El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition 9780520951792

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El Cinco de Mayo

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Valerie Barth and Peter Booth Wiley Endowment Fund in History of the University of California Press Foundation.

El Cinco de Mayo An American Tradition

David E. Hayes-Bautista

University of Califor nia Pr ess Ber keley Los Angeles London

Portions of chapters 3 and 4 were published originally as David E. HayesBautista and Cynthia L. Chamberlin, “Cinco de Mayo’s First Seventy-Five Years in Alta California: From Spontaneous Behavior to Sedimented Memory, 1862 to 1937,” Southern California Quarterly 89 (2007): 23–64. Portions of chapter 4 were published originally as David E. Hayes-Bautista, Cynthia L. Chamberlin, Branden Jones, Juan Carlos Cornejo, Cecilia Cañadas, Carlos Martinez, and Gloria Meza, “Empowerment, Expansion, and Engagement: Las Juntas Patrióticas in California, 1848–1869,” California History 85 (2007): 4–23, 66–72.  

 

 

 

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2012 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hayes-Bautista, David E., 1945–   El Cinco de Mayo : an American tradition / David E. Hayes-Bautista.     p.    cm.   Includes bibliographical references and index.   isbn 978-0-520-27212-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-520-27213-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)   1. Hispanic Americans—California—History—19th century.  2. Hispanic Americans—California—Ethnic identity  3. Cinco de Mayo (Mexican holiday)—Social aspects—United States.  4. Cinco de Mayo, Battle of, Puebla, Mexico, 1862.  5. Cinco de Mayo, Battle of, Puebla, Mexico, 1862—Social aspects—United States.  6. Cinco de Mayo, Battle of, Puebla, Mexico, 1862—Press coverage—United States.  7. United States— History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Social aspects.  I. Title.   f870.s75h384 2012  394.262—dc23 2011041840  

Manufactured in the United States of America 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Rolland Enviro100, a 100% post-consumer fiber paper that is FSC certified, deinked, processed chlorine-free, and manufactured with renewable biogas energy. It is acid-free and EcoLogo certified.

Con t en ts

List of Illustrations   vii Introduction   1 1  •  Before the American Civil War   11 2  •  The First Battle of Puebla, 1862   51 3  •  The American Civil War and the Second Battle of Puebla   75 4  •  The Juntas Patrióticas Mejicanas Blossom   101 5  •  One War, Three Fronts   132 6  •  Shaping and Reshaping the Cinco de Mayo, 1868–2011   177 Notes   193 Bibliography   251 Acknowledgments   263 Index   267

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I l lust r at ions

Figures 1. Mastheads from Spanish-language newspapers in California, 1850s   16 2. Los Angeles County births, by ethnicity, 1850–1869   43 3. Reginaldo F. del Valle, later president pro tempore of the California state senate, age five   44 4. Abraham Lincoln   52 5. Benito Juárez, president of the Republic of Mexico, 1858–1872   53 6. La Voz de Méjico’s report of the Mexican victory at the first battle of Puebla   61 7. A newspaper report of the first Cinco de Mayo celebration in California, 1862   63 8. Mastheads from Spanish-language newspapers in California, 1860s   77 9. The Emancipation Proclamation in Spanish, 1863   84 10. Confederate president Jefferson Davis   87 11. Emperor Maximilian of Mexico   102 12. Filomeno Ibarra, president of the Los Angeles junta in 1864   105 13. San Francisco junta member Hipólita Orendain   111 14. Sonora, California, junta member María Noriega   121 15. Los Angeles junta members José López, Jacinto Haro, and Julián Valdez   124 16. Captain José Ramón Pico   137 17. Native California Cavalry recruiting advertisement, 1863   137  

 

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18. Mariano G. Vallejo in Monterey, 1886   146 19. Ygnacio Sepúlveda, a county, federal district, and superior court judge   150 20. Abraham Lincoln’s reelection campaign advertisement in Spanish, 1864   157 21. Spanish-language report of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, 1865   163 22. Cinco de Mayo advertisement, 1877   179 23. Cinco de Mayo advertisement, 1884   181 24. Cinco de Mayo advertisement, 1893   182 25. Mexican Protective League of California advertisement, 1919   185 26. Article about braceros celebrating the Cinco de Mayo, 1945   188

Maps 1. Spanish-language newspaper agents in California, 1850s   18 2. Locations donating to the Latino sword of honor, 1862   67 3. Locations with a junta patriótica mejicana, 1862–1867   112

viii  •   I l lus t r at ions

Introduction According to one version of Bautista family legend, on May 5, 1862, my great-great-grandfather, Bartolo Bautista, stood on the walls of Puebla and watched the mighty French army march into view.1 He had been born in San Miguel Atlautla, in the state of Mexico, about seventy kilometers southeast of Mexico City, high on the slopes of Popocatepetl, on the opposite side of the volcano from the city of Puebla.2 The French charged, a battle ensued, and amid the smoke and noise, my great-great-grandfather’s unit was isolated, surrounded, and taken prisoner. They were told that they were going to be shot and should prepare themselves to die. The French put my great-greatgrandfather and his comrades up against a wall. First, however, they ordered the prisoners to remove their shirts. The French army lived off the territories they occupied and therefore intended to use their victims’ clothing, so they did not want to get the shirts bloody. The Mexican prisoners removed their shirts and presented their bare chests to the firing squad. But now the French soldiers appeared to be carrying on a confused discussion. Finally, one of them pointed to my great-great-grandfather and waved him out of the execution line; he was not going to be shot. Why not? A birthmark had just saved his life. The dark splotch over his heart was in the form of a hand, all five fingers clearly visible, so detailed that one could even see the fingernails. The French soldiers superstitiously refused to take aim at the heart below such a birthmark, so he was let go. He returned to Atlautla and later had a family, and I now exist to write this book 150 years later. I first heard this story in the early 1970s, in Atlautla. An uncle, Adán Páez, who had a story for every occasion, managed to slip this particular incident into a long line of family and town lore he was sharing with me over merienda, the Ibero-American equivalent of teatime, served between 1

four and six in the afternoon. Even now, forty years later, I can still see him, with his white hair and mustache, leaning over the table toward me to give emphasis to the description of my great-great-grandfather’s birthmark, and I remember the words he used to describe the remarkable feature: tan detallada que se veían hasta las uñas de los dedos (“so detailed that even the nails on the fingers were visible”).3 In the early days of the Chicano movement in the 1960s—more than a century after my great-great-grandfather’s (possibly apocryphal) brush with death before a French firing squad at the first battle of Puebla—we few Latino undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley, were pushing to make the Latino presence felt on campus. We devised an annual Cinco de Mayo concert at the Greek Theatre, where salsa musicians such as Carlos Santana, Coke Escovedo, Ray Barreto, and Eddie Palmieri shared the stage with Tex-Mex conjuntos, East Los Angeles doo-wop bands, and the occasional mariachi. Later, in the 1970s, I was a student at the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco. As the Cinco de Mayo approached one year, the editor of the campus newspaper, the Synapse, asked me to write an article about why the holiday was important to Latinos. I pulled together what information I could, but nothing really explained to me why we Latinos in the United States, particularly of the Chicano generation, should celebrate a battle that had taken place a hundred years ago, fifteen hundred miles away. I talked with a few people around the Bay Area and got some descriptions from the older generation of Cinco de Mayo celebrations in the 1930s, but no one knew why this day was celebrated. I developed my own explanation, based on feelings rather than data, because there were no data then: by celebrating Cinco de Mayo, we were celebrating resistance. I felt there must be much more to it, but my research was in other areas, such as Latino patient behavior, so after that one article, I did not return to the theme for decades. The tremendous growth in Spanish-language media during the 1980s and 1990s attracted a number of reporters and journalists from Venezuela, Columbia, Argentina, and, of course, Mexico. They too were puzzled by the celebration of the Cinco de Mayo in the United States. In the early 1980s, I was asked by a news reporter from the Spanish-language television station in San Francisco why we Chicanos celebrated Cinco de Mayo. I could not tell her why, but I did tell her that I too had noticed this. A few years earlier, I had happened to be in Guadalajara on May 5, so I had hurried downtown, expecting to find parades, music, dancers, and orators. I thought the center of action would be the cathedral plaza, so I picked out a spot on the sidewalk  

 

2  •   I n t roduc t ion

and waited to see the activities . . . and waited . . . and waited. Hours later, I returned to my cousins’ house, disappointed. Rather than witness the most spectacular Cinco de Mayo festivities of my life, I was witness to the fact that it is not a major celebration in Mexico. As a young reporter posted to Los Angeles in the 1980s for the Spanish-language paper La Opinión, Sergio Muñoz (now of the Los Angeles Times) raised the issue in print: “Cinco de Mayo is not a very important holiday in Mexico. . . . How does Cinco de Mayo come to be celebrated in the United States?” 4 Reporters have asked me some version of that question many times since. The 1960s and 1970s were a period of tremendous transformation for Latinos in California. Some of the changes were organizational, for example in the health care field. Enthusiastic young Chicanos established hundreds of community clinics, such as La Clínica de la Raza in Oakland, where I was executive director from 1970 to 1974. They also laid the foundations for a number of organizations still functioning in the field of Latino health, such as the California Latino Medical Association for physicians, the Latino Medical Student Association for medical students and residents, and the Chicanos/Latinos for Community Medicine for pre–health professional students. Similar developments took place in education, legal aid, policing, banking, and even the grocery industry. The field of history was likewise undergoing changes. As María Raquél Casas has pointed out, since the days of Hubert H. Bancroft, histories of California have painted a picture of a Latino elite spiraling downward, shorn of land, wealth, and power, slowly disappearing.5 From around 1870 to around 1970, Latinos often were depicted as passive bystanders to the state’s historical development. The 1970s saw the emergence of a new historical approach, which explored the concept of Latino agency. New studies began to look at American history through the lens of Latino experience, from labor organizing to family formation. Gradually a new body of work has formed in which Latinos are studied as both individuals and groups of individuals able to reflect on other individuals and groups and imbue their interactions with meaning. These socially constructed meanings enable any group to create lines of action that involve other individuals and groups, sometimes in conflict, sometimes in cooperation. 6 Lacking in California history for decades were the voices of groups and communities that found themselves in conflict with immigrants from the eastern United States who had claimed control of California and the Ameri­ can West since 1848. Yet since the 1970s, an increasing number of works  

I n t roduc t ion   •   3

have been providing alternative viewpoints. Lisbeth Haas has studied how Indians, Mexicans, and recent arrivals from the eastern United States interacted with one another for more than 150 years in one location, San Juan Capistrano, to give a sense of how Latino identity was socially constructed there over time. Her work sensitizes readers to the notion, developed by Stuart Hall, that “cultural identities are not fixed in a single or hidden history, but are ‘subject to the continuous “play” of history, culture and power.’ ” 7 María Raquél Casas has examined the lives and households of elite nineteenthcentury California women married to non-Latino men to better understand Latino agency in the history of ethnic encounters and conflicts. Casas has heard the voices of these intermarried Latinas and their children constructing a “cultural coalescence” by choosing, borrowing, retaining, and creating distinctive cultural forms in the course of their daily lives. 8 Conversely, John Walton has emphasized that public history also is socially constructed via the interaction of different events and narratives in a process of collective action that he terms historical sociology.9 A narrative of the social construction of the public memory in California known as the Cinco de Mayo adds to this body of thought. As Latinos exercised their agency to create this new public event during the early days of the American Civil War, they were engaging in the social construction of their own identity and culture, that of Latinos living in the United States during a time of war. This experience also provides nuance to the narrative of Latinos during the Gold Rush period. The Gold Rush attracted a huge immigration from Mexico, Central America, and South America, which dwarfed the relatively small population of Californios, the native-born Latinos of California. By virtue of sharing a common language, Spanish, and to a slightly lesser extent a common culture, this inadvertently cosmopolitan population of Latinos in California interacted with one another, worked claims together, set up businesses together, published newspapers in Spanish together, married one another, and had children who would grow up to be largely bilingual and bicultural. Latinos in the state also experienced outright prejudice, discrimination, and denial of justice, ranging from the Foreign Miners’ Tax and the “greaser law” to claim jumping and lynching. Some historians have suggested that Latinos responded to these acts of discrimination by creating “oppositional culture,” a purposeful rejection of mainstream culture so as to resist domination.10 Yet during the years of the American Civil War and the French Intervention in Mexico, we can also see a process of Latino appropriation of main4  •   I n t roduc t ion

stream culture emerging in California in which Latinos accepted and internalized certain elements of that culture on their own terms. For instance, the editors of Spanish-language newspapers urged Latino U.S. citizens to embrace electoral participation, but from a perspective of Latino agency. Oppositional dynamics thus were joined with cooperational dynamics, and both affected definitions of self and family, in a process similar to that discerned by George J. Sánchez in Latino communities in the early twentieth century. “Ethnicity . . . was not a fixed set of customs surviving from life in Mexico, but rather a collective identity that emerged from daily experience in the United States. As such, ethnicity arose not only from interaction with fellow Mexicans and Mexican Americans, but also through dialogue and debate with the larger cultural world.” 11 In 1998, Alvar W. Carlson published a study of Cinco de Mayo celebrations in the United States, recording them in twenty states, but with 79 percent taking place in California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. Nonetheless, he mistakenly presents the Cinco de Mayo as a holiday imported by immigrants from Mexico to the United States between 1965 and 1995.12 Cinco de Mayo celebrations in western states other than California surely have a history of their own, but a search of the literature so far has not turned up any scholarship about the origins of this celebration in those states, even Texas and New Mexico. The scant extant scholarly literature presents the Cinco de Mayo as a sort of St. Patrick’s Day event, a chance to party and consume alcoholic beverages.13 The anthropologist Clayton A. Hurd recently depicted Cinco de Mayo celebrations as alienating Latino students from nonLatino white students.14 A search for literature on the public memory of the Cinco de Mayo in Mexico found a few studies of twentieth-century uses of the commemoration in the creation of local identity but to date has not turned up any general histories of the commemoration of the event between 1862 and the twenty-first century.15 The fact that the holiday has been so little celebrated in Mexico while being so widely celebrated in the United States leads to the conclusion that the commemoration took two very different, independent paths, one indigenous to the United States and one indigenous to Mexico. This book focuses on its development in the United States, where public memory of the Cinco de Mayo was socially, and deliberately, constructed during the American Civil War by Latinos responding to events and changes around them. My discovery of the history of the Cinco de Mayo was unplanned. My primary field of research is the epidemiology and demography of Latinos I n t roduc t ion   •   5

in California. In the course of my work, I began developing populationbased data sets for the period between 1940 and 2000.16  After consulting the work of two colleagues who had used nineteenth-century data sources in the 1970s, Albert Camarillo and Richard Griswold del Castillo, I decided to gather and analyze data from as far back as 1850, when California became a state.17 Conscious of the vagaries of identifying Latinos in twentieth-century administrative data sets, I started with two fairly small, limited data sets: marriage licenses filed in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles Counties from 1850 to 1910.18 About 1 percent of a population gets married in California in any given year, so these data would be, in effect, a 1 percent sample, biased toward the young-adult population. Although African Americans, Native Americans, and Asians were routinely identified as such in these early sources, Latinos were not. I developed an algorithm for identifying Latinos in the marriage certificates, and my research team at the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at UCLA then extracted all the vital information from every certificate in which at least one partner was Latino and put it an electronic spreadsheet.19 I chose Los Angeles County as a case study county and had the research team extract the relevant data from six decennial U.S. censuses for that county from 1850 to 1910.20 They collected the data on every household in which my algorithm identified at least one person as Latino, yielding information on Latino-headed households, Latinos living in boardinghouses, Latinos staying in hotels, Latinos working as live-in servants in non-Latinoheaded households, and every other possible combination of household living arrangement. We also attempted to extract data from county birth and death certificates but found these data spotty and inconsistent until the twentieth century. To help fill in the blank spots for the nineteenth century, I therefore decided to use birth, baptism, marriage, death, funeral, and memorial service announcements from contemporary Spanish-language newspapers, beginning with Los Angeles’ El Clamor Público, published from 1855 to 1859.21 The effort soon was expanded to include Spanish-language newspapers published in San Francisco. San Francisco was the major port of entry during the Gold Rush (1848–1860s), and the newspapers published there yielded new types of data: lists of people whose letters awaited pickup at the post office and passenger lists of ships and stagecoaches. A significant difference quickly became apparent: while Los Angeles Latinos were predominantly of Cali­ fornio origin—that is, born in California while it belonged to either Spain or  

6  •   I n t roduc t ion

Mexico or born as U.S. citizens to California-born parents—Latinos in San Francisco and the rest of Northern California were predominantly immigrants from Mexico, Central America, and South America who came to the state during the Gold Rush. The realization that there were different population patterns in various parts of the state led to further expansions in the scope of my investigation. I selected Tuolumne County as a case study of a mining county, San Luis Obispo as a ranching county, and San Francisco as an urban county different from Los Angeles, and we extracted data on Latinos from the 1850 to 1880 censuses for each of these counties. The newspaper search expanded again, to include Spanish-language papers published in Santa Barbara between 1852 and 1898. While collecting vital statistics on the Civil War period from the San Francisco newspapers La Voz de Méjico and El Nuevo Mundo, initially I was annoyed by the constant appearance of lists of contributors to organizations called juntas patrióticas mejicanas (Mexican patriotic assemblies). These lists were so numerous that at times they crowded out other news, including the notices of births, marriages, and deaths I was looking for, and for months I brushed them aside, wanting to get at the “real news.” Then one day I had an epiphany. These lists, from all over California, as well as parts of Nevada and Oregon, were a previously unstudied data source independent of government records. These lists, and their reason for existing, were the news. Examining them, I noticed the wide geographic spread of junta membership. From The Dalles in Oregon to Santa Ana in California, from Half Moon Bay on the San Francisco Peninsula to the Reese River in Nevada, 129 locations reported having a junta. The research team entered the junta contributors into an electronic database and discovered that nearly 14,000 individual unduplicated names were recorded in these lists.22 The juntas were an extensive, largely grassroots organization; I can think of few other Latino organizations that boast almost 14,000 members, even in the twenty-first century. Moreover, many of the contributors’ names did not appear in censuses, marriage licenses, or baptism records. I had found a new data source for my demographic modeling. While the team was extracting the contributors’ names and the locations of the juntas, I read the correspondence published alongside the lists. This included organizational bylaws, notices of the election of officers and meetings, transcriptions of speeches given at meetings—and detailed descriptions of the celebration of the Cinco de Mayo. The papers’ reports also turned  

 

I n t roduc t ion   •   7

out to be a gold mine of qualitative information that had been available to Latinos in California at that time: military dispatches from Mexico, private correspondence about the French occupation of Mexico, articles copied from Mexican and French newspapers, reports from the battlefields of the American Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, correspondence between Generals Grant and Lee, anguished news of Lincoln’s assassination. My research on present-day Latinos often uses qualitative information, such as in-depth individual interviews and focus group sessions, to flesh out social trends suggested by quantitative data sets; indeed, my first peer-reviewed papers in the health care field were based on qualitative work. Now I was applying my experience in using qualitative sources to uncover the daily lives of the population tracked in the historical demographic data, at least as they were reported in the Spanish-language newspapers. Thus, this book fits into the new tradition of Latino social history described above and offers two modest additions to its growing methodology. The first is the use of multiple population-based data sets to gain some sense of the scale of the Latino population in California in the second half of the nineteenth century. In demographic research on present-day populations, the use of multiple data sets is preferred to the use of a single set, as every data set has its strengths and its limitations, which must be made transparent to the reader. The problems inherent in modern-day U.S. census data— the chronic undercount of Latinos; difficulties in defining exactly who is a Latino; respondents’ confusion over not just race versus national origin but also self-identification as Hispanic—already were evident in censuses from 1850 to 1910. They were exacerbated by a lack of call-back procedures to include people who weren’t home the day the enumerator counted a neighborhood, and by most enumerators’ unfamiliarity with spelling Spanish names. Additionally, the Foreign Miners’ Tax likely did not encourage Latinos to step forward and be counted during the 1860 census and probably did not encourage enumerators to probe too deeply into Latino settlements either. In today’s terms, the censuses of 1850 to 1910 are samples of unknown bias and unknown undercount, yet they are one readily available data source. The data sources independent of the censuses—marriage licenses, baptismal certificates, funeral notices, passenger lists, post office lists, and membership lists of the juntas patrióticas—are also biased and limited, but all these sources taken together provide a better view of the Latino population than would any single data set used in isolation. The second modest addition is the use of nineteenth-century Spanish 

 

 

 

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language newspapers as a qualitative data source. These were public communications, intended to inform a wide audience. Certainly they contain biases, of which the reader must be aware. For instance, four of them—La Voz de Méjico, El Nuevo Mundo, and La Voz de Chile y de las Republicas Americanas, all from San Francisco, and El Amigo del Pueblo from Los Angeles—espoused the Union’s cause in the Civil War and Juárez’s during the French Intervention in Mexico. But another Spanish-language paper, El Éco del Pacífico, published in San Francisco from 1852 to 1865, supported the Confederacy and the French Intervention. Yet all these newspapers served, in effect, as community bulletin boards, and their pages contain multiple voices, not always in harmony with editorial policy: junta news, transcripts of speeches, letters from self-appointed correspondents, announcements, advertisements, and so on. They offer a view of California—and parts of Nevada and Oregon—constructed by Latinos exercising their agency.  

 

 

 

A Note on Terminology I use the term Latino to refer to those individuals with origins in the culturalhistoric traditions of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is intended to be reflective not of race but of culture; as the U.S. Census Bureau informs enumerators and readers of its reports, “Hispanic may be of any race.” 23 Debates have raged since the 1960s over which terms should be used to refer to this population: Chicano, Boricua, Hispanic, pocho, Mexican American, Latino, Raza, Hispano, Spanish.24 These debates about terminology only become more complex as their historical context is also taken into account. They usually center around the question of whether to use a modern word that twenty-first-century readers will understand or one current in the historical period under discussion, which people of that period would have understood. Latinos in California during the Gold Rush and the American Civil War also puzzled over the proper term to use for a population that included Californios, Mexican immigrants, Central Americans, South Americans, Spaniards, and the bilingual, bicultural children of all these groups who were born in California. Luckily, one word exists that both periods would understand. Latino was among the terms used by nineteenth-century Spanishlanguage newspapers in California, in essentially the same way it is used today. I therefore prefer it for this book. This book generally covers the years 1848 to 1867. It studies Latinos creatI n t roduc t ion   •   9

ing a society and an identity during the California Gold Rush, the American Civil War, and the French Intervention, through the lens of the Cinco de Mayo holiday. Public commemoration of the first battle of Puebla did not cease with the imperialists’ defeat in 1867, but to do justice to the post–Civil War history of the Cinco de Mayo in California would take, literally, another book. Therefore, I perforce end with a chapter that briefly sketches an outline of the history of Cinco de Mayo commemorations from 1868 to 2010, since it has been celebrated in California communities every year since 1862. The 150th anniversary of the first battle of Puebla occurs on May 5, 2012. It should be recognized in the commemorations of the 150th anniversaries of the French Intervention in Mexico and the beginning of the American Civil War, as the Cinco de Mayo’s origins lie in those historic conflicts. I hope this book will serve to remind us of the traditionally close connections between Mexico and the United States, formed in large part via the long-standing communities of Latinos in the United States.  

10  •   I n t roduc t ion

On e

Before the American Civil War

Why is the Cinco de Mayo so widely celebrated in twenty-first-century California, and across the entire United States, when it is scarcely celebrated in Mexico? If the Cinco de Mayo were primarily a Mexican holiday, then the U.S. version ought to be but a pale imitation of the Mexican original, yet it is the other way around. This fact provides the key. Although the holiday celebrates a Mexican victory over the French at Puebla on May 5, 1862, the answer to the question is not to be found in Mexico. It is found instead in California, Nevada, and Oregon during the Gold Rush and the American Civil War—for the Cinco de Mayo is not, in its origins, a Mexican holiday at all but rather an American one, created by Latinos in California in the middle of the nineteenth century. To understand why Latinos in these western states in 1862 and later responded so passionately to a battle that took place fifteen hundred miles away, first one must understand the changes that took place in their population and culture as this territory evolved from being part of the Republic of Mexico to being part of the United States. It is also vital to understand how Latinos viewed the issues of the American Civil War—freedom versus slavery, broad-based democracy versus elitist oligarchy—through the lens of their experience in Gold Rush California and neighboring territories. Most of all, it is important to understand where Latinos of the time stood on issues of language, identity, citizenship, and political participation. In short, in order to understand why the Cinco de Mayo is celebrated today all across the United States, first the experience of Latinos in California and the far West during the crucial period from 1848 to 1861 must be understood, from the announcement of the discovery of gold in California to the moment Confederate guns fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.  

 

 

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Latinos in California The experience of the native-born Latinos of California, the Californios, may be exemplified by Francisco P. Ramírez, born in 1837 in the Mexican state of Alta California.1 On the night of February 1, 1848, when he went to bed at his parents’ home on Aliso Street in Los Angeles, not far from the plaza around which that city had been founded in 1781, he was an eleven-year-old citizen of Mexico. Later, as an adult, he recalled childhood evenings at home while California was still part of Mexico. “Who does not sigh upon recalling the winter nights when, beside the hearth, we listened to the sad history of the Aztecs, the cruelty of the conquistadors, the deeds of our own parents?” 2 He belonged to the regional variant of Mexican society and identity called Californio (“Californian”). His grandfather, Francisco Ramírez, had arrived in California from Tepic, via Sonora, in 1794. His father, Juan María Ramírez, had been born in Santa Barbara in 1801. Juan had married Petra Abila of the Abila family, who had been resident in Los Angeles since 1783; their family home, the Avila Adobe, still stands on Olvera Street.3 Young Francisco had Californio roots as deep as it was possible for a Latino to have in a state that had been settled by Latinos only in the late eighteenth century. But that night while he slept, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo took effect, formally ending hostilities between the United States and Mexico after the Mexican-American War and making California a territory of the United States, henceforward to be administered under U.S. law. When Francisco Ramírez awoke on February 2, he was a citizen of the United States of America. At first, this might not have seemed to have had a significant effect on his daily life. He still spoke with his parents in Spanish, ate the same sort of morning meal—most likely including tortillas and beans—and probably learned his usual lessons and went out to play with his usual friends. The familiarity of daily life, however, changed radically later in 1848, when Sam Brannan brought to San Francisco samples of gold just discovered in the Sierra Nevada and news of the discovery spread around the world. 4 Without leaving his native California, Ramírez would meet strange new people, learn new languages, and become acquainted with new laws, habits, and customs. Tens of thousands of immigrants, the Forty-Niners, poured in from the Atlantic states of the United States in search of gold. Despite this relocation, they doggedly continued to define themselves in terms of the Atlantic coast. They awaited “news from the Atlantic” brought by ship and sent their  

 

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correspondence back via “Mails for the Atlantic States.” They complained that California did not have the amenities that “nearly every city on the Atlantic has” and shared fond “memories of omnibus riding in the cities of the Atlantic.” Life in California frequently eroded their standards of behavior, leading the editor of an English-language newspaper to wonder, “Why is it that some men, when they come to California, throw off all the guards that surrounded them in Atlantic cities?” They assured themselves that they were eager to return to their “homes in the Atlantic States” when their sojourn in California was over, and indeed many of them did. Many others stayed. Their self-identification with the Atlantic region makes it logical to refer to these immigrants as Atlantic Americans, defined as people with origins in the historical experience begun by predominantly British settlers on the North Atlantic coast of the United States, which molded the socialization of people raised in that region, irrespective of race or ethnicity. Therefore, Atlantic American in this book refers to any and all non-Latinos from nonwestern states, including both Yankees and Southerners.5 Moreover, tens of thousands of Latino miners and other immigrants came north at the same time, by land from Mexico or by sea up the Pacific Coast from Central and South America, bringing their own regional customs with them. For example, a little over a year after Ramírez awoke as a citizen of the United States, a young gentleman from Guadalajara, Mexico, Justo Veytia, had his first look at San Francisco from the deck of the Volante on April 1, 1849. Veytia had made the decision to travel to faraway California as a gambusino, a prospector looking for gold. He kept a diary of his journey, begun at his elegantly appointed home on the main plaza in Guadalajara. Traveling in the company of friends and relatives, he made his way through various towns in Jalisco to the seaport of San Blas, where he boarded a ship for San Francisco. After suffering four weeks of bad food and seasickness, he finally reached his destination and recorded his first glimpse of California through a traffic jam of ships. “Around ten in the morning, we anchored in the bay, where something like forty vessels, both large and small, swayed majestically up and down. . . . At last we had in our sight the much-desired Harbor of the Land of Gold, the object of so many hopes. We had finished that sea voyage, so arduous and never to be forgotten.” 6 Veytia traveled in Northern California for nearly eighteen months. He never encountered Ramírez, who was then still living in Los Angeles. Yet although these two individuals never met, the presence of tens of thousands of gambusinos from Mexico and Central and South America helped shape Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r   •   13

the world of Ramírez and his Californio compatriots. Like Veytia, thousands of these Spanish-speaking gold seekers traveled from their homes to San Francisco, the international point of entry closest to the gold fields.7 Yet more would-be gambusinos trekked across the desert from northern Mexico to California, many motivated by economic hardship at home. Reports put their numbers in the tens of thousands. “A friend who has connections in Mexico . . . says . . . the crops have failed in Northern Mexico, and thousands of people have determined on leaving Sonora. . . . The people, to the number of twenty-five thousand, had determined on moving to this country. Eight thousand have already arrived at Los Angeles. The most of those people will settle about Sonora, near the Tuolumne, and that town will, of course, become a place of considerable importance. Many of them will settle also about the Mariposa, and perhaps farther South.” 8 On the morning that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo took effect in 1848, there were an estimated seventy-five hundred Californios living in the new U.S. territory. Over the next thirteen years, thanks to the Gold Rush, the total number of Latinos in California increased by an estimated factor of five to ten, or possibly more.9 As a result of this large immigration, the Latino population changed dramatically, from being a small, culturally homogeneous, Californio population to a very large, heterogeneous one, including Latinos representing nearly every country in Latin America, as well as the New Mexico and Arizona Territories (which Mexico had also ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo). There were even immigrants from Spain. From 1848 to 1869, this mix of native Californios, Latino immigrants, and Atlantic Americans laid the foundations of Latino society and daily life in California in the centuries to come. Several potential unifying factors served to bring this heterogeneous collection of Latinos together, but there also existed social factors working to divide them. Latinos in California between the time of Brannan’s announcement in 1848 and the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861 were pulled back and forth between cohesion and division. A search for balance influenced the men and women who were to respond to the news of the first battle of Puebla in 1862 and thereby shaped what became the Cinco de Mayo holiday. Language was an obvious unifying factor. The Californios and the immigrants who had just arrived from Mexico and Central and South America all spoke Spanish. Initially, therefore, communication among them would have been easy, even allowing for some variations in accent and vocabulary. During the Gold Rush, two developments particularly facilitated the use of 14  •   Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r

Spanish as a tool of communication among far-flung settlements of Latinos: the establishment of Spanish-language newspapers and, as of 1850, the officially mandated use of the Spanish language by state and local government. Spanish-language newspapers served to inform the Spanish-speaking public of events in California and beyond. The first publication began in 1851: the Spanish-language section of the Los Angeles Star (sometimes known by its Spanish name, La Estrella), whose pages often featured content and editorial direction independent of the English-language portion of the paper (see figure 1). The lawyer and poet Manuel Clemente Rojo, its first editor, announced that his publication was to be an advocate for Latinos against the problems besetting their community. “The press . . . has inexhaustible resources for introducing reform; and when it is proper, it raises its majestic voice to petition for the redress of our ills.” 10 A year later in San Francisco, a daily French newspaper, L’Echo du Pacifique, dedicated one or two of its four pages per issue to a Spanish-language publication, called El Éco del Pacífico. As the Spanish-speaking population of the state grew, a third newspaper began in 1854: La Crónica was a four-page newspaper written entirely in Spanish, published three times a week in San Francisco. After two years, the editor of La Crónica, J. Jofre, was hired away by El Éco del Pacífico to head a new, expanded version of four pages a day in Spanish, essentially separate from the French paper. Santa Barbara also had a bilingual newspaper in English and Spanish, the Gazette or La Gazeta, begun in 1855.11 On taking up his editorship of El Éco, Jofre reaffirmed the view of the role of a Spanish-language newspaper as being an advocate for a community, which in typical nineteenth-century language he termed “our race”: “As Americans and as members of the noble Spanish-speaking race to which we belong, we believe it to be our duty . . . to denounce before the supreme tribunal of public opinion the injustices, the abuses, and the outrages to which individuals of our race too often have been, and continue to be, victim. We believe it our duty to station ourselves constantly as a watchtower, which may give our Spanish-speaking countries warning against those illegal aggressions by which people have tried, and are trying, to engulf them.” 12 Francisco Ramírez had a role in the birth of the Spanish-language press in California. Shortly after his fourteenth birthday, he was employed by Rojo as an assistant at the Star, where he learned the basics of running a small newspaper. Ramírez later moved to San Francisco, where in 1853 he worked for the Catholic Standard, a religiously affiliated paper. When that paper declared bankruptcy in 1854, Ramírez traveled to the gold country Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r   •   15

Figure 1.  Spanish-language newspapers circulated throughout California during the Gold Rush. La Estrella began in 1851, as the Spanish-language portion of the weekly Los Angeles Star. El Éco del Pacífico was started in 1852 as the Spanish-language portion of the daily French-language L’Echo du Pacifique; both published until 1865. La Crónica was a triweekly in San Francisco in 1854–1855. El Clamor Público was published weekly in Los Angeles in 1855–1859. (CESLAC UCLA)  

and worked for an English-language paper, the Weekly California Express, for some months. He returned to Los Angeles later that year, an experienced newspaperman at the tender age of seventeen. He took over the editorship of the Star’s Spanish-language pages, recently vacated by Rojo. In the spring of 1855, however, Ramírez decided it was time for him to become independent. He established a weekly four-page Spanish-language paper in his native Los Angeles, El Clamor Público (“The Public Outcry”).13 When he was criticized 16  •   Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r

as being too young to run a paper, he answered proudly, “We are old enough to discover the needs of our brethren, to defend their interests, and to make them see what is best for them by maintaining the rights and privileges that the laws of this country give them.” 14 While editors’ voices were strong in frontier Spanish-language news­papers, the newspapers did not limit themselves entirely to those editors’ perceptions of events in the state and the country. The nature of local journalism in the mid-nineteenth century meant they could not do so; most provincial newspapers, such as El Clamor Público, had too small a circulation to afford to employ reporters or even much in the way of staff. Most editors wrote articles, composed editorials, set type, and administered subscriptions single­handed, or nearly so—and often had to maintain a sideline as job printers, to make ends meet. Consequently, they filled gaps by reprinting articles from other journals, especially to supply national and international news, and by soliciting material from just about anyone who wished to contribute.15 As a result, multiple voices spoke from the pages, at the editors’ invitation. In keeping with this practice, Ramírez proclaimed in his inaugural edition that his paper was open to the general public, with a section titled Comunicados (“Communications”)—an early form of a letters to the editor column—in which he would publish letters and other reader submissions. He added, however, the disclaimer that “here, each person expresses his own sentiments, and it will be obvious that we are not responsible for articles that appear under this heading.” 16 Communications poured in. A number of contributors were self-appointed, unpaid, semiregular correspondents writing from various locations, giving accounts of events that caught their attention. Most often these correspondents used pseudonyms, although they did occasionally sign their own names. In addition, there were plenty of letters from individuals who wrote only once or twice to the paper, seeking to bring specific matters to public attention; they sometimes signed their own names but not infrequently also resorted to pen names. Although their absolute numbers of subscriptions were small by today’s standards, such newspapers nonetheless circulated widely, in geographic terms, throughout California. One indication of this widespread circulation was the network of newspaper agents each paper used to recruit subscribers and distribute copies. Map 1 shows the location of agents for the Star, El Éco del Pacifico, La Crónica, La Gazeta, and El Clamor Público, from Shasta to San Diego and from Sonoma to Columbia. When California was admitted as a state of the United States in 1850,  

 

 

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Map 1.  Locations of agents for Latino newspapers in California in the 1850s. Overlapping sites have been dispersed by up to ten miles for easier viewing. The number of agents for each paper appears in the legend. (Werner Schink)

its first constitution mandated the use of Spanish along with English. Even while the constitutional convention was meeting, the delegates had resolved to make the proceedings available in both languages.17 In the original state constitution, Article XI, Section 21, specified, “All laws, decrees, regulations and provisions, which from their nature require publication, shall be published in English and Spanish.” 18 In September 1849, provisions were made for both the Spanish and the English version of the state’s constitution to be printed and distributed, along with the proceedings of the entire convention leading up to the writing of the bilingual constitution.19 Once the state legislature began meeting in 1850, its proceedings were printed in both English and Spanish. For the newspapers just beginning in California, a contract to publish laws and legislative proceedings in Spanish represented a sought-after steady source of income for those fortunate enough to secure it. The Los Angeles Star was among them. The Los Angeles Star was selected by the last Legislature as the medium for the early publication of the laws of this State in the Spanish language. . . . When it is remembered that there are in this State at least 30,000 persons who speak no other than the Spanish language, and that the Judges of some of our Courts even are familiar only with that tongue, the importance of the early publication of the Laws in Spanish, must be manifest to all. The Convention which framed the Constitution, were aware of the necessity and provided that all laws which required publication should be published in the Spanish language.20

Therefore, a good portion of the Star’s Spanish-language page often was devoted to printing translations of laws newly passed by the state. Counties and cities were likewise required to publish their laws and regulations in Spanish. After an initial burst of enthusiasm for the promulgation of state, county, and city ordinances in Spanish, however, such efforts began to lag; this deterioration was one of the first things Latinos began to complain about in their newspapers. In 1855, Ramírez, by then the editor of El Clamor Público, reminded state representatives of their duty to provide laws in Spanish. “We call the attention of our representatives to the lack which the Spanish-speaking population of California feels because the laws are not published in Castilian Spanish. One of the first articles of the State Constitution stipulates that ‘all the laws will be published in English and in Spanish.’ ” 21 Two years later, he revisited the theme: “We ask that our constitutional privileges be complied Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r   •   19

with. Article 11, Section 21: ‘All the laws, decrees, and regulations whose publication may be necessary, will be published in English and in Spanish.’ ” 22 Culture also could be a unifying factor. The first settlers who came from Mexico to California in 1769 brought with them the customs and culture of the late-colonial Mexican frontier, specifically the northern regions of Sinaloa, Sonora, and Baja California Sur.23 These became an integral part of Latino society in California—reflected in particular tastes in food, clothing, housing, furnishings, and horse gear—which provided a good market for those with such items to sell.24 The arrival of miners during the Gold Rush would add new dimensions to this set of cultural norms. Latino and other merchants provided goods and services that the Latino market wanted, and a number of Latino-owned businesses soon were established. One of the early retail stores set up by Latino merchants in San Francisco was the Tienda Española (“Spanish Shop”), founded by José Díaz and Juan Cima on Washington Street. By 1852 it was offering dry goods of particular interest to immigrants recently arrived from Mexico and other places in Latin America, including Mexican and Californian saddles, bits, and spurs, and Barcelona playing cards.25 As the Latino population grew, the Tienda Española began to offer services, including arranging passage for its customers on ships sailing for Mexico and brokering real estate deals, such as the sale of a ranch in Bodega Bay in Sonoma County and another one at Corral de Tierra in Monterey County.26 Another dry-goods store, La Amarilla, operated in the vicinity of the Tienda Española. 27 Latinoowned hotels and restaurants also set up in business, such as Francisco Gon­ záles’s Hotel de la Aguila de Oro (“Golden Eagle Hotel”), at the corner of Montgomery and Pacific.28 Other professionals arrived to provide services. The Sánchez brothers—J. Ramón, Manuel, and Bernardino—were originally from Chile. They undertook business as commission merchants and general commercial agents.29 Towns in the Central Valley served as jumping-off points for miners heading to the gold country, and a Latino business presence soon appeared in these locations. Once at the mines, a gambusino easily could find Latinoowned businesses. The town of Sonora had a large Latino population and consequently a number of Latino-owned businesses, such as Jacinto Barretto’s store, restaurants like José María Cabezut’s Sonora Restaurant, and the ubiquitous “fandango houses,” as houses of ill repute were locally known.30 Similar mixes of Latino-owned businesses were described at Camp Calaveras, Mokelumne Hill, Vallecito, Rough and Ready, and Shasta.31  

 

 

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Religious activities also played a unifying role in the social life of Latino California. The daily, weekly, and annual cycles of services and celebrations, including public processions and holy days, brought large portions of the community together on a regular basis.32 For example, the Mexican Día de los Muertos (“Day of the Dead”) continued to be observed during the Gold Rush. In Los Angeles in November 1857, “the second day of the present month, the day devoted in the Catholic church to praying for the dead, was observed. . . . In the afternoon, a large crowd left the church for the cemetery, where they went in order to offer their prayers for the souls of their parents, siblings, relatives, and friends whose mortal remains rest in that sacred enclosure. . . . Everywhere, one could see women and men kneeling by graves.” 33 During Holy Week, Latino Catholics in California followed the old custom of burning Judas in effigy. As the English-language paper Alta California noted in 1853, “The Catholics of several countries, particularly Mexico, have a custom of making an effigy of Judas Iscariot every year, on Good Friday, which they trot about on an ass, with his face turned towards the tail of the animal. They make a great parade of it, after which they hang him. He is then cut down, his pockets and mouth stuffed with fire crackers and all sorts of combustibles, and he is then publicly burnt at the stake. During the process, men, women, and children follow after, beating and calling him all kinds of hard names.” 34 The use of the Spanish language, shared customs and culture, and the influence of the Catholic religion all worked to unify the Latino community. There were, however, a number of potential divisions within this population as well. Some were endemic to all the societies of Mexico and Latin America, such as class, race, and regional identity, and indeed were hardly dissimilar to such divisive factors in any other contemporary society. New sources of potential fragmentation developed among Latinos in California as a result of its acquisition by the United States, including questions of national allegiance and Atlantic Americans’ insistence on classifying people by race. The Spanish-language newspapers provide ample evidence of these potential dividers. Among Latinos themselves, race had the potential to be a divisive factor. In the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, the Spanish crown had categorized individuals in its American colonies according to their race (e.g., Indian, African, European) or multiracial heritage (e.g., mestizos were of mixed Indian and European parentage; mulatos were of African and Euro­ pean parentage). This was known as the casta (“caste”) system. The lighterBe for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r   •   21

skinned castes were granted certain social privileges, while restrictions were placed on the darker-skinned ones.35 Once Mexico achieved independence, however, it abolished this system of racial identification. But while official racial classification thereafter was no longer legal, social consideration of a person’s racial background nonetheless continued informally, and in fact continues in Mexico today. Caste classifications quickly came to have little legal significance in California, although unofficial, social divisions based on ethnicity doubtless continued to some extent, as in Mexico. In the generations following the original settlements in the late eighteenth century, members of ethnically varied families intermarried and individuals held positions of social and political responsibility with little apparent consideration of racial heritage. By the early nineteenth century, caste terminology was being applied haphazardly at best or even abandoned altogether in favor of a simple binary distinction between gente de razón (“people of reason”)—which is to say, anyone born a Catholic and culturally Latino, regardless of ethnicity—and unbaptized Indians.36 With statehood, however, came the imposition of a U.S. legal system that made sharp distinctions between persons on the basis of race. Anyone of Indian, African, or other nonwhite descent—such heritage being calculated by the proportion of nonwhite ancestry in an individual’s background (the “blood quantum”) or sometimes simply presumed from the person’s appearance—had no right to vote, hold political office, serve on a jury, or even give valid testimony for or against a white person in court.37 During the first years of statehood, this provision was in practice largely disregarded by Californios and elite Atlantic Americans, who apparently preferred to classify Californios according to their socioeconomic status rather than their ancestry or skin color, especially in the Californio-dominated south. The first well-publicized debate on the subject of race and legal capacity in California occurred in the spring of 1857. Manuel Domínguez, a wealthy Los Angeles–area rancher who had helped to write the California constitution of 1849, was of Indian heritage and appearance, but this had been no bar to his being a respected member of Californio society before 1848 or even an elected official in his native county after that date.38 At some point before March 28, 1857, though, he had been scheduled to be a witness in a San Francisco trial, only to be unexpectedly denied the right to testify, “despite having been one of the men who signed the state constitution, because he had Indian blood in his veins.” 39 Assemblyman Pablo de la Guerra of Santa  

 

 

 

 

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Barbara testified about Domínguez’s racial background, pointing out that when that very constitution was being written, Domínguez’s mixed-race heritage had been well known, but no one had raised any objections to his being a signatory to the document. “I know he has Indian blood in his veins, and I know that this came to the attention of the Constitutional Convention. . . . I have known Don Manuel Domínguez since he was a boy, and he held high office under the Mexican government. He also has enjoyed high office under our [present] government. I know that his character has no stain upon it; never has anything been said, nor can it be said, against him.” 40 Editor Ramírez of El Clamor Público seized on the story with the vehemence he customarily displayed in denouncing Atlantic American assaults on Latinos’ rights or dignity. Señor de la Guerra . . . knew that having Indian blood in one’s veins was not disagreeable or disparaging to anybody. Señor Domínguez has occupied honorable posts in the state, in Mexican times. He frequently has been a witness in the courts, without opposition. He is highly esteemed, and at present is a supervisor of his county. . . . We think that, if it were possible to perform a chemical analysis of our brethren from the United States, there would be very few persons who would emerge as not having at least a drop of Indian or black blood. The age of bluebloods, if it ever existed, is assuredly not the present one. 41

Manuel Domínguez’s ethnic heritage and appearance had been no barrier in the Mexican California of the 1830s and 1840s to his possession of wealth and social prominence or to his full participation in politics and legal matters. Only with the introduction of contemporary Atlantic American notions did race become a legally divisive issue. Questions of national allegiance sometimes also were divisive, especially between Californios and people who emigrated from Mexico in the decade following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Prior to 1848, Californio culture had been merely a regional variant of Mexican society, just as Tapatíos from Jalisco and Jarochos from Veracruz enjoyed their own regional cultures. Thereafter, however, with the transference of California from Mexico to the United States, these feelings of regional identity threatened to divide Californios from Mexicans. Some Californios had not disapproved of this change of government, but many others had, and some of the latter group felt their former country had betrayed them in acquiescing to it. As a result, a certain amount of name-calling went on between the Cali­ Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r   •   23

fornios and the recent immigrants during the 1850s. A letter published in El Clamor Público in 1856, signed by Un Californio (“A Californian”), generally agreed with the editor Ramírez’s earlier stated opinion that Californios had been better off under Mexican rule. But Un Californio reminded him that while Californios had actually fought the U.S. Army in defense of their homeland and won several engagements—albeit not the war—the Mexican government had meekly sold the state to the United States. “Who has caused this misfortune for us, and who gave us into foreign hands? In order to keep our situation and our happiness, we threw ourselves into the battles of the Gutiérrez, [Rancho] El Chino, and San Pascual; but our brethren sold us, just as Joseph’s brothers did him.” 42 A correspondent identifying himself only as El Curioso (“The Curious Fellow”) wrote a letter to El Clamor Público in 1857 in which he commented on tensions between Californios and other Mexicans. “It is very sad to see the indifference and antipathy that prevails amongst Mexicans in California . . . and this is observed especially in the majority of the native sons of the country, who look upon those Mexicans who are not born in California with more scorn than they do the Indians.” 43 Given the anti-Latino attitudes of many Atlantic Americans, some Latinos began to wonder whether they were better off remaining in California or emigrating to Mexico. A few individuals organized groups of Californios who decided to relocate to the Mexican state of Sonora, but most Californios opted to stay. The question of whether a “real” Latino born in the United States ought to feel loyalty to that country or to Mexico (or another Latin American country of parental origin) has been debated ever since. 44  

 

California Conquered As the Gold Rush continued, similarities of language, culture, and religion united California’s burgeoning Latino population in significant respects, but that population also faced divisions created by socioeconomic factors, race, and national allegiance. Yet nearly all Latinos, Californio and immigrant alike, shared one overarching experience after 1848, which to one degree or another transcended whatever social or political differences might otherwise divide them. Characterized in 1856 by a representative of the Mexican government as the “experience of what has happened to them in California,” it was the situation of being considered undesirable strangers in a society to which they did not belong and which did not want them.45 Nearly all Latinos shared 24  •   Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r

it, to a greater or lesser extent, because it was essentially imposed upon them by the growing influence of Atlantic American culture, which on the whole did not trouble itself to distinguish between Latinos on the basis of their national allegiance but instead viewed them collectively through the prism of its own preconceptions about race. Because most Latinos were demonstrably of mixed-race origins, the majority of Atlantic Americans increasingly lumped them into the disparaged category “not white” and therefore considered them inherently inferior to themselves. Wealthy upper-class Latinos were to varying degrees spared some of the effects of this cultural and racial prejudice, but as the case of Manuel Domínguez shows, even they were not always immune. This rejection by Atlantic American whites was codified in governmental policy, as well as experienced in daily life by many Latinos. Yet for the most part, it did not move Latinos to leave California; instead they reacted against it, both by forming organizations devoted to self-help and political activity and in other ways. President James K. Polk’s secretary of state, James Buchanan, had promised Latinos in California that under the government of the United States, their lives and society would be better off than before. Some ten months after the ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Buchanan declared of these former Mexican citizens, “These our new citizens ought to be, and from the justice and generosity of the American character, the President is confident that they will be treated with respect and kindness, and thus be made to feel that by changing their allegiance they have become more prosperous and happy.” 46 During the Mexican-American War, most of California’s Latino inhabitants, as citizens of Mexico, had been the enemy. Viewed from this perspective, the Californios’ defense of their homes and property had simply been enemy action. Following the United States’ defeat of Mexico and acquisition of California, these former enemies now became the conquered. Initially, it was hoped that these conquered Californios would attain peaceful coexistence with their conquerors. Reporting on the signing of the state constitution in 1849, the San Francisco Alta California painted an idealized picture: “Those who had labored to lay the foundations of the new State—coming from different nations and climes—felt that, from that hour, they were one. . . . The American hearts beat strongly and proudly, as they felt that they had planted the flag under which they were born and reared upon this wild western shore of the new continent. . . . The Californians were convinced that they were conquered but [were] to become the brothers and friends of  

 

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the conquerors.” 47 This hopeful picture, however, was already being contradicted by the realities of life in the American West. Whether they wanted to attain peaceful coexistence or not, Latinos more often than not found themselves treated as a conquered enemy, expected by the Atlantic American conquerors to behave as befitted a subjugated people in the new state of California instead of as “brothers and friends” and social equals in their native land. Most Atlantic Americans entertained no doubt that California had been acquired by conquest, and indeed they were rather proud of that fact. An 1849 speech by the state senator T. L. Vermeule of San Joaquin minced no words. “Mr. Chairman—this land of California was acquired to the American people,—how? Why, to use the least offensive form of speech, it was acquired by military occupation. In more glowing, but not less truthful phrase, it is a rich gift, bequeathed to the American people by the valor of their soldiers, their volunteers and their sailors.” 48 This consciousness of being conquerors, more than any high-minded public statements by politicians in Washington, DC, shaped Atlantic American attitudes toward how the newly acquired lands and their occupants should be treated. Predictably, to those who saw California as conquered territory, the state’s resources, particularly its gold fields and fertile soil, were spoils of war that now belonged to the winners. Accordingly, many Atlantic Americans newly arrived in California believed they somehow were owed land simply for taking the trouble to travel to the Pacific coast. “A large proportion of the emigrants who came into California last year, did so, under the expectation that the government existing here when they left their homes, would grant them lands for agricultural purposes. Most of them have exhausted all their means in the expenses incident to their long perilous journey, and are now here, without house home or lands. . . . Some provision or regulation, it seems to us, should be made immediately for these emigrants, by which they will be authorized to settle upon vacant lands.” 49 Much of the land they desired, however, already belonged to Latinos, whose claims to ownership were seen as annoying obstacles that needed to be removed as expeditiously as possible. The recently elected U.S. senator from California, William McKendree Gwin, came to the Atlantic American settlers’ rescue with a new land law that essentially called into question all land grants made in California under Spanish and Mexican rule. Once Congress passed Gwin’s bill in 1851—in direct contravention of the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo—all those earlier land grants, without exception, now were required to be confirmed by a Land Commission. Thanks to substan 

 

 

 

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tial differences in U.S. and Mexican practices of surveying and establishing ownership, the commission retroactively required a higher standard of proof than the one in operation when the grants had been made under Spanish or Mexican law. The landowners who could not meet this new higher standard would not have their titles confirmed, and the lands in question would be declared to have no owner. Under U.S. law, the ownership of these “vacant” lands thereupon would default to the federal government, whose policy at this time was to consider them open for anyone to settle.50 This came as a shock to Californios, who had been assured by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and subsequently by various U.S. government officials that they would be treated with Buchanan’s “respect and kindness” and their property rights respected. Due to numerous rulings, appeals and higher court reviews, the Land Com­mission often took years, occasionally even decades, to determine the validity of any given title. In the end, the majority of Californio titles eventually were confirmed, but the expense of defending their property rights throughout this lengthy process often proved ruinous to the owners, who ended up selling some or all of their land to pay the lawyers’ fees. The legal process instituted by the Land Commission also seemed far too slow to some Atlantic American immigrants, who thought the state’s lands ought to be immediately open to their settlement by right of conquest. Especially in Northern California, these new arrivals therefore simply entered a promising area of Latino-owned land, staked out or fenced off a portion of it, and declared this to be their homestead. In some cases, these squatters were encouraged by politicians who promised to support their claims and by attorneys who assured them that the Spanish or Mexican titles would not stand up in court.51 “Straightaway, troublemakers—pettifogging lawyers—are not lacking to assure the new arrivals that they may rightfully and with complete confidence squat wherever they please because the titles issued by previous governments are not worth a fig” (italics in original).52 Not surprisingly, Latino landowners objected to the squatters’ behavior and were appalled that the political and legal systems appeared to be siding with the usurpers. “It is now proposed that this ignoble band known as squatters, who have committed all [manner] of pillaging, abuses, usurpations, and murders against the landowner for the past seven years, be covered with the mantle of justice, and be called ‘occupants in good faith.’ ” 53 While the new land laws and the squatting phenomenon directly affected only landowners, Latinos quickly and correctly came to see these  

 

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problems as aspects of their general rejection by Atlantic Americans and resented them accordingly.54 As if the squatter problem were not bad enough, a different sort of land dispute became endemic to the mining regions. When Forty-Niners arrived from the rest of the United States, they often were dismayed to discover that Latino miners, either Californios or immigrants from Mexico and Latin America, already had staked claims and had been working them for more than a year. Some Atlantic Americans resented the competition, and they sought to ban Latino immigrants from the mines. The resolutions of a selfappointed group of miners meeting in 1849 at the Mokelumne River declared, “It is vain to think that Americans that have conquered and own the soil, and under whose special legislation it must be ultimately ruled . . . who wrested (or aided to wrest) it from Mexican misrule . . . can ever hope to compete with the hordes of hired men who are weekly, nay, almost daily, flocking in upon them from the distant provinces of Mexico and South America.” 55 The easiest expedient, for resentful parties who had sufficient capability for armed force and the will to use it, was physically to expel Latino miners and take over their claims, justifying the possession in the name of the American conquest of California. The Alta California documented this approach in a report derived from the Stockton Times about a conflict between Atlantic American and Mexican miners at Mormon Gulch (modern Tuttletown, in Tuolumne County) in 1850. “The miners are up in arms, irritated beyond endurance, and there is a universal sentiment of hatred against foreigners. At the Mormon Gulch resolutions have been passed to drive all Mexicans from the mines; they have received notice to quit in fifteen days, or they will be expelled by force.” 56 The most sweeping and notorious means intended to limit Latinos’ mining activities was the Foreign Miners’ Tax. At the first legislative session of the new state in 1850, Senator Thomas Jefferson Greene of Sacramento invoked widespread Atlantic American fears that a wave of violent, dangerous Latinos was inundating California and in response proposed the Foreign Miners’ Tax with the intent of discouraging such immigration—or at least profiting from it. “Tens of thousands have already arrived in our country, and they are the commencement of a vast multitude en route and preparing to come hither of the worst population of the Mexican and South American States. . . . Pass this bill, and the foreign proprietor . . . will have to pay some little tribute for this rich and unprecedented privilege.” 57 Quickly approved, the tax required that twenty dollars per month be levied on every foreign miner, although in  

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practice attempts to collect it were overwhelmingly directed against Latinos rather than any other group.58 The average wage for a working man at the time was about a dollar a day, so twenty dollars a month was the rough equivalent of an income tax of 80 to 90 percent. If a miner struck it rich, the tax might seem manageable. But most miners did not make even the average daily wage, so this tax would have taken all they earned and even left them in debt. The shift from Mexican to U.S. law introduced another unwelcome surprise for Californios: property taxes. Suddenly, holding land became an annual liability when the taxes, used to finance state and local government, came due. “In California, real property had never been assessed, nor had any sort of taxes been paid on them before.” 59 After the Gold Rush began, more than 90 percent of California’s population lived in the north, where the gold fields were and where towns had sprung up to provide miners with goods and services. Therefore the northern counties easily dominated the state legislature, and it was in their interest to exempt gold mining from taxation. But the money had to come from somewhere, so the legislature decided to tax real estate. As a result, the bulk of state finance now was expected to come from landowners, the majority of whom, especially in politically feeble Southern California, were Californio cattle ranchers. “The representatives of the mining counties have exercised their power in a very unworthy way,” complained Los Angeles’ El Clamor Público, “casting the burden of taxes upon the counties dedicated to agriculture; and, as always, they have enjoyed that dominance in the Legislature, to succeed in exempting mineral lands, with all their riches, from paying tax. . . . So we ask that the southern counties’ taxes be reduced, or else that mineral lands should pay tax according to their value.” 60 Between simply not understanding the new property taxes and having their income-producing holdings tied up in title litigation, many Californio landowners gradually became tax delinquents, with the result that their lands eventually were sold at public auction to pay back taxes. 61 Once again, Latinos felt persecuted by an Atlantic American government policy, although in this case their targeting was more or less inadvertent. 62 The experience of their conquest and subsequent treatment as second-class citizens appeared to Latinos in California to be part of a larger, fundamental pattern of deplorable and arrogant U.S. behavior with regard to Latino countries, characterized by the spate of filibustering expeditions mounted by U.S. citizens against Central American nations and portions of Mexico in the 1850s. Consequently, filibustering also received considerable negative attention in the Spanish-language press. Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r   •   29

In one of the most notorious examples, William Walker gathered a small force of Atlantic Americans in San Francisco in 1853, traveled to Baja Cali­ fornia, harassed and plundered local ranchers, then declared himself the governor of the “Republic of Baja California.” 63 Although the U.S. government gave no official support or countenance to filibustering, many Atlantic Americans in the United States, including some in California, applauded Walker. A public meeting held in Stockton, for example, ended in a resolution to send him supplies and recruits. 64 Walker stayed in Baja California for three months, never controlling more than a small part of its territory, then attempted to take over the Mexican state of Sonora, where his expedition soon was defeated by Mexican irregulars and his own logistical incompetence, forcing him to return to California. 65 Despite this failure, he raised another force two years later and sailed for Nicaragua, which was then wracked by civil war. The plan was similar to the one attempted in Baja California: invade part of a country, proclaim independence, then petition to be admitted to the United States. Although Walker had failed previously in this approach in Mexico, a similar plan had essentially succeeded in Texas in the 1840s and nearly had done so in the Bear Flag Revolt in California, in 1846. 66 In his editorials in El Clamor Público, Francisco Ramírez furiously denounced Walker and all other U.S. filibusters, especially for their specious claims of advancing the causes of human liberty and social progress. 67 What made liberals like Ramírez even more outraged was that Walker sometimes represented his adventures as efforts to expand slaveholding territory. Accord­ ingly, the filibuster enjoyed his greatest support in the South, the same region that was to rebel in 1861 as the Confederate States of America. 68 Awareness of this fact would have a considerable influence on the political opinions of California’s Latinos in the 1860s. Legal redress seemed to be in short supply for Latinos. As citizens or as immigrants living under the protection of U.S. law, they should have been able to have crimes against them or their property resolved in the courts. But frequent failures to obtain justice from law enforcement officials and the legal system occurred, especially in the more populous and Atlantic American– dominated northern counties, and caused deep resentment among Latinos. The editor J. Jofre complained, “So the result of how things are in California is that when a Mexican is murdered—always provided the murderer is an American—there is no need for the authorities to bother themselves with the matter, for that’s all right” (he used the italicized words in English for ironic emphasis in the Spanish original). 69 San Francisco’s La Crónica reported in  

 

 

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1855 that in San José, some Latino ranchers had arrested four squatters for killing two of their cows. The county judge, however, refused to hear the case because the low value of the destroyed property made the crime only a misdemeanor; the local justice of the peace tried to hear it, but the defendants’ lawyer managed to disqualify all three juries the justice empaneled. Discussing this discouraging sequence of events in El Clamor Público, Ramírez gloomily concluded, “They certainly will not be punished, for the reason that the four thieves are Americans; for the judges pardon these gentlemen any crime.” 70 In the gold fields, one collector of the Foreign Miners’ Tax, upon confronting a recalcitrant Latino miner, “drew his pistol and shot him, from the results of which the miner died a little while thereafter. The Mexican was a peaceable man, and an old resident of the place. Nothing is said with respect to the murderer, and we infer that he will go free, under the protection of being a Yankee.” 71 The legal system seemed to be so biased against Latinos that Ramírez fulminated, with perhaps pardonable hyperbole, “If a Mexican has the ill luck to have a lawsuit in the courts of this state, he is sure to lose it.” 72 The political process that should have provided some check on the worst legal abuses sometimes itself seemed subject to exploitation by the abusers. For instance, in a public letter published on the Los Angeles Star’s Spanishlanguage page in 1853, U.S.-citizen Latinos in Santa Barbara complained that an attempt had been made to disqualify their votes in the previous year’s elections by a small group of Atlantic Americans who had opened an illegal polling place in the town and conspired to set their watches and clocks half an hour slow, so as to try to claim that the Latino steward of the official polling place had cheated by opening too early. When the county clerk refused to accept the votes from the illegal polling place and accepted those from the official polling place instead, he was threatened with personal harm and hastily relinquished his office. Fortunately, the county Court of Sessions named a new and braver county clerk, who duly dispatched the election results to the capital by mail.73

Latinos Create Community Faced with the general Atlantic American prejudice against nonwhites and in consequence often finding themselves subjected to social and legal abuses, Latinos of differing national origins to a certain extent came to identify with one another in California simply as fellow Latinos. Most usually did Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r   •   31

not completely subsume their original identities as Californios, Mexicans, Chileans, etc., into an artificial pan-Latino identity—although some idealists liked to talk about a “Latin race” that was, or in their opinion ought to be, unified—but rather expressed this sense of identification with their fellow Spanish speakers in terms of kinship, as “brotherhood” or other descent from common ancestors. A poignant reflection on this mutual identification came, in 1858, from the pen of a non-Mexican Latino correspondent of El Éco del Pacífico traveling in Calaveras County, after he had passed by the site of Atlantic American mob violence against Mexican miners seven years earlier. “In 1851, there were four thousand Mexicans in this camp, who were attacked by eight hundred Americans and completely ruined. Thirteen were killed, and various others wounded. The unfortunate men’s graves are still visible on the hills today. . . . A sad memory for our Mexican brethren.” 74 Yet many Latinos did not meekly acquiesce to their marginalization by Atlantic American society or to injustices perpetrated against them. Again and again, they defended their rights, sometimes in individual or spontaneous actions, at other times in deliberately organized group strategies. Latinos in the gold-mining regions resisted the Foreign Miners’ Tax and Atlantic American attempts at expulsion in a number of ways. The simplest and most straightforward approach was an individual decision simply to evade the tax or expulsion. Justo Veytia, on learning that the state legislature had passed the Foreign Miners’ Tax, mused in his diary that he and his companions had no intention of paying it. “In recent days, a law has been passed that all foreigners who work in the mines must pay 20 dollars a month henceforward. We’re all right; we already see how we shall avoid this fee.” Evasion was a necessity in his case. Veytia admitted that he was not a very good miner, and paying the tax would not have left him much, if anything, to live on, let alone any hope of amassing a fortune to take back to Mexico. So he and his companions successfully pretended to be Californios, who as U.S. citizens were exempt from paying the tax. “At first the Americans prohibited us from working here, but not now, because of the identity we have here; we have said we are Californios.” 75 As a result of such widespread dodges as Veytia’s and surreptitious prospecting away from the tax collector’s spying eye, the hated Foreign Miners’ Tax could not be collected in any sort of effective fashion. Moreover, one town might be assiduous in its collections but the next lax or even incapable. The Argentine merchant Ramón Gil Navarro observed Latino prospectors evading the tax by voting with their feet, moving to locations that did not  

 

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collect it. When enough of them adopted this measure, the effects amounted to a boycott, resulting in a serious economic downturn for the tax-collecting community. “I went to Stanislaus to sell my load of cereal but will have to return to Calaveras empty-handed. All of the encampments of Stanislaus have nearly been ruined by that darned tax law. Yesterday I met more than 300 men who were going to Calaveras because there they do not have to pay the tax. That means that there is no business at all for the merchants in Stanislaus.” 76 Having made their point by depriving local merchants of business by their absence, Latino miners often returned to their original diggings once the pressure to collect the tax had lessened. “Mexicans coming back.— Mr. McLean, of the Ferry, informs us that the Mexicans, inspired with new hope and confidence, are re-crossing his Ferry at the rate of forty or fifty a day. We observed that the gulches in the vicinity of Sonora are again lively with an industrious Mexican population.” 77 Sometimes resistance assumed a more pugnacious stance, with Latinos openly defying collection or attempts at expulsion. On May 18, 1850, Navarro described a tax collection attempt the day before that had gone badly wrong for the collector. “Today all of Stanislaus is in a veritable uproar because of the $20 tax that foreigners are charged every month. Yesterday the collector came here, and, seeing that everyone was willing to greet him with guns and knives instead of with $20, he went to the new Bolivia camp.” 78 Although the Foreign Miners’ Tax and acts of physical expulsion sought to drive Latinos out of the gold country, ultimately they did not succeed. The Land Commission reviewing Spanish- and Mexican-era titles was headquartered in San Francisco, which obliged landowners from Southern California to travel hundreds of miles by horseback or ship and find expensive lodgings in that city for indefinite periods in order to present their evidence to the commission. Annoyed, Los Angeles County landowners held a meeting at Ygnacio Coronel’s house on February 23, 1852, to decide how they would proceed under the circumstances. Attendance at the meeting was considerable, with the owners of fifty-three separate land titles either present or represented. The English-language editors of the Star were struck by the fact that Californios had called such a meeting, as before then their political activism had been modest. “We notice the singular fact about this meeting, that it is the first public assembly which has convened in this county for many years, in which the Americans were not the active agents and participants; for although there were many American proprietors present, yet four-fifths of the meeting was composed of native Californian rancheros.” The ranchers  

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composed and signed a petition requesting that the commission hold meetings in Los Angeles as well, and they raised funds to carry the petition to Washington, DC, if necessary. Their efforts met with success.79 When an Atlantic American vigilante group in the mining town of Columbia imprisoned four Mexican men in 1855, their fellow countrymen hired a lawyer, who obtained a writ of habeas corpus from the Tuolumne County Court against the vigilantes’ leader. 80 Similarly, when an Atlantic American justice of the peace in San Gabriel was accused of having abused his office by leading a vigilante group that lynched three innocent Latinos and shot a fourth to death, other local Latinos held a public meeting at which they formulated a request to higher authorities that he be arrested and tried. 81 Clearly, California’s Latinos, when effectively organized, could be a force to reckon with. In spite of all the flaws in the contemporaneous electoral process, Latinos gradually discovered that they could empower themselves by participating in politics to respond to injustices. This was especially true in Southern Cali­ fornia, where Latinos formed the majority of the local electorate in this period. In Santa Barbara County’s June 1852 election, two ethnically based slates of candidates ran against each other, “one called the California [sic] and the other the American.” 82 This polarized electoral situation continued in the November 1852 elections, as discussed above. “We learn from Santa Barbara that at the general election on the 2nd instant, two polls were opened, and that the natives of the country deposited their ballots in one box, and the Americans voted in another.” 83 A number of prominent Latino Barbareños, including J. M. Covarrubias, José Carrillo, Juan Camarillo, R. Carrillo, and José Lorenzana, sent a letter to the Spanish-language section of the Los Angeles Star explaining what lay behind the situation. First, they firmly dismissed reports that voting in their county occurred purely along ethnic lines: We deny such an assertion most emphatically, and assure you that the only reason for spreading the rumor of such a division is that the Californios refuse to vote for certain Americans. . . . Founded on this, a rumor spread that the most hateful sentiments against Americans exist in Californios’ hearts. Let us say, hypothetically, that Californios did refuse to vote for Americans. . . . Don’t they [Californios] by chance enjoy the privilege of disposing their votes as they please, the same way as any other American citizen? But, we repeat, the Californios merely don’t vote for certain Americans. . . . So, wouldn’t it be good to find out why the Californios don’t vote for certain Americans?84 34  •   Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r

The writers then recounted several recent incidents of ill treatment by individual Atlantic Americans against prominent local Latinos, ending with a detailed account of attempted voter fraud, which fortunately had been prevented by the county Court of Sessions’ prompt actions. Mocking prevailing Atlantic American beliefs about the supposed inferiority of nonwhite Latinos, the letter’s signatories predicted sardonically, “If our opponents obtain their ends by basing themselves on such principles, we semi-civilized Californios will have learned from the politicians and legal experts of Santa Barbara that the election of a president of the U.S. could depend on half an inch in the position of the ballot box, or a second of time in the beginning of voting.” 85 Santa Barbara County was not the only part of Southern California to experience the growing phenomenon of Latino voter awareness. In the 1857 gubernatorial election, Latino voters in Los Angeles County initially supported the Republican candidate, Edward Stanley. But when he expressed support for squatters, the Latino vote abruptly transferred to his opponent.86 Latino voters were learning to use the power of the ballot box to serve the interests of their communities and to resist Atlantic American efforts to marginalize them.

