The legal revolution in town politics: Oaxaca and Yucatán, 1812-1825

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 83, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 255-293

  Caplan, Karen D ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 64949179124     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: 15271900     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-83-2-255     Document Type: Review

References (69)

1. See, in particular, Peter F. Guardino, Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexico's National State: Guerrero, 1800-1857 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1996), 44-80
2. Michael T. Ducey, "From Village Riot to Regional Rebellion: Social Protest in the Huasteca, Mexico 1760-1870" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Chicago, 1992), 108-204
3. and Ducey, "Village, Nation, and Constitution: Insurgent Politics in Papantla, Veracruz, 1810-1812," Hispanic American Historical Review 79 (1999): 463-93
4. In addition to the works cited above, see Arturo Escobar Ohmstede, "Del gobierno indígena al ayuntamiento constitucional en las Huastecas hidalguense y veracruzana, 1780-1853," Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 12 (1996): 1-26
5. Although there is much scholarly disagreement about the role of the republica, it seems clear that, in varying degrees, it was a body that both provided a vehicle for Spanish exploitation and fostered local defenses. Repúblicas were responsible for the collection of tribute and had an important role in the distribution of labor drafts. But they also bolstered local autonomy and buffered communities from the direct exploitation of Spanish officials. For a review of this debate, see John K. Chance and William B. Taylor, "Cofradías and Cargos: An Historical Perspective on the Meso-American Civil-Religious Hierarchy," American Ethnologist 12 (1985): 1-26
6. See, in particular, Jan Rus and Robert Wasserstrom, "Civil-Religious Hierarchies in Central Chiapas: A Critical Perspective," American Ethnologist 7 (1980): 466-78
7. "Formación de los ayuntamientos constitucionales," 23 May 1812, Colección de los decretos y órdenes de las cortes de España, que se reputen vigentes en la república de los Estado-Unidos Mexicanos (Mexico City: Imprenta de Galvan, 1829), 28-30
8. Antonio Annino, "Cádiz y la revolución de los pueblos mexicanos 1812-1821," in Historia de las elecciones en Iberoamérica sigh XIX, ed. Annino (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995), 177, 209-10
9. The number for Oaxaca is from 1810 and comes from Fernando Navarro y Noriega, Memoria sobre la población del Reino de Nueva España (Mexico City: Instituto Mexicano de Investigaciones Jurídicas, 1943)
10. cited in Carlos Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes y burocracia en la Oaxaca poscolonial, 1786-1860, Serie Dishá (Oaxaca: Instituto Oaxaqueño de las Culturas; Fondo Estatal para la Cultura y las Altes; and Univ. Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca, 1998), 48
11. The exact number (88.28 percent) is nearly the same as that listed in the Censo de Revillagigedo for 1793 (87.53 percent). For Yucatán, the number comes from 1806 and is derived from a variety of local Estadísticas compiled by Nancy M. Farriss in Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984), app. 1, "The Population of Yucatán," 397-98
12. The minutes of the Yucatecan constituent congress were published daily in the Gaceta de Mérida between September 1823 and April 1825. I have unfortunately been unable to locate similar publications for Oaxaca and have had to rely on the legislation itself. The citations for the constitutions of both states are as follows: "Constitución política del estado libre de Yucatán, sancionada por su Congreso Constituyente en 6 de abril de 1825," Yucatán a través de sus constituciones: Leyes fundamentales, 1823-1918, Colección Historia Legislative (Mérida: Ediciones de la H. Legislatura del Congreso del Estado de Yucatán, 1988-90), 7-33
13. and "Constitución particular del Estado de Oaxaca," Las constituciones del estado de Oaxaca, ed. Gustavo Pérez Jiménez ([Mexico City]: Ediciones Técnicas Jurídicas del Gobierno de Oaxaca, [1959]), 71-103
14. Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes y burocracia, 48
15. William B. Taylor, "Town and Country in the Valley of Oaxaca," in Provinces of Early Mexico: Variants of Spanish American Regional Evolution, ed. Ida Altman and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1976), 76
16. John K. Chance, Conquest of the Sierra: Spaniards and Indians in Colonial Oaxaca (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 39
17. On the nonindigenous population in the eighteenth century, see also María de los Angeles Romero Frizzi, El sol y la cruz: Los pueblos indios de Oaxaca colonial (Mexico City: CIESAS/INI, 1996), 207-8
18. Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes y hurocracia, 61-81, 92-109
19. Brian Hamnett, Politics and Trade in Southern Mexico, 1750-1821 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1971), 122-26, 128-31
