Peter N.

Stearns
Agrarian Rebellion and Defense of Community: Meaning and Collective Violence in Late
Colonial and Independence-Era Mexico
Author(s): Eric Van Young
Source: Journal of Social History, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Winter, 1993), pp. 245-269
Published by: Peter N. Stearns
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3788302
Accessed: 08/02/2009 15:39
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AGRARIAN REBELLION AND DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY:
MEANING AND COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE IN LATE
COLONIAL AND INDEPENDENCE-ERA MEXICO
By
Eric Van
Young University
of
California,
San
Diego
Riot at Atlacomulco
On the
evening
of 1 November 1810-All Saints
Day-a
riotous crowd in
the
village
of
Atlacomulco,
in the Toluca area about
sixty
miles to the northwest
of Mexico
City,
attacked the home of don Romualdo
Magdaleno Diez,
a local
peninsular-bor Spanish
merchant and landowner.1
Magdaleno
Diez
himself,
along
with his
Spanish-born
estate
administrator,
was killed
by
the mob in
the action of that
evening,
and his son and son-in-law executed the
following
day
in the town
square
and
cemetery.
The riot was fuelled at least in
part by
widely
current rumors that an
army
of
gachupines (European-born Spaniards)
was
advancing
on the town to
slaughter
its
non-European inhabitants,
and that
the baker in
Magdaleno
Diez's
employ
had at his master's command
poisoned
the bread he was
making
that
evening.2
According
to a number of witnesses
(including
don Romualdo's wife and adult
daughters,
left
virtually
destitute in the aftermath of the
attack)
the
ethnically
mixed crowd of local Indian
peasants
and mestizo townsmen had advanced on
the
Magdaleno
Diez home from the
village plaza
at about 8
p.m.
that
evening,
throwing
stones when in
sight
of the house " ... with the
greatest fury,
and to
such an extreme that
[the stones] appeared [to fall]
like hail."
Despite
entreaties
to reason
by
the
family
and
servants,
the rioters
quickly
smashed down the doors
with axes and entered the
courtyard,
where
they
encountered don Romualdo
holding
a
rosary
and a
prayer-book.
The unfortunate man was seized
immediately
by
a number of hands in the
crowd,
and
dispatched
with a lance-thrust which
drenched his
now-hysterical youngest daughter
in her father's blood. As don
Romualdo
slumped
to the
ground mortally wounded,
members of the crowd
attacked him with stones and clubs. His eldest
daughter
... saw her father fall to the
ground,
and so
many [men]
throw themselves on
him that she could
distinguish
none of
them;
but she did see that
they gave
him
so
many wounds,
and so
many
blows with sticks and
stones,
leaving
him covered
with
stones,
that
they
left him in a wretched
condition,
almost
unrecognizable
(casi
sin
figura corporal).
His son
Jose Antonio, seeing
he could do
nothing
to aid his
father,
ran from the
house toward the home of the
village priest, seeking sanctuary
while brandish-
ing
a
passport
or safe-conduct from Father
Miguel Hidalgo (the
nominal leader
of the
anti-Spanish
rebellion which had
just
six weeks before
engulfed
central
Mexico).3
His
flight
availed him
nothing, however,
since a number of the
pur-
suing
rioters
caught up
with him near the
plaza
and wounded him
gravely
even
while he clutched the knees of the local
vicar,
imploring
his
protection.
The
next
day Jose
Antonio and his
Spanish-born
brother-in-law were
dragged
from
the town
jail
where
they
had
spent
the
night (the
son
by
this time
nearly
dead
from his untreated
wounds)
and executed
by
a
large
crowd of Indian
villagers
from the
neighboring
hamlet of San
Juan
de los Jarros.
The fearful violence directed
against
Romualdo
Magdaleno
Diez and his
household
may
have been
spontaneous
in the sense that it was
unexpected,
but
it
certainly
did not
spring
out of a social vacuum. For more than three decades
before 1810 the
relationship
of
Magdaleno
Diez with local
villagers
had been
one of almost unrelieved
antagonism, chiefly
over the issue of land
ownership.
Arriving
in the district in the
early
1770s or
so,
don Romualdo had
purchased
his
first hacienda
by 1776,
and was
subsequently
to
buy
other
property.
He
certainly
appears
to have been one of the most
aggressive
and
grasping
of local hacendados
(estate owners),
enclosing
and
engrossing
land,
manipulating
local
politics
and
justice
to favor his own economic
interests,
and even
turning
to
extra-judicial
violence when formal institutional means failed or moved too
slowly
to suit
him.4
Yet in these
practices
and in his habitual conflict with local Indian
peas-
ants and other landowners he was
by
no means alone. There had been a
long
history
of
struggles
over land and water in the
area,
involving villagers
of Atla-
comulco,
Jarros,
and other
hamlets,
pitted against
local
caciques (Indian nobles)
and non-Indian landholders.
Accompanying
the
generalized competition
for
land and water resources in the area were serious indications of
peasant
land
hunger, outright
invasions of hacienda lands
by
Indian
villagers, fairly frequent
incidents of
violence,
and abusive labor
practices by
estate owners. These were
the avatars of
processes virtually
universal in late colonial
Mexico, comprising
the
recovery
of
indigenous population
and resultant land
pressure;
the
growing
commercialization of
large-scale agriculture;
the
increasing competition
between
Indian
villagers
and others over land
resources;
and the
developing
social dif-
ferentiation within
indigenous
communities.5 This
generalized
situation in the
eighteenth century
was
compounded
and facilitated in the Mexico
City area,
where Atlacomulco was
roughly
located,
by
the
growth
of the urban market and
the
consequent spread
of
irrigated
wheat culture.
Locally,
the
agrarian equation
shifted between 1650 and 1750 from a situation in which land had been
plentiful
and labor
scarce,
to one in which land was scarce and labor
plentiful, creating
conditions under which a
large part
of the
farming population enjoyed
access
neither to
adequate
real
wages
nor sufficient subsistence
holdings
for
farming.
In a
sense, then,
Romualdo
Magdaleno
Diez
may
have served as a sort of
lightning
rod for
peasant
discontent-a
proxy
for local white
power-holders
as a
group,
and to some
degree
a
surrogate
victim for them. But he was
hardly
a faceless
victim or a
sociological
abstraction to the
people
who killed him.
Indeed,
victims
and killers knew one
another,
as the
testimony
in the case makes
abundantly
clear,
and
possibly
dealt with each other on a
day-to-day
basis. Under such
circumstances it must be
supposed
that
personal
animosities and vendettas of
a
highly personalized
and
possibly long-standing
nature,
and rivalries
political
and
economic,
as
opposed
to
simply
blind
rage and/or ideological
considerations,
aimed the assassins at their victims and lent
strength
to their mortal blows.6
Nonetheless,
Magdaleno
Diez was
definitely
a
scapegoat-the proximate object
246
journal
of social
history
winter 1993
AGRARIAN REBELLION AND DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY
for the
acting
out of intense social discontent which
might
more
reasonably
have been
expected
to be (and in some other cases
was)
directed
against
white
society
and the colonial
regime
as a whole. The social
displacement implied by
this
process
was a
complex
one much in evidence
during
the late colonial
period
and the era of civil
struggle
which
brought
it to a close.7
The
Analytical
Issues
On the
whole,
local
grievances
were
probably
much more
important
than ide-
ological
differences in
defining
where actors stood in relation to the
September
1810 rebellion in
general
and incidents like the one at Atlacomulco in
partic-
ular.
Adding
to the social
volatility
of the situation in Atlacomulco was the
decline in
power,
wealth,
and influence of the local
cacique group
after about
1700,
and most
notably
after
1750,
which
produced
within the diminutive so-
ciety
of local Indian householders a
legitimacy
vacuum
ultimately compounded
by
the
larger political
crisis of the
early
nineteenth
century.
At the same
time,
the
growing
economic
hegemony
of non-Indian landowners was not matched
by
a
parallel
reinforcement of the structures of influence and
legitimacy
weakened
by
the
very process
of its creation and the cession of local dominance
by
the
indigenous
elite.
Overall,
the wider rebellion initiated
by Miguel Hidalgo
and
subsequently
taken
up by
other leaders seems to have
provided
an
organizing
principle-a pretext,
a
framework-upon
which
existing patterns
of
enmity,
ri-
valry,
and faction could be
hung.
These occurrences seem to offer a miniaturized
version of events on a "national"
level,
at least in
part,
in which a
middling
sec-
tor of rural non-Indians
(abetted by socially marginal elements)
in some cases
initiated a rebellion
against
the colonial
regime
and in some cases
joined
one
already
in
progress,
and in which Indian rural
people participated massively
for
reasons
growing
more out of local conditions than out of
engagement
with their
ostensible leaders'
ideological
concerns.
The fact that
popular
collective action in the
countryside
of New
Spain
(as
Mexico was then
called)
was
overwhelmingly
local in
origin
and localocentric
in worldview does not
prevent
our
generalizing
about
it,
of course.
Popular
and
elite rebels had in mind
very
different and
mutually incomprehensible
social and
political agendas
when
they
took
up
arms
against
the
Spanish
colonial
regime
between 1810 and 1821. Peasant
villagers,
in
particular, fought
in defense of em-
battled communities which
they
conceived as antecedent
to,
and in some sense
existing
outside
of,
the colonial state. The creole directorate of the loose inde-
pendence
movement,
on the other
hand,
struggled
toward a
proto-nationalist
vision of an autonomous nation-state in which active
political citizenship
would
be limited to a white native elite and a
penumbra
of
ethnically
mixed
secondary
players.
That
strong
ethnic and class
divisions,
always present
but now
politically
salient in new
ways, emerged
within Mexico
during
the
period
of the
indepen-
dence
struggle
accotnts in
large
measure for the fears of caste war
expressed by
many
creole
insurgents
and social
observers,
and for the
socially
conservative
auspices
under which
independence finally
arrived in the
early
1820s.
Beyond
issues of
political
horizon, state,
or
citizenship, popular
rural rebellion also com-
prised
elements of cultural
resistance-linguistic survival,
religious cult,
local
status and
power arrangements, gender relations,
issues of self and
group
iden-
247
tity,
and worldview in
general-which
lent the
three-way struggle among peasant
villages,
creole
insurgent
directorate,
and colonial state a certain
sharpness
and
violence it would otherwise have lacked had not that cultural resistance been
conflated with the defense of
community.
The Atlacomulco
disturbance,
and dozens of similar ones that
erupted
in
1810 and
after,
raise a number of
interesting
issues about culture and
society
in
eighteenth-
and
nineteenth-century
Mexico. One of
these,
and the
principal
question
to which I want to devote the remainder of this
essay,
is the
following:
to
what
degree
can economic
grievances
of the sort outlined for Atlacomulco and
the hamlet
ofJarros
in the late colonial
period credibly
account
by
themselves for
violent collective behavior of this
intensity,
and its
absorption, frequently,
into
the
insurgency against Spain?
There is a substantial
doubt,
in other
words,
as to
whether and how our rural rioters framed their decisions to act with reference to
explicitly
economic
goals.
A
simplified
model of such collective
behavior,
with
land
hunger
as its
engine
or motive
force,
should enable us to
predict
that
peasant
villagers
in such situations would overturn the
existing
structures of colonial
oppression
in terms immediate to their own
experience, by expropriating
land
and
destroying
its owners and their
capital.
