Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution: Rural Social Conflict in Mexico

by Friedrich Katz (Editor)

Overview

Since the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, Mexico's rebellious peasant has become a subject not only of history but of literature, film, and paintings. With his sombrero, his machete, and his rifle, he marches or rides through countless Hollywood or Mexican films, killing brutal overseers, hacienda owners, corrupt officials, and federal soldiers. Some of Mexico's greatest painters, such as Diego Rivera, have portrayed him as one of the motive forces of Mexican history. Was this in fact the case? Or are we dealing with a legend forged in the aftermath of the Revolution and applied to the Revolution itself and to earlier periods of Mexican history? This is one of the main questions discussed by the international group of scholars whose work is gathered in this volume. They address the subject of agrarian revolts in Mexico from the pre-Columbian period through the twentieth century. The volume offers a unique perspective not only on Mexican riots, rebellions, and revolutions through time but also on Mexican social movements in contrast to those in the rest of Latin America.

The contributors to the volume are Ulises Beltran, Raymond Buve, John Coatsworth, Romana Falcon, John M. Hart, Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Friedrich Katz, William K. Meyers, Enrique Montalvo Ortega, Herbert J. Nickel, Leticia Reina, William Taylor, Hans Werner Tobler, John Tutino, Arturo Warman, and Eric Van Young.

Originally published in 1988.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691636498
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2016
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #979
Pages:	606
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.80(d)

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Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution

Rural Social Conflict in Mexico

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By Friedrich Katz

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1988 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-07739-0

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Rural Revolts in Mexico

Friedrich Katz

In the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution of 1910–20 the revolutionary peasant became a subject not only of historical study, but also of literature, films, and paintings. With his sombrero, his machete, and his rifle he has marched or ridden through countless Hollywood or Mexican films, killing brutal overseers, hacienda owners, corrupt officials, and federal soldiers. Some of Mexico's greatest painters, such as Diego Rivera, have portrayed the peasant as one of the most important forces of Mexican history. But was this in fact the case? Or are we dealing with a legend forged only in the aftermath of the Revolution and applied to the Revolution itself and to earlier periods with the benefit of hindsight?

This was one of the main questions dealt with by a panel of historians specializing in agrarian revolts in Mexico from pre-Columbian times through to the twentieth century. They also asked whether — in both quantitative and qualitative terms — Mexico occupies a unique position in Latin America. Whatever the answer, one characteristic is unique to rural uprisings in Mexico: their close links with national revolutions. First, the conquest of Mexico was the one that was linked with a major popular uprising against the ruling pre-Hispanic elite; second, the independence movement, in contrast to its counterparts in South America constituted both a social revolution in which peasants played a major role, and a peasant uprising; and third, the 1910 Revolution seems to have had much wider rural support than most other social movements in Latin America in the twentieth century.

The phenomenon of rural uprisings is not new to Mexican historiography. A number of excellent studies (many of them written by contributors to this volume) have been produced on the subject, but they have tended to deal with limited periods of time and with a limited number of regions. The essays presented in this volume contain both profound analyses of rural uprisings as well as facts that up to now have been largely unknown. To a large extent, completely new primary sources have been utilized to describe rural uprisings in all periods to answer a common set of questions on Mexican history from the Aztec period to the 1910 Revolution.

The participants of the conference concentrated on the following issues:

(1) Who were the rebels? Among the heterogeneous social groups in the countryside, which tended most to revolt? Inhabitants of the free communal villages, hacienda residents, rancheros, or temporary laborers with no firm roots in the community? Were Indians or non-Indians more prone to revolt?

(2) What were the motives for revolt? How significant were the issues of land, water rights, and taxes? How important were issues of local autonomy and the appointment of local officials? Against whom were the revolts mainly directed: landowners, local officials, the clergy, or the state? What kind of alliances did rural revolutionaries enter into, and with whom? When and how did such movements become regional or national in scope?

(3) Was there any continuity in time and space among rural revolts?

(4) What were the long- and short-term effects of these uprisings on the peasants and on other segments of society? Did military defeat of peasant armies always lead to political, social, or economic disaster for the rural revolutionaries?

(5) Was Mexico an exception within Latin America with respect to both the number and the scope of its rural revolts?