20. There is disagreement about the extent to which indigenous Oaxacans participated in the conflict, which was led for the most part by creole merchants and landowners. Leticia Reina, "De las reformas borbónicas a las leyes de reforma," in Historia de la cuestión agraria mexicana: Estado de Oaxaca, prehispánico-1824, vol. 1, ed. Leticia Reina and José Sánchez Cortés (Mexico: Juan Pablos Editor for Gobierno del Estado de Oaxaca; Univ. Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca; and Centro de Estudios Históricos del Agrarismo en México, 1988), 213-16
21. Rodolfo Pastor, Campesinos y reformas: La mixteca, 1700-1856 (Mexico City: Colegio de México, 1987), 415-20. Reina stresses that although some indígenas were coerced into fighting, "the indígenas also acted on their own account," amounting to veritable "social agitation." Pastor, on the other hand, argues that the indigenous villagers had little enthusiasm for either side
22. José Antonio Gay, Historia de Oaxaca, 3rd ed. (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1990 [1881]), 481-501
23. Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 420-25. The quote is on page 421
24. Among those who have made similar suggestions about Oaxaca in the nineteenth century are Carlos Sánchez Silva, in Indios, comerciantes y burocracia
25. Peter Guardino, "The Renovation of Colonial Order in the Countryside: Villa Alta, 1820-1860" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Miami, 16-18 Mar. 2000)
26. and Guardino, "Me ha cabido en la fatalidad': Gobierno indígena y gobierno republicano en los pueblos indígenas: Oaxaca, 1750-1850," Desacatos 5 (2000): 119-30
27. More similar to Pastor is Marcello Carmagnani, wdio argues for a "second conquest" of the Oaxacan indígenas in the nineteenth century, he, however, sees this process as beginning later, after 1846. Marcello Carmagnani, El regreso de los dioses: El proceso de reconstitución de la identidad étnica en Oaxaca, siglos XVII y XVIII (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988), 230-38
28. "Erección de Ayuntamientos en los Pueblos de . . . ," 29 Mar. 1821, INAH, AHM, Oaxaca, AJT, roll 33
29. Guardino, "Me ha cabido en la fatalidad,'" 122
30. No title, INAH, AHM, 21 Mar. 1821, Oaxaca, AJT, roll 33
31. For accounts of this conflict in the years after independence, see Peter Guardino, "The Renovation of Colonial Order," 5-7
32. Aguilar, 10 Mar. 1821, in "Sobre que se crie Ayuntamiento en el Pueblo de San Bartolomé Soyaltepec," INAH, AHM, Oaxaca, AJT, roll 33
33. Even in entirely indigenous towns, Oaxacan villagers often had to accommodate various ethnicities, which they did by formally alternating groups in power positions or by formally splitting those power positions among the ethnicities. Sec Carmagnani, "Local Governments and Ethnic Government in Oaxaca," in Essays in the Political, Economic, and Social History of Colonial Latin America, ed. Karen Spalding (Newark: Univ. of Delaware, 1982), 112
34. Francisco Rendón to Diputación Provincial, 4 Nov. 1820, "El Yndendente de Oaxaca haciendo varios consultas sobre elecciones," Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City (hereafter cited as AGN), Ayuntamientos, vol. 183
35. See Rodolfo Pastor's description of the election of the ayuntamiento of Tlaxiaco in 1821 in Campesinos y reformas, 423-24
36. The other states were Yucatán, Jalisco, and Zacatecas. Jaime Rodríguez O., "La constitución de 1824 y la formación del estado mexicano," Historia Mexicana 40 (1991): 520
37. Oaxaca declared itself to be a free state on 28 July 1823, in the "Bases Provisionales," in which they pegged their eventual participation in the Mexican republic to federalism. In Las constituciones de Oaxaca, 32-34
38. "Ley Orgánica para el gobierno del estado libre de Oaxaca," 25 May 1824, and "Constitución particular del estado de Oaxaca," 10 Jan. 1825, in Las constituciones de Oaxaca, 42-58, 71-103
39. For a narrative of the process of independence in Oaxaca, see Jorge Fernando Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca, 1821-1854: De la consumación de la independencia a la iniciación de la reforma (Oaxaca: Ediciones E.R.B., 1935), 7-58
40. "Ley Orgánica para el Gobierno del Estado de Oaxaca," Capítulo VI, Artículo único, Las constituciones del estado de Oaxaca, 51
41. "Se prescriben las condiciones necesarias para el establecimiento de ayuntamientos y repúblicas en los pueblos del estado," 25 Jan. 1825, Colección de leyes y decretos del estado libre de Oaxaca (Oaxaca: Impr. del Estado, 1879), 1:106-9
42. Farriss, Maya Society, 108-9
43. Terry Rugeley, Yucatán's Maya Peasantry and the Origins of the Caste War (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1996), 34
44. Robert W. Patch, Maya and Spaniard in Yucatán, 1648-1812 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1993), 138-43, 232-43
45. Marco Bellingeri, "Las ambig̈edades del voto en Yucatán: Representación y gobierno en una formación interétnica, 1812-1829," in Historia de las elecciones, ed. Annino, 276