Lawlessness had been endemic in Northern California since 1849 and became a serious issue in Southern California in the mid-1850s. Beginning in late 1852 and 1853, there was a significant rise in the southern crime rate, much of it attributable to recent immigrants, Latino and non-Latino alike, who drifted predatorily through the region after failing to strike it rich in the gold country up north. While each county did have a sheriff, he was obliged in almost every case to rely on temporarily deputized volunteers for manpower. 87 In this virtual absence of professional police, Latinos joined local militia units being organized by Atlantic Americans. The Santa Barbara Guards, formed in 1853, comprised about forty Atlantic Americans and Californios. 88 In contrast, the Los Angeles Guards, organized in 1855, had only Atlantic American officers and men, although they made Ramírez an honorary member. 89 In 1857, an emergency situation developed in Los Angeles County that motivated the formation of an all-Latino militia. On January 22, Sheriff James R. Barton received word of the whereabouts of a band of outlaws wanted for several murders and robberies in the vicinity of San Juan Capistrano. Despite warnings that he should wait to gather a larger posse, he set out with only five Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r   •   35

men. The following day, they were ambushed by a group consisting of at least twice their number, who shot Barton and three of his men dead. When news reached Los Angeles city that the county’s top law enforcement officer had been killed, nearly everyone was on the verge of panic.90 Groups of volunteers—or perhaps more properly said, vigilantes—quickly organized to search for the outlaws. Local newspaper accounts referred to one of these groups, composed entirely of Latinos and led initially by Tomás Sánchez and Juan Sepúlveda, as the compañía de Californios (Californios’ company).91 After a week, the various volunteer groups consolidated into four more or less official companies, one of which was commanded by the respected former Mexican general Andrés Pico.92 Pico’s company came upon the bandits and cornered them in Santiago Canyon; several of the fugitives surrendered, in exchange for their lives. In company with a party of Atlantic Americans from the village of El Monte, Pico’s men thereafter took five additional prisoners. Three of these, however, managed to escape from Atlantic American custody in Santa Ana that night and had to be pursued again; only one of the three, Juan Flores, subsequently was recaptured, in San Fernando, and taken to the Los Angeles jail. On hearing of the escape, Pico summarily hanged the two prisoners he and his men still had in their custody, to avoid a similar embarrassment.93 Initially, the community was pleased at the close cooperation of Latinos and Atlantic Americans in this episode and felt this demonstration of civic duty proved that Latinos were worthy citizens. Ramírez editorialized, “The fine harmony that prevailed during the campaign, between the Californios under the command of Don Andrés Pico and the citizens of El Monte, is a matter worthy of being commended. . . . By this action they have performed, the Californios have vindicated their honor, and have shut the mouths of all the so-and-sos who are pleased to place them on a level with the wretches they went out in pursuit of.” 94 But these feelings of cooperation and goodwill were short-lived. While Pico and his Californio company were riding out after the outlaws in company with Atlantic Americans from El Monte, the justice of the peace at San Gabriel, William B. Osburn, gathered a party of Atlantic Americans who on their own initiative arrested fifty-two local men, indignantly described by Ramírez as “all the Mexicans, or individuals of the Spanish-speaking race, who were in San Gabriel” (emphasis in original). Osburn’s vigilantes lynched three of the Latinos arrested in this sweep and shot a fourth to death on suspicion of belonging to the bandit gang that had killed the sheriff, although apparently there were scant grounds for this sus 

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picion.95 So even as some Latinos were risking their lives as vigilantes to bring criminals to justice, other Latinos were being killed by Atlantic American vigilantes like those in Osburn’s group. In the wake of these incidents, a company of all-Latino mounted militia was formally constituted in Los Angeles County. On May 12, 1857, this militia met at the home of leading citizen Cristóbal Aguilar. It took the name Lanceros de Los Angeles (Los Angeles Lancers) and chose officers: Captain Juan Sepúlveda; First Lieutenant Ramón Carrillo; Second Lieutenants Gerónimo Ybarra and Mariano Alvarado; Sergeants Luis Bauchet, Justo Domínguez, Antonio Rocha, and Ylario Ybarra; and Corporals Rafael Bauchet, Francisco Sánchez, Francisco Alvarado y Ruiz, and José Dámas Talamantes.96 By early July, Sepúlveda was able to announce to the citizens of Los Angeles, “The volunteer company called the Los Angeles Lancers, of which I have the honor to be captain, now is duly formed; and its goal is to give assistance to the authorities in support of law and order.” 97 Like most militias of this period, the Lanceros spent their time in a mixture of public ceremony and actual guard duty. They drilled throughout the summer, and on the Feast of the Assumption on August 15, honoring Los Angeles’ patron saint, the Virgin Mary, they gave a demonstration of their small arms and artillery drill in the Plaza, outside the church.98 Since the spring of 1857, the so-called Utah War had been simmering in the Rocky Mountains, following President Buchanan’s dispatch of troops to the Utah Territory to discourage a rumored rebellion by the Mormons there. Especially after the Mountain Meadows massacre in September 1857, awareness of this tension combined with Angelenos’ anxiety over the ongoing crime wave to the point that serious (albeit unjustified) fears were expressed that vengeful Mormons might invade their town to carry out reprisals.99 Despite the Lanceros’ training and public armed presence, however, it seemed to some Latinos that certain Atlantic Americans discounted their military ability. In a petition requesting arms to form their own militia, a group of Atlantic American citizens, fearful of the anticipated Mormon invasion, described their situation in terms that took no cognizance of any Cali­ fornio militia. “We are nearly unprovided with arms; and in the four southern counties scarcely four hundred Americans can be brought together who are determined to repel the invasion.” 100 This apparent oversight offended the editor of El Éco del Pacífico. “We have not ceased to be surprised that, in speaking of the scarce resources on which these counties can count in a matter of defense, the citizens have completely disregarded the native Californios Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r   •   37

and other citizens of the Spanish-speaking race who make up the majority of the population in Southern California.” 101 Yet this seeming slight probably was more apparent than real. The San Francisco–based editor probably was unaware that the Lanceros initially had experienced difficulty raising the two-thousand-dollar bond necessary to register as an official company of state militia. It therefore had not been entirely unreasonable for another group to apply for formal militia status before the Lanceros were able to present their bond, because technically no other militia as yet existed in the county. On payment of their bond in February 1858, however, the Lanceros finally were formally recognized as a state militia unit, and they received government arms with which to help defend against a possible Mormon invasion of Southern California.102 In the very same issue of El Clamor Público that carried the reprinted protest by El Éco’s editor, there appeared an account of a commemoration of the Battle of New Orleans by another Los Angeles County militia, the Southern Rifles. Among the toasts on that occasion, the Rifles drank one “to the California Lancers, of Los Angeles.” 103 A month later, the Lanceros, in solidarity with the Rifles and a company of Franco-American militiamen, kept the crowd in order at the execution of two convicted murderers in Los Angeles, one Latino and one Atlantic American.104 Near the end of the Utah War, in 1858, new reports of robber bands circulated in Southern California.105 The Lanceros continued to be a visible presence, particularly reassuring to local Latinos. In the Corpus Christi procession on June 3, 1858, for instance, “on both sides [of the procession] marched the Lancers’ Company, under the command of Don Juan Sepúlveda, and the Southern Rifles, under the leadership of Captain W. W. Twist, all dressed in their uniforms and armed with sabers and carbines.” 106 Sepúlveda also was among the members of that year’s Arrangements Committee for Los Angeles’ civic celebration of the Fourth of July.107  

Gradually a sense of community grew among many Latinos of disparate backgrounds. In 1857, a marginally literate young Salvadoran immigrant, Ángel Mora, labored to write a public farewell to his paisanos (“fellow countrymen”) in Los Angeles, which he subsequently had published in El Clamor Público, unwittingly leaving behind for the twenty-first century a brief but discernable outline of the increasingly inclusive Latino society and identity coalescing in Gold Rush California. Although he had been “born in the state 38  •   Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r

of San Salvador,” he was “raised in the state of California, in the town of San José.” As families of Californios, Mexicans, and other Latinos lived there, Mora declared, “I recognize everyone as my countrymen, since I have finished being raised on the foods of them all.” Therefore when he took his leave of them, and of his fellow Latinos in Los Angeles, where he later resided, he addressed them as “all my fellow countrymen.” The fact that he expected his farewell to reach them all via the pages of El Clamor Público implies that Latinos of every national origin found common ground in California’s Spanish-language press. His letter also reveals that the concept of a Spanishspeaking race was not just the notion of a few liberal intellectual elites like Ramírez but could be shared even by poor, ill-educated immigrants like Mora.108 In the decade and a half following the discovery of gold in California, Spanish-speaking immigrants in their thousands came to the state from all over Latin America. Initially they identified themselves by their country of origin, as Chileans, Argentines, Mexicans, Peruvians, Salvadorans, and so on, but the longer they remained in California, the more they came into contact with Latinos from other parts of the Americas and formed social bonds with them. The result was the formation of a uniquely Californian Latino society. For example, a gentleman Forty-Niner from Guadalajara, Justo Veytia, initially traveled with relatives and friends from Mexico to San Francisco aboard a ship, and thence to the San Joaquin Valley in company with a somewhat undependable oxcart. While crossing the valley, his party fell in with a group of Californios, members of the Arana family from Santa Cruz. They became friends, and for the rest of his sojourn in California, Veytia was never long out of touch with them. Indeed, the Aranas employed him in their shingle-making business on more than one occasion when Veytia’s haplessness as a prospector brought him close to starvation.109 José Alcayaga came from Chile. By 1854 he had established a grocery store in San Francisco called the Estrella de Chile (“Star of Chile”), which advertised its wares as “a general assortment of groceries . . . not just from Europe, but also from the United States of America, Chile, and Mexico.” These included items in local demand such as “chilis, chocolate, [and] samot gum, a medicine widely known among the Mexicans.” 110 This shows Alcayaga recognized that his market was the Latino community as a whole, which necessarily implies the existence of such a community, instead of separate enclaves of Mexicans, Chileans, Californios, and so forth. This mix of Latinos now residing in California increasingly mingled Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r   •   39

socially, and some began to marry one another. On June 30, 1858, in Los Angeles, a Californio named Carlos Cruz married the Mexican immigrant Martina Ochoa. Just prior to Cruz’s marriage in June, Ygnacio Aguilar from New Mexico had married Cesaria Valenzuela from California. Six months later, on December 3, a Chilean immigrant, José López, married Francisca Blanco, a Californio. Over the same six months, half a dozen couples in which both partners were Californios also got married, as did five MexicanCalifornio couples and three couples in which both husband and wife were Mexican.111 In inland Tuolumne County, on the other hand, immigrants far outnumbered Californios, who mostly had founded their population centers within a few miles of the coast. Between 1851 and 1853, there were twenty-two marriages in Tuolumne County in which both partners were Mexican immigrants, plus marriages of three Chilean couples, a Chilean-Mexican couple, a Bolivian-Chilean couple, a Spanish-Mexican couple, and an ArgentineBolivian couple. Not one recorded marriage from Tuolumne County in this period involved a Californio partner.112 Those individuals from Central and South America who chose to remain in California as the 1850s wore on no longer were merely visitors, wandering through the state in search of gold or adventure. They were becoming something new: Latino residents of the United States, leading lives different from those they would have lived had they stayed in their native countries. To a large extent, they formed this new society organically around the core of the already extant Californio society. As the new society developed, foods, accents, vocabulary, and social customs intermingled. The rapidly growing Atlantic American society that shared the state with this newly emergent society also influenced it to a notable degree. In turn, the new Latino society influenced that Atlantic American society as well. The gradual formation of this new Latino culture in California inevitably raised the question of what to call its many and varied members. Selfevidently, they were not simply Mexican or Californio, as among them were individuals of far more diverse backgrounds than just those two nationalities. El Clamor Público’s Ramírez was among those seeking an answer to the question. Ramírez’s first mentor in journalism, Manuel Clemente Rojo, a Peruvian by birth, had explained to his readership in Los Angeles in 1853 that the Spanish-language page of the Star contained news about Mexico and other “Hispanic-American republics, so that their innumerable children who are found in this state may stay abreast of news of their respective countries.” 113 In San Francisco two years later, La Crónica’s editor invoked the 40  •   Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r

emerging theme of kinship when he referred to “the children of the various peoples of Spanish-speaking America—of those peoples whose individual members should be thought of by the North Americans as brethren, and children of the same family.” 114 As a teenager, Ramírez lived for a time in cosmopolitan San Francisco, where he was exposed to a variety of Latin American origins and accents. Later he spent time in rural Marysville, witnessing often fraught interactions between Latinos and Atlantic Americans. Once he returned to Los Angeles and began his own newspaper, his local audience was composed mostly of California-born Latinos of Mexican ancestry, with a leavening of Mexican immigrants, all of whom he could comfortably and somewhat indiscriminately address as Californios, hijos del pais (“native sons of the country”), or Mejicanos (Mexicans). But how was he to refer to Latinos reading his paper in the northern mining counties, who were not hijos del pais and in many cases not even Mexicans? What terms would make sense to them as well as to his hometown readership? One term that found some favor was Hispano-Americanos (“HispanicAmericans”), which was applied to all Latinos from North or South America. In the first days of the Gold Rush, the owners of the quicksilver mine at New Almaden near San José sought workers from among the Latino population by advertising, in Spanish, in the English-language paper Alta California, for “Hispano-Americanos.” 115 In his 1859 farewell editorial on closing El Clamor Público, Ramírez included the hijos del pais in the Hispanic-American population when he sadly recounted his failure to be of “service to my native countrymen of California, and generally to all Hispanic-Americans.” 116 Other collective terms in use at the time featured the word raza (“race”) in combination with various descriptive adjectives.117 Collective terms for the various Latin American countries in nineteenth-century California included las Repúblicas Hispano-Americanas (“the Hispanic-American republics”), los Estados latinos (“Latin states”), and América latina (“Latin America”).118 The combination of these names with the concept of race led to use of the terms raza Hispano Americana (“Hispanic-American race”) and raza latina (“Latin race”) to designate Latinos collectively, especially when the intent was to contrast Latinos with some other group, such as Atlantic Americans. In remarks addressed to a purely Latino audience, this sometimes became, as a sort of shorthand, nuestra raza (“our race”). The various uses of these terms and the shades of meaning they contained may be seen in Spanish-language editorials of this period. For instance, in  

Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r   •   41

1858 the editor of El Éco del Pacífico informed his readers that at his news­ paper, “we are always ready to cooperate, by means of our services, with everything that could contribute to bettering the situation of the working class of our race,” meaning all Latinos.119 In the same editorial, he described the “back to Mexico” movement to resettle Californios and Mexican immigrants in the state of Sonora as being “made up in its entirety of descendants of the Latin race.” 120 In 1858, Ramírez published an opinion piece by a correspondent in Havana who described the situation in the Americas: “two rival races are competing with each other . . . , the Anglo-Saxon race and the Latin one.” 121 While no academy of Spanish-language scholars ever met to define terms for the various Latino subpopulations in California, in the pages of the ­Spanish-language press, terms denoting regional origin—such as Californio, Sonorense, and Chileno—came to be thought of as delineating subsets of a larger collectivity, Hispano-Americanos or raza latina. So while every Peruvian, for instance, was a Hispanic-American, not every Hispanic-­American was a Peruvian. The brief history of the Junta Colonizadora de Sonora (“Sonora Settlement Group”) illustrates the use of these terms. Initially, a group of Californios, Sonorans, and Chileans, under the leadership of Jesús Islas, came up with the idea that Latinos disillusioned with life under Atlantic American rule in post-1848 California should go settle in Mexico, where their civil and property rights presumably would be better respected. Islas’s proposal, published in El Clamor Público in 1855, collectively addressed prospective emigrants as Hispano-Americanos.122 As the group’s few hundred recruits began to gather for the overland trek to Sonora, early in 1856, a public notice addressed them as “Mexicans, Hispanic-Americans, and Californios.” When they set out in the fall, the participants were referred to again as Hispano-Americanos. Evidently Islas considered the specific and collective terms equally valid.123  

 

Born in California Most of the Latino couples who had been married in California since 1848, as well as couples living in common-law marriages, produced offspring. Figure 2 shows the annual number of Latino and Atlantic American births in Los Angeles County from 1850 to 1869. Numbers of births increased in both groups, with a steep rise during the 1850s and a more modest increase in the 1860s. But Latino births outnumbered Atlantic American ones and by 1869 accounted for about two-thirds of all births in the county.124 42  •   Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r

700 600 507

500

375

464

362

179 168 153

196

232 226 170 179

112

8 18 6

6 18 6

18 6

18 6

Latino

2

78

0

79

8

46

6

38

18 5

4

24

18 5

2 18 5

15

64

18 5

100 13

514 511

322

201

1

513

314

4

253

277

299

496 508

384

200

0

499

18 6

300

18 5

481

420 432

400

0

612

585

Non-Latino

Figure 2.  Births in Los Angeles County, by ethnicity, 1850–1869. (CESLAC UCLA)  

These Latino children formed the first cohort of second-generation, bicultural U.S. citizens born to Spanish-dominant immigrant parents.125 Although many of their parents might pine for the home country—or, in the case of the Californios, for the days before U.S. statehood—these children’s home was California, and the United States. They tended to differ from their parents’ generation in other key respects, particularly bilingual abilities and level of education (figure 3 shows a representative of this generation).126 After California came under U.S. rule, some Spanish-language voices favored instituting publicly supported education for the state’s children. Manuel Clemente Rojo urged in 1852, “It is a truth known by all the world that public education is one of the goals to which every government should devote its attention with the greatest zeal, which considers the fulfillment of its obligations worth anything.” 127 Francisco Ramírez saw education as a bulwark against despotism and a tool of democracy. “Education for the people puts absolute governments in danger; their ignorance, in contrast, places representative governments in danger.” 128 In 1857, before conducting a requisite public examination of his pupils at a school in Contra Costa County, the Central American–born Santiago López delivered a speech in Spanish, telling his students’ first-generation parents that education was the most valuable  

 

 

Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r   •   43

Figure 3.  Reginaldo F. del Valle—shown here at age five— was born in Los Angeles in 1854, a member of the first cohort of second-generation, bilingual, bicultural Latinos in Cali­ fornia. As an adult, he served as president pro tempore of the California state senate and passed legislation establishing the Los Angeles State Normal School, an institution that later became the foundation of UCLA. He died in 1938. (Courtesy Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History)  

 

and enduring gift they could give their children. Against some parents’ reluctance to send their children to school, he argued that the education of Latino children was critical to their future in the state. Without it, López declared, those children would be unable to compete with Atlantic American society, whose influence already was threatening to dominate Latino life.129 In the late summer of 1852, the Los Angeles County supervisors named Antonio F. Coronel the superintendent of schools and formed a Board of Education whose membership included the local landowner Cristóbal Aguilar; Abel Stearns, an Atlantic American from Massachusetts married to 44  •   Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r

native California daughter Arcadia Bandini; and the bilingual judge Benjamin I. Hayes.130 Funding and building a public school took some time, and the schoolhouse was not ready for use until January 1855, nearly three years after the County Board of Education had formed.131 As public schools made their appearance and education increasingly became mandatory, the issue of the language to be used in instruction caused many Latino parents concern that their children would be at a disadvantage. “Many parents don’t send their children to the public schools because only English is taught there.” 132 As a result, some private bilingual schools opened after the public schools were established, such as the Instituto Patriótico (“Patriotic Institute”) in Los Angeles in 1856; its advertising recommended it for “the native sons of the country, especially for those who wish to be educated in their native language, and also for those who may wish to learn the English language perfectly.” 133 Later the same year, another private bilingual school opened, called La Mexicanita (“the Little Mexican School”), which recruited pupils “de raza Española” (“of the Spanish-speaking race”). Those who took courses only in Spanish paid one dollar a month, while those who took courses in both English and Spanish were charged two dollars.134 In the event, it turned out that most Latino parents did not need to worry about sending their sons and daughters to schools taught only in English, thanks to children’s innate ability to acquire language quickly. In February 1858, a correspondent of El Clamor Público visited a Los Angeles public school attended by a “large number of Spanish-speaking children,” as well as some French speakers, and noticed how swiftly the students had acquired English.135 Even in the case of those who continued to speak Spanish primarily, English words began to infiltrate their daily speech. Ramírez began to slip anglicisms casually into his newspaper columns, evidently confident that his Spanish-speaking readers would understand them. For example, in reporting on the U.S. Independence Day celebrations of 1855, he wrote, “The memorable Fourth of July took place in good order. . . . Several orators made their speeches, as is the custom on such great occasions; but none of them spoke in Castilian Spanish, as had occurred in years past” (emphasis in original, where the word is in English).136 On printing a notice of the marriage of an Atlantic American friend, Ramírez freely used another untranslated anglicism, indicated by single quotation marks: “On reporting the wedding of our friend Alonzo, we thank him for the piece of the ‘wedding cake’ that he had the goodness to send us, of which all the printers had a share.” 137 Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r   •   45

Yet the borrowing of words from a new language did not go all one way. English speakers in the West began to use hispanisms in their daily conversations, many of which remain in use in the twenty-first century. One ubiquitous hispanism was the word vamos—often pronounced in English as vamoose—literally meaning “let’s go.” It acquired, when used by English speakers, the more general meaning of “to leave an area” or “to get out of town,” often in an unceremonious fashion. For example, in 1852, “in consequence of the bad conduct of the prostitutes in Placerville, the citizens . . . decided that they should all leave that town within forty-eight hours. On Friday, they were compelled to vamos, with strict injunctions not to return to that place.” 138 In fact, so much Spanish entered everyday English that in 1857, the Alta California ran an article listing terms and their meanings. It included several words and phrases commonly used in twenty-first century English, such as sierra, adios, Señorita, and Vaya con Dios (“mountain range,” “good-bye,” “Miss,” and “Go with God”).139 An 1859 article pointed out yet more “Californianisms” derived from Spanish, defining for newcomers cañon (“canyon”), coyote, corral, plaza, rancho, and rodeo and indicating how to pronounce them.140  

 

Francisco Ramírez was eleven years old when the United States conquered California. This was old enough that he retained a feeling for California as a part of Mexico, although he quickly learned English and developed a pervasive enthusiasm for the democratic ideal of government espoused by the United States. But children born after 1848, the “young and rising generation,” only knew life under the Stars and Stripes.141 As he made the transition from child to young adult, Ramírez witnessed many changes in the society around him. In 1859, only twenty-one years old but already with four rocky years of experience owning and publishing a Spanish-language newspaper in Los Angeles under his belt, he looked to the future and tried to discern what might become of him and his generation of bilingual, bicultural Latinos. The occasion for this introspection was his decision to include an Englishlanguage page in his Spanish-language newspaper, just as the Englishlanguage Star, where he had cut his journalistic teeth, for several years had published a page in Spanish. On the inaugural page of this new section, he gave advice to his readers about the situation of young Latinos born in a land

46  •   Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r

that had deep roots in Mexican society and history but was now part of the United States, urging them to learn English. It must be apparent to our Castilian [Spanish-speaking] friends, that it is not only their interest but absolute duty to give their children an English education; and to learn, if possible, to read and speak the language themselves. We are now under the American Flag, whether of our own accord or per force, and there is every probability that we shall remain so for all time to come. Nothing is more certain than this; we are Americans in name and feeling . . . . We are Native California Americans born on the soil, and we can exclaim with the Poet, this is “our own, our native land.” But the sooner we become “Americanized” . . . the better it will be for us and our posterity.

This was why he had decided to add an English-language page to his news­ paper. As do many Latinos in the twenty-first century, Ramírez believed that the acquisition of English did not have to entail the obliteration of Spanish; rather, fluency in both languages was desirable. “Let every family in Los Angeles county who can read (and they should be able to read and write), take El Clamor Publico from this time henceforward. Let them read the Spanish in their mother tongue; then let them strive to learn and read the English side by side. This will facilitate their progress, and they will never regret the time devoted to this highly essential and necessary pursuit.” 142 For the next two decades, Ramírez was to grapple publicly, in newspaper columns and in speeches, with the issue of being Latino in U.S. society. In so doing, he was among those who helped shape the meaning of citizenship for Latinos in California, particularly during the crucial years of the Civil War and the French Intervention in Mexico.

Sliding toward Civil War One of the major issues that resulted in the Civil War—the legal existence of slavery based exclusively on race—loomed large in the newspaper-reading Latino public’s sight. Mexicans in particular contrasted how the republics of Mexico and the United States handled this issue. During three centuries of Spanish colonial rule, a diverse and racially mixed population emerged throughout Latin America, the result of the movement of people from Europe, Africa, and Asia into the Americas.143 One of the achievements of  

 

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Mexican independence was the official rejection of colonial racial categorization, a stance reiterated in the country’s 1857 constitution, portions of which were published in California’s Spanish-language press.144 Racial categories already were being abandoned by Californios at the time of Mexican independence, and thereafter were not sustained by any legal framework under Mexican law. The sudden imposition by the United States Constitution of a legal system containing race-based provisions for citizenship and the exercise of civil rights therefore surprised and dismayed many Latinos.145 They were well aware that many Atlantic Americans did not hesitate to classify them too, derogatorily, as nonwhite. One of many examples appears in an 1858 editorial from the English-language Alta California, which uncomplimentarily describes Mexican-origin Latinos as “undoubtedly a mongrel race, of every hue and color.” 146 It was not merely a theoretical concern. Latinos in post-1848 California already had had the experience of being legally separated from whites by the infamous “Greaser Act” of 1855, which authorized local sheriffs to disarm, arrest, and punish “all persons who are commonly known as ‘Greasers’ or the issue of Spanish and Indian blood . . . who go armed and are not known to be peaceable and quiet persons, and who can give no good account of themselves.” 147 Nearly all adult males of every ethnic group in Gold Rush California habitually went armed, of course, and determining whether or not a Latino was able to give a good account of himself was left up to the individual lawman. The Greaser Act therefore effectively gave law enforcement personnel carte blanche to arrest almost any Latino man whenever they pleased. Notorious incidents like the refusal to allow Manuel Domínguez to testify in a San Francisco civil suit because he had Indian ancestry showed that even elite Latinos were not immune to the prejudicial effects of such race-based U.S. laws. In the 1850s, the ultimate expression of racially based denial of civil rights in the United States was, of course, the “peculiar institution” of black slavery. Mexico, on the other hand, was one of the first countries to abolish slavery and had made this ban one of the key features of the Constitution of Chilpancingo, written in 1813. It was reiterated in the 1857 constitution, in Article 31, Section 5: “In no part of the Mexican Republic shall slavery be established. Slaves from other countries attain liberty by the act of stepping into this nation’s territory.” 148 Therefore, when California was conquered by a country that loudly proclaimed freedom for all but allowed slavery to exist, Latinos could not help but note the obvious discrepancy between word and 48  •   Be for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r

deed, especially when their own civil rights were placed in question on the grounds of race. Liberty was one of Francisco Ramírez’s cherished ideals. In El Clamor Público’s first year, he translated the Declaration of Independence into Spanish and published it on the Fourth of July. The denial of liberty to anyone on the basis of race caused him great concern. Three weeks after publishing his translation of the declaration, he observed: The idea of liberty that is held in the United States is truly odd. . . . Some persons have no sort of liberty whatsoever—this liberty, we say, is that which is denied in the courts to anyone who is of color. Another great “liberty” that exists is that any individual has the liberty to buy a man for money, to arbitrarily hang him or burn him alive, as seems best to himself. This does happen in the states where slavery is tolerated, and there the most vile despotism reigns, without restraint—in the midst of a nation that calls itself the “model Republic.” 149  

 

By the 1850s, most other Latin American countries also had abolished slavery. This was one of the factors that made filibustering expeditions into Latin America particularly worrisome to Latinos in California. Filibusters from the United States wanted to add more slave territory to their native country so as to extend the peculiar institution that was so much a feature of life in the South and thereby increase the political power of that region in the face of efforts by the Northern states to abolish slavery entirely. Once he had established temporary control in Nicaragua, for instance, William Walker wrote a manifesto declaring the institution of slavery essential to good government. El Clamor Público published translations of passages from this manifesto. “General William Walker has written a curious manifesto concerning the enslavement of the blacks in Nicaragua. Born and raised in the Southern states, he has certain preoccupations, such that he has not the least scruple (as he has had none in worse cases) in insisting that a government without slavery is no government at all. . . . ‘The reintroduction of black slavery will be the surest means to establish the white race permanently in Central America. . . . It is therefore of great importance to the Southern states.’ ” 150 Such proposals were of great importance in an entirely different sense to those who supported the abolition of slavery in the United States, in whose number the majority of California’s Latinos could be counted. From his first months as editor of El Clamor Público, Ramírez was among those U.S. citizens who feared, with reason, that their country might tear itself apart over the issue of slavery. “Yet there is a more immediate matBe for e t h e A m e r ic a n C i v i l Wa r   •   49

ter, whose end will be the division of the Union’s territory, and which will tear the shining banner of the federation to bits. Everyone will fathom that we are talking about the system of slavery. Very little is known here in California about the strange amalgam that presents itself in the United States, of the liberty of individual persons and association and the slavery of the black race. . . . A spark of civil war would set alight the spirit of animosity that exists between the two sides.” 151 So it was not surprising that the Dred Scott decision struck Ramírez as especially significant. “The federal Supreme Court has decided, in the case of one Dred Scott, that blacks, be they slaves or free men, are not citizens of the United States, according to the Constitution.” The grounds for this denial of citizenship had been based solely on race, as had Manuel Domínguez’s disqualification as a witness just a month before. “It takes away, at least with respect to the national government, any manner of enfranchisement from every individual who may have the least drop of black blood in his veins, removing him from any protection afforded by the courts of the United States.” 152 Coming hard on the heels of the Domínguez incident, this was an ominous precedent indeed for almost every Latino in California. In the following years, the struggle between abolitionists and upholders of slavery grew louder and more violent. The eastern United States increasingly took on the qualities of a tinderbox, ready to burst into flame once a spark should be applied. In November 1859, Ramírez was about to leave his native California for the Mexican state of Sonora, where he had been offered the job of editing La Estrella del Occidente, Sonora’s government-backed newspaper.153 In one of the last issues of El Clamor Público, he reported that the messianic abolitionist John Brown had attacked the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, then in Virginia, hoping to incite a slave rebellion.154 The United States all too soon would descend into civil war.

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T wo

The First Battle of Puebla, 1862

Mexico and the American Civil War California’s entry into the Union as a free state upset the delicate balance between slave and free states, and despite subsequent legal developments favorable to them, from the Fugitive Slave Act to the Dred Scott decision, the slave states were anxious about the permanence of slavery under the U.S. Constitution. Southern states relied heavily on slavery, not only as an economic force but also to maintain a racially segregated society. They interpreted Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 election to mean that their property rights over slaves henceforth would not be protected (see figure 4). Unwilling, therefore, to keep trying to defend slavery through the constitutional process, in 1860–1861 nearly all the Southern states seceded and asserted themselves to be a new nation, the Confederate States of America.1 The Confederacy would establish its capital at Richmond, Virginia, barely a hundred miles from Washington, DC. It laid claim to all property within its bounds formerly belonging to its “predecessor” government, the United States, including Fort Sumter, off Charleston, South Carolina. President Lincoln, of course, recognized no such claims—indeed, refused to recognize the self-proclaimed new “nation”—and deliberately insisted on attempting to relieve Fort Sumter. The resulting Confederate bombardment of the fort, beginning April 12, 1861, signaled the start of the Civil War. Combat began in earnest on July 21, when the Union and Confederate armies clashed at Bull Run, about thirty miles from Washington. To the United States’ shock and dismay, the Federal lines collapsed after a few hours’ fighting, in what turned into a complete rout. There were fears the Confederates would proceed to take Washington and thereby end the war  

 

 

51

Figure 4. Abraham ­ incoln, whose election as L president in 1860 led to the Southern states’ decision to secede from the United States and form the Confederate States of America, which they intended would maintain slavery as an institution. (John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, plate between pages 288 and 289)

almost as soon as it had begun, with victory for the South. Yet this did not happen. The editor of a Spanish-language newspaper in California thought, “The success that crowned the Confederates’ arms when the war broke out, especially when the Federal forces were defeated at Bull Run, confused them—surprised at the latter’s defeat—has inspired too much confidence in their own forces, and has induced them to stay inactive, without taking advantage of the head start that a first victory always provides.” 2 Southern troops remained in northern Virginia for some time, feeding worries of an eventual Confederate attack on the United States capital. But eventually, as autumn wore on, they moved back toward Richmond. The U.S. Army had been disgraced by its shameful performance, and Lincoln sacked the hapless General Irvin MacDowell. In contrast, the Confederates seemed to be blessed with better leadership. Commenting on recent maneuvers by the Confederate forces, José E. Gonzáles, the editor of the pro-Union Spanishlanguage paper El Amigo del Pueblo in Los Angeles, observed, “The latter have able commanders; and, as it appears, a great unanimity prevails throughout the South.” As the fall of 1861 turned to winter, the Union’s supporters  

 

52  •   T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a

Figure 5.  Benito Juárez, a Zapotec Indian from Oaxaca, served four terms as president of the Republic of Mexico, 1858–1872. During his first term, the Conservative Party repudiated his government and essentially seceded from Mexico for nearly three years, forcing a civil war. No sooner had Juárez won back control of his country in 1861 than the Southern states seceded from the United States and Abraham Lincoln had to fight a civil war to keep that country together. (Percy F. Martin, Maximilian in Mexico: The Story of the French Intervention, 1861–1867, plate between pages 414 and 415)  

 

grew tense and unhappy. Clearly the war was not going to be over in a matter of days; clearly the South was an enemy to contend with. And clearly, much more blood was going to be shed. In the same editorial, Gonzáles reflected unhappily that while some people still hoped decisive Union military action would bring a swift conclusion to the conflict, “others believe it is impossible to subdue a people like those of the South. We believe what both sides admit: that it is a sad, ruinous, bloody war, and we are profoundly sorry for it.” 3

Three days after South Carolina seceded from the Union, President Benito Juárez of Mexico was informed that at Calpulalpan on December 22, 1860, his government’s forces had firmly defeated the conservative rebels who had, in essence, seceded from the rest of Mexico in 1857 (see figure 5). After three years of the bloody War of the Reform, Mexico was finally restored as one country under a single constitution, that of 1857, and one president. Juárez T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   53

now moved his government from Veracruz back to the nation’s historical capital, Mexico City. 4 Juárez then sent his young foreign minister, Matías Romero—who had been the chargé d’affaires representing the legitimate government of Mexico in Washington, DC, during Mexico’s civil war—to Springfield, Illinois. There, in January 1861, Romero met with president-elect Abraham Lincoln to discuss U.S.-Mexican relations, especially the common interest Juárez and Lincoln had in maintaining democratic governments in their respective countries against reactionary forces seeking to replace them with aristocratic or monarchical forms of government. This first of several meetings he would have with Lincoln convinced Romero that the two new presidents not only faced similar problems but also occupied common political and philosophical ground.5 After what Juárez had just been through—the rebels’ repudiation of the constitution, withdrawal from government institutions, and formation of an alternative government—the political crisis facing his new counterpart in the United States was only too familiar to him. But domestic budgetary matters occupied most of his attention. Mexico’s rebel government had contracted for various loans with banks headquartered in Britain, Spain, and France. The rebels had spent part of these funds on their military revolt, then fled the country with much of the remaining cash, leaving Juárez the task of reconstructing his government and country with virtually nothing in the national treasury but a stack of promissory notes. Although the banks were pressing for payment, there was no way he could satisfy their demands. So on July 17, 1861, while Union and Confederate forces were marching to their first battle, Juárez announced that he was forced to suspend payment on Mexico’s foreign debt for a period of two years. 6 But the Civil War now raging north of the border intruded into Mexican daily reality. Suddenly sharing a long border with the self-proclaimed Con­ federate States of America, Mexico was in a strategic position that could be of considerable utility to either the Confederacy or the United States. The greatest worry for the Union was that the Confederacy might conquer some or all of Mexico’s northern states, thereby expanding slave territory and gaining ports and supply lines. Another worry was that the Confederates might be able to persuade a cash-strapped Mexican government to grant them shipping access to Mexican ports; Guaymas, for example, would make an excellent transshipping point for supplies headed to Confederate-held Arizona. In June 1861, Lincoln’s secretary of state, William H. Seward, instructed U.S.  

 

 

 

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Ambassador Thomas Corwin in Mexico City to do everything possible to interrupt any cooperation between the Confederacy and Mexico.7 Seward’s fears were well grounded. Even as he wrote to Corwin, Santiago Vidaurri, the strongman governor of the combined states of Nuevo León and Coahuila—who himself had flirted earlier with the idea of seceding from Mexico and creating a new country—was meeting with Confederate agents. Both the Union’s embargo on shipping cotton from the South to the textile mills of Britain and the South’s own suspension of exporting cotton in an (unsuccessful) effort to coerce Britain into supporting the Confederacy already were starting to hurt mill owners and workers overseas, as Spanishspeaking readers in California were made aware. 8 So it was no surprise that Vidaurri soon tacitly allowed the Confederates to use his territory to evade the Union blockade—for a price. According to a letter from an unnamed correspondent of La Voz de Méjico in Brownsville, Texas, “Vidaurri has imposed a tax of a cent and a half on each pound of cotton that is shipped to Mexico, and another tax of twenty-five percent on all goods that leave Mexico for Texas.” 9 He later openly declared his support for the Confederacy. While some Mexican governors seemed susceptible to Confederate blandishments, others turned a deaf ear. Officials in the neighboring state of Chihuahua, for example, flatly turned down a Confederate request to be allowed to pass through Mexican territory to reach Texas.10 Governor Ignacio Pesqueira of Sonora received a considerable amount of Confederate attention, including both polite requests and barely disguised threats in mid-1861, aimed at “inducing this governor to make a sort of alliance with the states belonging to the Southern confederation, [and] obtaining rights of transit through that state and a depot in Guaymas, thereby making him into an enemy of the Union government.” Pesqueira, however, declined to cooperate.11 Some Confederates did not bother with niceties of negotiation but simply strong-armed their way into Mexico when it suited their needs. Early in February 1862, for example, an armed group of Confederates and some local allies invaded Janos in Chihuahua. Also in 1862, Confederates attacked Piedras Negras in Coahuila “in order to plunder the customhouse; and, upon being received with gunfire by the residents, they have set several houses on fire. Forces from neighboring communities have marched to the aid of the town, and the filibusters must have been punished [by now].” 12 Moreover, “Mr. Allen, the American consul in Minatitlan, confirms the news that the Rebels want to take over the states of Sonora and Chihuahua, where rich mines of gold and silver are to be found. For this reason, he advises that war 

 

 

T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   55

ships be stationed at Guaymas, and that troops from California be disembarked at that point, so that from there they may go to Arizona. . . . He says that the conquest of Sonora, Chihuahua, and Baja California by the Rebels would be very useful to their cause.” 13 The Civil War was threatening to draw Mexico into the U.S. crisis to the north, and President Juárez already had his hands full elsewhere. Juárez’s decision to suspend payment on the debt owed to French, British, and Spanish banks ultimately entwined Mexico in the U.S. conflict. Enraged at the suspension, the French ambassador to Mexico, Count Alphonse Dubois de Saligny, declared that normal relations between the two countries had ruptured and sent a note to Paris urging that troops be sent to enforce the claims of French citizens against the Mexican government. The British ambassador announced that relations between his country and Mexico were temporarily “suspended,” only one step less severe. Relations between Spain and Mexico already had been broken off, when the latter ousted the Spanish ambassador after detecting him in improper communication with the rebels.14 The three countries aggrieved with the reestablished Mexican government agreed among themselves in the Convention of London to send armed forces to Mexico to demand and take by force if necessary payment on the debts owed their respective bankers. Britain, however, was not completely assured that Spain and France did not also harbor expansionist ambitions in Mexico and insisted that the convention contain language stipulating that the Euro­ pean powers would not become involved in Mexico’s internal politics. This was despite the fact that British banks were owed the most, $69.9 million. Spanish banks were owed $9.46 million, and French banks only $2.86 million, less than 4 percent of the total debt owed to the three countries.15 Calling themselves the Triple Alliance, the members of the Convention of London landed troops in Veracruz, Mexico, between December 1861 and January 1862. Yellow fever almost immediately began to ravage the European soldiers, and Juárez offered to negotiate the claims in return for allowing the European troops to leave Veracruz for a more salubrious climate at higher elevations. At the Cinco de Mayo celebration in San Francisco in 1865, the Mexican consul José A. Godoy described details of the negotiations between the Juárez government and the Triple Alliance: “In the town of Soledad, General Manuel Doblado . . . made a pact with General Prim, plenipotentiary for Spain, and working in the names of Saligny and Wyke, who were plenipotentiaries for France and England: the Preliminaries that came to be a treaty among the belligerent parties.” 16 56  •   T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a

Latinos in California followed these negotiations in Spanish-language press accounts. In 1865, Rafael H. González laced his Cinco de Mayo speech in Virginia City, Nevada, with many accurate details of the intervention.17 In the Gold Rush mining town of Hornitos in Mariposa County, Ramón Martínez’s Cinco de Mayo address that year reminded his Spanish-speaking audience, “You all know the origin of the war . . . with France united with England and Spain, they made a pact among themselves called the ‘Convention of London,’ with the goal of making certain claims against the constitutional government [of Mexico].” 18 The Preliminaries of Soledad were essentially an agreement to begin formal negotiations. An important condition for Juárez was the Triple Alliance’s agreement that all three of its members would recognize his government as the legitimate, constitutional government of Mexico. On February 19, 1862, the Spanish forces’ commander, General Juan Prim, took the Preliminaries of Soledad back to the French and British representatives in Veracruz so that the next phase of negotiations could begin. Yet disagreements about the purpose of the expedition to Mexico had arisen between the three creditor nations’ representatives. Great Britain and Spain had begun to suspect that the French, not simply interested in collecting old debts, also had another agenda, which entailed interference in the internal politics of Mexico. All three powers signed the Preliminaries of Soledad, but then the Triple Alliance came apart. When the Mexican government’s representatives arrived in Orizaba for the negotiations, the British and Spanish representatives told them that the Triple Alliance was dissolved and that each government henceforth would negotiate separately with the Mexican government.19 On April 16, Dubois de Saligny informed the French foreign minister that a number of French soldiers had been killed outside Veracruz and Córdoba, which he claimed was proof the Mexican government was not negotiating in good faith, so on behalf of France he was ending all talks.20 That same day, the French published a proclamation to the citizens of Orizaba, that French troops were going to remain in Mexico. “Mexicans: We have not come here to take sides in your quarrels; we have come to make them stop. What we want is to call all men of good will to take part in the strengthening of order.” Of course, the current Mexican government would not approve of that line of action, so, the French announcement continued, “the Mexican government has responded to the moderateness of our conduct with measures to which we never have given our moral support, and for which the civilized world would reproach us T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   57

for sanctioning with our presence. Between it and us, war is today declared.” In spite of these protestations that the French were in Mexico only to help, Dubois de Saligny added a menacing note: “France’s flag has been planted on Mexican soil, and this flag will not retreat; so let all honorable men welcome it as a friendly flag. Let fools dare to fight it!” 21 Four days later, Juan N. Almonte, a Mexican official collaborating with the French, issued his “Pronunciamiento de Orizaba” (Orizaba Proclamation): Article 1. The authority of the pretended president of the republic Don Benito Juárez is not recognized. Article 2. His Excellency General Juan N. Almonte is recognized as supreme leader of the said republic, and of the forces which follow the present plan.22

The self-serving pronunciamiento also authorized Almonte to make any agreements he felt necessary with French forces already on Mexican soil. Cali­ fornia’s Spanish-language newspapers quoted a Mexico City newspaper, El Heraldo, as issuing a war cry in response: “To arms, Mexicans! War is inevitable now! Defend your homes, your families . . . !” 23

The First Battle of Puebla: May 5, 1862 Each side in a combat tends to see, and afterward emphasize in its reporting, different aspects of what transpired in the fight. The following account is taken from reports published in the San Francisco Spanish-language paper La Voz de Méjico, which unabashedly supported Benito Juárez’s government. It printed documents that its editor, Manuel E. Rodríguez, identified as full, verbatim dispatches (some in Spanish translation) from the Mexican and French commanders and their subordinates. The newspaper’s version has not been checked against original official dispatches in Mexico City or Paris or against standard histories of the battle subsequently written by historians of any stripe.24 For the purposes of this study, what actually happened at Puebla on May 5, 1862, and why—to the extent it can be determined precisely—is not the point. What matters instead is what the people who would, in response, create the Cinco de Mayo holiday perceived to have happened there. Rodríguez’s was the main account of the battle available to the vast majority of Latinos in California in 1862–1863. For better or worse, it ever after formed the basis of their perceptions of what had happened on that fateful day at Puebla.25  

 

58  •   T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a

 

The French general Charles Ferdinand Latrille, comte de Lorencez, noted that the Mexican commander, Ignacio Zaragoza, was retreating about a day’s march ahead of him, burning all structures and food supplies to deny them to his enemies. Lorencez had been assured by French officials that all Mexico welcomed French rule and would greet him with open arms, showering his troops with flowers. Thus, he arrived at the first city of consequence, Puebla de los Ángeles, on May 4, expecting little resistance.26 But Puebla had been a beehive of activity for some time, with fortifications built, trenches dug, and artillery pieces moved into place by the Mexican defenders.27 By 9 a.m. on May 5, the French artillery had opened fire on the various forts around Puebla, and Mexican artillery had responded in kind.28 After an hour’s artillery duel, the French infantry marched into view, arrayed in three columns, colors waving. Lorencez sent one column to attack the fort on Guadalupe Hill and another the fort on Loreto Hill, expecting a quick, decisive victory.29 At 11:30, the attack on the Guadalupe fort began. According to La Voz de Méjico, General Lorencez afterward recounted, “The zouaves and the light infantry charged, with the intelligent boldness that is traditional in these two corps. They did what only French troops are capable of doing.” But the Mexicans did not break and run as expected. Instead, they stood their ground, and the French found themselves “under terrible fire from artillery and small arms, from shrapnel and shells filled with grapeshot. Some men got as far as scaling the wall, where they were killed; with the exception of the bugler Roblet, who belonged to the light infantry, who stood there for a time sounding the ‘charge.’ ” 30 Then, as reported by a Mexican observer, the Mexican 1st and 3rd Toluca Light Regiments fixed bayonets, left their defensive positions, and engaged the French in fierce hand-to-hand combat. After about five minutes of this, there was a sight that had not been seen involving French troops since Waterloo, nearly fifty years before: “the zouaves fleeing in shameful flight.” 31 Outnumbered as he was and without cavalry, Zaragoza did not dare pursue the fleeing French, although the advantage was clear to him. Allowed this breathing room, the French regrouped; then, with reinforcements, their zouaves mounted another fierce attack up the slope. They came close, some even reaching the fort’s artillery, but Mexican shrapnel and bullets tore them apart, and once again they had to retreat.32 While these two attacks were taking place at the Guadalupe fort, French zouaves and infantry also attacked the fort on Loreto Hill, but here also the Mexicans held their positions and repulsed them. As the French retreated, T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   59

Mexico’s General Francisco de Lamadrid ordered his flanking cavalry to charge them. The French infantry tried to defend themselves by forming defensive squares, which usually could hold against a cavalry attack. But the weight of the Mexican cavalry broke a square outside Puebla, and most of the men in it were cut down.33 Meanwhile, at Guadalupe, the French rushed the fort a third time. Mexico was well into its rainy season, and the heavens chose this moment to open up and deluge the French, who now could not scale the wet, slippery walls.34 Once again, they retired, this time well beyond the range of the Mexican guns, in an attempt to reorganize, but by then it was late enough in the day that nothing further came of their efforts.35 In the last major encounter of the day, the Mexican collaborator General Leonardo Márquez, serving under French command, tried to join Lorencez with five thousand fresh troops, but the Mexican patriot General Tomás O’Horan intercepted them at Atlixco and forced them back to Matamoros de Izucar.36 Finally, around 7 p.m., the French troops at Puebla retired to their camp, which they spent all that night and most of the next day moving to a safer position, carrying their dead and wounded from the battlefield.37 It became clear the next day, May 6, that the initiative had shifted. In the morning the French attacked and again were repulsed and chased back to their camp.38 Meanwhile, Mexican reinforcements streamed toward Puebla. General Florencio Antillón arrived with his two thousand troops from Guana­ juato, warmly welcomed by General Zaragoza.39 Pedro Ogazón was expected the next day with three thousand from Jalisco, and Jesús González Ortega within four days from Zacatecas with six thousand troops and an artillery train.40 The morale of the Mexican soldiers was rising, their successes of the previous day filling them with confidence; now they wanted to attack. For their part, the French did not take the offensive again that day. On May 7, they were observed building fortifications. 41 Accordingly, at noon on May 8, the Mexicans were ready to face the once feared French army. Alejo Ruiz, an observer for the Mexican Army of the East, spent all afternoon, into the early evening, at his post in Puebla’s cathedral tower, watching the French forces’ movements. After facing the Mexicans in a stalemate lasting nearly four hours, the French soldiers did what they were never supposed to do: they withdrew from the battlefield, unwilling to engage in combat. Once he was sure the French were retreating, Ruiz hurriedly sent his report to his commanding officer. Ruiz’s report, with those of other officers in the forts that ringed Puebla, was telegraphed to 60  •   T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a

Figure 6.  The May 27, 1862, issue of La Voz de Méjico, published in San Francisco, gave its readers the earliest notice of the Mexican victory at the first battle of Puebla, on May 5. (CESLAC UCLA)

President Juárez’s headquarters in Mexico City. There they were compiled and released to a public anxiously awaiting news of the confrontation just fifty-five miles to the east of the capital. Mexican newspapers, among them the Monitor Republicano, gleefully reprinted the telegraphic dispatches verbatim.42 The Mexico City newspapers, along with correspondence from private individuals, subsequently made the trip by horse and stagecoach to the tropical port of Acapulco, where the steamship Orizaba picked them up on May 17, making its usual stop for passengers and mail on its route from Panama to San Francisco. After chugging up the coast, the ship dropped anchor in San Francisco at 7 a.m. on May 26. Along with its 580 passengers, it unloaded the Mexican newspapers containing dispatches from the front. 43 These soon made their way to the offices of the two major Spanish-language newspapers in San Francisco: La Voz de Méjico, begun in March 1862, and El Éco del Pacífico, the Spanish-language pages printed since 1852 under the aegis of the French-language L’Écho du Pacifique.44 Eager to share the momentous news with their readers, the two news­papers’ editors printed the telegraphed reports from the front verbatim, adding their own comments (see figure 6).45 Bundles of their freshly printed papers were loaded onto the river steamers that plied between San Francisco on the coast T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   61

and the inland communities of Sacramento, Marysville, and Stockton, the major jumping-off points for the gold country. From there the news spread swiftly, via stagecoaches and mule trains, to smaller towns in the Mother Lode—Sonora, Columbia, San Andreas, Hornitos, Calaveritas, Melones, Banderitas, Vallecito—and then out to the tiny camps such as Greaser Gulch, Merced River Camp, Feliciana Mine, and El Mono Mine. In all these places, groups of Latinos anxiously awaited news of the battle in far-off Puebla.  

 

Latinos in Alta California Respond The news was joyous: “HURRAH FOR MEXICO!!! HURRAH FOR INDEPENDENCE!” The banks below the headlines further rejoiced, “Hurrah for the valiant Mexican soldiers!! Hurrah for the heroic General Zaragoza and his comrades!” 46 In town after town, camp after camp, mine after mine, ranch after ranch, Latinos eagerly absorbed the news. Those who could read shared the glorious details with their illiterate fellows, and up and down the state, Latinos savored the blow-by-blow reporting from the front lines of the conflict that had so riveted their attention. To the Gold Rush town of Columbia, in Tuolumne County, goes the honor of having held the first spontaneous celebration of the victory of the battle of Puebla.47 Shortly after the May 27 issue of La Voz de Méjico arrived there, the Latino inhabitants experienced the “incomparable joy with which the satisfying news of our triumph against the French were received.” A selfappointed correspondent who identified himself only by the initials A.M. dashed off a letter to the newspaper describing a joyful celebration of gun salvos and banquets complete with toasts to Mexico and the singing of patriotic songs. He originally provided a detailed description of the event, including a fiery patriotic speech given by one Señora Eligia Mendoza, but the editor of La Voz de Méjico decided not to publish the entire letter, so the modern reader is left merely with an enticing outline of the first-ever celebration of Cinco de Mayo in California (see figure 7). 48 The huge wave of Gold Rush–induced immigration from Mexico to Cali­ fornia had brought a number of Mexican war veterans to the state. One of them, Francisco Tapia, was living in Columbia when news of the unexpected victory broke. In fact, just a week before news of the battle of Puebla reached Columbia, he had written an open letter to young Latinos urging them to go to Mexico to join the forces defending the republic against the French. Tapia  

62  •   T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a

Figure 7.  As reported in this newspaper article, the first Cinco de Mayo celebration in California took place in the mining town of Columbia, in Tuolumne County, in May 1862, barely three weeks after the first battle of Puebla. (La Voz de Méjico, June 7, 1862, p. 2. CESLAC UCLA)

had a respectable record of patriotic service himself. He described himself as over eighty years old and still suffering from a war wound delivered by a Spanish lance during the Battle of Calderón Bridge (1811), in the first phase of the war for Mexican independence. Tapia also had been wounded by a U.S. bullet during the Mexican-American War, at the battle of Angostura (or Buena Vista, 1847). Yet old and disabled as he was, Tapia declared himself ready to take up arms again in defense of his homeland. He closed his letter with the resounding plea “I hope, my fellow Mexicans, that . . . we may come together and march at once, with the liveliest and warmest valor, to take up the rifle, in order to swell the ranks of our dear brethren; in order to make T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   63

people see that we are as brave as tigers, and that we are able to defeat those lions who try to scare us in the shape of roosters.” 49 After nearly a year of hearing about unwelcome Confederate defeats of Federal troops in the eastern United States, the surprising Mexican victory at Puebla was a jolt of welcome news for supporters of Juárez and of the legitimacy of democratic government in general. Some measure of the impact can be gleaned from the reaction of Latino men both to news of the victory and to Tapia’s plea for involvement. About two weeks after the news of Zaragoza’s victory washed over California’s Latino communities, the state hummed with discussions and calls to action, as reported by La Voz de Méjico. “They are writing to us from the hinterland that in the counties of Tuolumne, Mariposa, Napa, Calaveras, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, etc., there are more than a thousand Mexicans ready and willing to march to Mexico to offer their services in defending their country against the foreign aggression.” Calling this wave of enthusiasm an “echo which Mexicans issue from California in response to the voice of Puebla’s defenders,” the editor Manuel E. Rodríguez characterized it as an indication of the patriotism still felt for Mexico and as support for the defenders of the constitutional government under attack by foreign invaders and domestic traitors who supported the French.50 In Mexico, meanwhile, people were aware of the considerable Latino presence in California. On the same day Francisco Tapia issued his call to arms from the town of Columbia, nearly 1,500 miles away in Acapulco, Vicente Méndez composed a poem dedicated “to my brothers, the Mexicans who live in the Republic of the United States in the North.” It read, in part: From the North turn your astonished gaze; Contemplate from Aculzingo, the immortal mountain, Heroic Puebla; turn your glance, And, brothers, you will feel your heart throb.

Méndez saw the battle as between not simply the Mexican and French armies but also their respective political values and institutions: outmoded monarchy versus new “democracy and republic,” and conservative rebellion against legitimate constitutional authority. To him, its meaning was encapsulated in “the magic word, the voice, of Liberty.” 51

On June 17, three weeks after receiving news of the victory at Puebla, Rodríguez shared with the readers of his La Voz de Méjico an item from 64  •   T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a

the Mexican government’s official newspaper. “We see, in the Siglo XIX for May 18, a list of donations toward a sword that is going to be given to the unconquered General Zaragoza. The donations by that day had amounted to $612 and 50 cents.” Then, perhaps merely thinking out loud, he offered a suggestion that, did he but know it, was going to change Latino society and identity in ways that persist to the twenty-first century: “Would it not be fitting that, here in California, some show of appreciation be made, which those valiant men merit who have spilled their blood in defense of the homeland?” 52 The very next day, his competitor, El Éco del Pacífico, announced that it had opened a subscription “to aid those wounded Mexicans who fell at Puebla.” Somewhat annoyed by his rival editor’s interpreting La Voz de Méjico’s notice about the sword of honor subscription as a not-so-subtle hint that the paper’s readers should imitate their compatriots in Mexico City, Rodríguez responded on June 19 that such had not been his original intent— but now that it had been suggested, he thought it was not a bad idea to acknowledge with “an award from the hands of the Mexicans of California” the skill and patriotism of the general who had thrown the enemy back from Puebla. He urged his readers to join him in this effort. “We issue a call to the patriotism of our brethren of California. . . . It would be useful to hold meetings and compile subscription lists, with the goal that, imitating the example of our countrymen in the capital [of Mexico], we should gather together a sum to have a sword of honor made here in San Francisco and to send it to Citizen General Ignacio Zaragoza, as a token that the Mexicans who live in California give, of their appreciation of his military virtues and untarnished patriotism.” 53 Rodríguez offered the infrastructure of his newspaper in the service of this effort. “In all our agents’ offices in the hinterland, printed registration lists will be found; and the amounts that may be collected will be sent to this newspaper’s office, where they will be published, to the extent that the contributors’ names shall be received. As of today, a subscription book lies open for this city.” 54 The next day, the first donors from San Francisco came to the offices of La Voz de Méjico to offer contributions. On June 21, Rodríguez proudly announced, “Today we publish the first subscription list for the Sword of Honor which is going to be given to General Zaragoza. . . . It may be demonstrated that, even though we live in a foreign land, we retain a lively attachment to our country.” He informed his readers that the donors included Latinos from all walks of life. “By this, one will see that every Mexican here,  

T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   65

rich or poor, has written his name in the list; for it belongs to all of them to make a public demonstration of their feelings toward the illustrious leader who won at Puebla.” 55 The names on the list did indeed represent a socioeconomic cross section of Latino San Francisco. At one end of the spectrum, for instance, was Gerardo López del Castillo, a Mexican actor and theater impresario whose troupe, the Estrella Company, had come to San Francisco soon after the French invasion of their homeland. Once there, he increasingly took part in civic affairs in California’s Latino community and gave rousing speeches at public events.56 The list also included humbler donors, such as Dolores Mojica, a maker of musical instruments who advertised himself professionally as a “Mexican woodworker.” 57 The donations came in slowly at first, primarily from San Francisco. To speed things up, Rodríguez reminded his readers that if they had no cash, they could pay with postage stamps enclosed in letters sent to his office.58 But then the rudimentary network of Latino communities that Spanishlanguage newspapers had supported and strengthened since the early days of the Gold Rush began to rouse to action. Groups of donors were organized in the far-flung towns of California, and donations began to be lumped together by the donors’ places of residence. The first organized response from outside San Francisco apparently came from nearby Sonoma, from the family of General Mariano G. Vallejo.59 Subsequently, lists of donors arrived from all over the state: from gold country towns and camps such as Greenwood, Columbia, Jenny Lind, Hornitos, Santa Cruz in Mariposa County, San Andreas, Laporte, Calaveritas, Coulterville, Placerville, West Point, Lancha Plana, Mayfield, Chinese Camp, and Murphy’s Camp; from towns in the Central Valley such as Yreka, Marysville, and Stockton; and from older, more settled, heavily Californio towns near the coast, including Sonoma, Watsonville, San Luis Obispo, San Lorenzo, San Leandro, Alvarado, New Almaden, San Juan, Washington District in Alameda County, Pachecoville, and Los Angeles. 60 Map 2 shows the distribution of the lists of organized donors to the Latino sword of honor. 61 The lists of donors also show the cosmopolitan nature of the Latino population in California barely fourteen years after it had passed from Mexican to United States control. Rodríguez’s initial appeal had been made to “Mexicans who live in California,” and more specifically, to those who had arrived from Mexico after February 2, 1848, both miners and others. Yet those Latinos who had been living in California prior to the Gold Rush, and their descen66  •   T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a

Map 2.  Locations donating to the Latino sword of honor, 1862. (Werner Schink)

dants, clearly felt an affinity with the more recent immigrant arrivals, and many of them, like the Vallejos, subscribed for the Latino sword of honor. 62 Similarly, Latinos drawn from all over Latin America by the Gold Rush also subscribed for General Zaragoza’s sword. Tomás Mora, a Chilean living in San Francisco, was an early subscriber, as was an anonymous Peruvian living in Marysville. 63 Another was a Salvadoran who would later play a leading role in Cinco de Mayo events in California, Juan Vicente Martorell, then living in Hornitos. Samuel Delgado, an Argentine living in Alameda County, also subscribed early on. Continuing the decades-old linkage between New Mexico and California, Estipula Vaca from New Mexico, residing in San Luis Obispo, was quick to sign up. Even non-Latinos volunteered their donations. One Eduardo (or Edward) Hays, described as an “Americano” from San Lorenzo, was an early contributor. 64 Rodríguez made a point of specially acknowledging the contributions made by those not of Mexican origin. 65 Initially, women were included in the lists as individual subscribers, along with the men. Latina donors in the mining town of Columbia, however, were the first to have their joint contribution, which they had raised as an exclusively female group, specifically acknowledged. In July, Agustina Ayala y León was tapped by her (male) local subscription collector, J. M. Hernández, to create a list of female donors from her community. In a letter to La Voz de Méjico, she proudly reported her success. “Señor J. M. Hernández . . . being the person entrusted with receiving the contributions of the persons who care to subscribe for the presentation of the Sword of Honor to General Ignacio Zaragoza, has done me the honor of distinguishing me with a list of the ladies; which I have carried out with the greatest pleasure, for my part making every effort possible to make up a regular sum.” She apologized for the smallness of the amount contributed by the women—although, in fact, it was only two dollars less than that donated by Columbia’s men—but asserted that the willingness with which it had been given was “very acute.” Indeed, the list of Columbia’s contributors to the sword of honor fund, printed on the same page of the issue in which her letter appeared, was divided into two categories: one for men and one for women. The editor Rodríguez responded with a tribute to the patriotism of Latinas in both Mexico and California. 66 This distinguishing of female donors from their male counterparts would be echoed not long thereafter in the formation of specifically female Latina patriotic societies. On August 9, Rodríguez announced the closing of the subscription and proudly proclaimed patriotism alive and well in the Latino communities  

 

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of California. “Today we close the subscription for the presentation of the sword that is going to be offered to Citizen General Ignacio Zaragoza, as a tribute in recognition of the eminent services he has done to his country, by his fellow citizens from California. . . . In this fashion we show our brethren in the motherland that, whether in Mexico or in a foreign land, we retain a Mexican heart, for our country.” In a little more than two months, $1,250 had been collected. 67 R. B. Gray and Co. in San Francisco was hired to make the sword. Rodríguez conveyed to his readership that “we have been assured that it will be one of the best swords of its type that has ever been made in America.” 68 The “Messrs. Nahl” had produced the design elements that would distinguish this sword from all others. Charles Christian Nahl and his half-brother, Hugo Nahl, were Germans who had come to California in the early years of the Gold Rush. After discovering that they were not adept miners, the Nahl brothers moved to San Francisco and opened an art studio that offered portraits, landscapes, photography, and design to the public. One Señor Villalón executed supplementary designs for the sword. 69 By mid-October, the sword was finished and placed on display for the public to admire at the jewelers’ shop Tucker and Co., which had been responsible for the goldwork on the sword and the jewels set into its hilt. Photographs were taken—possibly by Charles Christian Nahl—and sent to Mexico.70 To date, however, none of these photographs of the sword have been found, and the sword itself has been lost.71 Nonetheless, its original appearance can be vividly imagined, thanks to a detailed description in La Voz de Méjico on November 1, 1862. The Latino sword of honor encapsulated the battle of Puebla as perceived by Latinos in California. It was a parade sword thirty-nine inches in length, with a thirty-two-inch blade. The hilt was solid gold. On the grip appeared a figure representing America—in contemporary iconography, usually a female rather fancifully dressed as an Indian, with a feather headdress—here shown with her right foot treading on tyranny, as represented by an overturned royal crown. On her burnished shield appeared the word LIBERTAD (“Liberty”). The rest of the design elements were a fascinating mixture of Mexican and Californian symbols. Set into the pommel was an oval chunk of gold-­bearing California quartz. The pommel itself was shaped like an eagle holding a serpent in its beak, the serpent’s body forming part of the elaborate guard. This was inspired by the eagle and the serpent on the Mexican flag, which refer to the legend of Tenochtitlan’s founding in 1325. The eyes of the eagle and  

 

 

 

T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   69

the serpent were set with diamonds. Another Mexican theme appeared at the base of the hilt, near the pommel, where an engraved castle represented the heroic city of Puebla, with the date “5 de Mayo de 1862” inscribed below. Around the upper hilt, near the cross guard, was the inscription “To Citizen General Ignacio Zaragoza, [from] the grateful Mexicans of California.” The seven-inch chape at the tip of the blued-steel scabbard had at its center a cameo cut in San Francisco featuring the head of the goddess Minerva—an emblem of the state of California since 1849—surrounded by the panoply of war. A four-and-a-half-inch plaque halfway up the scabbard was decorated with the silver head of a “California bear,” presumably a grizzly, with rubies for eyes, and the nearly six-inch locket at the scabbard’s mouth bore another image of America personified, this time depicted with the sword and scales of Justice, with two supplicating figures kneeling before her.72 In anticipation of the public celebration that would accompany the sword’s send-off to Mexico, Henry Payot’s bookstore in San Francisco commissioned a lithographic portrait of General Zaragoza, made from an original photograph.73 But then, just as the sword was about to depart, dismaying news arrived. Ignacio Zaragoza had contracted typhoid fever and had died on September 8, 1862. The news had taken nearly a month to travel to California; when it arrived, on October 7, the impact was tremendous.74 In its issues of October 7, 9, and 11, La Voz de Méjico printed black borders of mourning around its columns on every page. Francisco Herrera, a writer living in San Francisco, contributed a piece published in the paper on October 7, “¡Zaragoza No Ha Muerto!” (“Zaragoza Has Not Died!”). In it, he argued that as with other past heroes, while the physical man might have perished, the inspiration he provided to others lived on. “But Zaragoza has not died; among those who love their homeland, there is Zaragoza.” He reminded his readers that Zaragoza had not simply been defending the country of Mexico; rather, he had fought for a larger cause, the preservation of democracy. “He has not died: see him smiling among the apostles and martyrs of democracy.” In furtherance of this point, Herrera compared the Mexican general to other great liberators of North and South America: “We repeat it: Heroes never die. Washington lives today, above thirty million human beings. Bolívar exists among the communities of Colombia. . . . But you, Zaragoza, you live throughout the Hispano-American continent. You live, for it conceived your great soul in this sacrosanct principle of equality.” 75 Implicit in this comparison was a linkage between the Juarist and Union causes, both fighting for equality and democracy against autocratically minded foes.  

 

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The following morning, October 8, grief at the news of Zaragoza’s death drew together a group of Latinos in San José. As Catholics, they decided the best way to mourn him was to sponsor a special memorial mass. They raised fifty dollars and took this sum to a local priest, asking that he say a mass to console them. To their consternation, the priest responded that he could not do so until he had telegraphed to Archbishop Josep Alemany of San Francisco for permission. Personally, the priest could see no reason why permission would be refused, but he evidently was acting in obedience to previous orders not to say any masses for Zaragoza without prior consultation. Despite the priest’s optimism, the answer came back from the archbishop that a mass could be celebrated “only when it may be made clear that General Zaragoza has publicly retracted.” Apparently Archbishop Alemany had been made uncomfortable by Zaragoza’s reputation as a defender of the 1857 Mexican constitution, which mandated the separation of church and state. One of the San José delegation’s leaders, José Ruiz, indignantly related these events in a letter to La Voz de Méjico. The editor Rodríguez vowed to look into the matter at once.76 The results of his investigation roused Rodríguez to a public expression of outrage that the Catholic church in California would so neglect Christian charity as to refuse to conduct services for Zaragoza while the archbishop was awaiting “the proof, perhaps, that the illustrious General Zaragoza had not been excommunicated.” Rodríguez thought the burden of proof lay on the archbishop’s side, to show why the memorial mass should not be conducted rather than simply presume that it should not until Zaragoza’s religious orthodoxy could be demonstrated. He pointed out that Zaragoza’s body had lain in state in the parish church of San Martín Tesmelucan in Mexico and subsequently had been buried in the pantheon of San Fernando, “which belongs to the Catholics.” Not receiving any satisfactory response from Archbishop Alemany, he asked trenchantly, “Can it be so that ecclesiastical law may be one thing for Señor Alemany and another, very different, thing for the diocesan bishops of Mexico City and of Puebla—who were closer to the truth?” 77 News of Zaragoza’s death took most of October 8 to travel to Hornitos in Mariposa County, where it arrived around nine o’clock that night. The news profoundly grieved the Latino population of the town, and by dawn on October 9, their doors and windows were draped in black. Four Mexicans living in the town, wearing black armbands and black bands on their hats, punctually fired salvos every fifteen minutes throughout the day, using a can 

T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   71

non ornamented with a black flag and black ribbons twined through the spokes of its gun carriage wheels and gunpowder bought by two of the more prosperous local residents, Pedro Sáenz and Eutimio Castillo. The local correspondent who described the scene to La Voz de Méjico expected mourning to continue for the standard nine days, “down to the sorriest miner’s tent.” 78 But another issue now arose: what should be done with the Latino sword of honor that had been the first fruits of California Latinos’ support of the war for freedom and democracy in Mexico? “We find ourselves in a dilemma. The sword . . . is on the verge of being finished. If Zaragoza had left a son, he without a doubt would have been the legitimate heir of our gratitude and sympathies; but, unfortunately, he passed away leaving only a little girl.” Rodríguez’s admitted preference was for sending the sword to the Mexican Congress, to be disposed of as that body should see fit. Nevertheless, claiming that he did not wish to impose his opinions on others, he suggested that all who had contributed to the sword’s making should decide collectively what to do with it. To speed up the process, he asked the newspaper’s agents throughout the state to consult with their respective territories’ donors and write back to him without delay.79 At a meeting of the San Francisco junta patriótica (patriotic assembly; see chapter 4) held on October 12, a general consensus was declared to have emerged among the donors. “Taking advantage of the current meeting, the president of the board asked if it was believed, in conformity with what was proposed by the newspaper La Voz de Méjico, that the Sword of Honor which had been destined for the unfortunate General Zaragoza should be sent to the general Congress in Mexico, so that this body might dispose of it as it thought best to carry out the donors’ views; and this proposal was approved unanimously.” 80 After appearing for public view for a week in the showroom of Tucker and Co., the sword was sent aboard the steamer Orizaba on November 11, 1862. The Pacific Navigation Company waived all shipping fees. 81 After a voyage of nearly two weeks, the sword arrived in Acapulco, whence it was taken to General Juan Álvarez’s hacienda—La Providencia, about thirty miles inland, which was serving as the military headquarters for his Division of the South—and placed in his care. On receiving the sword, General Álvarez wrote, “Upon seeing so rare an object, which I now have in my keeping, my heart cannot but be moved; for, coming from a country that once belonged to Mexico, it symbolizes that feeling for the homeland still lives in the children of that country.” 82  

 

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Newspaper readers in Mexico were informed of the magnanimous gesture made by Latinos in California and the widespread support for President Juárez among them. The Mexican government’s official newspaper, Siglo XIX, ran an article describing their patriotic efforts, which La Voz de Méjico reprinted. It emphasized, in idealized terms, the harmonious pan-Latino nature of the enterprise: “One feels an agreeable satisfaction upon learning of the patriotic conduct that Mexicans in Alta California are observing. They retain a lively sense of their nationality, they are closely united, and for them there is no division of parties or of fortunes. They have celebrated civic festivals on the anniversary of our Independence, with not just Mexicans delivering enthusiastic speeches, but also other South Americans, who fraternize cordially with our countrymen.” 83 While Zaragoza had beaten the French decisively at Puebla on May 5, their army had not left Mexico and indeed was being reinforced by new troops from France. These troops’ continuing presence and their encouragement of armed groups of reactionary collaborators made travel dangerous. Via a letter to La Voz de Méjico written on December 5, Álvarez assured Latinos in California that he would take care of their sword by providing it with a military escort: “Concerning the sword of honor . . . I have announced its receipt in my previous letter. It will leave tomorrow, with sufficient escort, for Cuernavaca, where it is to be delivered to Señor Altamirano, if he happens to be there; but if he is not, it will continue in the same fashion all the way to the capital of the Republic.” 84 The sword’s journey from La Providencia to Cuernavaca took almost three weeks; it finally arrived on December 21. Although it is less than sixty miles from Cuernavaca to Mexico City, the roads were so infested with conservative partisans and common bandits that the next leg of the trip took another three weeks. A letter published in La Voz de Méjico gives some idea of the difficulties the sword faced in reaching Mexico City. “But, oh, my friend! From that date until this very day, rounding Cape Horn would have been less dangerous than a passage from here to Cuernavaca. Such a precarious eighteen leagues! Imagine large gangs of traitors and of bandits owning the road and robbing every passerby.” 85 Thanks to its military escort, however, the sword of honor finally arrived in Mexico City and on January 29, 1863, was presented to Bartolomé E. Almada and Antonio G. Pérez, deputy secretaries to the Secretariat of the Mexican Congress. These two officials wrote to Latinos in California that “the sword that the Mexicans living in Alta California had made, at their own expense, to T h e F i r s t B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   73

bestow upon the illustrious General Zaragoza . . . now has been presented to the Permanent Committee, of which we are secretaries.” The question of what to do with the sword was given to the war council to work out. On February 26, 1863, Almada and Pérez, on behalf of the war council, officially thanked Latinos in California for this wonderful present. They then detailed three proposals made by the war council. “First. Unless the Congress dispose otherwise, the sword which the Mexicans living in Alta California dedicated to the general and distinguished citizen Ignacio Zaragoza should be placed in the meeting hall. Second. It should send a satisfactory reply to the Mexicans of Alta California, thanking them and sending them a transcript of the decision.” The third proposal would have virtually apotheosized the Latino sword of honor: “And in order to perpetuate such patriotic sentiments, the Permanent Committee also resolves—and probably the national representative body will approve—that the said sword be placed in the meeting hall next to that of the liberator Iturbide.” 86 A place of honor next to the nearly sacred sword of Iturbide! This was the highest tribute that could be paid, and it was proposed to be paid to the gift of California’s Latinos.  

 

Without a doubt, the first battle of Puebla, on May 5, 1862, had an extraordinary impact on Latinos living in California. But it was only the first major battle in a five-year French occupation of Mexico. Many full-scale battles—in Mazatlán, Acapulco, San Luis Potosí, Alamos, and Querétaro—and numerous smaller skirmishes would be fought after that. So why, out of all these engagements between Mexican and French forces, is the first battle of Puebla still commemorated by Latinos in California 150 years later?  

 

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T h r ee

The American Civil War and the Second Battle of Puebla

Of all the battles of the French Intervention in Mexico, the first battle of Puebla, on May 5, 1862, is commemorated with a holiday today because a network of Latino groups in California—the juntas patrióticas mejicanas (Mexican patriotic assemblies; see chapter 4)—deliberately created a public memory of it. The French invasion force unintentionally encouraged this construction by launching an attack on Puebla again in 1863, which turned into a two-month siege that riveted Latino attention in faraway Cali­ fornia. During the same period, the Union army suffered a major defeat at Chancellorsville, and this conjunction of events influenced the creation of the Cinco de Mayo holiday.  

