Articulations of rule: Landowners, revolution, and territory in Chiapas, Mexico 1920-1962

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 31, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 744-762

  Bobrow Strain, Aaron ^a  

^a WHITMAN COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HEGEMONY; INDIGENOUS POPULATION; LANDOWNER; TERRITORY; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

CHIAPAS; MEXICO [NORTH AMERICA]; NORTH AMERICA;

EID: 29744448952     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: 10958614     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2004.05.001     Document Type: Article

References (92)

1. On counter-revolutionary struggles in Chilón see P. Moscoso, El Pinedismo en Chiapas, Mexico, 1987.
2. For general historiography of the Revolution in Chiapas see T. Benjamin, A Rich Land, A Poor People: Politics and Society in Modern Chiapas, Albuquerque, 1996;
3. A. García de León, Resistencia y utopía, Mexico, 1998.
4. Archivo General de la Nación, 2312.8 (5) 5135.
5. La Jornada, January 7, 1994, 1. Fuentes' words echo the tendency in both popular and academic writing on Chiapas to treat landowners as a 'divine caste' exercising a 'perfectly coordinated' 'incontestable hegemony' over the Chiapan countryside that remains 'constant through time.'
6. A. García de León, Resistencia y utopia, Mexico, 1998, 103;
7. H. Tejera Gaona, Identidad, formación regional y conflicto político en Chiapas, Mexico, 1997, 46
8. L.M. Fernandez Ortiz and M. Tarrio Garcia, Ganadería y estructura agraria en Chiapas, Mexico, 1983, 152, respectively. Many of these authors' empirical material transcends their short-handed theorizing of landowners.
9. For example, Benjamin, who, in his classic history of Chiapas, offers the rather uncritical chapter title, '[landowners] and the state are the same thing' ultimately traces complex, often conflictive relations between landowners and the state [T. Benjamin, A Rich Land, A Poor People: Politics and Society in Modern Chiapas, Albuquerque, 1996, 223]. My goal in reflecting on the study of landed elites in Chiapas is not to create a straw person, or frame this article against 'bad' portrayals of landed elites. Rather, it is to highlight the limited extend to which Chiapan landed elites have been theorized at all in this heavily studied region of rural Mexico.
10. Fuentes' invocation of an untouched, 'colonial reserve' also exemplifies the proliferation of un-theorized spatial language and metaphors in scholarship on Mexican politics. As a rule, in recent years, scholars of Mexican politics have conjured space to highlight disjunctives between highly consolidated centralized state rule and entrenched local interests. Thus, discussions of subnational politics frequently invoke sovereign domains and enclaves. Mexico, according to these depictions, is a 'Swiss cheese state'-a solid mass in which actors carve out burps and bubbles of what James Scott has framed as 'nonstate spaces.' These 'enclaves' can either be sites of resistance to authoritarian rule or, more frequently, bastions of despotism.
11. C. Lawson Mexico's unfinished transition: Democratization and authoritarian enclaves in Mexico Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 16 2000 22
12. W.A. Cornelius, J. Hindley and T.A. Eisenstadt, Subnational Politics and Democratization in Mexico, La Jolla, 1999;
13. J.W. Rubin, Decentering the Regime: Ethnicity, Racialism, and Democracy in Juchit́, Mexico, Durham, NC, 1997
14. R. Snyder, After the state withdraws, in: W.A. Cornelius, J. Hindley and T.A. Eisenstadt, Subnational Politics and Democratization in Mexico, La Jolla, 1999
15. J Scott Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Field New Haven 1998
