990), 8485; Williams, States and Social Evolution, 6869.

198 Notes to Introduction

10. Williams, States and Social Evolution, 2631, 298299 n. 33; Manuel Rubio S nchez, Historia del comercio del caf en Guatemala. Siglos XVIIIXIX, part 1, a e ASGHG 50 (1977): 174191. 11. Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 93. 12. On the Liberal orientation of Brazilian monarchists, see Sam Adamo, Recent Works on Modern Brazilian History, LARR 27 (1992): 193, and Emilia Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1985), xixxxi, 58, 23, 5360, 6975, on which Adamo bases his remarks. On the Liberal Conservatives of Antioquia, Colombia, see Nancy Appelbaum, Remembering Riosucio: Race and Region in Old Caldas (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Seattle, Washington, January 1998), 5, 710, and Charles Bergquist, Coffee and Conict in Colombia, 18861910 (Durham: Duke University, 1978): 8 n. 12. Tristan Platt notes that Bolivias Conservative and Liberal parties were equally positivist and Liberal by the second half of the nineteenth century in Estado boliviano y ayllu andino: tierra y tributo en el norte de potos (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1982), esp. 37 n. 16. Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 87, 91, 93, 98100, discuss the developmentalist strategies of Costa Rican and El Salvadoran Conservatives. See also Richmond F. Browns review of Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes book, entitled Review of Lowell Gudmundson and Hector Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 18211871: Liberalism before Liberal Reform, H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews, July, 1996. 13. Burns, Poverty of Progress, 96106. Other examples of Carrera revisionists include: Keith L. Miceli, Rafael Carrera: Defender and Promoter of Peasant Interests in Guatemala, 18371848, Americas 31 (July 1974) 7295; Ralph Lee Woodward, Social Revolution in Guatemala: The Carrera Revolt, in Applied Enlightenment: Nineteenth Century Liberalism, 18301839 (New Orleans: Tulane University, 1971), 4370, and Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Response of the Peasants of La Monta a to the Government of Guatemala, 18211850, Plantation Society in the n Americas 1 (February 1979): 109129; and Carol A. Smith, Origins of the National Question, 7295. 14. Liberal supporters and detractors who view the Reforma period as having implied dramatic changes in land tenure, among other social relations, include Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Central America, 3 vols. (San Francisco: The History Company, 1886), 3:650651; Burns, Poverty of Progress, 97105; Ciro F. S. Cardoso, Historia econ mica del caf en Centroam rica (siglo XIX): estudio comparativo, Estudios o e e Sociales Centroamericanos 4 (Enero-Abril 1975): 2122; Alain Dessaint, Effects of the Hacienda and Plantation Systems on Guatemalas Indians, America indgena 22 (Octubre 1962): 330331; Handy, Gift of the Devil: A History of Guatemala (Boston: South End, 1984), 6869; Chester Lloyd Jones, Guatemala: Past and Present (New York: Russell & Russell, 1966), 150; Oliver LaFarge, Maya Ethnology: The Sequence of Cultures, in The Maya and Their Neighbors, eds. Clarence L. Hay, et al (New York: D. Appleton Century, 1940), 283; W. George Lovell, Surviving Conquest: The Maya of Guatemala in Historical Perspective, LARR 23 (1988): 3739; Severo Martnez Pel ez, La patria del criollo: ensayo de interpretacin de la realidad a o colonial guatemalteca (M xico: Universidad Autonoma de Puebla, 1987), 578579; e

Notes to Introduction 199 David J. McCreery, Coffee and Class: The Structure of Development in Liberal Guatemala, HAHR 56 (August 1976): 456457; Carol A. Smith, Local History in Global Context: Social and Economic Transitions in Western Guatemala, Comparative Studies in Society and History 26 (1984): 200204, and Origins of the National Question, 84; Valentn Sol rzano Fern ndez, Historia de evolucin econmica o a o o de Guatemala, 4a. ed. (Guatemala: Ministerio de Educaci n, 1977), 317323ff, o 397398; and Ralph Lee Woodward, Central America: A Nation Divided (Oxford: Oxford University, 1985), 174. 15. David J. McCreery, Debt Servitude in Rural Guatemala, 18761936, HAHR 63 (November 1983): 739. 16. Even El Salvadors image as the region where Liberal land reform legislation most forcefully disenfranchized indigenous communities is coming under scrutiny, thanks to the careful research of H ctor Lindo-Fuentes. See Gudmundson and Lindoe Fuentes, Central America, 25, 5051, 9698. 17. David J. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 17601940 (Stanford: Stanford University, 1994), esp. 236254. See also McCreery, State Power, Indigenous Communities, and Land in Nineteenth-Century Guatemala, 18201920, in Guatemalan Indians and the State: 15401988, ed. Carol A. Smith (Austin: University of Texas, 1990), 96, 106110. 18. J. C. Cambranes, Coffee and Peasants in Guatemala: The Origins of the Modern Plantation Economy in Guatemala, 18531897 (Stockholm: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1985), 84 and 89. 19. Woodward, Rafael Carrera; Jorge Gonz lez Alzate, A History of Los Altos, a Guatemala: A Study of Regional Conict and National Integration, 17501885 (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1994); Robert G. Williams, States and Social Evolution. 20. Wayne M. Clegern, Origins of Liberal Dictatorship in Central America: Guatemala, 18651873 (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1994); Gudmundson and LindoFuentes, Central America. 21. Wayne M. Clegern, Origins of Liberal Dictatorship, 4554 and 150; Gonz lez a Alzate, History of Los Altos, 552553, 560564, and 578581; Williams, States and Social Evolution, 6061; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 423432. 22. Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 428. 23. Clegern, Origins of Liberal Dictatorship, 7677. 24. Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 1 and 93. 25. Gonz lez Alzate, A History of Los Altos, 172173. a 26. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 249. 27. See Arturo Taracena Arriolas excellent Invencin criolla, sue o ladino, pesadilla o n indgena: los altos de Guatemala: de regin a Estado, 17401850 (Costa Rica: Editorial o Porvenir y CIRMA, 1997) on this point. 28. AMSJO, 8 enero 1821. 29. San Juan Ostuncalcos municipal archive was a repository not only for locallevel ofcials, but also for those who administered the nineteenth-century political district with its handful of towns. The same was true for Momostenango, a Kiche town in the neighboring department of Totonicap n. a 30. See Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, Founding Statement, boundary 2 20 (1993): 119121, for further discussion of this problem.

200 Notes to Chapter 1

31. See Florencia E. Mallon, The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern Studies: Perspectives from Latin American History, American Historical Review 99 (December 1994): 1494; but also Gyan Prakash, Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism, American Historical Review 99 (December 1994): 1477, 1480. 32. See for example, Marisol de la Cadenas Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 19191991 (Durham: Duke University, 2000), Jeffrey L. Goulds To Die in This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 18801965 (Durham: Duke University, 1998), Greg Grandins The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham: Duke University, 2000), Peter F. Guardinos Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexicos National State: Guerrero, 18001857 (Stanford: Stanford University, 1996), Aldo Lauria-Santiagos An Agrarian Republic: Commercial Agriculture and the Politics of Peasant Communities in El Salvador, 18241918 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1999), Florencia E. Mallons Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California, 1995), and Mark Thurners From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nationmaking in Andean Peru (Durham: Duke University, 1997). 33. By coast I am not referring to the actual Pacic shoreline, but rather the broad swath of piedmont and plainsas much as fty miles widethat connect the shoreline to the heights of the Sierra Madre, and that runs the length of Guatemala, from its border with Mexico, to El Salvador. This usage of the word, though perhaps puzzling to North American readers, was common in Guatemala, particularly prior to the twentieth century, and made sense given that the vast majority of the populace inhabited the countrys mountainous interior.
notes to chapter 1

1. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660. 2. Robert M. Carmack, Quichean Civilization: The Ethnohistoric, Ethnographic, and Archaeological Sources (Berkeley: University of California, 1973), 68. 3. Ostuncalcos leaders spoke of the Ro Comalate, but from their description it is clear that they were referring to the Ro Samal . a 4. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660. 5. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660. 6. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660. 7. A league is approximately 3 miles. 8. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660. 9. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660. 10. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660. 11. Ttulos de la casa Izquin-Nehaib, se ora del territorio de Otzoy , or n a Ttulo Nijaib I, transcribed in Adri n Recinos, ed., Crnicas Indgenas de Guatemala a o (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, 1957), 7196; Ttulo Coyoi, transcribed and translated in Carmack, Quichean Civilzation, 273306. For a fuller documentation of the Kiche ttulos, see my Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples: The Subaltern Roots of National Politics in Nineteenth Century Guatemala (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999), 33 n 15.

Notes to Chapter 1 201 12. Although the Ttulo Nijaib I claims that the rst signicant Kiche con quest of the Mam occurred in 1300 (76), both Recinos and Carmack dispute the veracity of this date. See the Crnicas Indgenas, 15, and Robert Carmacks The Quich o e Mayas of Utatl n: The Evolution of a Highland Guatemala Kingdom (Norman: Univera sity of Oklahoma, 1981), 121, and Rebels of Highland Guatemala: The Quiche-Mayas of Momostenango (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1995), 3940. 13. Ttulo Nijaib I, 7476. See also Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 3840. 14. John W. Fox, Quiche Conquest: Centralism and Regionalism in Highland Guatemalan State Development (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1978), 149150, and Maya Postclassic State Formation: Segmentary Lineage Migration in Advancing Frontiers (New York: Cambridge University, 1987), 182185. Cf. the Ttulo Coyoi, 297. 15. Carmack, Quichean Civilization, 33; Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 4042; Carmack, The Quich Mayas, 137140; Ttulo Nijaib I, 7173, 7784. e 16. Fox, Quiche Conquest, 149150 and 174175, and Maya Postclassic State Formation, 182185. 17. Fox, Quiche Conquest, 171 and 1987: 184; and Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 11. 18. Ttulo Nijaib I, 7178; Fox, Quiche Conquest, 153157. 19. Carmack, The Quich Mayas, 134135. e 20. Fox, Quiche Conquest, 174175, and Maya Postclassic State Formation, 184185. 21. Ttulo Nijaib I, 7173, 7778; Ttulo Retalulew, transcribed in Carmack, Quichean Civilization, 361363. 22. Carmack, The Quich Mayas, 140141; Ttulo Nijaib I, 7984. e 23. Cf. Fox, Quiche Conquest, 171. 24. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660. 25. Sacatep quez refers to San Pedro Sacatep quez, the main Mam town in what e e would become the department of San Marcos by the second half of the nineteenth century. See the map on p. 2 in Lawrence H. Feldman, Indian Payment in Kind: The Sixteenth-Century Encomiendas of Guatemala (Lancaster, CA: Labyrinthos, 1992), for a visual representation of this. 26. Wendy J. Kramer, Encomienda Politics in Early Colonial Guatemala, 1524 1544: Dividing the Spoils (Boulder: Westview, 1994), 146200. Feldman claims that Ostuncalco had become a Crown town by 1589 in Indian Payment in Kind (5), whereas Hostnig, Monografa, 1516, lists encomenderos for the town until 1678. 27. RF, 8:180; AGCA A1, leg. 5987, leg. 52660. 28. See the Carta que Diego Garc s escribi a la Real Audiencia de e o Guatemala . . . , in Pedro Carrasco, Sobre los indios de Guatemala (Guatemala: Ministerio de Educaci n, 1982), 96. Cf. Farriss, Maya Society, 206210. o 29. AGCA A3.16, leg. 2801, exp. 40502. 30. Carta que Diego Garc s escribi , 9596; AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660. e o 31. Readers interested in the detailed documentation of this demographic evolution should consult Reeves, Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 4345, including the associated notes.

202 Notes to Chapter 1

32. AGCA A1, leg. 6057, exp. 53751; A1.10, leg. 2448, exp. 18809; ST, Quezaltenango paq. 1, exps. 4 and 17; AGQ, 19 nov. 1836, 20 enero 1840; leg. 262, 3 junio 1855, 7 junio 1860, 22 febrero 1865, 19 marzo 1867; leg. 479, sept. 1874; leg. 792, 1884; ETEN, Comun de Paxoj, deslined con el pueblo de Huit n, 1887, a 1:577591; AMSJO, 2 junio 1862, 16 febrero 1863, 20 octubre 1863, 17 mayo 1865, 2 febrero 1866, 5 marzo 1868; Gall 19761983: 299300. 33. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660; A3.16, leg. 2801, exp. 40502; A1.11, leg. 4056, exp. 31441; Ttulo Nijaib I, 7196, esp. 7684; Carta que Diego Garc s e escribi , 8997; CSJO, Visita Pastoral realizada por el obispo Fray Andr s de las o e Navas y Quevedo, 1:34; Informe sobre el estado del curato . . . elaborado por el cura doctrinero Fray Andr s Gonzalez, por order del obisbo Fr. Andr s de las Navas e e y Quevedo, 1:5556); Carmack, The Quich Mayas, 137143; Elas Zamora Acosta, e El control vertical de diferentes pisos ecol gicos: aplicaci n del modelo al Occidente o o de Guatemala, Revista de la Universidad Complutense 27 (1979): 245272. 34. Relaci n de los caciques y principales del pueblo de Atitl n (1571), ASo a GHG 26 (septiembre a diciembre 1952): 435437; and by Alonso Paez Betancor y Fr. Pedro de Arboleda: Relaci n de Santiago Atitl n, a o de 1585, ASGHG 37 o a n (enero a diciembre 1964): 87, 98, 105; Descripci n de San Bartolom , del Partido o e de Atitl n, a o 1585, ASGHG 38 (enero a diciembre 1965): 265269; and Estancias a n de San Andr s y de San Francisco, sujetas al pueblo de Atitl n, a o de 1585, ASGHG e a n 42 (enero a diciembre 1969): 5255, 6365. 35. Carta que Diego Garc s escribi , 9196; Juan de Pineda, Descripci n de e o o la Provincia de Guatemala, ASGHG 1 (Junio 1925): 336341. 36. Relaci n de los caciques y principales, 435437; Betancor y Arboleda, o Relaci n de Santiago Atitl n, 87, 98, 105, Descripci n de San Bartolom , 265 o a o e 269, and Estancias de San Andr s y de San Francisco, 5255, 6365; Carta que e Diego Garc s escribi , 9196; Pineda, Descripci n de la Provincia, 336342. e o o 37. For a comparison of this phenomenon with the Andean ayllu, see my Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 52. 38. Carta que Diego Garcs escribi, 96. e o 39. AGCA A3.16, leg. 2801, exp. 40502. 40. Carta que Diego Garcs escribi, 9596; Pineda, Descripcin de la Provincia, 340 e o o 342. 41. AGCA A3.16, leg. 2801, exp. 40502. 42. Carta que Diego Garcs escribi, 9596; Pineda, Descripcin de la Provincia, 340 e o o 342; Father Alonso Ponce, Relaci n breve y verdadera de algunas cosas de las muchas o que sucedieron al padre fray Alonso Ponce, ASGHG 39 (enero a diciembre 1966), 130; AGCA A3.16, leg. 2801, exp. 40502; Zamora Acosta, El control vertical, 252; Murdo J. MacLeod, Historia socio-econmica de la Amrica Central Espa ola, 15201720, o e n 2a. ed. (Guatemala: Piedra Santa, 1990), 6668, 82, 199, 202206; Robert J. Ferry, Encomienda, African Slavery, and Agriculture in Seventeenth-Century Caracas, HAHR 61 (November 1981): 609635. 43. The alcaldes mayores of Zapotitl n mention Santa Catalina (or Catarina) in a 1570 (Carta que Diego Garcs escribi, 9596), and again in 1579 (Descripcin de la e o o Provincia de Zapotitl n y Suchitepquez, 7276). The 1688 population estimate is given a e

Notes to Chapter 1 203 by Fray Andr s Gonzalez in his Informe sobre el estado del curato . . . por orden del e obisbo Fr. Andr s de las Navas y Quevedo, CSJO, 1:5556. Elas Zamora Acosta e provides the multiplication rate of 1.25 for almas de confesi n in Conquista y o crisis demogr ca: la poblaci n indgena del occidente de Guatemala en el siglo a o XVI, Mesoamrica 6 (Diciembre 1983): 300301. e 44. DGM, 150; Adrian Van Oss, Pueblos y parroquias en Suchitep quez coloe nial, Mesoamrica 5 (1984): 176177. e 45. Carta que Diego Garc s escribi , 9596; AGCA A1, leg. 5952, exp. 52297, e o A1, leg. 5963, exp. 52305, A1.24, leg. 1579, exp. 10223, A1, leg. 5976, exp. 52500. 46. AGCA A, leg. 5963, exp. 52305; A1.24, leg. 1579, exp. 10223. Depending on the source, one caballera contains anywhere from 105 (MacLeod, Historia socio econmica, 419) to 112 (McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 417) acres. Throughout this study o I have accepted Handys gure of 109.8 acres (Gift of the Devil, 69). 47. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1; B100.1, leg. 1419, exp. 33282; and AGQ, leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatep quez sobre n e avances en sus ejidos, 18 diciembre 1841. 48. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp. 17, and A1.10.3, leg. 2448, exp. 18809; CSJO, Los naturales de San Crist bal Cabric n solicitan la exoneraci n de o a o los repartimientos, 1812, 2:342355. 49. Bernardo Belzunegui Ormazabal notes that by the end of the colonial period over half of all the Spanish and ladino families resided in indigenous towns. See his El problema de la tierra en Guatemala al nal del perodo colonial: datos para su estudio, in 500 a os de lucha por la tierra: estudios sobre propiedad rural y reforma agraria n en Guatemala, ed. J. C. Cambranes (Guatemala: FLACSO, 1992), 260. 50. CSJO, Visita Pastoral, 1:143; AHA Padr n de Pueblos, Caja T3 17, leg. 182; o RLRI, Libro VI, Ttulo III, Leyes XXIXXII, 212; AGCA A3.62, leg. 198, exp. 4011. For more on Ostuncalcos dual municipality, see Chapter 5. Cf. Ebel, Political Modernization, 145161. 51. CSJO, Informe sobre el estado del curato...elaborado por el cura doctrinero Fray Andr s Gonzalez, por order del obisbo Fr. Andr s de las Navas y Quevedo, e e 1:60; Visita Pastoral realizada por el obispo Fr. Andr s Navas y Quevedo, 1:68. e According to Jorge Luj n Mu oz in Reducci n y fundaci n de Salcaja y San a n o o Carlos Sija (Guatemala) en 1776, ASGHG 49 (enero-diciembre 1976), 4557, Sija was formally established as a town in 1776. 52. AHA Cartas, bulto a o 1834, leg. 79; AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, n exp. 11; A1, leg. 6043, exp. 53336; CSJO, Visita Pastoral realizada por el Visitador Dn. Miguel Cilieza Velasco, en representaci n del Arzobispo Don Francisco Jos o e Figueredo y Victoria, 1:170; AGCA A1, leg. 6057, exp. 53751; CSJO, Informaci n o sobre el Curato de San Juan Ostuncalco, propcionado por el cura Joseph Antonio Colomo . . . , 1:225; DGM, 150; AHA Padr n de pueblos, Caja T3 17, leg. 182; o AGCA A3.62, leg. 198, exp. 4011. Note that San Antonio Bob s changed its name o to Sibilia at the end of 1887 (RLRG, 15 diciembre 1887, 6:392). 53. AHQ Miscel neo, bulto a o 1811, leg. 33; AGCA A1.44, leg. 2372, exp. a n 17971; A, leg. 5955, exp. 52152; A1.21.9, leg. 5946, exp. 52046; ST, Quezaltenango,

204 Notes to Chapter 1

paq. 1, exps. 7 and 8. See also AHA Cartas, bulto a o 1835, leg. 472 Legajo de n certicaciones de matrculas de terrenos de San Marcos. 54. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp. 17; ETEN, Operaci n que muestra o el empalme de los ejidos de los pueblos de Quezaltenango y Ostuncalco, y la parte de tierra que los indgenas de Chiquirichapa usurpan a los de San Mateo, 1825, 1:273 283; AGQ, 8 abril 1836; AGCA B, leg. 3267, exp. 69541; leg. 28568, exp. 248; AGQ, 22 noviembre 1856; AGCA B, leg. 28580, exp. 42; AGQ, 28 febrero, 1 marzo and 28 marzo 1860, and 11 marzo 1866; ETEN, El Gobernador y Municipalidad de Concepci n Chiquirichapa, solicitando amparo de poseci n del terreno Las o o Barrancas, 1867, 1880,1:305308; AMSJO, 18 febrero 1885; AGQ, 15 junio 1885; AMSJO, 1 enero 1886; AGQ, leg. 53; and AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 28, exp. 8. 55. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exps. 4, 7, 8, and 11. 56. AGCA A1.19, leg. 350, exp. 7263; A1, leg. 5952, exp. 52297; A1, leg. 6043, exp. 53336; AMSJO, 20 noviembre 1873; bulto a o 1877, Libro de Actas, 15 octubre n 1878; AGQ, leg. 771; AMSJO, 20 agosto 1895. 57. AGCA A, leg. 6043 , exp. 53336; A1.21.9, leg. 2809 , exp. 24739; ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp. 17; ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 2, exp. 1; AGQ, leg. 68, 25 febrero 1832 and 18 febrero 1833; AMSJO, 25 febrero 1833, 20 junio 1833; AHA Cartas, bulto a o 1834, leg. 79; Cartas a o 1835, leg. 472; AMSJO, 30 enero 1836; AGQ, 23 abril n n 1836; AGCA B, leg. 3265 , exp. 69353; leg. 3267 , exp. 69499; leg. 28660, exp. 85333; AMSJO, 26 julio 1841; AGQ, 31 julio 1841; AGCA B, leg. 3268 , exp. 69765; AGQ, 30 Mayo 1846; AGCA B100.1, leg. 28535, exp. 92; B, leg. 28535, exp. 92; AMSJO, 6 noviembre 1846. 58. AGQ, 4 abril 1836. 59. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1; AGQ, leg. 155 A o de 1841. La n Municipd. de San Martin Sacatep quez sobre avances en sus ejidos, 31 agosto 1841. e Residents of Chiquirichapa made similar complaints about Ostuncalcos ladinos (e.g. AMSJO, bulto a o 1830, C. Alce. de la Municipld. de Sn. Juan Ostuncalco Bernabe n Monterroso and Ciudo Benturo Quinion); Arturo Taracena Arriolas Invencin o criolla, sue o ladino, pesadilla indgena: los altos de Guatemala: de regin a Estado, 17401850 n o (Costa Rica: Editorial Porvenir y CIRMA, 1997), 20, 5863, 7475. 60. Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, 20, 5863, 7475. o 61. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exps. 2, 3, 13; A1.57, leg. 395, exp. 8262; AGQ, leg. a o de 1836. Denuncias de los terrenos baldios del aguacate que hase n el Cno. Florentin Rosal; and Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, 5863, 7475. See o also AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp. 12, listed in the Indice de los expedientes del Archivo de la Escribana del Gobierno y Seccin de Tierras (Guatemala: Tipografa o Nacional, 1944), 162. 62. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 2, exp. 9; AGQ, leg. 68, 29 agosto 1832 and leg. a o de 1836. Denuncias . . . ; AMSJO, 12 marzo 1836. n 63. Jorge Gonz lez Alzate, A History of Los Altos, Guatemala: A Study of Regional a Conict and National Integration, 17501885 (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1994), 119149, 177182, and 302303; Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, 1042, 5875. o 64. Christopher H. Lutz, Historia sociodemogr ca de Santiago de Guatemala, 1541 a 1773 (Guatemala: CIRMA, 1982), 371372; McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 12, 38.