 

Latinos’ Views of the Confederates and the French California’s Latinos were presented, on a regular basis, with a large amount of information in Spanish about the United States’ Civil War and France’s attempt to change the government of Mexico. Napoleon III took advantage of the United States’ inability to enforce the Monroe Doctrine during the Civil War, intervening in Mexico in 1862, and the Southern rebels in turn sought diplomatic recognition from France. Most Latinos, in California and elsewhere, supported the North and Juárez’s democratically elected government, although a minority did sympathize with the Confederacy and the French-backed regime in Mexico (see chapter 5). Something of the nature of the detailed news coverage available to Cali­ for­nia’s Latinos can be seen, for instance, in La Voz de Méjico’s reporting on the famous ironclad vessels Monitor and Merrimac and their deployment.1 75

A number of Spanish-language newspapers were published at the time, especially in San Francisco (see figure 8). El Éco del Pacífico, which began in 1852 as the Spanish-language page of the French-language newspaper L’Echo du Pacifique, became a separate four-page daily around 1856, continuing publication until it was suppressed in 1865 (see chapter 5).2 La Voz de Méjico and El Nuevo Mundo were triweeklies, the former from 1862 to 1866 and the latter from 1864 to 1868. These two papers notably supported Mexican president Benito Juárez’s government throughout the French Intervention.3 Additionally, steamships brought newspapers from Mexico, Central America, South America, Cuba, and Spain. Spanish-speaking readers wishing to stay abreast of developments in the eastern United States benefited from the latest technology of their day. In September 1861, telegraph lines reached California, and thereafter the Associated Press could report events to or about the state within hours of their occurrence. 4 Editors of the Spanish-language newspapers thereafter often used Associated Press reports and reprints of articles from other news­papers as the foundations of their own reporting, but it should not be assumed that they simply translated and reprinted these materials uncritically. Having access to other sources of information, such as private correspondence, they often supplemented and commented on the material they obtained from the Associated Press and other papers, occasionally indicating to their readers when they thought the reports ought to be taken with a grain of salt. In one such instance, the editor of La Voz de Méjico, Manuel E. Rodríguez, cited an Associated Press report on the Union bombardment of Confederateheld Fort Jackson in New Orleans, in April 1862. He noted that this report had originated in an item first published by the New Orleans Delta, a newspaper that reasonably could be presumed to represent the Confederate point of view. According to this source, “It is affirmed that the Federal fire had diminished greatly, and that they had used over 37,000 pounds of gunpowder and shot a thousand tons of iron. This bombardment, the dispatch continues, has no peer in modern history. Our loss has not been more than five dead and ten wounded.” At this point, Rodríguez, clearly skeptical of these Confederate claims, added, “(Definitely, either these people are throwing tomatoes at each other, or else they’re foisting stories off on us. The Editors.)” 5 Editorial insertions and biases were not always so clearly indicated, however, especially when the source shared the biases. Yet in this respect, Spanishlanguage journalism in California was no different from its counterparts in any language in the United States or indeed anywhere in the world at the 76  •   C i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a

Figure 8.  During the American Civil War and the French Intervention, Latinos followed events in the United States and in Mexico through Spanish-language newspapers published in San Francisco—La Voz de Méjico, 1862–1866; El Nuevo Mundo, 1864–1868; and La Voz de Chile y de las Repúblicas Americanas, 1867–1868—and in Los Angeles—El Amigo del Pueblo, 1861–1862—which had wide circulation in the state. In addition to these pro-Union, pro-Juarist papers, one Spanish-language paper was pro-Confederate and proFrench, San Francisco’s El Éco del Pacífico. (CESLAC UCLA)  

 

 

 

 

 

time. Unbiased reporting was not really considered a virtue in nineteenthcentury journalism, despite occasional contemporary claims to the contrary. 6 In the case of La Voz de Méjico and El Nuevo Mundo, that bias was openly and frankly in favor of the Union cause in the United States and Juárez’s government in Mexico and vehemently opposed to the Confederacy and the French Intervention. It is less important, however, to point out with the benefit of historical hindsight where these Spanish-language newspapers might have been biased or inaccurate than to understand that they were, directly or indirectly, the major source of information that Latinos in California had during this period about what was happening in Mexico and in the eastern part of the United States. Whether these newspapers’ reports were objectively accurate or not, they were what informed Latinos’ views of, and thereby influenced their reactions to, the great conflicts of the day. While no subscription records have survived, the papers’ general influence in the Latino communities of California nonetheless can be judged to a reasonable extent from evidence such as the widespread response by ordinary individuals throughout the state to Rodríguez’s subscription campaign for the Latino sword of honor for General Zaragoza (see chapter 2) and the close relationship between the Spanish-language papers and the grassroots political groups known as the juntas patrióticas. It is clear that the Spanishlanguage press’s influence was extensive, in terms of both the numbers and the geographical dispersion of readers. Spanish-speaking readers of these newspapers received not only detailed information about the issues fueling the American Civil War but also analyses of how these issues were related to and resonated with issues of the French Intervention in Mexico. When perusing these 150-year-old accounts, the modern reader must keep in mind the contemporary emotional impact of all this news about the two struggles in the United States and in Mexico. It is easy with twenty-first-century hindsight to see that the North, with a larger population and a far greater industrial base, eventually would win a war of attrition against the South. But in the early years of the American Civil War, it was not at all clear that the North would win or even be able to hold its own. The South seemed able to make lightning military strikes at times and places of its choosing, and, for a time, it appeared that just a few more of these decisive actions might conclude events in the Confederacy’s favor, in spite of the Union’s material advantages. Moreover, accounts of battles often were confusing, with different dispatches giving contradictory reports of outcomes and casualties, and, of course, Federal and Confederate reports dif78  •   C i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a

fered vastly in their coverage. Therefore, initially it could be uncertain, especially to those who were following events through newspapers, which side had won a key battle.7 This fed public fears about the ultimate outcome of the war. The stakes could not have been higher. Both the United States and Mexico were fighting to survive as nations. Mexico was trying to avoid losing its independence to the imperial and hegemonic ambitions of Napoleon III of France. The editor Rodríguez of La Voz de Méjico left no doubt about what the survival or obliteration of the Republic of Mexico meant: From the borders of Washington’s territory to the farthest southern end of the Republic of Chile . . . thousands of citizens turn their anxious gazes . . . to Mexico. . . . Because on these news . . . depends the resolution of a problem that fifty or more years has not been able to resolve; a problem which contains the liberty of a nation of eight million people, her political existence, her being or nonbeing in the eyes of the other civilized nations of the globe; whose resolution is of interest not only to Mexico, but also to the other American republics and to all the free peoples of the earth. 8

Around the same time, in the gold-mining community of Chinese Camp in Tuolumne County, Nicolás Moreno also laid out the situation clearly for fellow members of the local junta patriótica: should Mexico cease to exist as an independent nation, the way would be open for European monarchies to topple other democracies in Latin America. “Mexico, gentlemen, is the key, so to speak, to South America. Once she has disappeared, what may our sister republics expect from them?” 9 For the majority of Latinos in California in 1862, a more fundamental issue was at stake than mutual sympathy for similar struggles for national existence. The Confederate secession was trying to effect a situation in which the United States would have to continue without the Southern states, although Lincoln refused to accept this. Should the South be victorious, the United States as it was currently known would cease to exist. The North might continue under the name the United States of America, but it would be a greatly reduced, very different country from the one that had existed prior to the war. The question of the United States’ survival touched California’s Latinos directly, as residents of that country, many of them citizens.10 An 1864 editorial in La Voz de Méjico, refuting propaganda disseminated by General George McClellan’s supporters in an effort to persuade Latino citizens to vote against Lincoln and the Republican party in the upcoming elecC i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   79

tions, predicted a bleak future for Latinos if the Union cause did not prevail. The editor, Antonio Mancillas, pointed out that in addition to feeling deep sympathies for Mexico, Latino citizens of the United States were part of their adopted country’s struggle. “We already have had occasion to prove, in the most indisputable manner, that the cause of the Union is the same one that Mexico is upholding. . . . Whatever may be the result of this great war, our destiny is discovered to be identified with our adoptive country.” He went on to lay out a grim scenario, should the North not prevail over the South: “If the Union should be dissolved, we would be citizens of a fragment of the great republic, which, from the moment of its dismemberment, would be an easy prey to the ambitious monarchists of Europe.” Or worse, California might “be invaded by the vandals from the Southern states.” Should that happen, Latino daily life would come under assault from the racial prejudices upon which Southern society was founded. “And in case of a dismemberment, our lot as American citizens could not be doubted. The white race of the South would dominate us; and the same people who fawn on us today with flattering lies would be the same ones who would make us feel the heavy yoke of slavery, once their plan of conquest were consummated.” 11

Republics led by democratically elected governments were very much in the minority among the world’s nations in the mid-nineteenth century. The major powers in Europe were monarchies, except for France during two previous brief flings with a republican form of government, both of which ended disastrously. Monarchy therefore appeared to many people to be the wisest, most stable form of government. In contrast, the Latin American republics, barely forty years old, were plagued with revolving-door presidents, governments, and constitutions and with military coups that occurred with alarming frequency. Even the almost-eighty-year-old United States seemed to be failing as a viable government by 1861, when it threatened to divide into two, possibly even three, countries. European skepticism about the stability of democracies extended to corollary doubts that the citizens of the Western Hemisphere’s republics would be willing to defend their form of government with any real vigor. “The Europeans wanted to know if the free republics of modern times were capable of sending to the battlefield citizens set on dying for their homeland and their principles without the need to be compelled to fight by the iron hand of a Nicholas I, of an Austrian despot, or even perhaps by the prestige of the name of a Napoleon III.” 12 80  •   C i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a

On the other hand, the social structure of the American South—where a small number of large plantation owners with multitudes of slaves controlled much of the wealth—easily could be perceived by its opponents as an aristocracy with pretentions to monarchy or at least as in sympathy with monarchical governments. In October 1864, Mancillas used the term oligarchy to characterize the Southern leaders’ preferred system of government, also comparing them to Russian despots: “The . . . people of the South . . . fight for an unjust cause . . . so that an oligarchy may be established, which would reduce them to nullity, to the base condition that the serfs in Russia have.” 13 Francisco P. Ramírez, the editor of El Nuevo Mundo, was even more strident in one of his 1865 editorials, after the French had established a puppet emperor in Mexico:  

 

It is not strange that the rebels of the South in the United States should be in favor of the establishment of Maximilian’s imperial power in Mexico; for men fanatically attached to the slavery system—who have rebelled against the most liberal republican government in the world and started the current war, without reason or any justice—are capable of anything. . . . The North’s is the cause of humanity, of progress; the South’s is the cause of reactionaryism, of backwardness, of crime, and of treason. Napoleon III, Maximilian, and Jefferson Davis maintain relations of the closest friendship. They support one another, for all of them have an interest in dominating the people, though it be over the bodies of the dead and through rivers of blood.14  

 

The American republics, however, firmly denied European monarchical theories and affirmed the essential worth and legitimacy of democratic forms of government. More than a year before Lincoln pronounced his famous vision of government of the people, by the people, and for the people at Gettys­burg, in 1862 Mexican president Benito Juárez invoked a similar vision of the legitimacy of citizen-based government, even as imperial French troops marched on Mexico City. He described his government as “conscious of its own legitimacy; which is derived from the free and spontaneous will of the people; which with constancy sustains the institutions that the republic has held and defended.” 15 In the fall of 1863, the junta patriótica in Hornitos, in Mariposa County, sent a letter to La Voz de Méjico protesting monarchical interference in Mexico and affirming its members’ commitment to republican constitutional law: We protest, in the most energetic and decisive manner, against the establishment of a monarchical government in the Mexican Republic, or in any other C i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   81

republic whatsoever of the continent of Columbus. We protest against the iniquitous French intervention, or that of any other foreign power which seeks to meddle in the affairs of Mexico or any part of republican America . . . . Therefore, we who sign below recognize only the government of Citizen Benito Juárez, as it is the only legal one and is chosen by the free election of the nation . . . and so we declare, from the hearts of free men.16

Even after Juárez was forced to flee his capital in 1863 and perforce took up a semiperipatetic existence in various parts of northern Mexico, his continuance as president defined the survival of the legitimate Mexican government. Looking back on the events of 1864, Ramírez concluded, “Where Juárez is, there is the capital of the republic; there is the ark of the alliance; there burns the vestal fire of patriotism.” 17 Moreover, from 1865 to 1867, as Juárez’s forces gradually retook control of Mexico, California’s Spanish-language press described his government’s progress not simply as a Mexican victory over the French or their conservative Mexican allies but rather as the reestablishment of constitutional law.18 La Voz de Méjico’s Fourth of July editorial in 1862 presented the values of independent, constitutionally based republics, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed, as a bond between Latinos and Atlantic Americans stronger than any differences of ethnicity, language, customs, or color could break. “Although the United States is distinct from the Hispanic-American nations in race, language, customs, and habits, nevertheless certain shared feelings about individual dignity and republican opinions bind them together.” 19

Slavery, many Latinos understood, was the major issue of the Civil War. A young Californio state assemblyman, Ramón J. Hill, who represented the large district encompassing Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties during this period, in 1864 offered an analysis in La Voz de Méjico, “Present Situation of the United States,” directed to California’s Latinos generally and specifically to “the citizens of Hispanic origin living in the counties of Southern California.” Ramón was the son of Daniel A. Hill of Massachusetts, who had traveled to California in 1823, shortly after Mexico declared independence from Spain. Daniel married Rafaela Sabina Luisa Ortega in 1825 and in 1846 was granted Rancho La Goleta. Their child Ramón was bilingual and well educated; he graduated from Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1860.20 He first was elected to the State Assembly for San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara in 1862, at the age of twenty-three.21 82  •   C i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a

Ramón Hill’s purpose in publishing his analysis was to urge upon Cali­ fornia’s Latinos the particular reasons they had to support the Union cause and thereby to vote Republican in the upcoming elections. He invoked the recent history of California, reminding his audience that it had come into the Union as a free state. “The people of the state of California have not wavered in declaring themselves in favor of the government and against the present rebellion. . . . Ever since this state put together its original constitution, it has been clearly seen that the great majority of the people would never accept the dishonorable system of slavery.” California’s admission as a free state had faced considerable opposition from the Southern states, as it had threatened to upset the antebellum balance between free and slave states. Those who had opposed California’s admission then, Hill told his audience, were the very ones rebelling against the federal government now.22 Another argument frequently made to California Latinos at this time was that past American aggressions against Mexico and Central America had been prompted by the South’s desire to expand slave-holding territory. Anyone who disapproved of filibustering, therefore, could not in good conscience support the social institutions or political entities that had encouraged it. Hill echoed this theme when he stated, somewhat disingenuously, that the United States’ interest in Latin America’s various civil conflicts had always been benevolent, “excepting only the filibustering expeditions, made up of bandits from the lower Mississippi and from Texas, who left their own shores to find low, dishonorable deaths in the countries they went to invade, condemned by every sensible person.” 23 Similarly, Mancillas of La Voz de Méjico asserted that observing Mexico’s weakness during its civil war in 1857–1861 “inclined the South to extend its area in the same way that it absorbed Texas, to the same end. Texas was annexed to the United States in order to spread slavery.” This, in turn, had encouraged filibustering by Southerners during the 1850s: “The distinctive doctrine of the late John P. Calhoun was that slavery needed to acquire territory in order to assist in its increase. . . . Each acre of territory that the South gained, made the price of slaves rise in the market; and consequently this [phenomenon] was duplicated with the acquisition of Texas. From this arose that insatiable desire of the Southern filibusters to take over Cuba and Nicaragua.” 24 In his preelection speech for Lincoln in Los Angeles in October 1864, Filomeno Ibarra sketched an ominous scenario in which, he claimed, a Confederate victory in the Civil War would result in the reintroduction of slavery in Mexico, where it had been illegal since 1829. “If a monC i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   83

Figure 9.  La Voz de Méjico ­published the Emancipation ­Proclamation in Spanish in California on January 6, 1863. (CESLAC UCLA)

archy is established in the United States, Mexico will be contaminated with the cursed plague of slavery; and this would be the ultimate misfortune that the nation could suffer, for death is a thousand times preferable to regressing to the point of tolerating slavery.” 25 The institution of slavery in the United States was described as a blot on an otherwise admirable country and in terms of loathsome illness, as “leprosy” or “that gangrene which was gnawing at the entrails of this great republic.” 26 Therefore, the Confederacy’s decision to engage in armed rebellion to preserve its “peculiar institution” was regarded with disgust. “There is no rebellion more infamous than the rebellion of those states in arms today to maintain the chains of their slaves, which squanders the sunlight of democracy.” 27 Late in 1862, Lincoln proclaimed that all slaves in the states currently in rebellion against the United States would be free as of New Year’s Day, 1863. La Voz de Méjico published a translation in Spanish on January 6, 1863 (see 84  •   C i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a

figure 9).28 Rodríguez rejoiced that “the great republic, with one stroke of the pen, washes away the stain that for many long years has placed her good name at stake.” But he also recognized that the Emancipation Proclamation was not born entirely of humanitarian ideals. “[The government] itself says so: it is a war measure . . . to come at a predetermined object. . . . For the North, it is a means to conquest; for the South, an incentive to resistance; for the rest of humanity, a pledge that one hastens to take up, to increase with it the treasure of conquests of which the century we live in boasts.” 29

The Fortunes of War Unfortunately, in 1862, the forces of autocracy and oppression seemed to be winning, or at least achieving a stalemate, through some inexplicable lack of will in their opponents.30 Any lingering hope that the Civil War might be settled with minimal bloodshed had evaporated when the carnage of the battle of Shiloh in early April of 1862 was revealed.31 Although the battle of Shiloh now is counted as a Union victory, modern estimates have put the combined Federal and Confederate losses at almost twenty-four thousand dead, wounded, and captured, more than the total combined losses of all major U.S. wars before that date. Nearly one out of every four soldiers at Shiloh had become a casualty. Such a butcher’s bill stunned the country, and the uncertainty induced by conflicting news reports and the U.S. government’s apparent reluctance to release accurate casualty counts began to have a deleterious effect on the morale of the Union’s supporters, on the East and West Coasts alike.32 Further disappointments awaited them, in the form of ineffective Union actions, such as McClellan’s abortive Peninsula Campaign, and reports of Richmond’s capture that afterward proved to be false.33 During these first years of the war, more often than not, each spate of contradictory, anxietyinducing reports of a military action in the East eventually resolved into the gloomy news that what initially had been acclaimed as a Union victory turned out to be no such thing. Moreover, Confederate forces, now under the command of Robert E. Lee, proceeded to take the offensive in the Seven Days Battles. After McClellan’s army briefly came close to capturing the Confederate capital, raising hopes for a quick end to the war, this felt like a humiliating defeat. Modern scholars consider it, on balance, more of a stalemate—but  

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they have the advantage of historical hindsight, which those who were following the events in contemporaneous newspaper reports did not. Lincoln relieved McClellan of command for his failure. Another Union general, John Pope, did not do much better, losing the second battle of Bull Run on August 28–30, almost exactly a year after the first one. Pope also was sacked. Eventually, however, having few other options at the time, Lincoln reluctantly returned the hapless McClellan to command. In the meantime, Lee’s forces had invaded Maryland and threatened to attack Washington DC. Times looked bleak for supporters of freedom and democracy (see figure 10). The defeats suffered by the Union were unexpected and shocking, and there was no way to hide them from the world. “The details of the battles held on the outskirts of Richmond were read about and debated in England with the greatest interest. Some newspapers judge that Federal arms have suffered a great reverse, and they criticize the American government for considering it anything different.” 34 Union supporters worried that, in the eyes of many European governments, the United States’ ability to bring a fractious minority back into the constitutional fold, and hence to command the allegiance of the rebellious territories ever again, was increasingly in doubt. “It is not improbable that the loss suffered by Federal arms in the vicinity of Richmond has confirmed to the United States’ enemies in Europe the supposed impossibility of her drawing the states of the South back to their duty and reducing them to obedience.” 35 The South had hopes of being recognized as an independent country by foreign powers. This would be a momentous step toward the Confederacy’s goal of independence from the United States. The recent string of Southern victories had caused the Rebels’ stock to rise in the eyes of some European governments, and as a result, diplomatic recognition began to look like a realistic possibility. “The Morning Post says that the events of the war are approaching a crisis that will require the North to take some decided resolution. The neutral powers, it says, cannot continue idly in their conjectures, when the South may be considered to have vindicated her right to be recognized.” 36 Throughout the American Civil War, the Confederacy and the French Empire carried on a fitful diplomatic courtship. The South desperately desired recognition of its independence by a major power such as France. Such recognition would bring immense benefits, for then international law would allow neutral ships to bring arms and supplies to the Confederacy and, of course, take Southern cotton to European mills, thereby generating reve 

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Figure 10.  Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Con­ federate States of America, 1861–1865. California’s ­Spanish-language newspapers thoroughly reported his leadership of the South. (El Nuevo Mundo, May 24, 1865, p. 3. CESLAC UCLA)

nue. Wanting to assert his power beyond Europe, Napoleon III toyed with the idea of having the Confederates as allies in the Western Hemisphere, to help neutralize the United States’ insistence on enforcing the Monroe Doctrine and to prevent what he saw as an otherwise inevitable U.S. territorial expansion in the Americas, which would hamper European economic interests there.37 In an editorial in La Voz de Méjico in July 1862, Manuel E. Rodríguez commented on the danger posed by these French ambitions. “The Americans are not unaware that the government which has shown itself most hostile to the American Union has been the French government, whose press has not ceased to demonstrate the liveliest desire to see the great republic ­divided. . . . France sincerely wants to see the great republic divided at all costs, certain that her future relations with the South, once the division has been accomplished, would acquire considerable commercial importance for her nationals.” 38 In the summer of 1862, a report from the Associated Press reprinted in La Voz de Méjico passed along rumors of a sinister arrangement supposed to be under discussion between the Confederacy and either Britain or France: “It C i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   87

is said that the Rebels’ policy is to continue fighting as long as possible; and instead of capitulating, and seeing their goods confiscated and their slaves declared free, their leaders will make a direct proposal, either to France or to England, to support them in the capacity of a colony or dependent state. It is feared that, given the aforesaid alternatives, the Confederates will prefer to be the subjects of Napoleon, who presently has in hand a colonial enterprise in Mexico.” 39 While this rumor proved to have no basis in fact—the Confederacy was seeking diplomatic recognition as an independent country, not subordination to a foreign power—it did reflect the fears raised in both the United States and Mexico by the South’s efforts to negotiate with various major European powers, especially France. Were an alliance to be made between the South and France, the consequences for both Lincoln’s and Juárez’s governments could prove grave indeed. As a result, the Spanishlanguage press in California was sensitive to any signs of growing rapprochement between the Union’s and Mexico’s enemies. For instance, La Voz de Méjico in May 1862 picked up a report via the Associated Press that “it is said that the visit of the French minster to Richmond had as its object acquiring information about the probability the Confederates have of maintaining their independence. Based on what he saw and observed, we deduce that he has been satisfied. (A Southern newspaper says this.)” 40  

 

The American Civil War and the French Intervention undeniably were closely linked. The French never would have intruded into Mexico had the United States not been distracted by the Civil War and thus unable to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. Moreover, the eventual success or failure of the French Intervention in Mexico was tied to the outcome of the Civil War; if the Union won, the United States could be expected to come to Juárez’s aid. Conversely, a successful bid for independence by the Confederacy would place a state friendly to the French directly on Mexico’s northern border. In this context, the Union loss outside Richmond had great importance to Latinos in Mexico and in the United States, and events on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border concerned Latinos in California. French recognition of the Confederacy might have tipped the balance of the Civil War in favor of the South. If the Confederacy were to become independent thanks to French recognition and help, it was unlikely to object to the French attaining effective hegemony over Mexico. A reduced United

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States would be able to do little more than voice objections to this blatant violation of the Monroe Doctrine. Summarizing a British opinion piece on the subject, Rodríguez noted, near the end of 1862, “The magazine called the Saturday Review, which is published in London, opines that Napoleon has other plans regarding Mexico, which are not revealed right away in his project for mediation in the United States. The Review’s article insinuates that an alliance of the emperor with the Confederate States of the South is very likely; this, as is to be expected, bears a relation to his designs upon Mexico.” 41 In an editorial focusing on recent events in the American Civil War, Rodríguez said, “It is obvious, therefore, that . . . the cause of the North may become, in a way, allied to the cause of the federal government of Mexico.” The United States’ influence was one of the few assets Mexico’s legitimate government had on its side, but the weaker this influence grew, as the result of Union defeats, the more likely Napoleon III was to send massive numbers of troops to Mexico. Many Europeans who sympathized with the Confederacy also supported the conservative rebels who streamed to the French side in Mexico following Juan N. Almonte’s proclamation that Juárez was no longer president (see chapter 2). Juárez’s supporters worried that recent Confederate victories might persuade European powers to grant recognition to the South. That could prove another threat to Mexico’s sovereignty, for “Mexico could not view without fear the establishment and consolidation in the South of a strong government founded upon the same principles that [already] have given rise to the loss of a large part of her territory. The men of the South have always been the promoters of filibustering. Our sympathies cannot be on their side.” 42 Subsequently Rodríguez reprinted, in translation, an editorial from the English-language Daily Herald and Mirror to show that supporters of the Union also saw the fates of the United States and Mexico as linked, in their twin struggles against the Confederacy and the French. This editorial began by praising Juárez and the Mexican people’s patriotism in resisting the French and went on to draw parallels between Juárez and Lincoln: “This president, just like our own president, is a man notable for his patriotism and integrity.” It declared, “Our sympathies are entirely on Juárez’s side. We hope our sister republic will throw the invaders of her soil out of the American continent. It is necessary for America’s future that any European intervention or mediation be frustrated and rejected, whatever may be the form in which it pretends to present itself, be it in the political affairs of Mexico or of the United

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States.” 43 This theme of linkage became a constant in the commentaries of California’s Spanish-language press on these simultaneous conflicts.

By the fall of 1862, many of the North’s supporters were growing dejected, and Spanish-language newspapers in California amply provided their readers with descriptions of the nation’s pessimistic mood. In light of the military events of the past two years, the Confederacy was beginning to look unbeatable. “The Rebels defend themselves; and what is worse, they defend themselves well. They know how to conceal their plans, to discover those of their enemy, to choose their positions well and, what is more, to defend them well. Their leaders have a reputation for being good ones; and to judge by the bravery with which they fight, we would say that their soldiers are not bad either.” 4 4 After nearly two years of sacrifice, the end of the war was nowhere in sight. Union forces seemed mired in indecision and lacking in leadership. In September 1862, Rodríguez reprinted, in translation, a dismal editorial from the New York Times that encapsulated this pessimistic mood: The great majority of the people are downcast and without courage. . . . They have spent their treasure and their blood like water, but they do not see the fruits that have been promised to them as the reward for their sacrifices. They have placed their unlimited confidence in the men in whose hands they have placed arms, but no result has come to justify that confidence. Week after week, month after month, through the slow passage of the seasons of an entire year, they have waited patiently for the brilliant, decisive victories that one day or the next has promised them; but . . . those victories have not come, and now it seems that they are even further off than when the war was begun.45

Were the defenders of freedom and democracy in a losing war?

While the overall national mood became increasingly pessimistic during the fall and winter of 1862–1863, in California, Latino memories of the exciting events of May 5, 1862, received two unexpected reinforcements. Both initially looked like setbacks for the cause of republican Mexico, yet in the long run both proved profoundly inspiring. The Mexican victory at the battle of Puebla had galvanized Latinos during the summer and early fall of 1862 to raise funds for a ceremonial sword for Ignacio Zaragoza (see chapter 2). Then, just two weeks after the horror  

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of a bloody, deadly stalemate at Antietam on September 17 had appalled the United States, news of Zaragoza’s death reached Latinos in California. Although bad, this news provided the first reinforcement of the memory of the Cinco de Mayo. Latinos up and down the state held memorials for their fallen hero, during which his patriotism and his remarkable accomplishment at the battle of Puebla were rehearsed again for the participants in these communal rituals. Over and over, the deeds of Zaragoza and his Army of the East at the battle were recounted, the brilliance of their victory providing a counterpoise to the gloomy news arriving from the eastern United States. The second phenomenon developed independently of Zaragoza’s death, although it came to fruition virtually simultaneously. Once the sword of honor was commissioned in the fall of 1862, largely at the behest of La Voz de Méjico’s editor, Latinos throughout California seized on the idea of collectively demonstrating their support for Mexico’s constitutional government and made it their own, in ways Rodríguez perhaps had not anticipated when he first sent out a call for subscriptions to the sword fund. They formed grassroots political and social organizations, the juntas patrióticas mexicanas (Mexican patriotic assemblies), whose structure and purpose are detailed in the next chapter. While based on models of civic engagement already extant in Mexico, these juntas were new to California and took on forms and purposes to which their Mexican antecedents did not extend. The Cinco de Mayo was their inspiration. In cities and towns and humble mining camps, when Latinos met to establish a junta, speakers at their organizational meetings harked back to the events of the Cinco de Mayo to prompt prospective members to step forward and join their efforts. Subsequently, when the juntas quickly assumed responsibility for the public celebration of Latino patriotic holidays, the near-miraculous Cinco de Mayo was the chief theme that their handpicked orators invoked to conjure up patriotic feelings in their audiences. One such junta was established in the Southern California port town of New San Pedro (subsequently Wilmington) on September 22, 1862. After a Cali­fornio, Juan Sepúlveda, was elected treasurer at its first meeting, the new secretary, Trinidad Nerio—a post-1848 immigrant from Jalisco, Mexico— made a typical speech.46 He addressed himself primarily to his “fellow countrymen” but also praised “our fellow-countrymen in California” for their contributions to Mexico’s defense, telling his audience, “Unity is an impregnable wall. . . . Let us form this wall and prepare ourselves to resist the power of France. . . . With all the republican Americas united, ten Frances could not  

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manage to conquer us” (italics in original). As prima facie evidence that a republic could withstand a monarchy, Nerio cited the first battle of Puebla: “And have we not already given proof of it in Puebla, on the 5th of May? Isn’t that so, Mister Count of Lorencez?” 47 When a junta was organized in Sacramento on November 16, 1862, Fran­ cisco G. Ramonet addressed the Latinos assembled, urging them to provide donations on a monthly basis for the duration of the war against the French; he too invoked the first battle of Puebla. “We are in a foreign land, certainly, but it does not matter. . . . Remember, the 5th of May happened not long ago, bequeathing us a golden page in the history of the nations.” 48 Although the news from the East Coast of the United States was bleak, memories of the Cinco de Mayo provided hope and a rallying point for Latinos in California, and the juntas took up this banner with great enthusiasm.

The Second Battle of Puebla, 1863 Were it not for Puebla’s strategic location on the main route from Veracruz to Mexico City and for a coincidence of historical timing and poor communications, Latinos in California and elsewhere today might be celebrating some other date as the anniversary of a triumph for the principle of republican selfdetermination and the continued independence of Mexico. Any French force desirous of capturing the Mexican capital first had to take and hold Puebla, to keep open its supply lines to the sea. Moreover, since the embarrassing defeat in May 1862, Puebla had taken on a symbolic value for the French and their emperor. In a letter assuring his commander in Mexico, the count of Lorencez, that the latter’s conduct of the campaign against Puebla had his entire approval, Napoleon III reminded him that “the national honor is at stake.” 49 He then almost immediately replaced Lorencez with General ÉlieFrédéric Forey, who promptly began preparing to fight a far different sort of battle to capture Puebla. Rather than relying on an outburst of French élan to take the city by storm, he planned to conduct a classic siege. While La Voz de Méjico emerged during 1862 as the preferred medium of public discourse for California’s juntas, El Éco del Pacífico changed its editorial position from tepid support of Juárez to decided advocacy of the French occupation of Mexico. The reasons for this reversal presumably lay in the conservative opinions of its owner, Étienne Derbec, whose French-language L’Echo du Pacifique also firmly supported the French intervention.50 Thus, 92  •   C i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a

by the end of the year, La Voz de Méjico consistently reflected the perspective of Juárez’s government and its supporters, as filtered through Latino perspectives in California, while El Éco del Pacífico reported events from a proFrench, pro-imperial point of view. They did have one thing in common, though, in that they were reporting events four to six weeks after they happened in Mexico. This delay was to play an important role in the development of the Cinco de Mayo holiday. Forey’s troops in Mexico eventually amounted to almost twenty-five thousand men, bolstered by a couple thousand more Mexican soldiers under the command of the reactionary general Leonardo Márquez.51 Given the French forces’ superior resources, a lengthy siege was expected to favor the French over the less well supplied Mexican army. But as Manuel E. Rodríguez hopefully suggested in an editorial in La Voz de Méjico in April 1863, “It is not the demoralized and tepid army of Santa Anna’s time which today places its breasts in the way of enemy bullets. It is the nation in arms.” More pragmatically—and, as events would prove, more accurately—he predicted that should Puebla fall to the French, Mexicans fighting for their country’s liberty would turn to guerrilla warfare. One way or the other, it would be a fight to the finish.52  

 

As early as January 22, 1863, Spanish-language newspapers in San Francisco began to speculate about a second battle of Puebla.53 It was therefore hardly a surprise to readers to learn that the French army finally had left its stronghold at Orizaba and begun maneuvering toward Puebla in February and early March.54 The Mexican government, meanwhile, had been seeking more recruits, arms, food, and munitions.55 On March 13, the French arrived on the outskirts of Puebla.56 By March 20, a number of French troops had set up camp near the outlying forts defending the city and proceeded to engage in various maneuvers that led the Mexican general Jesús González Ortega to deduce that Forey intended to “cut this place off from Mexico City, so that it will fall due to a lack of resources and victuals.” 57 Ortega’s apprehension that the French intended to isolate Puebla from Mexico City proved to be correct. On March 22, the French had occupied Cholula, squarely on the road between Puebla and the national capital, cutting the main line of communication between the two cities. At 9:30 a.m. on March 23, after more than a week of diversionary maneuvering, and having encircled the city, the French began their bombardment of Fort San Javier, and the second battle of Puebla was under way.58 On March 26, after the C i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   93

attackers had concentrated their artillery fire nearly all day long on one section of Fort San Javier, that part of the wall finally gave way. French infantry columns launched an assault on the fort that night. In less than an hour, though, its Mexican commander, Bernardo Smith, threw them back. Despite this setback, the French artillery battered away at San Javier and the city’s other forts, on and off, for the better part of the next two days. At one-thirty in the morning on March 28, the French made a second assault and “attacked this fort in a rough and vigorous manner from the front and flanks.” After desperate fighting, the Mexicans managed to hold.59 In May 1863, when these events became known far away in California, the editor Rodríguez remarked on the concern that Latinos were feeling over the events in Mexico. “Never has any cause stirred such lively and violent emotions in the breasts of Mexicans. Distant though we are from the scene of events, nonetheless we follow with burning interest even the smallest details of the siege of the heroic city.” 60 The collective feeling that had erupted in dozens of Latino towns and settlements at the news of the first battle of Puebla was still alive, nurtured by their commemorations of Zaragoza’s death and the establishment of juntas patrióticas. Now organized into their first statewide network of community organizations, large numbers of Latinos in California were eager for news from Puebla and to do what they could to help the legitimate Mexican government in this crisis. These juntas threw themselves into raising money to send to Juárez’s government. La Voz de Méjico spurred their efforts by publishing acknowledgments—such as that of Mexico’s secretary of state, J. A. Gamboa, who was in receipt of $1,600 “which Mexicans living in that state [California] recently have contributed to help with the war we are sustaining against France.” 61 Through such measures as these, mediated by the Spanish-language press, many ordinary Latinos in California could know that they were active participants, not mere bystanders, in the great contest unfolding at Puebla. Nearly 1,500 miles away in California, thousands more Latinos—Mexicans, Californios, Chileans, Colombians, Peruvians, Central Americans— were awaiting word of the outcome of the French assault on Puebla, only too aware that the news, when it reached them, would be weeks old. The local junta in Los Angeles wrote to La Voz de Méjico, “Ever since the cannon of [Fort] Guadalupe announced the approach of the enemy of our independence and liberty . . . we have been waiting here in anxiety, with a vehement desire to know the outcome of that terrible, bloody Iliad taking place in Puebla de Zaragoza.” 62  

 

 

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By May 1863, the siege of Puebla was entering its second month. In a historical coincidence, this meant that the renowned French army, despite several concerted efforts to storm the city, was still stalled outside as the first anniversary of the battle on May 5, 1862, approached. Latinos in California were very much aware of the impending anniversary. Could it be, some dared to hope, that the earlier Mexican victory might be repeated on May 5, 1863? Under the circumstances, it seemed fitting to Latinos in California to commemorate the earlier Mexican victory publicly, even while the second battle was under way. But how should it be commemorated? May 5 in 1863 did not come equipped with any organized program such as that of the established holiday of Mexi­ can Independence Day on September 16. Indeed, despite some people’s hopes, it was not clear that the date merited commemoration. What if Puebla should fall this time? It would be rather embarrassing to discover that Latinos in Cali­fornia had celebrated a past ephemeral victory while French troops were marching into Puebla. Consequently, the juntas patrióticas cautiously did not announce any formal plans for celebrations on May 5. Instead, the firstanniversary celebrations were spontaneously generated private events organized by more optimistic individuals. Despite their private nature, however, these celebrations left traces in the Spanish-language press. As evidenced by a notice in La Voz de Méjico late in April, the San Francisco businessman J. López organized a “great ball in honor of the 5th day of May.” He engaged the Philharmonic Hall, on the corner of Stockton and Jackson Streets, for the event “in commemoration of the brilliant triumph gained in Puebla on the memorable 5th of May by the Mexican army over the invader.” 63 Toward the other end of the cultural spectrum, Jesús Martigez also used the paper to advertise his decision to hold a dance, at the Bella Union Hall in Camp Calaveritas in the gold country. 64 Rodríguez clearly approved of the trend; La Voz de Méjico heralded the first anniversary of the Cinco de Mayo with his editorial “¡EL 5 DE MAYO!” (“THE 5TH OF MAY!”). It began, “Anniversary of the lovely fifth of May, day of eternal remembrance for every faithful child of Mexico, we salute you with rejoicing.” 65 But there were no official flag raisings, no salvos or bell ringings, no parades, no official speeches to mark the day. 66 Nonetheless, enthusiasm in 1863 for commemorating the first battle of Puebla clearly was widespread, if unofficial. So many parts of the state had private celebrations that Rodríguez did not try to describe each one; instead, he simply ran a small item: “The 5th of May. Mexicans in various places in the hinterland C i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   95

have celebrated, with great shows of rejoicing, the anniversary of the victory achieved by our army over the French invaders.” 67 No juntas were mentioned as having been involved in these events. Yet events in Mexico were about to affect these private, spontaneous observations of the first Cinco de Mayo. Apparently hoping to capture Puebla before the first anniversary of May 5, and thereby deny Mexicans an opportunity to celebrate their initial victory, the French had begun a surge in late April. 68 French artillery pounded away at the walls of the city’s Fort Santa Inés, widening the breaches, and after these attained a sufficient size, on April 25, General Forey ordered in the infantry. A bloody hand-to-hand combat ensued, with both sides “contesting the position in so fierce a manner that they were firing their guns close enough to burn each other’s clothing, without losing any ground.” Finally, even though the French “have fought like so many lions,” the Mexican “forces were left absolute masters of the position, with 130 prisoners of the first regiment of Zouaves, including seven commanders and other officers” (italics in original). 69 This sharp check seemed to baffle the French. The rate of their artillery barrages slowed considerably over the next two days, and they appeared to have lost the initiative.70 For nearly a week thereafter, they made no further attacks on the city.71 Could they possibly have been beaten again?

The First Official Commemoration of the Cinco de Mayo News of the Mexican repulse of the French attack at Puebla on April 25 reached San Francisco nearly a month later, on May 21, well after the private celebrations had marked the first anniversary of the Cinco de Mayo. Four days later, it reached Los Angeles, via copies of La Voz de Méjico and other newspapers. Within moments of the news becoming public, the celebration of the first battle of Puebla was institutionalized. The Los Angeles junta, which was the largest and wealthiest in California, decided to turn its organizational capacities to celebrating the events at Puebla. “From the moment the stagecoach arrived, on the morning of Monday, May 25, in which we received La Voz de Méjico and other newspapers . . . bringing the news of the glorious battle of April 25, [the junta officers] Señores Fuentes, Valles, Flores, and Cavazos Fuentes got together and started work, collecting donations with which to celebrate this auspicious event in our nation’s history.” In a matter of minutes, 96  •   C i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a

they raised the money, hired musicians, and started celebrating. Not having any traditions to follow for so new a holiday, much less a government-mandated script, they made up the celebrations as they went along, incorporating elements of both Latino and Atlantic American civic celebration. At seven o’clock at night, a bonfire was lit atop the highest of the hills adjacent to this city. A ceremonial guard company was organized, salvos were fired [and] rifles shot off repeatedly, and more than four hundred people instantly gathered. Señor Cavazos Fuentes improvised a short speech; and upon his showing portraits of Zaragoza and Juárez to the people, they broke out in a thousand enthusiastic huzzahs for the defenders of the homeland, the virile voices of free people mingling with the explosion of fireworks and the blare of the music. Afterward, the people came down from the hill and strolled about the streets, with the greatest order and respectfulness possible; and later that night they took leave of one another, to meet again the next day.72

The next morning, the junta incorporated into its ceremonies an element that never would have occurred in Mexico but that showed the Latino origins of the Cinco de Mayo in California. At the flag-raising ceremony at 5 a.m., both the Mexican and the United States flags were raised, side by side, to a twenty-one gun salute and the noise of rifles being fired more than five hundred times. A color guard remained beside the flags all day, under the direction of a “good and intelligent Mexican” named Jesús Silva. In the afternoon, a large crowd gathered outside the home of the junta president Gregorio González, where they spontaneously erupted into huzzahs for the Mexican republic, music played, and people seemed almost to go out of their minds with joy. At four o’clock, the cheering began again, along with the inevitable firing of rifles and the playing of patriotic tunes. Amid “a patriotic upswelling that everyone felt, but which is difficult to explain,” the chosen speaker of the day, Francisco P. Ramírez, was escorted to a platform to deliver his address.73 Ramírez was an eager, if often too idealistic, observer of state, national, and world politics, as well as of local Latino civil society. On this occasion, he delivered a speech that resonated with the emotionally charged crowd, setting a pattern for Cinco de Mayo speeches for years to come.74 He not only had to pay due homage to events in Puebla but also had to do so before a very mixed Latino audience. Many were, like himself, Californios, all U.S. citizens since 1848; many others were post-1848 Mexican immigrants, most of them initially attracted to the state by the Gold Rush. There was also a handful of immigrants from Chile, Colombia, Peru, and the Central American C i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   97

countries, likewise originally attracted by the lure of gold, but by 1863, like the Mexicans, settling into other businesses and employments. Then there were the children of all these groups, growing up in a society that was becoming more English-speaking while their parents still spoke Spanish. At various points in his speech, Ramírez included them all. Throughout his speech, Ramírez addressed his listeners collectively as conciudadanos (“fellow citizens”), compatriotas (“fellow countrymen”), and mejicanos (“Mexicans”), using each term repeatedly and apparently interchangeably. At two points, however, he specifically addressed the mejicanos de California (“Mexicans of California”), whom he otherwise seems to have generally included in the category of “fellow Mexicans.” The first time was when he singled out the juntas patrióticas for praise. “Fellow countrymen of California, it is very right for us to send to our brethren our modest contributions from here, to alleviate their need in some way. . . . Patriots of California! Your patriotic contributions are like the bread in Scripture, ‘which was cast upon the waters, and will be found again after many days.’ ” The second point came in the conclusion of his speech. After citing several examples of U.S. and even French politicians and journalists who had denounced the invasion of Mexico and proclaimed their support for the Juarists, Ramírez assured his listeners, “We have in our favor the sympathies of the good, the just, the patriots. My fellow citizens! You have the sympathies of all the good citizens of the United States.” He urged his audience—which may well have included Latinos who sympathized with the Confederacy, for there were a number of them in Los Angeles—not to betray the United States. “Mexicans of California! Always be faithful and loyal citizens. Do not stain yourselves with any treason against the homeland of Franklin, of Adams, and of Jefferson. Always conduct yourselves worthily and honorably.” Ramírez also made a point of insisting that Mexico’s struggle was the struggle of all democratic Latin America.  

 

Fellow countrymen! Within a short time, all the Americas will understand that this cruel war is being made for the purpose of destroying their democratic institutions, and then Mexico will not fight alone. New Grenada, Venezuela, all of Central America, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, and Chile will be so many other spirited soldiers of liberty. . . . And if no one helps our homeland in this hour of testing, her own children know how to die—if their brethren in institutions, in language, in identity of interests do not come together and form a great HispanicAmerican Union!75  

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Most of his speech, however, was concerned with the situation in Mexico. He invoked the Mexican victory at Puebla the previous year. He read out General Ortega’s dispatches on the recent battle, in the course of which cheers from the crowd interrupted him over and over, and at the end of which he led them in more vivas for the city’s defenders. He also touched on an undoubted sore point for his audience when he alluded to the racist arguments underlying part of the French justification for its self-proclaimed mission civilizatrice (“civilizing mission”) in Mexico. The same attitudes also cast a shadow on much of the post-1848 experience of being Latino in California, as measures such as the “Greaser law” had demonstrated (see chapter 1). “My fellow citizens! Do not doubt it, the Mexican nation, which some people believe is a huge tribe of savages, will emerge from this war with honor. . . . Let the dupes be undeceived; let them recognize that Mexicans are not savages, are not barbarians. It is a people; it is a nation small and young, but noble and generous.” At the end of the speech, Ramírez returned to the events in Puebla. He strove to make the audience share vicariously in the horrors of the battle that the city’s defenders had endured. “Fellow citizens! Have you ever been in combat? Have you heard the thunder of the artillery, the clash of the fields and of the weapons that tear them apart, the cries of desperation and of courage, or the horrible death rattle of the dying man in agony? These scenes are repeated every moment in Puebla.” He finished by leading the crowd in cheers: “Hurrah for national independence! . . . Hurrah for the noble defenders of Puebla! Glory and honor to Juárez, and to all the Mexican nation!” Following Ramírez to the speaker’s platform, junta president González briefly thanked him for his speech, “in the name of all the Mexicans of Los Angeles,” and led further cheers: “Mexicans! Hurrah for independence! Hurrah for liberty! Hurrah for the Mexicans living in California!” The audience then converted itself into a parade, with a band at its head, followed immediately by a color guard with the Mexican and American flags, described rather poetically as those of the respective countries’ revolutionary heroes: “the two united banners, that of Hidalgo and that of Washington.” Overcome with patriotic feeling, however, “some Mexican ladies” at one point seized the flags from the color guard and carried them themselves. This impromptu parade marched about the main streets of Los Angeles to cheering crowds until seven that evening, trailed by a “guard company” of little children. The anonymous correspondent who described all this in a letter to La Voz de Méjico was of the opinion that C i v i l Wa r a n d t h e S econ d B at t l e of Pu e bl a   •   99

no one remembers such enthusiasm ever having been seen in Los Angeles, such unity, such a lively attachment to the homeland’s just cause, as on these days, the 25th and 26th of May, anniversaries of the days we have celebrated [i.e., April 25 and 26]. All the Mexicans and Hispanic Americans of Los Angeles are very grateful to the American citizens of the United States for the lively sympathy and unmistakable demonstrations of true affection and respect that they gave to our countrymen at this time. Descendants of Franklin! Receive our eternal gratitude! In each and every respect, this festival was an honorable patriotic tribute, a true day of glory. All our countrymen were united in an instant, by unanimous feeling; enthusiasm was transmitted from heart to heart like a magnetic force: hands were outstretched, eyes grew wet with pleasure, hurrahs for the nation were the order of the day.

The first officially sponsored celebration of the Cinco de Mayo had just taken place.

A few days later, terrible news arrived from Mexico. Ammunition and food nearly exhausted, the Army of the East inside Puebla had continued to offer stiff resistance to the besiegers, but in spite of their heroic efforts, by midMay they could no longer effectively fight the French.76 At one o’clock on the morning of May 17, Ortega directed that the city’s cannon be spiked and other weapons rendered inoperative, to keep the enemy from using them, and the army be disbanded. At 5:30 a.m., he would raise white flags over Puebla’s forts and barricades and formally offer to discuss surrender terms with the French.77 In his notice to Forey that he would surrender, Ortega concluded, “‘I cannot continue defending myself any longer, General; if I could, your Excellency should not doubt that I would do it.’ ” 78 After a siege of sixty-two days, Puebla finally had surrendered.

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Fou r

The Juntas Patrióticas Mejicanas Blossom

May 5, 1864: Since the first battle of Puebla two years earlier, Mexican and French armies had fought about a dozen pitched battles, and Mexican irregulars harassed French and collaborationist Mexicans on an almost daily basis. Despite all that effort, the gods of war seemed to have turned their faces away from the democratically elected government of Mexico, and the French had occupied the major population centers of the country. Dozen of battles lay in the future, as did hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller skirmishes. Emperor Maximilian was steaming across the Atlantic to establish a monarchy in Mexico and create a dynasty that he expected to set an example of stability and growth for the rest of the Western Hemisphere (see figure 11). And in the United States, the Confederacy had just won a major victory at Chickamauga. How was it, then, that the date of the first battle at Puebla was to be celebrated in California for the next 150 years, while other battles and skirmishes slipped from the public’s memory? The first battle of Puebla is remembered today in California and elsewhere in the United States largely thanks to the efforts of a remarkable network of community-based organizations, the juntas patrióticas mexicanas (Mexican patriotic assemblies), whose members went to deliberate lengths to create and maintain the public memory of the Cinco de Mayo. During the American Civil War and the French Intervention, this network functioned in at least 129 locations in California, Nevada, and Oregon, encouraging Latinos in the American West to support the defense of freedom and democracy in both the United States and Mexico. Their efforts to whip up enthusiasm went beyond an annual commemoration of the battle. Many juntas held monthly meetings, at which speakers often invoked the memory of the Cinco de Mayo, imprinting it on the minds of their audiences. 101

Figure 11.  Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. Napoleon III convinced him to accept the results of a rigged 1863 plebiscite, held while the French occupied Mexico City, which offered him the crown of Mexico. He arrived in May 1864 with his wife, Charlotte. His reign lasted barely three years, ending in his execution for treason against the Mexican state on June 19, 1867. (Percy F. Martin, Maximilian in Mexico: The Story of the French Intervention, 1861–1867, plate between pages 24 and 25)  

Furthermore, Spanish-language newspapers regularly carried news of junta activities and frequently printed these speeches, enabling them to reach a much wider audience. These memories of the first battle of Puebla were invoked not only to rouse emotions but also to channel resources in Latino communities, particularly money and political support, toward a variety of causes and activities. Thanks to the juntas, the public memory of the Cinco de Mayo was invested with a 102  •   T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som

poder convocatorio (“summoning power”), the ability to convene and motivate Latino communities to pursue particular ends.1 During the war years of the 1860s, the objective was clear: to defend freedom and democracy from the Confederacy in the United States and from the French invaders and homegrown imperialists in Mexico. Yet the juntas patrióticas did not spring fully formed from the brow of any one individual. They were the product of the vigorous new Latino society that had been developing in the western United States ever since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.

Constructing a Public Memory On May 5, 1864, the editor of San Francisco’s La Voz de Méjico, Antonio Mancillas, set out to convince his readers that the Cinco de Mayo was worth remembering by linking it with September 16, Mexico’s Independence Day: “The day that we commemorate today, for the second time, is not a vain empty show; rather, let us celebrate, in the same way that we celebrate the anniversary of our independence, the remembrance of the glories by which our independence will be definitively consolidated.” 2 In the gold-mining town of Sonora in Tuolumne County, a crowd invited by the local junta patriótica gathered on the morning of that same May 5, drawn by the ceremonial firing of a cannon to witness the raising of the Mexican flag amid enthusiastic cheers, after which Eugenio Cárdenas made “an eloquent speech,” which he began by acknowledging his audience’s patriotism, the junta’s role in organizing the proceedings, and “the honorable charge that the Patriotic Society has been so good as to confer on me, with the intent that I should say something to you in remembrance of the glorious triumph that our national forces obtained at the city of Puebla on the 5th of May, 1862.” That night, the junta sponsored a dance in the Greenwood Theater, which had been decorated with a portrait of the late General Ignacio Zaragoza, the hero of Puebla, adorned with the simple date “5 de Mayo de 1862” and flanked by the flags of the Americas’ leading republics: Mexico, the United States, Chile, and Peru. A short program began the evening. First, a woman and a girl, Dolores R. de Cuevas and Rosaura Soto, sang the Mexican national anthem, accompanied by Cárdenas and Amado Cuevas. The crowd demanded that they repeat the performance several times. Señorita Soto then read a poem “that merited several rounds of applause.” These formalities completed, the dance began; it lasted for hours and was followed by a late-night T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som   •   103

supper, with toasts proposed by, among others, Paula A. de Tapia, the president of the Junta Patriótica de Señoras.3 The junta in the mercury-mining town of New Almaden, just south of San José, organized nearly twenty-four hours of commemorative activities. The celebration got under way on the evening of May 4, when a marching band paraded through the streets of “Spanishtown,” past houses decorated with laurel arches and illuminations; it carried an inscribed banner or placard in the Mexican national colors of red, green, and white, as well as portraits of President Benito Juárez and Zaragoza. A “military company” fired rifle salvos. The next morning, the firing of a signal cannon called the townspeople out into the streets, where they formed another parade and marched to the town’s theater with the portraits of Juárez and Zaragoza and flags of Mexico and the United States. A young man, Saturnino Ayón, gave the first speech, followed by a nine-year-old boy, Carlos Aguiar, with his prompter, and then the theatrical impresario Gerardo López del Castillo (see chapter 2). After singing the “Zaragoza Anthem,” the audience proceeded without incident to a bullfight. In the evening, the crowd returned to the theater, where a comedy was presented. 4 Meanwhile, in San Francisco at six that evening, a signal cannon reminded “the Mexican population”—and indeed, the entire city—of the events that had occurred two years earlier at Puebla and summoned them to celebrate. The Mexican flag was raised atop Russian Hill, floating above a crowd of “Mexicans and South Americans” cheering for Zaragoza and Mexico. A 101gun salute was fired off, and after it finally concluded, the crowd made its way to Dashaway Hall for a formal program of speeches and poetical recitals, followed by a dance. The principal speaker was the writer José María Vigil, who had arrived from Jalisco only three months earlier. He had been chosen for “his liberal ideas, his patriotism, and his civic merit,” several expressions of which already had been published in La Voz de Méjico’s columns.5 The Mexican poet Aurelio Gallardo, who had just arrived in San Francisco, recited a poem of his own composition, “Ode to the Homeland,” which began by evoking the situation of many refugees recently arrived in California, fleeing the French in Mexico:  

 

Exiled from the homeland and its altars, Today we celebrate, upon distant shores, The great deeds that history has kept For illustrious heroes. 104  •   T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som

Figure 12.  Filomeno Ibarra was the president of the Los Angeles junta in 1864. At the Cinco de Mayo celebrations that year, he recited a lengthy patriotic poem (La Voz de Méjico, June 4, 1864, p. 2). (Courtesy Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History)

After the formal program ended, the dance commenced, lasting until past two in the morning. Altogether it was “such a happy day of grateful remembrance for the Mexicans and other children of the American continent, fair judges of the glories acquired by their brethren.” 6 In Los Angeles, the celebration was postponed until May 8, a Sunday, so that working people would have the leisure to attend. At dawn on the appointed day, the Mexican and the United States flags were raised side by side to a twenty-one gun salute. At three in the afternoon, the officers and principal guests of the local junta met at the house of its president, Filomeno Ibarra (see figure 12). Accompanied by musicians, the group proceeded to the venue selected for the formal program, the German Garden. The anonymous correspondent who described the event in a letter to La Voz de Méjico emphasized the cosmopolitan nature of the crowd. “The Mexicans, native Californios, North Americans, and Spanish Americans who represented nearly all the republics of the Americas fraternized on this day, conscious of all having a common cause; and they united their robust voices in shouts of ‘Hurrah for the Cinco de Mayo! Hurrah for immortal Zaragoza! Hurrah for the free peoples of the Americas!’ ” More than five hundred people were T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som   •   105

estimated to be in attendance. Salvos were fired off all afternoon, and musicians played both pleasant tunes and rousing national anthems. Finally the designated speakers took their seats on the platform, to applause and cheers.7 The first speaker, Ibarra, was echoing the sentiment of La Voz de Méjico’s Mancillas, four hundred miles to the north, when he compared the newly minted memory of the Cinco de Mayo to Mexico’s Independence Day. “Until now, we only used to expect public festivities relating to the era in which our homeland threw off the yoke of slavery with which the old Spanish conquistadors had oppressed her. But today we count among them a glorious day for Mexico, now that we read in the pages of our history this line, written in indelible characters: The memorable 5th of May, 1862!” 8 The following speaker, Francisco P. Ramírez, was already part of the history of the Cinco de Mayo; he had had the honor of being the speaker a year earlier at the first official commemoration of the Cinco de Mayo in Los Angeles (see chapter 3).9 In 1864’s address, he built on a theme he had introduced then, that Mexico’s fight against the French Intervention was a struggle for freedom and democracy in the Western Hemisphere, in the face of European attempts to spread autocratic government. He declared, “The present war is not directed only against Mexico. . . . It is a threat to all the republics of the Americas: to the United States, to Colombia, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, etc. Brothers from Spanish-speaking America! We all have a common cause; we all have the sacred duty to preserve, pure and strong, the wise institutions of Washington, of Bolívar, and of Hidalgo. Children of America! Are you so base that you will let yourselves be dominated?” 10

The Juntas Grow A form of junta patriótica had existed in Mexico decades before the Ameri­ can Civil War. Four years after Mexico won her final independence from Spain, the planning and implementation of the annual celebrations of Mexi­ can independence in Mexico City were entrusted to a nongovernmental group, the Junta Patriótica (Patriotic Assembly), first organized in 1825.11 Beginning in the summer of that year, a group of citizens came together annually, elected a president and a set of other officers to plan the event, then collected funds to underwrite the costs of music, a parade, fireworks, temporary stands for orators, flags and decorations, food, drink, perhaps a bullfight, and inevitably a ball. After publishing a summary of expenses and 106  •   T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som

funds received, the junta went dormant until the next year. The custom of a voluntary junta organizing the annual Independence Day celebrations spread throughout Mexico, and most large cities came to have one. While the earliest documented existence of a junta in California dates from the 1840s, the idea of having a junta patriótica for the purpose of planning celebrations may have arrived in Alta California with the 1834 HijarPadrés colonial expedition.12 In 1845, the president of the junta patriótica in Los Angeles, José Antonio Carrillo, and his fellow junta member Narciso Botello sent an invitation to Antonio F. Coronel—who originally had come to California with the Hijar-Padrés colony—to serve as the chairman of the dance committee, which included Botello and Abel Stearns.13 The institution of the junta patriótica received a boost from the Gold Rush–induced Latino immigration to California that began in 1848. These new immigrants brought Latino society into the Central Valley and Sierra foothills. The earliest documented celebration of Mexican Independence Day outside the coastal towns was the 1851 celebration in Sonora, in Tuolumne County.14 The first fraternal lodge in the mining town of Hornitos, in Mariposa County, reportedly was built in 1850 to house the local junta.15 While there were juntas in California prior to the American Civil War, they appear to have functioned much as they did in Mexico, as single-purpose organizations dedicated to the annual celebration of Mexican Independence Day. The unexpected Mexican victory at the first battle of Puebla, however, spurred the juntas in California to a new level of activity, beginning one of the most fertile periods in Latino community organization, matched in magnitude perhaps only by the heady days of the Chicano movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  

 

 

When Manuel E. Rodríguez, the editor of La Voz de Méjico, announced the closing of fund-raising for the Latino sword of honor on August 9, 1862, this did not put an end to California Latinos’ participation in the events in Mexico.16 Instead, it marked the onset of expansion into new areas of endeavor. Latinos across the state, excited by the unexpected victory at Puebla, one of the first major victories of freedom and democracy during the dark early years of the American Civil War and the French Intervention, had responded enthusiastically to the call issued in the summer of 1862 to create a sword of honor for Zaragoza. By financing the sword, they had stepped forward to show the world that they too were part of Mexico’s momentous T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som   •   107

struggle. Organizing groups around the state to donate money for the sword sparked interest in participation on a wider scale. As the fund-raising for the sword of honor ended, groups of Latinos in California began to raise money to assist both the Mexican government and Mexican civilians affected by the war.17 Their combination of seeking inspiration in the Cinco de Mayo and transforming that inspiration into fund-raising efforts mediated by the Spanish-language press in California would prove central to the blossoming of the juntas patrióticas. Three Latino residents of Placerville—Rafael H. González, Ignacio Salazar, and Matías Galindo—invited “all the Mexican citizens” in their town to Salazar’s house on the evening of August 28, 1862, “to contribute, each with what he could manage, to help the well-deserving Army of the East” then defending Mexico. At this meeting, González made a speech, citing as the inspiration behind the proposal an article from Mexico City’s El Monitor that La Voz de Méjico had reprinted on August 26. This article informed readers that “an association of good patriots” had been formed in Mexico City for the purpose of collecting money to support the Army of the East, which sorely needed it, given the parlous state of the Juárez government’s finances. The article had directly invited El Monitor’s readers to do likewise, and González, Salazar, and Galindo saw no reason why Mexicans in California should not do their part as well. Accordingly, those attending the Placerville meeting that night organized themselves into a junta patriótica for this purpose. They elected González as president, Salazar as treasurer, and Vidal Salinas as secretary. A subscription was instituted to begin raising funds, but whereas the donation drive for the sword of honor had been a onetime event, now the Latinos of Placerville pledged to give what they could every month, “as long as the invader may remain in the Mexican Republic.” Every month or so, the funds collected were to be sent to La Voz de Méjico, whose editor would be responsible for figuring out how best to convey the money to Juárez’s government. Salinas recorded all this in a letter to the newspaper, which he asked Rodríguez to print “so that all our fellow countrymen living in California may do what it should belong to them to do, to help our government in defense of the independence of our country.” 18 Shortly after this challenge was issued, a correspondent in Mexico City identified by his initials, I.M.A., wrote to La Voz de Méjico describing the Army of the East, just a few months after its victory at Puebla, as in a miserable state for lack of supplies, unable to undertake any action against the French. “The troops have no provisions and are naked. . . . Now then, the  

 

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army gives as a reason for justifying its inaction that it has no bread or any sort of assistance, which is an extremely serious reason. . . . All the people ask for weapons. Why hasn’t it been arranged to buy them? There is no money. . . . In such cases, governments have no other rule than public rescue.” 19 Outraged by these reports of the miserable condition of the victors of Puebla, a group identifying themselves only as Varios Mejicanos (“Some Mexicans”) wrote to La Voz de Méjico, urging all their countrymen, who had donated so generously to create the sword of honor, to meet in San Francisco and form an association to be called the Sociedad Patriótica Mejicana (Mexi­ can Patriotic Society). Sheer geographical distance making them unable to serve in their country’s armed forces in person, they proposed instead to collect funds “to alleviate, to some extent, the ills which our army suffers.” They estimated that there were more than five thousand Mexicans presently in California, nearly all of them able and willing to donate at least a dollar a month. “Let us make an effort,” they urged, “for perhaps we will do good for more than one person. We have a duty, as sons of Mexico.” 20 Latinos in Los Angeles came up with their own variation on this theme. On September 21, 1862, a group met there and voted to establish a junta patriótica whose goals were to raise not only a monthly donation but also funds to equip and send volunteers to join the Mexican army. At the junta’s second meeting, on September 28, Agustín Somosa and Pascual Ramírez, both originally from Jalisco; Manuel Garfias, a Oaxacan; Ygnacio Varela, a Sonoran; and Francisco de P. N. Guerrero, a Californio, volunteered their services as soldiers for the cause.21 Latinos in the neighboring port town of New San Pedro (shortly to be renamed Wilmington) also formed a junta, on September 22, and seven of its members, all originally from Jalisco, volunteered to go fight.22 On publishing the minutes of these groups’ organizational meetings in his paper, Rodríguez noted that similar juntas had been formed in New Almaden and San Luis Obispo, in addition to Placerville, Los Angeles, and New San Pedro. He urged Latinos in San Francisco to follow their example and announced a meeting to be held for that purpose at La Voz de Méjico’s offices on October 12.23 Latinos up and down the state responded, and nearly every week thereafter La Voz de Méjico published announcements of juntas being organized. The processes involved in setting up a junta were similar in all cases. The organization of the one in Marysville, in Yuba County, was typical. On Octo­ber 19, 1862, less than two months after the Placerville junta was formed, a number of Mexican citizens met at the house of Martín Murillo in Marysville. Pablo T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som   •   109

Solorzano addressed the group, inviting his countrymen to contribute money to Mexico’s defense, “since, due to the distance at which we find ourselves, it is nearly impossible for us to personally take part in the defense of our nationhood.” By a voice vote, Juan Nepomuceno Leal was elected president of the junta. Thereafter taking charge of the meeting, Leal oversaw the election of the other officers: secretary, first and second board members, and treasurer, all elected by a voice vote. The newly elected first board member, Carlos Granizón, moved that all members “proceed to sign up for their monthly dues for the purposes already proposed, which was put into effect straightaway.” Leal asked those present to bring their donations to the next meeting so that they could be sent to the Junta Central Directiva (Central Managing Junta) in San Francisco, which had been formally constituted following the meeting called by Rodríguez on October 12. It was the Junta Central’s responsibility to forward the funds to Juárez’s government in Mexico. These arrangements having been made, the first meeting of the Marysville junta was adjourned.24 A newly established junta usually announced its foundation by communicating its acta de organización (record of organization) in a letter to La Voz de Méjico or, after June 1864, to La Voz and El Nuevo Mundo, both of which became semiofficial organs of the juntas patrióticas in California, Nevada, and Oregon. So numerous did the juntas grow in a very short time that the newspapers had to print apologies for their inability to publish the full texts of all these letters. When one of these Spanish-language newspapers published the bylaws of a junta, other juntas could comment on them. Certainly the papers’ editors did not hesitate to do so. For example, Rodríguez considered Article 4 of the bylaws of the junta in Chinese Camp too coercive. He commented, “The fourth [article] states that payment of dues is mandatory for members; we assume that this mandate is merely moral, for otherwise it does not seem proper to us to insist that they be compelled by urging them too strongly.” 25 One variation in this basic organizing process concerned what role women played in a community’s junta. Some juntas elected female officers to interact with other women (see figure 13). The one in Sacramento elected an allmale board but “immediately decided to commission two ladies to collect voluntary donations among the women of this capital . . . and Doña Josefa Cienfuegos and Doña Altagracia Liceo were chosen.” 26 As will be seen, however, the Latina women of some communities chose to form their own juntas de señoras (ladies’ assemblies), separate from the men’s. 110  •   T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som

Figure 13.  Hipólita Orendain collected donations from ­fellow female members of the San Francisco junta. (Courtesy California Historical Society, FN-29127/CHS2011.519.tif, Gift of F. V. Brigante Est.)

Map 3 shows 129 locations mentioned in the Spanish-language press as having a junta patriótica in the years 1862–1867. It indicates a strong Latino presence in the gold-mining areas of the Sierra foothills. In fact, those foothills had the greatest number of juntas, ranging from Downieville in the northern mining district to Hornitos in the southern mining district, with a preponderance of juntas in the southern district. There was a string of juntas in the large towns that served as jumping-off points for miners going farther into the mountains: Yreka, Red Bluff, Marysville, Sacramento, Stockton, and French Camp. Juntas ringed the San Francisco Bay Area, from Sonoma and Napa in the north to Mount Diablo, Pinole, San Leandro, and Alvarado in the east, down to San José and San Juan Bautista in the south. Southern California had juntas in San Luis Obispo, New San Pedro/Wilmington, and Los Angeles. There were also seven juntas in locations outside California: Virginia City, Silver City, Carson City, Gullimoque, Reese River, and Austin in Nevada, and The Dalles in Oregon.  

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Map 3.  Junta patriótica mejicana locations in California, Nevada, and Oregon, 1862– 1867. (Werner Schink)  

These juntas had at least 13,831 members during this period.27 They were a cosmopolitan lot. Although the juntas were established specifically to contribute to the Mexican effort against the French and much of their initial rhetoric addressed “brother Mexicans” or “Mexican patriots,” their membership certainly was not limited to Mexican citizens. Indeed, the Los Angeles junta announced at its foundation that “this junta . . . will not be made up exclusively of Mexican citizens; rather, all the children of the other American republics will be invited . . . because their national identities are equally threatened and because they are opposed to any European intervention which has as its objective changing our republican form of government.” 28 Píoquinto Dávila, an immigrant from Colombia, was a leading figure in this junta.29 Felipe Fierro, a Chilean immigrant, was prominent in the San Francisco junta.30 A Salvadoran, Juan Vicente Martorell, was a frequent contributor to the junta in Hornitos.31 In concluding his September 16 speech in Placerville, Rafael H. González went to pains to include all possible Latin Americans in his call to action: “Yes, Mexicans, Chileans, Peruvians, Colombians, New Grenadeans, and all the children of Latin America, the heroes and martyrs of our independence call to us from the tomb: To arms, all republicans, lovers of their liberty!” 32 So careful were most juntas to be inclusive in their membership that when La Voz de Méjico accidentally printed an invitation addressed only to Mexi­ cans, the editor Antonio Mancillas quickly offered an apology and reworded the invitation. “Inadvertently, we invited only Mexicans, in the notice we published in our last number. We publish it [again] today, for the same day, to Mexicans and all other Hispanic Americans in general. . . . In this country, when we say Hispanic American, we don’t notice where someone was born, but rather we embrace each other as brothers. . . . We are very sorry for our oversight.” 33 A number of Californios—Latinos born in California who, after 1848, became citizens of the United States—were also junta members. As far as can be ascertained, the Los Angeles and Wilmington juntas had the largest Californio presence. For instance, a subscription list from Los Angeles in 1863 identifies 35 of the 114 Latina women it includes (31 percent) specifically as either Californios or California Indians.34 The percentage of Californio participants in the juntas was lower in most other communities, especially San Francisco and the mining camps, both of which tended to have much higher concentrations of immigrants. Some Californios, such as Francisco P. Ramírez, played active roles in the juntas. Others, such as Mariano G. Vallejo  

 

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of Sonoma, had high-profile but less active roles. The Los Angeles junta listed Yaqui and California Indians as members, as well as Atlantic Americans (usually listed as Americano) and the occasional French, German, Portuguese, or Belgian immigrant. Nevertheless, there sometimes was tension between those with a more inclusive view and those who preferred a limited ethnic or political definition for the juntas’ membership and aims. One such conflict grew heated in 1865 when the junta in San Francisco voted to exclude from membership any Mexican who had taken U.S. citizenship, on the grounds that a true Mexican patriot would never renounce Mexican citizenship. One of its members, Tomás Jewett, objected to this restriction on the grounds that although he had been born in Mexico, he was a U.S. citizen, thanks to his father’s U.S. citizenship. While he was assured that the new rule was not aimed at him, he and his brother nonetheless resigned from the junta, in protest at its exclusion of those of their Mexican friends who had become U.S. citizens.35 Francisco P. Ramírez, who had moved to immigrant-dominated San Francisco from Californio-dominated Los Angeles, argued successfully at a subsequent junta meeting for the revocation of this exclusion, noting that it unfairly singled out Mexicans who had become U.S. citizens but did not exclude those who had become citizens of other countries, which could be construed as an insult to the United States. One of his key points was that most of the Mexicans who had taken U.S. citizenship recently had done so to be able to vote—the implication was, for Lincoln—in the 1864 presidential election. So closely identified were the Union and Juarist causes by this time that this could be seen as an act of Mexican patriotism. Passions ran so high over the issue that Ramírez and General Plácido Vega, the major proponent of the restriction and a recently arrived special emissary of Juárez’s government, got into an unseemly public brawl after the meeting and were arrested by the San Francisco police.36 While the San Francisco and Los Angeles juntas could boast of a number of relatively elite officers and members—foreign consuls, businessmen, physicians, artists, editors, writers, and the like—most members of any junta were ordinary Latinos of the 1860s: miners, mule skinners, cowboys, laborers, cooks, and housewives. Even the San Francisco junta said of its membership, “We Mexicans who live here now are poor, for we earn our bread by the sweat of our labor; but we have organized ourselves into Patriotic Societies.” 37 The participants’ lack of education occasionally affected junta proceedings but did not stop them. When women living at the Guadalupe mine in  

 

 

 

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Santa Clara County met to establish a women’s junta, they elected one of their number, Donaciana Diocio de García, as president. But nominations for a secretary were brought up short when they discovered that “there was not one of the ladies who knew how to write.” Undaunted, they turned to a man in the room, Facundo Orosco y Castelo, the secretary of the Guadalupe men’s junta, and persuaded him to act as their secretary also, “in the interim, until there should be another person who might fulfill the office.” 38 Only six members of the junta in Napa signed a letter published in El Nuevo Mundo in January 1866, but a postscript added, “I place below the names of those who don’t know how to sign, but who are in agreement,” followed by the names of twenty-one illiterate members.39

The Juntas in Action During the year following the excitement of the victory at Puebla on May 5, 1862, juntas patrióticas sprang up throughout California and in neighboring states. First and foremost, they were a fund-raising mechanism, able to gather respectable sums quickly and get the money into the hands of designated causes. Yet they served a number of social functions as well. They became a training ground for Latino leaders, in their election of officers and in providing forums for decision making and public speaking. They were also, thanks to the Spanish-language press in California, an important communications network that could spread word of events from one end of the state to the other in a matter of days. This network quickly communicated the news of the military disaster at Puebla in 1863 to Latinos in California, Nevada, and Oregon. The intelligence must have been especially bitter, as only a short time before there had been hope that the 1862 miracle of Puebla would be repeated and confirmed. But rather than being dismissed or forgotten as a failed hope, that first, successful battle of Puebla instead came to represent to Latinos in California the importance of the struggle and the goals for which it stood, much as the fall of the Alamo has come to mean for modern Anglo Texans. To remove any doubt about Puebla’s fall, the Central Managing Junta in San Francisco published an official pronouncement. “News of the loss of Puebla de Zaragoza has been confirmed by the last steamer. The only sure details of this disaster . . . can be summed up by the laconic words of a letter written by an impartial foreigner: ‘Puebla has yielded on account of T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som   •   115

hunger. Her heroic defenders refused all offers of surrender; they disabled their armaments; some commanders and officers committed suicide, so as not to become prisoners.’ ” Nonetheless, in the Junta Central’s view, the fall of Puebla changed nothing. Mexico was still at war with the French, and Mexicans (and others) living in California still had a valuable role to play. “Although, at this distance, we cannot offer our blood to the homeland, let us redouble our efforts to help her with our financial resources, with our moral support.” 40 The juntas responded to the call. They held emergency meetings, which their largely working-class members, although dependent on their daily wages to sustain their families, took leave of their jobs to attend. In Virginia City, Nevada; at the New Almaden mine in Santa Clara County; in the gold country towns of Hornitos, Chinese Camp, and San Andrés; in Los Angeles and other communities too numerous for the editor Mancillas of La Voz de Méjico to list individually, Latinos gathered to decide what to do in the wake of the Mexican defeat at Puebla. The Spanish-language press portrayed a near-religious fervor as sweeping through those attending junta meetings: “The zeal that the juntas of the hinterland have displayed after the disaster at Puebla is praiseworthy; it does honor to the Mexican nation.” Emotional demonstrations ensued, and as a tangible sign of their adherence to Mexico’s cause, junta supporters donated even greater sums of money than before. Their resolution in the face of the setback at Puebla led Mancillas to exclaim proudly, “Communities who love their liberty so much cannot be conquered!!” 41 Some individuals and small groups went even further. In San Francisco, a group of Mexican women organized a boycott of the city’s French merchants. Mancillas urged Latinos in the rest of the state to follow suit. 42 Near the San Francisco waterfront, Marcos Meléndez and an unnamed Frenchman came to blows in a Pacific Street saloon. “In accordance with the testimony of the Hispanic Americans who witnessed the event, the Frenchman was found to be the aggressor; and Marcos Meléndez is a free man again, and proud to have done something, for his part, that could avenge the misdeeds that the invaders are committing in his country, and thus erase the memory of Puebla.” 43 Latinos voiced their defiance of the French to one another in poems and letters published in the Spanish-language press. An anonymous Mexican “from the hinterland” sent in a poem about the French Intervention and the recent fall of Puebla mere days after the official notice was received. He concluded hopefully: 116  •   T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som

The grandee dies of ambition, The worker of unfulfilled desires; Thus will Napoleon [III] die, Dreaming of the income and treasury Of Mexico. . . . The Nation. 44

A South American who signed himself “an old Brazilian” exhorted, “Mexicans: Now is the time to demonstrate your courage. Run, with pleasure and enthusiasm, to defend your freedom.” 45 Nor, taking a leaf from the Los Angeles junta’s book, was the editor Mancillas slow to encourage Latinos in California to go to Mexico to fight the French. He urged those unable to go in person to pay the travel costs of those who were willing. Mancillas admitted that the number of volunteer soldiers from California might not be great but insisted that the moral effect of even a few Mexicans returning from abroad to defend their country would be tremendous and would encourage others to do the same.46

Thanks to efforts by the juntas patrióticas in California, Nevada, and Oregon, the memory of the first battle of Puebla was becoming institutionalized, as evidenced by the Cinco de Mayo celebrations described at the beginning of this chapter. But as time went on, the activities and interests of the juntas expanded beyond efforts to resist the French Intervention in ­Mexico. The organized voice of the juntas sought justice for California’s Latinos, especially the least advantaged among them, when other institutions rarely heeded them. As justice was sometimes in short supply in nineteenth-­century California, the bylaws of a number of juntas included a degree of civil rights protection as one of the benefits of being a member. For example, the junta in the mining town of Hornitos specified, of a portion of the money it raised, “Article 5. These funds are assigned exclusively to help those of its members made unfortunate by illness, imprisonment, or death. . . . Article 8. . . . If any of its members should happen to end up in prison, the Club will try to obtain his liberty.” 47 In the town of Sonora in 1864, when Ramón Velázquez was sentenced to die for killing a Chinese immigrant, he turned to the local junta for legal aid, as “his friends had refused to succor or help him because he was an Indian, giving people to understand by his words that the death penalty had been given him so that other, worse criminals might go unpunished.” He insisted, moreover, that he was innocent. The junta determined that $250 would secure the services of a good lawyer, who might be able to get Velázquez a T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som   •   117

new trial, but this sum was beyond the means of a single junta in a small mining community. The Sonora junta’s president, Gregorio Contreras, therefore wrote to La Voz de Méjico, asking the paper to bring Velázquez’s case to the public’s attention, “by virtue of the fact that the accused had directed a petition to the said junta, asking its members, in the interests of justice, to contribute in some way to saving him from the unmerited penalty that the law, poorly administered, had imposed upon him.” The juntas in Hornitos, Merced River, Martinez, and San Francisco donated to Velázquez’s appeal. They not only raised the $250 but also pressed Mexican emissary Plácido Vega and the state treasurer, Romualdo Pacheco, a U.S.-citizen scion of an old Californio family, to intercede with the governor on Velázquez’s behalf. The latter’s appeal was particularly effective, as the editor Mancillas recognized, obtaining a stay of execution while the case was reviewed. “Such effectiveness on the part of Señor Pacheco will be appreciated by all Mexicans to whose attention this notice may come.” Unfortunately for Velázquez, the state’s examiner found that the trial had been conducted impartially and justice served, and despite his continuing protestations of innocence, the convicted man was executed. After reprinting a local paper’s report of the execution, Mancillas thanked those who had come to Velázquez’s assistance. “In the name of our fellow countrymen, we thank Señor General Vega and the other friends and gentlemen who, from the moment they learned that a Mexican was suffering under the terrible weight of a death sentence, have not omitted any sacrifice in order to have the satisfaction of saving him—or at least so that a ray of comfort should penetrate the dark prison of Ramón Velázquez!” 48 Juntas sometimes engaged in other philanthropy, raising money not just for Juárez’s government but also for distressed Latinos in the United States. “The juntas patrióticas can do much good, even for the Mexicans who live in this country,” Francisco P. Ramírez opined in 1865. He had in mind mostly political benefits, envisioning the juntas as interest groups whose numbers would command attention even from the federal government. 49 An 1864 editorial in La Voz de Méjico reminded readers that “the patriotic associations are, for Mexicans, simply of a private and national interest. We cannot regard them as established exclusively for giving donations . . . but rather for lending us mutual aid, so that in a strange land we may act as a strong and solid nationality; so that in each and every one of the members may be seen not just a friend, but a brother.” 50 Such local benefits could take various forms. Given the complete lack of public support and health insurance in 1860s  

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California, people out of work due to illness could run the risk of literally starving to death. For this reason, sometimes the juntas provided basic necessities like food and shelter to sick members so they could avoid the humiliation of public charity. In 1865, the statutes of the Club Patriótico Mejicano (Mexican Patriotic Club) in San Francisco stated explicitly, “The purpose of the Club Patriótico Mejicano is political and charitable. Political, because it must occupy itself with affairs that bear a relation to the defense of the Mexican Republic. . . . Charitable, because its funds will serve to benefit its less fortunate members in cases of illness, imprisonment, or death.” They provided that “as soon as news is received that any member is sick, the president will name a commission composed of three individuals, who must go to the sufferer’s house, not just to visit him in the name of the Club, but also to offer the services of the Society.” 51 That same year, the Chileans’ junta in Mokelumne Hill, in Calaveras County, bought a house from Juana Ureta de Berna for $750 to provide a shelter for the disadvantaged, “so that the said property . . . may be the first step toward the development of the great idea and a realization of mutual benefits, and so that it may serve as a refuge from misfortune, misery, and poverty.” 52 The final benefit a mutual aid society could provide, of course, was a proper funeral. During the tumultuous days of the Gold Rush, it was not unknown for recent arrivals stricken by some mortal illness—cholera, typhus, smallpox—to suffer the indignity of an anonymous, unmourned burial. Being a member of a junta insured against the potter’s field and promised a dignified, ceremonious funeral and a grave in a recognized location. San Francisco’s Club Patriótico Mejicano furthermore declared that “in the case of death, all the members of the Club will accompany the body to its final home.” 53 The juntas did not always limit their philanthropy and benefits to their members. From the Gold Rush onward, Latinos had organized subscription lists to provide assistance to other Latinos who had fallen on hard times.54 As the juntas developed, however, they provided a more efficient way of practicing intra-Latino philanthropy. For example, in 1866 a Latina in San Francisco ran an advertisement in El Nuevo Mundo, addressed “To Philanthropic Persons,” imploring their assistance. “Doña Rosalía Bernales de Sánchez finds herself prostrated by sickness and without resources; she begs the Christian pity of all feeling people who might wish to help her in her sad condition, [thereby] exercising one of the most sublime virtues— charity.” 55 In Calaveras County, the junta in San Andrés, after collecting its usual subscriptions for Juárez’s troops, took up a special collection and was  

 

 

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able to provide her the sum of $3.85.56 Before the advent of the juntas and their intimate relationship with the Spanish-language press, Latinos in the mining camps almost certainly never would have learned of the plight of a poor countrywoman in San Francisco, much less have been able to come to her aid like this.