16. See 'Mexico's new cultural history: ¿una lucha libre?' a special issue of the Hispanic American Historical Review (79:2) for overviews of the debates surrounding this emerging field of Mexican historiography. Other key works in the field include: G.M. Joseph and D. Nugent, Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico, Durham, 1994;
17. G.M. Joseph, A. Rubenstein and E. Zolov, Fragments of a Golden Age, Durham, 2001;
18. D. Nugent, Spent Cartridges of Revolution, Chicago, 1993;
19. M.K. Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930-1940, Tucson, 1997
20. A. Wells and G.M. Joseph, Summer of Discontent, Seasons of Upheaval, Stanford, 1996;
21. F.E. Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru, Berkeley, 1995.
22. See J. Rubin, Decentering the Regime, Durham, 1997, 11-23;
23. A. Schmidt, Making it real compared to what? in: G.M. Joseph, A. Rubenstein and E. Zolov (Eds), Fragments of a Golden Age, Durham, 2001 for review of this revisionist perspective.
24. M.K. Vaughan Cultural approaches to peasant politics in the Mexican revolution The Hispanic American Historical Review 79 1999 277
25. H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Oxford, 1991;
26. G. Gordillo Locations of hegemony American Anthropologist 2002 104
27. Classic discussions of territoriality include R.D. Sack, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History, Cambridge, 1986;
28. P. Vandergeest N.L. Peluso Territorialization and state power in Thailand Theory and Society 1995 24
29. My definition, also builds on J. Agnew, Territoriality, in: Johnston, Gregory, Pratt and Watts (Eds), The Dictionary of Human Geography, Oxford, 2000.
30. A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, New York, 1971, 182. 1994.
31. For the new cultural historians' use of hegemony see G.M. Joseph and D. Nugent (Eds), Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and The Negotiation of Rule in Modem Mexico, Durham, 1994.
32. W. Roseberry, Hegemony and the language of contention, in: G.M. Joseph and D. Nugent (Eds), Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico, Durham, 1994, 361.
33. G. Gordillo Locations of hegemony American Anthropologist 2002 104
34. J. de Vos, La paz de dios y del rey, Mexico, 1980.
35. Non-indigenous; in Chiapas, ladino is often used interchangeably with mestizo.
36. J. de Vos, Oro verde, Mexico, 1994;
37. García de León, Resistencia y utopia, Mexico, 1998. For the purposes of this article, I combine Chilón and its smaller neighbor Sitalá. Nearly completely surrounded by Chilón and sharing a similar history, Sitalá was an administrative subdivision of the larger municipality for much of the period covered in this article.
38. J. Rus, Coffee and the recolonization of highland Chiapas Mexico 1892-1910, in: W.C.G. Clorence-Smith and S. Topik (Eds), The World Coffee Economy, Cambridge, 2003.
39. J. Rus, Coffee and the recolonization of highland Chiapas Mexico 1892-1910, in: W.C.G. Clorence-Smith and S. Topik (Eds), The World Coffee Economy, Cambridge, 2003;
40. F. Baumann, Terratenientes, campesinos y expansión de la agricultural capitalista en Chiapas, 1886-1916, Mesoamerica (1983) 5.
41. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, New York, 1967;
42. see A. Richards The political economy of Gutwirstschaft Comparative Studies in Society and History 21 4 1979 483-519 for more on debates over labor-rent estates in general
43. On labor-rent estates in Mexico see A. Knight Mexican Peonaje: What was it and why was it? Journal of Latin American Studies 18 1986 41-74
44. For a more complete historical-geographical analysis see, A. Bobrow-Strain, Rethinking thuggery: Landowners, territory, and violence in Chiapas, Mexico, unpublished PhD thesis, UC Berkeley, 2003.
45. Carlos Bertoni Unda, Interview, Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, July 20, 2001.
46. Registro Agrario Nacional-Tuxtla Gutiterrez, Documentos de Restitutión, Dotación y Ampliatión del Ejido Guaquitepec, 'Dictamen del Gobernador' May 17, 1946.