Notes to Chapter 1 205 65. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 97124; Taracena Arriola, Invencin a o criolla, 2122; Reeves, Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 439444. 66. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 124126, 144149; Taracena Arriola, a Invencin criolla, 24. o 67. AGCA A1.111.31, leg. 197, exp. 3987; AMSJO, 15 and 25 enero, 11 marzo, and 26 mayo 1820. 68. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 124126; Taracena Arriola, Invencin a o criolla, 1042, 5863. 69. Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, 3841; Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los o a Altos, 178182; Henry Dunn, Guatimala, or, the Republic of Central America, in 1827 8; being Sketches and Memorandum made during a Twelve Months Residence (New York: G. & C. Carvill, 1828), 234. 70. AHQ Miscel neo, bulto a o 1811, Padron General del Pueblo de Sn. Juan a n Ostuncalco de la Provincia de Quezaltenango, and AMSJO, bulto a o 1830, Padr n n o General. Departamento de Quesaltenango. Municipalidad de Ostuncalco. 71. AMSJO, 13 noviembre 1812 & 4 or 7 enero 1813; Ces reo de Armellada, La a causa indgena en las Cortes de C diz (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hisp nica, 1959), a a Decreto CCXIV de 4 de enero de 1813, 97100; RLA, N. 378 Ley 1a., 27 enero 1825, 5255, and N. 379 Ley 2a., 26 agosto 1829, 5659; N. 380 Ley 3a., 30 noviembre 1831, 59; N. 381 Ley 4a, 20 septiembre 1833, 5963; N. 383 Ley 6a, 12 abril 1834, 6465; N. 384 Ley 7a., 14 agosto 1835, 65; N. 386 Ley 9a., 5 diciembre 1835, 66; N. 387 Ley 10a., 28 abril 1836, 6667; N. 388 Ley 11a., 13 agosto 1836, 6769; RLG, 8 septiembre 1832, 3:294295. 72. On the thirty eight caballera gure, see AGCA A, leg. 6043, exp. 53336. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 52 and 361 n. 17, provides a more exact measurement of 38.75 caballeras for a legal ejido of one square league. 73. E.g. RLRI, Libro IIII, Ttulo XII, Leyes VII, VIIII, XVII, and XVIII, 41, 4344, and Libro VI, Ttulo III, Ley VIIII, 209. 74. AGCA A, leg. 6043, exp. 53336; ETEN, Operaci n que muestra el empalme o de los ejidos de los pueblos de Quezaltenango y Ostuncalco, y la parte de tierra que los indgenas de Chiquirichapa usurpan a los de San Mateo, 1825, 1:273283; AHA Cartas, leg. 79 Copias de las matrculas de tierras de varios due os, expedida n por los Jefes Polticos de San Marcos, 31 enero 1834; AGCA B, leg. 3633, exp. 85290. 75. AGCA A, leg. 6043, exp. 53336. 76. RLG, 8 septiembre 1832, 3:294295; RLA, N. 381 Ley 4a., 20 septiembre 1833, 5963; N. 383 Ley 6a., 12 abril 1834, 6465; N. 384 Ley 7a., 14 agosto 1835, 65; N. 386 Ley 9a., 5 diciembre 1835, 66. 77. AGCA B, leg. 3633, exp. 85290; AHA Cartas, bulto a o 1834, leg. 79 n Copias de las matrculas de tierras de varios due os, expedida por los Jefes Polticos n de San Marcos, and bulto a o 1835, leg. 338 Legajo de matriculas de terrenos de n distintos propietarios del Departamento de Totonicapan, and leg. 472 Legajo de certicaciones de matriculas de Terrenos de varios due os y departamentos. n 78. RLA, N. 387 Ley 10a., 28 abril 1836, 6667, and N. 388 Ley 11a., 13 agosto 1836, 6769.

206 Notes to Chapter 2

79. Censo rental refers to a form of long-term rental contract dating from colonial times, in which noncommunity members leased community-owned land for a period of several years, paying an annual canon or fee based on the assessed value of the property in question. For more on this topic see RLA, N. 378 Ley 1a., 27 enero 1825, 5255, and N. 379 Ley 2a., 26 agosto 1829, 5659; and McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 82. 80. AGCA B, leg. 3265, exp. 69355. 81. See for example, Oliver LaFarge, Maya Ethnology: The Sequence of Cultures, in The Maya and Their Neighbors, ed. Clarence L. Hay et al (New York: D. Appleton Century, 1940), 281291. For fuller documentation of this historiographical trend, see the Introduction, or my Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 78 n 100. 82. E.g., W. George Lovell and Christopher H. Lutz, Conquest and Population: Maya Demography in Historical Perspective, LARR 29 (1994): 136; Thomas T. Veblen, Declinaci n de la poblaci n indgena en Totonicap n, Guatemala, o o a Mesoamrica 3 (1982): 6165. e 83. See the appendix of my dissertation, Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 439444. 84. MacLeod, Historia socio-econmica, 2627, 106107, 109110, 177, 180, 186 o 188, 258260, 290291. 85. Thomas T. Veblen, The Ecological, Cultural and Historical Bases of Forest Preservation in Totonicap n, Guatemala (Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1975). a 86. Veblen, Ecological, Cultural, and Historical Bases, 293294, 300301, 313, 339 342, 346360, and 380 n. 79. 87. Veblen, Ecological, Cultural, and Historical Bases, 293294, 305306, 335337, 341, 347350, 352353, 360363, 365, and 379380 n. 68 and n. 70; MacLeod, Historia socio-econmica, 181. o 88. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660. 89. MacLeod, Historia socio-econmica, 186187. o 90. Elas Zamora Acosta, Los mayas de las tierras altas en el siglo XVI: tradicin o y cambio en Guatemala (Sevilla: Diputaci n Provincial de Sevilla, 1985), 218. o 91. RF, 8:181182; AGCA A1.17, leg. 210, exp. 5009; A, leg. 5963, exp. 52305; A1.17.1, leg. 2020, exp. 13999; Relaci n de Lizaurzaval y Anssola, 318323. o
notes to chapter 2

1. David J. McCreery, in Development and the State in Reforma Guatemala, 18711885 (Athens: Ohio State University, 1983), 1, dates the Reforma from 1871 to 1885. 2. Although Table 2.1 contains information on coffee production for the entire department of Quezaltenango, the Costa Cuca was by far the largest source of coffee within the department: Direcci n General de Estadsticas, Informe de la Direcci n o o General de Estadstica. 1888, Memoria de la Secretaria de Fomento de la Rep blica u (Guatemala: Tipografa La Uni n, 1889). o 3. San Martns ejido was rst measured in 1744, and found to contain 346 ca balleras. Later, more accurate calculations, however, uncovered 1,085 caballeras, or

Notes to Chapter 2 207 approximately 482 sq. km (AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1). To convert from caballeras to square kilometers I use Jim Handys gure of 109.8 acres per ca ballera, on p. 69 of his Gift of the Devil: A History of Guatemala (Boston: South End, 1984), and then the standard equivalence of 247.1 acres per sq. km. In terms of its location and boundaries, the ejido was bordered to the north by the territory of San Juan Ostuncalco and Concepci n Chiquirichapa, to the east by the Ro Ocosito, o and to the west by the Ro Naranjo and the lands of Santiago Coatepeque. Although I have been unable to reestablish the southern boundary, the ejido clearly reached into the present-day towns of Flores Costa Cuca, G nova, El Asintal and Nuevo San e Carlos. 4. David J. McCreery, State Power, Indigenous Communities, and Land in Nineteenth-Century Guatemala, 18201920, in Guatemalan Indians and the State: 15401988, ed. Carol A. Smith (Austin: University of Texas, 1990), 97, 108109. 5. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp. 17; A1.57, leg. 395, exp. 8262; AMSJO, 15 septiembre 1830; 27 agosto 1832; bulto a os 18341836, Co. Jues de primera n ynsta., C. G. D., and 12 marzo 1836; bulto a os 18421846, untitled document n dated 1836; 27 junio 1837; bulto a os 18401841, 2 agosto 1839; AGQ, leg. 68, n 29 agosto 1832; leg. a o de 1836. Denuncias . . . ; and leg. 155 A o de 1841. La n n Municipd. de San Martin Sacatep quez sobre avances en sus ejidos. e 6. AGQ, 16 febrero and 16 abril 1839; AMSJO, bulto a os 18401841, 2 agosto n 1839. See also AMSJO, 1 febrero 1837. The legislation regarding municipal governments and, in particular, alcaldes auxiliares, during this period is found in RLG, N. 300 Ley 1a., 11 octubre 1825, 1:480481, and N. 310 Ley 11a., 28 septiembre 1836, 1:492503. 7. AGQ, leg. a o de 1836. Denuncias . . . , 29 julio 1834; AMSJO, bulto a o n n 1835, C. G. D.; and AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 13 mayo 1839. The quote is from AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se n queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes, 20 abril 1841. Unfortunately, the authors are not identied individually. 8. AGQ, leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatep quez sobre n e avances en sus ejidos, 18 diciembre 1841. 9. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 18 septiembre 1839. 10. AMSJO, 12 marzo 1836; 8 junio 1849; AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 19 julio, 2 and 15 agosto, 18 and 24 septiembre, and 28 octubre 1839; B, leg. 28646, exp. 722; AGQ, leg. a o de 1836. Denuncias . . . ; leg. 156 A o de n n 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes, 3 and 8 mayo 1841; leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatep quez sobre n e avances en sus ejidos, 3, 21, and 22 junio, and 2 julio 1841; leg. 159 A o de 1841. n Sobre que Jos Mara Colomo pague cantidad de pesos a los ladinos que siembran en e los terrenos de Sn. Martin Sacatep quez. This view also is reinforced by agrimensor e Valerio Ignacio Rivas, in his Vindicacin que hace Valerio Ignacio Rivas (Guatemala: o Imprenta del Gobierno, 1838). Rivas version of events is discussed below. 11. AGQ, leg. a o de 1836. Denuncias . . . , 29 julio 1834 and 24 octubre 1836; n AMSJO, bulto a o 1835, C. G. D.; and AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun n n de San Martin se queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes, 20 abril 1841.

208 Notes to Chapter 2

12. For documentation of the regions population gures, see the appendix in my dissertation Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples: The Subaltern Roots of National Politics in Nineteenth Century Guatemala (Ph.D. diss., University of WisconsinMadison, 1999), 439444. 13. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 15 agosto, 1819 and 24 septiembre 1839; AGQ, leg. a o de 1836. Denuncias . . . and leg. 155 A o de 1841. La n n Municipd. de San Martin Sacatep quez sobre avances en sus ejidos, 3 junio, 2 julio, e and 31 agosto 1841. 14. Again, see the appendix in my dissertation Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 439444. 15. A sampling of crop damage complaints for the coast during the 1830s are found in AMSJO, bulto a o 1830, C. Alce. de la Municipld. de Sn. Juan Ostuncalco n Bernabe Monterroso; 27 agosto 1832; bulto a o 1835, C. G. D.; 12 marzo and n 19 octubre 1836; 22 enero 1838. See also Rivas, Vindicacin, 67. o 16. This trend, including the questionable involvement of government ofcials, is captured most succinctly in AGQ, leg. a o de 1836. Denuncias . . . ; AGCA B, leg. n 3265, exp. 69355; and Rivas, Vindicacin. See also Arturo Taracena Arriolas Invencin o o criolla, sue o ladino, pesadilla indgena: los altos de Guatemala: de regin a Estado, 17401850 n o (Costa Rica: Editorial Porvenir y CIRMA, 1997), 6062, for a listing of government ofcials who denounced land in western Guatemala during the rst decades of the nineteenth century. 17. RLA, N. 387 Ley 10a., 28 abril 1836, 6667, and N. 388 Ley 11a., 13 agosto 1836, 6769. 18. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 20 abril and 4 mayo 1841; AGCA C.1, leg. 197, exp. 5260; AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 13 mayo 1839; AGQ, leg. 155 A o de 1841. La n Municipd. de San Martin Sacatep quez sobre avances en sus ejidos, 18 diciembre e 1841. 19. The Livingston Codes divided Guatemala into 12 districts, each with several circuits. Ostuncalco was made a circuit cabecera within the district of Quezaltenango, which meant that the town would serve as the seat for a new circuit judge. In addition to the cabecera, the judge was to hear cases from all of the towns within the circuit, which in this case included Chiquirichapa, San Martn, Sig il , Cajol , and u a a Cabric n. See the Ley Org nica de la administracin de justicia por jurados en el Estado de a a o Guatemala (Guatemala, 1836), esp. 415; Mario Rodrguez, The Livingston Codes in the Guatemalan Crisis of 18371838, in Applied Enlightenment: Nineteenth Century Liberalism, 18301839 (New Orleans: Tulane University, 1955); Ralph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 18211871 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 53. 20. AGCA B86.2, leg. 1160, exp. 27284; B, leg. 3266, exps. 69365, 69377, 69414; AMSJO, 20, 22 and 30 enero, 3 and febrero 1837; Ley Org nica, 14, 18; and RLG, a N. 310, Ley 11a, 28 septiembre 1836, 1:492503. 21. B, leg. 3266, exps. 69377, 69414; AMSJO, 22, 25, 27 and 30 enero, 3, 9, 10, 19 and 21 febrero 1837. This was the rst time that an agent of the national state had ever resided in the town, and the fact that a noncommunity member was appointed

Notes to Chapter 2 209 to the post denitely lowered the probability of success. Indeed, Carrera and the Conservative government associated with him were much more astute in this regard, choosing local ladinos to ll the post of district administrator (see Chapter 5 below). 22. AMSJO, 2 septiembre, 13, 22 and 31 octubre, 9 noviembre 1823, and 16 and 20 enero, 26 febrero, 13 and 29 marzo, and 1 abril 1824; AGCA B, leg. 3266, exps. 69414, 69381; C.1, leg. 197, exp. 5260; Rivas, Vindicacin. Note that due to his o efforts on behalf of indigenous communities Rivas was eventually accused of being an agent of Rafael Carrera and jailed. 23. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 13 mayo 1839 and C.1, leg. 197, exp. 5260. The rebellion was defeated on 24 March 1837. 24. AGCA B. leg. 3266, exp. 69381 and 69370; C.1, leg. 197, exp. 5260. 25. Historian Mario Rodrguez counts more than thirty rebellions in 1837 alone. See his A Palmerstonian diplomat in Central America: Frederick Chateld, Esq. (Tucson: University of Arizona, 1964), 138139. 26. RLA, N. 390 Ley 13a., 2 noviembre 1837, 7072. Note, however, that the limit of thirty eight caballeras remained in force. 27. Rivas neglects to mention the exact date that he was hired (Vindicacin, 17), o but Colomo was contracted on 7 Agosto 1837 (AGQ, leg. 159 A o de 1841. Sobre n que Jos Maria Colomo pague cantidad de pesos a los ladinos que siembran en los e terrenos de Sn. Martin Sacatep quez). e 28. Rodas served as Quezaltenangos jefe poltico (or Gefe Departamental, as the ofce was called at that time) from the very beginning of 1835 through February 1837, when it appears that he moved to Guatemala City as a delegate to the state legislature. He also may have served as jefe poltico in 1834, but I do not have explicit information on him prior to January 1835. See AMSJO, 19 enero and 11 mayo 1835; AGCA B, leg. 3266, exp. 69377; and Mont far, Rese a histrica, 2:347. u n o The state of Los Altos declared its independence from Guatemala in early February 1838, and lasted until late January 1840. See Jorge Gonz lez Alzate, A History of Los a Altos, Guatemala: A Study of Regional Conict and National Integration, 17501885 (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1994), 379, 415417. Aside from Macario Rodas, another government ofcial who denounced land within San Martns ejido was Jos Mara e G lvez, a member of the new Los Altos state. In addition, F lix Morales, the Juez a e de Circuito of Ostuncalco (see above), also denounced land on the coast, although it appears to have been west of San Martn, under the administrative jurisdiction of San Marcos. On G lvez, see AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 17 junio a 1839; and Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 114. Morales is listed in AGQ, leg. a o de n 1836. Denuncias . . . 29. Rivas, Vindicacin, 6. o 30. Although Rivas does not reveal the identity of Quezaltenangos magistrado ejecutor, it appears that Manuel Pineda de Mont occupied the post at the time (AMSJO, 10 junio and 11 noviembre 1837). 31. Rivas, Vindicacin, 67. Unfortunately, Rivas never names San Martns ofo cials, presumably because they were indigenous. Neither does he make clear why the magistrado ejecutor would jail Ostuncalcos juez de paz. The implication seems to be that the magistrado suspected Galindo, as well as Ralda, of conspiring with the

210 Notes to Chapter 2

revolutionary sanmartineros, perhaps in approving the latters actions against Robles cattle, either before or after the fact. 32. Rivas, Vindicacin, 617. o 33. This according to Rivas (Vindicacin, 1114). o 34. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 13 mayo 1839. 35. Rivas, Vindicacin, 915. o 36. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes, 4 and 8 n mayo 1841; leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatep quez sobre n e avances en sus ejidos, 24 mayo 1841. Twentyone reales convert to two pesos, ve reales (8 reales = 1 peso). 37. Rivas, Vindicacin, 5. o 38. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 13 mayo 1839. 39. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes, 3 and 8 n mayo 1841; leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez sobre n avances en sus ejidos, 3 junio 1841; leg. 159 A o de 1841. Sobre que Jos Maria n e Colomo pague cantidad de pesos a los ladinos que siembran en los terrenos de Sn. Martin Sacatepequez. 40. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 15 agosto, 18, 19 and 24 septiembre, 1839. Among these were Manuel Orellana, Zenon Mazariegos, M ximo Castillo, a Juan de Dios de Le n, Mariano Castillo, and the children of Jos Rivas. o e 41. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes, 3, 5 and n 8 mayo 1841; leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez n sobre avances en sus ejidos, 24 mayo and 3 junio 1841; leg. 159 A o de 1841. Sobre n que Jos Maria Colomo pague cantidad de pesos a los ladinos que siembran en los e terrenos de Sn. Martin Sacatepequez. 42. Padre Orellana died sometime between July 1834 and December 1835 (AMSJO, 11 julio 1834; AGCA B83.2, leg. 3594, exp. 82505). 43. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes, 3 mayo n 1841 (quotation); leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez n sobre avances en sus ejidos, 3 junio 1841. 44. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes, 3 mayo n 1841. Orellana recalls that Paz spoke through municipal secretary Ralda, and Peres, the interpreter. 45. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes, 3 mayo n 1841. 46. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes, 3 mayo n 1841. 47. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 28 octubre 1839; AGQ, leg. 159 A o de 1841. Sobre que Jos Maria Colomo pague cantidad de pesos a los ladinos n e que siembran en los terrenos de Sn. Martin Sacatepequez; AGCA B100.1, leg. 1419, exp. 33282. 48. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 397399 and 412421; and Woodward, a Rafael Carrera, 114118. 49. RLA, N. 390 Ley 13a., 2 noviembre 1837, 7072. Cf. Ces reo de Armellada, a La causa indgena en las Cortes de C diz (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hisp nica, a a 1959), 46.