While the Mexican juntas patrióticas formed the largest, most highly structured Latino network, they were by no means the only Latino communitybased organizations established during the American Civil War and French Intervention. Following their example, other groups formed associated or imitative organizations and networks. Perhaps most notable among these were the various women’s juntas and the Chilean juntas. Shortly after the fall of Puebla in 1863, the Mexican refugee Francisca Manzo de Cavazos invited Latina women in Los Angeles to discuss the situation in her homeland. As she later expressed it, “I developed the idea of bringing together the Mexican women of this city, for the purpose of forming a new junta patriótica, of ladies. . . .  I immediately sent out a call to all my countrywomen . . . and in consequence, for the justness of our cause, they all attended in great numbers on June 28, to name a junta and gather donations for our brave Mexican army.” Once the interested women—and evidently some men as well—had assembled, Manzo de Cavazos delivered an inspiring speech, beginning, “I am a Mexican. I am a woman. And my heart has not been able to help but be shaken, upon considering the sacrifices that the Mexican people are making to defend the independence, liberty, and honor of my homeland.” She did not deny the limitations women then faced when venturing into public political activity but urged her audience not to let those barriers stand in their way.  

 

Mexican women! Although our weak constitutions do not permit us to bear arms with which to defend public liberty, this does not exempt us from the suffering and humiliation that tyranny brings with it. Although our sex keeps us apart from political life, or from debating the important interests of the State, we do not for that reason lack the common sense to know how to value liberty and to sacrifice our lives, rather than drag about the chains of despotism. For these reasons, ladies . . . we must cooperate, with all the power of our will, in reaching the noble goal that the junta patriótica of Los Angeles has proposed: that of contributing, every month, with our donations, to helping our brothers who so gloriously know how to die for the homeland. 120  •   T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som

Figure 14.  The 1860 U.S. Census listed María Noriega as a fifty-year-old dressmaker from Mexico living in Sonora, California. On September 30, 1863, she invited Latinas to her house, where she gave a speech asking them to organize a ladies’ junta in their town. The women responded enthusiastically and established the junta on the spot. (Courtesy California Historical Society, FN-36621/CHS2010.374.tif)

In concluding her speech, she invited the audience to take a solemn oath to defend freedom and democracy. The male editor of La Voz de Méjico noted, “All the women in the crowd stood up, and raising their hands, they swore; but in such an angry manner that the men were left astonished.” 57 Not long after, Latina women in other communities took up the Los Angeles women’s challenge and established ladies’ juntas in San José, Marys­ ville, Sonora, Virginia City, Hornitos, and the New Almaden and Guadalupe mines in Santa Clara County (see figure 14).58 These were not mere auxiliaries to the previously established, male-dominated juntas patrióticas. The members of a ladies’ junta elected their own officers, ran their own meetings, collected donations, and decided how to use the funds. Like the male-­ dominated juntas, though, they sent most of the funds they raised to Mexico to help Juárez’s government in its struggle against the French. In February 1865, a somewhat different sort of community organization appeared in Los Angeles, also created and run entirely by Latina women. T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som   •   121

The primary purpose of the Club Zaragoza, as outlined in its bylaws, was different from the main raison d’être of the juntas patrióticas during this decade, although certainly not outside one of the secondary functions juntas frequently adopted, of providing mutual assistance. Membership was not limited to Latinas but open to all women who wished to aid Mexico. Each member was to pay monthly dues of fifty cents to a dollar, depending on her ability, and “the funds will be assigned exclusively to helping sick women who belong to this society. . . . When one of the members shall fall ill, the assembly will name a committee of three persons to take on the responsibility of obtaining for her the necessary aid . . . and in case of death, it will be the duty of the Club to accompany her remains to her grave, where a cross will be placed.” In short, this group of Latinas had organized a mutual benefits society of, by, and for women.59 The membership of the Los Angeles ladies’ junta and the Club Zaragoza overlapped considerably, but the primary purpose of each was sufficiently different that two organizations seemed to be needed. Most Latinos in California lived in the same neighborhoods, with Mexi­ cans, Chileans, Peruvians, Colombians, Ecuadorians, Argentines, and Salvadorans all populating a local “Spanishtown.” After the Mexican immigrants who came to California during the Gold Rush, Chileans seem to have been the next largest Latino population group. 60 As a result of the Chileans’ numbers and economic influence, Chilean Independence Day, on September 18, was celebrated in San Francisco as early as 1851. 61 As the original ­Mexican juntas had, during the 1850s the few juntas patrióticas chilenas (­Chilean patriotic assemblies) in existence confined their activities to celebrating their Independence Day. When the Mexican juntas took on new life and a new purpose after the first battle of Puebla, a number of sympathetic Chileans assumed active roles in those organizations. For example, Manuel Silva was one of the principal orators at the Mexican Independence Day celebration in Los Angeles in 1865. 62 That same year, Juan V. Villalón gave a Mexican I­ ndependence Day address at the New Almaden mine. 63 Just a few weeks later, Villalón was among the nearly three dozen individuals who sent a letter to the editor Ramírez of El Nuevo Mundo on behalf of the Sociedad Patriótica Chilena of New Almaden, whose secretary Villalón was. They were protesting “the unjust war that Spain is conducting against our homeland” in a sideshow to the Chincha Islands War between Peru and Spain. Outraged at what they suspected (incorrectly) to be Spanish designs

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on their country’s independence, the Chilean juntas in California, as their Mexican counterparts had done just three years earlier, reinvented themselves as grassroots political organizations of immigrants in the United States. 64 Recognizing the power of organized community effort, the Sociedad Patriótica Chilena of Forest Hill, in Placer County, quickly announced that, like its counterpart in New Almaden, it was reorganizing to solicit monthly donations to support the Chilean government against Spain. 65 As the New Almaden junta had suggested and the Forest Hill junta seconded, a central junta soon was organized in San Francisco, with Felipe Fierro as its president, more or less on the model of the Mexican juntas’ Junta Central Directiva. 66 It was not long before Chilean juntas were sending in their donations from a number of locations, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, New Almaden, Forest Hill, Sutter Creek, San Pablo in Contra Costa County, San Juan Bautista and Vallecito in San Benito County, Mokelumne Hill, Placerville, Jackson, and Murphy’s Camp. 67 As a number of Chileans had been active in the Mexican juntas, Mexi­cans began to return the favor. The Chilean junta in Los Angeles, like the Mexican junta there, boasted a pan-Latino membership, including the Cali­fornio Cristóbal Aguilar, the Mexican Jacinto Haro, the Peruvian Pedro Blanco, the Colombian Píoquinto Dávila (who was also an officer of Los Angeles’ Mexican junta), the Central American Benito Valle, and the Atlantic American William C. Warren (see figure 15). 68 Furthermore, in November of 1865, Mexican consul José A. Godoy made an address to the Club Patriótico Mejicano in San Francisco explicitly comparing the Spanish invasion of Chile to the French invasion of Mexico, as another foreign intervention attempting to subject, by force of arms, an American republic to European autocracy. He also reminded his audience of the particular sympathy and support Chileans showed for the Juarist cause in Mexico and outlined several ways in which Mexicans now were ready to reciprocate: 1st. That Mexicans declare that the war that Spain is making on our sister republic of Chile is unjust and barbarous. 2nd. That they consider that war as criminal an act as the one that the French are committing by making war on the republic of Mexico. . . . 3rd. That Mexicans are prepared to give all the helps that lie in their power to the Chileans in the present fight. 69

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Figure 15.  Jacinto Haro (center), a post-1848 immigrant from Mexico, was a member of the Los Angeles junta from 1863 to 1866. Julián Valdez (right), a Californio, was a member of the same junta in 1863. Nothing is known about the background of José López (left). (Courtesy Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History)

Latino Social Life during the Civil War When the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in 1861, California had been part of the United States for thirteen years. The Californios, along with tens of thousands of immigrants attracted to the state’s gold fields from Mexico, 124  •   T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som

Central America, and South America, had begun to create a new society during that period. The members of this suddenly heterogeneous Latino population had some social characteristics in common, such as language, religion, and some cultural traits, but the potential dividers of class, race, and national origin threatened to keep Latinos from forming a single community. Yet a set of similar conflicts with Atlantic Americans, ranging from the Foreign Miners’ Tax to lynchings, helped to shape a sense of Latino community in California. While Californio and immigrant parents struggled to speak English and learn about Atlantic American ways, their United States–born children were growing up almost naturally bilingual and bicultural, at home in both English and Spanish. This new society continued to evolve after Abraham Lincoln’s election, but now a new common experience was added, namely living through the American Civil War and the French Intervention. The latter event caused a new wave of immigration from Mexico to California, primarily of refugees unable or unwilling to live under French rule. Once there, the new arrivals tended to settle in already-established Latino communities around the state, adding their activities and energies to the society emerging there. A thorough study of Latino social and cultural life in California during this time would require a book in itself. Until that book is written, brief observations of developments in several areas of social life, as revealed through the lens of the lively Spanish-language press of the day, may serve to show that the upheavals of the 1860s had far-reaching effects on Latino society, culture, and politics in California. Catholic worship had been a feature of Latino life in California since the first Spanish settlement in 1769, and by the war years of 1861 to 1867, the majority of Latinos were still Catholics, and Catholic practices were prominent in their social life. Formal participation by the Catholic church, such as the celebration of a mass, sometimes also was part of junta-sponsored civic ceremonies.70 During Holy Week of 1863, almost a year after the first battle of Puebla and while the protracted second battle of Puebla was going on, Latino San Franciscans satirically adapted the centuries-old Catholic folk tradition, practiced in Mexico and California, of burning Judas in effigy just before Easter.71 The account in La Voz de Méjico began unremarkably enough, noting that “on Holy Saturday, the Mexican boys of the city burned the customary Judas.” But in the next sentence, with mock solemnity, the editor claimed that he was in possession of Judas’s last will and testament, and it had proved to be that of “Juan N. Almonte (alias the Mexican Judas  

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Iscariot).” In Almonte’s self-serving declaration in Orizaba in 1862, he had denied the constitutionality of Juárez’s government and declared himself the nation’s rightful chief executive, allying himself with the French invaders (see chapter 2). The satirical last will and testament depicted Almonte as complaining to Napoleon III that he had been shunted aside by General Élie-Frédéric Forey and therefore intended to commit suicide, out of pique. He bequeathed the French emperor a country, Mexico, filled with inhabitants who “are very stupid, for they have had the temerity to form a numerous army to oppose themselves to bowing to the gentle yoke of the most powerful monarch on earth” (italics in original). He also asked that Napoleon award tin medals for outstanding conduct such as the violation of the Preliminaries of Soledad by the French ambassador to Mexico Count Alphonse Dubois de Saligny and General Charles Ferdinand Latrille, comte de Lorencez. “Also, the most excellent General Lorencez deserves another medal of the same class, and the title of marquess of Puebla, for the famous battle of May 5, with an inscription that ought to say: ‘He ran away at Puebla, May 5, 1862.’ ” The mock testament concluded by wishing the emperor, “God preserve your Majesty for many centuries, for I believe years alone are not sufficient for so great an enterprise” as the conquest of Mexico.72 The practice of burning effigies of French or reactionary Mexican figures in place of Judas Iscariot grew, until Holy Week of 1866 included four mannequins, representing Emperor Maximilian, his wife, and two particularly disliked imperial officials. These were paraded through the streets of San Francisco in a boisterous procession to the top of Telegraph Hill, where a jeering crowd tore them apart and burned them to ashes.73 Latino communities in California during the war years continued to build their lives around other time-honored customs as well, reflected in tastes in food, recreation, and music. As a result, they constituted a distinct market, and commercial advertising in the Spanish- and English-language presses reflected the robust continuation of their traditional practices. In particular, the provision of food provided business opportunities for those attuned to Latino customs. In 1862, for example, Hipólito Jurado was the proprietor of the Restaurante Mejicano on Dupont Street in San Francisco, “well known to the Spanish-speaking population,” which he advertised as offering “everything that may be Mexican-style food.” 74 Less than a year later, however, he had sold the establishment to Antonio J. Domínguez, who renamed it the Restaurante del Aguila de Oro (Golden Eagle Restaurant) and made some adjustments to its menu that he hoped would bring in a wider clientele 126  •   T h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som

of “Hispanic Americans and the general public.” 75 By 1864, a patriotically themed Mexican restaurant had opened, La Libertad (Liberty), owned by Gerardo Dávila, which advertised meals with a choice of tortillas or bread on the side, with or without wine, and enchiladas or chicken dishes on request.76 Latina women were also active in small business concerns, and the restaurateur’s trade seemed a particularly fertile field for female entrepreneurship. Early in 1862, Isabel González opened a restaurant called La Mejicana (The Mexican Girl) on Dupont Street in San Francisco, which featured, among other things, “Mexican-style hot chocolate.” 77 In 1866, Petra Rodríguez opened yet another new Mexican restaurant, on Broadway, offering meals with or without wine, or with tortillas on the side. Enchiladas, chicken, and hot chocolate were extra. The establishment’s private dining parlor for ladies was proof of its respectability.78 By the autumn of 1863, a business concern run by a Chilean woman, Estéfana Abello y Compañía, had purchased the Restaurante del Aguila de Oro, formerly owned by Antonio J. Domínguez. Abello, who was also a member of San Francisco’s junta, advertised, “The undersigned, having taken charge of the said establishment, announces to Mexicans and Hispanic Americans that they will find good food here from eight o’clock in the morning on.” 79 While the bulk of Latino-owned businesses were in urban areas such as San Francisco, San José, or Los Angeles, some opened in smaller towns and villages. In the mining town of Placerville, in 1864, Francisco Silvia was running a restaurant named, patriotically, the Zaragoza Restaurant; its cuisine was immediately identifiable from its subtitle, Casa Mejicana (Mexican House). Silvia advertised to “people of the Spanish-speaking race and to the general public” that he offered meals “in the preferred Mexican style.” Not wanting to limit his business opportunities, he helpfully added, “English and Portuguese spoken.” 80 In the town of Sonora, José María Cabezut advertised his Sonora Restaurant and Pablo Laviaga his Illyrien Restaurant in English in the Sonora Union Democrat.81 Both proprietors were leading members of the junta patriótica in Sonora. One recreation Latinos had a particular taste for was bullfighting, which often seemed to mystify or repel Atlantic Americans. Bullfights often featured in Latino civic events, such as the Cinco de Mayo commemoration organized by the junta at the New Almaden mine in 1864. As a spectator sport, bullfighting offered business opportunities to shrewd entrepreneurs. 82 In 1866, a novelty from Mexico appeared on the California bullfighting scene: a female bullfighter. On February 3, the “young and beautiful female bullT h e J u n ta s Pat r ió t ic a s M ej ic a n a s Bl os som   •   127

fighter” Rosa Medrano, recently arrived from Mexico City, was scheduled to face a “wild bull” in the ring at the Willows, an entertainment park outside San Francisco. Medrano, who was going to wear “a beautiful Andalusian outfit,” evidently was to perform in a corrida mixta that also would feature three male toreros—Nicolás Martínez, Ramón Núñez, and Guadalupe Cervantes—and a picador, Francisco Naranjo. The show also promised acrobats and a clown bilingual in English and Spanish. 83 A number of musicians from Mexico and Latin America arrived in this period, adding their voices and instruments to the harmonies of Spanishspeaking California. The Spanish-language press made their presence known, through advertisements, reviews, and the occasional puff piece. 84 In Decem­ ber 1862, four musicians from Mexico came to San Francisco aboard the Neva and advertised their services to the public via La Voz de Méjico. Apolinario Calderón played flute and guitar and gave lessons in both; Andrés Berroa played the cello; Emiliano Medián played the cornet; and Matías Sigala played the tenor horn. 85 In the summer of 1863, the violinist and conductor Paz Martínez arrived from Mexico City, making the final leg of his journey aboard the steamship Orizaba. La Voz de Méjico reported that he wished to give a concert to introduce himself to the public and hoped other musicians in San Francisco would help him achieve this goal. 86 The major languages used in California, Spanish and English, continued to vie with and influence each other throughout this period. California’s legislature followed the state’s constitutional mandate for bilingual governance by allocating money to translate all laws and regulations into Spanish. The results, however, were not always satisfactory. 87 In 1866, Francisco P. Ramírez of El Nuevo Mundo received copies of official state documents printed in both English and Spanish and was so disgusted at the poor quality of the Spanish translation, not to mention the overall print quality, that he felt compelled to object. “We have regretted to see that the Spanish translation, besides being entirely different than the original, contains many errors in proofreading, and even in common sense. We hope that the legislature may have more care henceforward in its nomination of a State Translator, for the carelessness that is obvious in the translation of the documents to which we refer is lamentable.” 88 Ramírez’s complaint evidently had some effect; just a few weeks later, a state commission selected him to be one of the official state translators for the next two years. Named to the post along with him was T. R. Eldredge, whom Ramírez characterized as a capable translator from English into Spanish, as well as a friend of his. 89  

 

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But if the government’s use of Spanish appeared to be halfhearted, business interests in California quickly learned that the ability to communicate in Spanish conferred an advantage, in profiting from the Latino market. For example, the West End Hotel on Brannan Place in San Francisco announced in its advertising, Se Habla Español (“Spanish spoken”). The Empire State Restaurant declared that it served delicious meals and also Se habla Español. The stonemason John Daniel included in his services se graban rotulos, en español, con toda propiedad (“lettering engraved in Spanish, with complete correctness”).90 While children picked up languages naturally, adults had to work at it. The editors of Spanish-language newspapers occasionally could not resist the temptation to point out common English-speaker mispronunciations. “The American Flag says that Spanish-speakers pronounce the word Mexico, Mayhee-co. We suppose it may sound that way to English speakers.” Some could not quite master the spoken language but could read Spanish. One M. J. Freeman in Unionville, Nevada, was a regular reader of La Voz de Méjico. “I have subscribed to your excellent newspaper La Voz de Méjico for some time. . . . I love your language, although I cannot speak it.” 91 Yet language was a two-way street in California in this era. Not only did some Atlantic Americans learn Spanish, but many Latinos learned English.92 A letter writer who identified himself only as “A friend of universal education” pointed out to his fellow Spanish speakers in San Francisco in 1866 the advisability of learning English. He noted that “there being many Mexicans in this city desirous of learning the English tongue,” night classes had been offered for the past two years by the public schools, “and one hopes that that portion of our community will take advantage of this nearly cost-free opportunity that our city’s Board of Education offers.” 93 Continuing a trend that had begun with the advent of massive numbers of English-speaking settlers during the Gold Rush, the Spanish vocabulary used in California during the 1860s was diverging from that of the Spanish spoken in Mexico and elsewhere as English words increasingly found their way into common use. In warning his readers against an apparently fraudulent organization called the Sociedad Voluntaria del 4 de Septiembre de 1861, the editor Rodríguez of La Voz de Méjico wrote in 1862, confident that his readers would understand the locution, “Esto suena a humbug muy decididamente” (“This sounds very decidedly like a humbug”).94 Some of the anglicisms common in twenty-first-century Spanglish were first heard among Latinos in Civil War–era California. Then as now, purists sniffed that only ignorant  

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people used such terms when Spanish had perfectly good words already for the objects or concepts in question. Defining anglicismos (“anglicisms”) for his readers in 1863, Rodríguez commented, “This is what the terms can be called that many of our fellow countrymen—ill-versed in their own language and not completely enthusiastic about its exactness and purity—have caused to be introduced into the tongue. Thus we see . . . that, from the English word market, they give us marketa; as if mercado (which is its meaning) were not pure, chaste Spanish.” In a similar vein, the English word grocery was hispanized to grocería and used to mean “a grocery store.” The problem in this case was that a Spanish homonym existed, grosería, which meant “a coarse or vulgar word.” “Also, from another English word, grocery, they with wonderful naivety and ease give us grocería—as if it were very agreeable for them to foist off on us a dirty word in exchange for our money, instead of food items.” In a vain effort to put a stop to the growing use of such anglicisms, Rodríguez offered a number of Spanish terms used in various parts of Latin America to mean “a store where one bought food.” “In some parts of Mexico, they call this kind of shop a pulpería; in other parts, a tendajón; in Cuba, a bodega, etc., etc. It scarcely can be doubted that any one of these names is better than grocería.” But Rodríguez and other defenders of the Spanish language’s purity were trying to turn back the tide in California, where the new regional Latino culture taking shape was vigorously borrowing English vocabulary, as well as other aspects of Atlantic American culture. Even Rodríguez was forced to acknowledge wearily, “There are many other anglicisms, which it would be too tedious to recount.” 95  

 

 

From 1769 to 1848, Spanish-speaking residents of California developed a regional variant of Mexican identity and society. After being annexed by the United States in 1848, they—and especially their children—developed a society that was neither simply a variant of Mexican society nor an exact replica of Atlantic American society. It was something new and different, which continues to the present day: a bilingual and bicultural society of Latinos living in the United States. The juntas patrióticas were a creation of this new hybrid society in the 1860s, and in turn they created a new public memory for it, in the commemoration of the first battle of Puebla. The celebration of this new public memory invested the juntas with a degree of summoning power they had not had before. They used this power to excite the energies and chan 

 

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nel the resources of Latino communities in the American West to support both political ­activity—especially the raising of funds to aid the Juarist cause in Mexico—and pragmatic local civic action, such as poor relief and the defense of Latinos’ civil rights. In the latter respect, the juntas served as an early form of the mutualista organizations that became prominent in Latino communities in the first half of the twentieth century. Indeed, the juntas served as a sort of unofficial academy for Latino leadership, providing political and administrative experience for a number of individuals who assumed the leadership of subsequent organizations, including perhaps the largest and most renowned of twentieth-century mutualista organizations, the Alianza Hispano-Americana, which operated in California from 1915 to 1955.96 Although the juntas patrióticas were superseded and died out in the early twentieth century, their efforts during the American Civil War and the French Intervention to create a motivational and unifying public memory around the unexpected victory of the forces of freedom and democracy at Puebla on May 5, 1862, were extremely successful. The memory of the event not only has outlived them but also has grown beyond their wildest dreams, and it is celebrated on a grander scale than ever in the twenty-first century.  

 

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Five

One War, Three Fronts

Far from both Washington, DC, and Richmond, Virginia, California sent relatively few soldiers across the country to see action in the eastern states during the U.S. Civil War. While around sixteen thousand men from California volunteered for the Army of the Pacific, fewer than five hundred Californians engaged in combat in the eastern theater of war.1 Not only was the cost of transporting soldiers from the Pacific to the Atlantic states prohibitive, but their services were needed in a wide area of the West, ranging from Washington to Arizona. Their duty was to ensure that the Confederacy not seduce or conquer the American West.

The Eastern Front: The Confederacy Barely a week after the humiliating Union defeat at the first battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861, on the other side of the continent in the desert of the American Southwest, John R. Baylor, the Confederate commander of the Second Texas Rifles, and his three hundred men waded across the Rio Grande a little upriver from El Paso and claimed a large chunk of the New Mexico Territory for the Confederacy. The small outpost of Federal troops at Fort Fillmore promptly surrendered. 2 Soon after, the South occupied most of the territories of New Mexico and Arizona. On December 4, the Rifles’ new commander, Major Henry H. Sibley, proclaimed, “An army under my command enters New Mexico to take possession of it in the name of the Confederate States.” 3 California rightly was thought to be next on the Confederates’ list of targets. The Rebels believed that getting and maintaining control of New 132

Mexico and Arizona was vital to their plans for westward expansion to reach ports on the Pacific coast.4 Military conquests like Baylor’s and Sibley’s might not have been the only means by which they sought to achieve this goal. After taking command of the U.S. forces in San Francisco in late April 1861, General Edwin V. Sumner notified the army headquarters in Washington, DC, “There is a strong Union feeling with the majority of the people of this State, but the Secessionists are much the most active and zealous party, which gives them more influence than they ought to have from their numbers. I have no doubt but there is some deep scheming to draw California into the secession movement . . . expecting afterwards to induce her to join the Southern Confederacy.” 5 The War between the States now threatened to knock on California’s door. Trying to quiet worries in Washington about the state’s loyalty, on May 17, 1861, John G. Downey, the governor of California and the husband of native daughter María de Jesús Guirado, signed a concurrent resolution by the legislature stoutly affirming “that the people of California are devoted to the Constitution and the Union of the United States, and will not fail in fidelity and fealty to that Constitution and Union now in the hour of trial and peril.” Downey was to serve the remainder of his term as California’s first “war governor,” one of three who would occupy that position before the Civil War was over. The state’s resolution soon was tested. Just three days after the Union defeat at the first battle of Bull Run, the War Department sent a letter to Governor Downey in Sacramento asking him to raise a volunteer regiment of infantry and five companies of cavalry. As the importance of the Union forces’ defeat at Bull Run became clearer in Washington, subsequent letters followed, each more urgently asking that increasing numbers of men be raised, to keep cross-country communications routes open and “to aid in enforcing the law and protecting public property.” In August, Downey made the formal call for volunteers to join newly commissioned cavalry and infantry units of the California Column that was to be sent to wrest the Arizona and New Mexico territories back from the Confederacy. 6 Some Latinos joined the Union forces. One of the first men to volunteer for the cavalry was the governor’s brother-in-law Juan Francisco “Pancho” Guirado, who enlisted on August 16 as the first lieutenant of Company B.7 The son of the landowners Rafael Guirado and Vicenta Urquides, Pancho Guirado was only twenty-one years old when he volunteered to serve his new country. 8 He enlisted in San Francisco, then was sent to Camp Merchant on the shores of Lake Merritt in Oakland, where the rest of his company On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s   •   133

assembled during the next few weeks. Company B then rode to Southern California, where the California Column spent the winter. Most of the column’s men were raw recruits, in need of intensive training before they would be fit to fight or even march properly.9 While they prepared themselves for their impending journey to the Rio Grande, reports of additional Confederate activity surfaced, most ominously that Confederate cavalry under Captain Sherod Hunter were headed from Mesilla, the capital of the new Confederate Territory of Arizona, toward Tucson, which was much closer to California.10 Dashing across the Sonora desert from the Confederate headquarters on the banks of the Rio Grande, Hunter entered Tucson with about a hundred cavalrymen on February 28, 1862, and raised the Stars and Bars over the town plaza on March 1. By then, however, although he and his men were not aware of it, the California ­Column was on the move. By late February or early March 1862, the unusually heavy rains that winter had ended, making the route passable for the column’s supply wagons. They left Southern California in several parties whose numbers totaled about 2,350.11 Yet already, even as detachments of the California Column moved east, the Confederates were running into trouble in New Mexico. Out of supplies, unable to replace their casualties after skirmishes with Union forces, and fearful of the advent of fresh troops from California, the Rebels retreated to Mesilla. They were harassed by Latino cavalry from New Mexico under the leadership of Captain Rafael Chacón, who later wrote a spirited description of his campaign. The first detachment of the California Column arrived in Tucson on March 20, about two weeks after the Confederates had decamped, with the rest coming in several waves thereafter. They then went on to New Mexico, intending to engage the Rebels there. Guirado, along with the rest of Company B under Colonel Edward E. Eyre, was sent ahead of the main body to make a reconnaissance along the Rio Grande. Apprised of their advance, the Confederates hurriedly left New Mexico for Texas, indeed so quickly that they left their wounded behind. Thus Guirado was present when, on July 4, 1862, the Stars and Stripes was raised over the Rio Grande for the first time in more than a year, near Fort Thorn, and New Mexico was again firmly under Union control. The Federal forces were welcomed by local residents, who quickly had become disenchanted with the Rebels’ persistent thievery and requisitioning of their property.12 While Guirado rode with the cavalry, a number of California Latinos signed up to slog on foot in the infantry. They were a minority among their 134  •   On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s

mostly Atlantic American and European-immigrant comrades, but they shared the same experiences. For instance, Braulio Mejía volunteered for the 5th Regiment of Infantry in Sacramento in December 1861 and was assigned to Company I, one of five from the 5th that subsequently became part of the California Column sent to Arizona and New Mexico. Given the high percentage of post-1848 immigrants among Latinos in the gold country, Private Mejía most likely was an immigrant, probably from Mexico. At Las Cruces in the fall of 1864, a number of veterans of the 5th Infantry, along with some men from the 1st Infantry of California Volunteers, were consolidated into the First Battalion of Veteran Infantry; Mejía thereafter found himself in Company D of the new battalion.13 Another Latino volunteer, Antonio Rosea, who originally joined the 5th Regiment of Infantry in Placer County in Northern California in 1861, probably also was an immigrant. After a brief desertion from the 5th, he reenlisted as a Veteran Volunteer in the 1st Regiment of Infantry. He was finally discharged at Los Pinos, New Mexico, on September 15, 1866.14 The Arizona and New Mexico territories were not the only places Latino soldiers from California served during the Civil War. The Army of the Pacific played a primarily defensive role, its presence deterring Confederate advances into a broad swath of territory ranging from Washington State to New Mexico and Colorado, and Latinos from all over that vast territory joined it. In Watsonville, California, Andrés Guzmán and Ismael Pinto enlisted on the same day, November 12, 1864, joining Company A of the 8th Regiment of Infantry; both were discharged, along with the rest of their company, on October 24, 1865.15 In Arcata, amid the redwood forests of Northern California, José Santa Cruz and Gregorio Vidal enlisted on May 12, 1863, and were discharged on May 13, 1865, with the rest of their comrades from Company B of the First Battalion of Mountaineers.16 Juan Reyes, who enlisted in Company E of the Mountaineers on May 23, 1863, was joined by José Martínez four days later. Both were from the town of Ukiah and were mustered out with their company at Fort Humboldt on June 14, 1865.17

The first Confederate invasion of the West had failed, but Rebel designs on the territory had not completely evaporated. After retreating to Confederateheld Texas, Baylor, obsessed by the idea of a western extension of the Con­ federacy, began agitating to retake the Arizona Territory. He received a new commission as a colonel in the Confederate Army, with permission to On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s   •   135

recruit 2,500 Texans to regain Arizona and New Mexico.18 This continuing threat of Confederate aggression prompted General George C. Wright to ask Brigadier-General Andrés Pico, then serving as the commander of the First Brigade of California Militia, to recruit a battalion of Spanish-speaking Native California Cavalry, from among a population whose renowned horsemanship particularly fitted them for patrolling the Arizona desert. These were the first predominantly Latino troops from California. California state senator Romualdo Pacheco, a Californio himself, had first suggested the idea, which found ready acceptance at the War Department. Four companies eventually took shape: Company A, recruited from several northern and central counties; Company B from San Francisco; Company C from Santa Barbara County; and Company D from Los Angeles County. Due to Andrés Pico’s age—he was fifty-four—and infirmities, his nephew José Ramón Pico took over early in 1863 and recruited vigorously, even advertising in Spanishlanguage newspapers before formal orders arrived from Washington (see figures 16 and 17).19 Gathering the nucleus of Company A in San José, Pico gave a rousing speech linking the fight for freedom and democracy in the American Civil War to the struggle against the French in Mexico. “Sons of California! our country calls, and we must obey! This unholy rebellion of the Southern States must be crushed; they must come back into the Union, and pay obedience to the Stars and Stripes. United, we will, by the force of circumstances, become the freest and mightiest republic on earth! Crowned monarchs must be driven away from the sacred continent of free America!” 20 Nearly eighty young men enlisted in Pico’s company, many bringing their riatas (lariats) with them, which they could handily use as weapons to supplement their firearms.21 They were a mixed lot, about half Californios and the rest Latinos from Mexico and Chile, with a few Yaqui Indians and even some non-­Latinos for good measure.22 In Santa Barbara County, Antonio María de la Guerra raised another company in 1864, the Santa Barbara Company, or Company C of the Native California Cavalry, and was commissioned its captain.23 José Antonio Sánchez formed Company D in Los Angeles County. One of its first volunteers, enrolled first as a sergeant and then as second lieutenant, was Pancho Guirado, already a veteran of the Civil War in the West with the California Column. Unfortunately, he was discharged with a disability only a few months after joining, before the Native California Cavalry ever left the state. Guirado later recovered, however, for he joined a Missouri cavalry regiment  

 

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Figure 16.  Captain (later Major) José Ramón Pico organized Company A, First Battalion Native California Cavalry, in 1863 and served with the unit until 1866. (Courtesy Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History)

Figure 17.  Captain José Ramón Pico took out an advertisement in La Voz de Méjico in March 1863 to attract recruits for the Native California Cavalry, Companies A (San José) and B (San Francisco). (La Voz de Méjico, March 3, 1863, p. 2. CESLAC UCLA)

in 1865 and served until the end of the Civil War. Nor did Sánchez end up going with the company he had raised. He resigned at the end of May 1864 and remained in Los Angeles, where he was active in local politics on behalf of Abraham Lincoln’s reelection.24 All four companies finally assembled at Camp Drum in Wilmington, California, in late June 1865 and began the trek of nearly five hundred miles across the desert to Tubac, to defend Arizona. During summer, temperatures in the Sonora desert can reach 110 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit; water and forage for animals are scarce. So as not to deplete what little was available, the companies were sent at staggered intervals.25 Company D left on July 21 and arrived at Fort Yuma on the banks of the Colorado River on August 4, with the weather so hot that one bilingual cavalryman wrote, “I . . . can consciously swear that if Hades is any warmer I’m a candidate for ‘Los Cielos Santos’ [‘the blessed heavens’].” After a few days’ rest for the horses, they escorted a military supply train carrying “grub for Uncle Sam’s boys in Arizona” to Tubac. After three more weeks’ travel through the desert, Company D finally arrived in Tubac, only to find that the U.S. forces they were expecting to join there—including Companies A and B of the Native California Cavalry—were moving to establish a new post at Fort Mason, near Calabasas.26 Soon after all the California Cavalry arrived at the new Fort Mason post in Arizona, on September 5, the realities of the United States–Mexico– Confederacy–French conflict descended on them. With Mexican imperialist forces closing in, Governor Ignacio Pesqueira of the Mexican state of Sonora, a supporter of Juárez’s government, found himself backed up against the United States–Mexico border. He asked permission to cross and received it—and protection—from the U.S. Army at the fort.27 The imperialists were forced to halt their pursuit at the border. Frustrated by this development, the imperialist prefect of Altar and Magdalena, José Moreno, threatened to cross the border, seize Pesqueira, and hang him from the nearest tree, even if his men had to climb over the dead bodies of the Fort Mason garrison to do it.28 U.S. Colonel Charles Lewis laconically replied, “Let him come and try it.” 29 Amid this tension, twenty-six men from Companies A and B deserted across the border into Mexico, taking horses and firearms. On being informed by a letter from Mexico that the deserters were in the town of Magdalena— contemporaneous reports do not make it clear who sent it—Lewis promptly dispatched Captains José Ramón Pico of Company A and Porfirio Jimeno of Company B, along with thirty of their men, to bring the deserters back.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Under an 1861 extradition treaty between the United States and the Republic of Mexico, Pico and Jimeno had the legal right to do this, without interference by Mexican officials. But this northern region of Mexico was now under de facto French and imperialist rule.30 Pico and Jimeno crossed into Mexico and arrived at the outskirts of Mag­ dalena, in Sonora, where about fifteen of the deserters were reported to be hiding. Pico drew his men up outside the town and sent Lieutenant William Emery as a messenger to Prefect Moreno, the commander of the three to four hundred imperial troops there, formally requesting that the deserters and their stolen equipment be handed over to him. When Emery did not return in a timely manner, Pico lost patience. With eight or ten cavalrymen, he rode into town in a markedly aggressive manner, coming to a brisk halt in front of Moreno’s office. Pico dismounted, went into the office, and informed the prefect that he had come for the deserters and their equipment. Moreno objected to the U.S. troops’ hostile stance on Mexican soil. Pico responded that the United States did not recognize the French-imposed imperial government; the only legal government of Mexico was that of President Juárez, with which the United States had an extradition treaty. Moreno ordered his cavalry to prepare for battle. In response, Pico ran out to the street and ordered his escort to mount up as well, sending a messenger to the rest of his troops outside the town to prepare for action.31 Pico thereupon publicly defied Moreno, warning him that the imperialists had better be prepared to kill him and all his men, as none would submit to being taken prisoner. This prompted an old man in the crowd that had gathered to watch the standoff to call out, “¡Vivan los Americanos!” (“Hurrah for the Americans!”). Uncomfortably reminded by this spontaneous salute to the (Spanish-speaking) U.S. presence that imperial rule was not happily accepted by all Mexicans, including some in Magdalena, Moreno eventually stood his men down and came to an arrangement with Pico. He would write to his superiors in Hermosillo, forwarding Pico’s request for the deserters and their arms. Pico would remain in Magdalena with his small escort, while Captain Jimeno and the rest of the California cavalrymen would withdraw across the border into U.S. territory.32 Nonetheless, after Jimeno had returned to the Arizona Territory, Pico’s continued presence in Magdalena somehow was interpreted as a detention, and rumors soon flew to California that the French had imprisoned him.33 In San Francisco on October 6, El Nuevo Mundo reprinted, in Spanish translation, excerpts from a letter originally published in the Wilmington (CA) On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s   •   139

Journal five days earlier, written by a Captain Dimpfel at Fort Yuma, Arizona, on September 20. Dimpfel related that “an officer just came into my office with the news that Captain Pico, of the Company of Native Californians, who . . . was sent to the Mexican border, has been captured by the French, and is now a prisoner in their hands. This incident will bring a war with France, and it would not surprise me if the French should make an attempt to penetrate into California via this place.” 34 The reality, however, turned out to be far less momentous. Officials in Hermosillo soon instructed Moreno to send Pico back across the border without either the deserters or the stolen U.S. government property. The Mexican imperialists demanded an apology for the perceived insult of this U.S. incursion into Mexican territory but apparently never got one. On the basis of these respective disappointments, tensions eased for a time.35

The Southern Front: The French in Mexico As noted in chapter 2, the Mexican victory at the first battle of Puebla in 1862 inspired a number of Latinos in California to offer their services to the Mexican Army. While most of these volunteers were immigrants, primarily from Jalisco and Oaxaca, the occasional Californio also signed up. Just a few weeks after Puebla’s surrender, a group of twenty Mexican immigrants in Virginia City, Nevada, informed La Voz de Méjico that they were ready and willing to return to their homeland “to take part in the present war of France against Mexico.” The same editorial announced that Francisco G. Ramonet, who had been instrumental in establishing the junta patriótica in Sacramento, “in conformity with the call that has been made, soon will be ready to take part in the defense of his homeland.” These individual declarations by patriotic Mexicans provided an occasion for the editor Antonio Mancillas to try to set the record straight about what his newspaper was and was not doing to assist the Juarist cause in Mexico.36 The issue at stake was that anyone recruiting men to go to Mexico to fight the French was breaking U.S. neutrality laws. Yet it was not, technically, illegal to provide money or certain types of nonmilitary supplies to those individuals who decided, of their own accord, to go to Mexico to fight. Therefore Mancillas insisted, somewhat disingenuously, that he was not recruiting per se—encouraging and facilitating, yes, but not recruiting.  

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Many ill-intentioned persons have caused the rumor to be circulated, with harmful intent, that we are trying to enlist men for the war against France. And as this involves responsibility for breaking the neutrality laws of the United States, which prohibit any person from recruiting soldiers in order to send them out of the state, we protest that we have never had such a thought, not now or ever. . . . We are ready to cooperate in sending men, money, and whatever items that the United States’ laws of hospitality do not prohibit. . . . Our newspaper columns, our own small resources, our activity—all, all are at the disposal of those sons who are lovers of Mexican liberty.37  

The first newspaper documentation of a Latino volunteer going to Mexico read, “Jesús Hernández, a Mexican living in San Luis Obispo County, is the first patriot who has left this state, that we know of, to take part in the present war. May all those in whom a Mexican heart beats, imitate his noble example. He took with him twenty-five pounds of gunpowder, a hundred pounds of bullets, a rifle, and a revolver.” 38 A little over a month after the announcement of Hernández’s departure, the steamship Oregon left San Francisco’s Folsom Street wharf on the afternoon of September 5, 1863, headed for Guaymas. Mancillas noted that a good number of Mexican immigrants were on board. “Many of our fellow countrymen have gone back, and among them citizen José León, who is going to take part in the defense of our homeland. He is provided with a rifle, revolver, and [other] munitions of war. We wish them all a good, comfortable, and lucky journey.” 39 Although there were such occasional reports of individuals or small groups of Latinos going to Mexico, California’s Spanish-language newspapers were understandably careful to carry little detailed news about the movement of soldiers to the south. Hints did appear in the papers, nevertheless, from time to time, suggesting that the number of men going to fight the French was noticeable, although perhaps not large. Death and illness notices provide some information. For instance, in December 1864, while Ulysses S. Grant was settling into his long siege of Richmond, La Voz de Méjico published a notice detailing the unfortunate fate of one Latino who had left California to join the Mexican Army. “Citizen José Rentería. From Mazatlan is communicated to us the news, very affecting to us and to the many friends this worthy citizen has in California, of his having been defeated between Culiacán and El Fuerte, gravely wounded, and taken prisoner. Señor Rentería, a zealous Mexican and possessed of a soul that still was not touched by vice or corruption, has shed his blood in defense of the homeland! We are sure

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that the Mexicans of California will feel a righteous sorrow upon reading this notice.” 40 A death notice sketches the story of a Mexican refugee who fled to San Francisco early in the war, only to go back later to fight the French, “cavalry colonel Luis A. Tostado, killed in the aftermath of the bloody battle of Hermosillo on May 4, 1866, defending the sacred cause of his homeland’s independence!” The San Francisco newspaper in which this appeared gave him an epitaph that would have served as well for any number of Latinos who chose to fight the French in Mexico: “There ended the career of that self-­sacrificing soldier who went from a foreign country to seal with his own blood the cause of our dear Mexico’s liberty.” 41

The Californio Mariano G. Vallejo and two of his sons, Platón and Uladislao, experienced the two fronts of the war to defend freedom and democracy, from the Confederacy in the United States and from the French in Mexico. Mariano Vallejo had been the commander of the province’s military when California was part of the Republic of Mexico, and he ever afterward retained a soft spot in his heart for Mexico. But as a U.S. citizen after 1848, he quickly developed a sincere loyalty to the United States and its institutions. When the American Civil War broke out and the French soon thereafter ­attempted to impose a monarchy in Mexico, two of Vallejo’s sons took part in the momentous conflict, one in the U.S. Army against the Confederacy, and the other in Mexico against the monarchists. Platón Vallejo, born in 1841 in Sonoma, became the first Latino physician from California to attend medical school in the United States; prior to his graduation in 1864 from Columbia University in New York, Latino physicians in California usually had studied in Mexico City or Guadalajara. The Bear Flag Revolt took place, literally, in Platón’s front yard; he watched the Atlantic American invaders paint the first Bear Flag in front of his house. In 1853, he went to study at St. Mary’s College in Baltimore for two years, then returned to California to continue his studies at San Francisco College. 42 In April 1860, a year before the United States descended into civil war, Platón returned to the East Coast to study at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. 43 Partway through his medical studies, however, he received the following letter from the New England Soldiers’ Relief Association, on June 8, 1862:

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Doctor Vallejo, with his medical friends will kindly go on the “State of Maine” and attend the sick and wounded on the steamer. Genl. Gould Vice Chairman, etc. etc. 44

Given the date of the letter, these were most likely casualties of the Union Army’s ultimately ill-fated attempt to take Richmond in June and July of that year. Platón evidently acceded to this request, for on June 23 he received another one, this time from the resident surgeon at the New England Soldiers’ Relief Association. “Two hundred sick & wounded soldiers are expected here at about 9. am tomorrow morning & you are respectfully requested to be present to assist in dressing their wounds.” 45 Three days later, another letter from the surgeon asked, “200 sick and wounded soldiers are coming in can you come down immediately & assist us about the dressing.” 46 With Rich­mond in danger of falling to Union forces, the Confederate Army was placed under the command of General Robert E. Lee, who mounted an energetic defense of the Rebel capital. Lee forced the Union’s General George McClellan to retreat from the Virginia Peninsula, and the Confederacy was, for the time being, saved. Union wounded poured into New York. Niceties were largely forgotten under the crush of casualties—more than eight thousand Union soldiers had been wounded in the campaign—and on July 7, Platón Vallejo received a curt telegram from the New England Soldiers’ Relief Association surgeon that said only, “Sick & wounded will be here at three o’clock.” 47 Even though his mother had specifically advised him, “Platon . . . I want to tell you not to go to war,” events had gone far beyond leaving a conscientious physician of republican sensibilities any choice. Shortly before the second battle of Bull Run, on August 28–30, 1862, Platón Vallejo joined the New York Sanitary Commission of Volunteer Surgeons. 48 As a battlefield surgeon, he had to go out to the killing ground after the guns had stopped firing and bring the wounded to the field hospital. While at this task one night, he encountered a Confederate officer. The man turned to be not only a surgeon, there on a mission much like Platón’s own, but also a former classmate of his from Columbia University. They embraced briefly and no doubt asked about each other’s lives since the parting of their ways in New York. Then each returned to his duty, taking the wounded back to their respective lines. 49 After his tour of duty, Platón returned to New York to complete his med 

 

 

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ical studies, graduated in 1864, and went home to California. Still wishing to do his part in the struggle for freedom and democracy, he took a position as an assistant surgeon at the United States naval base at Mare Island, in the San Francisco Bay. He remained in service until the end of the great conflict in the east, in April 1865. Thereafter, he practiced medicine in the town of Vallejo—named after his father—until his death in 1925.50 Uladislao Vallejo, a younger brother of Platón’s, chose to go south instead and fought the French in Mexico. Ula, as he was called by his family, already had made a donation in June 1862 toward the sword commissioned in Cali­ fornia for presentation to General Ignacio Zaragoza (see chapter 2).51 In the spring of 1864, with the help of his father’s connections, he went to Mazatlan to join the Mexican Army, “for the cause of Mexico and his ancestors.” 52 This first essay at soldiering did not last long. Ula, along with Governor García Morales, was taken prisoner by imperialist forces and fell seriously ill with some sort of fever. Mariano Vallejo pulled strings to have Ula released and brought back to California aboard the steamer John L. Stephens. La Voz de Méjico informed its readers of the arrival of “Ula Vallejo, son of General Mariano Vallejo, who a few months ago departed from this port to offer his services to his old homeland, and who today returns to recuperate from a painful illness that he acquired during the campaign.” 53 But he had not returned to stay. President Juárez had dispatched General Plácido Vega, the former governor of the state of Sinaloa, to San Francisco as his personal agent with instructions to procure guns, ammunition, other supplies, and volunteers to fight the French.54 When the chartered barque Josephine sailed out of San Francisco in July of 1866, along with seven thousand rifles, barrels of gunpowder, percussion caps, uniforms, and other small arms, it carried the newly commissioned Captain Uladislao Vallejo of the Mexican Army. With him were other Latinos, including fellow Californios, notably Lieutenant Melitón Alviso and Captain (later Colonel) Víctor Castro.55 Josephine came into Boca de Piedras, near the port of Topolobampo in Sinaloa State, on August 7, and the passengers disembarked with their cargo of weaponry.56 Ula Vallejo and his companions hauled the matériel nearly six hundred miles into the desert to Chihuahua, where Juárez had temporarily established his seat of government. There, the young Californio was made a member of the Presidential Guard, a signal honor. By March 1867, Ula was in San Luis Potosí, preparing for the final push that would restore control of the country to its rightful government.57 In the fall of 1865, during a period when Platón and Ula were back in  

 

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Cali­fornia, the senior Vallejo went across the bay from his home in Sonoma to San Francisco. There he visited the offices of La Voz de Méjico. During his visit, he saw a Mexican flag displayed in the editor Mancillas’s office and observed that the symbols on it did not look like the coat of arms he had served under for twenty-four years before 1848. A discussion over the proper representation of the Mexican national coat of arms ensued, and Vallejo left convinced that this new flag was not a proper flag of “Mexico, my old homeland.” At his house, he located a flag that had been painted for him years earlier by a young Mexican artist, Agustín Dávila, which bore a design different from the one he had just seen in San Francisco. It had been displayed at commemorations of Mexican Independence Day every year from 1834 until 1848.58 In 1846, Vallejo had been rudely treated by the Bear Flag rebels, imprisoned for nearly a month, threatened with execution, and had his property rifled.59 When he was released from prison, he went home and kept that very Mexican flag in his house for years thereafter, preserving it for the memories it held of Mexico, “the homeland that gave us being, dear homeland.” 60 Although the change from Mexican to United States rule had been brusque, Vallejo eventually concluded it was a generally positive development and assumed a prominent role in the new society. He became an elder statesman, consulted on matters large and small, and was on speaking terms with most governors of the state. 61 Yet he could not entirely forsake his “old homeland.” He hoped that the flag he had preserved in his house for seventeen years now could help keep the memory of Mexico alive for other Latinos in California as well, so he packed it up and shipped it via Wells Fargo to the offices of La Voz de Méjico, where it could be put on display to remind Latinos of the fate of Mexico, “unfortunate homeland . . . trampled underfoot today by her own wicked children and ungrateful foreigners . . . but which I hope soon will be avenged.” 62 Vallejo at the same time took an active interest in matters pertaining to the future of the United States. Early in 1865, he made a trip to Washington, DC. There, on February 11, he wrote to his unidentified correspondent in San Francisco, “Today [Mexican ambassador Matías Romero] came to my room and took me in his carriage to present me to President Lincoln, at a public reception that was being given; the which he performed with great courtesy and adroitness.” In the Gold Rush years, Vallejo had hosted Ulysses Grant at his house in Sonoma County. 63 During Vallejo’s Washington trip of 1865, Grant repaid this courtesy, to the extent that military exigencies allowed, On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s   •   145

Figure 18.  General Mariano G. Vallejo (center) in Monterey on July 5, 1886, the fortieth anniversary of the raising of the U.S. flag over California. The floral arrangement commemorates the Mexican-American War, during which Vallejo was commander of Mexican forces in California. (BANCPIC–1978–195–05–PIC Grand Army Badge, courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)  

 

 

 

even though he was prosecuting the final stages of his siege of Richmond. On February 10, Romero gave a dinner for Vallejo, at which one of the guests was Vallejo’s old acquaintance the Latin-Yanquí admiral David Farragut, who had been stationed at Mare Island in California in 1854–1858. 64 Vallejo also spent some time with his old friend María Ámparo Ruiz de Burton, who later deployed her observations of wartime Washington in her satirical Englishlanguage novel Who Would Have Thought It? (published 1872). 65 Including side trips to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Niagara Falls, and other communities, Vallejo spent nearly five months touring the East Coast, finally returning to California on July 9, 1865. 66 In 1877, Vallejo visited Mexico City, where he was interviewed by a local newspaper correspondent. Summing up his life’s experience, he said, “I am an American because the treaty of Guadalupe [Hidalgo] placed me on the other side of the line, dividing the two nations, but I was born a Mexican; my ancestors were Mexican and I have always maintained with my sword the honor of Mexico. I have both Mexican and American children and I desire for my native land all the prosperity and progress enjoyed by the country of some of my children and mine by adoption” (see figure 18). 67  

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The Home Front: Confederates and Imperialists While most of California’s population supported the Union during the Civil War, there was a sizable minority who favored the Confederate cause. As early as April 1862, the editor Manuel  E. Rodríguez of La Voz de Méjico cited an article in the San Francisco Bulletin, that contained a letter claiming Los Angeles was full of Confederate sympathizers. 68 In April 1861, General Edwin V. Sumner transferred federal troops from Fort Mojave to Los Angeles because he was of the opinion that “there is more danger of disaffection at this place than any other in the State.” 69 In May 1864, a detachment of the Native California Cavalry were sent from their training camp at the Drum Barracks in Wilmington to Los Angeles, where they arrested one J. F. Bilderbeck, who allegedly had remarked in public “that he hoped the Confederates would kill every negro who might be taken with arms in his hands, and every white man who might be in command of them or with them.” 70 Some prominent Latinos were known to sympathize with the Confederacy as well, such as Ygnacio Sepúlveda (see below) and the wealthy Ygnacio del Valle. Del Valle was a close friend of the former boss of Los Angeles’ Democratic party, the lawyer and former Los Angeles Rifles member Joseph Lancaster Brent, who had left California in 1861 to join the Confederate Army. Brent never returned to California, even after the war was over, because he refused to take the oath of loyalty to the Union that California’s postwar legislature demanded from all law and court officials.71 Just after news of Lincoln’s assassination reached Los Angeles in April 1865, Del Valle’s friend Ulpiano Yndart warned him to keep his political opinions to himself and not even go out in public for the next few days, for “the Union Party will never forget, or refrain from charging the party of the South with responsibility for the death of their President.” Such a warning would not have been necessary had Del Valle not been a recognized Confederate sympathizer.72 Separatist opinion was also vaguely reported to exist in Northern Califor­ nia. In April 1863, La Voz de Méjico noted, “The other day, a notice was published that the separatists in Napa are holding secret assemblies that threaten to disturb the public peace. The loyal citizens have armed themselves, and General Wright already has knowledge of these matters.” 73 In the course of informing the Spanish-speaking public on the debate circulating in Cali­ fornia about the need for security against Confederate agents, Rodríguez cautioned against believing wild rumors. In light of the J. M. Chapman plot earlier that year, however—in which a handful of Confederates in San  

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Francisco unsuccessfully tried to seize a schooner and turn pirate against U.S. shipping along the Pacific coast—he was obliged to acknowledge that Confederate sympathies and Confederate agents did exist in California. “Ever since, some time ago, the authorities of this port apprehended the schooner C. W. Chapman [sic] in the Bay—which, as it seems, had the intention of becoming a corsair upon American commerce—alarms have been frequent. . . . Without a doubt, there is something of exaggeration in all these fears; but, nevertheless, it is certain that, in the south of the state, there exists a germ of insurrection, and there will not fail to be turbulent spirits in other towns in the hinterland.” 74 In November 1864, two outlaws claiming Confederate sympathies, John Mason and Jim Henry (the latter an alias for Tom McCauley), murdered three passengers while holding up the stagecoach that ran between Watson­ ville on the coast and Visalia in the Central Valley. The justification these bandits reportedly gave for their atrocious act was that “their victims were Republicans, and they had sworn to murder every Republican they might find.” 75 Together with a small band of like-minded supporters, Mason and Henry took to the hills and proceeded to terrorize Fresno and Monterey Counties for months. In January 1865, Company B of the Native California Cavalry, under the command of Lieutenant John Lafferty, arrived at Camp Low in Monterey County. As described by Major Michael O’Brien, “the gay and gallant Spanish lancaroes [sic] came dashing through the town with the lances in their hand, a flag flying from each of them. I assure you that they presented a warlike appearance.” Major O’Brien informed them that the bandits were hiding out not far away and sent Lafferty and twelve of his men to capture them. They scoured the countryside, but the Mason and Henry gang managed to elude them, and Company B soon thereafter was sent to Arizona, where their Captain Jimeno was to take part in the standoff at Magdalena.76  

 

 

In addition to supporters of the Confederacy, Latinos in California also occasionally had to worry about sympathizers with French rule in Mexico. In July 1862, Rodríguez commented in La Voz de Méjico, “They write to us from Los Angeles that, in that part of the state of California as well, there are bad Mexicans who sympathize with the French invaders.” 77 French sympathizers could be quite open about their opinions, although they ran the risk of a violent response from their political opponents. A notice from the town of Ventura, for instance, described what happened when one man tried to 148  •   On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s

celebrate Maximilian’s arrival in Mexico. “In San Buenaventura, a conservative—or traitor—wanted to celebrate with music and brandy the news that Maximilian had come to Mexico; but the patriotic Mexicans got together and gave him such a warm welcome with stout sticks that the Maximilian supporter had to run away at a moment’s notice.” 78 At New Almaden, “Señora Luz Bailón heard that an individual was saying ‘Long live Maximilian! Long live the Empire! Long live Napoleon!’ and ‘Death to Mexico!’ The lady, irritated by these cries, got up from her seat and delivered him such a tremendous blow with a stick that she left him senseless. That’s how Mexican women teach traitors a lesson.” 79 Despite these occasional anecdotes, estimating how many Latinos sympathized with the French is difficult. One of San Francisco’s Spanish-language newspapers, El Éco del Pacífico, although previously a liberal journal, by late 1862 had become an ardent supporter of the French Intervention, due to its affiliation with the French-language L’Écho du Pacifique. Only one issue of El Éco del Pacifico published during the Civil War survives today. 80 Thus, what little is known of Latino French sympathizers in California comes mostly from El Éco articles reprinted in San Francisco’s liberal Spanish-language newspapers, La Voz de Méjico and El Nuevo Mundo, not infrequently accompanied by sarcastic commentary from the editors. 81 After the fall of Puebla and the occupation of Mexico City in 1863, the victorious French general, Élie-Frédéric Forey, called together the conservatives’ Assembly of Notables to announce a new political order in Mexico. Some Latinos in California supported this program, and at the beginning of 1864 a group of them wrote a statement saying so, which first circulated as a broadside. La Voz de Méjico obtained a copy and printed the statement, adding a lengthy, sardonic editorial introduction. Thanks to this publication, some idea of the opinions of imperialist sympathizers in California can be known. The statement began by reminding readers of the horrors of recent Mexican history, including the civil war of 1857–1861. “Take a look back, go over the pages of our history, and . . . you will always find the poisoning hand, the fratricidal hand that tyrannizes in the name of liberty and destroys in the name of reform, leaving behind its bloody traces, desolation and extermination.” Their solution to the problem was monarchy. And in accordance with Napoleon III’s plans, they knew just who ought to occupy the throne: “We proclaim as our emperor the magnanimous and enlightened ferdinand maximilian, archduke of austria.” Based on their self-description as “conservatives in California . . . far from  

 

 

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Figure 19. Ygnacio Sepúlveda, a scion of the Southern California Sepúlveda family, was a California county judge in 1869, a federal district judge in 1874, and a superior court judge in 1879. In 1883 he went to Mexico and did not return to Los Angeles until 1913. (Courtesy Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History)

our beloved homeland,” it would appear that the promoters of this statement had fled Mexico after the Juárez government triumphed in the War of the Reform (see chapter 2). None of them, however, seem to have signed the statement. 82 Another prominent French sympathizer whom La Voz de Méjico named was Ygnacio Sepúlveda, a member of the numerous, Los Angeles–based Sepúlveda clan and a cousin of the Del Valles (see figure 19). He was admitted to the bar in 1863 after Joseph Lancaster Brent mentored him in his law studies. The liberal press noted his movements in California during this period and denounced him as both a Copperhead and an associate of Mexi­ can imperialists. “The steamer Brother Jonathan came in on Saturday the 18th of the present month, arriving from Los Angeles. . . . Among her passengers were the infamous traitor ex-general Gándara, his son F. Gándara, and A. I. [sic] Sepúlveda (the Copperhead), who has been the traveling companion of these noteworthy persons.” 83 This identification of Sepúlveda as a Confederate sympathizer, in the context of his accompanying two Frenchsupporting Mexicans, underlines the close linkage between the Confederates and Mexican imperialists in the perceptions of many Latinos in California. In this case, those perceptions were not mistaken: Sepúlveda had relocated to  

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Mexico, where he was a member of the Assembly of Notables and held judicial office under Maximilian’s regime. 84

Although to date they have received scant mention in accounts of California’s military history, Latinos were among those who formed militia units to assist in maintaining law and order during the Gold Rush, particularly in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara (see chapter 1). During the American Civil War, nearly all the regular army units stationed in California were recalled to the war in the eastern states, and local militias had to take over their duties, which included keeping domestic order and guarding against any possible Confederate attempts to invade or infiltrate the state. 85 For the most part, these official state militias comprised Atlantic Americans and European immigrants, although a few Latinos did join here and there. Only one allLatino official California state militia company is on record, the Zaragoza Guard of Marysville, active in the years 1865–1866; thirty-two of its fifty-two members also belonged to the Marysville junta patriótica. 86 To qualify as an official militia of the state of California, any group organized for that purpose had to register the names of its members and elected officers with the county clerk in the county of its formation and, perhaps more crucially, had to have a bond on deposit with the county, normally in the thousands of dollars, to guarantee its members’ good conduct. 87 Many would-be members of Latino militias in the 1860s were anything but prominent and certainly did not have the financial resources to put up the necessary bonds. Yet there were unofficial Latino militias in a number of communities throughout the state: Marysville, Sonora, New Almaden, Hornitos, and San Francisco. Their existence demonstrates the willingness of many Latino men to translate their support of the Union and Juarist causes into concrete action, even if they were unable, for one reason or another, to join the regular armed forces of either the United States or Mexico. These unofficial, unregistered militias have gone largely unnoticed in formal military histories of California, due to the lack of official records of their formation or activities. The contemporaneous press, however, especially the Spanish-language press, did notice their existence, and it is thanks to newspaper accounts that anything is known about the Latino militias at all. Yet the press had to be cautious in what it said about their activities, so as not to implicate militia members in breaking the law against recruiting men on U.S. soil to fight in Mexico. As a result, they received sporadic and selective  

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coverage, making it difficult to reconstruct in many cases exactly when they were organized, who their members were, or what the nature of their routine activities was. Most frequently, they were mentioned in connection with celebrations of the Cinco de Mayo, Mexican Independence Day, and other festive events, which produces in the modern reader the misleading impression that they were merely a species of color guard, with no real military function. But one article does provide evidence that at least some of these militias equipped and trained themselves for serious military action, whether or not they ended up seeing any, in either the United States or Mexico. In an 1864 editorial on the subject of Mexicans’ patriotism by José Rentería and Antonio Mancillas of La Voz de Méjico, the editors observed approvingly that some young Latino men were drilling in the use of weapons in the hope of going to Mexico to fight the French, once they could scrape together funds for their passage. “At New Almaden this idea has become general to such a point that they have managed to form a fine military company, with very good weapons, splendidly uniformed; and we already know that they are preparing to celebrate the cinco de mayo with all the pomp their scarce resources permit.” 88 Until such time as they could raise travel funds, however, it would seem that the New Almaden militia had few outlets for its members’ military ambitions, except for serving as a ceremonial guard in Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day celebrations. Aside from this somewhat indiscreet mention of the New Almaden group’s military ambitions, however, the Spanish-language press usually took care to discuss the Latino militias of the day only in connection with their participation in patriotic celebrations. Nonetheless, it is not unreasonable to assume that like their counterparts at the New Almaden mine, the militias in San Francisco, Marysville, Sonora, and Hornitos were formed with more serious intent. San Francisco’s Latinos organized a small militia of artillerymen sometime before Mexican Independence Day, 1863, outfitted with colorful uniforms in the accepted military style of the day. According to La Voz de Méjico’s description of that year’s festivities, “At ten-thirty in the morning, the crowd that was to go to the cathedral was already gathered at Turnverein Hall. . . . They formed up, placing the artillerymen—fifteen men in number—in front. Thanks to their scarlet tunics with green collar and cuffs and brass buttons, blue trousers, and kepis with a tricolor rosette on the front, above two little brass cannon [insignia], they presented a martial appearance.” Late in the afternoon, the artillerymen accompanied the band and dignitaries up Russian Hill, where various speeches were made, then fired a  

 

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twenty-one gun salute to the Mexican flag as it was lowered before a cheering crowd. 89 A passing reference in La Voz de Méjico just before the Cinco de Mayo celebrations of the following year suggests that taking part in patriotic ceremonies was not the only connection the Latino artillerymen of San Francisco had with California’s juntas. The report was mainly concerned with irregularities found in accounts recently submitted by one of the Central Managing Junta’s trustees, the actor Gerardo López de Castillo (for more on Castillo, see chapter 2). All the money apparently had been accounted for, but some had been spent otherwise than the Junta Central had authorized. “We add that the aforesaid sum was put in the hands of this gentleman a little more than eight months ago, and that the Central Managing Junta entrusted him with the purchase of some trunks with it, to hold the equipment, etc., of the body of Mexican artillerymen that was organized in this city.” Castillo had, instead, spent it on something else.90 The fact that the Central Managing Junta, which was directly responsible for remitting funds to Juárez’s government in Mexico, had planned to spend some money on storage for the artillerymen’s “equipment, etc.”—that is, their military supplies—hints that, in this case at least, it was also to some unknown extent helping to finance the outfitting and equipping of a Latino militia on American soil whose members intended to go fight in Mexico. This would have been quite illegal, of course, which doubtless was why La Voz de Méjico was so vague about what was supposed to have gone into those trunks. The necessity of not alerting U.S. authorities to violations of the law against recruiting men to fight in foreign conflicts meant that the Spanish-language press rarely printed the names of militia members. One individual known to have belonged to the San Francisco artillerymen was a Captain Guillén, their commander, who was mentioned as leading them at a Republican political rally in October 1864.91 Another is known only because that year’s Cinco de Mayo festivities featured, among other things, a 101-gun salute, during which one of the artillerymen, Jesús Arellano, burned his hands when his cannon discharged prematurely. “Through luck, the burn was not serious, but he was left unable to work for several days. At the Hall, $25.50 was collected, which was given to Señor Arellano to help with his medical treatment.” 92 Latinos in other communities followed San Francisco’s and New Alma­ den’s examples. By the fall of 1863, a company of Latino militia had formed in Marysville with as many as forty members. Their uniforms, such as they were, consisted of black trousers and blue shirts, and all the men were on horseback.  

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At the time, no newspaper report mentioned their unit name.93 The following year, a correspondent who signed himself only as “R.R.”—possibly Ramón Ramírez, who appeared as a member of Marysville’s junta patriótica in a donation list the month before—sent his local English-language newspaper’s description of the town’s Mexican Independence Day festivities to La Voz de Méjico, which printed it in Spanish translation; his letter included the militia’s name, the Mexican Lancers. At nine on the morning of September 16, the Latino community, led by Juan N. Leal, the president of the Marysville junta, gathered around the Mexican flag at the intersection of Third and A Streets. The Marysville Band approached, followed by the Marysville Rifles, under Lieutenant A. G. Randall, and the Union Guard, commanded by Captain Hubbard. The Mexican Lancers formally received this delegation. To a salvo of small-arms fire, the Mexican flag was lowered from its pole and accorded a place of honor in the parade that followed, led off by Señor Leal, the band, the Rifles, the Union Guard, and the Lancers, who were “mounted and armed Mexican style.” 94 Next in the procession was a carriage in which rode the four official speakers of the day, all women. Candelaria García bore the Mexican flag, Abelina Campos the Chilean flag, Maria García the Peruvian flag, and Carmelita Wilson the flag of the United States. The parade halted in front of the Marysville city hall for the ladies to deliver their speeches. Each woman gave a tribute to the flag she carried. Wilson made her address in English, with a good portion of her remarks devoted to the American Civil War, “expressing her most ardent wishes that the government be supported and the rebellion be put down.” The parade then resumed, pausing in front of the local newspaper office to give three cheers for President Lincoln, and finally concluded with a picnic. Throughout these proceedings, the Union Guard periodically fired off salvos in the town square.95 In the mining town of Sonora, a similar group of Latinos had been organized, probably for similar purposes, by September 1864, when they participated in their community’s Mexican Independence Day celebrations. At 8 a.m. on September 16, the American, Chilean, and Peruvian flags were brought out to join the Mexican flag that had been raised the night before, and “at ten in the morning, the company of national militia formed up, at the direction of citizen Estanislao López; they called the spectators’ attention to themselves on account of their elegant dress.” For part of that afternoon’s parade, the town firemen joined this Mexican militia.96 In Hornitos in Mariposa County, the local Latino militia took part in  

 

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the Cinco de Mayo commemoration of 1865, which was a joint project by Hornitos and the small neighboring communities of Merced River, Mari­ posa, Santa Cruz, and El Oso. Things got under way at 6 a.m., when a cannon was fired and a band simultaneously struck up below the flagstaff. “At 10:00 in the morning, the band went to the hall, where the company of national militia formed up, at the direction of citizen [Pedro] María Herrera,” and a parade commenced. Another, larger parade took place that evening, ending up once again at the hall. “The hall was very splendid and was elegantly decorated. . . . There could be seen pictures of the distinguished President Benito Juárez [and] that of the hero of the 5th of May, accompanied by those of the immortal Lincoln, Washington, Comonfort, [and] González Ortega, and many other adornments . . . not forgetting that the North American flag also accompanied us, which was invited by the committee.” 97 In these reports of Latino militias’ participation in public holidays, the newspapers do not make any explicit link between the parading men in uniform and military action, but despite their caution, they give sufficient hints to indicate that some, if not all, of these Latino militias were organized for the deadly serious purpose of training men to fight in Mexico and that in many cases, the juntas probably were involved in this effort. Could more be discovered about the militias, it very well might reveal that many of the men who made up their membership were also part of a local junta. Notable throughout these descriptions of the celebrations, moreover, is the close identification of the Union and Juarist causes, as evidenced by the participation of non-Latino American citizens in Mexican patriotic celebrations and the conspicuous display of American patriotic symbols alongside those of Mexico. This linkage was equally prominent in California politics in this period.

Amid the protracted battle against slavery and rebellion, Abraham Lincoln’s first term as president was nearing its end, and he had to convince the American electorate to let him see the war through to its conclusion. In some areas of the country, his popularity was low. Antiwar Democrats, popularly known as Peace Democrats or Copperheads, created dissent in the North and the West, including some parts of California. The Peace Democrats were a sizable faction of the Democratic Party, sick of four years of an unprecedentedly bloody war, who did not view the idealistic cause of extending liberty to the enslaved as worth the loss of so much American life On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s   •   155

and did not believe war was the way to preserve the Union. They put up U.S. General George McClellan as their candidate to challenge Lincoln’s prosecution of the seemingly endless war. Their platform urged that peace be made and the Rebels readmitted to the Union without conditions—even being allowed to keep their slaves—and granted any concessions necessary to end the war and reunify the country. The Copperheads’ simplistic slogans appealed to many voters in the war-weary American public.98 Republican and War Democrat polemicists accordingly set out to refute them in the weeks prior to the election, including in California’s Spanish-language press. One such piece, published in La Voz de Méjico only a week before election day, specifically addressed “Californios and Hispanic Americans.” It argued, in part:  

 

No matter how much they may tell you that if McClellan should be elected we will have peace, it won’t exist except on the paper where he signs his name. McClellan has said that the only condition he desires is union; that is to say, that if the Rebels agree to reenter the Union, he is disposed to concede to them all their other aims . . . that is to say, the continuance of slavery, favoring their filibustering tendencies, protecting their pretentions to the states in the west of Mexico—in a word, letting them be the masters of the country and approving all of their actions.99  

Mancillas of La Voz de Méjico exhorted Latinos who were citizens of the United States to vote for Lincoln and urged immigrant Latinos who were not citizens to become naturalized in order to do the same (see figure 20). He declared, “The cause of the Union is the same one that Mexico is upholding. . . . Our destiny is discovered to be identified with our adopted country.” 100 California’s Latinos saw that the United States’ struggle was also a Central and South American struggle. A meeting was held at San Francisco’s Philharmonic Hall on October 9 “for the purpose of establishing a Republican club in this city, composed of all the individuals of our Latin race, which may come to be a true nucleus of unity among all the sons of the republics of the American continent; and equally for lending our decided support to the government of the United States.” The result was the foundation of the Club Unionista Hispano-Americano de Lincoln y Johnson (Hispanic American Union Club of Lincoln and Johnson).101 The Hispanic American Union Club soon formed a coalition with other groups that supported Lincoln, including the Irish Club for Lincoln and Johnson. To drum up enthusiasm for Lincoln’s reelection, this coalition 156  •   On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s

Figure 20.  La Voz de Méjico supported Abraham Lincoln’s reelection campaign. This advertisement ran on the front page of every issue from October 11 to November 5, 1864. (La Voz de Méjico, October 15, 1864, p. 1. CESLAC UCLA)

held a torchlight parade through the streets of San Francisco on the night of October 16, 1864. Flags bedecked the city’s buildings, their windows were illuminated, and bands played military tunes. By seven-thirty in the evening, Latinos from California, Mexico, and other countries had jammed Terpsichore Hall to overflowing, a good number of them belonging to the Hispanic American Union Club, which used the hall as its headquarters. Marching four abreast, all carrying torches, placards, or the flags of the various American republics, the Latinos joined the parade as it passed by. The Mexican artillerymen in their scarlet tunics were especially visible. The banOn e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s   •   157

ners and signs the Hispanic American Club carried attested to their bilingual and bicultural heritage. One sign identifying the Union cause in the American Civil War with resistance to the French Intervention in Mexico read, in a combination of English and Spanish, “Honest Abe is our man. Muera Maximiliano [‘Death to Maximilian’].” Another banner paired civil and military heroes of both wars: Lincoln, Juárez Grant, Negrete.102

A third proclaimed decidedly negative opinions of the leaders of the Con­ federacy and the imperialists in Mexico: Maximiliano el usurpador / Davis el traidor (“Maximilian the usurper / Davis the traitor”), while a fourth avowed the intention of enforcing the Monroe Doctrine against Maximilian as soon as it became possible: Maximiliano, vete à tu casa, porque con estos muchachos te echarémos fuera (“Maximilian, go home, because with these boys we’re going to throw you out!”). Yet another banner approvingly cited Lincoln’s emancipation of the slaves: Dios hizo al hombre / y Lincoln lo declaró libre (“God made man / and Lincoln declared him free”). A huge Mexican flag stretched across Clay Street from the offices of La Voz de Méjico, and a banner hanging from the windows announced the paper’s endorsement: “La Voz de Méjico / Lincoln y Johnson.” 103 Latinos all around the state made speeches and wrote letters in favor of Lincoln and the Union. Latino miners had founded the town of Hornitos, in Mariposa County, in 1849; fifteen years later, in 1864, it still had a large Latino population. As in most towns in California, the majority of Latinos in Hornitos supported freedom and democracy, and therefore supported Lincoln. Late in October 1864, the Latino community there helped stage a pro-Lincoln rally. The flags of both Mexico and the United States were prominently displayed together, as they had been in the San Francisco rally. But among the Atlantic American population of Hornitos were a number of people who supported McClellan and the peace platform. Annoyed by the Latinos’ support of Lincoln, local Copperheads made a dramatic public demonstration. They procured a six-pound cannon and, after the speeches were over and the crowd had drifted away, shot a hole through the flag of the Mexican Republic as it waved beside the Stars and Stripes. Then they fled the scene, whereupon a group of Latinos seized the cannon and spiked it with an ordinary iron file. When they taunted the Copperheads the fol158  •   On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s

lowing day over this literal spiking of their gun, one of the latter replied sullenly, “We don’t expect to get, and we don’t even want, the Mexican vote in this campaign.” This insult to the Mexican flag outraged Latinos who supported Lincoln. Mancillas, with some hyperbole, likened this act to the firing of Rebel guns at the American flag flying over Fort Sumter in 1861, thus implicitly equating McClellan’s supporters with the Confederates. The damaged Mexican flag was brought to San Francisco for repairs, but before it was mended, it was displayed at La Voz de Méjico’s offices in a bid for publicity, so that the Latino community could see firsthand the outrage that Lincoln’s opponents had committed. Mancillas urged, “We invite all Mexicans and other Hispanic Americans who have the right to vote to redouble their efforts in favor of the Union cause, from today until the day of the presidential election.” 104 A little more than a week before the election on November 8, 1864, Valentín Alviso, a youthful member of an old Californio family in San Leandro, was scheduled to speak at a Union political rally in his hometown, which he invited local Latino residents to attend, “mounted on their best horses [and] bearing the flags of their respective national origins.” The editors of La Voz de Méjico expressed the hope that San Leandro’s Latinos would attend Alviso’s rally, “to publicly demonstrate the patriotic and liberal sentiments that inspire them, and thus to give the lie to those who are trying to seduce them with contemptible promises into voting contrary to their own interests”—by which the editors undoubtedly meant McClellan’s supporters.105 In Southern California, on October 14, a downtown electioneering parade organized by the English-speaking Lincoln and Johnson Club of Los Angeles featured a U.S. Army band that had come all the way from the Drum Barracks at the port of San Pedro. This procession marched along Main Street, pausing in front of the headquarters of the local junta patriótica, where a crowd of Latinos—Californios, Mexicans, Central and South Americans—waited to join it. The flags of the United States and Mexico thereafter led the joint parade side by side, with the Latino participants carrying banners and placards in Spanish denouncing slavery, tyranny, and secession, and the Atlantic Americans banners and placards with similar sentiments in English. When the procession came to a halt in front of the Lafayette Hotel, T. G. Phelps, Ramón J. Hill, a Lieutenant Munday, and the local lawyer J. R. Gitchell all made speeches in English, after which the junta president Filomeno Ibarra addressed the crowd in Spanish, reminding them that the fight against slavery and tyranny was being waged in both the United States and Mexico.  