In Chapter 3 I examine the hypothesis that rural uprisings were already endemic to large parts of Mexico throughout the period of Aztec rule, although their character was at times obscured by the fact that most of them were led by the traditional upper classes of the subject peoples, who suffered as much from Aztec domination as the peasants did. Nevertheless, there were also some very clear cases of peasant uprisings under peasant leadership. What emerged from this examination of pre-Hispanic patterns of revolt is a possible parallel between the Aztec period and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Throughout these times rural revolts seem to have been much more frequent and intense in Mexico than in other parts of Latin America where a peasant class had developed. This seems to be particularly the case when revolts in central Mexico in Aztec times are compared with those in the other comparable, populous, and highly stratified society in pre-Columbian America: the Inca empire. There were very few revolts in Inca times and, unlike Hernán Cortés in Mexico, Francisco Pizarro in Peru was not considered a liberator by most of the Inca's subjects, nor did the coming of the Spaniards provoke a large-scale uprising similar to that in Mexico.

The pattern of rural uprisings in Mexico changed sharply (but not completely) from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, i.e., during most of the colonial period. Rural violence was endemic to the frontier areas of New Spain, and Spanish rule in Mexico ended in the same way in which it had begun — in conjunction with a massive rural uprising.

Nevertheless, during the sixteenth and seventeenth (and to a lesser degree the eighteenth) centuries there seem to have been comparatively fewer rural revolts in the core areas of Mexico than at any earlier or later time in its history. This period was also an exception in yet another respect. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries the Mexican countryside was far more peaceful than similar regions in other parts of Spain's huge American empire, and this comes out very clearly in John Coatsworth's essay (Chapter 2), which compares rural uprisings in Mexico to those in other parts of the continent. This chapter represents a first attempt to catalogue revolts according to regional and time patterns. For the colonial period Coatsworth concludes that the number, the scope, and intensity of rural revolts were far greater in Peru than they were in Mexico at this time. He attributes these differences to a variety of factors: the tradition of benign Inca rule; far more onerous taxes and labor services imposed by Spanish officials in Peru than in Mexico; the diversity of ethnic groups in Mexico with no common language or tradition to unite them, as in Peru; and the existence of a far stronger Indian nobility in Peru than in Mexico.

The reasons for rural passivity during the colonial period are the subject of the first part of John Tutino's essay in Chapter 4 on peasant uprisings in Chalco. Tutino argues that the success of Spanish colonial policy was due to its very real desire to maintain village communities as a counterweight to Spanish and Mexican landowners. The crown and large segments of the clergy allied to it not only feared the power of these landowners; they also wanted the tax revenues and the labor provided by the free villages. Spanish legislation attempted to protect communal landholdings and both the courts and the clergy at times successfully prevented the expropriation of village lands. In the eyes of many peasants the crown thus gained a large measure of legitimacy so that in general they preferred to resort to the courts rather than to revolt.

It is doubtful whether the efforts of the crown and clergy would have been so successful but for the high Indian mortality in the early colonial period. The reduction of the native Indian population from something like twenty million to an estimated two million made it relatively easy for landowners to expropriate the now uninhabited village lands without encountering massive peasant resistance. In addition, the great demographic catastrophe destroyed many communities' will to resist and the native leadership who might have directed uprisings.

A good example of the tactical success of the colonial administration in controlling the Yaqui Indians of Sonora is presented by Evelyn Hu-DeHart in Chapter 5. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Yaquis were considered the most hostile Mexican tribe, yet they submitted passively to the Jesuits in the early colonial period, as did many other Indian groups in central Mexico. But they were an exception among the inhabitants of the northern frontier where, as I show in Chapter 3, many Indian groups mounted bloody and frequently effective resistance against the Spaniards. This difference in attitude between the frontier and the core areas was due to the fact that the northerners had always lived in a more or less classless society and, unlike their counterparts in central Mexico, had never worked for a ruling elite. As a result, Spanish domination was much more objectionable in their eyes; in addition, many of them led a nomadic existence so that it was much more difficult for the Spaniards to subjugate them.

It took the Spaniards nearly two centuries — until the early eighteenth century — to dominate, exterminate, or marginalize Indians such as the Tarahumara in Chihuahua who had offered the greatest resistance. This subjugation, though, did not strengthen Spanish rule significantly on the northern frontier. The exterminated or subjugated Indians were replaced by a far more dangerous foe: the Apache who, with horses they had acquired from the Spaniards and which had completely transformed their way of life, began swarming into Spanish-controlled areas to mount increasingly bloody raids on Spanish settlements.