Notes to Chapter 2 211 50. No new land laws were even decreed under Carrera until September 1845, and this simply reiterated the stipulations of the last Liberal statute. See RLA, N. 392 Ley 15a., 19 septiembre 1845, 73. 51. Eric R. Wolf, Closed Corporate Peasant Communities in Mesoam rica and e Central Java, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 13 (Spring 1957): 118. For fuller documentation of the debates surrounding Wolf s concept, see my Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 115 n 56. 52. Two approaches that emphasize the contested nature of community politics and indigenous society are Florencia E. Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California, 1995), 11, 6486, 324330; and Steve J. Stern, The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1995), 194202. 53. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 4 and 8 mayo 1841. 54. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 4 and 8 mayo 1841; leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San n Martin Sacatepequez sobre avances en sus ejidos, 24 mayo, 3, 12, 21, and 22 junio, 2 julio, 31 agosto, and 18 diciembre 1841; AGCA B, leg. 3268, exps. 69734 and 69700. 55. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 4 mayo 1841. 56. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 4 mayo 1841. The rst quote is from Andr s, the second from e Martn. 57. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 20 and 21 abril, 4 mayo 1841; leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. n de San Martin Sacatepequez sobre avances en sus ejidos, 12 junio and 2 julio 1841. 58. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 20 abril 1841. 59. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 20 abril 1841. 60. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 20 abril 1841. 61. The four witnesses were Antonio Ramrez, Francisco G mez (maestro de o coro), Antonio G mez (mayor de la iglesia), and Sebasti n Guzman (segundo o a scal) (AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 21 abril 1841). 62. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 8 mayo 1841. 63. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 8 mayo 1841. 64. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 8 mayo 1841. 65. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 8 mayo 1841. 66. AGCA B, leg. 3637, exp. 85868. Although I did not nd evidence that explicitly corroborated the number of possessions M ximo Castillo claimed on the coast, a

212 Notes to Chapter 2

it is clear that he did have at least one nca within San Martns boundaries at the time of this conict. The same was true for both his father and his brother, who shared the name Gregorio Castillo. As this conict unfolded, M ximo, under the a advice of his father, placed the nca in the hands of an indigenous resident of Concepci n Chiquirichapa, Pascual P rez, with the understanding that for the time being o e Pascual would continue to pay M ximo half of the annual earnings that he derived a from the property (AMSJO, bulto a o 1855, Libro del Juez Preventivo, 26 octubre n 1853. 67. AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su n Gdor. i Alcaldes, 4 mayo 1841. 68. AGQ, leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez n sobre avances en sus ejidos, 24 mayo 1841. 69. AGQ, leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez n sobre avances en sus ejidos, 24 mayo 1841, and passim. 70. AGQ, leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez n sobre avances en sus ejidos, 2 julio 1841. 71. AGQ, leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez n sobre avances en sus ejidos, 2 julio, 31 agosto, and 18 diciembre 1841; AGCA B, leg. 3268, exp. 69700; ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 28 octubre 1839. Recall that San Martns ofcials did not immediately challenge the intruders because they had lost their title in a re in 1811, and they were afraid that armed with only the measurement itself their claims would be denied. 72. AGQ, leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez n sobre avances en sus ejidos, 3 junio and 18 diciembre 1841. The presidential decree is from the second set of documents, although a copy also may be found in AGCA B, leg. 3269, exp. 69911. 73. AMSJO, 8 junio 1849. 74. AGQ, leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez n sobre avances en sus ejidos, 31 agosto 1841; AMSJO, bulto a o 1856, Lista de los n Yndivids. qe. havitan en la Costa y terrenos de S. Martin. 75. AMSJO, 5 enero 1850. 76. AMSJO, 7 febrero 1852. 77. Two examples are Simon Ocheita and Perfecto Galindo. See AMSJO, bulto a o 1856, Lista de los Yndivids. qe. havitan en la Costa y terrenos de S. Martin; n 19 diciembre 1852; 9 enero 1841. 78. AMSJO, 16 mayo, 14 junio, 1 julio, 29 julio, and 18 octubre 1853; 28 abril and 11 noviembre 1854; Libro de Actas, 21 septiembre 1855. 79. AMSJO, bulto a o 1863, leg. 13 Padron de los contrivuyentes ladinos de n comunidad, que deben satisfaserla, tanto del a o pasado los qe. no la pagaron, cuanto n la que corresponde al corriente de 1863. 80. AMSJO, 5 enero 1863. 81. AMSJO, 17 enero and 27 and 28 febrero 1866. 82. AGQ, 4 abril 1839; AMSJO, 2 agosto 1839; 24 marzo 1840; 2 enero 1846; 7 enero 1848; bulto a o 1865, Libro de Actas, 20 diciembre 1864; 9 diciembre n 1867; 4 enero 1869.

Notes to Chapter 2 213 83. San Jos Pie de la Cuesta, also referred to as Las Maras, became Colomba (see e discussion below). El Asintal was precursor to the town of the same name (Francis Gall, ed., Diccionario geogr co de Guatemala, 4 vols. (Guatemala: Instituto Geogr co a a Nacional, 19761983), 1:151). Finally, Taltut and El Zapote became G nova and e Flores Costa Cuca, respectively (on G nova, see AMSJO, bulto a o 1868, Se or e n n Alcalde 1o. de San Juan Ostuncalco; 9 marzo 1869; and Gall, Diccionario, 1:461; on Flores, see AMSJO, 16 octubre 1862 and Gall, Diccionario, 2:118). El Zapote was settled by residents of the highland ladino town San Antonio Bob s from at least the o early 1860s. 84. Recall, from the introduction, that this included the towns of Cabric n, San a Antonio Bob s, Cajol , Sig il , Chiquirichapa, San Martn, and nally Ostuncalco o a u a itself. See chapter 5 for more on the development of the district. 85. AMSJO, 3 abril and 16 noviembre 1847; 5 octubre 1849; 8 abril 1853; 23 diciembre 1858; 26 marzo 1859; bulto a o 1865, Libro de Actas, 16 abril 1866; 25 n abril 1866; AGCA B, leg. 28606, exp. 267; AMSJO, 20 and 26 febrero and 11 marzo 1869; bulto a o 1869, leg. 34 Recibos de jornals. de Culpan. n 86. Recall that a square league amounted to approximately 38 caballeras. 87. AMSJO, 15 octubre 1855; AGCA B, leg. 28568, exp. 233. The Corregidors comments are found in the second source. 88. AGCA B, leg. 28568, exp. 233; leg. 28572, exps. 72 and 96. 89. AMSJO, 19 marzo 1854. 90. AMSJO, 26 septiembre 1854; Libro de Actas en que la Municipalidad del Pueblo de Ostuncalco deber continuar asentando las actas de sus respectivos acuerdos a en el a o de 1854 (hasta 1862), 16 junio 1855; Procesos judiciales (criminales), exp. n Criminal A o de 1855. Contra del indigena Manuel Ramirez, por presunciones de n sedicion contra las autoridades de Sn. Martin, 22 junio 1855 (contains the quoted material); AGQ, leg. No. 262. Visita Departamental. A o 1855, 13 junio 1855. n 91. During the course of the investigation, which began in late December, 1856, San Martns alcalde auxiliar for the coast, Francisco L pes, claimed that he had o received 15 pesos from the sansebastianos to use community land, and that he had passed on 13 of these pesos to then governor P res. The former governor, however, e vociferously denied the allegation. Unfortunately, the existing documentation does not indicate how the case was resolved (AGQ, Sor. Comte. Gral. de los Departs. de los Altos, Corregr. de el de Quezalto. Juzgado Prevento. del Distrito de S. Juan Ostuncalco, 18 diciembre 1856; AMSJO, 18, 19 and 31 diciembre, 1856). The resignation of governor P res is covered in AMSJO, 16 and 27 octubre 1856; and AGQ, e Sor. Corregr. del Departamto., 17 octubre 1856. As for San Jos Pie de la Cuesta, e little work actually was completed on the new town even as late as March 1857, the point at which San Martns opposition caused the project to be canceled (AMSJO, 4 and 17 enero, 31 marzo and 30 abril 1856; AGQ, leg. Corregimiento del Departamento de Quezaltenango. Copiador de Ocios y Ordenes del Corregimiento pr. los Sres. Mntros. del Supmo. Gobierno y otros funcionos. A o de 1856, 20 enero n 1857; AGCA B, leg. 28568, exp. 233). 92. AGCA B, leg. 28568, exp. 233. 93. AGCA B, leg. 28572, exp. 96.

214 Notes to Chapter 2

94. There is a vast amount of documentary evidence for this. Here are just four examples: AMSJO, 27 enero 1852; 12 mayo and 16 octubre 1862; 26 marzo 1863. 95. See the sources from the previous notes, as well as AGQ, leg. 262 Visita Departamental. A o 1855, 13 junio 1855; leg. 521 Medidas de los terrenos de n San Francisco Miramar, hecho por Herman Au, Agrn. Licdo. 1871, 1873 y 1874, 15 junio 1859 and passim; AMSJO, Libro de Actas . . . , 16 junio 1855; Procesos judiciales (criminales), 22 junio 1855 and 9 marzo 1869. 96. Gall, Diccionario, 3:83, 794. 97. Ttulo Coyoi, transcribed in Kiche and translated into English in Quichean Civilization: The Ethnohistoric, Ethnographic, and Archaeological Sources, ed. Robert M. Carmack (Berkeley: University of California, 1973), 300301 and 335337; Ttulos de la casa Izquin-Nehaib, se ora del territorio de Otzoy , or Ttulo Nijaib I, 71 n a 96, esp. 7778, and Ttulo Real de Don Francisco Izquin-Nehaib or Ttulo Nijaib II, 96117, esp. 101103, both transcribed in Crnicas Indgenas de Guatemala, ed. o Adri n Recinos (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, 1957). See also Gall, Diccionario, a 3:426427; and Elas Zamora Acosta, Los mayas de las tierras altas en el siglo XVI: tradicin o y cambio en Guatemala (Sevilla: Diputaci n Provincial de Sevilla, 1985), 344. o 98. This according to the Carta que Diego Garc s escribi a la Real Audiencia e o de Guatemala . . . , transcribed in Pedro Carrasco, Sobre los indios de Guatemala (Guatemala: Ministerio de Educaci n, 1982), 8997. See esp. 9395. Note that San o Sebasti n may have also been an estancia of Quezaltenango (Elas Zamora Acosta, El a control vertical de diferentes pisos ecol gicos: aplicaci n del modelo al Occidente o o de Guatemala, Revista de la Universidad Complutense 27 (1979): 264265; cf. Zamora Acosta, Los mayas, 343). 99. Pueblos y parroquias en Suchitep quez colonial, Mesoamrica 5 (1984): 172, e e 175. 100. San Felipes ejido size is listed variously as 37.5 and 38.25 caballeras (AGCA B, leg. 28590, exps. 206 and 220). In fact, McCreery notes that altogether Zunils residents titled a total of 68 caballeras in the area of San Felipe (Rural Guatemala, 144). On San Martn Zapotitl n, see AGCA ST, Quezaltenango paq. 1, exp. 15. a 101. AGCA B, leg. 28596, exp. 131; AGQ, leg. 262 Visita departamental. A o n 1855, 11 marzo 1865 and 27 marzo 1867; and AMM, 19 abril 1869. 102. AGCA C.1, leg. 4, leg. 66; ST, Quezaltenango paq. 4, exp. 5; and AHA Cartas, leg. 338 Legajo de matriculas de terrenos de distintos propietarios del departamento de Totonicap n, 4 abril 1835. See also Benson Saler, The Road from a El Palmar: Change, Continuity and Conservatism in a Quich Community (Ph.D. diss., e University of Pennsylvania, 1960), 2830. 103. RLG, N. 450, Ley 20a., 4 mayo 1853, 1:760761. Note that a quintal equals 100 lbs. (McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 419). 104. AGCA B, leg. 28590, exp. 206. 105. AGCA B, leg. 28576, exp. 156; leg. 28586, exp. 219; leg. 28590, exps. 206 and 220. Incidentally, these documents tell a similar, if less detailed, story for nearby San Martn Zapotitl n, where ladinos also usurped town lands by constituting a bogus a ladino municipalidad. 106. AGCA B, leg. 28576, exp. 156; leg. 28586, exp. 219; and leg. 28587, exp. 18.

Notes to Chapter 2 215 107. AGCA B, leg. 28576, exp. 156; and leg. 28586, exp. 219. 108. AGCA B, leg. 28576, exp. 156; leg. 28586, exp. 219; leg. 28587, exp. 18; leg. 28590, exps. 206 and 220. 109. AGCA B, leg. 28590, exp. 220. 110. AGCA B, leg. 28590, exp. 220. 111. AGQ, 9 and 14 agosto 1863. 112. AGCA B, leg. 28595, exps. 39 and 50; Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los a Altos, 521536; McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 165166. 113. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 165. 114. AMM, 20 octubre 1865 and 19 abril 1969; AGQ, leg. 165. Civiles a o de n 1859. Juan Perez, Manuel Pernape, Bartolo Siq y la Municipd. del Palmar pr. mutuos perjuicios en sus poseciones, noviembre 1859; 20 julio and 3 agosto 1866; leg. 272 Visita Departamental. A o 1855, 27 marzo 1867; leg. 993 Civil A o de 1874. El n n Cno. Mariano Henriquez, solicita en venta dos caballerias de los terrenos baldios del Palmar, situadas al occidente del rio Nim ; and leg. 475 A o 1874. Solicitudes del a n terreno del Palmar; AGCA ST, Quezaltenango paq. 4, exp. 5; and B, leg. 28645, exp. exps. 648, 653, and 654. 115. AMM, 20 octubre 1865 and 19 abril 1969; and AGQ, leg. 272 Visita Departamental. A o 1855, 27 marzo 1867. n 116. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 249. 117. Many scholars, for example, argue that without private land titles, incipient coffee planters could not gain the credit necessary to establish themselves. See Ciro F. S. Cardoso, Historia econ mica del caf en Centroam rica (siglo XIX): estudio o e e comparativo, Estudios Sociales Centroamericanos 4 (EneroAbril 1975): 14; Thomas R. Herrick, Desarrollo econmico y poltico de Guatemala durante el perodo de Justo Runo o Barrios (18711885) (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria de Guatemala/EDUCA, 1974), 2729; and Robert G. Williams, States and Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise of National Governments in Central America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1994), 41, 164. Such an argument is belied by the dramatic growth of coffee exports prior to 1871 (see Table Intro.1), as well as by the details of Quezaltenangos Costa Cuca. Moreover, the very authors who make these claims go on to provide contradictory evidence. Williams states, with regard to short-term crop loans, that for long-term investments such as coffee cultivation, the system was inadequate (164). Yet this conclusion seems to contradict his earlier comment that [t]he most regular source of nance [for the coffee boom] followed the colonial pattern of short-term loans, using future crops, not improved land, as security. . . . As trade ties with Europe and North America were regularized . . . a more abundant source of short-term nance began to be tapped. . . . Finance capital began to ow into Central America through trade channels. Coffee import houses in the industrialized countries would borrow from banks or advance their own funds to export houses in Central America. The export houses would then advance funds to large growers or merchant intermediaries, who would make loans to smaller growers. As modern processing mills were built, they became a conduit for credit to growers. The collateral at each step was coffee to be delivered at harvest time . . . (154, emphasis added. See also 155, 165, 193, 237, 242, 258). Likewise, Cardoso writes that coffee could not fully

216 Notes to Chapter 3

develop under the Conservatives because they were unable to impose the necessary reforms in land tenure and agricultural credit, among other things. Thus the coffee revolution had to await the Liberal revolution (14). Later on, however, Cardoso notes that even after the Liberals took power, future harvests, not property, continued to be among the most common methods by which cafetaleros secured credit (34). 118. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 163164. 119. Lowell Gudmundson and H ctor Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 18211871: e Liberalism before Liberal Reform (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1995), 1, 93. Historian Todd Little-Siebold makes a persuasive argument for decaffeinating Guatemalas nineteenth- and twentieth-century historiography in Guatemala and the Dream of a Nation: National Policy and Regional Practice in the Liberal Era, 18711945 (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1995), esp. 253279. 120. Data from Ostuncalco support such a conclusion. A review of some 200 land title requests that followed the issuance of Decree 170 in 1877 reveals that 44 were from indigenous residents of the town, while another 49 could not be associated with one ethnic group or another (AMSJO Ttulos supletorios, bulto a os n 18781889). Given the advanced state of decay in which I found these solicitudes I presume that this is but a fraction of the true number requesting title to community land.
notes to chapter 3

1. AGCA B, leg. 28586, exp. 205. 2. David J. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 17601940 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 130. For LaFarge, see Maya Ethnology: The Sequence of Cultures, in The Maya and Their Neighbors, ed. Clarence L. Hay, et al (New York: D. Appleton Century, 1940), 283287 and passim. 3. Lovell, Surviving Conquest: The Maya of Guatemala in Historical Perspective, LARR 23 (1988): 3739. For other examples, see the Introduction, or my Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples: The Subaltern Roots of National Politics in Nineteenth Century Guatemala (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999), 178 n 3. 4. Barrios issued a circular on the subject of mandamientos or forced labor drafts on November 3, 1876 (AMSJO). His denitive Reglamento de jornaleros was emitted April 3, 1877 (LIG, Decreto Gubernativo No. 177, 3542). 5. David J. McCreery, Debt Servitude in Rural Guatemala, 18761936, HAHR 63 (November 1983): 736, 755756; and Rural Guatemala, 283288, 323. 6. Greg Grandin afrms this point for the Kiche communities of eastern Quezaltenango during the late colonial period. See The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham: Duke University, 2000), 3233. 7. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 109. 8. Relaci n de Ignacio de Urbina, BAGG 2 (Abril 1937): 316318, and o Relaci n de Gregorio Lizaurzaval y Anssola, BAGG 2 (Abril 1937): 318323. o 9. The information referred to in this and subsequent paragraphs is found in AMSJO Correspondencia, beginning with the bulto for years 18081819, and, excepting 1848, continuing through all subsequent bultos until 1870. Of special

Notes to Chapter 3 217 importance are the notebooks in which Ostuncalcos ladino alcalde kept the details of each agreement. These exist for 18534, 1855, 1862, 1863, 1867, 1868, and 1870, and I have tabulated 327 of their debt-related entries in a spreadsheet database. The notebooks are titled as follows for each year: Libro en que se cientan las razones de las personas que ponen plazas para satisfacer deudas y no otorgan obligaciones (1854); Libro en que se asientan las rasones de las personas que ponen plasos para satisfaser deuda (1855); Cuaderno de deudores para el a o de 1862; Libro de n Conocimientos y Razones (1863); Libro de Razones del Juzgado 1o. (1867); Libro de Conosimientos del Juzgado 1o. Municipal (1868); and Libro de Conocimientos del Juzgado 1o. (1870). 10. For example, of the 327 tabulated debts mentioned in the notes above, almost 64% fell between March and July. 11. Ralph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 18211871 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 390391. 12. This calculation is based on 220 of the 327 tabulated debts mentioned in the preceding notes for which the creditors name was listed. Gender could not be determined for slightly more than 6% of these 220 creditors. 13. A similarly gendered prole of adores emerged from AGQ, leg. 112 Ano de 1836, 29 febrero 1836. This document lists aguardiente patent holders and their adores in the department of Quezaltenango, which at that time included much of present-day San Marcos. Although 58 of the 72 individually held patents pertained to women, 68 of the 72 corresponding adores were men. 14. Relaci n de Ignacio de Urbina, 316318, Relaci n de Gregorio Lizaurzaval o o y Anssola (4 noviembre 1765), 318323. 15. Christopher H. Lutz, Historia sociodemogr ca de Santiago de Guatemala, a 15411773 (Antigua: CIRMA, 1982), 335342, 356 n. 13. See also Robert M. Carmack, Social and Demographic Patterns in an Eighteenth-Century Census from Tecpanaco, Guatemala, in The Historical Demography of Highland Guatemala, eds. Robert M. Carmack, John Early, and Christopher Lutz (Albany: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, State University of New York, 1982), 146147. 16. AMSJO, 27 septiembre 1819; 8 enero 1821; 21 enero 1828; 19 septiembre 1851; Civil. Juzgado Prevento. del Distrito de S. Juan Ostuncalco. A o de 1856. Sobre n averiguar que bienes dej Sebastian Dias y en poder de que persona existen; bulto o a o 1865, Se or Juez Preventivo de este Distrito. n n 17. AMSJO, 15 diciembre 1820; 12 septiembre 1834; 26 julio 1839; 7 julio 1841; bulto a o 1851, Libro de Cargo i data de la Cofradia de la Sma. Trinidad. n 18. Eight reales comprised a peso. 19. AMSJO, 4 agosto and 15 octubre 1851, and Libro de cargo i data de la Cofradia de la Sma. Trinidad; 5 febrero 1855; Civil. A o de 1862. Contra la Se ora Antonia n n Lepe por deuda del nado su esposo Maximo Castillo Ocampo a la Se ora Paulina n Garcia. 20. AMSJO, 19 noviembre 1817; 10 junio 1833; bulto a o 1851, 20 julio 1850; n Juzgado Prevento. del Distrito de S. Juan Ostuncalco. Civil a o de 1855. El Sor. n Francisco Samora solicita se siga una informacion, de haber pagado al Presbo. Dn. Antonio Chinchia los cien pesos que estaban en su poder de la cofradia de Concepcion; 7 mayo 1865; 11 marzo and 23 mayo 1867; 13 marzo 1868.