46. Using names as an indication of ethnicity is by no means a foolproof method. Whenever possible, I have depended on self-identification, which fortunately occurred with some frequency. Also fortunately, the correspondence of Maya surnames and Indian civil status seems to have held quite firm in Yucatán. Don E. Dumond established that in the very early nineteenth century, "of men in the legal and taxable category of Indian, 22 individuals (0.4 percent) have Spanish names; of those legally vecinos, 106 or nearly 8 percent have Indian names. Put another way, of men with Indian names, nearly 1.8 percent are vecinos, while of men with Spanish names the same percentage are legally taxed as Indians. In demonstrating this relatively small overlap, the figures . . . lend credence to the Yucatecan expectation that civil status could be predicted on the basis simply of the paternal surname. For with any given male of Indian name the chance was only about one in 55 that he would not be a legal Indian, and for a male with a Spanish name the chance is almost exactly the same that he would not be a vecino." Don E. Dumond, The Machete and the Cross: Campesino Rebellion in Yucatán (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1997), 41-43
47. Rugeley, Yucatán's Maya Peasantry, 45-46
48. Bellingeri, "Las ambigüedades del voto," 253. Bellingeri found that out of 46 new ayuntamientos, 21 had at least one Maya member, with two towns electing Maya alcaldes
49. For these and all subsequent population percentages, see "Non-Indians in the Villages of Yucatan, 1777-91," app. B, in Patch, Maya and Spaniard, 259-63, unless otherwise noted
50. "Acta de instalación del Ayuntamiento, 1813," AGEY, Colonial, Documentos de los Ayuntamientos, vol. 1, exp. 16
51. In modern Yucatán, there are two towns with similar names, Tahdzibichén and Tandzibichén. Patch has records only for the former, and those are the numbers I am using, based on the presumption that the other town's foundation dates from a later period. This presumption is supported by the existence of a 1655 encomienda at the site of the former town, known as "Tacchebilchen," which was the spelling used in the AGEY document. Peter Gerhard, The Southeast Frontier of New Spain, rev. ed. (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 86
52. Centro de Apoyo a la Investigación Histórica de Yucatán, Mérida (hereafter cited as CAIHY), Libros Manuscrites, Libro de Acuerdos de la Municipalidad de Ucú, 1814-24, 6 Feb. 1814. Santos Chan, with a Spanish paternal name and a Maya maternal name, could easily have been mestizo as well
53. "Representación del Ayuntamiento del pueblo del Hampolon . . . ," 10 July 1822
54. "Sobre el perjuicio que reciben los labradores con el ganado . . . ," 21 Apr. 1823
55. "Presupuesto de obras presentado por el Ayuntamiento de Tenabo . . . ," 9 Sept. 1823, AGEY, Poder Ejecutivo, Ayuntamientos, vol. 1, exp. 9
56. "Representación del Ayuntamiento del pueblo de Hampolon . . . ," 10 July 1822, AGEY, Poder Ejecutivo, Tierras, vol. 1, exp. 4
57. The text of the questionnaire was as follows: "Tell me how much the Parochial fees amount to in [the pueblos] in your charge, those that were charged from January first to the end of December of last year, and those that remain to be paid, and if there are some that have not been paid the motives that have impeded their collection; [tell me also] if some Yndios are absent in the wilderness and ranchos or have come down from the Haciendas to live in the town [en poblado], and of those moved there how many attend Mass and Doctrina, if the Lamp in your Residence remains and how you maintain it, if the Churches are well-served, if the Casa Cural also has some service and how you acquire it, and if there is someone who is seducing the people, if he is from the same area or another." Jose Gmo. Espinola, 25 May 1814, Demography and Parish Affairs in Yucatán 1797-1897: Documents from the Archivo de la Mitra Emeritense, Selected by Joaquín de Arrigunaga Peón, ed. Carol Steichen Dumond and Don E. Dumond (Eugene: Univ. of Oregon Anthropological Papers no. 27, 1982), 380. This letter is a copy, sent by a priest to his tenientes
58. Don Juan Pío Albarado y Dominguez, 10 Mar. 1814
59. Br. Bart.e Jose Granado Baeza, 5 Mar. 1814, Demography and Parish Affairs, 444, 450. The wording of these two letters is very nearly the same, suggesting the two curas may have been using some sort of stock letter
60. CAIHY, Libros Manuscritos, Libro de Acuerdos de la Municipalidad de Ucú, 1814-24, 25 Feb. and 12 May 1814
61. Paul Joseph Reid, "The Constitution of Cádiz and the Independence of Yucatan," The Americas 36, no. 1 (July 1979): 23-25
62. Reid, "The Constitution of Cádiz," 23-25
63. Eligio Ancona, Historia de Yucatán desde la época más remota hasta nuestros días, vol. 3 ([Mérida]: Gobierno del Estado de Yucatán, 1917 [1881]), 15-58
64. Gaceta de Mérida, no. 46, 21 Jan. 1824, session of 30 Dec. 1823
65. Gaceta de Mérida, no. 49, 29 Jan. 1824, session of 10 Jan. 1824
66. Gaceta de Mérida, no. 14, 14 Oct. 1823, session of 25 Sept. 1823
67. "Sobre el régimen económico y Juntas municipales del Estado," 20 Sept. 1824, Colección de leyes, decretos, y órdenes del augusto congreso del estado libre de Yucatán (Mérida: Tipografía de G. Canto, 1896), 1:310-18
68. Gaceta de Mérida, no. 92, 2 June 1824, session of 28 May 1824
69. "Sobre Repúblicas de indígenas," 26 July 1824, Colección de leyes, 1:277-80