The focused violence and destruction
are
present
in the Atlacomulco incident and
many
others of the
time,
but not the
expropriation,
and even less
any systematic expression
of an
agrarian program
on
the
part
of
popular
rebels. A
subsidiary
theme, therefore,
consists in the
question
of
why
there is so little evidence of a
widespread agrarian ideology during
this
period,
or even of
expropriation by poor
rural
people
of the
property
of the rich.
Admittedly
these are somewhat different
issues,
and each will receive at least
abbreviated treatment in
passing.
The absence of
land,
for the most
part,
as a
major
issue in
policy
formulations,
public pronouncements,
and
ideological
elaborations in the rebellion in New
Spain
as a whole
(always excepting
the somewhat
murky
case of
Jose
Maria
Morelos,
another
country
curate who inherited the mantle of
Hidalgo's
leader-
ship
after the latter's death in
1811,
and who
espoused
some
agrarian
reform)
does not of course mean that it was not an issue in
bringing peasants
to arms.8
Nor should the absence of such a
coherent,
generalizing ideology
of
agrarianism,
either from above or from
below,
surprise
us; indeed,
its existence would have
seemed
peculiarly
anachronistic
given
the time and
place.
And even had such
a
program
been elaborated and
seriously promoted by
the
insurgent leadership,
its wide diffusion
among country people,
and their adherence to
it,
would have
been blocked
by
such factors as the constricted channels of communication
between elite
insurgent
directorate and common masses
(linguistic
differences,
an
overwhelmingly
illiterate
population),
and the still
strongly patriarchal
and
paternalistic
flavor of social
relationships prevailing
between the
laboring
and
owning
classes in
many parts
of the Mexican
countryside.
Nonetheless,
in the case of Atlacomulco conflict over land between rioter-
rebels and their
victims,
in one form or
another,
seems to be the main element
in the
etiology
of local
political
violence.
Partly,
of
course,
this
may
be the
result of the differential survival of
documentation,
granting
that the
possibility
that the sheer
frequency
of land conflicts and the obviousness of their
paper
trail
may
distort our view of what
actually
motivated collective violence on
the
part
of
peasants.
Where we can trace local economic
relationships
from
248
journal
of social
history
winter 1993
AGRARIAN REBELLION AND DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY
the
eighteenth century
into the
insurgency
era,
certainly, agrarian
conflict is
often in
play.
And where
insurgency-era
documentation itself is
thickest,
there
is abundant
evidence,
as we shall
see,
of ad hoc
popular agrarianism-acts
of
vengeance against
landlords,
destruction of
property, looting,
and so forth-
generally, however,
stopping
short of even short-term land
expropriation.9
What other
possible
candidates exist as motives for localized
popular
action?-
tribute and tax collections?
relationships
to the Church? the mercantile network?
separatist political
inclinations? None of these seems as credible an
explanation
for collective action as the land
question,
because
they
would
probably
have af-
fected
people
in a less uniform
manner;
because
except
in the case of the Church
they
would
probably
have lacked the
symbolic power necessary
to send
villagers
across the affective threshold into collective
action;
and because there is no
concrete evidence that
they
were at issue in Atlacomulco or most other cases of
village uprising.
What
occurred,
in
fact,
was that the land
question
was trans-
muted into other issues
capable
of
mobilizing
rural
people
to violent collective
action
under,
or
alongside,
the banner of
political protest, though
the
alchemy
of the
process
is not
entirely
clear. It is not
necessary
to
accept
a
knee-jerk hy-
pothesis concerning
the
relationship
between
agrarian
conditions and violent
protest,
nor does it seem
possible
to do so in this case. But the land
question
as a motivation for rebellion can be
preserved
if we
begin
to think in terms of
intervening
variables instead of the
simpler
formulation. What is novel in
my
own
interpretation
of
popular
action in the
period
is not
emphasis
on
agrarian
grievance, certainly,
since in recent
scholarly
work this has come to
occupy
an
ever more
important place.
Rather,
I am concerned to
explore
the nature of
popular agrarianism,
its
limits,
and more
importantly
its
relationship
to an even
deeper
level of
struggle
in the
countryside-the struggle
over the continued
political viability
of
peasant
communities and their existence as
substantially
autonomous
reproducers
of local ethnic culture.
Here the idea of a
"compromise
of
community"
as a motivation for
peasant
insurrection
may
be
helpful, especially
where the class
position,
and the ethnic
and cultural
identity
of the
peasantry
were
highly congruent.
The historical re-
silience of the
peasant community
in Mexico
suggests
that the maintenance of
village identity
and
autonomy
are
key
factors in
understanding
the
history
of
rural
society
there.10 This
resilience,
when
expressed
in
political
terms,
as
during
the wars of
independence,
could sometimes take on a flavor at once
zenopho-
bic and
reactionary
vis a vis the encroachment of
outsiders,
including
the state.
Nor was the overt
expression
of such sentiments unknown
during
the initial
phases
of the
independence
movement;
the incidents at Atlacomulco should
be seen in this
light.
It has even been
suggested by
a number of
anthropologists
and other scholars that the communal Indian
village
(and
communal
peasant
villages
in
general)
breeds a
particular peasant cognitive
formation which tends
to see the social
world-relationships
within
communities,
as well as between
them and outsiders-in
very
definite
terms,
with the
village
at its center and
with the universe as a kind of zero-sum
game.
The
struggle
to
preserve village
identity
intact
may
then be seen as
subsuming
the land
question,
inasmuch as
the land
question
was
inextricably
related to a coherent
cosmology
which had
the communal
village
as its central
entity.
The most extreme formulation of
this view would
completely
invert the materialist causal arrow
by positing
that
249
during
"normal" times land conflict was a
pretext
or
collectively
unconscious
representation
of a
deeper
social and cultural
conflict,
although
it
might
have
real
enough practical aspects
in itself.11 In this
scenario,
the
generalized
condi-
tions of social and
political upheaval
initiated
by
the insurrection of
1810,
and
concretized here in the case of the Atlacomulco
incident,
would have created
an
open space
or
breach,
as it
were,
to
play
out a much
larger
social drama in
which
agrarian grievances rarely
took center
stage.
We
have, then,
a series of
agrarian
or
agrarian-inspired uprisings,
often con-
flated with a diffuse movement of "national" liberation and a state of internal
war,
with a
rough
and
ready (though truncated)
agrarian ideology
and
praxis,
but also
embodying
a more
broadly
cultural conflict fueled
by
the
pressures
of
change
in rural
society
and transmuted into a rebellion in defense of
community.
It is essential to
remember, however,
that the
long-term
evolution of
agrarian
structures in colonial Mexico-of the social
chafing
attendant
upon
the devel-
opment
of
regional
commercial
economies,
land
grabbing,
and
peasant
defense
of
community-did
not occur in a social or economic vacuum. Broad
cycles
in colonial
economy
and
demography
tended to
deepen
over several
genera-
tions the
spreading
shadow of
impoverishment
for
major
sectors of the rural
population. Furthermore,
this
tendency
was
compounded by
shorter-term,
con-
junctural
factors which
positively
influenced the
propensity
of rural
people
to
engage
in collective action with the advent of the
political
crisis of 1808-1810.
The
metaphor
here would be the
generation by
the erosion of
popular living
standards of a sort of
political hyperesthesia
which in itself
might
not
spur
col-
lective
violence,
but which in combination with
sharpening
cultural and
politi-
cal conflict
might produce
that
very
effect. Without some
understanding
of this
economic
background, therefore, agrarian
conflict and a
peasant posture
in de-
fense of
community
are not
readily comprehensible.
Here we
turn, therefore,
to
look
very briefly
at the conditions of life for rural
working people
in late colonial
New
Spain,
and at
agrarian
structures in
general;
then to an
analysis
of what
one could call
popular agrarianism
in
practice;
and
finally
to
village
rebellions as
texts,
to see what
they
tell us about the
thinking
and
aspirations
of rural
people.
The General Economic Context of Rural Violence
As the
study
of colonial Mexican rural
history,
and of economic
history
more
generally,
has advanced over the last several
decades,
historians have built
up
and
begun
to dissolve
again
a number of conventional wisdoms. One of these is
that the
eighteenth century
was a time of
substantially uninterrupted
economic
expansion
and
prosperity,
a silver
century
if not a
golden
one.12 More
recently,
however,
our view of the
half-century
or so
leading up
to the outbreak of the
independence
movement in 1810 has
begun
to take on a darker
shading,
so
that I could not
unreasonably
characterize the
eighteenth century
in a recent
essay
of
my
own as a
century
of chiaroscuro-of
starkly contrasting light
and
dark.13 Indicators of economic movement and
general
welfare once
thought
to
be
unequivocally positive
for the
eighteenth century
are now
proving
to be less
so,
or even
negative
in
sign.14
Most
basically,
the
impressive demographic
increase
of the
early
decades of the
century began
to slacken or stutter after about
1770,
in some
regions earlier,
in some later.
Despite important
differences of
scholarly
250
journal
of social
history
winter 1993
AGRARIAN REBELLION AND DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY
opinion
as to the causes for this
sapping
of
demographic vitality,
it seems
likely
to have stemmed at least in
part
from an
increasingly
unfavorable
man/land
ratio
in the
years
after
mid-century
or so. This Malthusian situation was
aggravated
or
compounded by
recurrent subsistence crises linked to
meteorological cycles,
stagnant agricultural productivity,
and a
markedly
uneven distribution of income
and wealth in the late
colony.
Furthermore,
the most
important
sectors of the Mexican
economy-mining,
commerce,
and
agriculture-all
offer a mixed
picture during
the last decades of
the
colony.
The
production
of
silver,
for so
long
the bellwether of the colonial
enterprise,
echoed the overall movement of
population, experiencing
its
longest
period
of sustained
growth during
the first
quarter
of the
century.15
It would
also
appear
that even
signs
of
subsequent
absolute
growth
in
production
levels
masked a real economic
slippage
and structural
problems
of a serious
long-term
nature. And the Mexican
economy,
of
course,
did not stand still around the
mining
sector.
Although
the value of Mexican
exports during
the entire colonial
period
and well after it was
overwhelmingly comprised
of silver bullion and
coin,
the relative share of
mining output
in the colonial
gross
domestic
product
fell
towards the end of the
eighteenth century
to
something
like four or five
percent
of the total.16 Fiscal revenues and
commerce,
two thermometer-like indicators
of the
general
state of the
economy,
tended in the late
eighteenth century
to
travel the same
bumpy, curvy trajectory.17
If the situation of the
mining
sector
has been somewhat
controversial,
that of
agriculture
is
necessarily
even
foggier,
but on the whole it seems
likely
that
although agricultural production grew
perceptibly during
the
eighteenth century
in
many parts
of New
Spain,
there
was little in the
way
of
productivity gain
or
technological improvement.
It is
true that selected
parts
of the
country,
most
notably
the
Guadalajara
and
Bajio
regions,
were characterized
by
an
agricultural dynamism
unknown
elsewhere,
though
the reasons for this are not as
yet entirely
clear.18 But in
general
terms,
judging by
the
incomplete
and
equivocal figures
we
presently possess, population
growth, aggravated by
urbanization
(i.e.,
the
agglomeration
of
larger non-farming
populations),
was
running
ahead of
agricultural production
at the end of the
eighteenth century.19
The evidence for a fall in real
wages
and incomes for rural
working people
over
the course of the last colonial
century
is
virtually
incontrovertible. Estimates of
per capita
income at the close of the colonial
period
tend to
support
this view.