218 Notes to Chapter 3

21. Wage information was derived from several dozen archival sources. The low is found in AMSJO, 26 febrero 1821; the high in AGCA B, leg. 28590, exp. 206. 22. E.g., AMSJO, 16 febrero 1863; 20 diciembre 1866. 23. Examples of this are legion. AMSJO, 9 agosto 1821, is typical. 24. This paragraph is based on a synthesis of numerous documents found in Correspondencia bultos of the AMSJO. It would be impossible to list them all here. Instead, I will cite one or two examples where appropriate. The following two documents exemplify the use of indebted labor in highland wheat and livestock production prior to 1830: AMSJO, 1 agosto 1821; 11 mayo 1827. 25. AGCA A1.57, leg. 395, exp. 8262 and ST Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp. 17, and paq. 2, exp. 9. 26. AMSJO, Co. Jues de primera ynsta. (1835); 9 octubre 1841; 19 enero and 7 febrero 1852. 27. AMSJO, Libro de Conocimientos y Razones qe. Comienza Hoy 19 de Mayo de 1863. 28. AMSJO, 7 junio 1830. 29. AMSJO, Civil. Juzgado Prevento. del Distrito de S. Juan Ostuncalco. A o n de 1856. Sobre averiguar que bienes dej Sebastian Dias y en poder de que persona o existen. 30. AMSJO, 9 septiembre 1824. 31. See, e.g., McCreery, Debt Servitude, 754 and passim. 32. AMSJO, 9 septiembre 1824; 10 junio 1833; 25 enero and 11 marzo 1834; a o n 1849, 24 noviembre 1849; 13 agosto 1850; and 1 diciembre 1855. 33. McCreery, Debt Servitude, 754 and Rural Guatemala, 279280. 34. AMSJO, 5 abril 1823. 35. AMSJO, 8 enero 1821; 6 julio, 8 agosto, and 12 octubre 1855; AGCA B, leg. 28568, exp. 248. Sol Tax and Robert Hinshaw make a similar observation for the twentieth century: Land is not readily sold by Indians, but it is not infrequently pawned to tide families over nancial crises. Land sold to Ladinos generally does not return to Indian hands, although considerable Ladino-owned acreage may be rented by Indians. See their The Maya of the midwestern highlands, in Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 7, ed. E. Z. Vogt (Austin: University of Texas, 1969), 86. 36. Usury received attention from state authorities only occasionally. Examples include AMSJO, 6 marzo 1826; 10 junio 1833; and 11 marzo 1836. 37. Morris Siegel, Effects of Culture Contact on the Form of the Family in a Guatemalan Village, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 72 (1945): 56. Further documentation for this point can be found in my Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 200 n 40. 38. A good example of this debate is the Summer/Fall 1981 special issue of Latin American Perspectives, entitled Dependency and Marxism (8:3031). For a fuller discussion of the associated literature, see my Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 201 n 41. 39. See, e.g., Colin Henfrey, Dependency, Modes of Production, and the Class Analysis of Latin America, Latin American Perspectives 8 (Summer and Fall 1981): 1754. This disagreement found its way into arguments over Wallersteins

Notes to Chapter 3 219 world-system, as Steve J. Stern shows in Feudalism, Capitalism, and the WorldSystem in the Perspective of Latin America and the Caribbean, American Historical Review 93:4 (October 1988), 846848, and as exemplied by Robert Miles, Capitalism and Unfree Labour: Anomaly or necessity? (London: Tavistock, 1987), 5669. 40. Tom Brass, Coffee and Rural Proletarianization: A Comment on Bergad, Journal of Latin American Studies 16 (1984):143152; and Laird W. Bergad, On Comparative History: A Reply to Tom Brass, Journal of Latin American Studies 16(1984): 153156; Tom Brass, The Latin American Enganche System: Some Revisionist Reinterpretations Revisted, Slavery and Abolition 11 (1990): 74103; and Alan Knight, Mexican Peonage: What Was It and Why Was It?, Journal of Latin American Studies 18 (May 1986): 4174, and Debt Bondage in Latin America, Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labour, ed. L onie J. Archer (New York: Routledge, 1988), e 102117. For a fuller discussion of this debate in the historiography of Latin America, see my Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 202 n 43. 41. Knight, Mexican Peonage, 46 and 56. 42. Knight, Mexican Peonage, 4546 and Knight, Debt Bondage, 108110. 43. Knight, Debt Bondage, 111 and Knight, Mexican Peonage, 4243; John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico (Austin: University of Texas, 1990 [1910]). On Turners reporting in American Magazine and other US periodicals between 1909 and 1910, see Sinclair Snow, Introduction, Barbarous Mexico, ixxxii. 44. In making such an argument, Knight is not without his detractors. See particularly the work of Tom Brass: Of Human Bondage: Campesinos, Coffee and Capitalism on the Peruvian Frontier, The Journal of Peasant Studies 11 (1983): 82 84; Unfree Labour and Capitalist Restructuring in the Agrarian Sector: Peru and India, The Journal of Peasant Studies 14 (1986): 5152. 45. AMSJO, bulto a o 1830, Padr n General. Departamento de Quesaltenango. n o Municipalidad de Ostuncalco; bulto a o 1852, Padron Grl. de Ladinos y de indin genas and Padron General Munisipd. de Consepcion Chiquirichapa pr. orden del Se or Dn. Juan Ygnacio Yrigollen, Cmte. Grl. de los Altos y Coregidor de Quesalten nango; Direcci n general de estadsticas, Censo general de la rep blica de Guatemala, o u levantado el a o de 1880 (Guatemala: Tip. de El Progreso, 1881), and Censo general n de la rep blica de Guatemala, levantado en el 26 de febrero de 1893 por la Direccin general u o de estadstica y con los auspicios del presidente constitutional, general Don Jos Mara Reina e Barrios (Guatemala: Tip. Nacional, 1894); AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp. 17. 46. Commenting on the twentieth century, Tax and Hinshaw write in The Maya of the midwestern highlands that [w]here subsistence depends on constant, hard work, incapacitating illness is as much feared for its economic consequences as for the spiritual and physical jeopardy implied (93). 47. AMSJO, 24 enero 1821; 24 febrero 1830. 48. AMSJO, Padr n General. Departamento de Quesaltenango. Municipalidad o de Ostuncalco, 1 agosto 1830. Jornaleros averaged 28.9 years, vs. 36.5 for labradores. Unfortunately, this hypothesis cannot be compared against other data from the pre1871 period because subsequent censuses generally did not include the relevant information, or if they did, it was so haphazard as to render it useless.

220 Notes to Chapter 3

49. Douglas E. Brintall, Revolt Against the Dead: The Modernization of a Mayan Community in the Highlands of Guatemala (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1979), 83; Benson Saler, The Road from El Palmar: Change, Continuity and Conservatism in a Quich Community, (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1960), 9798; Charles e Wagley, Economics of a Guatemalan Village (Menasha, WI: American Anthropological Association, 1941), 67. 50. AMSJO, 11 mayo 1827; 2 febrero 1834; 3 agosto 1850. 51. Examples include: AMSJO, 27 junio 1837; bulto a os 18401841, De el n Alcald. 1o. de Ostuncalco. Al Se or Sesilio Garsia Alcald. de La Costa del Sur en el n Asintal; 23 septiembre 1847; 30 enero and 28 marzo 1852; and 7 mayo 1859. 52. The problem of distance was especially singled out by several Costa Cuca planters in 1879 (AGCA B, leg. 28670, exp. 285). For examples dating from before 1871, see AMSJO, 27 junio 1837; Juzgado 1o. Municipal de San Juan Ostuncalco. Libro de Razones, 18 febrero 1867; bulto a o 1869, Se or Alcalde de San n n Juan. 53. AMSJO, De el Alcald. 1o. de Ostuncalco. Al Se or Sesilio Garsia Alcald. de n La Costa del Sur en el Asintal; 9 junio 1854; 10 julio, 26 septiembre, and 12 octubre 1867. 54. AMSJO, 7 octubre 1846; 2 febrero 1855. 55. AMSJO, 12 octubre 1869. 56. Knight, Debt Bondage, 108. 57. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 4041, 6975. The censuses of 1840 and 1847 both state that there were no haciendas in the district of Ostuncalco (AGQ, Distrito de Ostuncalco. Depto. de Quesalto., 25 noviembre 1840; AGCA B, leg. 28539, exp. 125). San Antonio Bob s and Macl n, for example, originally titled as haciendas, o e were granted pueblo status soon after 1800 (AHA, Caja a o 1834, leg. 79; AGCA ST, n Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exps. 7, 8, and 11; A3.62, leg. 198, exp. 4011; A1.44, leg. 2372, exp. 17971; AHQ, a o 1811, leg. 33). According to McCreery, the hacienda n Vasquez (aka Zacualpa, per AGCA A, leg. 5955, exp. 52152) was taken over by the indigenous community of San Pedro Sacatep quez sometime in the early decades of e the 19th century (Rural Guatemala, 61). Finally, the combination of capellana debt and pressure from the indigenous residents of both Ostuncalco and Santa Cruz Cajol a ended in the apparent disintegration of the haciendas Veinte Palos and Los Granados (AGCA A, leg. 6043, exp. 53336; A, leg. 6045, exp. 53351; ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exps. 4 and 11). 58. See especially articles 2224 of RLG, N. 314. Ley 15a., 2 octubre 1839, 1:504511. 59. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 167; J. C. Cambranes, Coffee and Peasants in Guatemala: The Origins of the Modern Plantation Economy in Guatemala, 18531897 (Stockholm: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1985), 98, 104105; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 431432. 60. AGCA B, leg. 28586, exp. 205; leg. 28625, exp. 307; leg. 28628, exps. 43 and 51. In addition, this information derives from several dozen documents located in the AMSJO Correspondencia, bultos 18571859, 18601862, 1863, 1864, 1865, 1866, 1868, 1869, 1870, and 1871.

Notes to Chapter 3 221 61. AGCA B, leg. 28586, exp. 205; leg. 28625, exp. 307; leg. 28628, exps. 43 and 51. 62. AGCA B, leg. 28628, exp. 43. 63. AGCA B, leg. 28628, exp. 51. 64. AGCA B, leg. 28628, exp. 51. 65. I have not included 1858 or 1871 in this calculation because they were partial years: AGQ, leg. 382 1859. Estados que maniestan el n mero de individuos que u trabajan en el Camino de esta ciudad para Patio de Bolas; Estado y Presupuesto que presenta el Comicionado de la Obra del Camino carretero y de herradura qe. se abre de esta Ciudad para Patio de Bolas, numero de individuos qe. concurrieron al trabajo diario, abono de sus jornales, y expresion de los trabajos hecho en . . . 1865; AGQ, 8 mayo 1859; AMSJO documents from bultos dated 18571871 mentioned in the notes above. 66. E.g., AMSJO, 28 julio 1863. 67. AGCA B, leg. 28586, exp. 205. 68. Barrios issued Decree 177 on April 3, 1877. See DIG, 3542. 69. For example, Woodward writes in his recent work on Rafael Carrera, that [d]ebt peonage and the use of vagrancy laws to exploit cheap labor . . . were not widespread until the latter third of the nineteenth century in Guatemala, although they occurred considerably earlier in Mexico. We nd their beginnings, nonetheless, in Guatemala as early as the 1840s (425). 70. AMSJO, 22 abril 1870. The reorganization and expansion of municipal and regional governing structures will be treated in more detail in Chapter 5. 71. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 168169; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 431432, 581582 n. 47. 72. AMSJO, 19 agosto 1874. 73. The jefe departamental was the Liberal successor to the corregidor. The quote is from the Circular issued 3 noviembre 1876 by the personal secretary of Pres. Barrios (AMSJO). 74. Secretaria Particular del Jeneral Presidente. Circular. Guatemala, AMSJO, 3 noviembre 1876. 75. DIG, 3542. 76. AMSJO, 31 mayo 1880; 25 junio 1881; 4 agosto 1884; 27 marzo and 27 junio 1885. 77. AMSJO, 14 febrero 1885; leg. Cartas particulares, 14 septiembre 1885. 78. AGQ, Lista general de los mosos . . . , Fincas La Bolsa (Costa Cuca), Damieta (Costa Cuca), Nueva Austria (Costa Cuca; comparison for years 18941896), Quenene (El Palmar), and San Antonio (El Palmar). 79. AMSJO, 10 diciembre 1871; bulto a o 1872, 8 agosto 1871; 30 mayo 1873; n bulto a o 1875, leg. 2, Libro de Actas de la Municipalidad, 2 enero 1874; AGCA n B, leg. 28634, exp. 317. The alcaldes auxiliares are described in Chapter 2. 80. AGCA B, leg. 28670, exp. 285. 81. On Conservative designs for San Jos Pie de la Cuesta, see Chapter 2. e 82. AGCA B, leg. 28650, exp. 452; leg. 28646, exp. 722; leg. 28644, exp. 540; leg. 28684, exp. 747; AMSJO, 28 octubre and 24 diciembre 1874; 24 febrero 1875; 1 enero

222 Notes to Chapter 3

and 22 febrero 1882; leg. Notas de varios juzgados, 15 enero 1887; 2 noviembre 1887; RLRG, 10 abril 1882, 3:214; 10 febrero 1885, 4:323; 21 mayo and 26 agosto 1889, 8:52, 126. 83. AMSJO, 25 noviembre 1871; 1 junio 1874; 6 julio 1885; leg. Notas de particulares, 6 febrero 1886; 7 febrero 1889; 2 septiembre 1891. 84. AMSJO, leg. Notas de la Jefatura Poltica, 4 octubre 1886; 2 octubre 1888; 10 enero 1891; 7 abril 1892. 85. AMSJO, 10 enero 1891. Railroad wages ran 4 reales per day at a time when the typical nca wage was 3 reales (AMM, bulto a o 1889, 17 mayo 1890). n 86. AMSJO, 20 octubre 1876; bulto a o 1885, 29 enero 1881; 11 enero 1882; leg. n Notas de particulares, 24 enero 1886; 16 junio 1890; 11 septiembre 1891. 87. AMSJO, 6 and 12 julio and 24 agosto 1871. 88. AGQ, Lista general de los mosos . . . [1894].; AMSJO, El que suscribe certica . . . [1897]. The gure of 224 days is based on a daily wage of three reales, a value consonant with the documentation for the 1890s. 89. AGQ, 7 mayo 1892; AMSJO, leg. Libro copiador de la Jefatura Poltica, 29 agosto 1892 & 2 septiembre 1891. 90. See Charles Gibsons The Aztecs under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 15191810 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), 255, for a similar argument, as well as Juan Martnez Aliers comments in Relations of Production in Andean Haciendas: Peru, Land and Labour in Latin America: Essays on the Development of Agrarian Capitalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, eds. Kenneth Duncan and Ian Rutledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1977), esp. 147148. 91. Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 432. 92. Debt and wage information prior to 1871 is from AMSJO Correspondencia, beginning with the bulto for years 18081819, and, excepting 1848, continuing through all subsequent bultos until 1870. For more on how this documentation was analyzed, see the notes at the start of this chapter. Information on the 1890s is from AGQ, Lista general de los mosos . . . [1894], as well as numerous other sources from AMSJO Correspondencia, bultos 1890 to 1897. McCreery, Debt Servitude, charts wages at about three reales in 1875 and about four reales in 1900. 93. DIG, 3542; AMSJO bulto a o 1879, leg. Libro que contiene dos partes. 1a. n de remisiones de mosos a las ncas. 2a. debe i haber de los fondos municips.; leg. Notas de la Jefatura, 27 octubre 1883; leg. Notas de la Jefatura, 3 enero 1887. 94. AMSJO, leg. Libro Copiador de Circulares de la Jefatura Poltica, 18761878, 27 octubre 1877; AGQ, 6 noviembre 1878. 95. AMSJO, bulto a o 1879, leg. Libro que contiene dos partes. 1a. de remisiones n de mosos a las ncas. 2a. debe i haber de los fondos municips.; 12 marzo and 7 septiembre 1883; AMM 23 septiembre and 3 noviembre 1882. 96. AGQ, leg. 382. 1859. Estados que maniestan el n mero de individuos que u trabajan en el Camino de esta ciudad para Patio de Bolas; AMSJO, 8 abril 1863; 15 marzo 1865; 25 enero and 11 febrero 1870; 27 septiembre 1883; 14 enero 1885; 20 and 26 abril 1889. 97. AMSJO, 1, 3, 13, and 30 octubre 1888; 6, 20, and 29 septiembre and 3 octubre 1892; AGQ, leg. 382. 1859. Estados que maniestan el n mero de individuos que u trabajan en el Camino de esta ciudad para Patio de Bolas.

Notes to Chapter 4 223 98. For a full discussion of these problems, see my Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 236239. 99. Oscar H. Horst, La utilizaci n de archivos eclesi sticos en la reconstrucci n o a o de la historia demogr ca de San Juan Ostuncalco, Mesoamrica 22 (diciembre 1991): a e 220, 222. 100. One nal caveat: readers should note that even though the number of individuals involved in 1859 and 1888/1892 were similar in relative terms, the duration of each mandamiento contingent was greater in the Liberal period. In 1859 each contingent worked for six days, while after 1877 a contingent might be sent for 7 to 30 days. See AGQ, leg. 382. 1859. Estados que maniestan el n mero de indiu viduos que trabajan en el Camino de esta ciudad para Patio de Bolas, and DIG, 3542. 101. Given the state of these archives it is almost certain that I found documentation for only a portion of the actual number of mandamientos. Equally likely, however, is the probability that I did not recognize the names of all of the ofcials or their family members who received mandamientos. 102. E.g., AMSJO, 27 septiembre 1883; 14 enero 1885; 27 marzo 1887; 20 and 26 abril 1889; AGQ, 11 octubre 1892. 103. AMSJO, leg. Libro copiador de la Jefatura Poltica, 29 agosto and 4 di ciembre 1892. 104. AMSJO, 28 noviembre 1892; AGQ, 29 octubre 1892 and 2 octubre 1893. 105. AMSJO, 31 octubre 1892; AGQ, 19 noviembre 1892; AMM bulto a o 1893, n leg. Libro de habilitaciones de mozos de mandamientos. Note that the municipalidades also demanded additional fees for themselves during this same period. 106. Knight, Mexican Peonage, 5859; Debt Bondage, 111. 107. Knight cites McCreery, Debt Servitude (Mexican Peonage, 58 n. 72). 108. McCreery, Debt Servitude, esp. 736, 755756. The quote is from Rural Guatemala, 323, but also see 223225. 109. Knight, Debt Bondage, 111. 110. AMSJO, 22 enero 1873; 13 julio 1884; 6 febrero 1885; 25 febrero 1887; 2 mayo 1889; 11 enero 1886; 18 abril and 31 mayo 1895; cf. Oliver LaFarge and Douglas Byers, The Year Bearers People (New Orleans: Tulane University, 1931), 82.
notes to chapter 4

1. Elisha Oscar Crosby, Memoirs of Elisha Oscar Crosby: Reminiscences of California and Guatemala from 18491864 (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1945), 94 95, 97; Jorge Gonz lez Alzate, A History of Los Altos, Guatemala: A Study of Regional a Conict and National Integration, 17501885 (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1994), 418 421; Hazel Ingersoll, The War of the Mountain: A Study of Reactionary Peasant Insurgency in Guatemala, 18371873 (Ph.D. diss., George Washington University, 1972), 24547; John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1969 [1841]), 1:218, 23038, 2:205209; Ralph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 18211871 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 12022. 2. Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 335, 337.