47. RAN-TG, Letter from Comisión Agraria de Sitalá to the Procurador de Comunidades Indígenas, December 4, 1940.
48. RAN-TG, Documentos Ejido Guaquitepec, Letter from Marcelo Mendoza to Delegado Agrario, DA, November 30, 1954.
49. Registro Agrario Nacional-Mexico City, File 275.1/1800.
50. Archive Muncipal de Sitalá, Letter to Agente del Ministerio Público, October 22, 1960.
51. AMS, Letter from Juez Mixto to Comandante de la Policía Municipal Sitalá, October 15, 1960.
52. Archivo Municipal de Chilon, Letter from Hector Gallegos to Presidente Municpal (PM), Chilón, March 30, 1962.
53. Quoted in AMCH, Letter from Alberto Gutierrez to PM, Chilón, April 26, 1962.
54. AMCH, Letters from Lisandro Diaz C. to Humberto Martinez V., June 9 and 16, 1962.
55. AMCH, 'Certificación' by Humberto Martinez V., July 31, 1963.
56. Alejandro Díaz, Interview, Chilón, Chiapas, July 16, 2001. On the Chiapas-wide land invasions of 1994-1998 see A. Bobrow-Strain, Between a ranch and a hard place, in: N. Peluso and M. Watts (Eds), Violent Environments, Ithaca, 1999, 155-185.
57. see A. Bobrow-Strain, Between a ranch and a hard place, in: N. Peluso and M. Watts (Eds), Violent Environments, Ithaca, 1999, 155-185.
58. AMS, Borador de Oficios, 1954, October 2, 1954.
59. M. Reyes, El reparto de tierras y la política agraria en Chiapas, Mexico, 1992.
60. AMS, Oficio 896, November 15, 1927.
61. AMS, Oficio 123 from Erasto Urbina to PM Sitalá, February 21, 1938
62. AMS, Letter from Director General de Asuntos Indigenas, to PM Sitalá, July 22, 1954.
63. AMS, Letter from el Secretario General de Educación Publica to AM Sitalá, July 21, 1927.
64. E. Maurer, Los Tseltales, Mexico, 1983.
65. AMS, 'Convocatoria' March 28, 1940.
66. AMS, Circular from el Auxiliar de la PDAI, May 31, 1941.
67. AMCH, Oficio 67, March 1, 1940.
68. Diario Oficial de la Natión, Multiple issues, Mexico, 1922-1988.
69. Archivo Histórico del Poder Legislative del Estado de Chiapas, Letter from Secretario General to PM Chilón, January 26, 1967.
70. J. Nash, Death as a way of life: The increasing resort to homicide in a Maya Indian Community, American Anthropologist 69 (1967) 435-477.
71. AMCH, Libro del Juzgado de 1950.
72. AMCH, Acta del Juzgado, November 9, 1946.
73. Horizontes May 3, 1967 1
74. AMCH, Ejido Committee of El Carmen to DAAC, June 19, 1965.
75. AMS, Illegible to AM Sitalá, n.d.; Acta del Juez Municipal, April 14, 1942.
76. AMS, Letter from President of CEA Golonchán to PM Sitalá, March 18, 1940.
77. Diario Oficial de la Natión, Multiple issues, 1922-1988.
78. AMCH, 'Censo de Cantinas y Comercios' 1962.
79. RAN-TG, Letter from DA to Jefe de Zona de Organizaciones Agrarias y Ejidales, August 11, 1971.
80. RAN-TG, Letter from Campesinos Indigenas de Golonchán to Eva Samano de López Mateos, October 5, 1962.
81. Wenceslao Lopez Trujillo, Interview, Yajalón, Chiapas, December 1, 2000.
82. Horizontes January 16, 1967
83. RAN-TG, 'Proyecto de dictamen sobre dotación de ejidos al pueblo Sitalá del Municipio de Chilón' June 20, 1933.
84. RAN-DF Certificado de Inafectabilidad, 275.1/1302.
85. The official, agricultural engineer Abel Trujillo López, seems to have made a career out of determining that groups of peasants were ineligible to solicit land with similar rulings regarding three other estates.
86. RAN-TG, 'Acta de inexistencia del poblado de Shishontonil' March 11, 1957.
87. In one documented case, landowner and former-municipal president, Isaias Solorzano was released after being briefly held for the murder of a peasant (Horizontes (August 23, 1967).).
88. Israel Gutiérrez, Interview, Sitalá, Chiapas, January 10, 2001.
89. AMS, Letter from Adolfo R. Aguilar, to Juez Municipal Sitalá, August 30, 1945.
90. AGN, Document 2.331.8(5)5181, October 10, 1935.
91. I. Gutiérrez, Interview, Sitalá, Chiapas, October 18, 2000
92. RAN-TG, Documentos Ejido Guaquitepec, 'Historia Traslativo de Dominio del Predio Rustico, San Antonio Bulujib' September 28, 1984.