Even
allowing
for the fact that silver
output,
which drives most estimates of
gross
domestic
product,
fluctuated
considerably,
it seems
fairly
clear that
per capita
income in New
Spain
at best remained stable or declined
slightly during
the last
six decades of the colonial
period,
and at worst declined
sharply during
the last
two decades or so.20 If one takes into account
qualitative
evidence
indicating
that the distribution of wealth within the
colony
tended to become ever more
skewed in the late
eighteenth century,
the conclusion is
nearly inescapable
that
substantial
popular impoverishment,
if not
immiseration,
must have been the
inevitable result. The movements of
prices
and
wages certainly point
in the di-
rection of a loss of effective
purchasing power,
with consumer
prices
in Mexico
rising substantially from at least the last quarter of the eighteenth century and
into the first decades of the nineteenth.
1
As
nearly
as we can determine in
the absence of reliable
wage
series,
nominal cash
wages
for the most common
251
journal
of social
history
types
of unskilled and semi-skilled
work,
both rural and
urban,
remained
pretty
much at a dead level
during
the
eighteenth century.
The combination of
rising
prices
and
stagnant
nominal
wages, therefore, produced
a
drop
in real
wages
during
the latter half of the
eighteenth century
of
something
like 25
percent,
and a concomitant fall in the
living
standard for most
working people
in Mexico.
While this would
certainly
have reduced the real incomes of urban
working peo-
ple,
most
fully exposed
to market forces because of the cash
wage
nexus,
it also
severely
affected a
large proportion
of the
country population,
most
especially
rural
wage
laborers and
peasants
whose
landholdings
were not
adequate
to
sup-
port
their
family
subsistence and other needs. At a
guess, something
like half the
Mexican labor force earned
most,
or a substantial
part,
of its livelihood in
cash,
and would therefore have seen its economic
position perceptibly
eroded in the
late colonial decades.
Compounding
this secular trend there occurred a series of
harvest failures and
sharp price
rises in articles of basic
popular consumption
after
1800,
producing
the same
effects-popular immiseration,
unemployment,
busi-
ness
collapse, cityward migrations,
and so forth-characteristic of most ancien
regime
economies in the
grip
of crises de subsistences.
Agrarian Unrest,
Village
Rebellion,
Ideology,
Culture
The
signs
of
mounting agrarian conflict,
fuelled and
aggravated by
a
widespread
drop
in
popular living standards,
may
be seen in
virtually every
comer of the cen-
tral
part
of the
country.
Even with the
slackening
of momentum in
population
growth,
the
upward
drift continued and the
demographic pressure
accumulated
in the
dynamic early
decades of the
century subjected
the structure of landhold-
ing
to new stresses
by
its end. Waves of land conflict and rural
criminality
rose
to a crescendo at the close of the colonial
period.
In central
Mexico,
as in other
developed
areas of the
country,
the incidence of land suits
involving
all
types
of
landholders-Indian
villages, haciendas,
other
private
owners-about
tripled
from the middle of the
eighteenth century
until its
end,
so that the colonial
courts were
virtually
flooded with new and
continuing litigation by the early
nineteenth
century.22
As to
criminality
in
general
and rural
brigandage
in
par-
ticular,
most
contemporaries
and modem scholars would
agree
that
they
were
notably
on the
upswing
in the
eighteenth century.23
The colonial
countryside
was "innundated" and "infested" with
brigands, many
of whom entered the ranks
of the
insurgents
after 1810. There was also a
pretty
clear
upward
trend in the
incidence of rural collective violence-of
village
tumultos
(riots)-during
the
late colonial decades. Of the 150 or so riots that occurred in central Mexico
between 1700 and
1820,
over a hundred took
place
after 1765 and
nearly fifty
in
the
period 1796-1810,
though
there is no
particular periodicity
observable and
no clear
relationship
between rural riot and recurrent subsistence crisis.24
There is a
quite
marked
continuity
between the
types
of rural deviance and
protest
before
1810-primary among
them the
village
riot and rural
brigandage
just
mentioned-and those forms of
popular
violence and rebellion which came
to be associated
loosely
with the cause of
independence.
It bears
emphasizing
that rural riots were
perhaps
the most visible sort of
unambiguously popular
violence
during
the earlier
years
of the
insurgency.25
As we shall
see,
the
closely
circumscribed mental horizons
defining
traditional
village
life conditioned the
252 winter 1993
AGRARIAN REBELLION AND DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY
broader
participation
of
country people-particularly indigenous peasants-in
a
striking
manner.
Moreover,
it is in the form and
objects
of such outbreaks that
agrarian
rebellion reveals
itself,
albeit
mostly
in a
very
inchoate
way.
We now
turn to some consideration of the
agrarian
elements in
independence-era village
uprisings,
followed
by
a brief discussion of the cultural constraints which
kept
these movements localized and
politically fragmented.
The three most common forms for the
expression
of
agrarian
unrest in rural
disturbances both before and
during
the
independence struggle
were victim-
ization of local
non-indigenous
landowners and their allies and
representatives,
invasion of haciendas
by rioting villagers,
and
vaguely programmatic pronounce-
ments about
property rights
and the redistribution of wealth.
An
example
of the first sort we have seen in the Atlacomulco case. In con-
nection with the land
question,
this most often took the form of conflict with
"outsiders,"
primarily,
of
course,
an etic
category
reconstructed in the main
from evidence
concerning
the victims of communitarian violence. These
people
tended to share certain characteristics.
First, they
were
frequently non-village-
born (and
generally
non-Indian)
power-holders,
or allies or creatures of such
people.26
Second,
such structural "outsideness" was most often
complemented
by strong signs
of"otherness,"
such as
language and/or
ethnic difference.
Third,
the
upset
or threat of
upset
linked to such
people,
and
ostensibly
at the root of
popular
violence,
required
some
aspect
of
dynamism
(a
perceptible
element of
"more" or
"recently") and/or
of normative violation
(to
be "excessive" or "ille-
gitimate")
in order to create a level of stress or conflict sufficient for collective
violence to arise in the absence of alternative resolution mechanisms. Where
such individuals existed within or
proximate
to a
village community, precipi-
tating
events could turn them from tolerated
neighbors, functionally necessary
mediators,
or even
symbiotic
allies into noxious elements
against
which whole
or
part-communities might
turn their destructive
rage. Longstanding
social or
economic bonds
(which
in
any
case tended to have
markedly exploitative
as-
pects),
or even
personal familiarity
on a
day-to-day
basis
(as
the Atlacomulco
episode tragically
demonstrates)
were not
enough
to
exempt
such "outsiders"
from collective attack.
This
pattern
was
nearly
universal in central Mexico and has been
exhaustively
documented as a result of the
scholarly
attention
paid
to it
during
the last
twenty
years
or so.
Although
it had been
present
since the
early post-conquest period-
since the first
Spaniard's
cow nibbled the first Indian's corn
patch-the
incidence
of such friction was
apparently
on the
upswing during
the late colonial decades.27
We have
many straightforward examples
of
village
riots
preceded by years
and
even decades of conflict with white landowners in the
neighborhood.
Such cases
are
straightforward
in the sense that the observer can see
fairly
clear
class, ethnic,
and institutional
dividing
lines between rioters and
outsiders,
and it does not
require
much theoretical
imagination
to make some link between conflict and
violence.
To cite but one additional
example among many,
there occurred a number
of
village
riots in the
Jilotepec area,
to the northwest of Mexico
City, begin-
ning
at least with the late
eighteenth century
and
overlapping
well into the
independence period.
It is also worth
noting
that this district and the zone
adja-
cent to the
east,
and
especially
the town of
Huichapan
to the
north,
comprised
253
a theater of endemic
insurgent activity
well into the middle of the decade of
the 1810s. Recurrent land invasions and attacks
by
local
indigenous peasants
on
landowners,
government
officials,
and then later on
royalist soldiers,
punctuated
the
period
from the 1780s
on,
and are to be understood as
peasant responses
to
the
expansion
of haciendas onto
community
lands,
the
pushing
aside of
accepted
tenantry arrangements,
and
highly
abusive labor
practices by
local hacendados.28
The
underlying
motive of the conflict in the
area,
and of the collective violence
and
insurgent activity
which
grew
out of
it,
appears mainly
to have been an
intensifying
use of local
resources,
both landed and
human,
accompanied by
an
increased
competition
between
large-scale
mixed
farming
estates and
peasant
producers.
This,
in
turn,
can be linked to the
penetration during
the middle
and later decades of the
eighteenth century
of a commercial market into areas
previously marginal
to it. The
Jilotepec
area we
may suppose
to have
been,
like
that of Atlacomulco to the southwest
(and
for
roughly
similar reasons-resource
endowment,
relatively sparse population,
etc.)
drawn
fully
into the
deepening
and
ramifying
late colonial market
economy relatively
late. The drive of
large
landowners in the area to
abrogate customary tenantry arrangements
of
long
standing,
and to extract
larger
and more
predictable money
rents and labor in-
puts,
and the efforts of Indian
peasants
to resist these
demands,
reflect market
conditions
favorable,
grosso modo,
to
large-scale grain producers.
This is an his-
torical leitmotiv we can
expect
to encounter
repeatedly
in
any analysis
of the
events of 1810 and the
years
on either
side,
with the bass
playing
the
heavy
repeated
chords of
agrarian
discontent and the
upper
clef
picking
out the almost
infinitely
varied
melody
of local collective action.
The first sort of
expression
of
agrarian
unrest
obviously overlaps
with the
second,
comprising
invasions of
neighboring privately
held
lands-haciendas,
generally-by peasant villagers. During
the
insurgency,
it was
naturally
to be
expected
that rural estates would become
targets
for local
villagers, guerrilla
bands,
and even bandits. Since the rebellion itself was
overwhelmingly
rural,
the
countryside,
dominated as it was in
many
areas of the
country by large
ha-
ciendas,
formed the
major
theater for
fighting
and collective violence. Rural
estates were also
tempting targets
because of their often
strategic
location,
the
considerable wealth concentrated on
them,
and their
long
histories of conflict
with
surrounding villages
and small
property
owners. To the
degree
that local
people participated
in such
actions,
attacks
against
landed estates
pretty clearly
indicated one of the
major
components
of
popular thinking
about the social con-
stitution of the
colony.
Thus,
attacks on haciendas became an almost formulaic
element in
insurgent military
tactics in the Mexican
countryside
from the
very
beginning
of the
independence struggle.
For
example,
when in
August
of 1811
a well-armed force of some
sixty
rebels
briefly captured
the town of San
Juan
Teotihuacan
(familiar
to moder tourists for its ancient monumental
ruins), just
to the northeast of Mexico
City,
their actions followed a familiar
pattern. They
went
directly
to the offices of the
royal
tobacco
monopoly,
the customs
house,
and the local
magistrate,
and to the homes of
prominent Spanish
householders,
gathering
as much cash and
weaponry
as
they
could. The
judicial
archive in the
casas reales
(government building)
was
burned,
and
they
freed the
single pris-
oner in the town
jail.
Their business in Teotihuacan
finished,
they thoroughly
sacked a
neighboring
hacienda,
though
the
property escaped
the incineration
254
journal
of social
history
winter 1993
AGRARIAN REBELLION AND DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY
that befell so
many
rural estates in similar circumstances.29 Haciendas all over
the
country
were
regularly subject
to extortion of
money,
had their livestock
stolen,
and were sacked
and/or
burned.30
More
interesting
for our
present purposes
are those instances of attacks on
rural estates which can be linked
unambiguously
to local
peasants,
and which
reflect
programmatic
elements of the
popular insurgency
within the context of
local economic and social conditions.