224 Notes to Chapter 4

3. Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 332342. 4. Revisionists who suggest the possibility of populareven indigenoussupport for the Liberal insurgency of the late 1860s and early 1870s include Jean Piel, Sajcabaj : a muerte y resurreccin de un pueblo de Guatemala, 15001970 (Guatemala: Seminario de o Integraci n Social, 1989), esp. 315; and Todd Little-Siebold, Guatemala and the o Dream of a Nation: National Policy and Regional Practice in the Liberal Era, 1871 1945 (Chiquimula, San Marcos) (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1995), 99. 5. AGQ, leg. 96 Criminales a o de 1854. Yncidentes sobre varios procedimienn tos del Comiciondo. politico Dn. Manuel Larrave, Juez preventivo del Distrito de Ostuncalco. Venidos del Juzgdo. de 1ra. insta. de este Departamento, 24 octubre 1854 (contains quotations); AMSJO, 31 julio 1854. 6. AGQ, leg. 96 Criminales a o de 1854. Yncidentes sobre varios procedimienn tos . . . , 24 and 25 octubre 1854. 7. AGQ, leg. 96 Criminales a o de 1854. Yncidentes sobre varios procedimienn tos . . . , 24 octubre 1854 (contains quotations); AMSJO, 31 julio 1854. 8. See Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo, Woman, Culture, and Society: A Theoretical Overview, in Woman, Culture, and Society, eds. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Stanford: Stanford University, 1974), for a pioneering formulation of the domestic/public spheres model. For further discussion of the literature on this topic, see my Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples: The Subaltern Roots of National Politics in Nineteenth Century Guatemala (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999), 256 n 8. 9. AMSJO, Padr n General. Departamento de Quesaltenango. Municipalidad de o Ostuncalco, 1 agosto 1830. For a much more thorough discussion of this padrn, see o chapter 1. 10. The household classications (nuclear, extended, consanguineal, and nonfamily) discussed in the remainder of this paragraph and the one that follows are based on Pedro Carrasco, Family Structure of Sixteenth-Century Tepoztlan, in Process and Pattern in Culture: Essays in Honor of Julian H. Steward, ed. Robert A. Manners (Chicago: Aldine, 1964), 189196. Nuclear households are dened by the presence of a single married couple. The couple still may be dependent on a surviving parent, and the house may contain other people as well. Extended or joint-family households contain two or more related couples. Consanguineal and non-family households, by contrast, are devoid of a married couple. In the former, however, members are related by blood. Like Carrasco, I distinguish family from simple household based on the presence of blood or marriage ties among the common residents. Thus while a family necessarily makes up part or all of a household, a household need not contain a family. 11. There were no extended-family ladino households. 12. Only one yerno or son-in-law and one cu ado or brother-in-law are identied n outright in the padrn. An additional handful of men, probably no more than six, o could have been related to the male family head via their marriage to a daughter or sister of the latter. 13. AMSJO, 15 septiembre 1850; 27 enero 1852; Lista de los Yndivids. qe. havitan en la Costa y terrenos de S. Martin, 1856; 16 octubre 1860. Also, the ttulos supletorios mentioned in chapter 2 (AMSJO Ttulos supletorios, 18781889), and the

Notes to Chapter 4 225 following agricultural censuses list a signicant number of ladina landholders: Junio 1886, Borradores del Censo levantado en esta jurisdiccion del producto de cosechas de sementeras del a o ppdo; 6 julio 1889, Listas de los Se ores ladinos e indgenas n n que pocean el n mero de cuerdas de terreno; y los cuales son los que se ven a la u vuelta. La Victoria. 1889; enero 1891 (various); 1 julio 1892, Estadstica Agrcola de la Rep blica de Guatemala; junio 1895 (various); a o 1897, Cuadro que deu n muestra la situacion de la agricultura en la Villa de Ostuncalco, Departamento de Quezaltenango, and junio 1897 (various); 30 noviembre 1898, Estadstica Agrcola de la Rep blica de Guatemala. Cuadro que demuestra la Producci n Agrcola del u o Municipio de Ostuncalco Departamento de Quezalto. 14. Robert M. Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala: The Quiche-Mayas of Momostenango (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1995), 81. 15. Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 80, 155. 16. Morris Siegel, Effects of Culture Contact on the Form of the Family in a Guatemalan Village, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 72 (1945): 5658; Charles Wagley in Economics of a Guatemalan Village (Menasha, WI: American Anthropological Association, 1941), 67, and The Social and Religious Life of a Guatemalan Village (Menasha, WI: American Anthropological Association, 1949), 1115, 3741; Oliver LaFarge, Santa Eulalia, The Religion of a Cuchumatan Indian Town (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1947), 2226; LaFarge and Douglas Byers, The Year Bearers People (New Orleans: Tulane University, 1931), 87. 17. AMSJO, bulto a o 1864, Sr. Juez Preventivo del Distrito de Ostunco. n 18. AMSJO, 26 julio 1864. Other examples include leg. Juzgado 1o. Municipal de San Juan Ostuncalco. Libro de Conosimientos del Juzgado 1o. Municipal. A o n de 1868, 18 mayo 1868; leg. Libro de Conocimientos del Juzgado 1o. para el a o n de 1870, diciembre 1870. 19. AMSJO, 23 julio 1824. 20. See the appendix with population gures in my dissertation, Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples, 439444. 21. AGCA A3.62, leg. 198, exp. 4011. 22. Ley Org nica de la administracin de justicia por jurados en el Estado de Guatemala a o (Guatemala, 1836), published on 12 marzo 1836; RLG, N. 314. Ley 15a, 2 octubre 1839, 1:504511, esp. article 25, and N. 567. Ley 11a, 5 diciembre 1839, 2:5163, esp. article 73. 23. AMSJO, bulto a o 1864, Sr. Juez Preventivo del Distrito de Ostunco. n 24. AMSJO, 26 julio 1864. 25. AMSJO Ttulos supletorios, 18781889. Another eight ttulos supletorios were submitted by women of indeterminable ethnicity. 26. See the agricultural censuses cited in the notes above, as well as: AMSJO, bulto a o 1871, Cuadro que demuestra la situacion de la agricultura en la Villa n de Ostuncalco, Departamento de Quezaltenango, and bulto a o 1873, Cuadro n que muestra la situacion de Agricultura en la Villa de Ostuncalco, Departamento de Quezaltenango. 27. Robert Glasgow Dunlop, Travels in Central America (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1847), 337; J. W. Boddam-Whetham, Across Central

226 Notes to Chapter 4

America (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1877), 21, 44, 63, 203; Helen J. Sanborn, A Winter in Central America and Mexico (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1886), 116117; LaFarge and Byers, The Year Bearers People, 59. 28. Sol Tax and Robert Hinshaw, The Maya of the midwestern highlands, in Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 7, ed. E. Z. Vogt (Austin: University of Texas, 1969), 84. 29. AMSJO, bulto a o 1851, leg. Libro de Actas del A o de 1850, 31 diciembre n n 1851. 30. Aguardiente is an alcohol distilled from raw sugar similar to rum. 31. See the text and notes below for documentation. 32. The sources on which these comments are based are too numerous to list here. They are discussed and cited at length in chapter 3. See Greg Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham: Duke University, 2000), 3839, on women and debt in the city of Quezaltenango. 33. AMSJO, 1836, hojas sueltas; A o de 1855. Jusgado 1o. Libro en que se asientan n las rasones de las personas que ponen plasos para satisfaser deuda, 28 junio 1855; and 18 abril 1863. 34. Boddam-Whetham, Across Central America, 44; Douglas E. Brintall, Revolt Against the Dead: The Modernization of a Mayan Community in the Highlands of Guatemala (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1979), 7880; Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 156; Dunlop, Travels in Central America, 337; Henry Dunn, Guatimala, or, the Republic of Central America, in 18278; being Sketches and Memorandum made during a Twelve Months Residence (New York: G. & C. Carvill, 1828), 7273; Stephens, Incidents of Travel, 1:5859, 65; Tax and Hinshaw, Maya of the midwestern highlands, 84; and Wagley, Social and Religious Life, 46. 35. AMSJO, 13 enero 1823, 30 julio 1824, 2 enero 1825, 9 febrero 1830, 21 mayo 1849, and 26 octubre 1863. 36. Relaci n de Ignacio de Urbina, BAGG 2 (Abril 1937): 316317, and o Relaci n de Gregorio Lizaurzaval y Anssola BAGG 2 (Abril 1937), 318323, o respectively; AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 1, exp. 17. Cf. Dunn, Guatimala, 223, who notes, based on an 1823 Memorial written by Guatemalas Consulado de Comercio, that children as well as women participated in spinning cotton thread. 37. Tax and Hinshaw, Maya of the midwestern highlands, 7779; Cultural and Historical Geography of Southwest Guatemala (Washington: Government Printing Ofce, 1947), 6364; Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 6871, 158. 38. LaFarge and Byers, The Year Bearers People, 1617, 51, and LaFarge, Santa Eulalia, 5, 36; Tracy Bachrach Ehlers, Debunking Marianismo: Economic Vulnerability and Survival Strategies among Guatemalan Wives, Ethnology 30 (January 1991): 78; Cherri M. Pancake, Fronteras de g nero en la producci n de tejidos indgenas, e o in La Indumentaria y el tejido a travs del tiempo, eds. Linda Asturias de Barrios e y Dina Fern ndez Garca (Guatemala: Ediciones del Museo Ixchel, 1992), 119 a 128, and Las fronteras de g nero reejadas en los estudios de tejedores indgenas, e 267280. 39. David J. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 17601940 (Stanford: Stanford University, 1994), 278.

Notes to Chapter 4 227 40. Sanborn, Winter in Central America, 166167; E. Bradford Burns, Eadweard Muybridge in Guatemala, 1875: The Photographer as Social Recorder (Berkeley: University of California, 1986); Boddam-Whetham, Across Central America, 8485. Cf. Heather Fowler-Salamini, Gender, Work, and Coffee in C rdoba, Veracruz, 18501910, o in Women of the Mexican Countryside, 18501990, eds. Heather Fowler-Salamini and Mary Kay Vaughan (Tucson: University of Arizona, 1994), esp. 55 and 6465, for the case of Veracruz, Mexico. 41. AMSJO, 28 enero 1868; 20 febrero 1870; 8 febrero 1892; 29 noviembre 1897. LaFarge and Byers note that Jacalteca women frequently were hired to pick coffee (The Year Bearers People, 59). 42. AMSJO, bulto a o 1869, Sr. Alc. D. Simion Castillo; 9 enero 1871; 18 n octubre 1878; 13 julio 1884; 20 septiembre 1885; leg. Notas de la Jefatura, 1 octubre 1885; leg. Notas de particulares, 27 enero 1886; 29 julio and 2 noviembre 1887; 8 diciembre 1890; 5 febrero 1891; 14 septiembre 1895; AGQ, 10 noviembre 1885; 9 julio 1891. 43. AMSJO, 27 enero 1873; leg. Notas de particulares, 6 marzo 1886; 28 mayo 1892. 44. Direcci n general de estadsticas, Censo general de la rep blica de Guatemala, o u levantado el a o de 1880 (Guatemala: Tip. de El Progreso, 1881); LaFarge and Byers, n The Year Bearers People, 5859; Christine Eber, Women and Alcohol in a Highland Maya Town: Water of Hope, Water of Sorrow (Austin: University of Texas, 1995), 22. 45. Direcci n general de estadsticas, Censo general de la rep blica de Guatemala, o u levantado en el 26 de febrero de 1893 por la Direccin general de estadstica y con los auspio cios del presidente constitutional, general Don Jos Mara Reina Barrios (Guatemala: Tip. e Nacional, 1894). 46. This calculation is approximate because the census does not list age data by gender. I divided the 3924 children below fteen by two to produce 1962. This gure was then subtracted from the total number of women (3905), resulting in 1943. The accuracy of this gure is not all that important because the magnitude of the difference is all that I am trying to indicate. 47. Evidence of aguardientes importance to the national treasury in the decade preceding the Liberal insurgency is found in an 1863 listing of the monthly quotas that were to be paid by the monopolist of each town of the department of Quezaltenango for the following two years (AMSJO, 9 septiembre 1863). All told, the entire department was scheduled to generate 23,292 pesos per year, at a time when Guatemalas annual budget amounted to approximately 900,000 pesos (Woodward, Rafael Carrera, table 23, 410). Although this amounts to only 2.6%, if we consider that Guatemala counted 14 departments and several additional territories by 1863, then aguardiente revenues en toto may have comprised a quarter or more of the national budget. 48. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 176177. Liberal insurgents pledged to abolish the alcohol monopoly at least as early as 1867. See Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 337. Granados and his cohorts (including Barrios) formally promised to put an end to it on 8 May 1871. An English translation of their manifesto is published in Paul Burgess, Justo Runo Barrios: A Biography (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1926), 75 n. 478.

228 Notes to Chapter 4

On June 11th they also abolished the prohibition on Comiteco rum from Chiapas (RLRG, Decreto N m. 3, 1:3. u 49. RLRG, Decreto N m. 15, 25 agosto 1871, 1:1213; Decreto N m 19, 16 u u octubre 1871, 1:1523; Reglamento para la Administracion de aguardiente y chicha en la Rep blica, 25 octubre 1871, 1:2934; Decreto N m 175, 24 febrero 1877, u u 2:5167; Decreto N m 236, 2 marzo 1879, 2:253254; Reglamento complemenu tario del decreto n mero 236, 4 abril 1879, 2:256275; Decreto N m. 303, 18 u u enero 1884, 4:133134; Reglamento para los dep sitos, edicios de centralizaci n o o y f bricas de aguardiente, 24 julio 1891, 10:123139. a 50. In the case of Mexico City, Michael C. Scardaville estimates 1600 drinking establishments at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the majority of which were illegal. See his Alcohol Abuse and Tavern Reform in Late Colonial Mexico City, HAHR 60 (November 1980): 646647. 51. Cf. Scardaville, Alcohol Abuse, 668669 and passim. 52. William B. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford: Stanford University, 1979), 38, 53. Cf. Scardaville, Alcohol Abuse, 653 and passim. 53. Eber, Women and Alcohol, 22. 54. Eber, Women and Alcohol, 1920. 55. Julio C sar Pinto Soria, El valle central de Guatemala (15241821): un analysis e acerca del origen historico-economico del regionalismo en Centroamerica, Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos 14 (1988): 84, 87, 101 n. 136. 56. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 99; Pinto Soria, El valle central, 86. 57. He also briey mentions another case from nearby Ixtahuac n. Pinto Soria, a El valle central, 101 n. 130. 58. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 8788. 59. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 124126, 144149, 258. Cf. Arturo a Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, sue o ladino, pesadilla indgena: los altos de Guatemala: o n de regin a Estado, 17401850 (Costa Rica: Editorial Porvenir y CIRMA, 1997), 2442. o 60. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1, 17 junio 1839. 61. An arroba is equivalent to approximately twenty ve pounds. 62. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 3, exp. 1; B, leg. 3268, exp. 69700; AMSJO, bulto a os 184041, 2 agosto 1839 and 24 marzo 1840; AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. n n El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes, 20 abril 1841; leg. 155 A o de 1841. La Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez sobre avances en sus n ejidos, 12 junio, 31 agosto and 18 diciembre 1841; and Distrito de Ostuncalco. Depto. de Quezaltenango, 25 noviembre 1840. 63. The property used by Pinto Soria to exemplify the trapiches of Guatemalas backwater areas during the colonial period included a total land area of four caballeras. It was owned by a Spanish family, and, as stated in the text, they cultivated only 0.125 caballeras with sugar cane. The trapiche also included six oxen and three mules and/or horses. Its total value in 1712 was estimated at 225 pesos (El valle central, 8687). 64. AMSJO, 23 enero and 1 junio 1841; Pinto Soria, El valle central, 88. Santa Teresa el Asintal also counted 147 cuerdas of land cultivated in corn and other agricultural products, plus 13 oxen and other assorted livestock.

Notes to Chapter 4 229 65. AGQ, Distrito de Ostuncalco. Depto. de Quezaltenango, 25 noviembre 1840; Pinto Soria, El valle central, 91. 66. AGQ, Cuadro estadstico del Departamento de Quezaltenango correspon diente al a o de 1877, 27 abril 1878; Jorge Luj n Mu oz, Economa de Guatemala n a n 17501940: antologa de lecturas y materiales, 2 tomos (Guatemala: Universidad de San Carlos, 1980), 1:205. Note that the 1887 gure includes rened as well as raw (panela) sugar. Coatepeque was transferred from the department of San Marcos to Quezaltenango at the beginning of 1885. See RLRG, Se segrega el pueblo de Coatepeque del departamento de San M rcos y lo anexa al de Quezaltenango, 9 enero 1885, a 4:310. 67. AMSJO, 1 febrero 1837. The identication of Gregorio Castillo as Ostuncalcos rst alcalde in early 1837 is found in AMSJO, 27 enero 1837. 68. AMSJO, 23 enero 1841 (on Castillos trapiche); and 27 agosto 1832; bulto a o 1835, Co. Jues de primera ynsta.; bulto a os 184247, En el Pueblo de n n Ostuncalco (1836); 27 junio 1837; bulto a os 18401841, De el Alcald. 1o. de n Ostuncalco. Al Se or Sesilio Garsia Alcald. de La Costa del Sur en el Asintal; n 18 agosto, and 9 octubre 1841. 69. AGCA A1.111.31, leg. 197, exp. 3987; AMSJO, 15 and 25 enero, 11 marzo, and 26 mayo 1820. 70. AMSJO, 4 enero 1864; AGCA B, leg. 28617, exp. 78. 71. AMSJO, 7 mayo 1869; AGCA B, leg. 28617, exp. 78; AGQ, leg. 156 A o de n 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes, 4 mayo 1841. 72. AGQ, 1838, Cno. Gefe Politico departaml. de la Ciudad de Quesalto.; AMSJO, 12 and 15 julio and 23 diciembre 1856; 23 octubre 1858; 7 mayo 1869; Procesos Judiciales (criminales), 29 julio 1857; AGCA B, leg. 28617, exp. 78. 73. AMSJO, 1 marzo 1841; 21 enero 1859; 27 and 28 noviembre 1863. 74. E.g., AMSJO, 10 junio 1826; 6 noviembre 1833; 13 octubre 1849; 31 julio 1854; 10 mayo 1859; AGQ, leg. No. 96. Criminales a o de 1854. Yncidentes sobre varios n procedimientos del Comiciondo. politico Dn. Manuel Larrave, Juez preventivo del Distrito de Ostuncalco. Venidos del Juzgdo. de 1ra. insta. de este Departamento, 24 octubre 1854. 75. Ostuncalcos assistant Corregidor or encargado is rst mentioned in AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de San Martin se queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes, n 20 abril 1841. The legal justication for this position is provided in article 25 of RLG, N. 314. Ley 15a, 2 octubre 1839, 1:504511. The Juez Preventivo was rst appointed in 1853, per AMSJO, 20 julio 1853, and authorized by articles 7381, section 4, chapter 2, of RLG, N. 567. Ley 11a, 5 diciembre 1839, 2:5163. 76. AHQ, Garita informes, various years. 77. AGQ, leg. 96 Criminales a o de 1854. Yncidentes sobre varios procedimienn tos . . . , 7 agosto 1854; AMSJO, 6 mayo 1856. 78. AMSJO, 11 marzo 1820; 27 junio 1829; 1830, C. Alce. de la Municipld. de Sn. Juan Ostuncalco Bernabe Monterroso; 6 noviembre 1833; 1841, De el Alcald. 1o. de Ostuncalco. Al Se or Sesilio Garsia Alcald. de La Costa del Sur en el Asintal; n 9 enero 1852; 10 mayo 1859; AGQ, 1836, Denuncias; leg. 155 A o de 1841. La n Municipd. de San Martin Sacatepequez sobre avances en sus ejidos, 24 mayo 1841. 79. AMSJO, 11 marzo 1820.