 

 

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We Mexicans have been invited by the Americans to join with them as brothers in their political ideals; and as we have the same sentiments as the Ameri­ cans of the North, and we defend the Union and liberty, we do not hesitate to come together and make up one consolidated body with the same ideals. . . . It is our duty, as true Mexicans, to support the liberal party of the United States, giving our vote to Lincoln and Johnson. . . . It behooves us to do so because we are driven by our common feelings with the men who have the same ideals we do, just as the salvation of Mexico depends on the triumph of the North.106

Previous to his appearance on the speaker’s platform in Los Angeles, Hill had delivered an election speech in support of the Union to Latinos farther north along the California coast, in San Buenaventura (modern Ventura) on September 29. Also campaigning for Lincoln’s reelection in the area were prominent Latinos from Santa Barbara, José María Covarrubias and Agustín Janssens. The unnamed correspondent who provided an account of their speeches to La Voz de Méjico predictably linked Latino support for Lincoln to opposition to Maximilian in Mexico: “I am pleased to communicate to you that the Mexican population [here] is made up of loyal and patriotic gentlemen who hate Maximilian and his followers like death. All are in favor of the party of Lincoln and will vote the Unionist ballot.” 107 In Contra Costa County, the Union Club in Martinez, together with Union Clubs from the towns of San Ramon, Lafayette, and Antioch, held a large pro-Lincoln rally in the county agricultural society’s hall in Pachecoville on October 29. Bands played, a cannon was fired, and flags waved. When the Mexican flag was carried into the rally, Latinos and Atlantic Americans alike broke into applause. A member of the Berreyesa family addressed the crowd in Spanish, as did the Atlantic American who followed him to the podium, a Mr. Matheson. “If we may judge by the enthusiasm with which these speeches were received, the party of treason [Democrats] received some stout blows. The native Californians of this county are all united in favor of Lincoln and Johnson.” 108 Santos Berreyesa had spoken in Napa “about the Union cause” on Octo­ ber  16, and the San Francisco–based president of the Hispanic American Union Club, Agustín D. Splivalo, made a speaking tour to Latinos in Sacra­ mento, Marysville, Placerville, Oroville, and Nevada City, where he found “the Hispanic American citizens well informed about the political issues of the day, and disposed to support our candidates, Lincoln and Johnson, with their votes and influence.” 109  

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As Election Day approached, Mancillas of La Voz de Méjico ran an editorial congratulating Latinos for having demonstrated their greatest political involvement since California became part of the United States in 1850. “This is the first time, since the organization of the state, that the Hispanic American population has participated in so active a manner in the political issues of the country.” He concluded by urging them on, as soldiers to their duty, to support the Republican ticket on November 8. “On election day, may all of you be ready to close with the enemy and win a glorious victory. . . . May November 8 be a memorable day in history, and may every one of you have the satisfaction of having contributed to assuring the definitive triumph of patriotism over treason, of liberty over slavery.” 110 When the election results became known on November 10, La Voz de Méjico proudly announced: Mayoría Unionista en el Estado (“Unionist Majority in the State”), Entusiasmo Popular por el Triunfo de Lincoln (“Popular Enthusiasm for Lincoln’s Triumph”).111 Lincoln had won reelection, and the Civil War was to be pursued to its end.

Victory on the Eastern Front The April 12, 1865, issue of El Nuevo Mundo carried an article with the momentous title: Rendicion de Lee con su ejercito. Capitulacion Honrosa! ¡Generosidad con los vencidos! (“Surrender of Lee, Together with His Army. Honorable Capitulation! Generous Terms to the Defeated!”). It provided, in Spanish translation, texts of the notes exchanged between Grant and Lee, leading up to the surrender of Lee’s forces.112 Rebel forces were melting away, and the once intimidating Confederacy was disappearing.113 With Lee’s surrender, all rational hope had been lost that the South could continue in rebellion.114 The great crusade to eliminate slavery and restore democracy in the United States was coming to a victorious conclusion. The Spanish-language press in California also relayed the reaction of liberal newspapers abroad to the impending fall of the Confederacy, quoting, for instance, an editorial from Madrid’s La Democracia: “‘Peace goes forth in the United States, a peace achieved by the mercy of Lincoln’s firmness, a peace at whose end is the destruction of slavery. . . . The slave will disappear from the sacred soil of liberty. The slave will break his chains. The republic’s territory will be preserved intact.’ ” 115 In Los Angeles on April 10, the day after Lee’s surrender, Colonel James F. On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s   •   161

Curtis ordered his soldiers at Drum Barracks to turn out in full uniform to celebrate. The next day, they promptly did so. Among the men under his command were two companies of the Spanish-speaking Native Cali­ for­nia Cavalry, three English-speaking companies of the 4th Infantry, and Company A of the English-speaking 1st Cavalry. On horseback, Curtis led his assorted troops on parade through the town of Wilmington, to the cheering of a crowd, much of which would have been in Spanish. Partway through the parade, Curtis ordered a halt and had an aide read out the Order of the Day, and the soldiers gave three cheers, for General Grant, for the Union, and for Colonel Curtis. Touched, Curtis made a speech that must have dwelt on the recent events in the eastern United States, and on the situation in Mexico, for it concluded, “Brothers, a huzzah for President Juárez, and another for the independence of Mexico!” This brought loud applause from the soldiers of the United States Army, even moving some to tears. The Spanish-speaking and English-speaking soldiers turned to one another. “The native soldiers and the Americans, mixed together, shook hands, swearing that they would go to Mexico to defend the Republic against the monarchy that a despot from Europe wants to erect upon the blood of its children.” 116 Freedom and democracy had won after a long battle in the United States, but it remained to be seen what the outcome would be in Mexico. But abruptly the cheers were silenced, as black-bordered headlines summarized a sudden shocking turn of events. In its April 17 issue, El Nuevo Mundo announced, “Death of President Lincoln! Assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington! Flight of the assassin! . . . Immense sorrow and outrage of the people!” (See figure 21.) La Voz de Méjico the next day echoed, “President Lincoln assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington the night of April 14. The assassin has escaped. Death of the president. . . . Horrible tragedy. . . . The nation weeps in sorrow. Great outrage. They are pursuing the assassins. Details of this horrible event.” 117 In San Francisco, riots ensued as news of the president’s assassination spread through the city. Particularly targeted were individuals and organizations known or thought to be sympathetic to the Confederacy or to the imperialist regime in Mexico. Antonio Mancillas got firsthand experience of the reaction when an angry mob appeared at the offices of the Spanishlanguage Monitor, a “mouthpiece of the Catholic clergy and of the damned traitor faction,” directly across the hall from the offices of his own Voz de Méjico.118 Mancillas was up on the roof, draping the Mexican flag with black crepe in mourning for Lincoln, when the mob arrived at the b­ uilding 162  •   On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s

Figure 21.  Latinos in California were shocked by the news of Lincoln’s assassination. A little more than a week after the tragic event, El Nuevo Mundo published a specially commissioned engraving of the moment when John Wilkes Booth shot the president. (El Nuevo Mundo, April 28, 1865, p. 1. CESLAC UCLA)

on Clay Street. They gave several cheers for the Mexican Republic and its defenders, then stormed up three flights of stairs, intent on wrecking the Monitor’s presses. Initially confused as to which Spanish-language news­ paper’s offices were which, the leading edge of the mob invaded La Voz’s office and started throwing things out of the windows, but when their mistake was pointed out to them, they redirected their attentions across the hall instead, “and there Troy burned. The type and its cases were thrown out into the street; the frames, stones, forms, and all its materials entirely demolished. The desks, books, and other tools in the editor’s office met the same fate, its whole contents being converted to a huge heap of wreckage.” Mancillas also reported that a mob had attacked the British-owned paper News Letter, which he scornfully claimed had “constituted itself the official mouthpiece of Maximilian.” He noted that its next issue was to have appeared in San Francisco on April 22, “but the riot on that day has caused it to appear in hell [instead].” Also victims of mob action were the English-language Democratic Press and Occidental and the French-language Union Franco-Américaine. After destroying the Monitor’s offices, the mob Mancillas had witnessed “went on to settle accounts with our ignoble enemies, L’Echo du Pacifique and its offspring, the Spanish-language El Éco. The multitude, enraged, attacked those Gallic mouthpieces that so often have insulted the Union government and all the Hispanic American peoples; their desires were good: to severely punish those exponents of Napoleon.” The intended destruction of L’Echo and El Éco, however, encountered an obstacle: these newspapers shared office space and even machinery with the pro-Union English-language paper Alta California, against which the mob harbored no animosity. One of Alta’s owners, Frederick McCrellish, hastily negotiated with the crowd. “Promising them L’Echo du Pacifique would no longer be published in that building, he caused the people to desist, with regret, from their undertaking; although they stayed there a long time, waiting to ambush its editor Mr. Derbec, for whom they loudly offered a thousand dollars if they might be given him.” Étienne Derbec, however, had the good sense to lie low for a time. General Irvin MacDowell, the commander of the Department of the Pacific, persuaded the mob to disperse, assuring them that L’Echo would be closed down. By evening, U.S. soldiers were stationed in L’Echo’s offices. Indeed, martial law had to be declared in San Francisco; throughout the night U.S. infantry and cavalry patrolled the streets, and by morning things had quieted down.119 McDowell was as good as his word: L’Echo du Pacifique never published again, although Derbec went on to start a new French-language jour164  •   On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s

nal, Le Courier de San Francisco, in May 1865. Doing so, however, required a considerable investment of capital for him, as the U.S. soldiers who were assigned to watch over L’Echo’s offices took it upon themselves to destroy its equipment quite as thoroughly as any mob might have done. Derbec sued the city but never recovered more than a small fraction of the sixty thousand dollars in damages he claimed for L’Echo or the ten thousand dollars for El Éco.120 Latinos throughout the West who had supported Lincoln’s reelection so that he could see the Civil War through to its conclusion were stunned and grieved by the president’s assassination. Donaciano Mazón, the president of the junta in Virginia City, Nevada, summoned its members to a special meeting to reflect on this shocking event. He recalled the recent euphoria of victory, then noted that just at that moment of relief and hope, “a new Brutus raised up his murderous arm and killed one of the most distinguished men of the American continent.” Mazón did not need to go into the details of Lincoln’s assassination, for the junta’s members would have been as fully informed of the events as anyone else in Virginia City. Instead, he dwelt on the meaning of the tragic event. “This victim was the president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who after giving freedom to more than four million persons who sobbed beneath the heavy yoke of slavery, sealed with his own blood the redemption of his fellow men. . . . Rest in peace, Apostle of Liberty! Posterity will bless your great deeds, and the remotest generations will speak the name of Lincoln with respect, as one of the principal martyrs and saviors of oppressed humanity.” 121 Rafael H. González then explicitly linked the events on the Atlantic coast to developments in Mexico and Latin America. “An unthought-of event has come to fill the hearts of every son of the American continent with mourning. . . . Mexicans! Let us weep for the loss of this virtuous citizen, martyr to the liberty of America.” Although the man had been assassinated, González continued, “his teachings, which have entered the hearts of the people, will not disappear; and his name will be made eternal in history, beside those of Washington and Franklin.” He said that the crowned heads of Europe had tried to take advantage of the Civil War to gain territory in the Americas, but concluded that this had backfired badly on them. “Now they see her [the United States] transformed into a warrior nation, with sufficient resources to raise her voice with pride and say: I have no rival who may compete with me on the American continent.” The North’s victory over the Confederacy and the United States’ consequent elevation to the first rank of modern milOn e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s   •   165

itary powers gave hope to Latinos because it meant the Monroe Doctrine at long last might be enforced. “Here waves a flag with thirty-six stars, and its brilliance illuminates all America. . . . Out of the Americas with any hungry despot who comes here to satisfy his greed!” 122 Memorial processions were held throughout the state, in Sacramento, Stockton, Visalia, Placerville, San Andreas, Benicia, Petaluma, Monterey, Sonoma, and Markleeville, among other places.123 In San Francisco, a symbolic catafalque carried the simple inscription “Lincoln—Firm— Faithful—True.” The mourners marching behind the catafalque’s military escort included the Mexican consul, José A. Godoy, and some members of the San Francisco junta patriótica.124 In Virginia City’s public mourning ceremonies, two members of the local junta were invited to take places of honor beside the catafalque of the assassinated president.125 As soon as news of Lincoln’s assassination reached New Almaden, the Latino residents draped their houses in mourning. “The sorrow was general, and of so open a kind that the Americans of this place have given a thousand proofs of their gratitude, and were astonished by the two thousand Mexicans living at this mine, for their exhibitions of sorrow at the death of the man whose memory is so appreciated by all the American Continent.” One of the officers of the New Almaden junta, Jesús Herrera, composed a eulogy comparing Lincoln to the great martyrs in history, which ended with the promise that “they will always find us, the Mexicans living at the New Almaden Mine, fighting under your championship and the banner of liberty.” 126 When the news arrived in California, some Copperheads and Confederate sympathizers made public demonstrations of joy over Lincoln’s death. In Monterey County, “it is said that the separatist Democrats of Castroville and Allison Ranch . . . when they learned of the unfortunate death of Mr. Lincoln . . . marched in a parade and shot off artillery salvos.” 127 Company A of the Native California Cavalry was at the Benicia barracks when news of Lincoln’s death arrived. On April 23, a detachment of twenty-five cavalrymen from this company, under Lieutenant Marcelino E. Jiménez, had to be sent to Green Valley in Contra Costa County to restore the peace after authorities received reports that men alleged to be secessionists were rioting there in triumph at the news of Lincoln’s assassination. According to one report, “they declared themselves openly in rebellion, the day they got the news of President Lincoln’s death.” The cavalry met with violent resistance. “At their arrival, the rioters barricaded themselves in the house of one of their number; and upon the troop’s approach, they fired on it, wounding  

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two of the soldiers,” Antonio Guilman and Juan León. The Native California Cavalry promptly returned fire, wounding two of the rioters in turn. This firm response soon resulted in the rioters’ surrender; ten of them were placed under arrest and taken back to Benicia.128

Victory on the Southern Front An examination of Governor Santiago Vidaurri’s activities in northern Mexico provides further insight into the interlocking Union-MexicanConfederate-French relations from 1861 to 1867. When the Civil War began, Southern agents attempted to seduce governors of the northern Mexican states into some form of alliance with the Confederacy. Vidaurri was one of the few to respond positively; indeed, he even suggested to Jefferson Davis’s envoy in June 1861—apparently in all seriousness—that the Confederacy ought to annex Coahuila and Nuevo León. Davis declined, however, preferring a favorable commercial relationship between their respective territories instead. So Vidaurri allowed Confederate merchants to use his border towns in Nuevo León and Coahuila, both of which abutted Confederate Texas, to bypass the federal blockade of Southern seaports. As the Civil War and the French Intervention continued, he further inclined his policies to favor the Confederacy. By 1863, trade between the Vidaurri-controlled states and Texas had become the Confederacy’s largest commercial outlet, and Southern agents were able to import some war matériel via this route, including gunpowder, food, and clothing. Even charging the Confederates a favorably low tariff, Vidaurri reaped a small fortune from the duties he charged on these goods.129 Yet he was far more devoted to his own interests than to the Confederacy’s. A typical caudillo (local strongman), Vidaurri attempted to hold on to power by playing the Confederacy off against Juárez’s government and later the French when the latter became a factor to be reckoned with in Mexico. Even while allowing the Confederacy to use his ports, he claimed to support Juárez.130 In 1863, Juárez informed the ostensibly loyal Vidaurri that he was moving his headquarters from Saltillo to Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo León, and that he expected Vidaurri’s complete support. Marshal Achille François Bazaine soon marched on Monterrey with the French Expeditionary Force, however, in the hopes of defeating Juárez and the republican government’s forces. Bazaine told Vidaurri that he was expected to declare his support for  

 

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France. Still trying to play one side off against the other, Vidaurri claimed he needed to hold a plebiscite and would abide by the people’s choice when it came to supporting the French or Juárez. Juárez countered that anyone who participated in Vidaurri’s plebiscite would be considered a traitor. Caught between Juárez and the French, Vidaurri fled into Texas to take refuge with the Confederacy. So precipitate had his flight been that he abandoned troops, artillery, and supplies in Monterrey.131 His double, or even triple, dealing had been harmful to everyone’s interest except his own. In its lead article on June 21, 1864, La Voz de Méjico happily republished, in Spanish translation, a Unionist English-language newspaper’s verdict on the ex-caudillo after his flight: “In any way of looking at it, Vidaurri has been a baneful influence on the twin struggles that are occurring presently on this continent, for he has been as harmful to his own country as to the United States. Although he was not—because he could not be—openly hostile to us, he always had the best relations with the Confederates, repeatedly violating the neutrality of Mexican territory and making all sorts of protections available to the Rebels.” 132 At least now no one had to guess any longer about Vidaurri’s intentions; he had chosen the Confederacy and tied his future to its fortunes.  

 

A year after Lincoln’s reelection had provided the American president with the mandate to finish the Civil War, Benito Juárez found himself with a reelection problem in Mexico. Under the Constitution of 1857, his term in office was to end late in 1865, but with the French occupying the country’s principal cities, he could see no way that free, open, and honest elections could be held to replace him with a candidate who would continue the struggle against Napoleon III’s attempts to impose monarchy as doggedly as he had. So Juárez resorted to remaining in office himself and continuing to employ the extraordinary war powers conferred on him by the Mexican Congress shortly after the French violated the Preliminaries of Soledad in 1862. On November 8, 1865, he announced that he was postponing the election until the French were expelled from the country. The decision proved highly controversial. Jesús González Ortega, the Mexican general who had defended Puebla during its second siege, in 1863, believed that he should become interim president until a new election could be held. In addition to holding military rank, Ortega was the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the official who the Constitution of 1857 directed should act as president in case of the latter’s incapacity or during any period when proper elections could not be held.133 168  •   On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s

This controversy over the Mexican presidency generated strong interest among Latinos in California, demonstrating that their robust participation in Lincoln’s reelection campaign the year before had been no flash in the pan but rather a stage in the development of genuine political consciousness and activity. In the summer of 1865, the junta in San Juan Bautista was the first to request that Mexicans residing in the United States be allowed to vote in a Mexican election. One of its members, a Señor Villegas, pointed out that Mexicans in California had been raising funds for Juárez’s government. “In seventeen months, we have not let a single month pass without sending our modest offering to help those who so heroically defend the common cause.” That should leave no doubt of their patriotism. After noting the constitutional requirement for a new presidential election in Mexico, Villegas urged that all the juntas in California write to President Juárez and request that Mexican citizens living abroad be allowed to vote in the election. The San Juan Bautista junta unanimously approved his resolution, and its secretary, J. Higuera, sent a petition to that effect to the Mexican consul in San Francisco, to be forwarded to the Mexican government. Higuera also sent a copy to the editor of La Voz de Méjico so that other juntas around the state might learn more quickly about the proposal.134 The request was not granted, however; indeed, Mexican citizens residing in the United States were not allowed to vote in Mexican elections until 2005. When it became clear that there would be no election, various liberal factions in Mexico fell to quarreling among themselves. California’s juntas viewed the uproar with alarm. They did not want to simply watch from afar and say nothing as the Mexican government’s heretofore solid political front in the face of the French Intervention crumbled over the issue of elections. They thought Juárez’s pragmatic, if unconstitutional, decision to hold on to power until the war was over was preferable to the alternatives, and decided to say so. A number of juntas quickly made public their support of Juárez’s decision. San Francisco’s junta issued a declaration to that effect, which Godoy sent to the Mexican foreign minister, with a cover letter announcing, In conformity with what has been decided by the Mexican Patriotic Club of this city, I have the honor to send you the original of the statement that the loyal Mexicans living in San Francisco offer to the Citizen President of the Republic, Benito Juárez, demonstrating to him the satisfaction with which they have been impressed by the decree given in El Paso del Norte on November 8 of last year, resolving to extend the period in which he will fulfill the duties of the highest office of the nation (which the fundamental On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s   •   169

law demarcates), until such a time as the state of the war which currently is going on against the foreign invader may allow constitutional elections to take place.135

Other juntas followed suit, including the one in Los Angeles, whose petition bore more than two hundred signatures.136 In the event, Juárez did continue to serve as president until the French had been driven out and Maximilian executed, whereupon he duly called elections and won the second of his five terms as president. The fact that California’s juntas so assertively inserted themselves into the question of his continuance in office in 1865–1866, through petitions and demands that their voices be heard, is evidence of the increasing political awareness and participation of Latinos that resulted from the Civil War and the French Intervention.  

The collapse of the Confederacy motivated a number of Southerners to leave the United States. Some of them saw Mexico, most of which was still under imperial rule, as a potentially sympathetic refuge. After Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, rumor even had the former Confederate president Jefferson Davis trying to flee to Mexico with remnants of the Confederate Army. Latinos in California were concerned that these Rebels might strengthen Maximilian’s forces.137 Although Jefferson Davis never did, a number of leading Confederate figures indeed went to Mexico.138 Some of the ordinary soldiers, on the other hand, simply turned bandit along the border. “On the banks of the Río Bravo and in many other places, the Confederate troops and guerrilla bands committed all kinds of disorders and crimes. The former had not acquiesced in the surrender of their leaders, and they took their rapacity and ill will out on the residents of the frontier. The latter robbed and looted on both sides of the river.” 139 Those refugee Southerners who were seasoned soldiers and did not take to banditry could inject a new vitality into the imperialist ranks in Mexico, which accordingly made efforts to welcome them. Land was designated for refugees to settle, various subsidies encouraged them to do so, and a Con­ federate newspaper began in Mexico City, supported by funds from Maxi­ milian.140 The New Virginia Colony in central Mexico, with its largest town called Carlota after Maximilian’s wife, was founded expressly as a Confederate settlement.141 Even Santiago Vidaurri, nimble as always on his political feet, returned to Mexico from Texas, swearing loyalty to Maximilian and his 170  •   On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s

empire. His reward was to be made the secretary of Finance and War, then the president of the emperor’s council.142 The end of the American Civil War, however, spelled the end of monarchy in Mexico. Not willing to risk a military confrontation with a United States no longer distracted by internal divisions, Napoleon III began to back out of his commitments to Maximilian in Mexico, deciding that the latter would have to rely on his own troops, paid for from his own coffers, to establish an imperial dynasty in the Americas.143 Latinos in California were able to follow Maximilian’s consequent downfall via the pages of the Spanishlanguage press. In January 1866, the French emperor made his intentions clear in an address to his country’s Corps Législative. He was obliged to acknowledge the end of the Civil War—“America has come out of her struggle triumphant, with the Union reestablished and slavery abolished”—and diplomatically, if hypocritically, offered best wishes for the United States’ future prosperity. This development inevitably entailed the tacit recognition of the fact that the presence of French troops in the Americas now would not be tolerated by the United States, but Napoleon soothingly assured his legislature, “The emotion which the presence of our troops in Mexico has produced in the United States will be calmed by our frank declarations. The American people will understand that our expedition . . . was not opposed to their interests.” The frankest declaration of all, however, would be action. As a result, he said, “I am in agreement with Maximilian that the date for the return of our troops [to France] should be set.” Napoleon tried to apply a fig leaf, claiming that the troop recall would be accomplished “without compromising the interests of France, which we have been defending in that remote country,” but he carefully avoided saying what it was going to do to Maximilian’s interests.144 It would, of course, effectively pull the rug out from under his feet. Napoleon was as good his word: over the next few months, he withdrew his troops, which California’s Spanish-language press reported on with great satisfaction. La Voz de Méjico reprinted, in Spanish translation, a letter originally published in the English-language Washington Times, which read in part, “The activity for the retreat of the French comes along perfectly. It seems this is going to happen. . . . They will not make any further military efforts, ­according to what is being said; and from now on Maximilian will have to seek from his popularity and his own resources the means to maintain himself in the position where they have placed him.” The letter writer then added ironically, in French, “Nous verrons” (“We’ll see”).145  

 

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Yet Maximilian had no resources. He could neither repay the loans Mexico owed to foreign creditors nor pay what few soldiers he had left—who were, in any case, too few to keep him in power for any length of time.146 Juarist troops occupied Matamoros in the north, Oaxaca was taken in the south, Juárez had moved his traveling capital back to San Luis Potosí, and the symbolic city of Puebla pronounced its allegiance to the Mexican president.147 Maximilian’s falling fortunes turned him into a figure of mockery among Latinos in California. One sardonic report noted that the Californio population of Contra Costa County “had a big meeting in order to display their sympathy for Maximilian. They made an effigy of the usurper, which they decapitated and burned.” 148 A theater troupe put on a comedy titled Maximiliano y la Doctrina de Monroe (“Maximilian and the Monroe Doctrine”) at the Eureka Theater in San Francisco; it apparently ended with Uncle Sam kicking Maximilian out of Montezuma’s palace, no doubt with a great deal of slapstick humor. A review proclaimed it as mirroring “the public feeling in favor of Mexico, which has never altered among the people.” 149 A Californio in Contra Costa County, Cayetano Juárez, reportedly made a thousanddollar bet with two Frenchmen that the French and the Austrians would leave Mexico within eight months—that is, by December 1866.150 He lost the wager, but only by a matter of weeks, as the French left Mexico City on February 5, 1867.151 Maximilian’s wife meanwhile went to France to plead with Napoleon III for money and troops, and the Spanish-language press gleefully mocked her mortifyingly unsuccessful trip.152 The end came for Maximilian in the spring of 1867. On March 18, Uladislao Vallejo wrote to his father in Sonoma, noting Maximilian’s desperate attempt to make a stand at Querétaro with his few remaining loyal forces. “Maximilian is at Queretaro, almost starved to death. We will seize him, with his twenty thousand men. I think we will catch him alive. What do our Imperial friends think of it?” 153 On the morning of May 15, forces loyal to Juárez captured Maximilian and a number of his subordinates. In San Francisco, El Nuevo Mundo printed their names, in descending order by military rank. “I have here the list of prisoners taken in Querétaro. Emperor— Ferdinand Maximilian. Generals—Miguel Miramón, Tomás Mejía,” and so on, for a total of 364 individuals. Maximilian was kept at Querétaro, and a court-martial convened to try him, Miramón, and Mejía.154 Conspicuously not named in this article, although he had been at Querétaro in Maximilian’s civil service, was Ygnacio Sepúlveda. Fortunately for him, Sepúlveda, as a Californio, was a U.S. citizen. The Juárez government sentenced him to a four 

 

 

 

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year prison term, but on learning of his fate, his friends Phineas T. Banning and Volney E. Howard in Los Angeles wrote to Senator Cornelius Cole for help. Cole prevailed on the U.S. State Department to intercede for Sepúlveda, who received an early release and returned to Los Angeles in June 1868.155 Although defense attorneys were assigned to the former emperor, his trial’s outcome was a foregone conclusion. Maximilian was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death, for, “whatever his private virtues may have been, he was a foreign invader—an inciter of domestic treason and the recognized head of a great insurrection.” On the morning of June 19, 1867, he, Miramón, and Mejía were executed by firing squad at the Cerro de las Campanas in Querétaro. “On the soil of North America, a descendant of the imperial house of Hapsburg has been judged, condemned, and executed by the descendants of the Aztecs.” 156 While some expected a bloodbath to follow Maximilian’s downfall, Juárez had only a short list of public enemies to be hunted down, less than a dozen. Santiago Vidaurri, the Confederate sympathizer and turncoat former governor of Nuevo León and Coahuila, was one of them. He hid in the house of a U.S. citizen he knew in Mexico City but was found at midnight of June 21–22 and spent his last hours in the company of General Slaughter, a former Confederate officer, before being shot at four in the morning on June 22.157 An epitaph pronounced on Maximilian and his regime by the Englishlanguage newspaper Alta California, almost immediately reprinted in translation by El Nuevo Mundo, heralded the return of normalcy to Mexico, implicitly defined as democratic self-determination. “Whatever may have been the character of his public policy in Mexico as a would-be ruler, his reign, although brief, had been subversive of the imperishable right of the people to govern themselves.” 158 The restoration to power of Juárez’s government was not, therefore, only a matter of the Mexicans having beaten a foreign invader; it was also, like the Civil War in the United States, an assertion of the validity of freedom and democracy.  

 

Latinos responded to the events of the Civil War and the French Intervention by creating a new public memory in the commemoration of the Cinco de Mayo. Unlike the heavily scripted commemoration of Mexican Independence Day, however, Cinco de Mayo celebrations were not limited by protocol and precedents. As a result, Latinos in California chose and adapted holiday symbols they found appropriate to the memory it celebrated, such as On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s   •   173

displaying both the U.S. and the Mexican flags. This fluidity and the practice of linking the celebration of the first battle of Puebla to current events began as early as the waning days of the Civil War. How profoundly Abraham Lincoln’s death and legacy touched Latinos in California can be seen in their effects on celebrations of public memory, especially the Cinco de Mayo. Barely a week after the conclusion of national mourning for the lost president in 1865, the Latinos of Virginia City, Nevada, commemorated the Cinco de Mayo, but this anniversary introduced some new practices. The day started, as it had the previous year, with the raising of the Mexican flag at dawn to a twenty-one gun salute, which was followed by a salvo every fifteen minutes thereafter throughout the day. That evening, the crowd filed into the hall of the Mexican Patriotic Club, which was decorated, as was usual on such occasions, with the flags of both Mexico and the United States. Between the two flags, however, was something new: a portrait of George Washington. To one side were portraits of Lincoln and Andrew John­son, and on the other portraits of Juárez and González Ortega.159 The junta’s secretary, Rafael H. González, delivered a speech declaring that the fates of the United States and Mexico, of Lincoln and Juárez, were intertwined. Liberty and self-determination by the people were his themes. “And can an empire be tolerated in Mexico? No, a thousand times no! For there can be no monarch without territories, and those of Mexico belong to the descendants of Montezuma, redeemed by the blood of Hidalgo and Iturbide; it is not the patrimony of any adventurer prince, nor of any traitor.” He went on to make reverent reference to the American Civil War just ended. With the extinction of the Confederacy, hope for freedom now could be seen in Mexico. Liberty, whose first dawn begins to appear on the horizon of my country, after the smoke which had obscured it in Richmond has been put out, will make us free and independent. Now that holy and formidable struggle of the United States has ended; and today the complications into which the intruder Maximilian will enter, will show him, very soon, the road he ought to follow. . . . Just as there is no rose without a thorn . . . there is nothing begun for the good of humanity that has not been conquered with blood. . . . Without this war of giants that we have witnessed in the United States, the pustulant wound of slavery would not have been healed.

Lincoln might be dead, but his spirit would inspire Juárez to finish the fight for freedom in Mexico, “Benito Juárez, who has worked for progress, for independence and liberty, with the virtue of a Socrates and with the faith 174  •   On e Wa r , T h r e e F ron t s

of the venerable and immortal Lincoln.” This, then, was the meaning of the holiday, which González encapsulated in his closing exclamation: “Mexicans! Hurrah for Zaragoza! Hurrah for the Cinco de Mayo!” 160 In his Mexican Independence Day speech in San Francisco later that year, José Montesinos classed Lincoln, Juárez, and Zaragoza together as heroes who had risen from humble beginnings to become champions of freedom and human rights. “In wars for rights, for justice, in the great conflicts by which nations are transfixed, the men who rescue them do not, for the most part, rise or ever have risen from the upper classes of society. . . . From humble people, from the midst of an obscure breed, poor, where they had no connections: that is whence they have come—if not Washington or Bolívar, then indeed Garibaldi, Lincoln, Juárez—and that is whence the immortal Zaragoza came too, the lamented young man, the undefeated warrior, the glory of Mexico.” 161 In his speech that same day in Los Angeles, Filomeno Ibarra included a tribute to Lincoln among those to other heroes of the Western Hemisphere, such as Washington, Hidalgo, and Bolívar. “For the second time, the United States’ liberty was threatened . . . but God’s finger pointed out Lincoln; Divine Providence inspired this great man; and with a constancy unmatched in history, he saved the American nation from the tyrants’ talons a second time. You magnanimous man, you broke the chains of four million people and rid the United States of the stain that had dishonored her! . . . Lincoln! Immortal hero! Rest in peace!” 162 On a more domestic scale, in July 1865 a Mexican seamstress in San Francisco, Refugio Romo de Velasco, embroidered a miniature portrait of Lincoln surrounded by the American flag. A few months later, she had completed likenesses of Grant and Zaragoza, and all three went on display in her city’s Industrial Exhibition in September, to great acclaim.163 In 1866, more than a year after Lincoln’s death and funeral and the surrender of the Confederacy, Latinos in San Francisco gathered for the fourth commemoration of the Cinco de Mayo. The celebration was held in Dashaway Hall, which was decorated with the Mexican, American, and Chilean flags, along with the flags of other Latin American republics. On the speakers’ platform were the Mexican, American, and Chilean flags, “above which were seen pictures of the citizen Benito Juárez; of the hero of the day, Ignacio Zaragoza[;] . . . those of the father of the great American republic, Abraham Lincoln, and that of Grant.” 164 An American institution, known as the Cinco de Mayo, had been definitively born, on American soil, celebrating the very American values of freedom and democracy, created by citizens, immigrants, and refugees whose first language was Spanish.  

 

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The July 3, 1867, issue of El Nuevo Mundo carried the news of Maximilian’s execution, the end of monarchy in the Americas, and the victory of freedom and democracy in North America. Its editor had not overlooked the coincidence that the next day would be the Fourth of July. It seemed almost as if the timing had put an exclamation point on the triumph of freedom and democracy in Mexico and the United States. Thanks to its Californiaborn, American-citizen editor, Francisco P. Ramírez, the same issue featured a Spanish-language version of the Declaration of Independence, which Ramírez doubtless had translated himself: Cuando en el curso de los eventos humanos, viene á ser necesario para un pueblo disolver los lazos políticos que le han reunido con otro . . . 165

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Si x

Shaping and Reshaping the Cinco de Mayo, 1868-2011

On January 31, 1866, the Native California Cavalry, until then stationed in the Arizona Territory, saddled up and began the long ride back to Califor­ nia. The Union had defeated the Confederacy, Napoleon III had set a timetable for withdrawing the French Army from Mexico, and Maximilian’s days were clearly numbered, so the California cavalrymen retraced their path across the desert. After arriving in Los Angeles, Companies A, B, and D were mustered out at the Drum Barracks in Wilmington on March 20, and Company C at the Presidio in San Francisco on April 2.1 But the Los Angeles to which these veterans returned was different from the city Francisco P. Ramírez had woken up in nearly twenty years earlier, transformed overnight into a citizen of the United States. Its Latino population had grown and diversified since 1848. The Gold Rush had brought tens of thousands of immigrants from Mexico, Central America, and South America to the state. Most did not find much gold, so they began a secondary migration, from the gold fields to other parts of the state, including Los Angeles, to find work. This surge of young Spanishspeaking adults fueled an increase in Latino marriages, and then a baby boom; Latino births nearly tripled during the 1850s and 1860s.2 During the American Civil War and the French Intervention, members of this generation of bilingual, bicultural children participated in activities inspired by the first battle of Puebla. Children had even participated spontaneously in the first officially sponsored commemoration of the battle, on May 25 and 26, 1863.3 Some parents formally engaged their children in the juntas. In July 1863, the president of the Los Angeles junta, Gregorio González, enrolled his son, Gregorio Jr., as a member.4 In February 1863, Jesús Villanueva de Williams, a member of both Los Angeles’ regular junta patriótica and its ladies’ junta, enrolled her eleven-year-old daughter, Manuelita Williams, in the latter.5 177

Some of these children took an active part in the juntas’ activities, including celebrations of the Cinco de Mayo. In the town of Sonora, Rosaura Soto first appeared as a member of the ladies’ junta late in 1863; during the 1864 commemoration of the Cinco de Mayo, she was in the chorus that sang the Mexican national anthem and later read a poem aloud. 6 By 1870, the Latino population of Los Angeles was increasingly U.S. born, bilingual, and bicultural. This change was most evident among children and adolescents: more than 90 percent of Latinos under age twenty had been born in California. Adult Latinos twenty to forty-nine years old were about evenly split between U.S.-born Californios and immigrants. People age fifty and above were predominantly Californios, with a small minority of immigrants. The war years had challenged this Latino community of Californios, post1848 immigrants, and their second-generation children to develop and assert a shared public identity as defenders of freedom and democracy in both the United States and Mexico. With the formation of the juntas, the Latino community met this challenge, and in the celebration of the Cinco de Mayo, members of the large and wealthy junta in Los Angeles discovered a poder convocatorio (summoning power) that could harness the collective efforts of the Latino community toward specific ends (see chapter 4). As long as this power belonged to these Latinos and their children, the holiday’s genesis was remembered, but in subsequent generations, demographic developments caused it to pass out of their hands, and the Cinco de Mayo was reshaped by those with no memory of its origins.

For nearly twenty years after the Civil War and the French Intervention, war veterans and their civilian contemporaries in Los Angeles’ junta shaped the public memory of the Cinco de Mayo. Their celebration in 1877 shows how they, and the organizations to which they belonged, preserved memories of its origins. José López was the president of the junta that year and accordingly served as master of ceremonies for the event.7 At 6 a.m., the Mexican and United States flags were raised in front of López’s house to the sounds of artillery salvos and a band playing patriotic tunes. The cannon were fired again at noon. At five in the afternoon, officials assembled on the speakers’ platform, and the public crowded about to listen. López introduced one Señor Villalobos, who gave “an eloquent speech referring to the celebration of the day.” He was followed by a war veteran, Melitón Alviso, who had accompanied Uladislao Vallejo in 1866 in joining the Mexican Army (see chapter 5) 178  •   S h a pi ng a n d R e s h a pi ng t h e C i nco de M ayo

Figure 22.  A Cinco de Mayo ball held in Los Angeles in 1877 brought together former foes such as Melitón Alviso, a Californio from the Bay Area who had fought the French in Mexico, and his fellow Californio Ygnacio Sepúlveda, formerly a magistrate in Maximilian’s empire. (La Crónica, May 5, 1877, p. 2. CESLAC UCLA)

and had fought the French in Mexico. Alviso’s speech was not printed but likely alluded to his experiences defending freedom and democracy there. At 6 p.m., the flags were lowered, and a local Latino militia, the Rifleros de Los Angeles, escorted the junta’s officers to the home of Antonio Aguilar for another flag-saluting ceremony and more speeches. After these formal ceremonies concluded, the Guardia Hidalgo, another Latino militia group, held a lavish, well-attended dance (see figure 22). 8 S h a pi ng a n d R e s h a pi ng t h e C i nco de M ayo   •   179

As Latinos born in Los Angeles between 1848 and 1870 came of age and took their places in adult society, a number joined their parents’ organization, the local junta. In so doing, they were directly connected to living Latino history and direct memories of the Cinco de Mayo. The lawyer Antonio Orfila Jr. was born in Los Angeles in 1865, the child of a post-1848 immigrant from Spain, Antonio Orfila Sr., and a California-born Latina mother, María Antonia Domínguez. From the time he was twenty-one until at least 1909, he participated in junta activities and ceremonies, including Cinco de Mayo celebrations.9 Orfila was joined in high-profile junta participation by his fellow second-generation Latinos Rafael “Ralph” Domínguez and Frank Domínguez in 1890 and Ignacio I. Pérez in 1891.10 All four were members of the junta alongside the former California governor Pío Pico, and this experience gave them a direct connection to pre-1848 Latino history in California. Pico was born in 1801 at the San Gabriel Mis­ sion complex, near Los Angeles. He lived in California under three governments—Spain’s, Mexico’s, and the United States’—and filled multiple official and public roles during his ninety-three years. In 1885, for example, still recognized as the “ex-Governor of Alta California,” he was a member of the Reception Committee that planned Mexican Independence Day festivities.11 Once the Cinco de Mayo became a public ceremony in Los Angeles, Pico participated in that as well, for instance as a member of the Reception Com­ mittee for the ball held in honor of the “Glorioso 5 de Mayo” in 1877.12 Other older members of the junta were fellow Californios; yet other, middle-aged members of the junta were post-1848 immigrants. They all worked together to organize public commemorations, initially for Mexican Independence Day celebrations. For instance, the Colombian immigrant Píoquinto Dávila participated in Cinco de Mayo celebrations from 1864 through 1873 and also was prominent in the junta’s Mexican Independence Day celebrations from 1865 to 1874.13 Second-generation Latinos thereby rubbed shoulders with the older generations as the latter shaped the public memory of the Cinco de Mayo. Yet when the Los Angeles junta’s attention shifted away from the commemoration of the Cinco de Mayo in the early 1880s to concentrate its energies on Mexican Independence Day (September 16), the second-generation Latinos did not allow the Cinco de Mayo to fade. Instead, they took upon themselves the continuation of the public memory and, in so doing, continued to shape it. In mid-April 1882, a group of young Latino amateur actors in Los Angeles presented a Spanish play, No Más Mostrador, to sufficient local  

 

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Figure 23.  Los Angeles hosted a Cinco de Mayo event in 1884 organized by the Hispanic American Youths. This group included Juan Francisco Guirado, one of the first Californios to volunteer for ­service in the Union Army during the Civil War. He died in Los Angeles in 1886. (La Crónica, May 3, 1884, p. 3. CESLAC UCLA)

acclaim that they were asked to repeat the performance. The repeat performance fell on May 4, so the group dedicated it to the Cinco de Mayo and made a few adjustments in keeping with the holiday. The performance ended by ten-thirty at night, followed by a dance, and at midnight a chorus sang the Mexican national anthem.14 In 1883, as advertised in the English- and the Spanish-language press, there was a “Glorious 5th of May Ball for the Benefit of the Union Brass Brand of Los Angeles,” with the funds raised going to purchase new uniforms.15 The next year, a group of mostly second-generation Latinos calling themselves the Jóvenes Hispano-Americanos (Hispanic American Youth) sponsored a Cinco de Mayo dance at Nadeau Hall (see figure 23).16 Beginning in the 1870s, these second-generation Latinos married and had children, producing a third generation. Leo Carrillo was born in 1880, a descendant of an old Californio family that included members of the original expedition to Alta California in 1769, a Mexican-era governor, and a signer of the 1849 California constitution.17 Myrtle Gonzalez was born in 1891 to Manuel González, a second-generation Latino of Californio parentage born in 1869, and his Irish American wife, Lilian Cook.18 Typical of third-­ S h a pi ng a n d R e s h a pi ng t h e C i nco de M ayo   •   181

Figure 24.  A group of second- and thirdgeneration Latinos in Los Angeles organized an amateur zarzuela production in 1893 to commemorate the Cinco de Mayo. José S. Redona, a son of Lt. José Redona of Company D, Native California Cavalry, had one of the roles. (Las Dos Repúblicas, insert, May 1893. CESLAC UCLA)

generation Latinos, these children grew up familiar with Atlantic American culture yet also connected to Latino society, especially to the heritage of pre-1848 Mexican California. Early Californian songs, for instance, were part of their personal repertoire. In a 1904 musical recital, Myrtle Gonzalez was among the members of the La Golondrina Club, who performed old Cali­fornia dances and songs that included “El Sombrero Blanco” and “Los Camotes.” 19 Had these third-generation Latinos been the only ones to continue shaping the Cinco de Mayo tradition, twentieth-century celebrations might have perpetuated the memory of Latinos during the American Civil War and the French Intervention in Mexico (see figure 24). Yet the junta began to lose its summoning power around 1910. This prompted second- and third-generation Latinos in Los Angeles to form the Sociedad Hispano-Americana (Spanish American Society), to better institutionalize the public memories they had been shaping. This new organization was responsible for the celebration of the Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day in Los Angeles from 1910 to 1923. A group of secondgeneration Latinos who rose to positions of leadership between 1883 and the 1920s supplied the direction: Antonio Orfila Jr., Ralph Sepulveda, Frank Dominguez, Ignacio I. Perez, Manuel González, and Ralph J. Dominguez. 20 At the same time, the third generation of U.S.-born Latinos was entering its prime. But they were not to shape the Cinco de Mayo as their parents and grandparents had; instead, they ended up participating in someone else’s reshaping.

New Immigrants Redefine the Cinco de Mayo A renewed wave of immigration beginning in the 1890s brought a fresh population of first-generation immigrants from Mexico, whose experiences in California took the Cinco de Mayo in different directions. Los Angeles nearly quintupled in size, from 101,454 inhabitants in 1890 to 504,131 by 1910, finally overtaking San Francisco in population.21 The first immigrants in this period came to find work, but then the Mexican Revolution (1910–1930) sent massive numbers of refugees to California, fleeing political and social instability in their homeland. This huge new wave of immigrants dwarfed the population of U.S.-born Latinos and by the mid-1920s had taken over the shaping of the Cinco de Mayo. As the immigrants settled in, they formed a new type of organization, the mutualista (mutual aid society), which proS h a pi ng a n d R e s h a pi ng t h e C i nco de M ayo   •   183

vided rudimentary benefits for its members, such as burial insurance. These were first organized in the 1910s and flourished in the 1920s and 1930s.22 These new groups soon recognized the potential of the Cinco de Mayo’s summoning power to help them, and they began to sponsor Cinco de Mayo celebrations. In so doing, they reshaped the holiday’s meaning to reflect their own experiences and perspectives. In 1918 the Liga Protectora Mexicana de California (Mexican Protective League of California), an early civil rights group for first-generation immigrants, held an event concentrating on inspirational speeches about the first battle of Puebla (see figure 25).23 The 1919 celebration at the Plaza organized by the Comité Mexicano de Festejos Cívicos (Mexican Committee on Civic Festivals) was the first one documented that was completely of, by, and for first-generation immigrants recently arrived from Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. The music was Mexican, not Californio, for that audience would not have been familiar with old Cali­fornio traditional songs such as “Los Camotes” or “El Sombrero Blanco,” although these still played at the celebrations held by the Sociedad Hispano-Americana.24 This was an era in the United States before Latino academia had found its voice, so there were no institutional means through which new immigrants could learn what second- and third-generation U.S.-born Latinos had lived. About the only institutional voice for Latino communities was Spanish-language newspapers, but as recently arrived immigrants published most of these, like Los Angeles’ El Heraldo de México, the greatest part of their focus was on Mexico and events in that country, not the experiences of past generations of Latinos in California. As a result, in the early twentieth century, two types of Cinco de Mayo celebration bypassed each other. The California-themed Cinco de Mayo event, built on memories dating back to the Gold Rush and the Civil War, gradually passed out of existence as second-generation Latinos died out. A new, Mexico-themed event instead emerged in the growing communities of recent immigrants, to reflect their experiences. Those first-generation immigrants—unaware of the holiday’s origins in Latino California or its links to the American Civil War, and understanding only that it celebrated the first battle of Puebla—began to define the Cinco de Mayo in purely Mexico-centric terms. The general image presented in Cinco de Mayo speeches given at first-generation events during the 1920s and 1930s was that of small, hard-pressed Mexico standing up alone against the might of a European power. A David and Goliath theme emerged, of near-miraculous victory against overwhelming odds.25  

 

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Figure 25.  In 1919, the Mexican Protective League of California advertised its Cinco de Mayo event in a Los Angeles paper. In 1925, the league gave an award for community service to Reginaldo del Valle, whose life spanned the first seventy-five years of Cinco de Mayo celebrations in Los Angeles. (El Heraldo de México, May 6, 1919, p. 6a. CESLAC UCLA)

To keep the definition, and the summoning power, of holidays such as the Cinco de Mayo in the hands of this first-generation immigrant community, the Mexican consul Rafael de la Colina in 1931 appointed a Comité Mexicano Cívico Patriótico de Los Angeles (Mexican Patriotic Civic Committee of Los Angeles) to organize their celebration. This committee continues to function in the twenty-first century.26 The new Mexico-centric mythology promulgated by Mexican consuls and the first-generation immigrant press contributed mightily to the loss of public memory about the Cinco de Mayo’s true origins, which increased as the twentieth century progressed. The early twentieth-century wave of immigrants had successfully captured and reshaped the holiday, redefining it just as they redefined Latino culture in Southern California. By the 1930s the older, second-generation organizations, Los Angeles’s junta patriótica and the Sociedad Hispano-Americana, ceased to function. As a result, many third-generation Latinos, such as Leo Carrillo, instead came to participate in Cinco de Mayo activities organized by immigrant groups and the Mexican consul.

When the Axis Powers threatened freedom and democracy on a global scale in World War II, the celebration of the Cinco de Mayo seemed too important to leave in the hands of independent community organizations. Its summoning power could be harnessed to assist the war effort, and Los Angeles mayor Fletcher Bowron undertook to do just this. Under his direction, the Cinco de S h a pi ng a n d R e s h a pi ng t h e C i nco de M ayo   •   185

Mayo was elevated to an international event. On May 5, 1942, Mayor Bowron raised the Republic of Mexico’s banner in front of City Hall. The Mexican consul Rodolfo Salazar raised the Stars and Stripes beside it as the United States Army’s 16th Artillery Battalion band played the Mexican national anthem and more than five thousand Latinos witnessing the event cheered. In his remarks, Bowron emphasized that the Cinco de Mayo commemoration that day would show the world that the United States and Mexico were united in defending democracy.27 California governor Culbert Olson then took the microphone and recalled the history of the American Civil War and the French Intervention, developing the theme of two nations simultaneously under attack by the enemies of freedom and democracy, first in the 1860s and again in the 1940s. “Now, eighty years later, the fellowship of the two sister nations is felt again, and in the face of a common enemy that threatens this continent, the two peoples again toast their brotherhood and cooperation.” He concluded with the rousing cheer ¡Viva México y los Estados Unidos! (“Hurrah for Mexico and the United States!”).28 As the mayor of Los Angeles and officials of the U.S. and Mexican governments jointly shaped the Cinco de Mayo and explicitly enlisted its summoning power against the enemies of freedom and democracy, thousands of second-generation Latinos in the United States, the children of the 1910–1930 immigrants, responded by joining the U.S. armed forces.29 After the war, second-generation Latino veterans came home and formed families. Their third-generation Latino children grew up in the segregated California of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. Influenced by movements such as the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War protest movement, and the Farm Workers movement led by César Chávez, a good many of this cohort came of age questioning and even challenging California society’s perceptions of Latinos and the public policies based on those perceptions. Due to its sheer size, this third generation influenced many other segments of Latino society.30 It is not surprising, therefore, that almost from the beginning, this generation also challenged previous definitions of and ways of celebrating the Cinco de Mayo. The 1970 Cinco de Mayo event at the University of California, Irvine, was described as “a five-day program by Mexican-American students at UC Irvine on trends and problems of Chicanos in California.” Its activities included “panel discussions on education, the Delano [farmworker] strike and the Chicano movement, films and an outdoor dance.” 31 Many Los Angeles–area college campuses likewise  

 

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extended the celebration of the Cinco de Mayo over an entire week, which at Occidental College was called Semana de la Raza (Latino People’s Week) and at Chaffey College was called Chicano Week.32

Yet another wave of Latino immigrants settled in California between 1965 and 1990, many of whom had lived there before, when they were recruited from Mexico as braceros (guest agricultural workers) in the early days of World War II to grow the state’s food while the bulk of its men were in the armed services and its women worked in defense industries (see figure 26). Once the war ended, the braceros’ assistance continued to be so valuable that the program was maintained throughout the Berlin airlift, the communist victory in China, the Korean War, the Cuban revolution, and the raising of the Berlin Wall. Year after year, nearly half a million braceros traveled north to tend crops that fed much of the United States. When the program expired in 1964, it was soon discovered that agricultural labor was still sorely needed. Consequently, the United States again allowed regular Mexican immigration in 1965, and many braceros returned to their jobs, but with a different legal status. Now they were immigrants, able to settle, buy a house, and raise a family. From the mid-1970s, they were joined by refugees fleeing the violence that wracked El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras. It took nearly two decades, from 1965 to around 1985, for braceros to fully change their status to that of immigrants. In the 1980s, they invented a new kind of first-generation community organization, the Mexican Home Town Association (HTA). Immigrants hailing from the same town or village in Mexico came together in California to form a club, whose main purpose was to raise funds to be sent to their native town. There, the money was used to build public works and provide services not being supplied by Mexican federal or local authorities, such as street paving, running water, or a town ambulance. An HTA therefore is reminiscent of a nineteenth-century Californian junta patriótica, only operating on a smaller scale and for local, purely peaceful purposes.33 As the new group of first-generation immigrants settled in, they discovered, as previous generations of immigrants had done before them, a strange new holiday in California, the Cinco de Mayo. Its summoning power soon became apparent to them, and the HTAs embraced it. For example, the Federación de Clubes Zacatecanos (Federation of Zacatecan Clubs) solemnly

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Figure 26.  Both U.S. and Mexican authorities used the Cinco de Mayo to foster support for the fight against the Axis powers in World War II. Braceros participated in these celebrations, such as the one in Whittier in 1945 referred to in this article. (La Opinión, May 4, 1945, p. 3. Courtesy La Opinión)

laid a wreath in Los Angeles’ Lincoln Park on the Cinco de Mayo, 2010, at the monument to General González Ortega, who finally had had to surrender Puebla after the city’s second heroic defense, in 1863. Yet why this day should be so enthusiastically celebrated in California was a mystery to them, as it was to nearly everyone by this time. “This date has little relevance in Mexico, which considers September 16 its national holiday,” noted an article in the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión in 1986.34 Newspaper editors and public figures could say what the Cinco de Mayo holiday was not, but they were at a loss to explain its true meaning or where it had come from. Provided by Southern California’s immigrantdominated Spanish-language press only with the Mexico-centric David-andGoliath narrative presented annually under the auspices of the Mexican consulate, they naturally—albeit incorrectly—assumed that this festival must be some peculiar local adaptation of a purely Mexican holiday. “One of the great traditions that has come to the United States from Mexico is the celebration of the Cinco de Mayo,” declared William Dávila, then the president of Southern California’s supermarket chain Vons, in 1994.35 It did not seem to occur to anyone that the commemoration of the first battle of Puebla might have originated in California.  

 

In the second half of the twentieth century, big business also discovered the Cinco de Mayo’s summoning power. Companies saw that the holiday’s public celebration offered an excellent opportunity to expand into the Latino market via the sponsorship of musical or other cultural events. Conse­quently, by the 1980s, corporate influence was noticeable in the holiday’s celebration. In 1990, the owners of the Spanish-language radio station KMQA-FM introduced a new order of magnitude by creating the L.A. Fiesta Broadway. The main streets of downtown Los Angeles were closed and large stages erected where prominent musicians performed. A major corporation, such as Sears, Target, or AT&T, sponsored each stage. Generally held the weekend before the Cinco de Mayo, L.A. Fiesta Broadway billed itself as “the biggest celebration of the Cinco de Mayo in the nation.” 36 The demographic growth of the Latino electorate moved national and local political interests to try to claim the Cinco de Mayo’s summoning power in hopes of winning the Latino vote. In 1998, for example, the United States Post Office released a special Cinco de Mayo stamp featuring the image of two folklórico dancers—the man somewhat oddly wearing a mod 

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ern charro suit, while the woman was in a traditional “Adelita” dress.37 In 2005, President George W. Bush brought the Cinco de Mayo to the White House. As mariachis blared in the Rose Garden, he thanked the Latinos serving in the nation’s armed forces and noted recent Latino contributions to the national economy, also stating, “Here at the White House, the triumph of the Cinco de Mayo was recognized by President Abraham Lincoln.” 38 Like many others, however, the president appeared to be unaware that Latinos also had fought for the Union in the Civil War or that the Union and Juarist causes had identified with each other, as those facts went unmentioned. Yet even while some corporate and political interests attempted to lay claim to the holiday’s summoning power, there were other interests that rejected the idea of celebrating a holiday they mistakenly perceived as foreign and somehow un-American. This viewpoint was encapsulated in a post to an online political chat list just before May 5, 2007, in a historically and grammatically challenged response to the poll question “Should Cinco de Mayo be celebrated in America?”: “I say no! Its an mexican independance day when Mexico declared its independence from Spain. It should be celebrated in their country not in america. A lot of illegals celebrate it here in america. I would like to see a law no promoting Cinco de Mayo in america. Any one celebrates this on May 5th in any american city or town faces a fine of $500 plus 5 days in jail.” 39

The Cinco de Mayo: Celebrating Latinos in America This book was written to answer the question of why the Cinco de Mayo is so widely celebrated in the United States yet receives only perfunctory notice in Mexico. The answer is that it is not a Mexican holiday inexplicably adapted by Latinos in the United States nor, despite its undeniable commercialization in the late twentieth century, a fake holiday recently invented by beverage companies. Rather, it is a genuine American holiday, spontaneously created during the Civil War by ordinary Latinos living in California—soon echoed by others in Nevada and Oregon—as an expression of their support for freedom and democracy throughout the Americas. Far from being foreign or un-American, it originated in a devoted adherence to these basic American political values by the majority of Latinos in the United States, as well as Mexico and other republics in the Western Hemisphere, at a time when those values were under attack from within and without. It should be remembered  

 

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that from the beginning, Cinco de Mayo parades have flown the U.S. and Mexican flags side by side as symbolic of this fact. That tradition is still followed today, although the reasons are largely forgotten. It is interesting to speculate about what form future celebrations of the holiday might take, should its true origins and heritage become better understood. Naturally, the blatantly commercial aspects will not disappear; by now, virtually no American holiday has escaped some degree of commercialization. But future celebrations might also include Californio mission-era songs, dances, and costumes; uniformed Civil War reenactments featuring the Native California Cavalry and the unofficial Latino militias; images of Abraham Lincoln, Benito Juárez, and Ignacio Zaragoza; and of course liberal displays of American and Mexican flags side by side. Likewise, there might be uniformed reenactors of the French Intervention, including the Californios and Latino immigrants who traveled to fight for freedom and democracy in Mexico. In addition to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” one might hear Mexican soldiers’ songs of the 1860s, such as “Adiós, Mamá Carlota” or “Batalla del Cinco de Mayo.” 40 It might be fitting as well to remember the Latinos who, in the same spirit, fought for the United States in the SpanishAmerican War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and subsequent conflicts. As in the nineteenth century, there might be speeches and pageants recalling these historical events, reminding listeners of the motivating values they share, showing the continuing relevance of those events and values to modern-day issues. ¡Viva el Cinco de Mayo!

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Not es

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from the Spanish are by Cynthia L. Chamberlin.

Introduction 1.  Family legend never described Bartolo Bautista as a military man. Yet when the French were approaching Puebla, General Santiago Tapia sent out a summons for local manpower, asking all men age sixteen to sixty to help in the city’s defense. My great-great-grandfather very well might have been one of those who responded. See Jesús de León Toral, Historia militar: La Intervención Francesa en México (Mexico City: Publicaciones Especiales del Primer Congreso Nacional de Historia para el Estudio de la Guerra de Intervención y Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística, 1962), pp. 112–115. 2.  For the history of San Miguel Atlautla, see Francisco de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahín Cuauhtlehuantzin, Relaciones originales de Chalco Amaquemecan, trans. and ed. Silvia Rendón, with a preface by Ángel María Garibay K. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1965), pp. 40, 102, 111, 139, 171, 179–181, 197– 198, 203–204, 219, 220–222, 247. 3.  This family legend was reiterated to me in fall 2010, when I visited Tío Adán’s daughter, Josefa Páez, eighty-one years old and still living in Atlautla. She recounted the legend much as Tío Adán had. Her grandson José Páez came by during my visit and added that Bartolo Bautista had been one of the civiles armados (“armed civilians”) called up by General Tapia. Nevertheless, until I have hard evidence of my great-great-grandfather’s participation in the first battle of Puebla—his service record, for instance—I take this tale in a figurative rather than a literal sense. 4.  Sergio Muñoz, “Cinco de Mayo: Looking beyond the Margaritas,” Los Angeles Times, 4 May 1980, p. F1. 5.  María Raquél Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land: Spanish-Mexican  

 

 

 

 

 

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Women and Interethnic Marriage in California, 1820–1880 (Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 2007), p. 10. 6.  Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), pp. 129–183. 7.  Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769–1936 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 1–12, esp. p. 9. 8. Casas, Married to a Daughter, p. 18. 9.  John Walton, Storied Land: Community and Memory in Monterey (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), p. 10. 10.  David G. Gutiérrez, “Migration, Emergent Identity, and the ‘Third Space’: The Shifting Politics of Nationalism in Greater Mexico,” Journal of American History 86, no. 2, special issue “Rethinking History and the Nation-State: Mexico and the United States as a Case Study” (Sept. 1999): 489. 11.  George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 11–12. 12.  Alvar W. Carlson, “America’s Growing Observance of Cinco de Mayo,” Journal of American Culture 21, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 7–16. 13.  María L. Alaniz and Chris Wilkes, “Reinterpreting Latino Culture in the Commodity Form: The Case of Alcohol Advertising in the Mexican American Community,” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 17 (1995): 430–451. 14.  Clayton A. Hurd, “Cinco de Mayo, Normative Whiteness, and the Marginalization of Mexican-Descent Students,” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 39 (2008): 293–313. 15.  See Martha Marivel Mendoza Ontiveros, “Performance y drama social: La representación de la Batalla del 5 de mayo en una localidad mexicana,” Convergencia 17, no. 54 (Sept.–Dec. 2010): 93–110; Luis Arturo Jiménez Medina and Natalia Escalante Conde, “Miradas y reflexiones antropológicas sobre el desfile del 5 de Mayo en la ciudad de Puebla,” Cuicuilco 16 (2009): 229–247. 16.  David E. Hayes-Bautista, La Nueva California: Latinos in the Golden State (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 58–88. 17.  Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios, 1850–1930 (Dallas, TX: Southern Methodist University Press, 2005); Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850–1890: A Social History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979). 18. Hayes-Bautista, La Nueva California, pp. 14–37. 19.  Ted Gostin, under contract to the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture (CESLAC) at UCLA, prepared the data for figure 2 (see chapter 1) using his book Southern California Vital Records, vol. 1, Los Angeles County, 1850– 1859 (Los Angeles: Generations Press, 2001), and his unpublished manuscript of volume 2, which covers the period 1860–1869. Gostin’s work in both volumes draws on public vital records, Catholic mission and church records, newspaper accounts, local histories, published memoirs, biographical dictionaries, probate records, cem 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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etery records, and U.S. censuses. In the work he undertook for CESLAC, he eliminated any duplicate mentions of an individual—because a person’s birth could be attested by multiple sources, such as a birth certificate, baptismal record, or newspaper announcement, or deduced from the age listed in a U.S. census—so that only one person would be counted as having been born. To identify Latinos, he applied a CESLAC algorithm employed in the compilation of all the demographic data sets used in the present book. It defines as Latino any individual who displays at least one of the following characteristics: “Heavily Hispanic” surname. In 1980 the U.S. Bureau of the Census released a list of 12,497 surnames for use in identifying Latino populations. David L. Word and R. Colby Perkins evaluated and further refined this list by grouping the surnames into different categories of “Hispanic-ness” (see “Building a Spanish Surname List for the 1990’s—A New Approach to an Old Problem,” U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population Division, Technical Working Paper No. 13 [Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, March 1996]). Some surnames, such as García, were categorized as “heavily Hispanic,” meaning that at least 75 percent of people with such a surname were, in fact, Hispanic. The other categories are “generally Hispanic” (between 50 and 75 percent of people with such surnames are Hispanic), “moderately Hispanic” (includes surnames such as Silva that can also be Portuguese or Italian), “occasionally Hispanic,” and “rarely Hispanic” (such as Kahlo or O’Gorman). The heavily Hispanic category alone accounts for nearly 95 percent of the Hispanic population in the United States. Indeed, within this group of surnames, individuals bearing as few as 715 different names represent 83 percent of the Hispanic-surnamed population (Word and Perkins, p. 19). I previously have used the heavily Hispanic surname list to identify Latino physicians in 2000 and Latino dentists in 2007 (see David Hayes-Bautista, Paul Hsu, Maria Hayes-Bautista, Robert M. Stein, Patrick Dowling, Robert Beltran, and Juan Villagomez, “Latino Physician Supply in California: Sources, Locations and Projections,” Academic Medicine 75 [2000]: 727–736; Hayes-Bautista, Mariam Iya Kahramanian, Erin G. Richardson, Paul Hsu, Lucette Sosa, Cristina Gamboa, and Robert M. Stein, “The Rise and Fall of the Latino Dentist Supply in California: Implications for Dental Education,” Journal of Dental Education 71 [2007]: 227–234). The present volume considers any person whose census record had a heavily Hispanic surname to be Latino. Historically Hispanic surname. The heavily Hispanic surname list was developed from Latino populations living in the United States in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Given California’s population history—for example, the Catalan soldiers who arrived in 1769 or the numerous Basque shepherds and other immigrants who arrived a century later—surnames historically originating in non-Castilian-speaking parts of the Iberian Peninsula have augmented this list. Latino birthplace. People with birthplaces in Mexico, Latin America, Spain, or the Basque and Catalan regions of France were categorized as Latinos, irrespective of surname. People born in Portugal were excluded without the presence of additional inclusion criteria, although people born in Brazil were included. People born  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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in California prior to 1850 would have been raised in a primarily Latino society and hence are categorized as Latino, irrespective of surname or parentage. Because of rapid population changes in the state, a birthplace in California after 1850 was not in itself an indicator but was used at times in conjunction with other indicators to identify an individual as Latino. Latino parent. A person who had at least one parent or grandparent categorized as Latino according to the foregoing definitions also was counted as Latino. The most common indicators of parental or grandparental background were heavily Hispanic surname or birthplace. Many records, however, do not provide information about an individual’s grandparents. Specific Latino family history. Intermarriage with non-Latinos was not uncommon among Latinos in California. For instance, Dolores Domínguez married James Watson in 1855. Their children, born in California, were surnamed Watson. Under the first two criteria listed above—possession of a heavily Hispanic surname and birth in Latin America, Spain, or California prior to 1850—these children would not have been included as Latinos. Knowledge of specific family histories, however, has allowed this project to identify such individuals as Latinos. All the Watson-Domínguez children were baptized in the Catholic church and spoke Spanish as well as English (see Judson A. Grenier, with Robert C. Gillingham, California Legacy: The James Alexander Watson–María Dolores Domínguez de Watson Family, 1820–1980 [(Los Angeles): Watson Land Company, 1987], p. 209). Family histories and memoirs were used to identify intermarried families, which Kevin Starr has called Latin-Yankee (Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1973], pp. 26–27, 436). The term is something of a misnomer in many cases, though, as the non-Latino spouse frequently was not, strictly speaking, a Yankee—that is, a person from New England. 20.  We did not include the 1890 census, as most of those returns were destroyed in a 1921 fire. 21.  El Clamor Público is available in the USC Digital Library, at http://digitallibrary.usc.edu. 22.  David E. Hayes-Bautista, Cynthia L. Chamberlin, Branden Jones, Juan Carlos Cornejo, Cecilia Cañadas, Carlos Martinez, and Gloria Meza, “Empowerment, Expansion, and Engagement: Las Juntas Patrióticas in California, 1848–1869,” California History 85 (2007): 4–23, 66–70. 23.  United States Census Bureau, Ethnicity and Ancestry Branch, The American Community—Hispanics: 2004 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, 2007). 24.  See, for example: David E. Hayes-Bautista, “Identifying Hispanic Populations: The Influence of Research Methodology upon Public Policy,” American Journal of Public Health 70 (1980): 353–356; David E. Hayes-Bautista and Jorge Chapa, “Latino Terminology: Conceptual Bases for Standardized Terminology,” American Journal of Public Health 77 (1987): 61–68.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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One. Before the American Civil War 1.  Paul Bryan Gray has written an extensive biography of Francisco P. Ramírez, Brilliance and Shadows: The Life of Francisco P. Ramírez, a Native Los Angeles Mexican, 1837–1908 (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, forthcoming), which will provide a wealth of information on this editor and political figure. 2.  “Correspondencia de ‘La Voz de Méjico’: Celebracion del aniversario del glorioso dia 5 de Mayo en Los Angeles, Alta California,” La Voz de Méjico, 18 June 1864, p. 2. Such historical tales might have been topics of discussion in Ramírez’s unusually literate family, but they probably would not have been staples of most Californio children’s bedtime stories at the time—only about 10 percent of Los Angeles County’s male Latino population in 1850 was literate, and Latina women were even less so; see Michael Weiss, “Education, Literacy, and the Community of Los Angeles in 1850,” Southern California Quarterly 60 (1978): 117–142. But nearly all young Californios would have heard oral histories of their own parents’ and grandparents’ experiences, even if not tales of Aztecs and conquistadors. 3.  Paul Bryan Gray, “Francisco P. Ramírez: A Short Biography,” California History 84 (2006–2007): 20. 4.  William Heath Davis, Seventy-Five Years in California, ed. Harold A. Small, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: John Howell, 1967), pp. 308–309. 5.  “News from the Atlantic,” Alta California, 19 March 1851, p. 2; “Mails for the Atlantic States,” Alta California, 31 December 1850, p. 3; “A City Market,” Alta California, 20 February 1851, p. 2; “The Omnibus,” Alta California, 2 June 1851, p. 2; “Too Bad,” Alta California, 12 February 1851, p. 2; “For the Atlantic States,” Alta California, 15 June 1852, p. 2; David E. Hayes-Bautista, La Nueva California: Latinos in the Golden State (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 5–6. 6.  Justo Veytia, Viaje a la Alta California, 1849–1850: Publicado por su nieto Salvador Veytia y Veytia con una introducción por el Ing. Ricardo Lancaster-Jones (Guadalajara: privately published, 1975), fols. 1r–15r; the quotation is at fols. 14v–15r. 7.  See, for example, Ramón Gil Navarro, The Gold Rush Diary of Ramón Gil Navarro, ed. and trans. María del Carmen Ferreyra and David S. Reher (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000). 8.  “San Joaquin Intelligence: Castoria Correspondence,” Alta California, 17 March 1851, p. 2. 9.  For a preliminary discussion of Latino population growth during the Gold Rush, see David Hayes-Bautista, Cynthia L. Chamberlin, Branden Jones, Juan Carlos Cornejo, Cecilia Cañadas, Carlos Martinez, and Gloria Meza, “Empowerment, Expansion, and Engagement: Las Juntas Patrióticas in California, 1848–1869,” California History 85 (2007): 12–16. 10.  “Al publico de la ciudad de Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Star, 17 May 1851, p. 3. For background on the newspaper, see William B. Rice, The “Los Angeles Star,”  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1851–1864: The Beginnings of Journalism in Southern California, ed. John Walton Caughey (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1947), pp. 3–15. 11.  Vol. 1, no. 1 of the Santa Barbara Gazette was published on May 24, 1855. Its first, second, and fourth pages were in English and the third page in Spanish. 12.  “El Periodismo en California,” El Clamor Público, 23 February 1856, p. 1, reprinted from El Éco del Pacífico of unknown date. 13.  Gray, “Francisco P. Ramírez,” pp. 21–23. 14.  “Mejor fuera Callar que con Necios Contestar,” El Clamor Público, 15 November 1856, p. 2. 15. Rice, The “Los Angeles Star,” pp. 26–29, 60, 75–77, 103, 112–115, 116–118, 130. 16. “Comunicados,” El Clamor Público, 9 June 1855, p. 3. 17.  “Proceedings of the Convention,” Alta California, 27 September 1849, p. 1. 18.  The full text of the Constitution of the State of California, 1849, is available on the website of the California secretary of state, at www.sos.ca.gov/archives/collections/1849/full-text.htm, accessed 17 June 2010. 19.  Untitled item, Alta California, 25 October 1849, p. 2; “Proceedings of the Convention,” Alta California, 25 October 1849, p. 5; “Proceedings of the Convention,” Alta California, 1 October 1849, supplemental issue for the steamer Oregon, p. 4. 20.  “Early Publication of the Laws,” Los Angeles Star, 12 July 1851, p. 2. 21.  Untitled editorial, El Clamor Público, 15 December 1855, p. 2. 22.  Untitled editorial, El Clamor Público, 7 March 1857, p. 2. 23.  William Marvin Mason, The Census of 1790: A Demographic History of Colonial California, Ballena Press Anthropological Papers 45 (Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press, 1998), pp. 65–70. For some of the sources of the settlers’ customs, see Charles Julian Bishko, “The Peninsular Background of Latin American Cattle Ranching,” Hispanic American Historical Review 32 (1952): 291–515. 24.  See, for example, “Efectos Mejicanos . . . Mexican Goods,” Alta California, 1 February 1849, p. 3. 25.  “Aviso al Publico,” advertisement, Alta California, 22 November 1849, p. 3; “Just Received,” advertisement, Alta California, 29 July 1852, p. 3; “Real Barcelona Monte Cards,” advertisement, Alta California, 4 February 1852, p. 2. 26. “Fragatas de Vela para Mazatlan y San Blas,” advertisement, Alta California, 1 August 1850, p. 3; “se vende—un rancho” and “se vende— un rancho,” advertisements, Alta California, 6 December 1850, p. 3. The two real estate advertisements appear in both Spanish and English. 27.  During rebuilding in the wake of one of San Francisco’s periodic fires, it was reported, “In Washington street two dry goods stores, ‘La Amarilla’ and Juan Cima’s, are opened and stocked.” “The Burned District,” Alta California, 14 May 1850, p. 2. 28.  “Hotel de la Aguila de Oro,” advertisement, San Francisco La Crónica, 15 December 1854, p. 2. 29.  Untitled advertisement, Alta California, 26 July 1849, p. 3. 30.  “From the Southern Mines,” Alta California, 26 September 1850, p. 2; “Sonora  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Restaurant,” advertisement, Sonora Union Democrat, 12 January 1856, p. 1; “Great Fire at Sonora Flat—Loss Fifteen Thousand Dollars,” Alta California, 30 July 1853, p. 2. 31.  “Fatal Accident,” Alta California, 17 April 1856, p. 2; “Fire,” Alta California, 8 December 1856, p. 2; “The Fire of Vallecito,” Alta California, 17 August 1859, p. 1; “Destruction of Rough and Ready and Chips’ Flat by Fire,” Alta California, 10 July 1859, p. 1; “Sacramento News: Tremendous Conflagration—Weaverville Burnt— Loss, $100,000,” Alta California, 13 March 1853, p. 2. 32.  For instance, see the description of a Corpus Christi procession in “Corpus Christi,” El Clamor Público, 5 June 1858, p. 2. 33.  “Cronica Local,” El Clamor Público, 7 November 1857, p. 3. 34.  “Rescuing Judas,” Alta California, 27 March 1853, p. 2. For this custom in mid-nineteenth-century California, see also “Life in California,” Joseph Lancaster Brent Papers, box 9, no. BT 74, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, typescript, pp. 37–38. For the widespread traditional Catholic and Eastern Orthodox custom of burning Judas in effigy on the day before Easter, see C. Bryson-Taylor, “Hanging Judas in Mexico,” in The Easter Book, ed. William Croswell Doane (New York and Boston: Macmillan, 1910), pp. 25–26. 35. Mason, The Census of 1790, pp. 45–64. Artistic representations of the various castas can be seen in María Concepción García Sáiz, Las Castas Mexicanas: Un Género Pictórico Americano (Mexico City: Olivetti, 1989). 36. Mason, The Census of 1790, pp. 61–64. The same phenomenon occurred in colonial Arizona and New Mexico; see Martha Menchaca, Recovering History, Reconstructing Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), pp. 122–124, 156–169; Laura E. Gómez, Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race (New York: New York University Press, 2007), p. 52. 37. Menchaca, Recovering History, pp. 220–221. 38.  The specifics of Manuel Domínguez’s ethnic heritage are not recorded. The record of his baptism, on 30 January 1803 at Mission San Diego, gives his ethnicity merely as razón (“person of reason”). Huntington Library, Early California Population Project Database (2006), www.huntington.org/Information/ECPPmain.htm, baptismal record no. 03081, accessed 1 September 2011. Judson Grenier, in California Legacy: The James Alexander Watson–María Dolores Domínguez de Watson Family, 1820–1980 ([Los Angeles]: Watson Land Company, 1987), gives no concrete evidence for his statement that the Domínguez family “stemmed from pure-blooded ancestors born in Spain, and later in Mexico. Earlier generations were natives of Catalonia” (p. 17). For Manuel Domínguez’s political activity in Los Angeles before 1848, see Marie E. Northrup, Spanish-Mexican Families of Early California, 1769–1850, vol. 1 (Burbank: Southern California Genealogical Society, 1987), p. 127. Domínguez served as a Los Angeles County supervisor in 1857; see “County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors: Supervisor Manuel Dominguez,” at http://file.lacounty.gov/ lac/mdominguez.pdf, accessed 25 August 2010. 39.  Untitled item, El Clamor Público, 28 March 1857, p. 1, reprinted from El Éco del Pacífico of unknown date; “Defensa del Sr. M. Dominguez,” El Clamor Público,  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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25 April 1857, p. 2; quoting an article in El Éco del Pacífico of unknown date. Thanks to the loss of nearly all the issues of El Éco del Pacífico, it is not known which trial this was or who moved to exclude Domínguez as a witness. All that remains are these references to the affair in El Clamor Público. 40.  “Mr. Brent y el Sr. M. Dominguez,” El Clamor Público, 2 May 1857, p. 2. Pablo de la Guerra himself later encountered similar racially based questions about his right to citizenship. In 1870 he was prosecuted by the state of California for illegally exercising privileges of citizenship to which (the state claimed) he was not entitled, including voting and owning land, because he was not white. De la Guerra proved to the state supreme court’s satisfaction that he was indeed white and therefore possessed full citizenship, although the court in its decision also affirmed that nonwhite former citizens of Mexico and their descendants could not enjoy full civil rights in California; see Menchaca, Recovering History, pp. 221–222. 41.  “Defensa del Sr. M. Dominguez,” El Clamor Público, 25 April 1857, p. 2. Ramírez also reprinted an editorial from El Éco del Pacífico passionately denouncing the state legislature’s denial of civil rights to nonwhites as a travesty of American democracy and predicting that denying blacks and Asians the right to testify in court would result in a rise in crime; see “La Legislatura,” El Clamor Público, 2 May 1857, p. 1; reprinted from El Éco del Pacífico of unknown date. 42. “Comunicado,” El Clamor Público, 24 May 1856, p. 2. 43. “Comunicado,” El Clamor Público, 22 August 1857, p. 3. The Californios’ scorn and resentment sometimes were reciprocated by the immigrants; see, for example, Veytia, Viaje a la Alta California, fols. 39r, 40v, 42r–v. 44.  See chapter 4 for debates in the 1860s over whether any “true” Mexican ought to become a U.S. citizen. For the projects to settle Californios in Sonora, and their outcomes, see Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846–1890 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 210–213. 45.  It should be noted that the representative’s phrase was used specifically in connection with one of the proposals for Latinos disenchanted with life in California after 1848 to resettle in Sonora. He notified the proposal’s backers in California that the Sonoran governor had been emphasizing to his citizens the advantages that would be gained by the Californios’ projected relocation to their state, “porque ella no infunde temores para la seguridad pùblica en virtud de que los pobladores por su idioma, costumbres, religion y esperiencia de lo que les ha pasado en la California, no podrán uniformar sus sentimientos con los de la república del Norte.” In other words, the governor was reassuring Sonorans that the prospective settlers were really fellow Mexicans, not American filibusters in disguise. “Ministerio de Fomento: Seccion Cuarta,” El Clamor Público, 10 May 1856, p. 3. 46.  “Important Letter,” Alta California, 15 March 1849, p. 2. 47.  “Signing the Constitution,” Alta California, 22 November 1849, p. 2. 48.  “Speech of T. L. Vermeule, Esq.,” Alta California, 1 December 1849, p. 1. 49.  “Civil Government,” California Star, 27 February 1847, p. 2, reprinted in The  