Though
on occasion
villagers
remained
indifferent to such
depredations
or even
helped
estate
employees
offer resistance
to
them,
more often
they
demonstrated considerable
willingness
and even en-
thusiasm in
joining
in attacks on rural estates initiated and led
by
non-local
rebels. Such was the case of the attack on the Hacienda Nuestra Sefiora de
Guadalupe,
near
Pachuca,
in
September,
1811,
in which
twenty
men from the
nearby pueblo
of Santa Monica
helped
a rebel force sack the estate and execute
two
European Spaniards
found
hiding
in the casa
grande (main house).
When
the
village
men returned to their
pueblo early
the next
morning
laden with
items carried off from the
hacienda,
the Indian alcalde was
awaiting
them in the
cemetery
with fresh
pulque (a
mild
intoxicant),
which
they
all sat down and
drank
together,
almost as
though
in
acknowledgement
of a
planned
task well
accomplished.31
To take another
example,
the
passage
of
Hidalgo's insurgent
army through
the
neighborhood
of Toluca at the end of October 1810 seems to
have
spurred
a wave of attacks around the
Cuajimalpa
area,
in the mountains
between the Toluca
Valley
and the
Valley
of Mexico. The haciendas Buena-
vista,
Venta de
Cuajimalpa,
and Batan were almost
picked
clean
by people
from
a half-dozen or more local
villages,
whose inhabitants came en
masse,
directed
by
their local Indian
officials,
to harvest the
standing
maize in the estates' fields and
share out the livestock between themselves and the
passing insurgent
forces.32
Even more
revealing
is the
fairly typical
case of
Juan Valerio,
an Indian of
about 40
years
old from the barrio of Santa Maria in
Malinalco,
who had worked
for a number of
years
as a laborer on the local Hacienda de
Xalmolonga by
the
time of his
capture
as an
insurgent
on 25
August
1811. The
previous day
he had
participated
in an attack on the
hacienda,
where a number of witnesses had seen
him
putting
the torch to estate
buildings,
and he had taken
part
in an earlier
attack on the same estate led
by
the well known rebel chieftain Ruvalcaba on 1
November 1810. Valerio had received as
part
of the
booty
in the earlier incident
a bull to divide
up among
his fellow laborers. Witnesses recounted his statement
that " ... a
priest
was
coming
from the interior
(tierra adentro) who would fix
everything,
since the
viceroy
no
longer existed,
and this hacienda and all its
lands would be divided
among
its laborers."33
Juan
Valerio's
ingenuous
remark
brings
us to the third (and least well docu-
mented)
type
of
expression
of
agrarian discontent-explicit, typically fragmen-
tary programmatic
statements
regarding property rights
and the redistribution
of wealth in the
countryside.
An
example
is that of Albino
Vicente,
Indian
gob-
ermador of the
pueblo
of San
Marcos,
in the Tula
district,
arrested on 15 October
1810 on
suspicion
of
insurgent sympathies. Among
other
crimes,
Vicente was
accused of
having encouraged
an Indian
villager
named Mariano
Pascual,
from
a
sujeto (subordinate hamlet)
of San
Marcos,
to write a letter to the
insurgent
chief
Ignacio
Allende " ...
asking
him to
give
them the lands
usurped
from his
pueblo."
The naive Pascual had
gone
to the local escribiente
(scribe)
in the main
255
plaza
of Tula and asked him how much such a letter would cost. Pascual's
pueblo
had
long
had a suit
pending
in Mexico
City against
the accused
usurpers
of its
lands,
the noble counts of Moctezuma and la
Cortina,
and he testified that the
goberador
had told him Allende had restored lands to
villagers
wherever he
went
throughout
the
colony.34
Evidence of a similar sort shows unmistakable
elements of a
rudimentary agrarian program
at
play
in some
village
disturbances,
and of tendencies toward
levelling ideologies.
A few
days
after the
village up-
rising
at Tamasunchale in
February 1812,
for
example,
a local rebel commander
in the
neighborhood
wrote to the
representative
of the Indians of
nearby
Cha-
pulhuacan pueblo, offering
him a commission in the rebel
army
and
inviting
him
"
... to receive in the name of his constituents the lands to which
they
aspired."35
This and other evidence of an
explicit popular agrarian ideology
and of the
aggression
that could be unleashed
against
haciendas makes it all the more
notable that in most cases of
independence-era endogenous village uprising
there should have been so little
sign
of
any
such
ideology
or
action,
and
certainly
little inclination on the
part
of creole leaders to turn it into a broader
platform
for
popular political
mobilization in the
countryside.
There is a
difference,
of
course,
between
goals,
or levels of
goals,
and the instrumentalities
employed
to realize them. In almost no recorded instance was the actual
expropriation
and redistribution of hacienda land undertaken
by villagers.
But a
generalized
tendency
for
villagers
to initiate or
join
in the sack of
nearby
rural estates-a
short-term solution to
problems
of wealth
distribution,
as well as an outlet for
the
acting
out of
aggressive impulses-would
not
necessarily
be
incompatible
with a
deeper aspiration
to redress
by
more fundamental
steps long-standing
agrarian grievances.
It is
probably
reasonable to
assume, therefore,
that
peasant
sentiments in favor of land
expropriation
were more
widespread
than the direct
evidence indicates.
The issues of land or the distribution of wealth
actually
came
up
as
explicit
programmatic
elements
relatively
seldom
during
the
insurgency,
at least as com-
pared
with the Mexican Revolution of a
century
later or some other
great
moder
peasant
movements.36
Certainly village
riots and other violence related to land
disputes
between Indian
villages,
and between
villages
and
neighboring
non-
Indian
property
owners,
were common
enough
in most areas of the
country up
to
1810,
but
they
do not
figure
as
prominently
thereafter. The reasons for this
hiatus in
explicitly agrarian
violence-and it was
simply
an
hiatus,
since it
ap-
pears
to have
picked up again
after Mexico had
gained
its
independence-are
not
entirely clear,
but several
may
be
suggested.
On the one
hand,
it
may
be that
the unsettled conditions which
prevailed intermittently
in
many parts
of the
country during
the
period
1810-1821 worked
against
the normal
functioning
of
the colonial justice and administrative
systems
to some
degree,
so that documen-
tation on such incidents
might
not have been
generated,
or if
produced might
have been
partially destroyed
or lost. On the other
hand,
it
may very
well be the
case that the substantial survival of the central
government
intact-its failure
to
collapse
or
implode
over a
period
of months as the
regime
of Porfirio Dfaz
was to do in 1910-1911-and its
ability
to
re-impose
its
political
and
military
control over
large
areas of the
colony, discouraged peasant groups
in
particular
from
undertaking
land
expropriations
or other forms of
long-term
solution to
256
journal
of social
history
winter 1993
AGRARIAN REBELLION AND DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY
the
problem
of
agrarian pressure
in the
countryside.
The most obvious sort of
limit here would be
that,
while one could sack an estate in a matter of hours or
even
minutes,
the
equitable parcelling
out of land to
village insurgents
or rioters
might require
weeks or even
months,
a
leisurely
framework not often available.
Third,
to the
degree
that the elite creole directorate of the
separatist
move-
ment in New
Spain
exercised
any
real influence at all over the
popular
in-
surgency
at the
village level,
it did not
particularly encourage
a radical or far-
reaching agrarian
reform or other
types
of
property
redistribution,
even as the
sort of tactical measure in which Lincoln
emancipated
the slaves
during
the
U.S. Civil War. The contrast with the
ideology
and actions of at least a
seg-
ment of the
Revolutionary leadership
of
1910-1920-Zapata
and other
populist
leaders, particularly-could
not be clearer
here,
though
it is true that men like
the northern
politicians
Francisco Madero and Venustiano Carranza
paralleled
in their social conservatism
figures
of a
century earlier,
such as the elite cre-
ole officer
Ignacio
Allende.37 Even in the
revolutionary
Mexico of
1910-20,
however,
after
nearly
a
century
of
increasingly ideologically
influenced
agrarian
disturbances, including
the diffusion of liberal
political
doctrines,
centralized
efforts at some land
reform,
and anarchist
agitation
in the
countryside;
and even
with the
presence
and substantial national diffusion of
agrarian ideology
of a
vindicationist
stamp (Zapatismo
and other
programs), agrarian
action at the
local level still bore the
stamp
of
political-military necessity,
on the one
hand,
or of
longstanding
vendetti or short-term
looting
on the other.38 It would seem
that some
peasant attempts
at the seizure and re-distribution of
property
did
occur in 1810 and
after,
but it
may
be that
they
were not more
widespread
in the
period,
and have therefore left a limited
documentary trail,
because a
genuinely
popular agrarian ideology
had not
yet developed
in the Mexican
countryside,
but
only
bits and
pieces
of one activated on an ad hoc basis if at all. In this sense
the
step
from a
profoundly
localocentric, defensive,
and reactive
posture
on the
part
of
peasant villagers,
from which
they sought
in the end to
prevent
further
erosion of their economic
position,
to a
broader,
more
systematically aggressive,
proactive posture,
from which
they might actually expand
the limits of
village
economy,
was
likely
to be a short but difficult one.
This
brings
us around
again
to the
question
of culture and mentalite
among
the
indigenous
Mexican
peasantry
at the end of the colonial
regime. Briefly put,
the
solipsism
of
village
life-the
intensely
localocentric
worldview,
the xeno-
phobic
attitudes towards
outsiders,
and the conflation of
economic, cultural,
and
personal identity
in
community membership-precluded
the
development
of an
agrarian ideology
that
might
have
helped
local
protest
movements
against
the colonial
regime
coalesce into
larger
ones.
Furthermore,
at the
top
of the
movement the creole and
provincial directorate-always excepting
the some-
what
murky
case of Father Morelos and one or two other
people-was
unlikely
to embrace such
doctrines,
which
they
would have viewed as too radical.
Even had a
coherent, generalizing,
and
widely
diffused
agrarian program
ex-
isted in the ranks of the
independence
movement's creole
directorate,
the in-
commensurability
of their
political
lexicon with that of the
popular
rural
classes,
and the cultural dead air between these
groups,
would have acted to
dampen
its
broad
appeal.
The creole
leadership
and mass rural
following
of the
insurgency
were characterized
by diametrically opposed
worldviews and mentalities. These
257
differences nourished
entirely
distinct views of
citizenship,
and therefore
strongly
conditioned the reach of
ideological appeals.
The conventional wisdom about
the movement for Mexican
independence
is that the
primary objective
of both
popular
and elite rebels was national
autonomy
and the
capture
of state
power.
But whatever else
they may
be,
states are also mental
constructs,
and one's
per-
ception
of them is
likely
to
change
as one's structural
perspective
and
conception
of
citizenship changes.
For
people
even to conceive of the
state,
or of its active
intervention in
altering
the social distribution of wealth or
property
relations,
they
are
required
to share a
cognitive map
which includes a view of a wider world
beyond locality,
and of the
integuments
which hold it
together.
For much of the
population
of late colonial Mexico such a vision did not-could
not-exist,
and to assume its
presence
is anachronistic. In
fact,
the common cultural and
political ground
shared
by
the
representatives
of the colonial
regime
with the
creole leaders of the rebellion and their allies was much
larger
than
any
between
the latter and their mass
following.
Within this framework it can be seen that
the
critique
of the late Bourbon state fashioned
by
the creole directorate of the
independence struggles,
and the
project
for a national state
experimented
with
in the decades
following
the break with
Spain,
were artifacts of
elite, essentially
urban culture linked to a
European great
tradition. The
assumptions
and
preoc-
cupations
of that culture and the
political projects
that arose from it resonated
only dully,
if at
all,
with the
popular
culture of rural and
predominantly
Indian
Mexico. In
sum,
what seems to have mattered most to the vast
majority
of rural
people
was not
state,
but
community.