230 Notes to Chapter 4

80. With regard to the area over which ladino authorities attempted to enforce aguardiente statutes, note that no clandestinistas were recorded for Cabric n, Huit n, a a or San Martn Sacatep quez in the documentation used to construct Table 4.1, e which covered the years 1862 to 1886. Yet other evidence suggests that clandestine aguardiente was rampant in these municipalities. 81. AGQ, leg. No. 164 Segunda Representaci n de las mujeres del comun del o Quezaltenango solicitando se suprima el sistema del Estancos en aquella ciudad, y se restablesca el de Patentes del Aguardiente del pais, 1841. 82. McBryde, in Cultural and Historical Geography, notes that even in the 1930s certain indigenous communities, though they drink as much rum as any of their neighbors, have decreed prohibition of the sale or manufacture of intoxicating liquor, apparently to keep out the Ladinos who would control its production, which is regimented by national law (16). 83. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 87. 84. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 88. 85. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 141148. a 86. AGCA A1.111.31, leg. 197, exp. 3987. 87. AGCA A4, leg. 5802, exp. 48992 (1763); A1.111.31, leg. 197, exp. 3987 (1810); CSJO, Piden destituci n del gobernador comunal Gregorio Marroqun por altivo, o 1 diciembre 1639, 2:581, and Los naturales de San Crist bal Cabric n solicitan la o a exoneraci n de los repartimientos, 18 septiembre 1812, 2:342355. o 88. AMSJO, 15 mayo 1824. 89. AMSJO, 10 junio 1826. 90. AMSJO, 10 junio 1826. 91. AMSJO, 6 junio 1827; 27 junio 1829; 11 septiembre 1834; 3 febrero 1848. 92. AGQ, leg. 68 Gobierno Departml. de Quesaltenango. Libro Copiador de Municipalidades en San Marcos, 11 septiembre and 8 noviembre 1832; AMSJO, 6 noviembre 1833; 19 junio and 11 septiembre 1834. 93. AMSJO, 27 junio 1829. 94. RLG, N. 878. Ley 5a, 10 junio 1833, 2:471472. 95. The aguardiente monopoly was reestablished on 28 mayo 1834. See RLG, N. 881. Ley 8a, 2:475. The quotations are from AMSJO, 11 julio 1834. 96. AMSJO, 11 septiembre 1834. 97. RLG, N. 882. Ley 9a, 29 octubre 1834, 2:474475; N. 883. Ley 10a, 31 diciembre 1834, 2:475478; N. 884. Ley 11a, 7 mayo 1835, 2:478479; N. 886. Ley 13a, 16 agosto 1835, 2:479480. 98. AGQ, leg. 112, 29 febrero 1836. 99. AGQ, Cno. Gefe Politico departaml. de la Ciudad de Quesalto (Junio 1838). 100. LIG, 24 (transcribed decree dated 25 noviembre 1839); RLG, N. 888. Ley 15a, 10 diciembre 1839, 2:480481; N. 348. Ley 15a, 14 diciembre 1839, 1:605 606. 101. AMSJO, 19 and 27 febrero, and 1 marzo, 1841. 102. AMSJO, 3 febrero 1848; 13 and 30 octubre 1849; 22 marzo, 1, 12, and 23 junio, 2 julio, 1 agosto, and 15 septiembre 1850. 103. AMSJO, 13 octubre 1849; 23 junio 1850; 1 febrero 1851; RLG, N. 903. Ley 30a, 21 agosto 1851, and N. 904. Ley 31a, 10 marzo 1852, 2:499503.

Notes to Chapter 4 231 104. On the assistant Corregidor, see AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Con mun de San Martin se queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes, 20 abril 1841, and RLG, N. 314. Ley 15a, 2 octubre 1839, 1:504511. On the Juez Preventivo, see AMSJO, 20 julio 1853, and articles 7381, section 4, chapter 2, of RLG, N. 567. Ley 11a, 5 diciembre 1839, 2:5163. 105. E.g., AMSJO, 1 enero and 2 julio 1850; 5 and 9 enero and 26 junio 1852; 6 julio and 26 octubre 1854. 106. AMSJO, 7 enero 1854; 12 septiembre and 5 octubre 1864; Procesos criminales (judiciales), 8 junio, 5 and 29 julio, and 12 octubre 1857; AGQ, 25 and 26 enero 1856. 107. AMSJO, 15 octubre 1858. 108. AGQ, 26 enero 1856; AMSJO, 12 septiembre and 5 octubre 1864. 109. AGQ, 26 diciembre 1856. 110. AMSJO, 2 enero and 31 julio 1854; AGQ, leg. 96 Criminales a o de 1854. n Yncidentes sobre varios procedimientos . . . , 24 octubre 1854. 111. AMSJO, Libro de Actas, 10 and 26 agosto and 1 and 2 octubre 1855; 1 octubre 1855. 112. AMSJO, 28 noviembre 1855; AGCA B, leg. 28582, exp. 195; leg. 28586, exp. 218. 113. AMSJO, 19 marzo and 13 noviembre 1856; AGCA B, leg. 28572, exp. 70; AGQ, 12 enero and 25 abril 1857. A new Juez Preventivo was appointed in July 1857 (AMSJO, Libro de Actas, 4 julio 1857; AGQ, 31 julio 1857). 114. AMSJO, 19 junio 1863. 115. AMSJO, bulto a o 1863, Sr. Juez Prevo. del Disto.; 9 septiembre 1863. n 116. AMSJO, 22 septiembre 1868; 7 mayo 1869; 30 enero 1871; AGCA B, leg. 28617, exp. 78. 117. AMSJO, bulto a o 1863, Sr. Juez Prevo. del Disto. n 118. AMSJO, 6 julio, 8 agosto, and 19 and 28 septiembre 1855; AGQ, 12 octubre 1855. 119. AMSJO, 7 enero 1854; Procesos judiciales (criminales), 29 julio 1857. 120. AMSJO, 13 diciembre 1855; 5 enero 1864; 11, 27 and 28 noviembre 1863. 121. Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 337; Wayne M. Clegern, Origins of Liberal Dictatorship in Central America: Guatemala, 18651873 (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1994), 112, 116; Burgess, Justo Runo Barrios, 75 n. 478, 81; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 436; RLRG, Decreto N m. 3, 1:3; AMSJO, Libro de Actas, 18 u junio 1871. 122. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 5457, 5549; Taracena Arriola, a Invencin criolla, 404; Burgess, Justo Runo Barrios, 81; AGQ, leg. 164 Segunda o Representaci n de las mujeres del comun del Quezaltenango solicitando se suprima el o sistema del Estancos en aquella ciudad, y se restablesca el de Patentes del Aguardiente del pais, 1841; McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 1767; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 343; Manuel Pineda de Mont, in the footnote dated 1 April 1872, in RLG, N. 915. Ley 42a, 31 enero 1865, 2:5204. 123. RLRG, Decreto N m. 15, 25 agosto 1871, 1:1213; Decreto N m 19, u u 16 octubre 1871, 1:1523; Reglamento para la Administracion de aguardiente y chicha en la Rep blica, 25 octubre 1871, 1:2934; Decreto N m 175, 24 u u

232 Notes to Chapter 5

febrero 1877, 2:5167; Decreto N m 236, 2 marzo 1879, 2:2534; Reglamento u complementario del decreto n mero 236, 4 abril 1879, 2:256275; Decreto N m. u u 303, 18 enero 1884, 4:1334; Reglamento para los dep sitos, edicios de centralo izaci n y f bricas de aguardiente, 24 julio 1891, 10:123139. See also Burgess, Justo o a Runo Barrios, 177 n. 5; and McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 1767.

notes to chapter 5

1. AGCA A1, leg. 5987, exp. 52660; A3.16, leg. 2801, exp. 40502; A1.21.9, leg. 5946, exp. 52048 and leg. 5955, exp. 52152; A1.19, leg. 350, exp. 7263; CSJO, Piden destituci n del gobernador comunal Gregorio Marroquin por altivo [a o 1639], o n 2:581, and Indio principal Gregorio de Qui ones Marroqun pide exoneraci n del n o pago del tributo, 1639, 2:1445. It should be noted that not all cacique families were as self-interested as the Barrios de San Mill ns. Descendants of the Marroqun line a were among those who petitioned the Crown on behalf of the town to return at least a portion of Zacualpa in 1686 (AGCA A1.21.9, leg. 5950, exp. 52115). Concepci n o Chiquirichapa apparently harbored deep resentment over Gabriel the elders sale of Zacualpa to Spaniards, and its ofcials continued to blame Ostuncalco for the loss as late at the eighteenth century (CSJO, Testimonios del pueblo de Chiquirichapa relacionados con el visitador Francisco Gomez de la Madriz, 1701, 2:496a496c). 2. McCreerys Rural Guatemala, 17601940 (Stanford: Stanford University, 1994), 3453; Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, sue o ladino, pesadilla indgena: los altos de o n Guatemala: de regin a Estado, 17401850 (Costa Rica: Editorial Porvenir y CIRMA, o 1997), 1042, 376; Todd Little-Siebold, Guatemala and the Dream of a Nation: National Policy and Regional Practice in the Liberal Era, 18711945 (Chiquimula, San Marcos) (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1995), 53; RF, 8:180191; DGM, 141152; AGCA A1.17, leg. 210, exps. 50025018; A3.62, leg. 198, exp. 4011; and AHQ Miscel neo, bulto a o 1811, leg. 33 Resumen gral. de los hombres q. en doce a n Pueblos contiene la Prova. de Quesaltenango entre Espa oles y Ladinos y las vestias n q. estos tienen q. todo se extracta en cita; Jorge Gonz lez Alzate, A History of Los a Altos, Guatemala: A Study of Regional Conict and National Integration, 1750 1885 (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1994), 69126, 172177, 192193, 643647; Jorge Luj n Mu oz, Fundaci n de Villas de ladinos en Guatemala en el ultimo a n o tercio del siglo XVIII, Revista de Indias 145146 (Julio-Diciembre 1976): 5181, and Reducci n y fundaci n de Salcaja y San Carlos Sija (Guatemala) en 1776, o o ASGHG 49 (Enero-Diciembre 1976): 4557; Christopher H. Lutz, Evoluci n o Demogr ca de la Poblaci n No Indgena, and Evoluci n Demogr ca de la a o o a Poblaci n Ladina, both in Historia general de Guatemala, ed. gen. Jorge Luj n Mu oz o a n (Guatemala: Editorial Amigos del Paz, 19931994), 2:249258 (esp. 250256), and 3:119134, respectively. 3. RLRI, Libro IIII, Ttulos VII and XII, and Libro VI, Ttulos I and III. See also the discussion in Luj n Mu oz, Fundaci n de Villas, 5254 and Reducci n a n o o y fundaci n, 4547; as well as Magnus M rner, La poltica de segragaci n y el o o o mestizaje en la audiencia de Guatemala, Revista de Indias 9596 (1964): 137151.

Notes to Chapter 5 233 4. Ladino councils, particularly those that emerged during the independence struggle, tend to be referred to as ayuntamientos. Nevertheless, I will continue to use cabildo for the sake of clarity. 5. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 100101, 172177; Luj n Mu oz, a a n Reducci n y fundaci n, 5153; Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, 7880; AGCA o o o A3.62, leg. 198, exp. 4011. 6. These generalizations do not entirely hold for the somewhat ambiguous case of San Marcos/San Pedro Sacatep quez. Recall, too, that Salcaj falls within the pattern e a of northern-tier towns. 7. Ostuncalcos dual-municipality system continued until 1927, when, according to Roland H. Ebel, Political Modernization in Three Guatemalan Indian Communities (New Orleans: Tulane University, 1969), 151156, separate indigenous municipal councils were abolished by national decree. Quezaltenangos indigenous and ladino municipalidades co-existed at least through the end of the nineteenth century (RLRG, 29 enero 1884, 4:142143, and 21 agosto 1886, 5:151; AHQ Miscel neo, a 2 febrero 1893), and Robert M. Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala: The QuicheMayas of Momostenango (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1995), notes that nearby Momostenango maintained indigenous and ladino municipal councils into the twentieth century (98, 126, 1367, 170). According to AGQ, Aprobaci n de Alcaldes, o as of December 1840 the towns of Tacan and Tejutla also had dual indigenous a and ladino municipal governments. In addition, the document lists both ladino and indigenous alcaldes for Santiago Coatepeque, San Antonio Sacatep quez, and San e Pedro Sacatep quez, but without indicating whether these towns had two separate e municipal councils, or one that was integrated. 8. Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 9394, 126; Nancy M. Farriss, Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton: Princeton University, 1984), 236; Kevin Gosner, Conceptualizaci n de comunidad y jero arqua: enfoques recientes sobre la organizaci n poltica maya colonial en el alti o plano, Mesoamrica 22 (Diciembre 1991): 1589; Charles Gibson, The Aztecs under e Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 15191810 (Stanford: Stanford University, 1964), 176; Marcello Carmagnani, Local Governments and Ethnic Government in Oaxaca, in Essays in the Political, Economic, and Social History of Colonial Latin America, ed. Karen Spalding (Newark, DE: Latin American Studies Program, 1982), 117119; Peter Guardino, Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexicos National State: Guerrero, 18001857 (Stanford: Stanford University, 1996), 2930, 93; Mario Rodrguez, The C diz Experiment in Central America, 18081826 a (Berkeley: University of California, 1978), 4042; AMSJO, 2 febrero and 17 diciembre 1808, 30 diciembre 1809, 20 diciembre 1810; Gonz lez Alzate, History of a Los Altos, 172177; Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, 7880. o 9. Political Constitution of the Spanish Monarchy, Promulgated at an Assembly of the General and Extraordinary Cortes, held at Cadiz, March 19, 1812, trans. Daniel Robinson, Esq. (London: J. J. Stockdale, 1813), esp. articles 126 (112) & 313320 (7677); Primera Constituci n del Estado de Guatemala, CG, esp. articles 4649 (292 o 293) & 165166 (315316); RLG, N. 311. Ley 12a., 25 abril 1837, 1:503; N. 314. Ley 15a., 2 octubre 1839, 1:504511; N. 76. Ley 23a., 26 abril 1844, 1:116121;

234 Notes to Chapter 5

N. 321. Ley 22a., 21 septiembre 1845, 1:572574; N. 322. Ley 23a., 16 noviembre 1847, 1:574575; AMSJO, 4 octubre 1841; and RLRG, Decreto N mero 242, 30 u septiembre 1879, 2:283294. The evidence for Ostuncalco consists of the minutes of yearly municipal elections from 1808 to the 1890s found in AMSJO Correspondencia, sometimes in what is left of the Libros de Actas, and supplemented by AGQ, 5 diciembre 1848, 4 diciembre 1859, and 8 diciembre 1883. 10. Guardino, in particular, discusses the contradictory nature of the municipal council as both agent of the state and organ of local democracy: Peasants, Politics, 29, 82108. 11. Many authors have employed this term to describe the dual nature of community-level authorities and other mediators in Latin American society. See my Liberals, Conservatives, and Indigenous Peoples: The Subaltern Roots of National Politics in Nineteenth Century Guatemala (Ph.D. diss., University of WisconsinMadison, 1999), 342 n 22, for further documentation. 12. Murdo J. Macleod, Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 15201720 (Berkeley: University of California, 1973), 157, 245248, 266, 273, 287, 291292, 294, 330, 333; Timothy Anna, The Independence of Mexico and Central America, in Cambridge History of Latin America, v. 3, ed. Leslie Bethell (New York: Cambridge University, 1985), 7779; Ralph Lee Woodward, Central America: A Nation Divided, 2nd. ed. (New York: Oxford University, 1985), 38, 9095. 13. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 23, 1617, 124126, 144149, 170 a 173, 195217, 258; Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, 24, 3031, 4249, 5556, 7882. o 14. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 104105, 192193; Estado de la a Poblacion, Rentas y Administracion del Arzobispado de Guatemala. A o de 1805, n Boletn del Archivo Histrico Arquidiocesano 1 (Julio 1989): 108113; AHQ Miscel neo, o a bulto a o 1811, leg. 33 Resumen gral. de los hombres q. en doce Pueblos conn tiene la Prova. de Quesaltenango entre Espa oles y Ladinos y las vestias q. estos n tienen q. todo se extracta en cita; Little-Siebold, Guatemala and the Dream, 310, 334. 15. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 152305; Taracena Arriola, Invencin a o criolla, 17112. A published example of regionalist sentiment is Jos Suasnavars Ine forme que sobre la erecci n de un Estado compuesto con los pueblos de Los Altos di o o al govierno S. de la naci n en 27 de Abril de 1824, ASGHG 37 (Enero-Diciembre o 1964): 111122. 16. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 244273; AHQ Miscel neo, bulto a a a o 1821, leg. no. 80. Actas de adhesi n al Imperio Mexicano de la Villa Nueva n o de San Marcos, Totonicap n, Retalhuleu, Huehuetenango, Santiago Tejutla, Salcaj , a a Ostuncalco, Sn. Sebastian Quezaltenango, Chiquimula, Sn. Pedro Sacatepequez, Santiago Patzica; Rodrguez, Cadz Experiment, 155160. 17. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 243291. Quezaltenangos ladino a council is quoted on p. 267 n 40; Gordon Kenyon, Mexican Inuence in Central America, 18211823, HAHR 41 (May 1961): 175205, esp. 183 and 187190; Rodrguez, Cadz Experiment, 156166. 18. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 258265, 288; Taracena Arriola, a Invencin criolla, 87; Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 121122, and Historia o social de los quichs (Guatemala: Ministerio de Educaci n, 1979), 229243. e o

Notes to Chapter 5 235 19. David J. McCreery, Atanasio Tzul, Lucas Aguilar, and the Indian Kingdom of Totonicap n, in The Human Tradition in Latin America: The Nineteenth Century, eds. a Judith Ewell and William Beezley (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1989), 3958; AGCA C.1, leg. 22, exp. 528; B11.6, leg. 201, exp. 4632; Carmack, Historia social, 229230, 241. 20. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 307329, Taracena Arriola, Invencin a o criolla, 115119; Alejandro Marure, Bosquejo Historico de las revoluciones de Centro America desde 1811 hasta 1834 (Guatemala: Tipografa de El Progreso, 1877 [1837]), 182, 185 (quotations); AHQ Libros de Actas, Libro N mero 5: Principiado el 23 u de Agosto de 1826; Terminado el 18 de Setiembre de 1826 and Libro N mero 6: u Principiado el 19 de Setiembre de 1826; Terminado el 13 de Julio de 1827, entries dated 11 septiembre through 27 octubre 1826; Miscel neo, leg. no. 19. Ocios del a Comandanto Gral. de las Armas, y del Jefe Dptal., 26, 27, 29 and 31 octubre 1826; AMSJO, 12 septiembre, 19, 21, 29 and 31 octubre 1826; and El Indicador 106 (13 Noviembre 1826): 425426. 21. AMSJO, 29 abril, 21 junio, and 8 octubre 1824. 22. AMSJO, febrero, 3 and 20 marzo, 12 mayo, 8 junio, 26 julio, 4 and 11 agosto, 1 octubre, and 29 noviembre 1830. 23. AMSJO, 9 enero, 25 febrero, 1 marzo, 11 and 27 abril 1833. The quotation is from 11 abril 1833. Cf. Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 339366. a 24. See chapter 2 for more on this subject. 25. Greg Grandin describes a similar trajectory for the city of Quezaltenango in The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham: Duke University, 2000), 78. 26. The codes were printed in Guatemala in 1836 under the title Ley Org nica de a la administracion de justicia por jurados en el Estado de Guatemala. 27. See the opinion of Alejandro Marure, Efemerides de los hechos notables acaecidos en la republica de Centro America desde el a o de 1821 hasta el de 1842 (Guatemala: Minn isterio de Educaci n P blica, 1956 [1885]), 151; Lorenzo Mont far, Rese a histrica o u u n o de Centroamrica, 7 tomos (Guatemala: Tipografa de El Progreso, 187887), 2:339 e 349; and Ralph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 18211871 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 61. 28. AGCA B86.2, leg. 1160, exp. 27284; B, leg. 3266, exps. 69365, 69377, 69414; AMSJO, 20, 22 and 30 enero, 3 and febrero 1837; Ley Org nica, 14, 18; RLG, a N. 310, Ley 11a, 28 septiembre 1836, 1:492503. 29. AMSJO, 22 enero 1837. 30. AMSJO, 30 enero 1837. 31. AMSJO, 3 febrero 1837. 32. AMSJO, 25 enero 1837; leg. Libro que lleba el que subscribe de las multas que . . . aplicados pr. los Jueces de este Pueblo de San Juan Ostunco. comencado el 27 de Enero del a o de 1837. n 33. AGCA B, leg. 3266, exp. 69414. Note that the piece of land referred to had been a point of contention between Ostuncalcos indigenous and ladino residents for almost two decades. See chapter 2 for more detail. 34. On the Carrera Revolt, see Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 49101; and Hazel Ingersolls extremely useful Ph.D. dissertation, The War of the Mountain: A Study

236 Notes to Chapter 5

of Reactionary Peasant Insurgency in Guatemala, 18371873 (George Washington University, 1972), esp. 45203. 35. Los Altos became the sixth state or province of the Central American Federation. See Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 113122 36. This event is narrated in a letter dated 8 October 1839 by Joaqun Duran, the secretary of Guatemalas chief-executive, to ofcials of the State of Los Altos, and transcribed in Mont fars Rese a histrica, 3:405407. u n o 37. Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, 372376, 402; Lowell Gudmundson and o H ctor Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 18211871: Liberalism before Liberal Reform e (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1995), 8992. On the importance of religion to nation-building in the aftermath of Spanish colonialism see Douglass Creed SullivanGonzalez, Piety, Power, and Politics: The Role of Religion in the Formation of the Guatemalan Nation-State, 18391871 (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1994), 326, 134137, 248249. 38. Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, 307325, 326 n 2, 372383, 402; Gudmundo son and Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 83; Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 148 n 103, 181; Steven Paul Palmer, A Liberal Discipline: Inventing Nations in Guatemala and Costa Rica, 18701900 (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1990), 4546; Sullivan-Gonzalez, Piety, Power, 195; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 81, 8692, 221. 39. Legal basis for the comisionado poltico is established in article 25 of RLG, N. 314. Ley 15a., 2 octubre 1839, 1:504511. Juez preventivos were authorized and governed by articles 7381 of RLG, N. 567. Ley 11a., 5 diciembre 1839, 2:5163. After mid-century there was much confusion over the respective characteristics of these two ofces because, as was true of Ostuncalco, the same individual frequently had been vested with both titles. See RLG, N. 333. Ley 34a., 5 febrero 1864, 1:583; AMSJO, 8 and 19 enero 1876. Ostuncalcos comisionado poltico rst appears in the documentation in early 1841 (AGQ, leg. 156 A o de 1841. El Comun de n San Martin se queja contra su Gdor. i Alcaldes). The additional powers of the juez preventivo are added ca. 1853 (AMSJO, bulto a os 18521854). n 40. AGQ, 4 abril 1839; AMSJO, 2 agosto 1839; 24 marzo 1840; 2 enero 1846; 5 enero and 23 septiembre 1847; 7 enero 1848; 12 enero 1849; bulto a o 1865, Libro n de Actas, 20 diciembre 1864; 9 diciembre 1867; 4 enero 1869. 41. Carmack, Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 137; AMSJO, 26 agosto 1852; 10 noviembre 1823; 31 agosto 1829; RLG, N. 1,041. Ley 9a., 30 octubre 1832, 2:674680; N. 1,045. Ley 13a., 3 julio 1837, 2:682683; N. 1,047. Ley 17a., 16 enero 1838, 2:683684; Alejandro Marure, Cat logo de las leyes promulgadas en el a estado de Guatemala, desde su ereccion en 15 de setiembre de 1824 hasta el 5 de octubre de 1841 (Guatemala: Imprenta de La Paz, 1841), 5664; AGCA C.1, leg. 197, exp. 5260; B, leg. 3266, exp. 59387; AHQ Miscel neo, leg. no. 3. Documentos relacionaa dos con los succesos del restablecimiento del Estado de Los Altos, 11 and 12 julio 1848. 42. AGQ, 13 julio 1854; AMSJO, 28 abril and 13 julio 1855; 5 enero 1863. 43. AMSJO, 11 and 21 enero and 17 noviembre 1854; 31 enero 1855; AGQ, 30 enero 1856; 23 febrero and 16 junio 1857.