 

 

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California Star: Yerba Buena and San Francisco, vol. 1: 1847–1848, facs. ed. (Berkeley: Howell-North Books, 1965), p. 30. 50. “Junta,” Los Angeles Star, 14 February 1852, p. 3; Pitt, The Decline of the Californios, p. 91. 51. Pitt, The Decline of the Californios, pp. 83–107; Paul Gates, “The California Act of 1851,” California Historical Society Quarterly 50 (1971): 395–430; Gates, “California’s Embattled Settlers,” California Historical Society Quarterly 20 (1962): 99–130. 52. “Adviertese,” Los Angeles Star, 23 October 1852, p. 3. 53.  “Acta para Pacificar los Terrenos en California,” El Clamor Público, 5 April 1856, p. 2. 54.  The desire of Atlantic American citizens and European immigrants to the United States for land in the areas acquired in the Mexican-American War eventually led to the Homestead Act of 1862. See Lee Ann Potter and Wynell Schamel, “The Homestead Act of 1862,” Social Education 61 (1997): 359–364; available at www.archives.gov/education/lessons/homestead-act/, accessed 7 July 2010. 55.  “Meeting of Miners,” Alta California, 26 July 1849, p. 1. This group assumed, groundlessly, that “the foreigner (no matter of what country) . . . thrown by circumstances or a love of adventure to locate himself as a permanent resident of the country [California]” was not, and could not be, a Latino. 56.  “San Joaquin Intelligence,” Alta California, 29 July 1850, p. 2. In a number of districts, Atlantic American miners went through the formality of first convening meetings and voting to expel the “foreign” interlopers; see, for example, “Muerte a los Españoles,” El Clamor Público, 28 August 1855, p. 1. 57.  “Foreign Miners,” Alta California, 5 April 1850, p. 3. Greene’s other claim to fame was reportedly ending each day’s meeting of the 1850 legislature with the suggestion, “Let’s have a drink. Let’s have a thousand drinks!,” which led to its becoming known as the Legislature of a Thousand Drinks. Not coincidentally, he owned a saloon near where the legislature met in San José. See Pitt, The Decline of the Californios, p. 60. 58. Pitt, The Decline of the Californios, pp. 60–64; Richard Henry Morefield, “Mexicans in the California Mines, 1848–54,” California Historical Society Quarterly 35 (1956): 37–46. For the text of the Foreign Miners’ Act, see “An Act for the Better Regulation of the Mines, and the Government of Foreign Miners,” in The Statutes of California, Passed at the First Session of the Legislature. Begun the 15th Day of Dec. 1849, and Ended the 22d Day of April, 1850, at the City of Pueblo de San José. With an Appendix and Index (San José, CA: J. Winchester, State Printer, 1850), pp. 221–223. 59.  “Estado Financial de Este Condado,” Los Angeles Star, 24 May 1851, p. 3. Under Spanish and Mexican rule, taxes on imports and exports had almost entirely funded California’s government. 60. “Contribuciones,” El Clamor Público, 22 August 1857, p. 2. 61.  See, for example, “Venta de Terrenos,” Los Angeles Star, 24 May 1851, p. 3. “Lista Delincuente de las Contribuciones: Para objetos del Estado y Condado, por  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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los años 1856 y 1857,” El Clamor Público, 21 November 1857, pp. 2–3, lists delinquencies as varied as the $2.33 owed by an Indian named Seferino, for improvements to a lot in San Juan Capistrano, just south of another lot owned by the Indian woman María de Jesús, and the $137.60 owed by Juan Sepúlveda for a house and lot fronting Los Angeles’s main plaza, and twenty-two acres of orchard, which was the fourthlargest delinquent amount that fiscal year. 62.  J. Jofre strongly expressed the feeling of persecution in “Venta de Sonora,” El Clamor Público, 10 April 1858, p. 3, rpt. from El Éco del Pacífico of unknown date. 63.  “Mas molestias para santa anna,” Los Angeles Star, 10 December 1853, p. 3. 64.  Untitled item, Los Angeles Star, 21 January 1854, p. 3. 65.  For a brief overview of Walker’s filibustering in the 1850s, see David E. Hayes-Bautista, Cynthia L. Chamberlin, and Nancy Zuniga, “A Gold Rush Salvadoran in California’s Latino World, 1857,” Southern California Quarterly 91 (2009): 278–282. More detailed information can be found in the sources cited therein. 66.  Inspired by Walker’s initial apparent success in Nicaragua, Henry A. Crabb organized a filibustering expedition to Sonora with the intention of pushing aside the Mexican governor, declaring himself the ruler, and then seeking admission to the United States. Crabb eventually was defeated in Sonora and Walker in Nicaragua; see Hayes-Bautista et al., “A Gold Rush Salvadoran,” p. 282; untitled item, El Clamor Público, 28 March 1857, p. 1; “¡Noticias de Sonora! ¡¡Destruccion de los Filibusteros!!,” El Clamor Público, 16 May 1857, p. 2, reprinted from the San Diego Herald of unknown date; “Nicaragua: Capitulacion de Walker, Fin del Filibusterismo,” El Clamor Público, 27 June 1857, p. 2, reprinted from the Costa Rica La Crónica, 8 May 1857. 67.  Untitled editorial, El Clamor Público, 26 September 1857, p. 2. 68.  Untitled editorial, El Clamor Público, 13 February 1858, p. 2. 69.  “Ejemplos Gloriosos!,” El Clamor Público, 4 December 1858, p. 1, reprinted from El Éco del Pacífico of unknown date. 70.  “Cuando se Acabaran,” El Clamor Público, 3 July 1855, p. 2; based on a report in the San Francisco La Crónica of unknown date. 71. “Ultraje—Un Hombre Asesinado,” El Clamor Público, 3 July 1855, p. 2; based on a report in the Sonora Herald of unknown date. The account seems somewhat confused in saying that the miner who was shot had paid the tax; the victim’s remarks about saving his equipment from forced sale and his simply walking off the claim seem better suited to someone unable to pay. 72. “Inquisicion,” El Clamor Público, 28 August 1855, p. 2. 73.  “Eleccion de Santa Barbara,” letter dated 20 December 1852, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles Star, 15 January 1853, p. 4. The signatories of the letter, “A nombre de muchos Californios,” were J. M. Covarrubias, José Carrillo, T. R. Malo, Juan Blanerty, Juan Camarillo, R. Carrillo, and José Lorenzana. See n. 82 for a virtual admission by an Atlantic American of the attempted voter fraud. 74.  “El campo de los Muertos,” El Clamor Público, 12 June 1858, p. 1, reprinted from El Éco del Pacífico of unknown date. 75. Veytia, Viaje a la Alta California, fols. 54r, 55v. Although otherwise inclined  

 

 

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to hold Californios in a certain contempt as rude provincials, Veytia evidently was not above pretending to be one when it benefited him. 76. Navarro, The Gold Rush Diary of Ramón Gil Navarro, pp. 126–127. 77.  “San Joaquin Intelligence,” Alta California, 2 September 1850, p. 2. 78. Navarro, The Gold Rush Diary of Ramón Gil Navarro, pp. 119–123. For a summary of English-language reporting of this episode, see Pitt, The Decline of the Californios, pp. 61–63. 79.  “Meeting of Rancheros,” Los Angeles Star, 28 February 1852, p. 2. The Spanish-language text of their petition appears on p. 3 of the same issue. 80.  “Representacion al Consul Mexicano en California,” letter dated 23 September 1855, Sonora, El Clamor Público, 9 October 1855, p. 1, reprinted from the San Francisco La Crónica of unknown date. The outcome of the case is not known. 81. “Meeting,” El Clamor Público, 21 February 1857, p. 3. It is interesting that both the title and the text of this Spanish-language account used the English word meeting to describe this example of political activity in Southern California, whereas the source cited in the previous note, from Northern California, used the entirely Spanish junta pública. There may have been some truth in the Star’s observation in 1852 that Los Angeles County’s Latinos were unaccustomed before the mid-1850s to organized political participation, if they were borrowing terms for it from English. In contrast, Latinos in Northern California evidently had rather more experience. The lynching of Juan Valenzuela, Pedro López, and Nazario Duarte and the shooting death of Diego Navarro are recounted in “Sucesos de San Gabriel: Tres Hombres Ahorcados por el Pueblo y Uno Muerto a Balazos en los Brazos de Su Esposa,” El Clamor Público, 31 January 1857, p. 2. A rather different version of these events appeared in “Arrest and Execution of Four Robbers,” Los Angeles Star, 31 January 1857, p. 2. According to the latter account, the vigilantes who carried out the lynchings were operating under the presumption that the four Latinos were somehow connected to the outlaws who had killed Sheriff James R. Barton and three of his men (discussed later in this chapter), although there appears to have been scant evidence to support that presumption. 82.  Letter to the editor from S. Barney, dated 11 June 1852, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles Star, 19 June 1852, p. 2. 83.  “Santa Barbara Election,” Los Angeles Star, 13 November 1852, p. 2. 84.  “ Eleccion de Santa Barbara,” letter to the editor, dated 20 December 1852, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles Star, 15 January 1853, p. 4. Italics in original. 85. Ibid. 86.  Untitled editorial, El Clamor Público, 5 September 1857, p. 2. Francisco Ramírez had published a Spanish translation of Stanley’s letter on the subject a couple of weeks earlier, with the comment, “It is very deplorable, to those of us who were expecting the regeneration of the country from the triumph of Republicanism, that a man of such fine qualities as Mr. Stanley has declared himself in favor of the usurpations of the pirates, or settlers, against every notion of justice and sound reason. Moreover, the settlers have chosen him as a candidate for governor. This is grounds  

 

 

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enough for no Californio to cast his vote in his favor.” “Eduardo Stanley,” El Clamor Público, 22 August 1857, p. 2. 87.  See “Robos! Asesinatos! Desordenes!,” Los Angeles Star, 16 July 1853, p. 3; “Comunicado,” Los Angeles Star, 11 January 1855, p. 3; untitled editorial, Los Angeles Star, 7 April 1855, p. 3; Sandra Bass and John T. Donovan, “The Los Angeles Police Department,” in The Development of Los Angeles City Government: An Institutional History, 1850–2000, 2 vols., ed. Tom Sitton (Los Angeles: Los Angeles City Historical Society, 2007), 1:145–146. Cries of anguish similar to those in the Spanish-language press emanated regularly from its English-language counterpart as well. 88.  J. M. Scammell, “Military Units in Southern California, 1853–1862,” California Historical Society Quarterly 29 (1950), pp. 230–231. A report on 1854’s Fourth of July celebrations in Santa Barbara described the Guards’ membership as “composed of about 40 Americans and Californians.” “Fourth of July at Santa Barbara,” Los Angeles Star, 8 July 1854, p. 2. 89.  “Lista de los Guardias de la Ciudad,” El Clamor Público, 15 December 1855, p. 4. In printing this membership list, Ramírez, as he often did, rendered everyone’s first names in Spanish form, such as “Francisco Mellus” for Francis Mellus, but all can be identified as Atlantic Americans or European immigrants. Still, it is known from county marriage records, court documents, and memoirs that a number of the Guards had married Latina women and spoke at least some Spanish. 90.  “Horribles Asesinatos,” El Clamor Público, 24 January 1857, p. 2; “Horrenda Tragedia: Muerte del Sheriff de Los Angeles y Tres de sus Compañeros. EL FUNERAL. estragos cometidos por los ladrones,” El Clamor Público, 31 January 1857, p. 2; “Letter from Los Angeles,” letter to the editor from “W.A.W.,” dated 26 January 1857, Alta California, 1 February 1857, p. 2. 91.  “Horrenda Tragedia,” El Clamor Público, 31 January 1857, p. 2. 92.  “Compañias Organizadas,” El Clamor Público, 7 February 1857, p. 2. “Military Organization of the Citizens,” Los Angeles Star, 31 January 1857, p. 2, omits the Californios’ company but adds one under the command of W. W. Twist; another article in the same issue, “The Mounted Companies,” p. 2, however, fully acknowledges the Californios’ company. 93.  “Ejecucion de los Malhechores,” El Clamor Público, 7 February 1857, p. 2. “The Pursuit of the Robbers,” Los Angeles Star, 7 February 1857, p. 2, puts the number of Pico’s men at fifty-one and gives a detailed account of their pursuit and arrest of the outlaws, as well as the sequelae of escape, recapture, and the lynching of the Californios’ prisoners. 94.  Untitled editorial, El Clamor Público, 7 February 1857, p. 2; untitled editorial, Los Angeles Star, 7 February 1857, p. 2. 95. “Prisioneros,” El Clamor Público, 14 February 1857, p. 2. “Los Asesinatos en San Gabriel,” El Clamor Público, 14 February 1857, p. 2, translates the English-language account of these events given in “The Affair at the Mission,” Los Angeles Star, 7 February 1857, p. 2, which claimed, “Now, a general search took place, and a large number of suspected persons were taken prisoners—among them, Pedro Lopez and Juan Valenzuela.” Ramírez responded to this, “The ‘large number of suspected per 

 

 

 

 

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sons’ he mentions were all the Mexicans, or individuals of the Spanish-speaking race, who were in San Gabriel” (emphasis in original). 96.  “Lanceros de Los Angeles,” El Clamor Público, 16 May 1857, p. 2. 97. “Invitacion,” El Clamor Público, 11 July 1857, p. 1. 98. Comunicado, El Clamor Público, 22 August 1857, p. 3. Their participation in other public events is noted in “Cronica Local,” El Clamor Público, 5 December 1857, p. 3; “Funeral,” El Clamor Público, 9 January 1858, p. 2. 99.  Untitled editorial, El Clamor Público, 14 November 1857 p. 2; “Meeting,” El Clamor Público, 19 December 1857, p. 1. For the Utah War and the Mountain Meadows massacre, see Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2002); David L. Bigler, “The Aiken Party and the Utah War, 1857–1858,” Western Historical Quarterly 38 (2007): 457–476; David L. Bigler and Will Bagley, eds., Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, vol. 12 of Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier (Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark, 2008); Sally Denton, American Tragedy: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). Ramírez’s reporting on the Mountain Meadows massacre is in “Horrorosa Carniceria. DEGUELLO DE 118 E ­ MIGRANTES!! por los mormones e indios. relacion de mr. powers. venganza b ­ rutal de los mormones,” El Clamor Público, 17 October 1857, p.1. 100. “Meeting,” El Clamor Público, 19 December 1857, p. 1. 101.  “Los Californios,” El Clamor Público, 16 January 1858, p. 2, reprinted from El Éco del Pacífico of unknown date. 102.  “California State Militia and National Guard Unit Histories: Lanceros de Los Angeles,” at www.militarymuseum.org/LancerosdeLosAngeles.html, accessed 2 July 2010; Scammell, “Military Units in Southern California, 1853–1862,” pp. 233– 242; untitled item, El Clamor Público, 27 March 1858, p. 2. 103.  “Celebration. Of the 8th of January, the 43rd Anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, by the Southern Rifles,” El Clamor Público, 16 January 1858, p. 3. 104.  “Ejecucion de King y Tapia,” El Clamor Público, 20 February 1858, p. 2. 105.  “Cuadrilla de Ladrones,” El Clamor Público, 13 March 1858, p. 2. 106.  “Corpus Christi,” El Clamor Público, 5 June 1858, p. 2. 107.  “El 4 de Julio de 1858: Celebracion del aniversario octuagesimo tercero de la INDEPENDENCIA NACIONAL!,” advertisement, El Clamor Público, 22 May 1858, p. 2. 108.  For the text and an analysis of Mora’s cryptic letter, see Hayes-Bautista et al., “A Gold Rush Salvadoran,” pp. 257–294. 109. Veytia, Viaje a la Alta California, fols. 25r–26r, 31r, 32rv, 33r, 37v–38r, 39r– v, 51v–53r. 110.  “Estrella de Chile: Groserias [sic] de familias,” advertisement, San Francisco La Crónica, 15 December 1854, p. 3. Alcayaga was cosmopolitan enough to use the bastardized English-Spanish term grocería in his advertising to mean “grocery store”; see chapter 4 for other uses of this Spanglish term in mid-nineteenth-century California.  

 

 

 

 

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111.  The following are all in the Los Angeles County Recorder’s Office, Marriage Book 1. p. 24, 30 June 1858 wedding of Carlos Cruz and Martina Ochoa; ibid., 5 June 1858 wedding of Ygnacio Aguilar and Cesaria Valenzuela; p. 30, 3 December 1858 wedding of José López and Francisca Blanco. Californio-Californio marriages: p. 24, 14 June 1858 wedding of Gerónimo Fleury and María Silva; p. 25, 20 July 1858 wedding of José Redona and María Fermina Sepúlveda; p. 27, 28 August 1858 wedding of Felipe Abila and Prudencia Ruiz; p. 28, 1 September 1858 wedding of José Librado Silvas and María Ramona Armenta; ibid., 15 September 1858 wedding of Silvestre and Trinidad (both were California Indians); 25 September 1858 wedding of Pedro Almenares and Susana Herrera. Mexican-Californio marriages: p. 25, 7 July 1858 wedding of José María Rojas and Apolinaria García; p. 26, 6 August 1858 wedding of Julián Quintero and María Rita Bermúdez; p. 28, 9 September 1858 wedding of Agapito Osuna and Petra Ruiz; ibid., 11 September 1858 wedding of José Romualdo López and María Ermita Wansylvanin [sic]; ibid., 20 September 1858 wedding of Alejo Rendón and Rosario Romario. Mexican-Mexican marriages: p. 24, 8 June 1858 wedding of Andrés Federio and Joaquina Monroy; p. 25, 28 July 1858 wedding of Antonio Pérez and Guadalupe Espinosa; p. 27, 14 August 1858 wedding of José Espinoza and Dionisia Figueroa. 112.  Tuolumne County Marriage Books 1–4, pp. 5, 9, 11, 17–23. 113.  “Reflecciones sobre Mejico,” Los Angeles Star, 7 May 1853, p. 3. 114.  “Hospitalidad Californiana,” El Clamor Público, 18 September 1855, p. 1, reprinted from the San Francisco La Crónica of unknown date. 115. “aviso a los hispano-americanos,” advertisement, Alta California, 27 September 1849, p. 4. The term was also used in “A. G. Randall: Escribano Publico,” advertisement, L’Echo du Pacifique, 7 August 1852, p. 4. 116.  “Despedida: A los Lectores de El Clamor Publico,” El Clamor Público, 31 December 1859, p. 2. 117. While race in twenty-first century English usually refers to a group of people sharing constituent genetic elements, the Spanish raza is more flexible—as, for that matter, was race in older forms of English, including that used in the mid-nineteenth century. In Spanish, the meanings of raza range from approximately the present-day English sense of “breed” or “race” to “extended family,” “kin group,” or even a larger, more loosely defined group that shares certain nonbiological characteristics, such as language or culture. 118.  “[Para El Clamor Público.] La america de Madrid—El times de Londres, y el congreso continental,” opinion piece by “M.R.,” El Clamor Público, 17 October 1857, p. 2; “El porvenir de la America latina,” El Clamor Público, 5 November 1859, p. 1. 119.  “Emigracion para Sonora,” El Clamor Público, 13 November 1858, p. 1, reprinted from El Éco del Pacífico of unknown date. 120.  Ibid. The term raza is used similarly in “Comunicado,” letter to the editor from “varios californios,” El Clamor Público, 7 March 1857, p. 3. 121.  “Los Estados Unidos e Hispano-America,” letter to the editor from “D.A.,” dated 1858, Havana, El Clamor Público, 5 June 1858, p. 1.  

 

 

 

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122.  “Situacion de los Hispano-Americanos en California,” proposal by Jesús Islas, dated 26 June 1855, Mazatlan, El Clamor Público, 23 October 1855, p. 2. Interestingly, in this document Islas attributes the desire of Latinos to leave California not just to the ill treatment they were experiencing under U.S. rule but also to a recent severe economic downturn. The vast majority of Latinos in California, despite Islas’s prediction, decided against resettlement in Mexico, and only about two or three hundred joined the Junta Colonizadora de Sonora; see Pitt, The Decline of the Californios, pp. 210–213. 123.  “Emigracion a Sonora,” El Clamor Público, 16 February 1856, p. 1; “Aviso a los Hispano-Americanos,” advertisement, El Clamor Público, 20 November 1858, p. 2. 124.  For how these numbers were derived, see introduction, n. 19. 125.  Although Californio parents were not, strictly speaking, immigrants, their generational position was effectively the same as that of the post-1848 immigrants in demographic terms. 126.  Public instruction in Los Angeles could be said to have begun in the colonial period, with the establishment of a school in 1817, while San Diego, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco had schools founded in the 1790s; see William M. Mason, Los Angeles under the Spanish Flag: Spain’s New World (Burbank: Southern California Genealogical Society, 2004), p. 52. Most of these were in operation for only a few years at best, to be succeeded at intervals by others similarly ephemeral; see Hubert Howe Bancroft, California Pastoral, vol. 34, pt. 2, of The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, rpt. ed., Elibron Classics (San Francisco: History Company, 1888; Adamant Media, 2005), pp. 493–525. As a result, the literacy rate among adult Latino males in Los Angeles County in 1850 has been calculated at roughly 10 percent, with an even lower rate among adult women; see Weiss, “Education, Literacy and the Community of Los Angeles in 1850,” pp. 117–142. 127.  “Instruccion Pública,” Los Angeles Star, 1 May 1852, p. 4. 128.  “La Instruccion Publica,” El Clamor Público, 24 July 1858, p. 1. 129.  “Anuncios Nuevos: Discurso,” El Clamor Público, 7 November 1857, p. 2. López referred to his origins in an advertisement he placed in the San Francisco La Crónica, 15 December 1854, p. 4: “There is a Central American individual who seeks a future as an instructor in the lower grades . . . SANTIAGO LOPEZ.” Public examinations before members of the school board and anyone else who wished to attend were a regular feature of nineteenth-century education in the United States, to demonstrate that a school was effectively teaching its students. 130.  “Escuelas Publicas,” Los Angeles Star, 14 August 1852, p. 3. 131.  “La Escuela Pública,” Los Angeles Star, 18 January 1855, p. 3. There were also contemporary efforts by private and parochial schools to educate local children; see “Aviso,” Los Angeles Star, 19 June 1852, p. 3; “La Educacion,” Los Angeles Star, 15 January 1853, p. 3; “Hermanas de la Caridad,” El Clamor Público, 7 June 1856, p. 2. 132.  “Las Escuelas,” El Clamor Público, 1 November 1856, p. 2. 133.  “Insituto Patriotico. Para la juventud de ambos sexos,” advertisement, El Clamor Público, 15 March 1856, p. 3. Louis Vignes, in whose house the school was held, was Ramírez’s godfather and had played a considerable role in his education, so  

 

 

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the newspaper’s endorsement of this school is not surprising; see Gray, “Francisco P. Ramirez,” pp. 20–22. 134.  “La Mexicanita,” advertisement, El Clamor Público, 27 September 1856, p. 2. The ad employs the Spanish monetary term peso as the equivalent of the U.S. dollar, standard usage in California at this time. There is almost no evidence that Spanish-language schools were founded in Northern California. Latino schoolchildren there seem to have been educated almost exclusively in English, aside from whatever lessons they may have had in the home. This is not surprising, given the large influx of Atlantic Americans into the mining counties from 1849 on, which quickly made them the dominant ethnic group in the northern part of the state. 135.  “Comunicado. La Escuelas Públicas,” El Clamor Público, 20 February 1858, p. 2. 136.  “El 4 de Julio,” El Clamor Público, 10 July 1855, p. 2. 137. “Casamiento,” El Clamor Público, 29 May 1858, p. 2. The newlyweds were his fellow newspaper publisher James Alonzo Waite, with whom Ramírez had worked at the Star, and Louisa J. Fox; for Waite’s career at the Star, see Rice, The Los Angeles Star, pp. 60, 140–141, 216. 138.  “Sacramento News,” Alta California, 14 April 1852, p. 2. 139.  “Spanish Words Frequently Used in English Conversation in California,” Alta California, 19 October 1857, p. 1. 140.  John S. Hittell, “Variations of the English Language,” Alta California, 17 June 1859, p. 3. 141.  Ramírez uses the phrase young and rising generation in English in “To Our Spanish-American Friends,” El Clamor Público, 18 June 1859, p. 3. 142.  Ibid. “our own, our native land” is from the American patriotic song “God for Our Native Land,” by the clergyman George W. Bethune. 143.  Edwin Williamson, The Penguin History of Latin America (London: Penguin, 1992), pp. 144–146. 144.  Seccion 5, Art. 73, “No podrà establecerse distincion alguna civil ni política por razon del nacimiento, ni del origen ó raza” appears in “Estatuto Organico Provisional de la Republica Mexicana: Decretado por el Supremo Gobierno el dia 15 de Mayo de 1856,” El Clamor Público, 16 August 1856, p. 1. 145.  See, for instance, “Progresos de Cangrejo,” El Clamor Público, 3 April 1858, p. 1, rpt. from El Éco de San Francisco (probably El Éco del Pacífico is meant) of unknown date; “El Crimen de nacer Negro,” El Clamor Público, 5 March 1859, p. 2. 146.  The editorial, in its potted history of Mexico, declares:  

 

 

Spaniards, Indians and negroes were promiscuously thrown together. No law of custom or prejudice prevented their union and mixture. . . . They were undoubtedly a mongrel race, of every hue and color. . . . The virtues of European civilization were cast aside, while the hereditary vices and low instincts of the African race and Indian tribes were retained. These men were the founders of Mexican law, order, religion, civilization and government. How different their condition in the scale of greatness and grandeur from that exhibited by the inhabitants of the sister Republic of North

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America? The primitive virtues, the stern morals, the industrious habits, ardent patriotism, the indomitable enterprise, the self-denial, and unflagging energy of the American people, were directly the reverse of their Mexican neighbors[’]. Idleness, indolence, ignorance, bigotry, superstition, jealousy, hatred and envy, were the characteristics of the latter. The low ideas, as well as the low cunning, of the negro and Indian preponderated, and Mexico has reaped sorrowfully, and disastrously[,] of the harvest grown from such seed.

“Some Reasons Why Lower California and Sonora Should Become Integral Portions of the United States,” Alta California, 5 January 1858, p. 1. 147.  “An Act to Punish Vagrants, Vagabonds, and Dangerous and Suspicious Persons. Approved April 30, 1855,” Statutes of California Passed at the Sixth Session of the Legislature, Begun on the First Day of January, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty-Five, and Ended on the Seventh Day of May, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty-Five, at the City of Sacramento (Sacramento: B. B. Redding, 1855), pp. 217–218. In an untitled editorial in 1856, Ramírez could remark, “Our readers will remember the famous ‘Greasers’ Law,’ ” confident that his readers would immediately understand the reference; see El Clamor Público, 13 September 1856, p. 2. 148.  “Estatuto Organico Provisional de la Republica Mexicana. Decretado por el Supremo Gobierno el dia 15 de Mayo de 1856,” El Clamor Público, 2 August 1856, p. 1. 149.  Untitled editorial, El Clamor Público, 25 July 1855, p. 2. 150.  Untitled editorial, El Clamor Público, 14 November 1857, p. 2. 151.  Untitled editorial, El Clamor Público, 30 October 1855, p. 2. 152.  “Estados Unidos,” El Clamor Público, 25 April 1857, p. 2. 153.  Gray, “Francisco P. Ramírez,” p. 29. 154.  “Insurreccion en el Estado de Virginia,” El Clamor Público, 19 November 1859, p. 2.  

Two. The First Battle of Puebla 1.  Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2001), pp. 76–79. 2.  “La Guerra de los Estados Unidos,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 April 1862, p. 2. 3.  Untitled editorial, El Amigo del Pueblo, 30 November 1861, p. 2. 4.  Jasper Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez (London: Constable, 1993), pp. 27– 29, 32–42. 5.  Ernest G. Hildner Jr., “The Mexican Envoy Visits Lincoln,” Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 6 (1950): 184–189; Robert Ryal Miller, “Matías Romero: Mexican Minister to the United States during the Juárez-Maximilian Era,” Hispanic American Historical Review 45 (1965): 229, 231–232; Thomas D. Schoonover, ed. and trans., Mexican Lobby: Matías Romero in Washington, 1861–1867 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986), pp. 2–3, 7–9, 25.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No t e s t o Pag e s 4 8 – 5 4   •   209  

6. Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez, pp. 63–64. 7.  “La cuestion de Méjico en los Estados Unidos,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 May 1862, p. 2. 8.  Untitled item, El Amigo del Pueblo, 30 November 1861, p. 1. 9.  “Despachos telegráficos á la prensa asociada,” La Voz de Méjico, 13 May 1862, p. 2. See chapter 5 for Vidaurri’s later declared support of the Confederacy. 10.  “Noticias del Este,” La Voz de Méjico, 12 July 1862, p. 2. 11.  “Maquinaciones de los confederados de Sonora,” La Voz de Méjico, 1 May 1862, p. 2, based on documents printed in the (San Francisco?) Bulletin, 28 April 1862; “Los rebeldes y Pesqueira,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 May 1862, p. 1. 12.  “(De la Crónica de Nueva York),” La Voz de Méjico, 28 June 1862, p. 1, reprinted from the New York Chronicle of unknown date. 13.  Untitled item, La Voz de Méjico, 1 July 1862, p. 2; based on a report in the Evening Journal of unknown date. 14.  Ralph Roeder, Juarez and His Mexico (New York: Viking, 1947), 1:273; Martín Reyes Vayssade, Jecker: El hombre que quiso vender México (Mexico City: Joaquín Mortiz, 2005), pp. 183–192. 15.  Reyes Vayssade, Jecker, pp. 217–222, 227–229. 16.  “Discurso Pronunciado en el Salon Dashaway, en San Francisco, California, la noche del 5 de Mayo de 1865, por el C[iudadano]. consul de la Républica mejicana José A. Godoy, presidente del Club patriótico mejicano,” La Voz de Méjico, 6 May 1865, p. 1. 17.  “Discurso Pronunciado en Virginia City, Estado de Nevada, por el ciudadano Rafael H. Gonzalez, secretario del Club Patriòtico Mejicano, el 5 de Mayo de 1865,” El Nuevo Mundo, 15 May 1865, p. 1. 18.  “Discurso Pronunciado por el C[iudadano]. Ramon Martinez en el aniversario del 5 de Mayo de 1865 en el pueblo de Hornitos California,” La Voz de Méjico, 25 May 1865, p. 2. 19. Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez, pp. 80–84, 89–93. 20.  Letter from Alphonse Dubois de Saligny and his colleague E. Jurien to the French foreign minister, published in translation in “Documentos importantes,” La Voz de Méjico, 3 June 1862, p. 2. An article titled “Mejico” in the same issue of this newspaper, p. 1, cites the (San Francisco?) Herald as stating that Saligny had complained to Juárez’s government about the French soldiers’ deaths, but the letter from the French ambassador to the Mexican foreign minister published in “Documentos importantes” makes no mention of this. 21. “Mejico,” La Voz de Méjico, 3 June 1862, p. 1. 22.  “Mejico: Noticias Anteriores. Pronunciamiento de Orizaba,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 June 1862, p. 1. 23. “Mejico,” La Voz de Méjico, 3 June 1862, p. 1. 24.  Jesús de Leon Toral, Historia militar: La Intervención Francesa en México (Mexico City: Publicaciones Especiales del Primer Congreso Nacional de Historia para el Estudio de la Guerra de Intervención and Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística, 1962), pp. 112–122, gives an general overview of the battle and the units  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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that fought in it. For the centennial of the first battle of Puebla in 1963, Miguel A. Sánchez Lamego compared the official reports written by Zaragoza and other commanders to other recently discovered documentation, such as muster rolls, and pointed out a number of minor discrepancies between the different sources; see his “La batalla del 5 de Mayo de 1862: Algunas consideraciones novedosas,” in La Batalla del 5 de Mayo, ed. Sánchez Lamego, Miguel Arroyo Cabrera, Antonio Prado Vertiz, Octavio Guzmán, Enrique Cordero y Torres, and María Dolores Posada Olayo (Mexico City: Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística, Sección de Historia, 1963), pp. 11–35. A French account published less than a year after the first battle of Puebla starts by naming the individual Frenchmen alleged to have been killed by Mexicans, whose deaths were the pretext for the French repudiation of the Preliminaries of Soledad. It then recounts the battle from a French perspective; see Félix Ribeyre, Histoire de la Guerre du Mexique (Paris: Eugène Pick de L’Isère, 1863). Modern French treatments are less triumphalist, such as Jean Avenal’s La Campagne du Mexique (1862–1867): La fin de l’ hégémonie européenne en Amérique du Nord (Paris: Economica, 1996). 25.  Although accounts from private letters also may have been known to a few individuals, Rodríguez’s is also the only one in Spanish circulating in California at the time that survives today. 26.  “Parte oficial del general Lorencez,” La Voz de Méjico, 19 August 1862, p. 1. 27.  “Parte del general Zaragoza,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 June 1862, p. 2; “Ministerio de guerra y marina. Parte oficial de la defensa de Puebla, comunicado por el General Zaragoza,” La Voz de Méjico, 8 July 1862, p. 1. 28.  “Importantes pormenores de Puebla,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 June 1862, p. 2. For Zaragoza’s preparations, see “Parte del general Zaragoza,” ibid. 29.  “Importantes pormenores de Puebla,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 June 1862, p. 2; “Ministerio de guerra y marina,” La Voz de Méjico, 8 July 1862, p. 1; “Parte oficial del general Lorencez,” La Voz de Méjico, 19 August 1862, p. 1. 30.  “Parte oficial del general Lorencez,” La Voz de Méjico, 19 August 1862, p. 1. 31.  “Importantes pormenores de Puebla,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 June 1862, p. 2. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34.  “Parte oficial del general Lorencez,” La Voz de Méjico, 19 August 1862, p. 1. 35.  “Parte del general Zaragoza,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 June 1862, p. 2. 36. “Mejico,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 May 1862, p. 2. 37.  “Ministerio de guerra y marina,” La Voz de Méjico, 8 July 1862, p. 1. 38. “Mejico,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 May 1862, p. 2. 39.  “Parte del general Zaragoza,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 June 1862, p. 2; “Proclama,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 June 1862, p. 2. 40.  “Las noticias de Mèjico,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 May 1862, p. 2. 41.  “Importantes pormenores de Puebla,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 June 1862, p. 2; “Mejico,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 May 1862, p. 2. 42.  “¡¡¡Noticia Importantisima!!! Retirada de los franceses,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 May 1862, p. 2.  

 

No t e s t o Pag e s 58 – 61   •   211  

43.  The particulars of transmission for these reports are recounted in “Mejico. Correspondencia particular de la Voz de Méjico,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 May 1862, p. 2. 44.  La Voz de Méjico, vol. 1, no. 1, was printed on 29 March 1862. Few issues of the triweekly Éco del Pacífico have survived. Its publishing history may be deduced from the volume and issue numbers given in the masthead of the first known surviving issue, from 7 August 1852 (vol. 1, no. 28). Most of its surviving content exists in the form of articles reprinted in contemporaneous newspapers. 45.  “¡¡¡Noticia Importantisima!!! Retirada de los franceses,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 May 1862, p. 2. 46. Ibid. 47.  For a detailed study of this event, see David E. Hayes-Bautista and Cynthia L. Chamberlin, “Cinco de Mayo in Tuolumne County, 1862–1865: A New Light Shines on Tuolumne County’s Latinos,” Chispa, the Quarterly of the Tuolumne County Historical Society 48 (2008): 1715–1722. 48. “Remitido,” La Voz de Méjico, 7 June 1862, p. 2. The date of this letter is printed as “Mayo 22 de 1862,” but this is almost certainly an error. An article in the May 22 issue of La Voz de Méjico, “Los Franceses en Méjico,” p. 2, referred glancingly to a recent battle having taken place between the French and the Mexicans, but there was no mention of who might have won it and certainly no headlines announcing a great victory for Mexico. A.M.’s handwritten letter most likely was dated May 29, two days after the May 27 paper was printed, but was misread and typeset as May 22. 49.  “Columbia Mayo 20 de 1862,” La Voz de Méjico, 24 May 1862, p. 2. The rooster is one of the traditional symbols of France. 50.  Untitled item, La Voz de Méjico, 12 June 1862, p. 2. 51.  “A mis hermanos los Mejicanos que habitan en la Republica de los EstadosUnidos del Norte,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 June 1862, p. 2. Aculzingo is a village near Veracruz that Mexican patriots burned in 1862 to deny supplies to the French forces advancing from Veracruz to Puebla. 52.  “Una espada de honor para ¡el General Zaragoza!” La Voz de Méjico, 17 June 1862, p. 2. 53.  Untitled item, La Voz de Méjico, 19 June 1862, p. 2. Although Rodríguez did not name his “Spanish-speaking colleague,” El Éco del Pacífico was at the time the only other Spanish-language paper being published in San Francisco, so the implication is clear. 54. Ibid. 55.  Untitled item, La Voz de Méjico, 21 June 1862, p. 2. 56.  Gerardo López del Castillo was the son-in-law of the theatrical company’s founders, Donato Estrella and his Spanish wife, María de los Ángeles García de Estrella. Castillo’s mother-in-law was the company’s leading lady, while his wife, Amelia Estrella del Castillo, played the ingenue roles and danced; both women also sang, as did Donato Estrella. Having spent the 1850s and early 1860s touring Mexico, with occasional ventures into the Caribbean and Central America, the Estrella Company in 1862 relocated to San Francisco, presumably due to upheavals caused by the French Intervention. Initially, Castillo seems to have been overshadowed as  

 

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an actor by his wife and mother-in-law, but with the advent of the juntas patrióticas in mid-1862, he found a starring role as a patriotic orator and impresario. In addition to organizing the benefit at the Metropolitan Theater on August 10, 1862, he gave a long, vehement speech at that year’s Mexican Independence Day celebrations in San Francisco as principal orator. The partial transcript of this speech in La Voz de Méjico occupies a good deal of the front page of the September 18 and September 20 issues and is repeatedly marked by phrases in italics and all-capital letters, reflecting Castillo’s highly emotional delivery. The editor observed that Castillo was frequently interrupted by applause and practically mobbed by his audience after he descended from the podium. After the summer of 1863, however, the Estrella Company seems to have left San Francisco. Their whereabouts for the next few years are not clear, but in 1867, Castillo, his wife, and his parents-in-law reappeared in Mexico City as leading members of the Compañía Dramática del Liceo Mexicano (Dramatic Company of the Mexican Lyceum): the two women as its leading actresses, Castillo as the company’s director, and Estrella as its musical director. In subsequent years, Castillo became known for staging popular sentimental and patriotic productions, especially those by Mexican dramatists. In 1875, the Mexico City newspaper El Monitor Republicano called him the country’s leading national actor. He died in 1902. For Castillo and the Estrella Company, see: untitled item, La Voz de Méjico, 29 March 1862, p. 2; “Teatro” and advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 3 April 1862, p. 2; advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 5 April 1862, p. 2; “Teatro” and advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 10 April 1862, p. 2; “Teatro” and advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 12 April 1862, p. 2; advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 17 April 1862, p. 2; advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 19 April 1862, p. 2; “Artistas españoles,” La Voz de Méjico, 24 April 1862, pp. 1–2, reprinted from the Los Angeles El Amigo del Pueblo of unknown date, and advertisement, ibid.; advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 1 May 1862, p. 2; advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 8 May 1862, p. 2; “Teatro español” and advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 10 May 1862, p. 1; advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 15 May 1862, p. 2; advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 22 May 1862, p. 2; “Funcion teatral,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 August 1862, p. 2; advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 7 August 1862, p. 1; “El 16 de Setiembre” and “Oracion civica pronunciada por el C[iudadano] Gerardo L. del Castillo en el Puerto de San Francisco del dia 16 de Setiembre de 1862,” La Voz de Méjico, 18 September 1862, p. 1; “Oracion civica pronunciada por el C[iudadano] Gerardo L. del Castillo en el Puerto de San Francisco del dia 16 de Setiembre de 1862,” La Voz de Méjico, 20 September 1862, p. 1; “Lista,” La Voz de Méjico, 23 September 1862, p. 1; “Teatro español,” La Voz de Méjico, 7 July 1863, p. 1; advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 21 July 1863, p. 2; Manuel Mañon, Historia del Teatro Principal de México (Mexico City: Cvltvra, 1932), pp. 92, 242–243; Rosemary Gipson, “The Beginning of Theatre in Sonora,” Arizona and the West 9 (1967): 349–355; Nicolás Kanellos, “El teatro profesional hispánico: orígenes en el Suroeste,” La Palabra: Revista de Literatura Chicana 2 (1980), at www.cervantesvirtual.com/servlet/­ SirveObras/80228400320804384100080/p0000005.htm#I_6_, accessed 18 March 2010; Clementina Díaz y Ovando, Un enigma de Los Ceros: Vicente Riva Palacio  

 

 

No t e t o Pag e 66   •   213

o Juan de Dios Peza (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1994), pp. 114–115. 57.  His advertising featured images of a violin and guitar, with the legend “Dolores Mojica / carpintero mejicano,” and noted that “he builds guitars, makes violins, and carries out any delicate work of carpentry whatsoever.” See, for example, his advertisement in La Voz de Méjico, 8 May 1862, p. 1. 58. “Lista,” La Voz de Méjico, 23 June 1862, p. 2. 59. “Lista,” La Voz de Méjico, 28 June 1862, p. 2, under “Sonoma.” Included were General Vallejo, his wife Benicia, and six of their children—Adelaida Vallejo de Frisbie, Jovita Vallejo (de Haraszthy), Uladislao Vallejo, Henry Vallejo, Andrónico Vallejo, and Napoleón Vallejo—as well as the general’s great-nephew, Eduardo Bale. Probably due to a mistake by Rodríguez in reading a handwritten list of these subscribers, Adelaida Vallejo de Frisbie appears as “Mrs. S. C. Frisbie (de Vallejo).” Her husband’s initials were L.C., for Levi Cornell Frisbie; a curly capital L could easily be mistaken for a curly capital S in the handwriting of the period. 60.  See the “Lista”s in La Voz de Méjico, p. 2, on 28 June 1862, 10 July 1862, 15 July 1862, 19 July 1862, 22 July 1862, 24 July 1862, 26 July 1862, 29 July 1862, 31 July 1862, 2 August 1862, 5 August 1862, 7 August 1862, 9 August 1862, 14 August 1862, and 21 August 1862; “La Espada de Honor,” La Voz de Méjico, 6 September 1862, p. 2. 61.  I use Latino sword of honor, a name both brief and not inaccurate, to distinguish this particular ceremonial sword from a number of other presentation swords that were made for military heroes in Mexico and the United States around this time. Contemporaries referred to it in several different ways, the most precise and descriptive of which was “the sword that the Mexicans living in Alta California had made at their own expense to give to the famous General Zaragoza,” in “Comunicaciones,” La Voz de Méjico, 14 March 1863, p. 2. This sobriquet, however, is not only too long and clumsy to use regularly in a discussion of the sword’s origins but also inaccurate; as explained in this chapter, a number of non-Mexicans, Latinos and non-Latinos alike, contributed to its making. Latino sword of honor seemed a reasonable compromise, even though the term was not used at the time. 62. “Lista,” La Voz de Méjico, 28 June 1862, p. 2, under “Sonoma.” 63. “Lista,” La Voz de Méjico, 28 June 1862, p. 2, records a donation from one “Tomas Mora (Chileno)”; “Lista,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 July 1862, p. 2, notes a donation from “Un Peruano, de Marysville,” along with sums given by three other, named Latinos living in the same town. 64.  See the “Lista”s in La Voz de Méjico, p. 2, for 26 July 1862, 9 August 1862, 19 July 1862, and 29 July 1862. 65. “Lista,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 August 1862, p. 2. 66.  “Noticias del Interior,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 July 1862, p. 2. The list of subscribers appears as “Lista,” ibid. Tellingly, the male subscribers are designated Ciudadanos (“citizens”), while the female subscribers are Señoras (“ladies”); women, of course, had no voting rights in either the United States or Mexico in 1862 and therefore could not be considered full citizens of either country. 67. “Lista,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 August 1862, p. 2. This source claims a total col 

 

 

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lection of a little more than $1,140, but “Cuenta de la Espada,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 April 1863, p. 2, gives a final total of $1,250. 68.  “La Espada de Honor,” La Voz de Méjico, 20 September 1862, p. 2; “Espada de Honor,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 October 1862, p. 2. 69.  Untitled item, containing a “Cuenta de la Espada,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 April 1863, p. 2. For the Nahl brothers’ careers, see www.askart.com/askart/n/charles _christian_nahl/charles_christian_nahl.aspx, accessed 26 February 2010. “Señor Villalón” may have been one of the partners of the jewelers’ firm Rogers and Villalón, on Washington Street in San Francisco, which advertised in La Voz de Méjico during the 1860s; see, for instance, their advertisement in that paper’s 13 September 1864 issue, p. 1. 70.  Untitled item, containing a “Cuenta de la Espada,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 April 1863, p. 2; “La Espada de Honor del General Zaragoza,” La Voz de Méjico, 1 November 1862, p. 2. 71.  David E. Hayes-Bautista, María Luisa Rodríguez Sala, Alfonzo Pérez, and Ignacio de Jesús Gómezgil, “Una espada de honor para Ignacio Zaragoza: La Batalla del 5 de Mayo en Puebla y las reacciones de los hispanos en la Alta California.” 72.  “La Espada de Honor del General Zaragoza,” La Voz de Méjico, 1 November 1862, p. 2. 73.  “Litografia del General Zaragoza,” La Voz de Méjico, 4 October 1862, p. 2. 74.  “Llegada del vapor ‘Constitution’ ” and “El C[iudadano]. General Ignacio Zaragoza,” La Voz de Méjico, 7 October 1862, p. 1; “La muerte del General Zaragoza,” ibid., p. 2. The first two articles cited contradict each other as to whether Zaragoza died of typhus or typhoid fever, a confusion that persists in nearly all subsequent reporting on his death. Although modern medical science recognizes the two diseases as entirely separate, their names frequently were confused during the nineteenth century. 75.  “Remitido. ¡Zaragoza no ha muerto!” La Voz de Méjico, 7 October 1862, p. 3. 76.  “Carta de San José,” La Voz de Méjico, 11 October 1862, p. 2. 77.  “Sobre la negativa de honras funebres al B[enemérito] General Zaragoza,” La Voz de Méjico, 16 October 1862, p. 2. 78.  “Hornitos, Octubre 10 de 1862,” La Voz de Méjico, 14 October 1862, p. 2. 79.  “¡La espada! ¡Consulta interesante!,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 October 1862, p. 2. The official Mexican journal Siglo XIX, however, was of the opinion that the sword ought to be given to Zaragoza’s daughter; see the article reprinted as “La espada de honor del general Zaragoza,” La Voz de Méjico, 30 December 1862, p. 1. 80.  “Junta Patriotica de San Francisco,” La Voz de Méjico, 16 October 1862, p. 1. Not incidentally, the president of the San Francisco junta patriótica was none other than Manuel E. Rodríguez himself. 81.  “Remision de la ESPADA,” La Voz de Méjico, 11 November 1862, p. 2. An untitled item in La Voz de Méjico, 11 December 1862, p. 2, confirms that Rodríguez had the sword put on the Orizaba on 11 November of that year. 82. “Correspondencia,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 December 1862, p. 2. In the same article, letters from L. Salas and J. de Loya in Acapulco, dated November 25 and 26  

No t e s t o Pag e s 69 – 72   •   215  

respectively, confirm receipt of the sword and its transmission to General Álvarez. De Loya praises the sword’s workmanship and notes that it is already on its way to Mexico City. 83. “Mexico,” La Voz de Méjico, 30 December 1862, p. 1; rpt. from Siglo XIX, 4 December 1862. For Siglo XIX’s status as the Mexican government’s official newspaper, see Schoonover, Mexican Lobby, p. xvi. Despite the rosy picture painted by the article, there certainly were divisions of parties and of fortunes among Latinos in California. The editor of Siglo XIX tacitly acknowledged the existence of such divisions when he wrote, the next month, “It should be noted especially that our fellow countrymen living in Alta California are not the old Californios, but rather Mexicans from all the states [of Mexico] who earn a living by their own labor. There are no great capitalists or rich merchants among them. Almost all are artisans, laborers, [or] miners who earn little and who subject their families to privation in order to send their donations for the defense of their homeland.” “Los mejicanos en la Alta California,” Siglo XIX, 5 January 1863; reprinted in “Mexico,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 February 1863, p. 1. Yet this view went too far in the opposite direction; many Californios supported Juárez and the Union and indeed donated to those causes (see chapter 5). 84.  Correspondencia de la Voz de Méjico, La Voz de Méjico, 30 December 1862, p. 2. 85.  Untitled letter to editor from “I.M.A.” (Ignacio M. Altamirano), dated 10 January 1863, Mexico City, La Voz de Méjico, 10 February 1863, p. 2. 86. Comunicaciones, La Voz de Méjico, 14 March 1863, p. 2. According to HayesBautista et al., “Una espada de honor,” the Mexican Congress formally approved the first two proposals on January 19, 1863, as attested by El Diario de los Debates del Tercer Congreso Constitucional de la Nación (Mexico City: F. Díaz de León y S. White, 1873), 1:384–386. There is, however, no mention in this source of the proposal to place the sword beside Iturbide’s, so it is not known whether or not this was approved, or indeed what became of the sword after these resolutions were taken. In 1863, the French won the second battle of Puebla, then pressed on to and occupied Mexico City. For four years thereafter, Mexico was in turmoil, and the sword seems to have vanished during the course of the war. Iturbide was independent Mexico’s first head of state.  

Three. The American Civil War and the Second Battle of Puebla 1.  “Buques blindados,” La Voz de Méjico, 1 May 1862, p. 2; “combate naval. Entre la batería de hierro la Merrimac e la escuadra federal,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 April 1862, p. 1. 2.  Clifford H. Bissell, “The French Language Press in California,” California Historical Society Quarterly 39 (1960), pp. 141–143. 3.  El Nuevo Mundo originally was established with Mexican government funds  

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supplied by Juárez’s personal emissary to California, General Plácido Vega, under the editorship of the Mexican exile José María Vigil. It soon developed financial problems, however, and Vigil resigned. Francisco P. Ramírez offered to assume both the editorship and the debts of the paper, which he did by December 1864. He maintained El Nuevo Mundo’s staunch support for Juárez and also moved in on La Voz de Méjico’s heretofore peculiar identity as the mouthpiece of the junta patriótica movement in California, at the same time entering into a bitter contest with Vega for influence over the juntas. See Paul Bryan Gray, “Francisco P. Ramirez: A Short Biography,” California History 84 (2006–2007): 31–32; Robert Ryal Miller, “Plácido Vega: A Mexican Secret Agent in the United States, 1864–1866,” Americas 19 (1962): 142–143. Other contemporary Spanish-language papers were El Amigo del Pueblo, published weekly in Los Angeles from 1861 to 1862; La Bandera Mejicana, published weekly in San Francisco during at least part of 1864 (although no copies are known to survive, its existence can be deduced from mentions in other journals); and La Voz de Chile, a triweekly published in San Francisco from 1867 to 1868. At least two Spanish-language newspapers also were published in New York, El Cronista and El Porvenir. See www.loc.gov/rr/news/bound/us/nybnd.html, accessed 19 November 2009. 4.  Prior to this, California newspapers relied on the Pony Express; see Anthony Godfrey, “By Ocean or by Land: Roots of the Pony Express,” ch. 1 of Pony Express: Historic Resource Study (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1994), available at www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/ poex/hrs/hrs1.htm, updated 17 January 2008, accessed 9 September 2011. 5.  “Despachos telegráficos de la prensa asociada: Fechas hasta el 30 de Abril,” La Voz de Méjico, 3 May 1862, p. 2. 6.  William B. Rice, The “Los Angeles Star,” 1851–1864: The Beginnings of Journalism in Southern California, ed. John Walton Caughey (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1947), pp. 30–31, 60, 75–77, 103, 112–115, 116–118, 130. 7.  For instance, President Lincoln treated the battle of Gettysburg, now seen as the turning point of the war, almost as a loss and let General George Meade feel his displeasure for having allowed the Confederate army to escape almost intact across the Potomac to fight another day. Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative—From Fredericksburg to Meridian (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), pp. 593–594. 8. “la voz de mejico: San Francisco, 29 de N[oviem]bre. de 1862,” La Voz de Méjico, 29 November 1862, p. 2. 9.  “Breve alocucion en la Junta de Campo Chino,” La Voz de Méjico, 20 November 1862, p. 2. 10.  “La Celebracion del 4 de Julio en Los Angeles,” El Nuevo Mundo, 17 July 1865, p. 2. 11.  “El partido Copperhead y sus Doctrinas,” La Voz de Méjico, 13 October 1864, p. 2. 12.  “Noticias del dia,” La Voz de Méjico, 15 April 1862, p. 2. 13.  “Las procsimas [sic] elecciones,” La Voz de Méjico, 11 October 1864, p. 2. Some rhetoric, such as Filomeno Ibarra’s in the 1864 election year, went even further: “The origin of the South’s rebellion is the goal of creating a monarchy in the United States, to better assure their system of slavery in this manner. . . . If by mischance the  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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rebels should come to triumph, a monarchy surely will be created; and in that case we would be lost forever, for it would be impossible to destroy the empire in Mexico or prevent it [from being established] in all the Americas.” “La Campaña Electoral,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 November 1864, p. 2. Similar arguments previously had appeared in “Noticias diversas,” La Voz de Méjico, 12 April 1862, pp. 1–2, reprinted from L’Echo du Pacifique of unknown date. L’Echo was then still sympathetic to the liberal cause in Mexico and to the Union side in the U.S. Civil War. 14.  “Los rebeldes del Sur y el Imperio Mejicano,” El Nuevo Mundo, 13 February 1865, p. 2. 15.  “El ciudadano Benito Juarez, presidente constitucional de la República, á la nacion,” La Voz de Méjico, 6 May 1862, p. 1. 16.  “Protesta de los CC. [ciudadanos] Mexicanos y sud americanos de Hornitos, Alta California, Condado de Mariposa, contra una monarquia en México,” La Voz de Méjico, 28 November 1863, p. 2. 17.  “El fin del año,” El Nuevo Mundo, 4 January 1865, p. 2. For Juárez’s departure from Mexico City and subsequent relocations of government, see Jasper Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez (London: Constable, 1993), pp. 132–133, 152, 181, 225– 226, 240. 18.  “El discurso del Sr. Godoy,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 February 1865, p. 1. 19.  Untitled editorial, La Voz de Méjico, 3 July 1862, p. 2. 20.  The marriage of Daniel Hill and Rafaela Ortega, in Santa Barbara on August 11, 1825, is recorded in marriage record no. 01019 in the Huntington Library, Early California Population Project Database (2006), at www.huntington.org/­ Information/ECPPmain.htm, accessed September 9, 2011; the bride’s mother’s permission for the wedding is noted, as Rafaela was under age. The bride’s baptism, on August 29, 1809, is recorded in baptismal record no. 00351 in the same database. The baptism of their son José Ramón Mateo Hill, in Santa Barbara on November 2, 1839, is recorded in baptismal record no. 01348. He later seems to have used José as his middle name, to judge from his signing himself Ramón J. Hill. For the grant of Rancho La Goleta to Daniel Hill by Governor Pío Pico, see Walter A. Tompkins, The Yankee Barbareños: The Americanization of Santa Barbara County, California, ed. Barbara H. Tompkins (Ventura, CA: Movini Press, 2003), p. 64. 21.  Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, vol. 7, 1860–1890, vol. 24 of The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft (San Francisco: History Company, 1890), p. 296n23. 22.  “La situacion actual de los Estados Unidos. Discurso del Sr. Ramon J. Hill, diputado por Santa Barbara y San Luis Obispo en la Asamblea del Estado de California,” La Voz de Méjico, 20 September 1864, p. 1. 23. Ibid. 24.  “Maximiliano, Napoleon y Méjico: ¿Qué se ha hecho de la ‘­doctrina de Monroe’?,” La Voz de Méjico, 11 June 1864, p. 2. 25.  “La Campaña Electoral,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 November 1864, p. 2. 26.  “La democracia en los Estados Unidos,” La Voz de Méjico, 15 April 1862, p. 1, reprinted from a newspaper called La América, of unknown provenance and date; “El 4 de Julio de 1776,” El Nuevo Mundo, 3 July 1865, p. 2.  

 

 

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27.  “La democracia en los Estados Unidos,” La Voz de Méjico, 15 April 1862, p. 1, reprinted from a newspaper called La América, of unknown provenance and date. 28.  “Proclama de emancipacion del presidente Lincoln,” La Voz de Méjico, 6 January 1863, p. 2. 29.  “La proclama de emancipacion,” La Voz de Méjico, 6 January 1863, p. 2. For Latino disapproval of the South’s violent reaction to the Emancipation Proclamation, see “Noticias del Este. Despachos telegraficos a la Prensa Asociada. Fechas hasta el 8 de Octubre,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 October 1862, p. 2. 30.  “Los cañones de madera,” La Voz de Méjico, 3 May 1862, p. 2. 31.  “Noticias del dia,” La Voz de Méjico, 15 April 1862, p. 2; “Despachos telegràficos á la prensa asociada,” under the sections headed “Fechas de St. Joseph hasta el 17 de Abril” and “Posterior. Fechas hasta el 16 de Abril,” La Voz de Méjico, 19 April 1862, p. 2, citing a report in the Cincinnati Gazette, 12 April 1862; “Despachos telegráficos á la prensa asociada. Fechas hasta el 19 de Abril,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 April 1862, p. 2; “Despachos telegráficos á la prensa asociada. Fechas hasta el 19 de Abril,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 April 1862, p. 2; “Noticias del 22,” La Voz de Méjico, 24 April 1862, p. 2. Many Northern newspapers were critical of General Ulysses S. Grant’s conduct at Shiloh, which had a decided negative effect on public opinion. Modern historians, however, have concluded that this criticism was not merited and that indeed Grant had been responsible for making Shiloh a Union victory, albeit a very bloody one. Some of the confusion may have arisen from journalists’ not understanding that Grant’s casualty report referred only to the forces under his command, not to the entire Union strength at Shiloh. Modern historians agree that Grant’s estimate of casualties in his own forces was more or less correct. See Steven E. Woodworth, Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861–1865 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), pp. 198–201; Jean Edward Smith, Grant (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), pp. 167–205, esp. 204–205. 32.  “Estados Unidos. Batalla de Pittsburg Landing,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 May 1862, p. 1, citing the New York La Crónica of unknown date, which quoted, presumably in translation from English, an unidentified “semi-official” New York newspaper; Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative—Fort Sumter to Perryville (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), pp. 350–351. 33.  “Despachos telegráficos á la prensa asociada: Fechas de Chicago hasta el 10 de Abril,” La Voz de Méjico, 19 April 1862, p. 2; “Posterior. Fechas hasta el 15 de Mayo. Richmond en poder de los federales,” La Voz de Méjico, 17 May 1862, p. 2; “Despachos telegráficos á la prensa asociada. Fechas hasta el 18 de Mayo,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 May 1862, p. 2; “Posterior. Fechas hasta el 23,” La Voz de Méjico, 24 May 1862, p. 2; “Despachos telegráficos á la prensa asociada. Fechas hasta el 3 de Junio,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 June 1862, p. 2; “Las Noticias del dia,” La Voz de Méjico, 7 June 1862, p. 1; “Noticias del Este. Despachos telegráficos de la prensa asociada,” La Voz de Méjico, 7 June 1862, p. 2; “Noticias del Este. Despachos telegráficos a la prensa asociada,” La Voz de Méjico, 12 June 1862, p. 2. 34.  “Noticias de Europa,” La Voz de Méjico, 29 July 1862, p. 2. 35.  Untitled editorial, La Voz de Méjico, 29 July 1862, p. 2.  

 

 

 

 

 

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36.  “Noticias de Europa,” La Voz de Méjico, 29 July 1862, p. 2. 37.  Indeed, one of Napoleon III’s motives for intervening in Mexico in the first place was to establish a monarchy there as a bulwark against anticipated expansion by the republican United States; see Alfred Jackson Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), pp. xiii-xv, 3–4, 8–9, 15–20, 60–68. 38.  Untitled editorial, La Voz de Méjico, 29 July 1862, p. 2. See also Alfred Jackson Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), pp. 58–68, 117–119. 39.  “Noticias del Este. Despachos telegraficos a la Prensa Asociada. Fechas hasta el 3 de Julio,” La Voz de Méjico, 8 July 1862, p. 2. 40.  “Despachos telegráficos á la prensa asociada,” section titled “Posterior. Fechas hasta el 8 de Mayo,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 May 1862, p. 1. 41.  “Noticias de Europa,” La Voz de Méjico, 6 December 1862, p. 2. Cf. Rodríguez’s comments in “La guerra en Méjico,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 July 1862, p. 2. 42.  “Las noticias del teatro de la guerra,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 July 1862, p. 2. The reference to a significant loss of Mexican territory alludes to the Mexican-­A merican War. 43.  “Noticias del Este (Del Daily Herald & Mirror),” La Voz de Méjico, 25 November 1862, p. 2. 44.  “La guerra en los Estados Unidos,” La Voz de Méjico, 23 December 1862, p. 2. 45.  “La situacion,” La Voz de Méjico, 4 September 1862, p. 2, reprinted in translation from the New York Times of unknown date. 46.  Only this initial meeting of the San Pedro junta was documented in La Voz de Méjico, in “Junta Patriotica de San Pedro, Condado de Los Angeles,” 9 October 1862, p. 1. The article noted that the junta’s treasurer was Juan Sepúlveda and its president Francisco Guerrero; in the article’s list of donations collected on this occasion, neither man is designated by a middle initial or ethnic identification. Sepúlveda was most likely the same individual listed in Los Angeles County tax records during the 1850s as a major property owner at Rancho Palos Verdes, a short distance up the coast from San Pedro; see the Los Angeles County Tax Book for 1856–1857 and the Delinquent Tax Book for Los Angeles County for 1857–1858, Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. He was a Californio, Juan Capistrano Sepúlveda, born in 1814; see baptismal record no. 05617 in the Huntington Library, Early California Population Project Database (2006), at www. huntington.org/Information/ECPPmain.htm, accessed 6 May 2010. There is a lesser chance that the individual in question was Juan María Sepúlveda, also a Californio, who was listed as Los Angeles junta subscriber Juan M. Sepúlveda in 1863; see “Lista de donativos patrioticos para ausiliar Al Ejército de operaciones contra los invasores,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 October 1863, p. 2. Juan María Sepúlveda was a cousin of the Juan Sepúlveda from Rancho Palos Verdes; he was born in 1828 and was listed as the main property owner of Rancho San Vicente, with additional property in Los Angeles city, in Los Angeles County tax records during the 1850s. See baptismal record no. 00138,  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Huntington Library, Early California Population Project Database; Los Angeles County Assessment Book for 1856–1857 and Los Angeles County Tax Book for 1856– 1857, Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. This individual, however, seems regularly to have used his middle name or initial to differentiate himself from his cousin. The numerous Sepúlveda family had lived in California for generations; see William Marvin Mason, The Census of 1790: A Demographic History of Colonial California, Ballena Press Anthropological Papers 45 (Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press, 1998), pp. 39, 92–93. 47.  “Junta Patriotica de San Pedro, Condado de Los Angeles,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 October 1862, p. 1. Charles Ferdinand Latrille, comte de Lorencez, was the French general at the first battle of Puebla. 48.  “Sociedad patriotica mejicana de Sacramento City,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 November 1862, p. 2. The junta in Chinese Camp and the editor of La Voz de Méjico, Antonio Mancillas, used similar rhetoric at this time; see “Breve alocucion en la Junta de Campo Chino,” La Voz de Méjico, 20 November 1862, p. 2; untitled article headed “Se nos ha remitido para su publicacion lo siguiente,” La Voz de Méjico, 13 November 1862, p. 2. 49.  “Noticias del Este: Despachos Telegraficos a la Prensa Asociada. Fechas hasta el 3 de Octubre,” La Voz de Méjico, 7 October 1862, p. 2. 50.  Derbec was a strong supporter of the papacy and of Napoleon III, so it can be inferred that his newspapers duly reflected his personal views. See Bissell, “The French Language Press in California,” pp. 143, 161–165. L’Echo’s political policy and El Éco’s change of position are known only through reprints of and comments on their coverage in La Voz de Méjico and other contemporaneous newspapers. Only one issue of El Éco published during the French Intervention has survived, in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, whereas every issue of La Voz de Méjico is available. U.S. authorities shut down El Éco and its French-language parent in 1865 (see chapter 5). 51. Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez, p. 121. 52.  Untitled editorial, La Voz de Méjico, 2 April 1863, p. 2. 53.  Editorial, “Los franceses en Méjico,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 January 1863, p. 2. 54.  Letter from “J.A.G.,” dated 18 February 1863, Mexico City, “Correspondencia de ‘La Voz de Méjico,’ ”La Voz de Méjico, 12 March 1863, p. 2. 55.  “El enemigo avanza,” La Voz de Méjico, 4 April 1863, p. 1. 56.  Dispatch from General Jesús González Ortega to the Mexican foreign minister, dated 14 March 1863, Puebla, published in “Interesante. Ultimas noticias de Puebla,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 April 1863, p. 2. 57.  Dispatch from Ortega to the Mexican minister of war, dated 21 March 1863, Venta de San Antonio, published in “Llegada del vapor ‘Sonora’. Noticias interesantes de Puebla. (Fechas hasta el 1º de Abril.),” La Voz de Méjico, 21 April 1863, p. 1. 58. Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez, pp. 126–127. 59.  Dispatch from Vicente Rosas Landa to the Mexican war minister, “Llegada del vapor ‘Sonora’. Noticias interesantes de Puebla. (Fechas hasta el 1º de Abril.),” La Voz de Méjico, 21 April 1863, pp. 1–2.  

 

 

 

 

 

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60.  Untitled editorial, La Voz de Méjico, 19 May 1863, p. 1. 61.  Letter from Gamboa to the treasurer of the Junta Central Directiva de las Sociedades Patrióticas Mexicanas in San Francisco, dated 4 March 1862 [sic, for 1863], Mexico City, forwarded by J. Alvarez in La Providencia, Mexico, on 20 March, “Correspondencia de ‘La Voz de Mejico,’ ” La Voz de Méjico, 7 April 1863, p. 2. 62.  “Entusiastas festividades en Los Angeles, sur de California, con motivo de los triunfos alcanzados en Puebla por los hijos de la republica,” La Voz de Méjico, 6 June 1863, p. 1. The writer’s allusion to the Iliad presumed that readers would be familiar enough with that work to know it was about the long siege of a heroically defended city. 63. “gran baile en celebridad del dia 5 de mayo,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 23 April 1863, p. 2. 64. “gran baile en celebridad del dia 5 de mayo,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 30 April 1863, p. 2. The gist of this advertisement, exceptis excipiendis, clearly was copied from J. López’s announcement on 23 April. It is unknown whether this was done by Martigez or the editor. 65.  “¡EL 5 DE MAYO!,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 May 1863, p. 2. 66.  The ad hoc nature of 1863’s celebrations is revealed by the striking fact that a citizens’ group subsequently started a subscription, quickly taken up by La Voz de Méjico, “for the purchase of a Mexican flag, for the purpose of making use of it on our days of celebration.” “Lista de suscricion para un pabellon mejicano,” La Voz de Méjico, 19 May 1863, pp. 1–2. Evidently the first celebration of the Cinco de Mayo in San Francisco took place without a Mexican flag! 67.  “El 5 de Mayo,” La Voz de Méjico, 14 May 1863, p. 2. 68.  Letter from Ortega to the Mexican war minister, containing the report of General Ignacio Comonfort, published in “Llegada del vapor ‘Golden Age’. Gloriosas Noticias de Puebla. Los franceses rechazados en todos los puntos. Son derrotados el dia 25 de Abril y en el solo punto de Santa Inés dejaron 400 cadàveres y 130 prisioneros. Suspenden sus operaciones despues de esta derrota. Fechas hasta el 2 de Mayo en la capital,” La Voz de Méjico, 21 May 1863, p. 1. Despite the claim in the title of this article, other sources indicate that the number of French dead in this attack was 27, not 400, although they agree on the number of prisoners taken. Only 185 French soldiers were killed during the siege of Puebla in 1863 and just 1,000 wounded; see Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez, pp. 127, 131. 69.  “Llegada del vapor ‘Golden Age,’ ” La Voz de Méjico, 21 May 1863, p. 1. 70. Ibid. 71.  Letter from “J.D.” to Rodríguez, dated 7 May 1863, Mexico City, “Correspondencia de ‘La Voz de Mejico,’ ” La Voz de Méjico, 30 May 1863, p. 2. 72.  “Entusiastas festividades en Los Angeles, sur de California, con motivo de los triunfos alcanzados en Puebla por los hijos de la republica,” La Voz de Méjico, 6 June 1863, p. 1. 73.  Ibid. The spontaneous shooting off of guns as part of Los Angeles celebrations was recorded as early as 1854; see Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853–1913, ed. Maurice H. Newmark and Marco R. Newmark (New  

 

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York: Knickerbocker Press, 1916), p. 59: “The first New Year’s Eve that I spent in Los Angeles was ushered in with the indiscriminate discharging of pistols and guns. This method of celebrating was, I may say, a novelty to me, and no less a surprise. . . . Promiscuous firing continued for years to be indulged in by early Angelenos, though frequently condemned in the daily press.” It still is. 74.  A text of Ramírez’s speech and description of subsequent events can be found in “Discurso del Sr. D. F. P. Ramirez, pronunciado en Los Angeles de la Alta California, en la tarde del 26 de Mayo de 1863,” La Voz de Méjico, 6 June 1863, pp. 1–2. 75.  New Grenada was an old name, but still in contemporaneous usage, for a polity encompassing what is now Colombia, Panama, and part of Ecuador and Venezuela. As of May 8, 1863, it became the United States of Colombia, but that news probably had not yet reached California by the time Ramírez made this speech on May 26. 76.  Untitled editorial, La Voz de Méjico, 9 June 1863, p. 2. 77.  “Documentos importantes sobre la desocupacion de Puebla de Zaragoza,” La Voz de Méjico, 20 June 1863, p. 1. Ortega and his officers surrendered to the French but refused to give their parole, while the common soldiers were encouraged to flee through enemy lines to try to fight another day. Some of them made it, but many did not and ended up being conscripted into the imperialist armies. The officers—more than 1,500 of them—posed a considerable problem for their captors. Eventually it was decided to ship them off to French territories as prisoners of war, but two-thirds managed to escape en route to Orizaba, including Ortega himself; see Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez, pp. 130–131. 78.  “La ocupacion de Puebla de Zaragoza y defensa de la Capital,” La Voz de Méjico, 23 June 1863, p. 2.  