An
ideology
of
agrarianism embracing
the
country
as a
whole,
or an identifiable
regional space,
or even the
neighboring
village,
would not have made much sense to
country people
of the time.39
Decoding
Collective Behavior
Finally
we come to the
question
of what rural
uprisings
do show about the inde-
pendence
movement in
particular
and late colonial Mexican
society
in
general.
Here I would like to take
up briefly
in turn three
aspects
of the
insurgency specif-
ically
with
regard
to
village-based
collective violence:
language
and
otheress,
the
organization
of collective
violence,
and
patterns
of
popular participation.
Language comprised
one of the main mediums of "otherness" in the localized
village
disturbances that accounted for so much of
popular
violence
during
the
insurgency struggle. Nothing
else demonstrated so
clearly
the lack of
unifying
ideologies among
the
rebels,
the
gulf
between
indigenous people
and
outsiders,
or,
most
importantly,
the cultural markers
bounding
and
reinforcing
the com-
munitarian
spaces
whose
viability
and defense constituted the main item on the
agenda
of
popular
collective action. The form that threats and verbal
abuse,
di-
rected
by
Indians at
non-Indians,
could assume
during village
riots struck
many
non-indigenous
victims and
witnesses,
and non-rioters in
general,
as
very
menac-
ing. Although many
non-Indians
spoke
Nahuatl or other
indigenous languages,
most
probably
did
not,
and the fact that much rebellious discourse was carried
on in unknown
speech
associated with the
mercurial, suggestible,
violent brown
masses of the
countryside
must have seemed to them
particularly
sinister. Ac-
counts
by
such
people
of the
chanting
and
shouting
that went on in some riotous
situations
are,
in
fact, oddly chilling, especially
when
large groups
of
people
were
258
journal
of social
history
winter 1993
AGRARIAN REBELLION AND DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY
involved. Not
surprisingly, rioting
Indian crowds
expressed
themselves reflex-
ively
in Indian
languages,
even if
large
elements of them were
bilingual.
But the
yelling
and
anarchy
so often
described,
for
example, by
witnesses to late colonial
land measurements where
possession
of
village
lands was at
issue,
became more
alarming
as it
dropped
in
volume,
since the menace of the
protest
(at
least in
the
perception
of
non-Indians)
was
apparently inversely
related to its loudness.
In the Malinalco riot of
1803,
for
example,
the
alguacil mayor (constable)
of
the town found the Indian crowd in the
patio
of the casas reales
very
sinister,
not least because to the
pushing
and
shoving
"... was added a
murmuring
or
whispering among
the Indians which
only they
understood,
since it was in their
language,
and also because
everyone
talked at the same time."40 In the
uprising
at
Chicontepec
in
1811,
the teniente de
justicia (deputy magistrate)
noted that
the crowd of Indians which came to arrest him in his house
spoke exclusively
their "Mexican
language,"
and at one
point began chanting
"Grab
him,
grab
him"
("Cojanlo, cojanlo").41 During
one
phase
of the 1810 Amecameca
upris-
ing,
a crowd of local Indians were heard to chant
"War,
war with the
gachupines"
("Guerra, guerra
con los
gachupines").42
Passing
on to forms of collective
violence,
the
organization
of
many village
uprisings
both before and after 1810 resembles
nothing
less than rural
soviets,
or
perhaps
free communes
along
Fourierist lines. These cases consisted of short-
lived
attempts by
rural communities
apparently
to cut their
political
and other
bonds with the outside world and
govern
themselves in
utopian independence.
Occasionally
one sees in such
episodes
hints of attacks on local
systems
of
priv-
ilege
and
property,
such as occurred at
Chicontepec
in
May 1811,
where the
admittedly
scant evidence of an
insurgent program points
to the local landhold-
ing
structure as the most
specific
item of
grievance.
The one concrete
proposal
talked of in the
village,
and in rather diffuse terms at
that,
was that
"
... the
lands of
private
individuals be divided
amongst
all the sons of the
village,
and
that
[other] goods
be set aside for the maintenance of the lords who were com-
ing [presumably Ignacio
Allende and his
army]."43
This local
agrarianism
was
occasionally accompanied
(as
in the
Chicontepec
case) by
actual or threatened
violence directed
against
non-Indian racial
groups,
and a
highly amplified,
al-
most obsessive concern with local
political legitimacy
and
authority.
It is true
that one sees this
village utopianism prefigured
in occasional incidents before
1810 or
so,
and also true that
during
the
insurgency
it was sometimes
complicated
by
the
presence
of outside rebel influences.
Nonetheless,
as a manifestation of
the localocentric
identity
and worldview of
peasant
communities it was more
frequent,
and achieved its most
developed expression, during
the
insurgency
period.
One
fairly
vivid
example
of the
pueblo-as-soviet during
the
insurgency
is that
of the
village
of San Lorenzo
Ixtacoyotla,
near Metztitlan to the northeast of
Mexico
City,
taken
by
force of
royalist
arms on 15 November 1811.
Though
the
defenders of the town had
virtually
no firearms
(only
bows and
arrows, clubs,
and
stones), they
had held it as an
avowedly insurgent
commune for some two
months. The
major leadership
seems to have
come
not from
outsiders,
but from
the
gobernador
of the
pueblo
and the local
insurgent
cabecillas
(leaders)
Luis Vite
(also
an
Indian)
and Vicente Acosta. Local men were recruited to steal maize
from the
nearby
Hacienda San Guillermo and other estates. Other
villages
in
259
journal
of social
history
the area were known to the rebels as
"cantons," though
their action in concert
was
virtually
non-existent. Local roads
connecting
the
insurgent villages
with
other areas were
cut,
the rebels
"
...
thinking
with this that the
pueblo
would
remain safe"-not
only,
one
suspects,
for tactical
reasons,
but to underline the
autochthonous nature of the
uprising.44
Local men
loyal
to the insurrection for
the most
part
wore a device with a
representation
of the
Virgin
of
Guadalupe
and a feather on it. Acosta
enjoined
the
village
rebels not to believe in
(or
acknowledge
the
authority
of)
King
Ferdinand VII
("
...
que
no
creyeran
en
el
Rey"),
and Vite convinced them that the
royalist troops operating
in the
region
"
... came
killing everyone
because since
they
were
gachupines they
did
not like the local men
("los hijos" [del
pueblo])
because
they
are Indians." It
was also
widely
believed
by village insurgents
in the area that the
gachupines
and
other non-Indian locals were allied
against
the Indian
villagers,"
... and if the
non-Indians
help
the
gachupines,
we have no other
support
than our
Lady
of
Guadalupe."
One
captured
rebel testified
ingenuously
that the
insurgents
would
eventually triumph
because
they
followed the commands
("la
ley")
of"Nuestra
Sefiora de
Guadalupe,
la Americana." When
questioned specifically
what those
commands consisted
of,
he said
"
... he doesn't know what the laws
contain,
but that
they
were
promulgated by
those
iniquitous
men who are
persecuting
the
Europeans
and
embargoing [the
property ofl
and
arresting
all the non-Indians
of the town who are their allies."45
So we have here and in other cases what looks to be the
embryonic stage
of an
insular
village utopia, substantially
cut off from other such
communes,
acting
to
expropriate property
from
non-Indians,
and
following
at least to some
degree
an
ideology
of American
religious legitimation,
ethnic
exclusion,
and
rejection
of
the colonial state from the
top
down. The creation of these
village
soviets-or
even the
tendency
to move in that
direction,
short of
actually instituting
such
a commune-was
pregnant
with
significance concerning indigenous villagers'
views on
political authority
and the colonial
regime
in
general.
One can rea-
sonably
infer from their actions in these situations-as in the "normal"
village
politics
of the
pre-insurgency period-the
localocentric worldview and
politi-
cal
ideology
we have been
describing.
A
diagnostic sign
of this collective habit
of mind is the
preoccupation
with
political legitimacy
that one sees in
many
rural disturbances
during
the era. The basic model in
play
here seems to have
been one in which
sovereignty
(to
some
extent)
and
legitimacy (to
a
greater
extent)
were seen as immanent in the local
indigenous polity,
or at least could
be
disaggregated
to several
levels,
the bottom-most of which was the communal
landholding village.
The model resonated
strongly
with the
concept
of the two
republics
much talked of in the sixteenth
century,
in which
Spanish
and Indian
polities
were seen in
theory
to be
separate
from each other
politically, though
they might
touch at
points
for
purposes
of
religious
conversion and
maintenance,
and
(uneven)
economic
exchange.46
A hermetic
sealing-off
of
indigenous
from
conqueror society
was never envisioned in this
doctrine,
of
course,
except among
its most extreme
advocates,
but in
actuality
a substantial
village political
auton-
omy
was
widely customary
even
by
the close of the colonial
period.
The
point
is that this seems not to have been
imposed
from the
top
of the
imperial
struc-
ture
down,
but was rather accommodated to as it continued to well
up
from the
smiallest
political
cells in rural
society.47
260 winter 1993
AGRARIAN REBELLION AND DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY
Finally, patterns
of
popular participation
in the
insurgency
tend to reinforce
the model of
peasant
collective action we have been
exploring
here.
Throughout
its
life,
but most
especially
in its
early phases,
the
popular following
of the
insurgent
cause was in the main
identifiably
Indian as
opposed
to mestizo.48 This
conclusion is based
upon
a
computer-analyzed sample
of
nearly 1,300
individuals
captured
as
insurgents
between 1810 and 1815. Of those individuals
(about
85
percent
of the
sample)
whose
ethnicity
can be
determined,
some 55
percent
were
Indian,
25
percent Spanish (overwhelmingly
creole,
or New
World-born),
15
percent
mestizo,
and 5
percent
mulatto or black. This
corresponds fairly
closely
to the
generally accepted
overall ethnic
makeup
of New
Spain
at the
end of the colonial
period,
when the
population
was
comprised
of 60
percent
Indians,
18
percent
whites,
and about 22
percent
mixed-blood
groups.
Some
well substantiated conclusions from the
sample
of
captured insurgents
extend to
other
variables,
as
well,
including age,
marital
status,
occupation, place
of
origin,
and so forth. To summarize
here,
the modal rebel of the
period
turs out to have
been a married Indian farmer or rural laborer-a
peasant,
it is fair to
say-of
about
thirty years
old
(almost elderly by
the standards of the
time), probably
the
head of a nuclear
family,
and most
likely captured
within
sixty
miles or so of his
home,
a two- or
three-day trip by
foot.49
This last
point
is of some
particular
interest to
us,
since it
provides
a
picture
of
the
physical mobility
of
people
in times of acute social
upheaval,
and therefore
some
insight
into the worldview of
popular
rebels and the sub-set of cultural ideas
they
shared
amongst
themselves. There are
significant
differentials
amongst
eth-
nic
groups
insofar as distance between home and
place
of
capture
is concerned.
The clearest of these is between Indians and
Spaniards
(that
is to
say, whites),
the former about four times more
likely
that the latter to be
captured
within a
short distance
(say,
three hours or so
by
foot)
of their homes. On the
whole,
these
findings
and results of other cross-tabulations
among
the variables
suggest
a sort
of von Thiinen's
ring-like arrangement
in the
propensity
of
groups
in the insur-
gent population
to act in a
spatial
field centered on their home
towns, villages,
and hamlets.