Rural instability on the northern Mexican frontier in the eighteenth century was matched by increasing restiveness in the core areas of New Spain. This restiveness manifested itself at times by an increasing number of lawsuits and demands by Indian villagers, at times even through the outbreaks of local revolts, and frequently by an increase in rural banditry.

Several authors deal with this unrest, which heralded the end of the Pax Hispanica. In Chapter 5, Evelyn Hu-DeHart describes how in 1740 the hitherto passive Yaquis rose against both the Jesuits and the Spanish colonial administration. They were only subdued with great difficulty by the Spanish military. An even bloodier uprising occurred at the other end of New Spain, in the Yucatán peninsula, with the messianic uprising of the Maya Indians under Jacinto Canek. In central Mexico, social unrest was less violent and less abrupt but nevertheless quite noticeable. Eric Van Young (Chapter 6) and William Taylor (Chapter 7) assess this unrest among village Indians around Mexico's second largest city, Guadalajara. Van Young examines one manifestation of Indian dissatisfaction: an increasing number of lawsuits and complaints, whereas Taylor deals with the more violent forms of restiveness in this area — the rise of banditry in the final years of Spanish colonial rule in this same area.

Both authors feel that there is no single explanation for increasing social unrest. But in the Guadalajara region a massive population increase may have been an important factor. By the eighteenth century the Indians of New Spain had developed immunity to some of the diseases introduced by the Spaniards, and their numbers were now increasing. But the lands that had been allotted to them by the crown when their numbers were low were insufficient to support the communities now, creating new social tensions. These tensions were exacerbated by the fact that not only the Indians but the mestizo and white populations of New Spain were also increasing, and these groups were beginning to encroach on Indian lands. This was one of the major factors, according to Evelyn Hu-DeHart, that triggered the Yaqui uprising of 1740, and Van Young shows how increasing settlements of non-Indians in Indian communities also exacerbated the Indians' resentment in the Guadalajara area.

The degree to which the colonial-era revolts were linked to economic fluctuations is discussed by Ulises Beltrán in Chapter 18. He applies quantitative methods to the study of eighteenth-century rural uprisings in the state of Oaxaca.

In the mid-eighteenth century, after nearly two centuries of decline, the Spanish monarchy attempted to revitalize the economy of Spain and to make it a great power again. Spain's economic demands on the colonies therefore increased, and these were translated into higher taxes and more forced labor from village communities.

As the crown's pressure on Indian communities increased, its mediating efforts and its perceived role as a protector of Indian rights began to decrease and its legitimacy in the eyes of its Indian subjects waned, as did that of the Catholic Church, which had played a similar role in the eyes of the Indians. All the chapters that deal with this late period of colonial rule show how this breakdown of the traditional role of the Catholic Church contributed to or even provoked rural uprisings. In Sonora, for example, part of the surplus that the Jesuits extracted from the Indians had always been held to provide for periods of hardship, but when a massive famine occurred in 1740 it was found the Jesuits had sent all the grain north to help establish missions in California, and there was none left to feed the Indians. Similarly, in Yucatan, the unfulfilled promises of Bishop Perez to put an end to peonage precipitated an Indian uprising; in the Guadalajara region the conflict between communities and the church over the resources owned by religious cofradías (confraternities) led to conflicts; and all these difficulties were exacerbated by the effects of economic development. For example, in the Guadalajara region, hacendados began to impose restrictions on the amount of land they rented to Indians because they found it much more profitable to farm the lands themselves.

These factors are essential in providing an answer to one of the central questions raised by both Taylor and Van Young, that of why the Spanish colonial regime, which for nearly three centuries had been so successful in keeping the area peaceful, finally provoke the greatest rural revolt in nineteenth-century Latin America? Another equally important problem that both authors address is one that has long been obscured by popular legend and tradition, concerning the Hidalgo revolt of 1810. In countless corridos, murals, and storybooks the Hidalgo revolt has been depicted as a general uprising of nearly all Indian village communities in Mexico against Spanish rule. But this view has now been challenged by some historians and the issue of the extent of Indian village participation is particularly controversial. One of the main reasons for doubt was that the center of the revolt was the Bajio region northwest of Mexico City, which in many senses was atypical to the rest of Mexico. It had a relatively small Indian population and most of its inhabitants were mestizo or white. The number of free village communities was small.