 

 

 

Four. The Juntas Patrióticas Mejicanas Blossom 1.  The Mexican consul Agustín García López Santaolalla, in a 1988 conversation with the author in Lincoln Park at the commemoration of Benito Juárez’s birth, used the term poder convocatorio to describe the ability of the Comité Cívico Patriótico de Los Angeles to convene a group and move it to action. 2.  “Aniversario del glorioso ‘5 de Mayo’ de 1862,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 May 1864, p. 2. 3.  “El aniversario del ‘5 de Mayo’ en la ciudad de Sonora, California,” La Voz de Méjico, 24 May 1864, p. 2; “Discurso pronunciado por el C[iudadano]. Eujenio Càrdenas en el aniversario del ‘5 de Mayo’ de 1864 en la ciudad de Sonora, California,” ibid. 4.  “Junta patriótica de Nuevo Almaden,” La Voz de Méjico, 28 June 1864, p. 3. 5.  “A los mejicanos e hispano-americanos,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 May 1864, p. 2; “El Sr. D. Josè Maria Vigil,” La Voz de Méjico, 11 February 1864, p. 2. 6.  “La festividad del ‘5 de Mayo,’ ”La Voz de Méjico, 7 May 1864, p. 1; “Oda a la patria,” ibid., p. 2.

No t e s t o Pag e s 97 – 105   •   223  

7.  “Junta Patriotica de Los Angeles: Sesion del 28 de abril de 1864,” La Voz de Méjico, 12 May 1864, p. 2; “Celebracion del aniversario del glorioso dia 5 de mayo en Los Angeles, Alta California,” La Voz de Méjico, 4 June 1864, p. 2. 8. Ibid. 9.  “Entusiastas festividades en Los Angeles, sur de California, con motivo de los triunfos alcanzados en Puebla por los hijos de la república,” La Voz de Méjico, 6 June 1863, pp. 1–2. 10.  “Celebracion del aniversario del glorioso dia 5 de mayo en Los Angeles, Alta California,” La Voz de Méjico, 18 June 1864, p. 2. 11.  Michael Costeloe, “The Junta Patriótica and the Celebration of Independence in Mexico City, 1825–1855,” Mexican Studies / Estudios Mexicanos 13 (1997): 21–53. 12.  For this colonizing expedition, see C. Alan Hutchinson, Frontier Settlement in Mexican California. The Hijar-Padres Colony, and Its Origins, 1769–1835 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1969), esp. chs. 4–9. For the inference that the institution of the junta patriótica probably came to California via this expedition, see David E. Hayes-Bautista, David E., Cynthia L. Chamberlin, Branden Jones, Juan Carlos Cornejo, Cecilia Cañadas, Carlos Martinez, and Gloria Meza, “Empowerment, Expansion, and Engagement: Las Juntas Patrióticas in California, 1848–1869,” California History 85 (2007): 66n8. 13.  Letter from José Antonio Carrillo and Narciso Botello to Antonio F. Coronel, 15 August 1845, in Coronel, ed., “Documentos para la Historia de California, 1821–1872,” BANC MSS C-B 75, University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library, p. 239. 14.  Letter from “Pete” to the editor of the Stockton Herald, in “San Joaquin Intelligence,” Alta California, 19 September 1851, p. 2, reprinted from the Stockton Herald of unknown date. A further communication on the subject appeared in the Alta California on 22 September, “San Joaquin Intelligence,” p. 2, in the item titled “The Sonora Herald furnishes us a few items of intelligence from the Quartz miners’ city: Anniversaries of the Spread of Freedom.” The item goes on to note a similar celebration by the local Chileans on their independence day, September 18. 15.  Salazar, Francisco, The Gold of Old Hornitos, as told to William B. Secrest (Fresno, CA: Saga-West, 1964), p. 4. 16. “Lista,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 August 1862, p. 2. 17. “Lista,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 August 1862, p. 2; “Remitido,” La Voz de Méjico, 23 August 1862, pp. 1–2; “Teatro Metropolitan GRAN FUNCION,” La Voz de Méjico, 7 August 1862, p. 1; “Funcion Teatral,” ibid., p. 2; “Teatro,” La Voz de Méjico, 12 August 1862, p. 2. 18. “Patriotismo,” La Voz de Méjico, 2 September 1862, pp. 1–2; “Junta patriotica en Placerville,” ibid., p. 2; see also “Mejico. Patriotismo,” La Voz de Méjico, 26 August 1862, p. 1, reprinted from El Monitor, 28 July 1862. 19.  “Correspondencia de la ‘Voz de Mejico,’ ” La Voz de Méjico, 18 September 1862, p 1. The writer was almost certainly Ignacio M. Altamirano; see chapter 2, n. 85. 20. “Remitido,” La Voz de Méjico, 25 September 1862, p. 2. “Do good for more  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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than one person” seems to be a critical reference to the sword of honor campaign, in which the contributions of hundreds of people went to provide a single individual with a beautiful but rather impractical luxury item; collecting funds to feed, clothe, and arm the Mexican forces, on the other hand, would benefit the entire country. 21.  The names of the volunteers from Los Angeles appear in the minutes of the September 28 meeting, printed immediately following those from the foundational meeting of September 21, in “Junta de patriotas mejicanos instalada en Los Angeles,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 October 1862, p. 1. 22.  The minutes of the New San Pedro junta’s formation, election of officers, and list of volunteer soldiers appear in “Junta Patriotica de San Pedro. Condado de Los Angeles,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 October 1862, p. 1. For the town’s 1863 name change to Wilmington, see Erwin C. Gudde, California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names, 4th ed., rev. ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), p. 424. 23.  “Las Juntas Patrioticas del interior,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 October 1862, p. 2. 24.  “Junta Patriotica de Marysville,” La Voz de Méjico, 23 October 1862, p. 2. For the constitution of the Junta Central and its official date of establishment, see “Estatutos organicos De la Junta Central de la Sociedad Patriotica Mejicana, Aprobados el 19 de Octubre de 1862,” La Voz de Méjico, 30 October 1862, p. 2. 25.  “Sociedad Patriótica de la mina del Nuevo Almaden,” La Voz de Méjico, 15 November 1862, p. 2. 26.  “Sociedad Patriotica Mejicana de Sacramento City,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 November 1862, p. 2. 27.  Hayes-Bautista et al., “Empowerment, Expansion, and Engagement,” pp. 13– 15, 17. 28.  “Junta de Patriotas Mejicanos instalada en Los Angeles,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 October 1862, p. 1. 29.  “Correspondencia de ‘La Voz de Méjico’: Celebración del aniversario del glorioso dia 5 de Mayo en Los Angeles, Alta California,” La Voz de Méjico, 11 June 1864, p. 2. Dávila’s prominence in the Los Angeles junta may be deduced from how often he was invited to be an official participant in the Mexican Independence Day celebrations the junta organized; see “Celebracion del 16 de Setiembre, aniversario de la independencia de la Republica Mejicana, en Los Angeles, California,” El Nuevo Mundo, 2 October 1865, p. 1; “Mexican Independence,” Los Angeles Semi-Weekly News, 18 September 1868, p. 2; “Los Angeles Gardens,” in Local Matters column, Los Angeles News, 18 September 1869, p. 3; “Mexican Independence,” Los Angeles Express, 16 September 1871, p. 3; “Celebracion del Aniversario de la Independencia de Mexico,” Los Angeles La Crónica, 20 September 1873, p. 3; “Gran celebracion del 16 de Septiembre,” Los Angeles La Crónica, 19 September 1874, p. 3. 30.  For instance, Fierro was on the junta’s organizing committee for the Cinco de Mayo celebrations in 1864 and was in charge of renting Dashaway Hall, providing the refreshments, “and other costs.” He also delivered an address as part of the formal program. “A los mejicanos e hispano-americanos,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 May 1864, p. 2; “Remitido,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 May 1864, p. 2.  

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31.  Martorell’s Tulare County marriage license details his origins, calling him a native of San Salvador and his parents natives of “San Salvador Central America.” Tulare County Recorder, Marriage Certificates of Tulare County, Book C, p. 290: marriage of Juan Vicente Martorell and María Chacón, 12 October 1883 (State of California Certification of Vital Record, County of Tulare, nos. 000323782– 000323783 and 000313503–000313504, issued 13 August 2008). His activity in the juntas is attested in “Lista. De donativos patrióticos para auxiliar al Ejército de Oriente en México,” La Voz de Méjico, 4 December 1862, p. 2; “Lista de donativos patrioticos para auxiliar al Ejército de Oriente en Mejico,” La Voz de Méjico, 3 January 1863, p. 2; “Lista de donativos patrioticos para ausiliar al Ejército de Oriente en México,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 February 1863, p. 2; “Lista de Donativos Patrioticos para Ausiliar Al Ejército de Oriente en México,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 March 1863, p. 2; “Lista de donativos patrioticos para ausiliar Al Ejército de Oriente en México,” La Voz de Méjico, 14 May 1863, p. 2; “Protesta de los CC. [ciudadanos] Mexicanos y sud americanos de Hornitos, Alta California, Condado de Mariposa, contra una monarquia en México,” La Voz de Méjico, 28 November 1863, p. 2; “Remitido,” La Voz de Méjico, 28 January 1864, p. 2; “[C]orrespondencia de ‘La Voz de Méjico,’ ” La Voz de Méjico, 19 September 1865, p. 2; “Secretaria de la So[ciedad] Patriotica Mejicana de Hornitos,” El Nuevo Mundo, 29 January 1866, p. 2; “Junta Patriotica Mejicana de Señoras de Hornitos. Lista de Donativos Patrióticos para auxiliar al ejército de operaciones contra los invasores,” El Nuevo Mundo, 2 February 1866, p. 2; “Remitido,” El Nuevo Mundo, 9 February 1866, p. 2; “Lista de donativos patrióticos para auxiliar al ejército de operaciones contra los invasores de M[é]jico,” El Nuevo Mundo, 21 February 1866, p. 2; “Lista de Donativos Patrióticos para auxiliar al ejército de operaciones contra los invasores de Méjico,” El Nuevo Mundo, 23 March 1866, p. 2. In the junta donors’ lists, Martorell sometimes is identified as a “centro-américano.” 32.  “DISCURSO pronunciado por el C[iudadano]. Rafael H. Gonzalez, en Placerville, el Dia 16 de Setiembre,” La Voz de Méjico, 29 September 1863, p. 2. 33.  “La convocatoria,” La Voz de Méjico, 7 April 1864, p. 2. The invitation was indeed reprinted correctly, “to all Mexicans and other Hispanic Americans,” on the same page, under the headline “CONVOCATORIA.” 34.  “Lista de donativos patrioticos para ausiliar Al Ejército de Operaciones contra los invasores, Suscricion de Los Angeles,” section titled “Suscricion de la Junta patriotica de señoras mejicanas de Los Angeles,” La Voz de Méjico, 16 July 1863, p. 2. Although not identified by any regional or ethnic origin, the child Manuelita Williams likely also was California born; if she were included in the count, the total of Californios in this list would be thirty-six. 35.  “Club Patriotico Mejicano,” El Nuevo Mundo, 8 March 1865, p. 2. 36.  “Asalto brutal,” El Nuevo Mundo, 27 March 1865, p. 2. For a summary of Vega’s career as Juárez’s agent, see Robert Ryal Miller, “Arms across the Border: United States Aid to Juárez during the French Intervention in Mexico,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, 63:6 (December 1973): 16–30; Miller, “Plácido Vega: A Mexican Secret Agent in the United States, 1864–1866,”  

 

 

 

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Americas 19 (1962): 137–148. Miller seems unaware, however, that Vega’s relationship with the California juntas was not as he represented it to President Juárez. 37.  “LISTA de donativos patrióticos para auxiliar al Ejército de Oriente en México,” La Voz de Méjico, 13 November 1862, p. 2. 38.  “Club Patriotico Mejicano de Señoras,” El Nuevo Mundo, 28 February 1866, p. 2. 39.  Untitled letter to the editor, El Nuevo Mundo, 8 January 1866, p. 2. This letter, in support of Juárez’s second term as president, was written by Martín Aguilar y Ríos and signed by him, Gumersindo Flores, Juan López, Basilio Solano, José de la Cruz Ramos, and Rafael Coronado. 40.  “La Junta Central Directiva, à las Juntas Patrioticas mejicanas,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 June 1863, p. 2. 41.  “Juntas patrioticas,” La Voz de Méjico, 18 June 1863, p. 2. 42.  Untitled item, La Voz de Méjico, 11 June 1863, p. 2. 43.  “Victoria mejicana,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 June 1863, p. 2, reprinted in translation from the San Francisco Morning Call, 26 June 1863. 44. “Poesia,” La Voz de Méjico, 4 June 1863, p. 2. The author signed himself simply “Un Mejicano.” The original read, in part: “Del interior nos remiten la siguiente. . . . Muere el grande de ambicion; / De deseos el proletario, / Asì morirà Napoleon / Soñando rentas y erario / De Méjico. . . . La Nacion.” 45.  Untitled letter to the editor, La Voz de Méjico, 13 June 1863, p. 2. For similar exhortations from a group of San Francisco Latinos, see “A los Mejicanos residentes en California,” La Voz de Méjico, 2 July 1863, p. 2. 46.  “Refuerzos al ejército francés en Méjico,” La Voz de Méjico, 25 June 1863, p. 2. 47.  “Estatutos del Club Patriotico Benefico Juarez de Hornitos,” La Voz de Méjico, 21 April 1866, p. 2. 48.  “Un mejicano sentenciado á la pena de muerte,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 September 1864, p. 2; “La causa de Ramon Velasquez,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 September 1864, p. 2; “Ejecucion de Ramon Velazquez en Sonora,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 October 1864, p. 2. The San Francisco and Martinez junta collections appear in “Ausilio para la defensa de la causa de Ramon Velazquez,” La Voz de Méjico, 15 September 1864, p. 2; that of the Hornitos junta in “lista de las personas que contribuyeron para ausilio de Ramon Velazquez,” La Voz de Méjico, 24 September 1864, p. 2; and that of Merced River in a letter from J. Lino Flores to the editor, dated 21 September 1864, Hornitos, ibid. 49.  “Las juntas patrióticas,” El Nuevo Mundo, 6 January 1865, p. 2. 50.  “A las Sociedades Patrioticas,” La Voz de Méjico, 20 September 1864, p. 2. 51.  “Estatutos del Club Patriotico Mejicano, organizado en San Francisco, California,” El Nuevo Mundo, 13 February 1865, p. 2. 52.  Untitled letter to the editor containing the “Sociedad Patriotica Chilena de Beneficencia Mutua de Mokelumne Hill, Acta de Instalacion,” El Nuevo Mundo, 23 October 1865, p. 2. 53.  “Estatutos del Club Patriotico Mejicano, organizado en San Francisco, California,” El Nuevo Mundo, 13 February 1865, p. 2. A case of these principles put into practice is found in “Defuncion,” El Nuevo Mundo, 30 March 1866, p. 2.  

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54.  Examples may be found in the advertisement “Una junta de los Católicos de San Francisco . . . ,” Alta California, 25 February 1851, p. 3; “Noticias locales. Las Hermanas de la Caridad,” El Clamor Público, 22 December 1855, p. 2; “Encarnacion Berreyesa,” El Clamor Público, 4 April 1857, p. 2; “Socorro à la desgracia,” La Voz de Méjico, 7 June 1862, p. 2. 55. “A las personas filantrópicas,” advertisement, El Nuevo Mundo, 14 February 1866, p. 2. 56.  “Club Patriotico Chileno de Forest Hill,” El Nuevo Mundo, 14 March 1866, p. 2, in the section of the San Andrés junta’s published report “Donativos colectados por D. Jesus Villagoy en San Andres para la señora Bernales de Sanchez.” This item’s inclusion under the heading of the activities of the Chilean junta in Forest Hill is a mistake. 57.  “El bello sexo mejicano en Los Angeles,” La Voz de Mejico, 16 July 1863, p. 1. For further details, see Paul Bryan Gray, David E. Hayes-Bautista, and Cynthia L. Chamberlin, “ ‘The Men Were Left Astonished’: Mexican Women in Las Juntas Patrióticas de Señoras, 1863–1866.” 58.  “Junta Patriotica de s[eño]ras en San Josè,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 November 1863, p. 2; “Discurso, pronunciado por D[oñ]a Laureana Cardenas de Garcia, en Marysville,” La Voz de Méjico, 15 December 1863, p. 2; “Acta de la Junta Patriótica de las S[eño]ras mejicanas de Sonora,” La Voz de Méjico, 15 October 1863, p. 2; “Remitido,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 April 1864, p. 2; “Juntas patrioticas,” La Voz de Méjico, 6 September 1866, p. 1; “Junta patriotica de N[uevo] Almaden” La Voz de Méjico, 9 August 1864, p. 2 (this article is about a combined meeting of the men’s and women’s juntas); “Club Patriotico Mejicano de Señoras,” El Nuevo Mundo, 28 February 1866, p. 2. 59.  “Club Zaragoza,” El Nuevo Mundo, 31 March 1865, p. 2. The nouns and adjectives in the club’s bylaws are uniformly feminine. The Club also collected voluntary donations from its members to aid the Mexican army. 60.  Preliminary data extracted by the UCLA Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture from the lists of junta donors published in La Voz de Méjico and El Nuevo Mundo between 1862 and 1866 yields a total of 13,855 donors. Of these, the largest number by far were either positively identified as or may be presumed to have been Mexicans. The next largest number were positively identified as Chileans. The third largest group were Californios or California Indians. The fourth largest group were identified as “Americans” or “North Americans,” presumably Atlantic Americans. For the methodology used in these data extractions, see the introduction, n. 19. 61.  “The Anniversary of the Independence of Chile,” Alta California, 19 September 1851, p. 2. 62.  “Discurso. Pronunciado por el Sr. Don Manuel Silva, ciudadano chileno, en la ciudad de Los Angeles, el 16 de Setiembre de 1865,” El Nuevo Mundo, 4 October 1865, p. 1. 63.  “Discurso. Pronunciado por D. Juan V. Villalon, orador nombrado por el Club Patriótico chileno de Nueva Almaden, en el aniversario de la independencia de Chile, el 18 de Setiembre de 1865,” El Nuevo Mundo, 6 October 1865, p. 1.  

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64.  “Patriotismo de los chilenos de Nueva Almaden,” El Nuevo Mundo, 27 November 1865, p. 2. 65.  “Sociedad Patriotica Chilena de Forest Hill,” El Nuevo Mundo, 1 December 1865, p. 2. 66.  “Sociedad Patriotica Chilena de Sutter Creek,” El Nuevo Mundo, 4 December 1865, p. 2; untitled letter to the editor from Felipe Fierro, dated “4 December 1865,” San Francisco, ibid. The full board of the Junta Central Directiva is named in “Sociedad Patriotica Chilena de San Francisco,” El Nuevo Mundo, 6 December 1865, p. 2. 67.  “Sacramento. Suscricion de los miembros de la Junta Patriotica Chilena,” El Nuevo Mundo, 23 February 1866, p. 2; “Lista de Donativos con que contribuyen las Sociedades Patrióticas Chilenas de California y Nevada, para auxilio de la guerra que sostiene Chile contra España,” El Nuevo Mundo, 14 March 1866, p. 2; “Lista de Donativos con que contribuyen las Sociedades Patrióticas Chilenas de California y Nevada, para auxilio de la guerra que sostiene Chile contra España,” El Nuevo Mundo, 16 March 1866, p. 2; “Lista de Donativos con que contribuyen las Sociedades Patrióticas Chilenas de California y Nevada, para auxilio de la guerra que sostiene Chile contra España,” El Nuevo Mundo, 6 April 1866, p. 2; “Juntas patrioticas,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 May 1866, p. 2. 68.  “Lista de Donativos con que contribuyen las Sociedades Patrióticas Chilenas de California y Nevada, para auxilio de la guerra que sostiene Chile contra España,” El Nuevo Mundo, 6 April 1866, p. 2. 69.  “Demostracion de simpatia por Chile,” El Nuevo Mundo, 29 November 1865, p. 2. See also “La Guerra de Chile,” ibid. 70.  See, for example, “El 16 de Setiembre,” La Voz de Méjico, 18 September 1862, p. 1. 71. “Judas,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 April 1862, p. 2; “Life in California,” Joseph Lancaster Brent Papers, box 9, no. BT 74, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, typescript, pp. 37–38. For the widespread traditional Catholic and Eastern Orthodox custom of burning Judas in effigy on the day before Easter, see C. BrysonTaylor, “Hanging Judas in Mexico,” in The Easter Book, ed. William Croswell Doane (New York and Boston: Macmillan, 1910), pp. 25–26. 72.  Untitled article containing the “Testamento de Judas,” La Voz de Méjico, 7 April 1863, p. 3. Another mock will of Almonte appeared a year later, as the “Testamento del Judas mejicano” in “Remitido,” La Voz de Méjico, 26 March 1864, p. 2. 73.  “Sabado de Gloria,” El Nuevo Mundo, 2 April 1866, p. 2. 74.  “Restaurante mejicano,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 27 May 1862, p. 4. 75.  “Restaurante del Aguila de Oro (anteriormente) Restaurante Mejicano,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 5 May 1863, p. 2. The advertised menu included both “Chocolate mexicano” and “Tee ó Café y kakes [sic].” 76. “nueva fonda mexicana. la libertad,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 5 May 1864, p. 3. For another example, see “nueva fonda mexicana, su nombre: ¡¡la voz de mexico!!,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 13 September 1862, p. 2. 77. “la mejicana,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 27 May 1862, p. 3. Some months later, she evidently sold her establishment, for in September, Pascuala Ayala  

 

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advertised that she was running “a Mexican restaurant” of the same name at that address; “la mejicana,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 13 September 1862, p. 4. 78. “nueva fonda mejicana,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 5 May 1866, p. 4. 79. “restaurante del aguila de oro,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 22 September 1863, p. 2. The proprietress appears as “Estéfana Stockin [sic] (chilena)” in “Lista de donativos patrioticos para ausiliar Al Ejército de operaciones contra los invasores,” section titled “Suscricion de San Francisco,” La Voz de Méjico, 20 August 1863, p. 2. As a junta subscriber, she was listed under her husband’s last name, Stocking. By Latin American custom, her full name was Estéfana Abello de Stocking, but she was known by any combination of her names, including “Fanny Stocking”; see “Restaurante Aguila de Oro,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 1 August 1863, p. 2. For a restaurant in San José, see “restaurante voz de mexico. [c]alle de market cerca de la de san juan, san jose,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 4 December 1866, p. 2. 80. “zaragoza restaurant (casa mejicana),” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 5 May 1864, p. 1. 81.  Advertisement, “Sonora Restaurant,” Sonora Union Democrat, 18 September 1858 (this advertisement ran through at least September 1860); “Illyrien Restaurant,” advertisement, Sonora Union Democrat, 20 September 1862. 82.  “Dia de San Rafael. 24 de Octubre. Gran fiesta,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 21 October 1862, p. 2. 83.  “Corrida de Toros,” El Nuevo Mundo, 31 January 1866, p. 2; “Los Willows,” advertisement, ibid. 84.  “El Sr. D. Manuel Castaño,” La Voz de Méjico, 11 February 1864, p. 2; “Polka Mazurka,” La Voz de Méjico, 19 October 1865, p. 2. 85.  “Mùsicos Mejicanos,” La Voz de Méjico, 4 December 1862, p. 2. 86.  Untitled item, La Voz de Méjico, 23 June 1863, p. 2. See also the example of Pedro C. Dorrego: “El Sr. Pedro C. Dorrego,” El Nuevo Mundo, 6 November 1865, p. 2; “Pedro C. Dorrego,” advertisement, El Nuevo Mundo, 29 November 1865, p. 2; untitled item, La Voz de Méjico, 5 May 1866, p. 2. 87.  Untitled letter to the editor (“Srs. R. R. de La Voz de Méjico”) from “A.D.S.,” dated 12 February 1864, San Francisco, La Voz de Méjico, 16 February 1864, p. 2. 88.  Untitled item, El Nuevo Mundo, 17 January 1866, p. 2. 89.  “La traduccion de las leyes,” El Nuevo Mundo, 14 February 1866, p. 2. 90.  “West End Hotel,” advertisement, La Voz de Mejico, 8 October 1863, p. 2; “Empire State Restaurante,” advertisement, El Nuevo Mundo, 3 January 1866, p. 3; “John Daniel. Obras de marmol,” advertisement, El Nuevo Mundo, 28 December 1864, p. 4. Among many other examples, see also “La tienda mas barata / La de Eugenio Gillespie,” La Voz de Mejico, 3 July 1862, p. 3; “Anuncio,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 May 1862, p. 3; “Peter Dempsey,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 17 April 1862, p. 2; “Atkins Massey / Empresario de pompas funebres,” El Nuevo Mundo, 4 December 1864, p. 3; “Se solicita un jóven de raza española,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 20 December 1862, p. 2; “Se solicita un socio,” advertisement, La 230  •   No t e s t o Pag e s 1 27 – 1 29  

Voz de Méjico, 8 May 1862, p. 2; “A las familias españolas,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 19 July 1864, p. 2. 91. “Gacetilla,” La Voz de Méjico, 12 January 1865, p. 2; “Espresion de simpatia,” La Voz de Méjico, 15 July 1865, p. 2. As other articles and an editorial in this issue discussing the American Flag make clear, this English-language newspaper was singled out for criticism mainly because the La Voz de Méjico editor Mancillas disliked its political positions; making fun of its Spanish-language competence was merely a detail of the general critique. 92.  See, for example, “Casa de Asistencia,” advertisement, El Nuevo Mundo, 2 December 1864, p. 4. 93.  “Enseñanza gratis del ingles,” La Voz de Méjico, 4 September 1866, p. 1; letter to the editor from J. F. Leonard, dated 3 September 1865, San Francisco, in “Escuelas públicas nocturnas,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 September 1865, p. 2. 94.  “La Sociedad Voluntaria del 4 de Septiembre de 1861,” La Voz de Méjico, 21 June 1862, p. 2 95. “Anglicismos,” La Voz de Méjico, 26 May 1863, p. 2. 96.  See Hayes-Bautista et al., “Empowerment, Expansion, and Engagement,” p. 23, for details of individuals who moved on from the Los Angeles junta patriótica to lead other Latino civil rights organizations, including the Alianza Hispano-Americana.

Five. One War, Three Fronts 1.  Aurora Hunt, The Army of the Pacific: Its Operations in California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Plains Region, Mexico, Etc., 1860–1866 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2004), pp. 26–27, 281–300. 2.  Darlis A. Miller, The California Column in New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), p. 3. For background, see M. L. Crimmins, “An Episode in the Texas Career of General David E. Twiggs,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 41 (1937): 167, 172–173. 3. Hunt, The Army of the Pacific, pp. 53–56; Darlis A. Miller, The California Column, pp. 3–4. 4.  Darlis A. Miller, The California Column, p. 3. 5.  Richard H. Orton, Records of California Men in the War of the Rebellion, 1861 to 1867 (Sacramento: State Office, 1890), p. 6. A group of San Francisco businessmen expressed similar worries in a letter to the U.S. secretary of war; ibid., pp. 27–28. 6.  Ibid., pp. 5, 12–13. See also Darlis A. Miller, The California Column, p. 4. 7. Orton, Records of California Men, pp. 68, 98; “A Veteran’s Departure: Gone to Meet the Commander-in-Chief,” Los Angeles Times, 16 July 1886, p. 4. Pancho to Spanish speakers, he was also known to English speakers as Frank Guirado. 8.  Baptismal record no. 01005 indicates that José Juan Francisco de Jesús Guirado was baptized at the Los Angeles mission on 27 June 1840, the son of Rafael Guirado and Vicenta Urquides (aka Vicenta Alanís). Huntington Library, Early California  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Population Project Database (2006), at www.huntington.org/Information/­ECPP main.htm. 9.  Darlis A. Miller, The California Column, p. 8. 10. Hunt, The Army of the Pacific, pp. 81–82. 11.  Darlis A. Miller, The California Column, pp. 4, 9. 12.  Jacqueline Dorgan Meketa, ed., Legacy of Honor: The Life of Rafael Chacón, a Nineteenth-Century New Mexican (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), pp. 165–185, 199, 383–384n38; Hunt, The Army of the Pacific, pp. 109–115, 117, 119; Orton, Records of California Men, pp. 42–58; Darlis A. Miller, The California Column, pp. 4–5, 10–13. 13. Orton, Records of California Men, pp. 381, 401, 715; Darlis A. Miller, The California Column, pp. 31–32. 14. Orton, Records of California Men, pp. 685, 407. 15.  Ibid., p. 801. 16.  Ibid., p. 838. 17.  Ibid., pp. 844–845. 18.  Thomas D. Gilbert, “Confederate Arizona,” at www.civilwarhome.com/­ confederatearizona.htm (updated 18 February 2002), accessed 8 September 2010. 19.  Tom Prezelski, “Lives of the California Lancers: The First Battalion of Native California Cavalry, 1863–1866,” Journal of Arizona History 40 (1999): 30–31, 33–35; “Compañia de Caballeria, N.C.B.,” advertisement, La Voz de Méjico, 26 February 1863, p. 2; the brief notice “Caballeria de naturales californios,” ibid., directs the reader to the advertisement. Unwilling to wait for the cumbersome military procurement process to provide equipment, José Ramón Pico used more than eight thousand dollars of his own money to equip the new recruits, hoping he would be reimbursed by the U.S. Army. The state of California finally compensated him instead—although not until 1901, nearly three months after his death. “Bills Signed by Governor,” Los Angeles Times, 29 March 1901, p. 3. An untitled item in the Los Angeles Times, 23 February 1897, p. 6, mentions Pico’s having outfitted the company at his own expense, raising the money by selling land he owned in San José. This source, however, misstates his age as 68; in 1897, he would have been only 58. Baptismal record no. 01355 indicates that José Ramón de la Concepción Pico was christened at the Santa Barbara Presidio chapel on 12 December 1839, the son of Juan Pico and Juana Valenzuela [de Pico]; Huntington Library, Early California Population Project Database. A brief obituary appears in “Native Son Dead,” Los Angeles Times, 5 January 1901, p. 15. 20.  Prezelski, “Lives of the California Lancers,” p. 31, citing “Native Californian Troops,” Alta California, 11 March 1863, p. 1. 21.  Californios often used the lariat in hunting grizzly bears, but there are records of its use as an offensive or defensive weapon against human beings as well. For examples, see Auguste Bernard Duhaut-Cilly, “Duhaut-Cilly’s Account of California in the Years 1827–28,” trans. Charles Franklin Carter, California Historical Society Quarterly 8 (1929): 152–153; William Heath Davis, Seventy-Five Years in California, ed. Harold A. Small (San Francisco: John Howell, 1967), p. 183; Tracy Irwin  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Storer and Lloyd P. Tevis, California Grizzly (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 131–138. 22. Orton, Records of California Men, pp. 307–310; Prezelski, “Lives of the California Lancers,” pp. 31, 33. 23. Orton, Records of California Men, p. 305; Prezelski, “Lives of the California Lancers,” pp. 33–34; J. M. Scammell, “Military Units in Southern California, 1853– 1862,” California Historical Society Quarterly 29 (1950): 232n14. Antonio María was a brother of the state assemblyman Pablo de la Guerra, who had defended Manuel Domínguez’s right to testify in court in 1857 (see chapter 1). 24. Orton, Records of California Men, p. 317; Commission and muster-in papers of 1st Lt. Juan Francisco Guirado, 11th Regiment, Missouri Cavalry Volunteers, 9 and 17 March 1865, Little Rock, Arkansas; pension certificate of Ester Sepúlveda de Guirado, 21 April 1893, Collection 1329, Sepúlveda-Guirado Papers, items 14, 22, 42, Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Sánchez wrote a letter vehemently rejecting the Democrats’ efforts to win the Latino vote in California for George McClellan, published as “Remitido. Contestacion. Al manifiesto publicado en espanol [sic] por la Junta Central Democratica del Estado,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 October 1864, p. 2; he signs himself “presidente de la Junta Unionista de nativos californios en Los Angeles.” 25.  Prezelski, “Lives of the California Lancers,” p. 39. 26.  Letter to the editor from “Juan,” dated 10 September 1865, Fort Mason, “Correspondence,” Los Angeles News, 24 October 1865, p. 2. “Juan” may have been Sergeant Juan Robarts, who is known to have written a letter to the Los Angeles News on another occasion, or it may have been a pen name for another individual. For Robarts, see Orton, Records of California Men, p. 317; “Aviso,” Los Angeles News, 30 September 1865, p. 3, in which he sent the newspaper word, in Spanish, of the Native Cavalry’s arrival in Tubac on the fourth of that month, signing himself “J.R.” After the war, he returned to Los Angeles and had a distinguished career as a lawyer, dying in 1894; see “Heart Failure. Sudden Death of John Robarts, the Attorney, at His Office,” Los Angeles Times, 18 July 1894, p. 10. Although in later life he moved easily in Atlantic American society in Los Angeles, his Latino roots remained deep; for instance, all three of his wives were Latina women, and his children had traditionally Hispanic first names. 27.  Letter to the editor from “Juan,” dated 10 September 1865, Fort Mason, “Correspondence,” Los Angeles News, 24 October 1865, p. 2. For a brief biography of Pesqueira, which only passingly mentions this incident (p. 160), see Rudolph F. Acuña, “Ignacio Pesqueira: Sonoran Caudillo,” Arizona and the West 12 (1970): 139–172. 28.  “La Prision del Capitan Pico,” La Voz de Méjico, 21 October 1865, p. 2; letter from Lt. John Lafferty to Senator William E. Lovett, dated 5 September 1865, Fort Mason, reprinted from the San Francisco Morning Call of unknown date. Lafferty here refers to Pesqueira’s pursuers as “the French,” but other accounts make clear they were Mexican imperialist forces under Moreno’s command; see Prezelski, “Lives of the California Lancers,” pp. 41–43; “De la linea. Dificultades Internacio 

 

 

 

 

 

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nales. Serios temores de un Rompimiento,” La Voz de Méjico, 24 October 1865, p. 2, based on a report in the San Francisco Bulletin of 20 September 1865. 29.  “De la linea,” La Voz de Méjico, 24 October 1865, p. 2; Prezelski, “Lives of the California Lancers,” pp. 42–43. 30.  “La Prision del Capitan Pico,” La Voz de Méjico, 21 October 1865, p. 2. Antonio Mancillas’s introduction of the letter indicates that initial reports received via Mazatlan gave a different, far less accurate version of events than Lafferty’s. See also Prezelski, “Lives of the California Lancers,” pp. 43–44. 31.  “De la linea,” La Voz de Méjico, 24 October 1865, p. 2; letter to the editor of the Los Angeles News from “Juan,” dated 10 September 1865, Fort Mason; “Correspondence,” Los Angeles News, 24 October 1865, p. 2; Prezelski, “Lives of the California Lancers,” pp. 43–44. There is some question about how many cavalry Moreno had at his disposal. The Voz de Méjico article claims seventy to eighty; Prezelski’s sources say only ten or twenty. Prezelski’s sources also seem to place the Mexican cheers for the U.S. cavalry earlier in the confrontation. 32. Ibid. 33.  “Prisionero de los franceses,” La Voz de Méjico, 19 October 1864, p. 2. The official in question, José Moreno, was of course not French, and Captain Pico had not been taken prisoner. 34.  “Arresto del Capitan Pico,” El Nuevo Mundo, 6 October 1865, p. 2; “A War with France ‘Imminent,’ ” Los Angeles News, 3 October 1865, p. 2. 35.  “De la linea,” La Voz de Méjico, 24 October 1865, p. 2; Prezelski, “Lives of the California Lancers,” pp. 44–45; letter to the editor of the Los Angeles News from “Juan,” dated 10 September 1865, Fort Mason; “Correspondence,” Los Angeles News, 24 October 1865, p. 2. 36.  “Es un hecho,” La Voz de Méjico, 7 July 1863, p. 1. 37. Ibid. 38.  Untitled notice, La Voz de Méjico, 28 July 1863, p. 2. 39.  “Noticias sueltas,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 September 1863, p. 2. 40.  “El C[iudadano] José Renteria,” La Voz de Méjico, 13 December 1864, p. 1. 41.  “¡Hayase abierto el cielo para recibir el alma de los martires!,” La Voz de Méjico, 2 August 1866, p. 1. 42.  George D. Lyman, “The First Native-Born California Physician: A Memoir of Dr. Platon Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo,” California Historical Society Quarterly 4 (1925): 284–287; Madie Brown Emparan, The Vallejos of California (San Francisco: Gleeson Library Associates, University of San Francisco, 1968), pp. 245, 315–316, 320–321. Both of these “colleges” were preparatory schools, not universities. 43. Emparan, The Vallejos, pp. 317, 319, 321. 44.  General Gould to Platón Vallejo, 8 June 1862, Vallejo Papers (1748–1996), file 23, no. 7 (2001.43.44.2), Institute for the Study of the American West, Autry National Center of the America West, Los Angeles (hereafter cited as Vallejo Papers). The steamship State of Maine was a side-wheeler built in New York in 1848; see Joseph Williamson, History of the City of Belfast in the State of Maine: From Its First Settlement in 1770 to 1875 (Portland, ME: Loring, Short and Harmon, 1877), p. 662.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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45.  A. North to Platón Vallejo, 23 June 1862, Vallejo Papers, file 23, no. 6 (2001 .43.45.3). 46.  A. North to Platón Vallejo, 26 June 1862, Vallejo Papers, file 23, no. 8 (2001 .43.43.1). See Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative—Fort Sumter to Perryville (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), p. 516, for casualty figures. 47.  A. North to Platón Vallejo, 7 July 1862, Vallejo Papers, file 23, no. 9 (2001.43 .43.2). 48. Emparan, The Vallejos, p. 320. 49.  Lyman, “The First Native-Born California Physician,” p. 287; Emparan, The Vallejos, p. 320. 50. Emparan, The Vallejos, p. 321, 324, 346–348. 51.  “LISTA: De las personas que espontáneamente suscriben para comprar una Espada de Honor que se ofrecerà al C[iudadano] General ignacio zaragoza, como tributo del reconocimiento y admiracion de sus conciudadanos de California,” La Voz de Méjico, 28 June 1862, p. 2. 52. Emparan, The Vallejos, pp. 367–368; Mariano G. Vallejo to Plácido Vega, dated 5 May 1864, Watsonville, Plácido Vega Papers, box 10, folder 10, Stanford University, Cecil Green Library, Special Collections M0098 (hereafter cited as Plácido Vega Papers); Plácido Vega to Mariano G. Vallejo, dated 11 May 1864, San Francisco, Plácido Vega Papers, box 10, folder 10. 53.  “De la Costa de Méjico,” La Voz de Méjico, 13 December 1864, p. 1; Emparan, The Vallejos, pp. 367–368. 54.  After the end of the American Civil War, Mexico was allowed to recruit openly in the United States, offering high pay, land grants, and citizenship to nonMexican citizens who served in the Mexican Army. Vega returned to his country with about forty U.S. Army veterans and about thirty Latino volunteers of various national backgrounds. The veterans eventually were incorporated into the American Legion of Honor. For details, see Robert Ryal Miller, “The American Legion of Honor in Mexico,” Pacific Historical Review 30 (1961): 229–241; “Arms across the Border: United States Aid to Juárez during the French Intervention in Mexico,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, 63:6 (December 1973): 23–29, 37. For an overview of Vega’s career in this period, although it misstates the origins of the California juntas and the nature of Vega’s relationship with them, see Robert Ryal Miller, “Plácido Vega: A Mexican Secret Agent in the United States, 1864–1866,” Americas 19 (1962): 137–148. 55.  Robert Ryal Miller, “The American Legion of Honor,” p. 235, and “Plácido Vega,” pp. 146–147; Emparan, The Vallejos, pp. 368–369. 56.  “Internacion del Sr. General Vega,” La Voz de Méjico, 15 September 1866, p. 1. 57. Emparan, The Vallejos, pp. 369–370. 58.  “Un rico presente,” La Voz de Méjico, 25 November 1865, p. 2. 59. Emparan, The Vallejos, pp. 25–43. 60.  “Un rico presente,” La Voz de Méjico, 25 November 1865, p. 2. 61. Emparan, The Vallejos, pp. 43, 48–194. Despite the honors and recognition he received from the federal, state, and local governments after 1848, Vallejo also  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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suffered a series of financial reverses, which ultimately left him with little property beyond his house in Sonoma and a few acres of land. 62.  “Un rico presente,” La Voz de Méjico, 25 November 1865, p. 2. 63.  Mariano G. Vallejo to an unidentified correspondent in San Francisco, dated 11 February 1865, Washington, DC; “Carta de Washington informes interesantes,” La Voz de Méjico, 23 March 1865, p. 2; Platón Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, Memoirs of the Vallejos: New Light on the History, before and after the “Gringos” Came—Based on Original Documents and Recollections of Dr. Platon M. G. Vallejo. (Fairfield, CA: James D. Stevenson and Napa County Historical Society, 1994), p. 80. Originally serialized in the San Francisco Bulletin, 26 January–17 February 1914. 64.  Charles Lee Lewis, David Glasgow Farragut: Admiral in the Making (Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute, 1941), pp. 256–266; Emparan, The Vallejos, pp. 268–269. 65.  Mariano G. Vallejo to an unidentified correspondent in San Francisco, dated 11 February 1865, Washington, DC; “Carta de Washington informes interesantes,” La Voz de Méjico, 23 March 1865, p. 2. Ruiz de Burton was originally from Baja California; she married the U.S. Army officer Henry S. Burton in Monterey, California, in 1849. Her husband was reassigned to various posts on the East Coast from 1859 on; see María Ámparo Ruiz de Burton, Who Would Have Thought It?, ed. Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita (Houston: Arte Público, 1995), p. viii. 66. Emparan, The Vallejos, pp. 113–114; untitled item, El Nuevo Mundo, 10 July 1865, p. 2. 67. Emparan, The Vallejos, p. 141. He expressed similar sentiments in 1886; ibid., pp. 168–169. 68. “Interior,” La Voz de Méjico, 17 April 1862, p. 2. For an assessment of how much of Los Angeles’ antigovernment feeling was due to genuine sympathy for the Confederate cause and how much merely to unfavorable economic conditions and local politics, see Ronald C. Woolsey, “Disunion or Dissent? A New Look at an Old Problem in Southern California Attitudes toward the Civil War,” Southern California Quarterly 66 (1984): 185–205. 69. Orton, Records of California Men, p. 16. Sumner certainly was correct that Los Angeles had more Confederate sympathizers than the rest of the state; see, for example, Clarence C. Clendenen, “Dan Showalter: California Secessionist,” California Historical Society Quarterly 40 (1961): 309–325; Gene C. Armistead, “California and the Civil War—California’s Confederate Militia: The Los Angeles Mounted Rifles,” at www.militarymuseum.org/LosAngelesMountedRifles2.html. To conclude, however, that the whole town was likely to commit treason or secede was probably overestimating their numbers; see n. 68. 70.  “Military Arrest,” Los Angeles Weekly News, 10 May 1864, p. 2; William B. Rice, The “Los Angeles Star,” 1851–1864: The Beginnings of Journalism in Southern California, ed. John Walton Caughey (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1947), pp. 240, 253–255. Bilderbeck may have been one of the two brothers by that name who were murdered in January 1871 while working a mining claim near the Tujunga Pass; see J. Albert Wilson, History of Los Angeles County, Califor 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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nia: With Illustrations Descriptive of Its Scenery, Residences, Fine Blocks, and Manufactories, from Original Sketches by Artists of the Highest Ability, facs. ed., with an introduction by W. W. Robinson (Oakland, CA: Thompson and West, 1880; Berkeley: Howell-North, 1959), p. 85. 71.  Benjamin D. Wilson to Joseph Lancaster Brent, 21 September 1865, Joseph Lancaster Brent Papers, box 1, no. 45 (BT 250), Huntington Library, San Marino, California (hereafter cited as Brent Papers); “The Burning Lamp of Camulos,” Brent Papers, box 9, no. BT 50, undated. Brent attained the rank of general in the Confederate Army. See his memoir, “Life in California,” Brent Papers, box 9, no. BT 74, typescript, pp. 9–12, 58–79; Gene C. Armistead, “California and the Civil War— California’s Confederate Militia: The Los Angeles Mounted Rifles,” at www.­military museum.org/LosAngelesMountedRifles2.html. 72.  Ulpiano Yndart to Ygnacio del Valle, 10 April 1865, Collection 1002, Del Valle Papers, box 5, no. 1540, Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (hereafter cited as Del Valle Papers). ­Yndart’s warning was not exaggerated. In his memoirs, Harris Newmark recounts that Dr. John S. Griffin, a Confederate sympathizer, was paying a house call on his family when people in the street outside began to shout out the news of Lincoln’s assassination. Griffin leaped up and began to cheer for the Confederacy and Jefferson Davis, and Newmark had to bodily restrain him from rushing outside to repeat these sentiments in public. In later years, Griffin “frankly admitted that I had undoubtedly saved him from certain death.” Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853–1913, ed. Maurice H. Newmark and Marco R. Newmark (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1916), p. 337. 73.  “Noticias sueltas,” La Voz de Méjico, 7 April 1863, p. 2. 74.  “Noticias sueltas,” La Voz de Méjico, 9 April 1863, pp. 2–3. Fifteen Confederate sympathizers were arrested in San Francisco on March 15, 1863, before they could embark on a career of piracy aboard the schooner J. M. (not C. W.) Chapman against American shipping in the area. The leaders of the abortive plot were imprisoned on Alcatraz until 1864; see Aurora Hunt, “California Naval History: The Pacific Squadron of 1861–1866,” at www.militarymuseum.org/Pac%20Sqdn.html, accessed 19 September 2011. 75.  “Gacetilla. Por el telégrafo del Estado. Horrible tragedia en el Condado de Fresno,—Tres hombres asesinados por los demócratas,” La Voz de Méjico, 12 November 1864, p. 2. 76.  Prezelski, “Lives of the California Lancers,” p. 37. 77.  “Noticias del interior,” La Voz de Méjico, 15 July 1862, p. 2. 78.  “Gacetilla,” section titled “Los mejicanos de San Buenaventura,” La Voz de Méjico, 26 July 1864, p. 2. 79.  Untitled item, El Nuevo Mundo, 10 January 1866, p. 2. 80.  Due to ongoing renovations at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, which holds this unique document, it was not available for examination during the writing of this book.  

 

 

 

 

 

No t e s t o Pag e s 147 – 149   •   237  

81.  See, for example, “El ‘Eco del Pacifico’ y el nuevo imperio mejicano,” La Voz de Méjico, 13 September 1864, p. 2. 82.  “Gacetilla. Bellisimas bellezas,” La Voz de Méjico, 14 January 1864, p. 2. 83.  “Gacetilla. Los Angeles,” La Voz de Méjico, 21 February 1865, p. 1. Sepúlveda’s given names were Antonio Ygnacio, but he ordinarily went by his middle name alone, which he consistently spelled with an initial Y, not an I. 84.  Paul Bryan Gray, “Judge Ygnacio Sepúlveda,” presentation at a meeting of the California Judicial Education Program, Los Angeles Superior Court (Central), 3 August 2009. For the Assembly of Notables, see Jasper Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez (London: Constable, 1993), pp. 140–141, 147. The few published biographies of Sepúlveda omit his involvement with Maximilian’s government, doubtless deliberately, as they were published during his lifetime or shortly thereafter; see, for example, the laudatory entry “Ygnacio Sepulveda,” in A History of California, and an Extended History of Los Angeles and Environs (Los Angeles: Historic Record, 1915), 2:76–77. Sepúlveda’s friendship with Brent continued after the Civil War ended; see Sepúlveda to Ygnacio del Valle, 8 June 1868, Los Angeles, Del Valle Papers, box 6, no. 1539. Sepúlveda also carried on a correspondence with Brent in subsequent years; see Del Valle Papers, box 6, no. 1598 (17 November 1869); Brent Papers, box 1, BT 195 (6 February 1878), BT 196 (18 February 1880), BT 197 (1 April 1880), BT 198 (30 September 1880), BT 199 (29 December 1884). 85.  Norman S. Marshall and Mark J. Denger, “California State Militia and National Guard Unit Histories: The Creation of the National Guard of California,” at www.militarymuseum.org/CreationNGC.html; Roger McGrath, “California Military History: California and the Civil War,” at www.militarymuseum.org/ HistoryCW.html; both accessed 2 July 2010. 86.  “Copy of the Call for the Organization of a Volunteer Military Company,” dated 20 January 1865, Marysville, CA, item no. B3414–3, Military Records, Saragossa Guard, 1865–1886, Militia Companies Records, 1849–1880, Inventory of the Military Department, California State Archives, Sacramento. This document lists fifty-two members of the Saragossa Guard, all Latinos. The militia’s name usually is given in English as the Saragossa Light Guard, following the usual anglicization of Zaragoza; the unit obviously was named in honor of the hero of the first battle of Puebla, making this the only California state militia company to be named for the Cinco de Mayo. 87.  Marshall and Denger, “The Creation of the National Guard of California”; “California State Militia and National Guard Unit Histories: Lanceros de Los Angeles,” at www.militarymuseum.org/LancerosdeLosAngeles.html, accessed 2 July 2010. 88.  “Patriotismo de los mejicanos en California,” La Voz de Méjico, 25 February 1864, p. 1. 89.  “El 16 de Setiembre,” La Voz de Méjico, 19 September 1863, p. 2. 90.  “Aclaracion de los 11 pesos,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 May 1864, p. 2. 91.  “Gran procesion popular.—Demostracion espléndida, imponente y entusiasta en favor de la Union.—Ocho mil votantes en procesion.—Iluminacion de la ciu 

 

 

 

 

 

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dad.—Cien mil espectadores presencian esta imponente manifestacion.—Popularidad de Lincoln y Johnson,” La Voz de Méjico, 18 October 1864, p. 2. 92.  “Gacetilla. La Festividad del ‘5 de Mayo,’ ” La Voz de Méjico, 7 May 1864, p. 1; “Accidente,” ibid. 93.  “Noticias sueltas,” La Voz de Méjico, 19 September 1863, p. 2; letter to the editor from J. M. Ruiz, dated 17 September 1863, Marysville, “Remitido,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 September 1863, p. 2. It does not seem that this was the same militia that José Buentello Elizondo’s letter to Juárez’s agent Plácido Vega on 22 March 1865 explicitly mentions as having been raised in Marysville to join the fight against the French in Mexico. The militia Elizondo mentioned apparently was infantry, whereas the Latino militia in Marysville was mounted; see Robert Ryal Miller, “Arms across the Border,” p. 25. Elizondo perhaps was referring to the Zaragoza Light Guard; see n. 86. The name of Marysville’s mounted Latino militia was confirmed by an 1864 newspaper article to be the Mexican Lancers; see n. 94. 94.  Ramón Ramírez appears as a donor to the Marysville junta in July 1864 in “Sociedades patrioticas mejicanas,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 August 1864, p. 2. For the description of Marysville’s 1864 Mexican Independence Day celebrations, see letter to the editor from “R.R.,” dated 20 September 1864, Marysville, “Correspondencia de ‘La Voz de Mejico’. Marysville, Setiembre 20 de 1864,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 September 1864, p. 1, reprinted in translation from the Marysville Appeal, 17 September 1864. The Marysville Rifles was a local militia unit between 1859 and 1866; see “California State Militia and National Guard Unit Histories: Marysville Rifles (Marysville Light Artillery),” at www.militarymuseum.org/Marysville%20Rifles.html, accessed 26 May 2010. The Union Guard was another local militia unit, organized in 1863; see “Yuba County” in “California Militia and National Guard Unit Histories: Index to Militia Units of the State of California 1850–1881,” at www.­military museum.org/Militia%20Units.html, accessed 26 May 2010. 95.  Letter to the editor from “R.R.,” dated 20 September 1864, Marysville, “Correspondencia de ‘La Voz de Mejico’: Marysville, Setiembre 20 de 1864,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 September 1864, p. 1. 96.  Letter to the editors from Gregorio Contreras and Ramón Martínez, dated 30 September 1864, Sonora, “Crroespondencia [sic] de ‘La Voz de Mejico’ Celebracion del Diez y seis de Setiembre en Sonora,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 October 1864, p. 2. 97.  Letter to the editor from Juan V. Martorell, dated 18 May 1865, Hornitos, “Comunicado,” La Voz de Méjico, 25 May 1865, p. 2. Ignacio Comonfort (1812–1863) was Juárez’s predecessor as democratically elected president of Mexico and served as a general in the Mexican Army during the French Intervention. 98.  James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 493–494, 506–507, 592, 594–595, 600, 760–763, 768–772, 775–776; Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative—Fredericksburg to Meridian (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), pp. 631–632. Ironically, McClellan, as a War Democrat, did not hold with his party’s platform and renounced it partway through the election; see Stephen W. Sears, George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (New York: Da Capo Press, 1988), pp. 372–374.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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99.  “Remitido. Reflecciones a los californios é hispano-americanos sobre la eleccion presidencial de 1864, por su amigo V. Dartin,” La Voz de Méjico, 1 November 1864, p. 2. 100.  “El partido Copperhead y sus Doctrinas,” La Voz de Méjico, 13 October 1864, p. 2. 101.  “A los hispano-americanos en general,” La Voz de Méjico, 6 October 1864, p. 1. 102.  Miguel Negrete was a general in the Mexican Army. 103.  “Gran procesion popular,” La Voz de Méjico, 18 October 1864, p. 2. 104.  “Gacetilla. Insulto copperhead,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 October 1864, p. 2, part reprinted in translation from the San Francisco American Flag, 26 October 1864. 105.  “Reunion Popular en San Leandro,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 October 1864, p. 2. 106.  “Vapor del sur. Gran Junta Unionista en Los Angeles,” La Voz de Méjico, 20 October 1864, p. 2, reprinted in translation from the San Francisco Alta California of unknown date; “La campaña electoral: Discurso pronunciado por el C[iudadano]. Filomeno Ibarra, presidente de la Junta Patriotica Mejicana, en la gran reunion popular que tuvo lugar en Los Angeles el 14 de Octubre,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 November 1864, p. 2. 107.  “Las elecciones en Sta. Barbara,” La Voz de Méjico, 4 October 1864, p. 2. The correspondent either was misinformed in part or, more likely, deliberately exaggerated the extent of anti-imperialist and pro-Union sentiment in Santa Barbara, as may be deduced from the fact that this was the only major town in California not to have a junta patriótica during this period, despite its population being overwhelmingly Latino. 108.  “Gacetilla,” section titled “Gran reunion unionista en el condado de Contra Costa,” La Voz de Méjico, 3 November 1864, p. 2. 109.  “D. Santos Berreyesa,” La Voz de Méjico, 15 October 1864, p. 2; “Gacetilla,” section titled “El Sr. A. D. Splivalo,” La Voz de Méjico, 18 October 1864, p. 2; untitled item, La Voz de Méjico, 29 October 1864, p. 2. 110.  “El 8 de Noviembre,” La Voz de Méjico, 5 November 1864, p. 2. 111.  “Mayoria Unionista en el Estado de California,” La Voz de Méjico, 12 November 1864, p. 2; “Entusiasmo Popular por el Triunfo de Lincoln,” ibid. 112.  “Despachos telegraficos. Rendicion de Lee con su ejercito. Capitulacion Honrosa! Generosidad con los vencidos!,” El Nuevo Mundo, 12 April 1865, p. 2. 113.  “Despachos telegraficos,” El Nuevo Mundo, 14 April 1865, p. 2; “Noticias del Este (Fechas hasta el 13 de Abril),” La Voz de Méjico, 15 April 1865, p. 2. 114.  “Noticias del Este. (Fechas hasta el 9 de Abril.) ¡Rendicion de R. E. Lee general en gefe del ejercito rebelde con todas sus tropas! ¡gran regocijo nacional!,” La Voz de Méjico, 11 April 1865, p. 2. See also “Gacetilla,” order dated “Departamento de la Guerra, Washington, Abril 9 á las 10 de la noche,” La Voz de Méjico, 11 April 1865, p. 2. 115.  “Maximilian y Napoleon,” La Voz de Méjico, 13 April 1865, p. 2, reprinted from the Madrid La Democracia, 16 February 1865. 116.  Letter to the editor from “V.G.,” dated 14 April 1865, Drum Barracks

240  •   No t e s t o Pag e s 156 – 162  

(Wilmington), in “Sur de California. Correspondencia de El Nuevo Mundo,” El Nuevo Mundo, 26 April 1865, p. 1. 117.  “DESPACHOS TELEGRAFICOS: MUERTE DEL PRESIDENTE LINCOLN! Asesinado en el teatro de Ford en Washington! fuga del asesino! En las misma hora el secretario Seward es apuñalado en su cama por un asesino.— Se supone que sus heridas sean mortales! inmenso dolor e indignacion del pueblo!,” El Nuevo Mundo, 17 April 1865, p. 1; “NOTICIAS DEL ESTE: El presidente Lincoln asesinado en el teatro Ford en Washington en la noche del 14 de Abril. el asesino se escapo. muerte del presidente. El secretario Seward casi muerto en su cama por un asesino. horrible tragedia. plan premeditado desde antes del 4 del marzo. La nacion gime de dolor. Grande indignacion. Se persigue a los asesinos. Detalles sobre este horrible acontecimiento. Inauguracion del nuevo Presidente,” La Voz de Mejico, 18 April 1865, p. 1. 118.  The following account is from “Efecto de las funestas noticias. Aspecto de la ciudad. Gran indignacion del pueblo. Destruccion de la prensa traidora.—Sus redactores apenas escapan con vida y huyen à ocultarse,” La Voz de Méjico, 18 April 1865, pp. 1–2. 119. Ibid. 120.  Clifford H. Bissell, “The French Language Press in California,” California Historical Society Quarterly 39 (1960): 163–165. It is likely that this official suppression, combined with the soldiers’ unofficially sanctioned destruction of Derbec’s operation, accounts for the otherwise puzzling nonsurvival of all but the barest handful of issues of L’Echo du Pacifique and El Éco del Pacífico. 121.  “Club Patriotico Mejicano de Virginia City, Estado de Nevada,” El Nuevo Mundo, 28 April 1865, p. 1. 122. Ibid. 123.  “Interior del Estado,” El Nuevo Mundo, 21 April 1865, p. 2. 124.  “Exequias funebres a la memoria del presidente Lincoln,” El Nuevo Mundo, 21 April 1865, p. 2. 125.  “Estado de Nevada,” El Nuevo Mundo, 24 April 1865, p. 2. 126.  “Sentimientos patrioticas de los mejicanos de Nuevo Almaden,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 April 1865, p. 2. 127.  “Traidores infernales,” El Nuevo Mundo, 26 April 1865, p. 2. 128.  “Jubilo de los traidores por la muerte de Mr. Lincoln,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 April 1865, p. 2. León’s wound evidently was not serious, as he was mustered out with the rest of Company A at Drum Barracks in Southern California on 20 March 1866; Guilman, however, was given an honorable discharge, on 17 October 1865, “for disability caused by gunshot wound in the foot, received in action at Green Valley, Cal., April 13, 1865.” Orton, Records of California Men, p. 309. “Rebelion en Solano,” El Nuevo Mundo, 26 April 1865, p. 2. For another example of individual exhibitions of joy in California at Lincoln’s assassination, see “Otro traidor en Sutter Creek,” ibid.; Orton, Records of California Men, p. 305. Prezelski, “Lives of the California Lancers,” p. 38, mistakenly reports Grass Valley as the location to which Lt. Jiménez and the men of Company A were called.  

 

 

 

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129.  R. Curtis Tyler, “Santiago Vidaurri and the Confederacy,” Americas 26 (1969): 69–71, 73; Alfred Jackson Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), pp. 160–162. 130.  Tyler, “Santiago Vidaurri,” pp. 68–69, 72–75. 131.  Tyler, “Santiago Vidaurri,” pp. 75–76; “Noticias del Este. Despachos telegràficos a la Prensa Asociada. Fechas hasta el 18 de Mayo,” section headed “Méjico,” La Voz de Méjico, 21 May 1864, p. 2; Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, pp. 162–163. 132.  “Mejico. El Fugitivo Vidaurri,” La Voz de Méjico, 21 June 1864, p. 1, based on an article in the New Orleans Daily True Delta of unknown date. 133.  Ortega stated his case in a lengthy manifesto published serially on the front page of La Voz de Méjico as “El Ciudadano Jesus G. Ortega, Presidente constitucional de la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Republica mejicana a la Nacion,” on 15, 17, 20, 22, and 24 March 1866. A brief summary may be found in Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez, pp. 206–209. 134.  “Junta patriotica de San Juan Bautista,” La Voz de Méjico, 8 July 1865, p. 2. 135.  “Club Patriotico Mejicano de San Francisco,” El Nuevo Mundo, 8 January 1866, pp. 1–2. 136.  “La Presidencia de la Republica de Mejico,” El Nuevo Mundo, 28 February 1866, p. 2. The Los Angeles junta’s declaration of support uses language virtually identical to that of Godoy’s cover letter. 137.  “Noticias del Este. (Fechas hasta el 25 de Abril.) Extracto,” section titled “Jeff Davis en camino para Méjico,” La Voz de Méjico, 27 April 1865, p. 1; “La Confederacion del Sur,” El Nuevo Mundo, 3 May 1865, p. 2; “Méjico,” La Voz de Méjico, 15 August 1865, p. 2. 138. “Tejas,” La Voz de Méjico, 22 August 1865, p. 1, extracted in Spanish translation from San Francisco’s Alta California of unknown date, which took its account from the Monterrey (Mexico) Ranchero, 3 July 1865. 139.  “Ejercito de Observacion en el Rio Grande,” La Voz de Méjico, 29 August 1865, p. 2. 140.  Alfred J. Hanna, “A Confederate Newspaper in Mexico,” Journal of Southern History 12 (1946): 67–83; George D. Harmon, “Confederate Migration to Mexico,” Hispanic American Historical Review 17 (1937): 461–464; Alfred J. Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, “The Immigration Movement of the Intervention and Empire as Seen through the Mexican Press,” Hispanic American Historical Review 27 (1947): 238–240. Even conservatives who otherwise supported Maximilian and the imperialist agenda, however, did not universally welcome the notion of accepting defeated Confederates as colonists; see Hanna and Hanna, “The Immigration Movement,” pp. 232–234, 241–243, 245. 141.  Carl Coke Rister, “Carlota: A Confederate Colony in Mexico,” Journal of Southern History 11 (1945): 33–50; Harmon, “Confederate Migration to Mexico,” pp. 459–460, 466–473. Most of these settlements lasted less than five years, with the majority of the former Confederates eventually returning to the United States,  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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although a handful remained, mostly in Mexico City; see Harmon, “Confederate Migration,” pp. 474–487; Frank A. Knapp, “A New Source on the Confederate Exodus to Mexico: The Two Republics,” Journal of Southern History 19 (1953): 364–373. 142.  Tyler, “Santiago Vidaurri,” p. 76. 143.  “Maximilian y Napoleon,” La Voz de Méjico, 13 April 1865, p. 2, reprinted from the Madrid La Democracia, 16 February 1865. 144.  “Noticias del Este. (Despachos a la Prensa Asociada.) Fechas hasta el de [sic] 10 Febrero,” section titled “Discurso de Napoleon,” La Voz de Méjico, 13 February 1866, p. 2. 145.  “Carta de Mejico,” La Voz de Méjico, 1 September 1866, p. 2, reprinted from the Washington Times of unknown date. 146.  “La situacion del imperio mejicano,” La Voz de Méjico, 11 September 1866, p. 1, reprinted from the Havana El Siglo of unknown date. The regime’s resulting desperation led to Maximilian’s promulgation of the infamous Black Decree, essentially a “take no prisoners” order; see Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez, pp. 228–230; “El moderno Huitzlipochtli [sic], o sea Maximiliano el asesino,” La Voz de Méjico, 6 February 1866, p. 2. Huitzilopochtli was one of the primary gods to whom the Aztecs had dedicated thousands of human sacrifices. 147. “Matamoros,” La Voz de Méjico, 4 August 1866, p. 1, reprinted in translation from the New Orleans Crescent of unknown date; Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez, p. 25; “Llegada del ‘Golden City,’ ” La Voz de Méjico, 29 November 1866, p. 1. 148.  “Maximiliano quemado en efigie,” La Voz de Méjico, 20 January 1866, p. 2. 149.  “Maximiliano y la Doctrina de Monroe,” La Voz de Méjico, 10 August 1865, p. 2. 150.  “Rasgo de patriotismo,” La Voz de Méjico, 14 April 1866, p. 2. 151. Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez, p. 255. 152.  Ibid., pp. 247–249; “Fuga de la muger de Maximiliano,” La Voz de Méjico, 4 August 1866, p. 1. 153. Emparan, The Vallejos, p. 369. 154.  “Importantes noticias de Mexico,” section titled “Juicio de los prisioneros de Queretaro,” El Nuevo Mundo, 29 June 1867, p. 2, reprinted from the Guanajuato (Mexico) Regenador, 6 June 1867. 155.  Paul Bryan Gray, “Judge Ygnacio Sepúlveda,” presentation at a meeting of the California Judicial Education Program, Los Angeles Superior Court (Central), 3 August 2009. 156.  “El Tragico fin de Maximiliano,” El Nuevo Mundo, 3 July 1867, p. 2, reprinted in translation from San Francisco’s Alta California, 2 July 1867. 157.  “Affairs in Mexico,” New York Times, 7 August 1867, p. 8; Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez, pp. 280. 158.  “El Tragico fin de Maximiliano,” El Nuevo Mundo, 3 July 1867, p. 2, reprinted in translation from San Francisco’s Alta California, 2 July 1867. 159.  “La celebracion del 5 de Mayo en Virginia City, Estado de Nevada,” El Nuevo Mundo, 15 May 1865, p. 1. 160.  “Discurso pronunciado en Virginia City, Estado de Nevada, por el ciuda 

 

 

 

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dano Rafael H. Gonzalez, secretario del Club Patriótico Mejicano, el 5 de Mayo de 1865,” El Nuevo Mundo, 15 May 1865, pp. 1–2. Similar displays of both countries’ flags and images of their respective leaders distinguished various memorial services held in California on the death of the Mexican diplomat Manuel Doblado in 1865; “Un recuerdo a la memoria del C[iudadano] Manuel Doblado,” El Nuevo Mundo, 10 July 1865, p. 2; “Honras funebres a la memoria del general Doblado.—Patriotismo de los mejicanos de Nueva Almaden,” El Nuevo Mundo, 17 July 1865, p. 2; “Comunicado. Nueva Almaden. Honras funebres a la memoria del General Doblado,” El Nuevo Mundo, 19 July 1865, p. 2; “Virginia City, Estado de Nevada. Honras funebres a la memoria del general Doblado,” El Nuevo Mundo, 24 July 1865, p. 2; Ridley, Maxmilian and Juárez, pp. 201–202. 161.  “Discurso pronunciado en el Dashaway Hall, San Francisco, el dia 16 de Setiembre de 1865, por el ciudadano jose montesinos, Coronel del ejercito del Oriente, y uno de los defensores de Puebla de Zaragoza, y ex-prisionero en Francia,” El Nuevo Mundo, 25 September 1865, p. 1. 162.  “Discurso Pronunciado por el C[iudadano] Filomeno Ibarra, presidente de la Junta Patriótica de Los Angeles, el 16 de Setiembre de 1865,” El Nuevo Mundo, 2 October 1865, p. 1. The celebrations in Los Angeles that year apparently also included the burning of Maximilian in effigy, at least according to a report by a French eyewitness, “X.C.,” originally published in the French-language Le Courier de San Francisco and reprinted in Spanish translation, with refutation, as “La Celebracion del 16 de Setiembre en Los Angeles juzgada por un Frances,” El Nuevo Mundo, 29 September 1865, p. 2. 163.  “Una Obra Sorprendente de Bordado,” El Nuevo Mundo 28 July 1865, p. 2, reprinted in translation from the San Francisco American Flag of unknown date; untitled article, El Nuevo Mundo, 6 September 1865, p. 2. Romo de Velasco had advertised her services as a seamstress and a sewing teacher for girls at least as early as 1862; see “refugio romo de velasco,” La Voz de Méjico, 13 September 1862, p. 4. 164.  “Celebracion del 5 de Mayo,” La Voz de Méjico, 8 May 1866, p. 2. 165.  “Declaracion de Independencia: Julio 4 de 1776,” El Nuevo Mundo, 3 July 1867, p. 2. Two articles on the same page report Maximilian’s execution, “Tragico fin de Maximiliano” and “Despachos Telegraficos. Noticias de Mejico.” This was not the first time a Spanish-language editor had published a translated Declaration of Independence in the issue nearest the Fourth of July: Antonio Mancillas had done so the year before, on the front page of the 3 July 1866 issue of La Voz de Méjico, under the title “4 de July de 1776,” and Ramírez himself had done so even earlier, in the 3 July 1855 issue of El Clamor Público, on p. 3.  

 

 

Six. Shaping and Reshaping the Cinco de Mayo 1.  Richard H. Orton, Records of California Men in the War of the Rebellion, 1861 to 1867 (Sacramento: State Office, 1890), pp. 306–320. A brief contemporary notice  

244  •   No t e s t o Pag e s 175 – 177  

of Captain Porfírio Jimeno’s arrival in San Francisco praises him as “one of the first young sons of California who, upon the South’s rebellion breaking out, offered his services to the United States government. His honorable conduct, his affable manners, earned him a well-deserved popularity among his superiors and the respect of his subordinates. The Company to which he belonged having been dissolved, he has retired with full honors and with the satisfaction of having fulfilled his duties as a soldier and a gentleman.” “El Capitan Porfirio Jimeno,” El Nuevo Mundo, 2 April 1866, p. 1. 2.  David E. Hayes-Bautista, “Demographic Change in California: Implications for Health,” presentation at the Hispanic Serving Health Professional Schools SAMHSA HRSA Training Program, Rockville, MD, 13 June 2011. 3.  “Entusiastas festividades en Los Angeles, sur de California, con motivo de los triunfos alcanzados en Puebla por los hijos de la republica,” La Voz de Méjico, 6 June 1863, pp. 1–2. 4.  “Lista de donativos patrioticos para ausiliar Al Ejército de operaciones contra los invasores,” La Voz de Méjico, 20 August 1863, p. 2. 5.  “Lista de donativos patrioticos para ausiliar Al Ejército de Oriente en México,” La Voz de Méjico, 12 March 1863, p. 2. 6.  “Lista de donativos patrioticos para ausiliar al Ejército de operaciones contra los invasores: Suscricion de la junta Patriotica de Señoras en Sonora,” La Voz de Méjico, 14 November 1863, p. 2. This lists Soto, however, among the adult members of the junta, not with the “Niñas,” although “El aniversario del ‘5 de Mayo’ en la ciudad de Sonora, California,” La Voz de Méjico, 24 May 1864, p. 2, lists her as a niña, suggesting she was a teenager in 1863. “El aniversario del ‘5 de Mayo’ en la ciudad de Sonora, California,” La Voz de Méjico, 24 May 1864, p. 2. She may have been the same individual enumerated in the 1860 census as seven-year-old Rosa Soto, the ­California-born daughter of the Mexican immigrant Sancha Soto; U.S. Census, 1860, Tuolumne County, Columbia, 2nd township, family no. 2239. 7.  His was such a common name that in the absence of further biographical information, there is no way to tell if he was the same man as the José Antonio López who was a private in Company D of the Native California Cavalry in 1864–1866. Orton, Records of California Men, p. 319. 8.  “Celebracion del 5 de Mayo,” Los Angeles La Crónica, 9 May 1877, p. 3. The advertisement for the Guardia Hidalgo’s ball appeared in the previous issue of this paper, 5 May 1877, p. 2, as did a brief puff item titled “Guardia Hidalgo,” p. 3. 9.  “Yesterday. The Celebration of the Event in Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Times, 17 September 1886, p. 4; “Mexican Independence. Beginning to Celebrate—Today’s Programme,” Los Angeles Times, 16 September 1887, p. 1; “Mexican Independence. The Anniversary Handsomely Celebrated Here,” Los Angeles Times, 17 September 1887, p. 1; “Mexican Independence,” Los Angeles Times, 17 September 1890, p. 2; “Mexican Independence. Programme of the Second Day of the Celebration,” Los Angeles Times, 17 September 1892, p. 4; “Sing ‘Vivas’ for Mexico,” Los Angeles Times, 17 September 1908, sec. II, p. 10; “Another Mile Stone Passed,” Los Angeles Times, 17 September 1909, sec. II, p. 3; John Steven McGroarty, Los Angeles: From  

 

 

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the Mountains to the Sea (Chicago and New York: American Historical Society, 1921), 2:180–181. 10.  “Viva Mexico. The Independence of Mexico Duly Celebrated,” Los Angeles Times, 6 May 1890, p. 4; “Maximilian’s Defeat. It Will Be Celebrated Today by Loyal Mexicans,” Los Angeles Herald, 5 May 1891, p. 3. 11.  “Turnverein Hall. Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of Mexican Independence,” advertisement, Los Angeles Times, 23 August 1885, p. 5. 12.  “¡Atencion! Gran baile conmemorativo del glorioso 5 de Mayo,” advertisement, La Crónica, 5 May 1877, p. 2. 13.  “Correspondencia de La Voz de Mejico. Celebracion del Aniversario del Glorioso dia 5 de Mayo en Los Angeles, Alta California,” La Voz de Mejico, 4 June 1864, p. 2; “Celebracion el Aniversario el 5 de Mayo de 1862 en Los Angeles,” La Crónica, 7 May 1873, p. 3. For more on Píoquinto Dávila’s role in the celebration of Latino holidays, see chapter 4. 14.  “No Mas Mostrador,” Los Angeles Times, 2 May 1882, p. 3; “No Mas Mastrador [sic],” Los Angeles Times, 4 May 1882, p. 3. The sparse news accounts provide no names of the actors, but at that time an amateur theater group of young Latinos most likely would have been largely members of the second generation. No Más Mostrador, written in 1831, was the first play by the French-educated Spaniard Mariano José de Larra. 15.  “Glorious 5th of May Ball for the Benefit of the Union Brass Band of Los Angeles, at the Turnverein Hall: The Object Is to Purchase New Uniforms for the Band,” advertisement, Los Angeles Times, 11 April 1883, p. 4. The individuals responsible for planning this event were A. W. Potts, R. Bilderrain, J. C. Kays, Theodore J. DuPuy [sic, for DuPy], George P. McLain, C. E. Milca, B. A. Yorba, J. D. Guerrero, J. F. Quirado [sic, for Guirado], E. F. de Célis, E. A. DeCamp, C. L. Cruz, C. J. Prudhome [sic, for Prudhomme], J. S. Griffin, E. Hossmnn [sic, for Hussmann], Y. Ortega, Carlos Buckeye, J. Elfas, J. Valdez, D. Sanchez, M. Velasco, H. Hussmann, R. Buckeye, F. Olivas, J. Martinez, and A. Orfila. The first mention in print of the Union Band’s existence seems to be in the Los Angeles Times’ The City column, 20 May 1883, p. 4. The band’s participation in Mexican Independence Day celebrations is mentioned in “Viva Mexico. An Enthusiastic Celebration Yesterday by Mexican Residents,” Los Angeles Times, 18 September 1883, p. 1; “1810–1885. The Celebration Here of Mexico’s Independence Day,” Los Angeles Times, 17 September 1885, p. 4; “Mexican Independence. The Celebration of the Seventy-Sixth Anniversary,” Los Angeles Times, 16 September 1886, p. 4; “Mexican Celebration. The Day Fully Honored in Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Times, 17 September 1889, p. 2. None of these sources detail its membership, although an advertisement, “Turnverein Hall,” and a notice, “Benefit Ball,” Los Angeles Times, 14 March 1885, p. 4, name the leader as Juan Castillón. 16.  “ ‘El Cinco de Mayo,’  ” advertisement, Los Angeles La Crónica, 5 April 1884, p. 3. The “varios Jóvenes Hispano-Americanos” listed on the dance committee were J. F. Guirado, T. D. Mott, Martin Aguirre, N. A . Covarrubias, M. A . Hamburger, R. C. Guirado, B. A . Yorba, F. López, E. T. McGinnis, A. Domingo, J. D. Guerrero,  

 

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José Antonio Aguirre, A. Montaño, J. R . Sanchez, J. M. Arnaz, and B. Olivas. Yorba and Guerrero were also on the committee of the 1883 Cinco de Mayo dance to benefit the Union Brass Band. Some of these “jovenes,” such as the Guirado brothers, were middle-aged. See, for example, baptismal record no. 01005 (José Juan Francisco de Jesús Guirado) and baptism record no. 01092 (Rafael Cancio Guirado), Huntington Library, Early California Population Project Database (2006), at www .­huntington.org/Information/ECPPmain.htm. 17.  Leo Carrillo, The California I Love (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1961), pp. 15–19, 115; “First Police Chief of Los Angeles is Dead,” Los Angeles Times, 1 April 1916, sec. II, p. 1. Carrillo’s father, Juan José, was four years old when the ­Mexican-American War began in 1846 and shared the experiences of second-­ generation Latinos during the Gold Rush and the Civil War. In modern sociological terms, he would be called a 1.5 generation immigrant: that is, one who came to the United States in early childhood and as a result generally grew up as if part of the second generation. 18.  U.S. Census, 1900, Los Angeles County, Los Angeles City, Ward 8, enumeration district 84, household no. 90, records the backgrounds of both parents. The maiden name of Gonzalez’s mother appears in the marriage record of Manuel G. González and Lillie L. Cooke [sic], 14 August 1889, Marriage Book 20, p. 66, Los Angeles County Recorder’s Office, Norwalk. 19.  “Women’s Clubs,” Los Angeles Times, 14 June 1904, p. 6; liner notes, Flowers of Our Lost Romance, by the group Los Californios (San Diego Friends of OldTime Music, 1998). Charles Lummis collected the melodies and lyrics of these songs in 1904. See Henry Edmond Earle, “An Old-Time Collector: Reminiscences of Charles F. Lummis,” California Folklore Quarterly 1 (1942): 182; Susanna Bryant Dakin, A Scotch Paisano in Old Los Angeles: Hugo Reid’s Life in California, 1832– 1852, Derived from His Correspondence (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1939), p. 49. Antonio Coronel mentioned “Los Camotes” as a traditional Californio song in the memoir he dictated for Hubert Howe Bancroft in 1877; Coronel, Tales of Mexican California: Cosas de California, trans. Diane de AvalleArce, ed. Doyce B. Nunis Jr. (Santa Barbara, CA: Bellerophon Books, 1994), p. 86. 20.  “Observe Mexican Freedom Today. Mexico Spanish-American Club Programme,” Los Angeles Times, 16 September 1915, sec. II, p. 7; “Celebrando el Dia 5,” Los Angeles El Heraldo de México, 29 April 1916, p. 8; “Cinco de Mayo. With Spanish Dances,” Los Angeles Times, 5 May 1916, sec. I, p. 12; “Mexicans Celebrate at Cinco de Mayo Fete,” Los Angeles Times, 6 May 1918, sec. II, p. 1; “Los Ultimos Festejos del 5 de Mayo En Los Angeles y Alderredores,” Los Angeles El Heraldo de México, 9 May 1918, p. 1. The exact date of the Sociedad Hispano-Americana’s foundation has not yet been discovered. 21.  “Historical Census Populations of Counties and Incorporated Cities in California, 1850–2010” (Sacramento: California State Department of Finance, Demographic Research Unit, August 2011), available at www.dof.ca.gov/research/­demographic/ state_census_data_center/historical_census_1850–2010/view.php, accessed 19 September 2011.  