Indians,
laborers and
farmers,
and married men tended
generally
to
stay
closest to
home,
while
Spaniards,
small merchants and
muleteers,
and
single
men wandered furthest afield. The most
likely interpretation
of this
hinges
on
differences in
mentality among
the
groups
in
question,
the most
important
of
these in the
present
context
being
a
metaphorical political
horizon
defining
the
effective limits of
people's
action in collectivities. Indian
peasants,
who made
up
the
largest group amongst
the
insurgents,
were
profoundly
localocentric in
their
worldview,
and their actions tended to be constrained
by
the
political
and
affective
campanilismo
characteristic of their
mentality. Spaniards,
on the other
hand,
were much more
likely
to
enjoy
a
higher degree
of
physical
and social
mobility,
to have
experienced something
of a wider
world,
and therefore to be
able to conceive of an abstract
entity
such as a nation in whose nominal interest
they might
take
up
arms. There would
appear
to be a
spatial gradient, therefore,
corresponding closely
to an ethnic one which reflected not the
importance
of
race
per
se in
stimulating
or
damping
collective
action,
but the
largely
unarticu-
lated views of different
groups
as to what constituted the
appropriate community
of reference for such action.
In
conclusion,
if we
analyze popular
violence,
thinking,
and
mentality
it
begins
261
to become clear how
agrarian
discontent could have bred
continuing political
violence in the absence of an
overarching ideology
of
agrarianism.
A focus on
the
intervening
variables between
agrarian change
and collective action-on
the structure of rural
communities,
on Indian cultural
identity,
and on ethnic
relations-indicates that
agrarian discontent,
while real
enough
in
itself,
was
only
one
aspect
of a
broader,
ongoing struggle
of cultural resistance. The
floodgate
of
opportunity provided by
the
Spanish imperial
crisis allowed this
struggle
to
overflow its
normally
restricted banks and
betray
its
totalizing
character. But
if this is the
case,
what does it do to our
understanding
of the
independence
movement? The conclusion is
inescapable
that
popular
and elite rebels had
substantially
different and
mutually incomprehensible agendas
when
they
took
up
arms
against
the
Spanish
colonizers,
and that the
independence
conflict was
less a
two-way struggle
than a
three-way
conflict
amongst
the Mexican
masses,
the elite creole directorate of the
insurgency,
and the colonial
regime.
Department of History
LaJolla,
CA 92093-0104
ENDNOTES
1. The brief account
presented
here is based on a detailed reconstruction of the occur-
rence in
Chapter 3, "Anatomy
of a
Riot,
1:
Atlacomulco, 1810,"
in
my book-in-progress,
"The Other Rebellion:
Popular
Violence and
Ideology
in
Mexico,
1810-1816." The doc-
umentation on the Atlacomulco
case, except
where otherwise
noted,
is to be found in
Archivo General de la
Naci6n,
Mexico
(hereafter, AGN), Criminal,
vol.
229,
no
expe-
diente
no.,
fols.
263r-413v, 1810;
vol.
231,
exp.
1,
fols.
lr-59r, 1811;
vol.
238,
exp.
1,
fols.
lr-66v, 1811;
and
AGN, Infidencias,
vol.
24,
exp.
13,
fols.
246r-254v,
Fagoaga
to
Venegas,
1
July
1811.
2. Such rumors were common
among
rural
people especially during
the
early years
of
the
insurgency
in
Mexico,
recalling
to some extent in form and content the
rapidly
cir-
culating, panic-inducing
tales of
marauding
armies of
sanguinary counter-revolutionary
aristocrats traced
by Georges
Lefebvre in The Great Fear
of
1789: Rural Panic in Revolu-
tionary
France
(Princeton, 1973).
3. The rebellion had broken out on 16
September
1810 under
Hidalgo's leadership,
at the central Mexican town of
Dolores,
his own
parish.
At first autonomist in its
aims,
it
quickly
came to
espouse
a
complete political rupture
with
Spain, though
it embraced
both monarchist and
republican
tendencies. After a series of initial
military victories,
Father
Hidalgo
and several of his lieutenants were
captured
and executed in
mid-1811,
the same fate that in 1815 befell
Hidalgo's
sometime
seminary
student and
political
successor
Jose
Maria
Morelos,
also a
parish priest.
Guerrilla warfare continued in
many
parts
of the
country
until a conservative creole
(Mexican-bom white) military officer,
Agustmn
de
Iturbide,
consummated the break with
Spain
in
1821,
establishing
a short-
lived
empire
with himself on the throne. For a solid recent
interpretive history
of the
Mexican
independence
movement,
also
embodying
much new
primary
research,
see Brian
R.
Hamnett,
Roots
of Insurgency:
Mexican
Regions,
1750-1824
(Cambridge, 1986);
and
specifically
on the
Hidalgo period (September, 1810-January, 1811), Hugh
M.
Hamill,
Jr.,
The
Hidalgo
Revolt: Prelude to Mexican
Independence (Gainesville, 1966).
4. For a detailed reconstruction of local
agrarian
conflicts between about 1775 and
journal
of social
history
262 winter 1993
AGRARIAN REBELLION AND DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY
1810,
but also
reaching
back into the seventeenth
century,
see the discussion in
my
manuscript
mentioned in note 1
above,
and the sources from
AGN, Tierras,
cited there.
5. For a
survey
and some case studies of these
phenomena,
and their
relationship
to
popular
collective violence in
general
and the outbreak of the
independence
movement
in
particular,
see the
essays
in Eric Van
Young,
La crisis del orden colonial: Estructura
agraria
y
rebeli6n
popular
en la Nueva
Espania,
1750-1821
(Mexico City, 1992).
6. For
example,
there is some evidence to indicate that one of the men
prominently
implicated
in the murder of
Magdaleno
Diez
himself, Jose
Maria
Reyes,
was a somewhat
less successful commercial
competitor
of the murdered
man;
and that old
grudges relating
specifically
to local
politics
and law enforcement
arrangements played
their
part
in
polar-
izing
the
community
into factional
struggles
that entered
heavily
into the victimization
of
Magdaleno
Diez.
7. I have elsewhere
explained
this
dynamic
as one in which violence directed
by
Indi-
ans and other
popular groups against European Spaniards
should be seen as a
displacement
of hostile affect
away
from whites as a whole
(both
creole and
European)
and toward Eu-
ropean Spaniards
in
particular, following along
the lines of
scapegoating.
A
compellingly
cogent
model of this behavior is
provided by
the
concept
of
"splitting,"
which
grows
out of the
object-relations
school of
psychoanalytic theory. Explorations
of the
concept
of
splitting,
and allusions to
it,
in the
object-relations
literature are
many;
see,
among
others,
Margaret
S.
Mahler,
"Rapprochement Subphase
of the
Separation-Individuation
Process,"
Psychoanalytic Quarterly
41
(1972): 487-506;
P.
Giovacchini,
Treatment
of
Prim-
itive Mental States
(New York, 1979), 20-39;
Richard
Galston, "Teasing
as an Inducer of
Violence,"
in
Justin
D.
Call,
Eleanor
Galenson,
and Robert L.
Tyson, eds.,
Frontiers
of
Infant Psychiatry (New York, 1984),
2:
307-312;
and
especially
Louise
J. Kaplan,
Oneness
and
Separateness:
From
Infant
to Individual
(New York, 1978), 42-48,
252-253.
8. It is doubtful that Morelos himself favored
large-scale agrarian
reform-the
break-up
and redistribution to the
peasantry
of
large, secularly
owned rural
estates-though
such
plans
were
apparently
authored
by
more radical urban-based creole rebels associated with
his
movement;
Morelos's own
proposals
touched more
upon
the abolition of tribute and
slavery,
and in the
agrarian
realm on the
preservation
and
disposition
of
village
common
lands. On Morelos's
tepidity
as an
agrarian
reformer,
see Wilbert H.
Timmons, "Jose
Maria
Morelos:
Agrarian
Reformer?",
Hispanic
American Historical Review 35
(1956): 183-195;
Timothy
E.
Anna,
The Fall
of
the
Royal
Government in Mexico
City (Lincoln, 1978), 240,
n.
31;
and
Jorge
I.
Dominguez,
Insurrection or
Loyalty:
The Breakdown
of
the
Spanish
American
Empire
(Cambridge,
MA, 1980),
199-200.
9.
John Tutino,
in his book From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases
of
Agrarian Violence,
1750-1940
(Princeton, 1986),
has traced these
linkages
in an
extremely
suggestive way
for a number of
important
Mexican
regions
over two
centuries,
though
I
would take issue with some of his conclusions
(see
n. 21
below).
10. On this theme
see,
particularly,
the work of William B.
Taylor, Drinking, Homicide,
and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican
Villages (Stanford, 1979);
and
Tutino,
From Insurrection
to Revolution.
11.
James Scott,
Weapons of
the Weak:
Everyday
Forms
of
Peasant Resistance
(New Haven,
1985), especially Chapter
2,
has some
interesting
observations to make on
consciousness,
collective
behavior,
and class interest
among Malaysian peasants,
and
among peasants
more
generally,
but his view tends to be that
relationship
to the means of
production
is antecedent to what one
might
call "cultural" variables. This stance is even clearer in
his more recent
work,
Domination and the Arts
of
Resistance: The Hidden
Transcript
(New
Haven, 1990).
For further
development
of the view of
agrarian
conflict as a cultural
project,
see
my forthcoming
article
"Dreamscape
with
Figures
and Fences: Cultural Con-
263
journal
of social
history
tention and Discourse in the Late Colonial Mexican
Countryside,"
in
Serge
Gruzinski
and Nathan
Wachtel, eds.,
Le Nouveau Monde-Mondes Nouveaux
(Paris, forthcoming);
and for a
critique
of some of Scott's
ideas, my
article,
"The Cuautla Lazarus: Double Sub-
jectives
in
Reading
Texts on
Popular
Collective
Action,"
Colonial Latin American Review
2
(1993):
3-26.
12.
See,
for
example,
the classic treatment of
Lesley Byrd Simpson, Many Mexicos, 4th
ed.,
revised
(Berkeley,
1967) (but
to be
fair,
Simpson
[203] noted the lack of
any
"trickle-
down effect" from silver-based
wealth);
Colin MacLachlan and
Jaime
E.
Rodriguez,
The
Forging of
the Cosmic Race: A
Reinterpretation of
Colonial Mexico
(Berkeley, 1980); Jaime
E.
Rodriguez,
Down
from
Colonialism: Mexico's
Nineteenth-Century
Crisis
(Distinguished
Faculty Lecture, University
of
Califoria, Irvine, 1980);
and more
recently, John
S.
Leiby,
Colonial Bureaucrats and the Mexican
Economy (New York, 1986).
13. Eric Van
Young,
"The
Age
of Paradox: Mexican
Agriculture
at the End of the Colo-
nial
Period, 1750-1810,"
in Nils
Jacobsen
and
Hans-Jiirgen
Puhle, eds.,
The Economies
of
Mexico and Peru
During
the Late Colonial
Period,
1760-1810
(Berlin, 1986), 64-90.
14. The discussion of the late colonial
economy
is based
substantially
on two articles
by
Eric Van
Young:
"A modo de conclusi6n: el
siglo parad6jico,"
in
Arij
Ouweneel and
Cristina Torales
Pacheco, eds.,
Empresarios,
indios
y
estado:
Perfil
de la economia mexicana
(Siglo XVIII) (Amsterdam, 1988), 206-231;
and
Chapter 2,
"Los ricos se vuelven mas
ricos
y
los
pobres
mas
pobres:
Salarios reales
y
estandares
populares
de vida a fines de la
colonia en
Mexico,"
in Van
Young,
La crisis del orden colonial.