Notes to Chapter 5 237 44. AHQ Miscel neo, leg. no. 2 Ocios del Corregidor, 17 junio 1853; Libros a de Actas, Libro Numero 37: Iniciado el 5 de Diciembre de 1852; Finalizado el 9 de Agosto de 1853, 17 junio 1853; AGQ, 26 junio 1853; AMSJO, 27 junio 1853. 45. AGCA B, leg. 28560, exp. 106; RLG, N. 1.092. Ley 13a., 16 septiembre 1852, 3:4753; AMSJO, 28 diciembre 1851; 25 agosto and 16 octubre 1852; 5 and 8 julio 1853; 22 abril and 24 mayo 1854; bulto a o 1855, leg. Libro de Visitas del Corregidor n desde 1851 a 1867, 4 junio 1860. The 1851 decree called for schools to be established in Ostuncalco, San Antonio Bob s, San Martn Sacatep quez, Cantel, and Salcaj . o e a 46. The boys school is discussed in AGQ, 25 noviembre 1840; AGCA B, leg. 28539, exp. 125; leg. 28560, exp. 106; AMSJO, 27 agosto 1847; 7 septiembre 1852; 15 diciembre 1852; bulto a o 1854, Estado de los Alumnos q. forman la Escuela n de esta Cabecera de San Juan Ostuncalco; 20 octubre 1855; bulto a o 1855, Libro n de Visitas del Corregidor desde 1851 a 1867, 4 junio 1860. The school for girls is covered in AGCA B, leg. 28582, exp. 195; AGQ, 9 and 15 junio 1866; AMSJO, 4 septiembre 1855; bulto a o 1855, Libro de Visitas del Corregidor desde 1851 a n 1867, 4 junio 1860 and 20 marzo 1867; 24 and 31 enero, 2 agosto 1862; 31 octubre 1863; bulto a o 1864, Estado general que maniesta los ingresos y egresos de los n fondos de propios y arvitrios de la Municipalidad de Ostuncalco; 14 enero 1864; bulto a o 1865, Libros de Actas, 16 abril and 20 junio 1866; 20 enero, 28 febrero, 11 n agosto and 31 diciembre 1870; 12 febrero 1871. 47. AGCA B, leg. 28560, exp. 106; AMSJO, bulto a o 1854, Estado de los n Alumnos q. forman la Escuela de esta Cabecera de San Juan Ostuncalco; 20 enero 1870. 48. Wayne M. Clegern, Origins of Liberal Dictatorship in Central America: Guatemala, 18651871 (Niwot, CO: University of Colorado, 1994), 4556, 95101, 148 150; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 351370; J. C. Cambranes, Coffee and Peasants in Guatemala: The Origins of the Modern Plantation Economy in Guatemala, 18531897 (Stockholm: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1985), 90. 49. Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, 13 (source of quotation), 402405; Ingersoll, o War of the Mountain, 344; Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 643. a 50. Robert G. Williams, States and Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise of National Governments in Central America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1994), 211223. 51. Palmer, Liberal Discipline, 174, 181. 52. See Francisco A. Scaranos The Jbaro Masquerade and Subaltern Politics in Puerto Rico, American Historical Review 101 (December 1996): 13981431. The quotes are from p. 1399. 53. AMSJO, 8 enero 1821. 54. Provincial liberalism in the Central American, and especially Guatemalan, context, is discussed in Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 8289; Palmer, Liberal Discipline, 8285; Gonz lez Alzate, History of Los Altos, 1617, a 170173, 298299, 351353; Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 211212; Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, 1249, 132144, 154158, 305306. o 55. Ley Constitutiva de la Rep blica de Guatemala, decretada por la Asamblea u Nacional Constituyente en 11 de diciembre de 1879, CG, 423443. Earlier Liberal

238 Notes to Chapter 5

formulations of citizenship had included literacy, but this restriction was eased over the course of the 1870s: RLRG, Decreto Num. 39. Reglamento de elecciones directas de diputados a la Asamblea Constituyente, 11 diciembre 1871, 1:6068; 30 Noviembre 1874, 2:7576; Decreto Num. 144. Reglamento de elecciones directas de diputados a la Asamblea Nacional Constituyente, 21 octubre 1875, 2:160167; Decreto N mero 242, 30 Septiembre 1879, 2:283294. u 56. The quotation is from article 16 of the Ley Constitutiva de la Rep blica, CG, u 423443. Conservative-era legal protections for the indigenous majority were based on the idea that [t]o establish and maintain the social equilibrium, the law supports the weak against the strong, and for this reason those persons who, due to their sex, age or present incapacity, lack sufcient learning to recognize and defend their own rights, receive special protection in all nations, even those less cultured. Therefore, the majority of indgenas nding themselves in this situation, the law should protect them so that they can improve their education, avoid being defrauded of that which pertains to them as a group or individual, and that they are not bothered in those activities and customs learned from their ancestors that are not contrary to acceptable norms (RLG, N. 172. Ley 13a., 5 diciembre 1839, 1:230235). Among other things, Conservative law re-instituted sections of the Spanish RLRI, lowered the court costs for indigenous plaintiffs, and reestablished the ofces of the Protector and the Int rprete de Indios (LIG, 17 agosto 1839, 2223; 5 octubre 1851, 30; 31 octubre e 1851, 18; RLG, N. 189. Ley 12a., 29 marzo 1845, 1:244245; N. 192. Ley 15a., 8 noviembre 1851, 1:246; N. 123. Ley 33a., 3 agosto 1854, 192193). How carefully the Conservative state actually hewed to the letter of these protective laws is open to question, but they were anathema to the Liberals, who abolished them for good with their overhaul of the judicial system in 1880 (see the Ley org nica y reglamentaria del a Poder Judicial, issued as Decreto N mero 257, RLRG, 17 febrero 1880, 2:435457). u 57. Helen J. Sanborn, Winter in Central America (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1886), 149. 58. Patriarchal references abound in Reforma-era documents, and just as Liberal ofcials frequently employed the hijos del pas metaphor for the people, community-level petitioners frequently invoked some variation of the father-gure metaphore.g., padre y protectorwhen writing to the president. Two examples are: AMSJO, 21 marzo 1878; and AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 29, exp. 7. See also Paul Burgess, Justo Runo Barrios: A Biography (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1926), 140 141; Cambranes, Coffee and Peasants, 279280; Carmack, Historia social, 264; Palmar, Liberal Discipline, 235; and John M. Watanabe, Entitling Ethnicities: Land, Locality, and Identity in Two Maya Land Titles from Western Guatemala, 18791891, in Indigenous Perceptions of the Nation-State in Latin America, eds. Lourdes Giordani and Marjorie M. Snipes (Williamsburg: College of William and Mary, 1995), 163. 59. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 238255; Cambranes, Coffee and Peasants, 272 297; AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 29, exp. 7. 60. AGCA B, leg. 28670, exp. 292; leg. 28674, exp. 186; AMSJO, 13 mayo 1880. San Miguel Totonicap n, too, was allowed to keep its indigenous corporaa tion: AGCA B, leg. 28699, exp. 1030. The 1879 municipal reform law is printed in RLRG, Decreto N mero 242, 30 septiembre 1879, 2:283294. u

Notes to Chapter 5 239 61. Grandin, Blood of Guatemala, especially chapters 5, 6, and 8. 62. Although I do not have data for the entire department of Quezaltenango in the late 1830s, in 1811 the corregimiento counted roughly 5,000 ladinos, excluding the region of San Marcos, and that gure climbed to nearly 9,800 by 1852, and more than 20,000 by 1880. The ladino population of the district/department of San Marcos showed little increase for the period 18111852, rising from about six to seven thousand, but by 1880 it had jumped to almost 24,000 (AHQ Miscel neo, a bulto a o 1811, leg. 33 Resumen gral. de los hombres q. en doce Pueblos contiene n la Prova. de Quesaltenango entre Espa oles y Ladinos y las vestias q. estos tienen n q. todo se extracta en cita; Padron del Valle de Bov s; Padron General del Pueblo o de Sn. Juan Ostuncalco; Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, 378; and Censo general de o la republica de Guatemala, levantado el a o de 1880). n 63. In the words of historian Arturo Taracena Arriola, El Guatemalteco era (y sigue siendo para muchos) el ladino (Invencin criolla, 408). For overall population o gures, see McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 346. 64. See the table in Taracena Arriola, Invencin criolla, 411 n. 5, for a numo ber of examples primarily from the department Quezaltenango, but including also the departments of Huehuetenango, Quich , Retalhuleu, San Marcos, Solol , Sue a chitep quez, and Totonicap n; McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 256257; Cambranes, e a Coffee and Peasants, 284, 287. 65. RLA, 22 julio 1873, 8586, and 13 mayo 1874; and RLRG, 17 octubre 1873, 201202; AGQ, leg. 630 A o 1877. Los indigenas poseedores de los terrenos de n Talculan, contra los vecinos de Bob s por avances de estos en sus mismas posesiones; o leg. 599 1877. Patrocinio Ybarra contra los vecinos de Bob s, por avances y provio dencia de la Jefatura cortandolos, octubre 1877; 15 octubre 1877; leg. 2102 Civil. Terrenos A o 1883. Bonifacio Lopez solicitando certicacion de la concesion que n de un lote de terreno se le hizo en los de la Costa Cuca, mayo 1883; 3 agosto 1883; leg. 1565 Administrativo a o de 1888. Asunto de Tierras. Los milicianos de n Sibilia sobre que se les reparta un terreno que posee en Coatepeque la Sra. Zeferina Barrios; AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 10, exp. 5; B, leg. 28816, exp. 73; AMSJO, bulto a o 1879, unnamed legajo containing documents dating from 4 mayo 1878 n to 26 octubre 1880; 26 noviembre 1888; 24 octubre and 27 noviembre 1889; Libro de sessiones, 11 and 20 febrero and 9 mayo 1890; 22 diciembre 1890; and ETEN, Milicianos de Ostuncalco, Ro NegroSaquichilla, 2:425455. 66. AGCA ST, Quezaltenango, paq. 6, exp. 2; paq. 9, exp. 13; paq. 19, exp. 19; B, leg. 28658, exp. 108; B leg. 28816, exp. 73; C.1, leg. 293, exp. 7837; AGQ, leg. 2096 1883. Terrenos. Patrocinio Castillo I Aureliano Perez se quejan de que de orden de Comandante Local de San Carlos Sija les han quitado una porcion de sus respectivos terrenos. . . . ; AGQ, 13 enero, 25 and 31 mayo 1877; Carmack, Historia social, 248249; Rebels of Highland Guatemala, 364265; ETEN, Milicianos de San Carlos Sija, El Eden, Cajol Quezaltenango, 1886 [1883], 2:719734. a 67. AMSJO, 11 enero 1886; 31 mayo 1895. The establishment and evolution of Ostuncalcos nineteenth-century cantons is covered in literally hundreds of documents, and they cannot be cited adequately here. See Grandins Blood of Guatemala, 135136, for a similar discussion of Quezaltenango.

240 Notes to Chapter 6

68. These payments were referred to as derechos or aranceles among other things. See below for the example of fees associated with the Liberal labor regimen that were paid to municipal ofcials. 69. AMSJO, 24 abril 1890. See Grandins discussion in the Blood of Guatemala, especially 121122. Carmack, in Historia social, discusses the growth of indigenous militia membership under Liberal rule in Momostenango (257259, 277 and passim). 70. Decree 177 is reprinted in LIG, 3542. 71. State railroad projects, for example, paid 4 reales per day at a time when the typical nca wage was 3 reales (AMM, bulto a o 1889, 17 mayo 1890). n

notes to chapter 6

1. See Alejandro Marure, Efemerides de los hechos notables acaecidos en la republica de Centro America desde el a o de 1821 hasta el de 1842 (Guatemala: Ministerio de Edun caci n P blica, 1956 [1885]), 151; Lorenzo Mont far, Rese a histrica de Centroamrica, o u u n o e 7 tomos (Guatemala: Tipografa de El Progreso, 187887), 2:339349; Hazel Inger soll, The War of the Mountain: A Study of Reactionary Peasant Insurgency in Guatemala, 18371873 (Ph.D. diss, George Washington University, 1972), 75; and Ralph Lee Woodwards Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 18211871 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1993), 61. 2. Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 6094. 3. On the possible existence of an alliance between Carrera and the western Maya, see Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 220 n. 49; and Carol A. Smith, Origins of the National Question in Guatemala: A Hypothesis, in Guatemalan Indians and the State: 15401988, ed. Carol A. Smith (Austin: University of Texas, 1990), 8082, and Failed Nationalist Movements in 19thCentury Guatemala: A Parable for the Third World, in Nationalist Ideologies and the Production of National Cultures, ed. Richard G. Fox (Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1990), 154, 162. 4. Marcelo Molina, Esposicion a la Convencion de los Estados Centro-Americanos, protestando Contra La Usurpacion del de Los Altos. La Dirige el Lic. Marcelo Molina, Gefe que fu del mismo estado (Mexico: Impreso por Ignacio Cumplido, 1841), 2226; e Jorge Gonz lez Alzate, A History of Los Altos, Guatemala: A Study of Regional Conict a and National Integration, 17501885 (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1994), 383421; Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 238239; and Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 113117. 5. E.g., John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1969 [1841]), 1:225226. See also the opinion of Robert Glasgow Dunlop, Travels in Central America (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1847), 8790; E. G. Squier, Travels in Central America, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1853), 429430, and The States of Central America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1858), 514515; Mario Rodrguez, A Palmerstonian diplomat in Central America: Frederick Chateld, Esq. (Tucson: University of Arizona, 1964), 138139; and Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 77113. On the expulsion of Archbishop Cas us, see Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 3738, and passim. a 6. Rodrguez cites this gure in A Palmerstonian diplomat, 138139.

Notes to Chapter 6 241 7. Memorias del General Carrera, 1837 a 1840, ed. Ignacio Sols, pr logo Francis Polo o Sifontes (Guatemala: Serviprensa Centroamericana, 1979 [1906]), 20. Apparently, Carreras pronouncement was issued in early June, 1837 (2122 n. 8). 8. This according to Hazel Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 114. 9. William J. Grifth, Empires in the Wilderness: Foreign Colonization and Development in Guatemala, 18341844 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1965); Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 5152. 10. Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 7887, 114. 11. Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexicos National State: Guerrero, 18001857 (Stanford: Stanford University, 1996), 67, 41, 4445, 5458, and passim. Historian Ann Jefferson suggested to me the importance that cross-class alliances may have played in Carreras success. See her dissertation on eastern Guatemala at the beginning of the nineteenth century for further investigation of this topic: The Rebellion of Mita, Eastern Guatemala, in 1837 (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 2000). 12. Michael F. Fry, Agrarian Society in the Guatemalan monta a, 17001840 (Ph.D. n diss., Tulane University, 1988), 4659, 9899, 106, 112, 167175, 221222; Christopher H. Lutz, Evoluci n demogr co de la poblaci n no indgena (249258) and o a o Evoluci n demogr ca de la poblaci n ladina (119134), in Historia general de o a o Guatemala, ed. gen. Jorge Luj n Mu oz (Guatemala: Editorial Amigos del Pas, 1993 a n & 1994), volumes 2 and 3, respectively; Woodward, Rafael Carrera, 62, 69, 83; and Stephens, Incidents of Travel, 8085. 13. For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster (London: Allen Lane/The Penguin Press, 1969), 100. 14. Jack L. Amariglio, Stephen A. Resnick, and Richard D. Wolff, Class, Power, and Culture, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1988), 487501. The quotation is from p. 488. 15. Amariglio, Resnick, and Wolff, Class, Power, and Culture, 488. 16. E.g., see the Commentary and Debate in LARR volume 31 (1996): 111 157, spurred by Mitchell A. Seligsons Thirty Years of Transformation in the Agrarian Structure of El Salvador, 19611991, LARR 30 (1995): 4374. 17. Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham: Duke University, 1994). 18. Knights essay is entitled Weapons and Arches in the Mexican Revolutionary Landscape (2466), and the quotation is from p. 26. 19. For a pioneering and wide-ranging discussion of this theme within the Latin American context, see the essays in Steve J. Sterns edited Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1987). The quoted phrase is from his introduction, New Approaches to the Study of Peasant Rebellion and Consciousness: Implications of the Andean Experience, 325. Thompsons foundational work in this regard is The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century, Past and Present 50 (February 1971): 76136. Scotts relevant works are The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven: Yale University, 1976), and Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University, 1985).

242 Notes to Chapter 6

20. Use of hegemony as a method of historical and political analysis traces back to the work of Italian communist Antonio Gramsci. See Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), written ca. the early 1930s, especially the Notes on Italian History, 52120. 21. Knight, Weapons and Arches, 42. 22. The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (London: Basil Blackwell, 1985). See also Sayers comments in Everyday Forms of State Formation: Some Dissident Remarks on Hegemony, in Everyday Forms of State Formation, 367377, from which the quotation is taken (368369). Although Scott rightly has criticized the use of false consciousness, he is completely mistaken when he equates it with hegemony, as he does in both Weapons of the Weak and Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University, 1990). 23. Reections on the Ruins: Everyday Forms of State Formation in NineteenthCentury Mexico, 69106. The quotations are from p. 70. 24. Dissident Remarks, 374377. On the fragility of hegemony as end point, see also William Roseberry, Hegemony and the Language of Contention, in Everyday Forms of State Formation, 355366, but esp. 358. 25. Sayer, Dissident Remarks, 374. 26. James C. Scott, Forward, in Everyday Forms of State Formation, viixii. The quotations are from xi. See also Roseberry, Hegemony and the Language of Contention, 358361. 27. This does not discount the likely existence of a third group of ambiguous or ambivalent intermediaries, with one foot in both camps. 28. Lowell Gudmundson and H ctor Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 18211871: e Liberalism before Liberal Reform (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1995), 93. 29. The Momostenango rebellion is covered best in Robert M. Carmacks Historia social de los quichs (Guatemala: Ministerio de Educaci n, 1979), 245269. On the e o Remincheros, see Ingersoll, War of the Mountain, 346351. 30. See Paul Burgess, Justo Runo Barrios: A Biography (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1926), 90132, for a blow-by-blow description of the Liberal attack on the Church, which, by and large, was directed by Barrios. 31. For an illuminating comparision, see Francisco A. Scaranos discussion of the jbaro in Puerto Rico, in The Jbaro Masquerade and Subaltern Politics in Puerto Rico, American Historical Review 101 (December 1996): 13981431. For a useful overview of how the term ladino has been employed in Guatemala over the centuries, see Arturo Taracena Arriola, Contribuci n al estudio del vocablo ladino o en Guatemala (S. XVIXIX), Historia y Antropologa: ensayos en honor de J. Daniel Contreras R., ed. Jorge Luj n Mu oz (Guatemala, 1982), 89104. An interesting case a n study is Jorge Luj n Mu ozs Los caciques-gobernadores de San Miguel Petapa a n (Guatemala) durante la colonia, Mesoamrica 1 (1980): 5677. e 32. United Nations Historical Clarication Commission, Guatemala: Memory of Silence: Report of the Commission for Historical Clarication (February 25, 1999), article 124. See also articles 108123.