The fact that such an atypical region constituted the core of the 1810 revolt, as well as the fact that more research has focused on the Bajío in 1810 than on any other part of Mexico, have obscured the problem of the degree of participation of traditional village communities in Mexico's independence wars. One of the most important aspects of the essays of both Van Young and Taylor is that for the first time they examine a region in which Indian communities rebelled on a massive scale between 1810 and 1815. Both feel that the social, economic, and religious factors that transformed the Guadalajara communities in the late eighteenth century were crucial in explaining the outbreak of the 1810 revolt. Taylor discusses in detail the revolt itself, describing its course and a unique victory over the Spaniards by peasants who held out for nearly three years on an island on Lake Chapala.

One way to understand why people rebel is to compare those who do with others under partially similar circumstances who do not. Taylor compares villages that joined the revolt with others in the same area that remained peaceful, and with Indians in another part of Mexico, Oaxaca, who did not rebel at all.

The defeat of the popular insurrection led by Hidalgo and Morelos, and the assumption of power after independence in 1821 by the most conservative groups in Mexico, did not constitute the end, but rather the beginning of a series of rural uprisings in the nineteenth century that culminated in the national revolution of 1910. This sudden upsurge of rural violence occurred because there was a profound change in the character of the state compared with previous years. The colonial state had been strong, whereas until the late nineteenth century the Mexican state was weak and unstable. The colonial government had attempted to play off hacendados against Indian villages and to maintain the letter's integrity, but Mexican governments were unwilling to do this (their links to the hacendados were extremely strong). Even had they been willing to carry out such a policy, they would have been unable to do so since they had neither the strength nor the long-term support.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution by Friedrich Katz. Copyright © 1988 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• CONTENTS, pg. v
• PREFACE, pg. ix
• CHAPTER ONE. Introduction: Rural Revolts in Mexico, pg. 1
• CHAPTER TWO. Patterns of Rural Rebellion in Latin America: Mexico in Comparative Perspective, pg. 21
• CHAPTER THREE. Rural Uprisings in Preconquest and Colonial Mexico, pg. 65
• CHAPTER FOUR. Agrarian Social Change and Peasant Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century Mexico: The Example of Chalco, pg. 95
• CHAPTER FIVE. Peasant Rebellion in the Northwest: The Yaqui Indians of Sonora, 1740-1976, pg. 141
• CHAPTER SIX. Moving Toward Revolt: Agrarian Origins of the Hidalgo Rebellion in the Guadalajara Region, pg. 176
• CHAPTER SEVEN. Banditry and Insurrection: Rural Unrest in Central Jalisco, 1790-1816, pg. 205
• CHAPTER EIGHT. The 1840s Southwestern Mexico Peasants' War: Conflict in a Transitional Society, pg. 249
• CHAPTER NINE. The Sierra Gorda Peasant Rebellion, 1847-50, pg. 269
• CHAPTER TEN. Revolts and Peasant Mobilizations in Yucatan: Indians, Peons, and Peasants from the Caste War to the Revolution, pg. 295
• CHAPTER ELEVEN. The Political Project of Zapatismo, pg. 321
• CHAPTER TWELVE. “Neither Carranza nor Zapata!”: The Rise and Fall of a Peasant Movement that Tried to Challenge Both, Tlaxcala, 1910-19, pg. 338
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN. Agricultural Laborers in the Mexican Revolution (1910-40): Some Hypotheses and Facts about Participation and Restraint in the Highlands of Puebla-Tlaxcala, pg. 376
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Charisma, Tradition, and Caciquismo: Revolution in San Luis Potosí, pg. 417
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN. Second Division of the North: Formation and Fragmentation of the Laguna's Popular Movement, 1910-11, pg. 448
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN. Peasants and the Shaping of the Revolutionary State, 1910-40, pg. 487
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Rural Rebellions after 1810, pg. 521
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. Economic Fluctuations and Social Unrest in Oaxaca, 1701-94, pg. 561
• GLOSSARY OF SPANISH TERMS, pg. 573
• NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS, pg. 576
• INDEX, pg. 579