15.
See, particularly, John
H.
Coatsworth,
"The Mexican
Mining Industry
in the
Eigh-
teenth
Century,"
in
Jacobsen
and
Puhle, eds.,
The Economies
of
Mexico and
Peru, 26-45;
the same
author's,
"La
historiografia
econ6mica de
Mexico,"
in
John
H.
Coatsworth,
Los
origenes
del atraso: Nueve
ensayos
de historia econ6mica de Mexico en los
siglos
XVIII
y
XIX
(Mexico City, 1990), 21-36;
and
Coatsworth,
"Obstacles to Economic Growth in
Nineteenth-Century Mexico,"
American Historical Review 83
(1978):
80-100. In ad-
dition,
see Richard L.
Garer,
"Silver Production and
Entrepreneurial
Structure in
Eighteenth-Century
Mexico," Jahrbuch
fur
Geschichte von
Staat, Wirtschaft
und
Gesellschaft
Lateinamerikas 17
(1980):
157-185.
16. The
figure
on
exports
as a
percentage
of
gross
domestic
product
is drawn from
John
H.
Coatsworth,
"El estado
y
el sector extemo de
Mexico, 1800-1910,"
Secuencias 2
(1985):
40-41. David
Brading,
Miners and Merchants in Bourbon
Mexico,
1763-1810
(Cambridge,
1971), 96,
and Laura
Randall,
A
Comparative
Economic
History of
Latin
America,
1500-
1914,
vol.
1,
Mexico
(Ann Arbor, 1977), 234-235,
would both
put
the share of
exports
as
percentage
of GDP somewhat
higher. Jaime
E.
Rodriguez,
Down
from
Colonialism, 3,
estimates that silver constituted 75-85
percent
of all Mexican
exports by
value for the
period
1796-1820.
Rodriguez
would
put
the level of
exports
at about 14
percent
of GDP
around
1800,
feasible but
improbably high,
in
my
view,
because of the enormous
weight
of unmonetarized and uncounted subsistence
production
in the
economy
as a whole.
17.
John TePaske,
"Economic
Cycles
in New
Spain
in the
Eighteenth Century:
A View
from the Public
Sector,"
in Richard L. Garer and William B.
Taylor, eds.,
Iberian
Colonies,
New World Societies:
Essays
in
Memory of
Charles Gibson
(n. 1., 1985),
125 and
passim;
and
the same author's "The Financial
Disintegration
of the
Royal
Government of Mexico
During
the
Epoch
of
Independence,"
in
Jaime
E.
Rodriguez,
ed.,
The
Independence of
Mexico and the Creation
of
the New Nation
(Los
Angeles, 1989), 63-84. See
also,
in Garer
and
Taylor, eds.,
Iberian
Colonies,
the
essay
of
Stanley J. Stein,
"Prelude to
Upheaval
in
Spain
and New
Spain,
1800-1808: Trust
Funds, Spanish Finance,
and Colonial
Silver,"
185-202. For
figures
on
exports,
see
Brading,
Miners and
Merchants, 96;
and
Randall,
A
Comparative
Economic
History, 1:234-235,
both of which are based on
Miguel
Lerdo
de
Tejada,
Comercio exterior de Mexico desde la
Conquista
hasta
hoy (Mexico City, 1967;
originally published 1853),
Table
14, 30-41.
winter 1993
264
AGRARIAN REBELLION AND DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY
18. For detailed studies of these two
regions, see,
respectively,
Eric Van
Young,
Hacienda
and Market in
Eighteenth-Century
Mexico: The Rural
Economy of
the
Guadalajara
Region,
1675-1821
(Berkeley, 1981);
and David A.
Brading,
Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican
Bajio: Leon,
1700-1860
(Cambridge, 1978).
19. This is the
gist
of the
argument presented by
Richard L.
Gamer,
"Price Trends in
Eighteenth-Century Mexico," Hispanic
American Historical Review 65
(1985): 279-325;
and more
recently by Arij
Ouweneel and C. C.
J.
H.
Bijleveld,
"The Economic
Cycle
in
Bourbon Central Mexico: A
Critique
of the 'recaudaci6n del diezmo
liquido
en
pesos,'"
Hispanic
American Historical Review 69
(1989): 479-530.
20. These schematic conclusions are based on the income estimates of
John
TePaske in
his "Economic
Cycles,"
126,
which
depend
in turn
upon determining
an
appropriate
mul-
tiplier
for silver
output;
TePaske derives these from
Coatsworth,
"Obstacles to Economic
Growth." A number of such calculations have been
made,
several of them
differing
as to
the
magnitude
of the terms to be
employed-total population, mining output, mining
as
a
percentage
of total economic
production,
and so forth. Most other estimates of GDP
and
per capita
income
rely
on basic
figures
set forth in
Jose
Maria
Quiros,
Memoria de
estatuto
(Veracruz, 1817). Coatsworth,
"Obstacles to
Progress," 82,
asserts that Mexican
per capita
income in 1800 was about half that in the U.S. and a third that in Great
Britain,
while
Rodriguez,
Down
from Colonialism, 4,
on the basis of small
population estimates,
puts
Mexican
per capita
income at about two-thirds that of its northern
neighbor.
21. This
discussion,
as that of
wages
and
living
standards,
is based
primarily
on
Chapter
2 in Van
Young,
La crisis del orden
colonial,
and the sources cited there. In
addition,
see
particularly, Gamer,
"Price
Trends,"
and his more recent
essay,
"Prices and
Wages
in
Eighteenth-Century Mexico,"
in
Lyman
L.
Johnson
and
Enrique
Tandeter, eds., Essays
on
the Price
History of Eighteenth-Century
Latin America
(Albuquerque, 1990), 73-108; and,
among
other recent
works,
the
essays
of Clara Suarez
Arguello
and
Virginia
Garcia Acosta
on wheat
production
and
prices
in Ouweneel and Torales
Pacheco, eds.,
Empresarios,
indios
y estado,
103-115 and
116-137,
respectively.
For a
dissenting
view on the
general price
trend,
see the
idiosyncratic
and somewhat
self-adulatory
article of
Ruggiero Romano,
"Some Considerations on the
History
of Prices in Colonial Latin
America,"
in
Johnson
and
Tandeter, eds.,
Essays,
35-72. In a short article in the same volume
(21-34), John
Coatsworth notes the
still-primitive
state of
price history
for colonial Latin America.
22. For the
Valleys
of Mexico and
Toluca,
see
John Tutino,
"Creole Mexico:
Spanish
Elites, Haciendas,
and Indian
Towns,
1750-1820"
(PhD. diss.,
University
of Texas at
Austin, 1976), 242-247;
for a somewhat
larger
zone,
see Ouweneel and
Bijleveld,
"The
Economic
Cycle
in Bourbon Central
Mexico,"
and
Chapters
3 and 4 of
my
book-in-
progress,
"The Other Rebellion:
Popular
Violence and
Ideology
in
Mexico,
1810-1816."
Tutino and Ouweneel
/Bijleveld
indicate that land
disputes
were
increasing
faster than
indigenous population.
For the
Guadalajara region
at the end of the
eighteenth century,
see the
impressionistic
discussion of land
disputes involving
Indian
villages, amounting
to much the same
conclusion,
in Van
Young,
Hacienda and
Market,
Chapter
14.
23. On the
upsurge
in rural
brigandage
and other sorts of crime in the
eighteenth
century see,
for
example,
Paul
J. Vanderwood,
Disorder and
Progress: Bandits, Police,
and
Mexican
Development (Lincoln, NE, 1981);
Colin M.
MacLachlan,
Criminal
Justice
in
Eighteenth-Century
Mexico: A
Study of
the Tribunal
of
the Acordada
(Berkeley, 1974);
and
especially
Hamnett,
Roots
of Insurgency,
59-67. The
upsurge
in rural
brigandage,
as
might
be
supposed,
was echoed
by
the increase in urban
crime,
which has been much better
studied,
especially
for Mexico
City. Among
the most
interesting
of recent treatments of
crime in the
viceregal capital
is Teresa Lozano
Armendares,
La criminalidad en la ciudad de
Mexico,
1800-1821
(Mexico
City, 1987),
who
strongly implies
that the overall
frequency
of crime of all sorts in Mexico
City
was
increasing
at the turn of the nineteenth
century;
and for a similar situation in Puebla and
Guadalajara,
see
Hamnett,
Roots
of Insurgency,
60-61.
265
24. The
tally
of rural disturbances is based on a combination of data from
Taylor,
Drink-
ing, Homicide,
and
Rebellion,
especially Appendix A, 173-177,
with that
produced by my
own research in
AGN,
various ramos. For a
tally embracing
most of Latin
America,
but
based on somewhat broader criteria
(including
slave
rebellions,
for
example),
see
John
H.
Coatsworth,
"Patterns of Rural Rebellion in Latin America: Mexico in
Comparative
Perspective,"
in Friedrich
Katz, ed., Riot, Rebellion,
and Revolution: Rural Social
Conflict
in
Mexico
(Princeton,1988),
21-62. On
periodicity
of various sorts in
eighteenth-century
subsistence
crises,
see
Enrique
Florescano,
Precios del maiz
y
crisis
agrncolas
en Mexico
(1708-181
0) (Mexico City, 1969).
25. This often
goes unacknowledged by
moder scholars in favor of neat
explanatory
schemes that stress class or other theoretical constructions of
popular
behavior. In his
pathbreaking
book From Insurrection to Revolution in
Mexico,
for
example, John
Tutino is
at some
pains
to
prove
that the central
valleys
of Mexico remained
substantially passive
during
the
early independence struggle
because most
villagers
there retained a
large degree
of material
security,
and economic and social
autonomy,
as the result of a
longstanding
"symbiotic" relationship
with
neighboring
haciendas. Tutino's formulation of a socioe-
conomic
symbiosis
is
useful,
I
think;
I do not
dispute
its
existence,
but rather its
specific
applicability
at certain times and
places.
In
fact,
as the Atlacomulco incident and dozens
of other
village
riots of the
period
make
abundantly
clear,
there was considerable rural
unrest in the central
valley regions
of the
country,
but it took a
peculiarly
constrained
form molded
by
the cultural tone and
political history
of
village
life.
26. In this
connection, by
the
way,
it
may
be mentioned that
being
both a substantial
landholder and a
representative
of the
Spanish
state,
as in Romualdo
Magdaleno
Diez's
case (he was a sometime minor local
official),
increased the likelihood of victimization.
27. To cite but three
examples
of
regional monographs
which
paint
this
picture
for
various
parts
of New
Spain,
there are the works of William B.
Taylor,
Landlord and Peasant
in Colonial Oaxaca
(Stanford, 1972); Cheryl
E.
Martin,
Rural
Society
in Colonial Morelos
(Albuquerque, 1985);
and Van
Young,
Hacienda and Market. A theoretical model for
such endemic conflict is
put
forth in
my
article "Conflict and
Solidarity
in Indian
Village
Life: The
Guadalajara Region
in the Late Colonial
Period," Hispanic
American Historical
Review 64
(1984):
55-79. Land conflict at the
village
level is seen as a
major etiological
factor of the
insurgency by Tutino,
From Insurrection to
Revolution,
and
by
Hamnett,
Roots
of Insurgency, among
other authors.
28. Documentation on
Jilotepec
is to be found in
AGN, Historia,
vol. 411,
exp.
6,
fols.