Notes to Chapter 6 243 33. Berkeley: University of California, 1995. 34. Guardino, Peasants, Politics, 5 and passim. 35. Mallon, Peasant and Nation, 274. 36. From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nationmaking in Andean Peru (Durham: Duke University, 1997). 37. Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 19191991 (Durham: Duke University, 2000), 6. 38. Jeffrey L. Gould, To Die in This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 18801965 (Durham: Duke University, 1998), 242. 39. Gould, To Die in This Way, 179181, 199. 40. As both Mallon and Thurner demonstrate, Perus inclusive moments e.g., the War of the Pacic and the subsequent Atusparia rebellionwere more apparent than real. Populist and supra-regional mediators along the lines of Vicente Guerrero, Juan Alvarez, or even Rafael Carrera failed to materialize in Peru, and thus subaltern resistance remained largely local in focus and limited in its impact. See Mallon, Peasant and Nation, 139140, 178, 185199, 207217, 221241, 247248, 274275, 311317; and Thurner, From Two Republics, 5498, 140143, 151152. See also Nelson Manriques Yawar Mayu: Sociedades terratenientes serranas, 18791910 (Lima: DESCO, 1988), 50 and passim. 41. The most signicant exception discussed by Gould is the Indian-Conservative Alliance of the early twentieth century, in which General Emiliano Chamorro gured prominently in connection with the indigenous communities of Matagalpa and Boaco (To Die in This Way, 43ff ). 42. See Tristan Platt, Estado boliviano y ayllu andino: tierra y tributo en el norte de potos (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1982), esp. 37 n. 16, 73, and passim; and The Andean Experience of Bolivian Liberalism, 18251900: Roots of Rebellion in 19th-Century Chayanta (Potos), Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, ed. Steve J. Stern (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1987), 280323. 43. Gonz lez Alzate, A History of Los Altos; Arturo Taracena Arriolas a Invencin criolla, sue o ladino, pesadilla indgena: los altos de Guatemala: de regin a Estado, o n o 17401850 (Costa Rica: Editorial Porvenir y CIRMA, 1997); and Greg Grandin The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham: Duke University, 2000). 44. Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala, 6, 18, 126, 130ff. 45. Grandin excerpts the following passage from Eduardo Galeano Pas ocupada: The indigenous bourgeoisie of Quetzaltenango . . . is the exception that highlights the situation in which the descendants of the Maya live. See The Blood of Guatemala, ix, and also Grandins discussion on pp. 2653 & 130131. 46. On the indigenismo of early twentieth-century Guatemala and Miguel Angel Asturias, see John Beverley and Marc Zimmerman, Literature and Politics in the Central American Revolutions (Austin: University of Texas, 1990), 144171, but esp. 144152; Gerald Martin, introduction to Men of Maize, by Miguel Angel Asturias. Trans. and coord. Gerald Martin (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1993), xixxx; Virginia

244 Notes to Chapter 6

Garrard-Burnett, Indians are Drunks and Drunks are Indians: Alcohol and Indigenismo in Guatemala, 18901940, Bulletin of Latin American Research 19 (2000), 342346; and Jim Handy, Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 19441954 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1994), 4950. On Asturias life, see Arturo Taracena Arriola, El camino politico de Miguel Angel Asturias, Mesoamrica 38 (Diciembre 1999), 86101. e

Index

aguardiente, 14, 31, 32, 54, 77, 104106, 112, 116135, 150, 170171, 182183; alcohol police, 130134; free trade, 124, 147; monopoly licences, 8, 104, 116, 118119, 123135, 171, 183 Almolonga, 21 Althusser, Louis, 176, 177 Alvarado, Leonor de, 23 Alvarado, Pedro de, 1923 Arce, Manuel Jos , 147 e Audiencia, 1820, 26, 180 Barillas, Manuel Lisandro, 156 Barrios de San Mill n, Gabriel (governor), a 140 Barrios, Justo Runo, 34, 1315, 35, 39, 7275, 91, 93, 97, 100, 102, 110, 156, 160, 162, 170 Barrundia, Juan (governor of Guatemala), 147 Boddam-Whetham, J. W., 111, 114 Bosque y Artiaga, Juan Antonio del (agrimensor), 28, 42, 50, 5758 Buenabaj, 30, 162 Burbano de Lara, Martn (padre), 5962 Burns, E. Bradford, 6, 7 cabildo (see also town council), 137144 cacao, 20, 2528 cacicazgo, 26 caciques, 140

C diz: Constitution, 148; Cortes, 3233 a Cambranes, J. C., 7 Cantel, 21, 129 C rdenas, Lus (appellate judge), 1 a Carmack, Robert, 18, 2122, 108, 112113, 153, 162 Carrera, Rafael, 3, 6, 13, 15, 47, 50, 57, 6163, 67, 73, 91, 103, 123124, 130, 137, 149, 151152, 159, 167168, 170172, 174175, 183, 190 Carrera Revolt, 23, 135, 145, 151, 170173, 175176, 180181, 184 C scara, Francisco (corregidor), 53, 54, 56, a 58 Castillo, M ximo, 4344 a Castillo, Nicolas, 118119 Castillo Ocampo, M ximo, (encargado), a 5456 Catholic Church, 9, 121, 147, 150, 172, 174175, 181, 185 cattle ranching, 13, 30, 32, 38, 44, 47, 49, 52, 6465, 70, 85, 134, 152, 182 Cerna, Vicente, 8, 14, 6869, 74, 104, 168 Champerico, 156 Chiantla, 154 Chiapas (Mexico), 117, 187 Chiquimula (department of ), 40, 176 cholera, 172, 174 Clegern, Wayne, 8 Coatepeque, 60, 119

246 Index
coffee, 34, 6, 8, 1214, 28, 39, 60, 6369, 72, 75, 77, 7981, 8485, 8990, 92, 99, 100, 113114, 116, 138, 152, 155156, 159160, 162164, 168169, 171, 182, 184, 189, 190191; exportation, 4, 6, 64, 69, 163164, 184 Colomba Costa Cuca, 60, 95 Colomo, Jos Mara, 4650, 5455 e Colotenango, 117 Concepci n Chiquirichapa, 10, 12, 18, 20, o 24, 28, 30, 33, 46, 6061, 81, 90, 98, 129130, 133134, 148 Conservatives, 34, 615, 39, 41, 50, 6163, 6770, 7375, 81, 8992, 94101, 104, 106, 116, 124, 127, 130, 133, 135138, 152156, 159163, 168, 170172, 181185, 190 contribuci n territorial (land tax; see also o land ), 34 Corrigan, Philip, 178, 184 Cort s y Larraz, Pedro (archbishop), 27, 29 e Costa Cuca (see also costa del sur), 12, 13, 39, 42, 56, 63, 67, 70, 71, 90, 92, 94, 95, 96, 99, 101, 114, 118, 119, 153, 155, 162, 182 costa del sur (southern coast or Pacic piedmont), 9, 1114, 2022, 2428, 3032, 3539, 4142, 44, 4749, 5657, 5960, 6265, 6768, 7072, 75, 7980, 8485, 8790, 9295, 98101, 104, 114, 116119, 122, 148, 153, 160163, 166, 174, 182; Costa Cuca, 1213, 39, 42, 56, 63, 67, 7071, 90, 92, 9496, 99, 101, 114, 118119, 153, 155, 162, 182; forasteros, 27 cotton, 2527, 3132, 37, 76, 77, 112113, 138, 145 Cuchumatanes, 22, 84, 108, 113 Cueva, Francisco de la, 23, 38 debt, 1314, 72, 74102, 104, 112, 171; credit, 13, 77, 79, 81, 83, 96, 101, 112, 161, 182; adores, 7778, 81, 87, 112; habilitaciones, 76, 87, 91, 9398, 100, 166, 182; libretos (passbooks), 93, 98; mozos fugos, 88, 94, 101; peonage, 7475, 81, 8385, 8889, 9193, 96, 98, 99 de la Cadena, Marisol, 188 dependency theory, 84 Dunlop, Robert, 111 Eber, Christine, 117 Ehlers, Tracy, 113 ejido (see also land ), 13, 28, 30, 3235, 37, 39, 42-55, 57, 60, 6266, 8182, 108, 118, 134, 160 El Asintal, 12, 60, 118 El Palmar, 6368, 70, 119 El Quich (department of ), 11, 40, e 182 El Suj (Palestina de los Altos, aldea of Ostuncalco), 133, 165 encomienda, 19, 23 Escobar, Catalina, 126, 127 Escuintla (department of ), 40, 127 adores (see also debt and women), 7778, 81, 87, 112 Flores Costa Cuca, 12, 60 Flores, Cirilo (vice governor of Guatemala), 147 Flores, Juan Bautista, 42, 57 forasteros (see also costa del sur), 27 Fuentes y Guzm n, Francisco, 23, 118 a Galindo, Leandro (regidor), 104106, 132 G lvez, Mariano (governor of Guatemala), a 2, 15, 4548, 73, 138, 149, 151, 153, 159, 161, 167, 170175, 184 Garc s, Diego (alcalde mayor of Zapotitl n), e a 2527 Garca Pel ez, Francisco de Paula a (archbishop), 60 G nova, 12, 60 e Gonz lez Alzate, Jorge, 78, 117, 125 a Gould, Jeffrey, 189190, 192 Grandin, Greg, 161, 165, 191 Great Britain, 32 Guardino, Peter, 176, 187188, 192 Guatemala City, 23, 811, 31, 50, 55, 62, 77, 111, 116, 137, 141, 144147, 149, 151152, 155, 159, 163, 166168, 171172, 176, 180185, 190191 Gudmundson, Lowell, 8, 15, 69, 183 Gsman, Francisco (governor), 61 habilitaciones (see also debt), 76, 87, 91, 9398, 100, 166, 182 haciendas (see also land ), 2, 29, 38, 5960, 84, 88, 176

Index 247
hegemony, 177179, 181, 184, 187 household types, 7981, 107108 Huehuetenango (department of ), 40, 84, 117, 127, 182 Huit n, 21, 24, 29, 30 a indigenismo, 188, 190, 192 Joseph, Gilbert M., 177178 Juares, Nicolas, 10, 158 Kiche (Maya): 13, 1823, 25, 30, 38, 61, 6465, 67, 113, 123, 154, 192; Aches, 1819 Knight, Alan, 8485, 8889, 92, 99, 177 ladinization, 9, 144, 156, 168, 185 ladinos, 1, 1011, 15, 1718, 2932, 35, 4149, 5259, 61, 6466, 6871, 82, 95, 107, 109, 112, 115, 118125, 129, 133, 137, 141146, 151153, 155159, 162, 168, 174, 185, 191192; crop damage (see also land ), 4344, 51, 5354, 56, 58; nationalism, 138, 190; settlement of western highlands, 31, 142, 145 LaFarge, Oliver, 73, 111, 113 land: composici n, 3334, 42, 141; o contribuci n territorial (land tax), 34; o crop damage (see also ladinos), 4344, 51, 5354, 56, 58; ejido, 13, 28, 30, 3235, 37, 39, 4253, 55, 57, 60, 6266, 8182, 108, 118, 134, 160; haciendas, 2, 29, 38, 5960, 84, 88, 176; milpa agriculture, 13, 18, 24, 26, 28, 3738, 44, 47, 52, 6465, 71, 7374, 83, 85, 101; patrilineal inheritance, 108110; realengos, 51; rental, 34, 4243, 49, 5455, 57, 6162, 6566, 69, 72; surveying, 28, 4243, 4548, 50, 55, 58; tierras fras, 25, 28, 30, 35, 36 Larrave, Manuel (juez preventivo), 104106, 132 Liberals, 34, 610, 12, 15, 41, 50, 6870, 7273, 9192, 100101, 116, 135138, 149, 152, 156, 159163, 168, 170171, 182186, 190; 1871 revolution, 34, 67, 10, 1314, 35, 39, 41, 63, 6869, 7275, 77, 8788, 9091, 96, 100101, 104, 110, 116, 135136, 156, 159, 161, 163, 165, 167168, 170, 181183, 185, 190; provincial ideology, 810; Reforma, 34, 69, 13, 15, 39, 41, 62, 68, 7072, 75, 100, 116, 136138, 155, 157, 159, 161, 163, 170171, 180186 Lindo-Fuentes, H ctor, 8, 15, 69, 183 e Livingston Codes, 2, 45, 149, 153, 161, 172174 Lopes, Aniseto, 126127, 158 Los Altos (state of ), 7, 9, 4647, 48, 50, 52, 62, 137, 146, 148, 151, 155156, 159, 162, 168, 171172, 176, 183, 185, 190191 Lovell, W. George, 73 Lutz, Chris, 78 Macl n, 29 e Malacat n, 141, 154 a Mallon, Florencia E., 178179, 186188 mandamientos, 14, 7475, 8991, 93, 96100, 102, 155, 166, 171, 182183 mayeques (serfs), 26 McBryde, Felix, 112 McCreery, David, 7, 9, 41, 6769, 7374, 76, 81, 88, 99100, 113114, 116117, 124125, 141 Mercedarians (Order of Mercy), 12, 23 mestizaje, 2, 188 mestizos, 29, 117118, 137, 141, 145, 152, 157158, 167, 188189 Mexico, 12, 2627, 84, 99, 116117, 146, 152, 167, 171, 176177, 186192; empire of, 146, 167 Meza, Lorenzo (agrimensor), 48, 50, 52, 55, 5758 militias, 59, 118, 153154, 162, 166, 183 milpa agriculture (see also land ), 13, 18, 24, 26, 28, 3738, 44, 47, 52, 6465, 71, 7374, 83, 85, 101 Momostenango, 21, 30, 6465, 9798, 108, 113, 153154, 162, 184 Morales, F lix (circuit court judge), 12, e 4546, 149150, 174 Moraz n, Francisco, 151152, 172 a mozos fugos (see also debt), 88, 94, 101 municipalidad (see also town council), 11, 42, 4950, 56, 5962, 6566, 72, 77, 94, 96, 98, 103, 110, 111, 119, 121122, 126130, 132134, 138139, 141, 143, 147150, 153, 158, 165 Muybridge, Eadweard, 114

248 Index
national identity (see also ladinos), 10, 12, 138, 188190, 192 Nejapa Tepintepeque, 25 Nicaragua, 189192 Nuevo San Carlos, 12 Nugent, Daniel, 177178 Orellana, Jos Mara (padre), 49, 80, 128, e 158 Orellana, Manuel, 4950 overdetermination, 176177 Pacheco, Narciso (corregidor), 66, 133 Pancake, Cherri, 113 Paxoj, 24, 30 Paz, Andr s (governor), 4955, 58 e Peru, 186190, 192 Pet n (department of ), 40, 127 e Pie de la Cuesta de la Laja (aldea of Ostuncalco), 72 Pineda, Juan de, 2526 Pinto Soria, Julio, 117118 population, 107109, 112, 115 Portocarrero, Pedro, 23 principales (see also town council), 11, 49, 5153, 6061, 72, 82, 129, 130, 134, 139, 143, 150 proletarianization, 8, 8485, 8889, 92, 99 public/private spheres (see also women), 106107, 122 Quezaltenango, 13, 1014, 1726, 2832, 3443, 4548, 50, 53, 58, 60, 6364, 66, 70, 7274, 7678, 8085, 8891, 9498, 100101, 103, 108109, 111112, 114, 117119, 122123, 125126, 128134, 140142, 145155, 158, 161, 165, 172174, 176, 182, 190192 Quich (department of ), 11, 40, 182 e Ralda, Cayetano and Matilde, 104106, 132 Ralda, Irinea, 105106, 132 Ralda, Miguel (municipal secretary), 47, 49, 60 realengos (see also land ), 51 Recinos, Adri n, 21 a Reforma (see also Liberals), 34, 69, 13, 15, 39, 41, 62, 68, 7072, 75, 100, 116, 136138, 155, 157, 159, 161, 163, 170171, 180186 repartimiento: de brazos, 76; de mercancas, 76, 112 Retalhuleu, 1113, 20, 25, 2728, 40, 60, 64, 66, 155 Ro Blanco, 141 Ro Naranjo, 30 Ro Samal , 18, 2122, 25, 30 a Rivas, Valerio Ignacio (agrimensor), 4548 Rivera, Manuel (scal), 1 Robles, Gertrudis, 4748 Rodas, Macario (jefe politico), 4647 Rodrguez, Mario, 2 Salcaj , 31, 141 a San Antonio Bob s (see also Sibilia), 12, 29, o 31, 59, 141142, 154, 162 San Antonio Palop , 113 o San Antonio Suchitep quez, 64 e San Bartolo Aguas Calientes, 97, 154 San Carlos Sija, 29, 31, 61, 119, 141142, 154, 162 San Crist bal Cabric n, 12, 24, 2930, o a 133134, 140 San Crist bal Totonicap n, 30 o a San Felipe, 6367, 104 San G ronimo Cuyamesumba, 25 e San Jos Pie de la Cuesta, 6061, 95 e San Juan Olintepeque, 24 San Juan Ostuncalco, 1, 2, 1112, 1736, 3839, 4147, 49, 54, 59, 6062, 64, 7173, 7678, 8082, 85, 8790, 9495, 9798, 102, 104116, 118123, 125135, 140142, 147151, 153155, 158, 161162, 165, 171, 173174, 176, 182, 192; aldea El Suj (Palestina de los Altos), 133, 165; aldea Pie de la Cuesta de la Laja, 72; aldea Sechicul, 131 San Lorenzo, 141142 San Marcos, 1, 3031, 40, 61, 89, 92, 141142, 149, 182 San Martn Sacatep quez, 1214, 24, 28, 30, e 35, 39, 4167, 6971, 90, 95, 104, 109110, 118, 129130, 134135, 148, 153, 160, 174, 182 San Martn Zapotitl n, 6367 a San Mateo, 30 San Miguel Acat n, 108, 113 a San Miguel Ixtahuac n, 21 a San Miguel Sigil , 12, 24, 33, 46, 88, a 133134, 150

Index 249
San Miguel Totonicap n, 141 a San Pablo, 141 San Pedro Sacatep quez, 2526, 30, 42, 154 e San Sebasti n, 61, 6364, 6667 a Sanborn, Helen, 111, 114 Santa Catalina Retalhuleu, 12, 20, 2527 Santa Catarina Ixtahuac n, 21, 151 a Santa Cruz Cajol , 12, 24, 30, 33, 46, 133, a 150, 162 Santa Eulalia, 108, 113 Santa Mara Chiquimula, 21 Santa Mara Magdalena, 12, 25, 2728, 81 Santiago Atitl n, 25 a Santiago Chimaltenango, 108 Santiago de los Caballeros, 31, 78, 141 Sayer, Derek, 178179, 184 Scott, James C., 177179 Sechicul (aldea of Ostuncalco), 131 sheep, 28, 32, 3738, 76 Sibilia (see also San Antonio Bobs), 12, 21 o Siegel, Morris, 84 Soconusco, 2122, 27 Solol (department of ), 34, 40, 50, 90, 172, a 182 state formation, 7, 910, 1718, 167168, 170171, 178, 186187 Suasn var, Jos (jefe poltico), 126 a e Suchitep quez (department of ), 11, 13, e 2627, 40, 64, 66, 70, 89, 127 sugar, 13, 3032, 41, 44, 49, 58, 64, 70, 7980, 85, 92, 99, 112, 116119, 122123, 138, 152, 182 Tacan , 141 a Taracena Arriola, Arturo, 141, 155 Tax, Sol, 111 Taylor, William, 116117 Tejutla, 141142 textiles, 14, 3132, 112113, 115, 145 Thurner, Mark, 188 tierras fras (see also land ), 25, 28, 30, 3536 Todos Santos Cuchumat n, 113 a Totonicap n (department of ), 11, 21, 34, a 3738, 46, 64, 78, 146, 154, 182 town council, 11, 17, 2930, 41, 42, 44, 4951, 56, 5962, 6566, 72, 77, 94, 96, 98, 103, 110111, 119, 121122, 126130, 132134, 137144, 147150, 153, 158, 161, 165; auxiliaries, 101102, 153, 163, 165; principales, 11, 49, 5153, 6061, 72, 82, 129130, 134, 139, 143, 150 Urrutia, Jos Miguel (juez preventivo), 131 e Utatl n, 18, 2122 a Van Oss, Adrian, 64 Vargas, Manuel, 48 V squez Ysara, Pedro (alcalde), 48, 51, 5355 a Veblen, Thomas, 37 Verapaz, 40, 89, 172, 176, 182 Vixben, 24, 30 wheat, 31, 3638, 73, 7679, 112 Williams, Robert, 7 Wolf, Eric, 51 women, 14, 31, 54, 7778, 106120, 122123, 126, 129, 131, 135, 177; clandestinistas, 105106, 123; adoras, 112; public/private spheres, 106107, 122, 136 Woodward, Ralph Lee, 78, 77, 92 wool, 14, 3132, 37, 76, 112113 Xacan , 24, 30 a Zaculeu, 21, 22 Zunil, 21, 64