Bandit Nation: A History of Outlaws and Cultural Struggle in Mexico, 1810-1920

by Chris Frazer

Overview

Stories about postcolonial bandits in Mexico have circulated since the moment Mexico won its independence. Narratives have appeared or been discussed in a wide variety of forms: novels, memoirs, travel accounts, newspaper articles, the graphic arts, social science literature, movies, ballads, and historical monographs. During the decades between independence and the Mexican Revolution, bandit narratives were integral to the broader national and class struggles between Mexicans and foreigners concerning the definition and creation of the Mexican nation-state.

Bandit Nation is the first complete analysis of the cultural impact that banditry had on Mexico from the time of its independence to the Mexican Revolution. Chris Frazer focuses on the nature and role of foreign travel accounts, novels, and popular ballads, known as corridos, to analyze how and why Mexicans and Anglo-Saxon travelers created and used images of banditry to influence state formation, hegemony, and national identity. Narratives about banditry are linked to a social and political debate about "mexican-ness" and the nature of justice. Although considered a relic of the past, the Mexican bandit continues to cast a long shadow over the present, in the form of narco-traffickers, taxicab hijackers, and Zapatista guerrillas. Bandit Nation is an important contribution to the cultural and the general histories of postcolonial Mexico.

Chris Frazer is an assistant professor of history at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803217997
Publisher:	Nebraska Paperback
Publication date:	05/01/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Chris Frazer is an assistant professor of history at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada.

Read an Excerpt

Bandit Nation

A History of Outlaws and Cultural Struggle in Mexico, 1810-1920

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By Chris Frazer

University of Nebraska Press

Copyright © 2006 University of Nebraska Press
All right reserved.

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Introduction

Memory, Legend, and History

The serious historical study of banditry is only just beginning. -Eric Hobsbawm, American Historical Review, 1988

There is no doubt that history is written by the victors. But it is also true that legends are written by the people.

-Speech at Pancho Villa's grave, from Oscar W. Ching Vega, La última cabalgata de Pancho Villa, 1977

Postcolonial Mexicans have been telling stories about their bandits ever since they won independence. So too have foreigners, both travelers and those who observe Mexico from afar. Narratives about the "Mexican bandit" have appeared in almost every form of culture since the early nineteenth century: novels, memoirs, travel accounts, newspapers, academic literature, movies, ballads, and the graphic arts. For the most part, we have grown accustomed to thinking about these tales and images as historical relics or curiosities, just like the bandits they purport to represent, but they continue to cast a long shadow over the Mexican present. Literary narratives still circulate widely, speaking to intellectuals who aspire to understand historical bandits, or influencing debates about the character of real and alleged outlaws in contemporary Mexico: narco-traffickers in the Gulf of Mexico, taxicab hijackersin Mexico City, or latter-day Zapatistas in Chiapas. Narratives from the past also survive in the oral traditions of popular culture, such as corridos (ballads). These are preserved in audio recordings, in archives, and in published collections, but they are also alive today on the streets, in the cantinas, and in the homes of Mexicans. Sometimes, memories and images of historical bandits are resurrected in expected ways, as in the performances of the mariachi bands that gather daily in Mexico City's Garibaldi Square. At other times, the shadows of historical bandits are lurking and unanticipated. A scholar researching bandits can spend long days plundering criminal records in the former prison that now houses the Archivo General de la Nación, then return to his or her apartment near the Monumento de la Revolución, where Pancho Villa's remains are interred, and later dine in the San Angel market at the Restaurante Chucho el Roto, which bears the sobriquet of a celebrated nineteenth-century bandit. It is no exaggeration to assert that the imagined bandit is ubiquitous in Mexican culture. But what does this mean?

This book is a cultural history of banditry in Mexico from independence to the end of the revolution, based on narratives produced by Mexicans and English-speaking foreign visitors during this period. Rather than arguing whether or not certain outlaws were social bandits, or Robin Hoods, I will examine why and how people told stories about them during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many of these narratives now constitute part of the national heritage of Mexico, forming the tradition that helps to express a sense of being Mexican, lo mexicanidad. Meanwhile, narratives by visitors from three English-speaking countries-Great Britain, the United States, and Canada-helped to shape Mexico's image abroad and its relations with foreign countries. This study argues that bandit narratives were integral to broader processes, involving Mexicans and foreigners in forms of national and class struggle, to define and create the Mexican nation-state. These narratives have not come to the present effortlessly, as a seamless and unchanging process, without conflict and sacrifice. Nor do they have any meaning free of the contradictions, explicit or submerged, that continue to fracture Mexico along the fault lines of class, ethnicity, and gender. In one way or another, all narratives about Mexican banditry, whether contemporary or historical, are linked to social and political struggles-continuing to this day-about what it means to be a Mexican.

Consider, for example, how the best-known of Mexican bandits, Francisco "Pancho" Villa, came to enter the pantheon of officially sanctioned heroes of the revolution. Villa is now interred, along with other revolutionary contemporaries, in the Monumento de la Revolución. But this was a long-belated acknowledgment. For forty-three years after Villa's death in 1923, the Mexican state refused to recognize his revolutionary credentials. In 1915, when revolutionary unity collapsed into a fratricidal civil war, Villa ended up on the losing side. Afterward, the victorious faction coalesced into a ruling clique known as the Revolutionary Family. The winners anathematized Villa as a counter-revolutionary bandit until 1966. In a culture where patriarchal relations and patronage still dominate social and political life, Villa was the black sheep, the unrecognized bastard son of the revolution. So why is he now a hero? There can be little doubt that his rehabilitation was an attempt to shore up an increasingly unpopular regime. But it was also a triumph for the tenacity of the rural and urban poor, who refused to forget a man they regarded as a more ideal patriarch than most of Mexico's post-revolutionary leaders. Vast numbers of lower-class Mexicans insisted on remembering Villa as a champion of the poor, a man who protected the interests of his gente, or los de abajo. They ignored the official censure of Villa and clung to his memory, inscribing a popular mythology about him in corridos that are performed in Mexico to this day. These memories are so closely intertwined with the post-revolutionary aspirations of Mexico's dispossessed classes that oppositional movements of the political left and right have identified themselves with Villa's legacy throughout the twentieth century. No other historical figure in Mexico can lay claim to such enduring popular appeal, with the exception of Emiliano Zapata, whose name is now invoked to impart meaning and prestige to the indigenous peasant guerrillas in Chiapas.

(Continues...)

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