36r-41r, 1811; AGN, Criminal,
vol.
26,
exps.
9-10,
no
page
nos., 1818; AGN, Tierras,
vol.
2176, exp. 1,
no
page
nos., 1782;
and
exp. 3,
no
page nos., 1808;
and vol.
2191, exp.
3,
no
page
nos.,
1806.
29.
AGN, Historia,
vol.
103, exp. 1,
fols.
lr-6v,
1811. For a similar attack on the
pueblo
of
Cempoala
and a
nearby
hacienda about the same
time,
see
AGN, Historia,
vol.
105,
exp.
35, fols.
122r-v,
1811.
30. For a few
representative examples (among
hundreds)
of the extensive
sacking
or
outright
destruction of rural
estates,
see the cases of the Hacienda de San
Clemente,
to the
west of Lake
Chapala-Biblioteca
Piblica del Estado de
Jalisco,
Guadalajara
(hereafter,
BPE), Criminal, leg.
6,
exp.
36, 1811;
at least two haciendas in the area of
Ixtlafn-BPE,
Criminal,
paquete
23, exp.
5,
ser.
505, 1811;
several haciendas in the area of
Cuautitlan,
to
the north of Mexico
City-AGN, Operaciones
de Guerra
(hereafter, OG),
vol.
16,
fols.
18r-22r, 1812;
the haciendas of
Miacatlan,
el
Puente,
and
Mazatepec
in the Cuernavaca
area-AGN, Infidencias,
vol.
32, exp. 5,
fols.
192r-226r, 1817; Tayagua
and other estates
in the
Jalpa
area near
Zacatecas-AGN-OG,
vol.
151,
fols.
106r-108r,
Gayangos
to
Cruz,
18
April 1816;
the famous Hacienda de la
Gavia,
near
Piedragorda
in the
Bajio-
AGN-OG,
vol.
155,
fol.
287r, 1818;
and the haciendas
Ojuelos
and
Cienega
de Mata in
the Altos de
Jalisco-AGN-OG,
vol.
158,
fols.
312r,
1819. Romualdo
Magdaleno
Diez's
266
journal
of social
history
winter 1993
AGRARIAN REBELLION AND DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY
Hacienda de
Xomeje, just
to the west of
Atlacomulco,
was sacked down to the door locks
by
a
predominantly
Indian crowd
following
the
killings
of 2 November 1810.
31.
AGN, Infidencias,
vol.
2,
exp.
7,
fols. 145r-153v, 1811. It should be noted in
passing
that rural social conflict in the Pachuca zone was
quite consistently fed,
well into the late
eighteenth century, by
forced labor recruitment
among
Indian
villagers
to meet the needs
of the famous silver mines in the
area;
Doris M.
Ladd,
The
Making of
a Strike: Mexican
Silver Workers'
Struggles
in Real del
Monte,
1766-1775
(Lincoln, NE, 1988), 29-44.
32.
AGN, Criminal,
vol.
13,
exp. 9,1810;
it will be remembered that this is
roughly
the
same area where Atlacomulco is located. For another
example
of the
complete
sack of a
rural estate
by villagers
and rebel
invaders,
see the case of the unnamed hacienda in the
Tulancingo
area,
in
AGN, Infidencias,
vol.
41,
exp.
5,
fols.
285r-289v,
1812.
33.
AGN, Infidencias,
vol.
16,
exp.
3,
fols.
16r-23v,
1811. On the other
hand,
local
landowners
occasionally
found in
insurgent activity
a
pretext
for
arresting
troublesome
villagers
with whom
they
were embroiled in conflicts over land.
34. AGN, Criminal,
vol.
53,
exps.
16-17,
fols.
196r-224r,
1810.
35.
AGN, Historia,
vol.
104,
exp.
6,
fols.
12r-18v,
1812.
36. For a
sweeping interpretation
of the Revolution of 1910-1920
emphasizing
the
agrarian origins
of rural rebellion and
detailing popular peasant aspirations
for land redis-
tribution,
see Alan
Knight,
The Mexican
Revolution,
2 vols.
(Cambridge, 1986);
and also
Tutino,
From Insurrection to
Revolution;
and for a discussion of some
points
of contrast be-
tween the two
popular insurgencies relating
to the
presence
or absence of
explicit agrarian
grievances
and land seizures
by peasants,
see
my
review
article,
"'To See Someone Not
Seeing':
Historical Studies of Peasants and Politics in
Mexico,"
Mexican Studies/Estudios
Mexicanos 6
(1990):
133-159.
37. There is some considerable
irony,
therefore,
in the occasional
popular
veneration
of Allende
during
1810-1811 as a messianic
surrogate
for
King
Ferdinand
VII,
and in
the label of land reformer attached to his
figure,
even
though
he himself was
appalled
at
popular
retributive violence and shunned
any
reforms of Mexican
society
other than in
the
political sphere.
For a detailed treatment of this
theme,
see
my essay
"Quetzalc6atl,
King
Ferdinand,
and
Ignacio
Allende Go to the
Seashore; or,
Messianism and
Mystical
Kingship
in
Mexico, 1800-1821,"
in
Rodriguez,
ed.,
The
Independence of Mexico,
109-
128. A mild
physiocratic critique
of the colonial
landholding system,
focused on the
supposedly retrograde
effects of
large
estates and
practices
of
entail,
did
develop among
an
enlightened segment
of the colonial elite in the late
eighteenth century, paralleling
similar
developments
in
Spain
(the
tratadistas come to mind
here)
and elsewhere in
Europe;
on New
Spain,
see
Enrique Florescano,
"El
problema agrario
en los ultimos afos
del
virreinato,"
Historia Mexicana 20
(1971): 477-510;
and on
Spain,
Richard
Herr,
Rural
Change
and
Royal
Finances in
Spain
at the End
of
the Old
Regime (Berkeley, 1989).
38. These are the conclusions arrived at
by
Romana Falc6n in her extended studies of
the north-central state of San Luis
Potosi,
for
example.
Falc6n's conclusions are worth
quoting,
in
fact,
for their resonances with the 1810-20
period:
One decisive fact demonstrated the
longing
and limits of the Potosino
popular
revolution:
despite
its historical roots and
agrarian tone, very
little land came to be
distributed. There were more than
enough
reasons: the
prevailing insecurity,
the
military
failure suffered
by
the most
popular
factions ... the fear that
carrying
out
agrarian
distribution would immobilize and disband the
soldiers;
and
that,
without
the confiscated
haciendas,
there would no
longer
be resources for the war. As
important
as the reasons cited above were the
many psychological
barriers and
traditional
political
culture .... The contrast with the
Zapatista approach
was
267
journal
of social
history
clear: the central
objective
of the confiscations in San Luis Potosi was not the
distribution of land for
campesinos.... [This is] impressive proof
of the relative
social
superficiality
that these seizures sometimes
possessed
...
;
Romana
Falc6n,
"San Luis Potosi: Confiscated
Estates-Revolutionary Conquest
or
Spoils?,"
in Thomas
Benjamin
and Mark
Wasserman, eds.,
Provinces
of
the Revolution:
Essays
on
Regional
Mexican
History,
1910-1929
(Albuquerque, 1990), 133-162,
at
p. 148
(italics added).
For the situation of the Morelos
sugar-growing
zone,
to the south of Mex-
ico
City,
and the central
place
of
agrarian
reform in the
Zapatista program,
see Arturo
Warman,
"The Political
Project
of
Zapatismo,"
in
Katz, ed., Riot, Rebellion,
and Revolu-
tion, 321-337;
and the other
essays
in the same volume for the
agrarian picture
in the
nineteenth
century
more
generally, especially
Katz's own
essay,
"Rural Rebellions after
1810,"
521-560.
39. For an
interesting
theoretical and
comparative
historical discussion of the
origins
of nationalist
sensibility
and its relation to the
development
of modem
states,
see Bene-
dict
Anderson, Imagined
Communities:
Reflections
on the
Origin
and
Spread of
Nationalism
(London, 1983).
Peasant
politics
and nationalism have
recently
become
important top-
ics in both Andean and Mexican
history,
as witness
interesting
debates
among
Heraclio
Bonilla,
Florencia
Mallon,
Alan
Knight, John Hart,
and other scholars.
40. AGN, Criminal,
vol.
191,
exp.
1,
fols.
lr-34v, 1803;
and for a similar
case,
at
Amecameca in
1799,
see
AGN, Criminal,
vol.
226,
no
exp.
no.,
fols.
400r-445v,
1799.
41. AGN, Infidencias,
vol.
17,
exps.
7-11,
fols.
137r-307r,
1811.
42. AGN, Criminal,
vol.
156,
fols.
20r-167v, 1810;
and for another incident from the
1810 Amecameca
disturbances,
in which a crowd chanted in Nahuatl
"iQuien? iQuien?"
("Who? Who?")
for the
space
of half an
hour,
see
AGN, Criminal,
vol.
47, exp. 15,
fols.
443r-574v,
1810.
43. Details of the
Chicontepec uprising
are to be found in
AGN, Historia,
vol.
411,
exp.
14,
fols.
84r-116v, 1811;
and
AGN, Infidencias,
vol.
17,
exps.
7-11,
fols.
137r-307r,
1811.
44. For some other instances of
villagers cutting
roads,
see the cases of
Jilotepec,
San
Francisco
Sayamiquilpan,
and several other
villages
in the
Huichapan
area in late
1810,
in
AGN-OG,
vol.
159,
fols.
3r-4r,
Eusebio
Jimenez
to
Venegas,
28 November
1810;
and
Tepetlaostoc, just
to the east of Mexico
City,
in
AGN, Criminal,
vol.
260, exp. 20,
fols.
295r-303r,
1811.
45. AGN, Criminal,
vol.
251,
exps.
1, 10, 11,
respectively
fols.
lr-12v, 309r-319v,
and
320r-329v,
1812.
46. For a
good general
discussion of the
concept
of the two
republics,
see Woodrow W.
Borah, Justice by
Insurance: The General Indian Court
of
Colonial Mexico and the
Legal
Aides
of
the
Half-Real (Berkeley, 1983), 27-35,
and the modem commentaries cited there.
47. It is also
interesting
to note other
aspects
of this isolationism.
Village
riots often oc-
curred,
for
example,
on or around All Saints
Day,
a
point
in the
liturgical
calendar
strongly
associated with
ancestor-worship
and other forms of localism.
Furthermore,
the
patterns
of
physical mobility
in these incidents-where rioters
moved,
and
when-suggests
a
pro-
cess of
implosion
in
village
disturbances,
in which
people
moved into the center of the
pueblo,
where the
significant political
action or violence often took
place,
rather than
out into the
surrounding countryside
or on to other settlements.
48. For a discussion of
why
this runs counter to the conventional wisdom
regarding
the
268 winter 1993
AGRARIAN REBELLION AND DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY 269
social
composition
of the movements for
independence,
see Van
Young,
"In the
Gloomy
Caverns of
Paganism: Popular
Culture,
the Bourbon
State,
and Rebellion in
Mexico,
1800-1821,"
in Christon I.
Archer, ed.,
The Mexican Wars
of Independence, Empire,
and
Early
Republic (Lincoln, NE;
in
press).
49.
By way
of
comparison,
it is
interesting
to note that in the extensive rural disturbances
which occurred in
right-bank
Ukraine in the 1905-07
period,
the
average age
of a small
sample
of arrested
village
men was 33
years;
Robert
Edelman,
Proletarian Peasants: The
Revolution
of
1905 in Russia's Southwest
(Ithaca, 1987),
150.