 

 

 

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22.  José Amaro Hernández, Mutual Aid for Survival: The Case of the Mexican American (Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger, 1983), esp. pp. 75–83. 23.  “Los Ultimos Festejos del 5 de Mayo En Los Angeles y Alderredores,” Los Angeles El Heraldo de México, 9 May 1918, p. 1. 24.  “Otro de los números grande y justamente ovacionados, fué el ‘Saludo a México,’ que tocó las fibras del patriotismo y del recuerdo,” as noted in “Cronica semanal,” Los Angeles El Heraldo de México, 10 May 1919, p. 3a. 25.  See, for example, “El 5 de Mayo,” Los Angeles La Opinión, 5 May 1927, p. 5. 26.  A brief Spanish-language history of the Comité Mexicano Cívico Patriótico is available on the organization’s website, at www.cmcpla.com/historiademexico.php, accessed 23 June 2010. 27.  “Se Conmemora hoy el Cinco de Mayo. Imponente Ceremonia al las 12 m. en el Palacio Municipal de Los Angeles,” Los Angeles La Opinión, 5 May 1942, p. 1; “El Gobernador Presidió la Ceremonia de Ayer. Una Enorme Multitud Se Congrego. La bandera de México, con la de Estados Unidos. Hablaron el Mayor, el Sheriff y el Cónsul Salazar,” Los Angeles La Opinión, 6 May 1942, p. 1. 28.  “Discurso del Gobernador de California, Mr. Olson,” Los Angeles La Opinión, 6 May 1942, p. 1. 29.  Richard Griswold del Castillo, “The War and Changing Identities: Personal Transformations,” in World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights, ed. Griswold del Castillo (Austin: University of Texas, 2008), pp. 49–50. 30.  David E. Hayes-Bautista, La Nueva California: Latinos in the Golden State (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 18–20, 27– 32, 38–49, 57. 31.  “Cinco de Mayo: County Will Note Mexican Historical Day,” Los Angeles Times, 30 April 1970, p. D9. 32.  “Occidental Plans Week of Mexican Cultural Events,” Los Angeles Times, 3 May 1970, sec. SG, pp. C1, C7; “Valley Activities Will Honor Mexican History,” Los Angeles Times, ibid., sec. SG, p. A4. 33.  Efraín Jiménez, “Dar sin fronteras,” presentation at the Stanford University Global Philanthropy Forum, Fourth Annual Conference on Borderless Giving, 2– 4 March 2005. 34.  “Hispanos festejan el 5 de Mayo,” Los Angeles La Opinión, 3 May 1986, 2nd section, p. 1. The Mexican consul’s cultural attaché expressed similar views in Alicia Alarcón, “Se debe difundir el 5 de Mayo en su proporción histórica: Lorenza De Icaza,” Los Angeles La Opinión, 5 May 1988, 2nd section, p. 3. 35.  William Dávila, “Celebre este nuevo Cinco de Mayo con la debida sobriedad,” Los Angeles La Opinión, 5 May 1994, p. 15A. 36.  “Fiesta Broadway promete diversión para toda la familia,” Los Angeles La Opinión, 28 April 1996, p. 2D. 37.  “Cinco de Mayo,” at https://shop.usps.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ ProductDisplay?catalogId=10001&storeId=10052&productId=10004252 &langId =-1, accessed 28 September 2011. Charros are Mexican cowboys who follow traditions originating in central and western Mexico, which include a particular style of  

 

 

 

 

 

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dress. The Adelita dress is a female costume from the period of the Mexican Revolution; the name is from a popular folk song of the era and came to be applied generically to the female camp followers of the revolutionaries. The two styles of dress have virtually nothing in common, yet for some reason in non-Latino U.S. culture they have become stereotyped as “typical” or “traditional” Mexican costume for men and women, respectively. Putting figures dressed in these costumes on a postage stamp was meant to show respect for Mexican culture—a gesture that, it was presumed, would generate positive views in Latino voters toward the government that had authorized the stamp but instead only demonstrated misunderstanding of their culture. 38.  “President Celebrates Cinco de Mayo,” Office of the Press Secretary, the White House, 4 May 2005, available at http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives .gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050504–2.html, accessed 29 June 2010. 39.  Post by user “steveox,” 3 May 2007, at www.uspoliticsonline.com/culture -media-issues/38093-should-cinco-de-mayo-celebrated-america.html, accessed 3 May 2009. It should be noted, however, that the list’s moderator responded, “You want to jail people for celebrating a holiday? Perhaps you should move to North Korea whe[re you would] find things more to your liking,” and that other posters reproved “steveox” ’s characterization of the Cinco de Mayo as “an mexican independance [sic] day,” correctly referencing the first battle of Puebla instead. Yet they too were under the mistaken impression that the holiday had been brought to the United States at some ill-defined point by Mexican immigrants. The majority of responses to the poll supported the celebration of the Cinco de Mayo in the United States. 40.  Irene Vázquez Valle and María del Carmen Ruiz Castañeda, liner notes, Cancionero de la Intervención Francesa, recording (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1977).  

 

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Bi bliogr a ph y

Archival Sources “The Burning Lamp of Camulos,” Joseph Lancaster Brent Papers, box 9, no. BT 50, undated. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. “Copy of the Call for the Organization of a Volunteer Military Company,” dated 20 January 1865, Marysville, CA. Item no. B3414–3, Military Records, Saragossa Guard, 1865–1886, Militia Companies Records, 1849–1880, Inventory of the Military Department. California State Archives, Sacramento. Coronel, Antonio F., ed. “Documentos para la historia de California, 1821–1872.” BANC MSS C-B 75, University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library. Delinquent Tax Book for Los Angeles County, 1857–1858. Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Del Valle Papers. Collection 1002, Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Joseph Lancaster Brent Papers. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. “Life in California.” Joseph Lancaster Brent Papers, box 9, no. BT 74, Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Los Angeles County Assessment Book, 1856–1857. Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Los Angeles County Recorder’s Office, Norwalk, Marriage Books 1, 4, 15, 20, 23. Los Angeles County Tax Book, 1856–1857. Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Plácido Vega Papers. Stanford University, Cecil Green Library, Special Collections M0098. Sepúlveda-Guirado Papers. Collection 1329, Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Tulare County Clerk-Recorder’s Office, Marriage Certificates of Tulare County, Book C. Tuolumne County Recorder’s Office, Tuolumne County Marriage Books 1–4.  

 

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de Jesús Gómezgil. “Una espada de honor para Ignacio Zaragoza: La Batalla del 5 de Mayo en Puebla y las reacciones de los hispanos en la Alta California.” Jiménez, Efraín. “Dar sin fronteras.” Presentation at the Stanford University Global Philanthropy Forum, Fourth Annual Conference on Borderless Giving, 2–4 March 2005.  

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Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books, 1967. Bigler, David L. “The Aiken Party and the Utah War, 1857–1858,” Western Historical Quarterly 38 (2007): 457–476. Bigler, David L., and Will Bagley, eds. Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, vol. 12 of Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier. Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark, 2008. Bishko, Charles Julian. “The Peninsular Background of Latin American Cattle Ranching,” Hispanic American Historical Review 32 (1952): 291–515. Bissell, Clifford H. “The French Language Press in California,” California Historical Society Quarterly 39 (1960): 1–18, 141–173, 219–262, 311–353. Bryson-Taylor, C. “Hanging Judas in Mexico,” in The Easter Book, ed. William Crosswell Doane, pp. 25–26. New York and Boston: Macmillan, 1910. “California Militia and National Guard Unit Histories: Index to Militia Units of the State of California 1850–1881,” at www.militarymuseum.org/Militia%20 Units.html. The California Star: Yerba Buena and San Francisco, vol. 1, 1847–1848, facs. ed. Berkeley: Howell-North Books, 1965. “California State Militia and National Guard Unit Histories: Lanceros de Los Angeles,” at www.militarymuseum.org/LancerosdeLosAngeles.html. “California State Militia and National Guard Unit Histories: Marysville Rifles (Marysville Light Artillery),” at www.militarymuseum.org/Marysville%20Rifles .html. Camarillo, Albert. Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios, 1850–1930. Dallas, TX: Southern Methodist University Press, 2005. Carlson, Alvar W. “America’s Growing Observance of Cinco de Mayo,” Journal of American Culture 21, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 7–16. Carrillo, Leo. The California I Love. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1961. Casas, María Raquél. Married to a Daughter of the Land: Spanish-Mexican Women and Interethnic Marriage in California, 1820–1880. Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 2007. Chabris, Christopher F. “IQ Since ‘The Bell Curve,’ ” at www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/ Chabris1998a.html. Clendenen, Clarence C. “Dan Showalter: California Secessionist,” California Historical Society Quarterly 40 (1961): 309–325. Constitution of the State of California, 1849, at www.sos.ca.gov/archives/­collections/ 1849/full-text.htm. Coronel, Antonio. Tales of Mexican California: Cosas de California, trans. Diane de Avalle-Arce, ed. Doyce B. Nunis Jr. Santa Barbara, CA: Bellerophon Books, 1994. Costeloe, Michael. “The Junta Patriótica and the Celebration of Independence in Mexico City, 1825–1855,” Mexican Studies / Estudios Mexicanos 13 (1997): 21–53. “County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors: Supervisor Manuel Dominguez,” at http://file.lacounty.gov/lac/mdominguez.pdf.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Ack now le dgm en ts

This book would not have been written if my colleague Stephen Aron, a professor of history at UCLA, had not put me straight one day over lunch at the Faculty Center. He encouraged me to expand my focus from writing a large number of papers to writing one or two books. I had outlined about half a dozen papers on the topic of Latinos in California during the Gold Rush and the Ameri­ can Civil War but had not thought seriously about putting the material into a monograph. Stephen’s suggestion intrigued me; I took it; and the result is the book you now hold in your hands. A large number of people provided invaluable support and input at critical times as this project moved from idea to reality. Two incredibly important people on staff at the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Cul­ ture (CESLAC) at UCLA served as my right and left hands. Cynthia  L. Chamberlin performed triple duty as editor, fact checker, and translator of all the Spanish and French passages, in addition to her regular function of digging around in archives, discovering and transcribing primary-source documents. Margarita Reyes used all her skills as a media producer to manage the hundreds of images that were considered for use in this book, eventually winnowed down to twenty-six, ensuring that each was of appropriate quality and had all the required permissions, releases, and other legal clearances. Providing support to their efforts was another pair of talented people: Werner Schink, a colleague of thirty years’ acquaintance, prepared the maps; and Paul Hsu, a colleague for nearly fifteen years, helped organize the massive amounts of data. I also want to acknowledge the contributions of former CESLAC staff members who helped extract and process data from public records and nineteenth-century newspapers: Marta VanLandingham, 263

Gloria Meza, Karen Milian, Azucena Puerta-Díaz, Ernesto Medina, Branden Jones, Juan Carlos Cornejo, Carlos Martinez, Cecilia Cañadas, Mariam Iya Kahramanian, and Jennifer Wei-Li. The professional genealogist Ted Gostin provided invaluable information on nineteenth-century Latino families and individuals in Southern California. I have relied on the collections and key individuals of a number of institutions: John Cahoon and Betty Uyeda at the Seaver Center for Western History Research at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County; Mary Morganti, the director of Library and Archives, and Debra Kaufman, the library reproduction and reference associate, of the California Historical Society; Polly Armstrong (formerly) and Mattie Taormina (currently) of Special Collections at the Cecil Green Library at Stanford University; David Kessler and Susan Snyder of the Bancroft Library at the University of ­California, Berkeley; the staff of the Ahmanson Reading Room at the Henry  E. Huntington Library; and the staff of the Special Collections Depart­ment of Young Research Library, UCLA. Also at UCLA I would like to acknowledge the support of my division chief, Martin Shapiro, and the extraordinary administrative support of Mark Lucas, as well as the support of Jade T. Reyes and Maria T. Jauregui. A number of close acquaintances provided emotional support during the long gestational period that producing a book requires, and I thank them: Steve Soto of the Mexican American Grocers Association, State Senators Gil Cedillo and Richard Polanco, María Luisa Rodríguez Sala and José Luis Talancón of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), and Samuel Schmidt of the Universidad de Guadalajara. Family members who encouraged me include Raúl and Ana Ofelia Bracamontes of Guadalajara; Hugo, Patricia, and Hugo René Wingartz of Mexico City; Cristina Bautista and José Oviedo Bautista of Ozumba; Ana Raquel Poe and Aaron Edsinger of San Francisco; Diego Hayes-Bautista of San Diego; and Catalina HayesBautista and my new son-in-law, Alejandro Rodriguez, in Sacramento. A small group of individuals provided feedback on the manuscript and helped develop activities to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the first battle of Puebla: Jorge Mettey, Juan José Cué, and my sobrinos—José Adrian Gabriel Camacho, Carlos Anaya, and Hector Ortiz—of Puebla, Mexico; Gabriela Tiessier and Dina Rodriguez of the television station KMEX, Los Angeles; Judge Michael Stern; my colleague and coauthor Paul Bryan Gray (Don Pablo); and Ana T. Valdez of the 650 Company. Even more involved  

 

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were my editors at University of California Press, Naomi Schneider and Kim Robinson. And, of course, I want to thank my greatest supporter and most supportive critic, my wife Teodocia María de Jesús Rodríguez Menchaca de HayesBautista, also known, simplemente, as María.

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I n de x

A. de Tapia, Paula, 104 Abello [de Stocking], Estéfana, 127, 230n79 Abila, Felipe, 206n111 Abila [de Ramírez], Petra, 12 Abila family, 12 Acapulco, Mexico, 61, 64, 72, 74 Aculzingo, Mexico: mountain, 64; village, 64, 212n51 Adams, John, 98 “Adelita” dress, 189–90, 249n37 “Adiós, Mamá Carlota” (song), 191 Aguiar, Carlos, 109 Aguilar, Antonio, 179 Aguilar, Cristóbal, 37, 44, 123 Aguilar, Ygnacio, 40, 206n111 Aguilar y Ríos, Martín, 227n39 Aguirre, José Antonio, 246–47n16 Aguirre, Martín, 246–47n16 Alameda County, CA, 66, 68 Alamo, the, 115 Alamos, Mexico, 74 Alcatraz Island, CA: federal penitentiary on, 237n74 Alcayaga, José, 39 Alemany, Josep: archbishop of San Francisco, 71 Alianza Hispano-Americana, 131, 231n96 Aliso Street, Los Angeles, 12 Allen, Mr.: U.S. consul in Minatitlan, Mexico, 55–56 Allison Ranch, CA: reaction to Lincoln’s assassination, 166  

 

 

 

Almada, Bartolomé E., 73–74 Almenares, Pedro, 206n111 Almonte, Juan N.: mock testaments of, 125–26, 229n72; proclaims himself president of Mexico, 58, 89, 126; supports French Intervention, 58, 126 Alta California (newspaper), 21, 28, 164, 240n106, 242n138, 243n158; advertising in, 41; editorials in, 25, 48, 173; editorial on Maximilian’s execution, 173; on hispanisms in English, 46 Altamirano, Ignacio M., 108–9, 216n85, 224n19 Altar, Mexico, 138 Alvarado, CA, 66; junta in, 111 Alvarado, Mariano, 37 Alvarado y Ruiz, Francisco, 37 Álvarez, Juan, 72, 73, 216n82. Alviso, Melitón, 144, 178–79, 179 (fig.) Alviso, Valentín, 159 “A.M.” (pseudonym), 62 La Amarilla (store), 20 La América (newspaper), 218nn26–27 American Flag (newspaper), 129, 231n91, 240n106, 244n163 American Legion of Honor (Mexico), 235n54 Angostura, battle of. See Buena Vista, ­battle of Antietam, battle of, 90–91 Antillón, Florencio, 60 Antioch, CA: Union Club in, 160 Appomattox, Lee’s surrender at, 170  

 

 

 

 

 

267

Arana family, 39 Arcata, CA, 135 Arellano, Jesús, 153 Argentina, 98; immigrants from, 32, 39, 40, 122 Arizona Territory, 56, 139; California Column sent to, 133–34, 135; Confederate plans to retake, 135–36; Confederates retreat from, 134; Native California Cavalry in, 138, 177; occupied by Confederates, 54, 132–34; transferred to United States by Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 14 Armenta, María Ramona, 206n111 Army of the East (Mexico), 60, 91, 100, 108 Army of the Pacific (U.S.), 132, 135 Arnaz, J. M., 246–47n16 Assembly of Notables (Mexico), 149, 151, 238n84 Associated Press, 76 A Street, Marysville, CA, 154 AT&T (corporation), 189 Atlantic American: definition and use of term, 12–13; influenced by Latino culture in California, 40; influence on Latino culture in California, 14, 25– 38, 40; legal classification of persons by race, 21–23, 25 Atlixco, Mexico, 60 Austin, NV: junta in, 111 Austrians in Mexico, 172 Avila Adobe, Los Angeles, 12 Axis Powers, 185, 188 (fig.) Ayala, Pascuala, 229–30n77 Ayala y León, Agustina, 68 Ayón, Saturnino, 104 Aztecs, 12, 173  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bailón, Luz, 149 “Baja California, Republic of,” 30 Baja California state, Mexico, 20, 30, 56, 236n65 Bale, Eduardo (Edward), 214n59 Baltimore, MD, 142, 146 Bancroft, Hubert H., 3, 247n19 Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 237n80 Banderitas, CA, 62

Bandini [de Stearns], Arcadia, 44–45 Banning, Phineas T., 173 Barreto, Ray, 2 Barretto, Jacinto, 20 Barton, James R., 35–36, 203n81 “Batalla del Cinco de Mayo” (song), 191 “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (song), 191 Bauchet, Luis, 37 Bauchet, Rafael, 37 Bautista, Bartolo, 1–2, 193n1, 193n3 Baylor, John R., 132, 135–36 Bazaine, Achille François, 167–68 Bear Flag Revolt, 30, 142, 145 Bella Union Hall (Calaveritas, CA), 95 Benicia, CA: arrested Confederate sympathizers taken to, 167; Company A of Native California Cavalry barracked at, 166; memorial services for Lincoln, 166 Berlin airlift, 187 Bermúdez, María Rita, 206n111 Bernales de Sánchez, Rosalía, 119–20 Berreyesa, Santos, 160 Berreyesa family, 160 Berroa, Andrés, 128 Bilderbeck, J. F., 147, 236n70 Bilderrain, R, 246n15 Black Decree, 243n146 Blanco, Francisca, 40, 206n111 Blanco, Pedro, 123 Blanerty, Juan, 202n73 Boca de Piedras, Mexico, 144 Bodega Bay, CA, 20 Bolívar, Simón: memory invoked in Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 106 Bolivia, 106; immigrants from, 40 Bolivia camp, CA, 33 Booth, John Wilkes, 163 (fig.) Botello, Narciso, 107 Bowron, Fletcher, 185–86 Braceros, 187, 188 (fig.) Brannan, Sam, 12, 14, 157 (fig.) Brannan Place, San Francisco, 129 Brent, Joseph Lancaster: Confederate sympathies, 147; friendship with Y ­ gnacio del Valle, 147; general in Confederate Army, 237n71; member of Los Angeles Rifles, 147; mentor of Ygnacio Sepúl­ veda, 150

268  •   I n de x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Broadway, San Francisco, 127 Brother Jonathan (steamship), 150 Brown, John, 50 Brownsville, TX, 55 Buchanan, James, 25, 27, 37 Buckeye, Carlos, 246n15 Buckeye, R., 246n15 Buena Vista, battle of, 63 bullfighting, 104, 127–28 Bull Run, first battle of, 51–52, 132, 133; ­second battle of, 86, 143 Burton, Henry S., 236n65 Bush, George W., 190  

 

Cabezut, José María, 20, 127 Calabasas, AZ, 138 Calaveras, CA, 33 Calaveras County, CA, 32, 64, 119 Calaveritas, CA, 62, 66, 95 Calderón, Apolinario, 128 Calderón Bridge, battle of, 63 Calhoun, John P., 83 California: Atlantic Americans view as conquered territory, 25–28; Confederate sympathizers in, 133, 147; enters Union as free state, 51, 83; majority of citizens support Union, 133, 147; pre-1848 state of Mexico (Alta California), 11, 12; schools in, 43–45, 207n126, 207n129, 207–8n133, 208n134; settled by Latinos in eighteenth century, 12; transferred to United States by Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 12, 23–24 California Column, 133–34, 135, 136 California Constitution of 1849, 17–20, 22–23 California Gold Rush, 4, 11, 119; ­Atlantic American immigration to C ­ alifornia during, 3, 12–13, 27, 35, 151, 201n54; European immigration to California during, 14, 69, 114, 135, 151, 201n54, 204n89; Latino immigration to California during, 4, 5, 7, 13–14, 20, 24, 28, 30, 35, 39, 40, 41, 43, 62, 68, 97–98, 107, 113, 122, 124–26, 135, 140, 141, 175, 177; law and order during, 35–38, 151 California Indians, 113 California Latino Medical Association, 3  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Californios, 4, 12, 41; and U.S. race-based legal classifications, 22–23; as junta members, 113–14; become U.S. citizens under Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 12, 34; culture, 12, 20; donate to Latino sword of honor, 66–68; estimated population of in 1848, 14; feelings towards Mexico, 23–24; in Los Angeles, 12, 178; in Native California Cavalry, 136; legal disregard of casta system, 22; political activity, 33–35, 203n81; proposed relocation to Sonora, Mexico, 24, 25, 42, 200nn44–45, 207n122; settlement patterns in California, 66; support Juárez’s government, 140, 216n83; support Lincoln’s reelection in 1864, 160; support Union cause, 216n83; volunteer to fight for Juarist cause, 140 Californios’ company, 36, 204nn92–93 Calpulalpan, battle of, 53 Camarillo, Albert, 6 Camarillo, Juan, 34, 202n73 “Los camotes” (song), 183, 184, 247n19 Camp Calaveras, CA, 20 Camp Drum, Wilmington, CA, 159: Native California Cavalry stationed at, 138, 147, 162, 241n128; soldiers from celebrate end of Civil War, 161–62 Camp Low, CA, 148 Camp Merchant, CA, 133 Campos, Abelina, 154 Cárdenas, Eugenio, 103 Carlota (settlement), Mexico, 170 Carlson, Alvar W., 5 Carrillo, José, 34, 202n73 Carrillo, José Antonio, 107 Carrillo, Juan José, 247n17 Carrillo, Leo, 181, 185, 247n17 Carrillo, R., 34, 202n73 Carrillo, Ramón, 37 Carrillo de Vallejo, Francisca Benicia, 143, 214n59 Carson City, NV: junta in, 111 Casas, María Raquél, 3, 4 Casta system in Latin America, 21–22 Castillo, Eutimio, 72 Castillo, Gerardo López de, 66, 212–13n56; speeches at Cinco de Mayo celebrations,

I n de x  •   269

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Castillo, Gerardo López de (continued) 104, 213n56; unauthorized spending as financial trustee for Central Managing Junta, 153 Castillón, Juan, 246n15 Castro, Víctor, 144 Castroville, CA: reaction to Lincoln’s assassination, 166 Catholic religious observances, 21, 37, 38, 71, 125–26; and juntas, Catholic Standard (newspaper), 15 Cavazos Fuentes, Señor, 96, 97 Célis, E. F. de, 246n15 Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at UCLA, 6 Central Managing Junta: announces fall of Puebla, 115–16; establishment of, 225n24; forwards collected donations to Juárez government, 110, 153; financial irregularities investigated, 153; links to Latino militias, 153 Central Valley of California, 20, 66 Cerro de las Campanas, Querétaro, ­Mexico, 173 Cervantes, Guadalupe, 128 Chacón, Rafael, 134 Chacón [de Martorell], María, 226n31 Chaffey College, 187 Chancellorsville, battle of, 75 Charleston, SC, 51 Charlotte: burned in effigy, 126; mocked in Spanish-language press in California, 172; seeks aid in France, 172; wife of Maximilian, 102 (fig.), 170 Charros, 189–90, 248–49n37 Chávez, César, 186 Chicano generation, 2 Chicano movement, 2, 3, 107, 186 Chicanos/Latinos for Community Medicine, 3 Chickamauga, battle of, 101 Chihuahua, Mexico, 144 Chihuahua state, Mexico, 55, 56 Chile, 79, 98, 106; and Chincha Islands War, 122–23, 124 Chilean flag: displayed at Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 103; displayed at Mexican Independence Day celebrations, 154  

 

 

 

 

Chilean immigrants: in California, 39, 40, 42, 97, 122; in Native California Cavalry, 136; in San Francisco, 20, 39, 68, 127; support Juarist cause in Mexico, 124 Chilean Independence Day (September 18): celebrated in San Francisco, 122; cele­ brated in Stockton, 224n14 Chilean juntas, 122–23; celebrate Chilean Independence Day, 122; Central Managing Junta, 123, 229n66; fundraising, 123; links with other juntas, 123–24; locations of, 123; philanthropy, 119 Chincha Islands War, 122–23, 124 Chinese Camp, CA, 66, 116; junta in, 79, 110, 221n48 Cholula, Mexico, 93 Cienfuegos, Josefa, 110 Cima, Juan, 20 Cinco de Mayo holiday: academic study of, 5; advertisements in newspapers, 95, 179 (fig.), 181, 181 (fig.), 182 (fig.), 189; and Latino identity in California, 14; cele­ bration of in Hornitos, CA, 57, 154–55; celebration of in Los Angeles, 96–100, 105–106, 105 (fig.), 178–79, 179 (fig.), 180–81, 181 (fig.), 182 (fig.), 183; celebration of in 1970s, 186–87; celebration of in San Francisco, 56, 153, 175; celebration of in Sonora, CA, 178; celebration of in Virginia City, NV, 57, 174–75; created by Latinos in California in response to French Intervention and U.S Civil War, 11, 58, 173–74, 175; children’s roles in, 177–78; comparisons with Mexican Independence Day, 95, 189; Chilean flag displayed at, 103, 175; comparisons with St. Patrick’s Day, 5; control of celebrations changes hands, 178–90; ­corporate sponsorship of celebrations, 189–90, 191; display of Mexican and United States flags at, 97, 99, 103, 104, 105, 155, 173–74, 175, 178, 186, 191; during World War II, 185–86, 188 (fig.); editorials on, 95; first recorded celebration, 62, 63 (fig.); George Washington invoked at, 155, 175; Grant invoked at, 175; identity as an American holiday, 11, 175, 190–91; institutional memory developed, 93, 117;

270  •   I n de x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Juárez invoked at, 175; juntas ­organize celebrations of, 96–100, 178–82; Lincoln’s memory invoked at, 155, 175, 190; loss of memory of its origins, 178, 183, 184–85, 189, 190; Mexico-centric themes, 184–85, 189; misunderstood as U.S. adaptation of Mexican holiday, 5, 189, 249n39; not widely celebrated in Mexico, 2–3, 5, 11, 189; politics and, 186–87, 189–90, 249n39; private cele­ brations of, 95–96, 180–81, 181 (fig.); sale of alcoholic beverages and, 5, 190; speeches, 178–79; “summoning power” of, 130–31, 178, 183, 184, 185–86, 187– 89; uncertainty over celebrating in 1863, 95; Zaragoza’s memory invoked at, 103, 155, 175. See also Puebla [de los ­Á ngeles], memory of first battle of. Cinco de Mayo postage stamp, 189–90 Civil rights movement, 186 Civil War (U.S.). See United States Civil War El Clamor Público (newspaper), 6, 17, 18 (map), 19, 38, 42; advertisements in, 208n134; and Manuel Domínguez case, 23; closes, 41; correspondence in, 17, 24, 38–39, 42, 45; editorials in, 15, 16– 17, 19–20, 23, 24, 29, 30, 31, 36, 41, 47, 49–50, 200n41, 203–4n86, 204–5n95, 209n147; founded, 15–17, 16 (fig.). See also Ramírez, Francisco P. Clay Street, San Francisco, 158, 164 Clínica de la Raza, Oakland, CA, 3 Club Patriótico Mejicano, 119, 123 Club Unionista Hispano-Americano de Lincoln y Johnson. See HispanicAmerican Union Club of Lincoln and Johnson Club Zaragoza: donations to the Mexican army, 122, 228n59; founded, 121–22; fundraising, 228n59; gendered language in bylaws, 228n59; mutual aid society for Latina women, 122 Coahuila state, Mexico, 55, 167 Cole, Cornelius, 173 Colombia, United States of, 106, 113, 223n75; immigrants from, 97, 122. See also New Grenada  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colorado (state), 135 Colorado River, 138 Columbia, CA, 34, 62, 64, 66, 68; Cinco de Mayo first celebrated in, 62 Columbia University, 142, 143; College of Physicians and Surgeons, 142 Comité Mexicano Cívico Patriótico de Los Angeles, 185, 223n1 Comité Mexicano de Festejos Cívicos, 184, 248n26 Comonfort, Ignacio, 222n68, 239n97; ­portrait displayed at Cinco de Mayo ­celebrations, 155 Compañía Dramática del Liceo Mexicano (theatrical company), 213n56 Company A, 8th Regiment of Infantry (U.S.), 135 Company A, 1st Cavalry (U.S.), 162 Company A, Native California Cavalry (U.S.), 136, 137 (fig.); arrest Confederate sympathizers, 166–67, 241n128; deserters from, 138–40; in Arizona Territory, 138; mustered out, 177, 241n128 Company B, California Column (U.S.), 133–34 Company B, 1st Battalion of Mountaineers (U.S.), 135 Company B, Native California Cavalry (U.S.), 136, 137 (fig.); deserters from, 138–40; in Arizona Territory, 138; mustered out, 177; pursue Mason and Henry gang, 148; stationed at Camp Low, 148 Company C, Native California Cavalry (U.S.), 136; mustered out, 177 Company D, 1st Battalion of Veteran Infantry (U.S.), 135 Company D, Native California Cavalry (U.S.), 136; goes to Arizona Territory, 138; mustered out, 177 Company E, 1st Battalion of Mountaineers (U.S.), 135 Company I, 5th Regiment of Infantry (U.S.), 135 Confederate army, 51, 52, 135, 147 Confederate emigrants in Mexico, 170, 173, 242n140, 242–43n141 Confederate flag, 134

I n de x  •   271

 

 

 

 

 

Confederate outlaws: along U.S.–Mexican border, 55–56, 170; in California, 148; Confederate States of America, 30; defeated in Civil War, 161, 165, 177; diplomatic overtures to France, 86–88; diplomatic overtures to Britain, 87–88; negotiations with Vidaurri, 167; secede, 51, 52 (fig.) Conservative Party (Mexico), 53 (fig.) Constitution of Chilpancingo (Mexico), 48 Constitution of 1857 (Mexico), 48, 71, 168 Contra Costa County, CA, 43, 123, 160, 166 Contreras, Gregorio, 118, 239n96 Convention of London, 56, 57 Copperheads, 150, 155–56, 158–59, 160; equated with Confederates, 159, 166 Córdoba, Mexico, 57 Coronado, Rafael, 227n39 Coronel, Antonio F., 44, 107, 247n19 Coronel, Ygnacio, 33 Corps Législative (French legislature), 171 Corral de Tierra, CA, 20 Corwin, Thomas: U.S. ambassador to M ­ exico, 55 Costa Rica, 98 Cotton: and British textile industry, 55, 86; export embargoed by Confederacy, 55; export embargoed by Union, 55 Coulterville, CA, 66 Le Courier de San Francisco (newspaper), 164–65, 244n162 Covarrubias, José María, 34, 160, 202n73 Covarrubias, Nicolás A., 246–47n16 Crabb, Henry A., 202n66 El Cronista (newspaper), 217n3 Cruz, C. L., 246n15 Cruz, Carlos, 40, 206n111 Cuba, 76, 83, 130; revolution, 187. See also Havana Cuernavaca, Mexico, 73 Cuevas, Amado, 103 Culiacán, Mexico, 141 “El Curioso” (pseudonym), 24 Curtis, James F., 161–62  

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Daily Herald and Mirror (newspaper), 89 The Dalles, OR: junta in, 111 Daniel, John, 129

Dashaway Hall, San Francisco, 104, 175, 225n30 Dávila, Agustín, 145 Dávila, Gerardo, 127 Dávila, Pioquinto: background, 113; member of Los Angeles Chilean junta, 123; member of Los Angeles junta patriótica, 113, 123, 225n29; participates in Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 180, 246n13; participates in Mexican Independence Day celebrations, 180, 225n29 Dávila, William, 189 Davis, Jefferson, 87(fig.), 167, 237n72; compared to Maximilian, 81, 158; rumors of attempted flight to Mexico, 170 Day of the Dead (holiday), 21 DeCamp, E. A., 246n15 Declaration of Independence translated into Spanish, 244n165 De la Colina, Rafael, 185 De la Guerra, Antonio María, 233n23; captain of Company C of Native California Cavalry, 136; recruits for Native California Cavalry, 136 De la Guerra, Pablo, 22–23, 200n40 Delano, CA: farm workers’ strike, Delgado, Samuel, 68 Del Valle, Reginaldo F., 44 (fig.); award from the Liga Protectora Mexicana de California, 185 (fig.); background, 44 (fig.); political career, 44 (fig.) Del Valle, Ygnacio, 147; Confederate sympathizer, 147; friendship with Brent, 147; friendship with Yndart, 147 Democratic Press (newspaper), 164 Department of the Pacific (U.S. Army), 164 Derbec, Étienne, owner of L’Echo du Pacifique and El Éco del Pacífico, 92, 164– 65; compensation for destruction of L’Echo’s presses, 165; L’Echo’s presses destroyed, 164–65, 241n120; publishes Le Courier de San Francisco, 164–65; support for French Intervention, 92, 221n50; supporter of the papacy, 221n50; threatened by 1865 rioters, 164 Día de los Muertos (holiday). See Day of the Dead Díaz, José, 20

272  •   I n de x

 

 

 

 

Dimpfel, Capt., 140 Diocio de García, Donaciana, 115 Division of the South (Mexican Army), 72 Doblado, Manuel: negotiates Preliminaries of Soledad, 56; Mexican and U.S. flags displayed at memorial services for in California, 244n160 Domingo, A., 246–47n16 Domínguez, Antonio J., 126–27 Domínguez, Frank, 180, 183 Domínguez, Justo, 37 Domínguez, Manuel, 22–23, 25, 48, 50, 199nn38–39, 233n23 Domínguez, Rafael (or Ralph J.), 180, 183 Domínguez [de Orfila], María Antonia, 180 Domínguez [de Watson], Dolores, 196n19 Dorrego, Pedro C., 230n86 Las Dos Repúblicas (newspaper), 182 (fig.) Downey, John G.: governor of California, 133; raises troops for Union, 133 Downieville, CA: junta in, 111. Dred Scott decision, 50, 51 Drum Barracks, CA. See Camp Drum, CA Duarte, Nazario, 203n81 Dupont Street, San Francisco, 126, 127 DuPy, Theodore J., 246n15  

 

 

 

L’Echo du Pacifique (newspaper), 9, 61; links to El Éco del Pacífico, 15, 16 (fig.), 76; presses destroyed, 164, 241n120; publication suppressed, 164–65, 221n50, 241n120; supports French Intervention, 164, 221n50; supports Juarist and Union causes, 218n13 El Éco del Pacífico (newspaper), 9, 17, 18 (map); articles reprinted in El Nuevo Mundo and La Voz de Méjico, 149, 208n145; correspondence in, 32; editorials in, 15, 30, 37–38, 41–42, 65, 200n41; founded, 15, 16 (fig.), 61; links to L’Echo du Pacifique, 15, 16 (fig.), 61, 76, 164; opposes French Intervention, 92; presses destroyed, 164; publication suppressed, 76, 164–65, 221n50, 241n120; raises funds for Mexicans wounded in first battle of Puebla, 65; rivalry with La Voz de Méjico, 65, 92–93, 164, 212n53; supports Confederate cause, 77 (fig.); sup 

 

 

 

 

ports French Intervention, 9, 77 (fig.), 92–93, 149, 164, 221n50; survival of issues, 149, 200n39, 212n44, 221n50, 241n120 Ecuador, 106, 223n75; immigrants from, 98, 122 Education in California: 207n126; bilingual, 208n134 Eldredge, T. R., 128 11th Regiment, Missouri Cavalry Volunteers, 233n24 Elfas, J., 246n15 El Fuerte, Mexico, 141 Elizondo, José Buentello, 239n93 El Mono Mine, CA, 62 El Monte, CA, 36 El Oso, CA, 155 El Paso, TX, 132, 169 El Salvador: immigrants from, 38, 39, 122, 187 Emancipation Proclamation: 8; Confederate reaction to, 219n19; published in Spanish translation, 84–85, 84 (fig.) Emery, William, 139 Empire State Restaurant, 129 Escovedo, Coke, 2 Espinosa, Guadalupe, 206n111. Espinoza, José, 206n111 Estrella, Donato, 212–13n56 La Estrella (newspaper). See Los Angeles Star (newspaper) Estrella Company (theatrical company), 66, 212–13n56 Estrella de Castillo, Amelia, 212–13n56 Estrella de Chile (store), 39 La Estrella del Occidente (newspaper), 50 Eureka Theater (San Francisco), 172 European views of monarchy and republican government, 80 Eyre, Edward E., 134  

 

 

 

 

Fandango houses, 20 Farragut, David, 146 Federación de Clubes Zacatecanos, 187–89 Federio, Andrés, 206n111 Feliciana Mine, CA, 62 Fierro, Felipe: letter to El Nuevo Mundo, 229n66; member of San Francisco junta,

I n de x  •   273

 

Fierro, Felipe (continued) 113; participates in Cinco de Mayo cele­ brations, 225n30; president of Chilean Central Managing Junta, 123 5th Regiment of Infantry (U.S.): part of California Column, 135 Figueroa, Dionisia, 206n111 Filibusters, 29–30, 89; association with slavery, 30, 49, 83; term used for Confederates, 55 Firearms: celebratory shooting of, 222–23n73 First Battalion of Veteran Infantry (U.S.), 135 First Brigade of California Militia (U.S.), 136 1st Infantry of California Volunteers (U.S.), 135 1st Toluca Light Regiment (Mexico), 59 Fleury, Gerónimo, 206n111 Flores, Gumersindo, 227n39 Flores, J. Lino, 227n48 Flores, Juan, 36 Flores, Señor, 96 Folsom Street wharf, San Francisco, 141 Ford’s Theater, Washington, DC, 162 Foreign Miners’ tax, 4, 8, 28–29, 31, 125; resistance to, 32–33 Forest Hill, CA: Chilean junta in, 123 Forey, Elie-Frédéric, 92, 93, 126, 149; and siege and second battle of Puebla, 93, 96, 100 Fort Fillmore, New Mexico Territory, 132 Fort Guadalupe, Puebla, Mexico. See Guadalupe Hill, Puebla, Mexico: fort at. Fort Humboldt, CA, 135 Fort Jackson, LA, bombardment of, 76 Fort Mason, Arizona Territory, 138, 233n28 Fort Mojave, Arizona Territory, 147 Fort San Javier, Puebla, Mexico, 93–94 Fort Santa Inés, Puebla, Mexico, 96 Fort Sumter, SC: bombardment of, 11, 51, 124, 159 Fort Thorn, New Mexico Territory, 134 Fort Yuma, Arizona Territory, 138, 140 Forty-Niners, 12, 28, 39 4th Infantry (U.S.), 162 Fourth of July holiday, 38, 45, 49, 82, 176 Fox, Louisa J., 208n137 Franklin, Benjamin, 98, 100, 165  

 

 

 

 

Freeman, M. J., 129 French Camp, CA: junta in, 111 French Expeditionary Force, 167 French Intervention in Mexico, 8, 9, 47, 56–61, 73, 74, 75–78, 77 (fig.), 78, 98, 106, 116, 117, 124, 126, 131, 136, 158, 169, 170, 173, 191, 239n97; begins, 57–58; troop build-up, 73 Fresno County, CA, 148 “A friend of universal education” (pseudonym), 129 Fuentes, Señor, 96 Fugitive Slave Act, 51  

 

 

Galindo, Matías, 108 Gallardo, Aurelio, 104; poetry by, 104 Gamboa, J. A., 94 Gambusinos, 13, 14, 20; definition of term, 13 Gándara, F., 150 Gándara, Manuel María, 150 García, Apolinaria, 206n111 García, Candelaria, 154 García, María, 154 García de Estrella, María de los Ángeles, 212–13n56 García López Santaolalla, Agustín, 223n1 García Morales, Governor, 144 Garfias, Manuel, 109 Gente de razón: definition of term, 22 German Garden, Los Angeles, 105 Gettysburg, battle of, 217n7 Gettysburg Address, 81 Gitchell, J. R., 159 Godoy, José A.: Mexican consul in San Francisco, 56, 123, 166, 169–70, 242n136 gold discovered in California, 11 Gold Rush. See California Gold Rush Gonzáles, Francisco, 20 Gonzáles, José E., 52–53 González, Gregorio: president of the Los Angeles junta, 97, 99, 177 González, Gregorio, Jr., 177 González, Isabel, 127 Gonzalez, Lilian Cook, 181, 247n18 González, Manuel, 181, 183, 247n18 Gonzalez, Myrtle, 181, 183, 247n18 González, Rafael H.: and founding of ­Placerville junta, 108; reaction to Lin-

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coln’s assassination, 165; speech at Mexican Independence Day celebrations, 114; speech at Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 57, 174–75 Gould, General: vice-chairman of the New England Soldiers’ Relief Association, 143 Granizón, Carlos, 110 Grant, Ulysses S, 8; cheered at ­celebrations in Los Angeles, 162; compared to Negrete, 158; correspondence with Lee, 8, 161; criticism of after battle of Shiloh, 219n31; invoked at Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 175; portraits of, 175; siege of Richmond, 141, 146; visited by Mariano G. Vallejo, 145–46 Greaser Act, 4, 48, 99, 209n147 Greaser Gulch camp, CA, 62 Greek Theater (Berkeley, CA), 2 Greene, Thomas Jefferson, 28, 201n57 Green Valley, CA: reaction to Lincoln’s assassination, 166–67, 241n128 Greenwood, CA, 66 Greenwood Theater (Sonora, CA), 103 Griffin, John S., 237n72, 246n15 Griswold del Castillo, Richard, 6 Grizzly bear, 232n21; as symbol of California, 70 Guadalajara, Mexico, 2–3, 13, 39 Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of, 14, 23, 25, 103, 146; contravention of its terms, 26– 27; formally ends Mexican-American War, 12; transfers Mexican territory to the United States, 12, 23–24 Guadalupe Hill, Puebla, Mexico: fort at, 59, 94 Guadalupe Mine, CA: junta at, 115; women’s junta at, 114–15, 121 Guanajuato, Mexico, 60 Guanajuato [Mexico] Regenador (news­ paper), 243n154 Guardia Hidalgo: Latino militia in Los Angeles, 179; sponsors Cinco de Mayo ball in 1877, 179, 179 (fig.), 245n8 Guatemala, 98, 187 Guaymas, Mexico, 54, 55, 56, 141 Guerrero, Francisco, president of the Wil­ mington junta patriótica, 220n46 Guerrero, Francisco de P. N., 109  

 

Guerrero, J. D., 246n15, 246–47n16 Guillén, Capt., 153 Guilman, Antonio, 166–67, 241n128 Guirado, Juan Francisco, 231n7, 231–32n8, 246n15, 246–47n16; brother-in-law of Downey, 133; discharged from Native California Cavalry, 136; enlists in Missouri cavalry regiment, 136–38; first lieutenant of Company B, California Column, 133, 134; member of Jóvenes Hispano-Americanos, 181 (fig.); second lieutenant, Company D, Native California Cavalry, 136 Guirado, Rafael, 133, 231n8 Guirado, Rafael C. (or Ralph C.), 246–47n16 Guirado [de Downey], María de Jesús, 133 Gullimoque, NV: junta in, 111 Los Gutiérrez, battle of, 24 Guzmán, Andrés, 135 Gwin, William McKendree, 26  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Haas, Lisbeth, 4 Hall, Stuart, 4 Half Moon Bay: junta in, 7 Hamburger, M. A., 246–47n16 Haro, Jacinto, 123, 125 (fig.) Harper’s Ferry, VA, 50 Havana, Cuba, 42 Havana El Siglo (newspaper), 243n146 Hayes, Benjamin I., 45 Hays, Eduardo (or Edward), 68 Henry, Jim (alias of Tom McCauley), 148 El Heraldo (newspaper), 58 El Heraldo de México (newspaper), 184; advertisements in, 185 (fig.) Hermosillo, Mexico, 139, 140; battle of, 142 Hernández, Jesús, 141 Hernández, J. M., 68 Herrera, Francisco, 70 Herrera, Jesús, 166 Herrera, Pedro María, 155 Herrera, Susana, 206n111 Hidalgo, Miguel: memory invoked in Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 99, 106, 174; memory invoked in Mexican Independence Day celebrations, 175 Higuera, J., 169 Hijar-Padrés colonial expedition, 107

I n de x  •   275

 

Hijos del pais. See Californios Hill, Daniel A., 82, 218n20 Hill, Ramón J., 218n20; background, 82; elected to California State A ­ ssembly, 82; political analysis for La Voz de Méjico, 82–83; speeches, 159, 160; urges Latinos to vote for Lincoln in 1864, 83, 159, 160 Hispanic-American Union Club of Lincoln and Johnson, 156–58, 160 Hispanisms in English, 46 Hispano-Americanos, use of term, 41 Holy Cross College (Worcester, MA), 82 Homestead Act of 1862, 201n54 Honduras, 98, 187 Hornitos, CA, 62, 66, 68, 116; Atlantic American residents, 158; Cinco de Mayo celebrations in, 57, 154–55; Copperheads in, 158–59; first fraternal lodge in, 107; founding of, 158; junta in, 81, 107, 111; junta provides legal aid, 117, 118; Latino militia in, 151, 152, 154–55; shooting of Mexican flag, 158–59; support for Lincoln’s reelection, 158–59; U.S. and Mexican flags displayed at political rally in 1864, 158; women’s junta in, 121; Zaragoza mourned in, 71–72 Hotel de la Aguila de Oro, 20 Howard, Volney E., 173 Hubbard, Capt., 154 Huitzilopochtli, 243n146 Hunter, Sherod, 134 Hurd, Clayton A., 5 Hussmann, E., 246n15 Hussmann, H., 246n15  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ibarra, Filomeno, 105 (fig.); compares Cinco de Mayo to Mexican Independence Day, 106; participates in Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 105 (fig.); participates in Mexican Independence Day celebrations, 175; president of Los Angeles junta, 105, 105 (fig.); speeches, 83–84, 106, 159–60, 175, 217–18n13 The Iliad, 94, 222n62 Illyrien House (restaurant), 127 Immigration to California: Atlantic American, 3, 12–13, 27, 35, 151, 201n54, 204n89; European, 14, 69, 114, 135, 151,  

 

 

 

201n54, 204n89; Latin American, 4, 5, 7, 13–14, 20, 24, 28, 35, 39, 40, 41, 43, 62, 68, 97–98, 107, 113, 122, 124–26, 135, 140, 141, 175, 177, 183, 187; post–Gold Rush, 183–84, 185, 186, 187 Instituto Patriótico (school), 45, 207–8n133 Irish Club for Lincoln and Johnson, 156 Islas, Jesús, 42, 207n122 Iturbide, Agustín de, 174, 216n86; sword of, 74, 216n86  

 

 

 

 

 

Jackson, CA: Chilean junta in, 123 Jackson Street, San Francisco, 95 Jalisco state, Mexico, 13, 23, 60, 91, 104, 109, 140 Janos, Mexico, 55 Janssens, Agustín, 160 “J.D.” (pseudonym), 222n71 Jefferson, Thomas, 98 Jenny Lind, CA, 66 Jewett, Tomás, 114 Jiménez, Marcelino E.: captain of Com­ pany B, Native California Cavalry, 148, 241n128; leads arrest of Confederate sympathizers in Green Valley, CA, 166– 67; lieutenant of Company A Native California Cavalry, 166 Jimeno, Porfirio, 244–45n1; captain of Company B, Native California Cavalry, 138; pursues deserters, 138–39 J. M. Chapman (ship), 147–48, 237n74 Jofre, J., 15, 30 John L. Stephens (steamship), 144 Johnson, Andrew: vice-presidential candidate in 1864, 156, 157 (fig.), 160; portrait of (as president) displayed at Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 174 Josephine (ship), 144 Jóvenes Hispano-Americanos, 181, 181 (fig.), 246–47n16 Juárez, Benito, 53 (fig.); and War of the Reform, 53, 53 (fig.); anniversary of birth commemorated, 223n1; attempts to negotiate with Triple Alliance, 56; background, 53 (fig.); California juntas support his continuance in office in 1865, 169–70; challenges Vidaurri’s loyalty, 167–68; cheered at celebrations in Los

276  •   I n de x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Angeles, 99, 162; compared to Lincoln, 89, 158, 174–75; execution of Maximilian and supporters, 173; flees Mexico City in 1863, 82; memory invoked at Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 191; portraits of, 97, 104, 155, 174; postpones 1865 elections, 168; president of Mexico, 53 (fig.), 139; recognized as Mexican president by California Latinos, 81–82; reelection controversy in 1865, 168–70, 227n39; statement of democratic i­ deals, 81; suspends payment on Mexico’s foreign debt, 54, 56; temporary capitals, 53–54, 144, 167, 172; terms in office, 53 (fig.), 168–70 Juárez, Cayetano, 172 Juarist cause identified with Union cause, 70, 78–82, 88–89, 114, 136, 155, 156, 158, 159–60, 162, 173, 174, 190 Judas: burned in effigy on Good Friday, 21, 125; burning as political satire, 125–26 Junta Central Directiva. See Central Managing Junta Juntas chilenas. See Chilean juntas Junta Colonizadora de Sonora, 42 juntas patrióticas: and justice for Latinos in California, 117–18, 131; and the Latino sword of honor, 91; as source of demographic data, 7, 228n60; as communications network, 101, 115, 120; Chileans in, 122; composition of membership, 113–15, 228n60; contributions acknowledged by Mexican government, 94; create ­public memory of first battle of Puebla, 75; die out in early 20th century, 131, 183, 185; do not celebrate Cinco de Mayo in 1863, 95; estimated number of members, 7, 113; formation of, 91–92, 94, 109–10, 130; fundraising by, 94, 98, 108, 110, 115, 116, 118, 119, 131, 169; inclusiveness of, 113– 14; in Mexican California, 107; inspired by first battle of Puebla, 91–92; lists of donors to, 7; locations of, 8, 101, 111, 112 (map); organize celebrations of Cinco de Mayo, 97–100, 105–6, 105 (fig.), 178– 79, 179 (fig.); organize celebrations of Mexican Independence Day, 106–7, 180; origins in Mexico, 91, 106–7, 224n12;  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

philanthropy, 118–20, 131; procedures for founding, 109–10; provide leadership experience for Latinos, 115, 131; relationship with Spanish-language press in California, 91, 92, 107–8, 110, 115, 120, 215n80, 216–17n3; support Juárez’s continuation in office in 1865, 169–70; support Juárez’s government against the French, 81–82, 94, 98, 131; tensions in, 114; women as members, 110, 111 (fig.) juntas patrióticas de señoras, 110, 120–22; founding of, 120–22; fundraising by, 120–21; locations of, 121. See also Club Zaragoza Jurado, Hipólito, 126  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kays, James C., 246n15 KMQA-FM (radio station), 189. Korean War, 187, 191 Lafayette, CA: Union Club in, 160 Lafayette Hotel, Los Angeles, 159 Lafferty, John: lieutenant of Company B, Native California Cavalry, 148, 233n28, 234n30 L.A. Fiesta Broadway, 189. La Golondrina Club, 183 Lake Merritt, CA, 133 Lamadrid, Francisco de, 60 Lancha Plana, CA, 66 Land Commission, 26–27, 33–34 Land Law of 1851, 26–27 Laporte, CA, 66 La Providencia (hacienda), 72 Lariats, 136, 232n21 Larra, Mariano José de, 246n14 Las Cruces, New Mexico Territory, 135 Latina women: demonstrations of s­ upport for Juarist cause, 120–21; donate to Latino sword of honor, 68, 214n66; in business, 127–28; married to Atlantic Americans, 4, 44–45, 133, 204n89; recognized for patriotism, 68. See also Juntas patrióticas de señoras Latino: use of term, 9, 41–42 Latino cavalry: from New Mexico Territory, 134. See also Native California Cavalry

I n de x  •   277

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Latino Medical Student Association, 3 Latino physicians, 3, 142–44, 195n19 Latinos in California: and legal system, 22–23, 25, 30–31, 34, 199nn38–39, 204– 5n95, 233n23; and Mexican presidential election of 1865, 169–70; biculturalism, 40, 44 (fig,), 46, 125; bilingualism, 43, 44 (fig.), 45, 46, 82, 125, 127, 128, 129– 30, 156, 158, 177, 178; businesses, 20, 39, 126–27; Civil War veterans, 178–79, 182 (fig.); colonial race-based classifications of, 21–22, 48; Confederate sympathizers among, 98, 147, 150; cultural development of, 4–5, 20–21, 24–31, 40, 98, 124–25; demography of, 6–8, 42– 43, 43 (fig.), 197n9; ethnic terms for, 15, 40–42, 98; feelings towards Mexico, 23–24, 68–69, 72–73; French sympathizers among, 148–51; historiography of, 3–9; identity of, 4, 47; immigration, waves of, 13–14, 125, 183, 187; in Korean War, 191; in militias, 35–38, 151–55; in Union Army during Civil War, 133– 40, 190, 191; in Vietnam War, 191; in World War I, 191; in World War II, 185– 86, 191; learn English, 45, 46, 125, 129– 30, 208n134; literacy of, 43–45, 114–15, 197n2, 207n126; majority support abolition of slavery, 49, 82–85; majority support Union cause in Civil War, 75, 158, 160; marriage patterns, 40; pan-Latino influences in California, 4, 14–15, 19– 49, 66–68, 73, 113–14, 122, 124–25; political activity, 31, 33–35, 156–61, 157 (fig.), 169, 203n81, 203–4n86; prejudice against by Atlantic Americans, 22–38, 48–49, 125, 200n40, 208–9n146; reactions to Atlantic American prejudice against them, 25–38, 48; reactions to Lincoln’s assassination, 165–66; secondary migration within California, 177; segregation, 186; support Juárez’s government, 75; support Lincoln’s reelection in 1864, 158, 160; volunteer to fight for Juárez’s government, 109, 140, 191 Latino sword of honor, 64–74, 78, 90–91; and death of Zaragoza, 70–72; criticism of, 224–25n20; description of, 69–  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

70; disposition of in Mexico, 72–74, 215n79, 216n86; donations for, 65–68, 67 (map), 90, 107, 108, 144, 214–15n67; making of, 69; lost, 69, 216n86; on public display, 69, 72; Rodríguez suggests making, 65, 91; sent to Mexico, 72; use of term, 214n61 “Latin-Yankee,” 196n19 “Latin-Yanquí,” 146 Laviaga, Pablo, 127 Leal, Juan Nepomuceno: president of Marysville junta, 110, 154 Lee, Robert E., 8; correspondence with Grant, 8, 161; defends Richmond, VA, in 1862, 143; invades Maryland, 86; Seven Days Battles, 85; surrenders at Appomattox, 161, 170 León, José, 141 León, Juan, 166–67, 241n128 Leonard, J.F, 231n93 Lewis, Charles, 138 La Libertad (restaurant), 127 Liceo, Altagracia, 110 Liga Protectora Mexicana de California, 184, 185 (fig.); gives award to R. F. del Valle, 185 (fig.); organizes Cinco de Mayo event in 1919, 185 (fig.) Lincoln, Abraham, 52 (fig.), 53 (fig.); assassination of, 8, 162, 163 (fig.), 237n72; cheered at Latino celebrations, 154; compared to Juárez, 158, 174–75; Confederate sympathizers’ reactions to his assassination, 147, 166–67; election of in 1861, 51, 52 (fig.), 125; emancipation of the slaves, 84–85, 84 (fig.), 158, 165, 175; Gettysburg address, 81; Latino reactions to his assassination, 147, 162, 163 (fig.), 165–66, 174; meets M. G. Vallejo, 145; memorial services in California, 166; memory invoked at Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 174, 190, 191; memory invoked at Mexican Independence Day celebrations, 175; portrait of, 175; portrait displayed at Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 155, 174; praised in international press, 161; reelected, 161, 168; reelection campaign of 1864, 79, 83, 114, 138, 155–61; refuses to recognize Southern states’ secession, 51, 79

278  •   I n de x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lincoln and Johnson Club of Los ­A ngeles, 159 Lincoln Park, Los Angeles, 189, 223n1 London, 89 López, Estanislao, 154 López, F., 246–47n16 López, J., 95 López, José: Chilean immigrant, 40, 206n111 López, José, member of Los Angeles junta, 125 (fig.) López, José: president of the Los Angeles junta, 178 López, José Antonio: private in Company D, Native California Cavalry, 245n7 López, José Romualdo, 206n111 López, Juan, 227n39 López, Pedro, 203n81, 204n95 López, Santiago, 43–44, 207n129 Lorencez, Charles Ferdinand Latrille, count of, 59, 221n47; and first battle of Puebla, 59, 92; in political satire, 126 Lorenzana, José, 34, 202n73 Loreto Hill, Puebla, Mexico: fort at, 59–60 Los Angeles, CA, 12, 34, 35, 40, 44 (fig.), 66, 116, 127, 177, 233n26; celebrates end of Civil War, 161–62; celebrations of Cinco de Mayo, 97–100, 105–6, 105 (fig.), 178– 79, 179 (fig.), 180–81, 181 (fig.), 182 (fig.); celebrations of Mexican Independence Day in, 122, 175, 180, 244n162; celebratory customs, 222–23n73; Chilean junta in, 123; Confederate sympathizers in, 98, 147, 236nn68–69; demographics, 6– 7, 41, 42–43, 43 (fig.), 97–98, 159, 178, 181–83; election rally in 1864, 159–60; French sympathizers in, 148; immigrants from Sonora state (Mexico) arrive in, 14; in post–Civil War period, 177; individual Latinos volunteer to fight for Juárez, 109; militias in, 35–38, 151, 179; Mexican immigrants reshape Cinco de Mayo holiday, 183–85; Plaza, 37, 202n61; reactions to second battle of Puebla, 96–100; religious observances, 21, 37, 38; schools, 44–45, 207n126, 207n131, 207–8n133; second–-eneration Latinos in, 42–43, 43 (fig.), 44 (fig.); Spanish-­ language newspapers, 9, 15–17 (see also  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

El Clamor Público); third-generation Latinos in, 181–83, 185; women’s junta in, 113, 120–21, 177 Los Angeles El Amigo del Pueblo (newspaper), 9, 52, 77 (fig.), 217n3; editorials in, 52–53 Los Angeles La Bandera Mejicana (news­ paper), 217n3 Los Angeles County, 33, 37, 64; elections in, 35, 159–60; enlistment for Native California Cavalry in, 136; law and order in, 35–38, 203n81, 204n87, 204n93, 204–5n95 Los Angeles County Board of Education, 44–45 Los Angeles County Supervisors, 23 Los Angeles La Crónica (newspaper): advertisements for Cinco de Mayo events, 179 (fig.), 181 (fig.); advertisements in, 179 (fig.), 181 (fig.), 245n8, 246–47n16 Los Angeles Fiesta Broadway, 189 Los Angeles Guards, 35, 204n89 Los Angeles junta, 111, 125 (fig.), 177, 178; and Latino volunteers to fight the French, 109, 117; Atlantic Americans in, 114; before 1862, 107; Californios in, 113, 114; ceases to function, 185; celebrates Cinco de Mayo, 96–100, 105–6, 105 (fig.), 178–79, 179 (fig.), 180; celebrates Mexican Independence Day, 180; composition of membership, 113, 114; Europeans in, 114; formed, 109; fundraising for Mexican army during French Intervention, 120; Indians in, 113, 114; largest in CA, 96; loses “summoning power” of Cinco de Mayo, 183; members in later Latino civil rights organizations, 231n96; offices of, 159; reactions to second battle of Puebla, 94, 96–100; second-generation Latinos join, 180; supports Juárez’s continuance in office in 1865, 170, 242n136 Los Angeles Lancers, 37–38 Los Angeles News (newpaper), 233n26 Los Angeles Rifles, 147 Los Angeles Star (newspaper), 15, 16 (fig.), 17, 18 (map), 19, 31, 33–34, 40, 46, 208n137; correspondence in, 34–35  

 

 

I n de x  •   279

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Los Angeles State Normal School, 44 (fig.) Los Angeles Times, 3 Los Pinos, New Mexico Territory, 135 Lovett, William E., 233n28 Loya, J. de, 215–16n82 Lummis, Charles, 247n19 lynching, 4, 34, 35–37, 203n81  

 

MacDowell, Irvin, 164; dismissed from command after first battle of Bull Run, 52; suppresses publication of L’Echo de Pacifique and El Éco del Pacífico, 164–65 Madrid, Spain, 161 Madrid La Democracia (newspaper), 161 Magdalena, Mexico, 138–39 Main Street, Los Angeles, 159, 297 Malo, T. R., 202n73 Mancillas, Antonio, 106, 221n48, 234n30; and Latino identity, 113; and recruitment in U.S. to fight the French in Mexico, 140–42; and Velázquez case, 118; and volunteers from California to fight the French in Mexico, 117, 140–41, 152; apology for Mexican-only invitation, 113; compares Cinco de Mayo to Mexican Independence Day, 103; congratulates Latinos on political activity, 116, 161; disapproves of newspaper American Flag, 129, 231n91; editor of La Voz de Méjico, 80, 103, 116, 221n48; editorial on Cinco de Mayo, 103; identifies Union cause with Juarist cause, 80, 156; Mexican flags displayed in his offices, 145, 158, 159, 162; on Confederates, 81; on Copperheads, 156, 159; on filibusters, 83; on Latino brotherhood, 113; on Mexican patriotism, 116, 152; on shooting of Mexican flag in Hornitos, CA, 159; on slavery, 83; publishes Declaration of Independence in Spanish, 244n165; reports San Francisco riots in 1865, 162–65; supports Juarist cause, 80, 156; supports Lincoln’s reelection, 156, 161; supports Union cause, 80, 156; urges boycott of French businesses, 116; urges Latino U.S citizens to vote for Lincoln in 1864, 156, 159, 161 Manzo de Cavazos, Francisca, 120–21  

 

 

 

 

 

Mare Island, CA (U.S. naval base), 144, 146 María de Jesús, 202n61 Mariposa, CA, 155 Mariposa County, CA, 57, 64, 71, 81, 154, 158 Mariposa Creek, CA, 14 Markleeville, CA: memorial services for Lincoln, 166 Márquez, Leonardo, 60, 93 Martigez, Jesús, 95 Martinez, CA: junta in, 118; Union Club in, 160 Martínez, J., 246n15 Martínez, José, 135 Martínez, Nicolás, 128 Martínez, Paz, 128 Martínez, Ramón, 57, 239n96 Martorell, Juan Vicente, 68; background, 113, 226n31; member of Hornitos junta, 113, 239n97; participates in Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 68 Marysville, CA, 62, 66, 68; election rally in 1864, 160; junta formed, 109–10; junta in, 111, 151, 154; Latino militias in, 151, 152, 153–54; Mexican Independence Day celebrated in, 154, 239n94; militias in, 153–54, 238n86; support for Union cause, 154; women’s junta in, 121 Marysville Appeal (newspaper), 154, 239n94 Marysville Band, 154 Marysville Mexican Lancers, 153–54, 239n93 Marysville Rifles, 154, 239n94 Marysville Union Guard, 154, 239n94 Mason, John, 148 Massachusetts, 44, 82 Matamoros, Mexico, 172 Matamoros de Izucar, Mexico, 60 Matheson, Mr., 160 Maximilian, 102 (fig.), 164, 242n140; Alta California editorial on his downfall, 173; and withdrawal of French troops from Mexico, 71–72, 177; burned in effigy in Contra Costa County, 172; burned in effigy in Los Angeles, 244n162; burned in effigy in San Francisco, 126; captured at Querétaro, 172; compared to Jefferson Davis, 81, 158; downfall, 171–73; execution of, 102 (fig.), 170, 173, 244n165; named emperor of Mexico, 101, 102 (fig.);

280  •   I n de x

 

 

 

 

 

 

promulgates Black Decree, 243n146; reactions to in California, 148–50, 158, 160, 172, 174; reign, 102 (fig.), 170; supporters of in California, 149–50; welcomes Confederate emigrants, 170; Maximiliano y la doctrina de Monroe (comedy), 172 Mayfield, CA, 66 Mazatlan, Mexico, 74, 144, 234n30 Mazón, Donaciano: president of Virginia City, NV, junta, 165; reaction to Lincoln’s assassination, 165 McCauley, Tom. See Henry, Jim McClellan, George: Peninsula Campaign, 85–86, 143; presidential campaign of 1864, 79, 156, 158, 159, 233n24, 239n98 McCrellish, Frederick, 164 McGinnis, E. T., 246–47n16 McLain, George P., 246n15 McLean, Mr., 33 Meade, George, 217n7 Medián, Emiliano, 128 Medrano, Rosa, 127–28 Mejía, Braulio, 135 Mejía, Tomás: captured at Querétaro, 172; court-martialed and executed with Maximilian, 172–73 La Mejicana (restaurant), 127 Meléndez, Marcos, 116 Mellus, Francis, 204n89 Melones, CA, 62 Méndez, Vicente, 64 Mendoza, Eligia, 62 Merced River camp, CA, 62; junta in, 118, 155 Merrimac (ironclad ship), 75 Mesilla, New Mexico Territory, 134 Mestizo, definition of term, 21 Metropolitan Theater (San Francisco), 213n56 Mexican-American War, 12, 25, 63, 146 (fig.), 220n24 Mexican Army, 140, 239n97, 240n102; recruitment for in United States, 235n54 Mexican-British relations, 56–57 Mexican-Chilean relations, 124 Mexican-Confederate relations, 54–56, 167 Mexican Congress, 72, 73–74, 168, 216n86  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mexican costume. See “Adelita” dress; charros Mexican flag, 146 (fig.); design of, 69, 145; displayed at Cinco de Mayo c­ elebrations, 97, 99, 104, 174; displayed at ­Mexican Independence Day celebrations, 145, 152–53, 154, 222n66; displayed at La Voz de Méjico’s offices, 145, 158, 159; displayed with U.S. flag in U.S. election rallies in 1864, 157 (fig.), 157–58, 159, 160. See also Cinco de Mayo holiday, display of Mexican and U.S. flags at Mexican-French relations, 56–57. See also French Intervention in Mexico “Mexican from the Hinterland” (pseudonym), 116–17 Mexican Home Town Associations, 187–89 Mexican Independence Day (September 16): celebrated in Los Angeles, 175, 180; celebrated at New Almaden mine, 152; celebrated in San Francisco, 152–53, 175; celebrated in Sonora, CA, 154; comparisons with Cinco de Mayo holiday, 95, 189; display of Mexican and U.S. flags at, 154; George Washington invoked at celebrations of, 175; Giuseppe Garibaldi invoked at celebrations of, 175; Juárez invoked at celebrations of, 175; juntas organize celebrations of, 106–7, 180; Lincoln invoked at celebrations of, 175; Miguel Hidalgo invoked at celebrations of, 175; Simón Bolívar invoked at cele­ brations of, 175; Zaragoza invoked at celebrations of, 175 La Mexicanita (school), 45, 208n134 Mexican Lancers. See Marysville Mexican Lancers Mexican national anthem: sung at Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 178 Mexican Patriotic Club (San Francisco). See San Francisco, junta in Mexican Patriotic Club (Virginia City, NV). See Virginia City, NV, junta in Mexican Revolution, 249n37 Mexican-Spanish relations, 56–57 Mexican-United States relations, 54–56 Mexico: independence from Spain, 48, 63, 82

I n de x  •   281

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mexico City, 54, 55, 58, 81, 92, 93, 128, 243n141; bandits and partisans outside of, 73; bishop of, 71; Confederate newspaper in, 170; French withdraw from, 172; Mexican sword of honor for Zaragoza, 65; news of first battle of Puebla reaches, 60–61; newspapers, 58, 61, 65, 72, 108, 170; occupied by the French, 102 (fig.), 149, 216n86 Mexico City El Monitor (newspaper), 108 Milca, C. E., 246n15 Militias, 35; bonds for, 38, 151; all-­Atlantic American, 35, 37–38; all-French, 38; all-Latino, 35–38, 151, 179, 191; ­Atlantic American and Latino, 35; Latino militias’ connections with juntas, 151, 153, 155; Latino militia members’ names rarely published, 153; participate in Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 152, 155, 179; participate in Mexican Independence Day celebrations, 152, 153–54; status of Latino militias in California, 37–38, 151–55 Minatitlan, Mexico, 55 Minerva: as symbol of California, 70 Miramón, Miguel: captured at Querétaro, 172; court-martialed and executed with Maximilian, 172–73 Mississippi, 83 Mojica, Dolores, 66, 214n57 Mokelumne Hill, CA, 20; Chilean junta in, 119, 123 Mokelumne River, 28 Monitor (ironclad ship), 75 Monitor (newspaper), 162–64 El Monitor Republicano (newspaper), 213n56 Monroe Doctrine, 75, 87, 88, 89, 158, 166, 172 Monroy, Joaquina, 206n111 Montaño, A., 246–47n16 Monterey, CA, 146 (fig.); memorial services for Lincoln, 166 Monterey County, CA, 20, 148, 166 Monterrey, Mexico, 167 Monterrey [Mexico] Ranchero (newspaper), 242n138 Montesinos, José, 175 Montezuma, 172, 174 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, 20 Mora, Ángel, 38–39  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mora, Tomás, 68, 214n63 Moreno, José: confrontation with J. R. Pico, 139–40, 234n31, 234n33; prefect of Altar and Magdalena, Mexico, 138, 233n28; threatens to attack Fort Mason, 138 Moreno, Nicolás, 79 Mormon Gulch, CA. See Tuttletown, CA Mormons, 37–38 Morning Call (newspaper), 233n28 Morning Post (newspaper), 86 Mott, Thomas D., 246–47n16 Mountain Meadows massacre, 37 Mount Diablo, CA: junta in, 111 Mulato, definition of term, 21 Munday, Lt., 159 Muñoz, Sergio, 3 Murillo, Martín, 109 Murphy’s Camp, CA, 66; Chilean junta in, 123 musicians, 2, 103, 128, 178, 181, 183, 184, 186, 189, 190, 212n56 mutualista, 131, 183–84  

 

 

 

Nadeau Hall (Los Angeles), 181, 181 (fig.) Nahl, Charles Christian, 69. Nahl, Hugo, 69. Napa, CA: alleged Secessionists in, 147; election rally in 1864, 160; junta in, 111, 115 Napa County, CA, 64 Napoleon III, 81, 89, 149, 164, 168; and Confederacy, 87–88; in political satire, 126; motives for French Intervention, 75, 79, 99, 220n37; mentioned in Mexican poetry, 117, 227n44; replaces Lorencez with Forey, 92; withdraws French forces from Mexico, 171, 177 Naranjo, Francisco, 128 Native California Cavalry, 191; and Confederate sympathizers, 148, 166–67, 214n128; celebrate end of Civil War, 162; deserters from, 138–40; ethnic composition of, 136; formed, 136; mustered out, 177, 241n128; return to California, 177 Navarro, Diego, 203n81 Navarro, Ramón Gil: and Foreign Miners’ tax, 32–33

282  •   I n de x

 

 

 

 

Negrete, Miguel, 158, 240n102; compared to Grant, 158 Nerio, Trinidad, 91–92 Neva (ship), 128 Nevada, 11; juntas in, 101, 111, 166, 174 Nevada City, CA: election rally in 1864, 160 New Almaden, CA, 66, 116; celebrations of Cinco de Mayo in, 104, 127, 152; celebrations of Mexican Independence Day in, 122, 152; Chilean junta in, 122– 23; French sympathizer in, 149; junta formed, 109; junta in, 116, 127, 166; Latino militia in, 104, 151, 152; memorial services for Lincoln, 166; mercury mining in, 41, 104; “Spanishtown” in, 104; support for Juarist cause, 104, 116, 127, 149, 151; women’s junta in, 121 New England Soldiers’ Relief Association, 142–43 New Grenada, 98, 223n75. See also Colombia, United States of Newmark, Harris, 222–23n73, 237n72 New Mexico Territory, 40; California Column sent to, 133–34, 135; Confederates retreat from, 134; links with California, 68; occupied by Confederacy, 132–34; transferred to United States by Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 14 New Orleans, 76 New Orleans, battle of, 38 New Orleans Crescent (newspaper), 243n147 New Orleans Delta (newspaper), 76 New San Pedro, CA. See Wilmington, CA News Letter (newspaper), 164 newspapers: nature of in the nineteenth century, 17–19, 76–78 New Virginia Colony, Mexico, 170 New York, state of, 234n44 New York City, 142, 143, 146 New York La Crónica (newspaper), 219n32 New York El Cronista (newspaper), 217n3 New York El Porvenir (newspaper), 217n3 New York Sanitary Commission of Volunteer Surgeons, 143 New York Times, 90 Niagara Falls, NY, 146 Nicaragua, 30, 49, 83, 187 Nicholas I, 80  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No más mostrador (drama), 180–81, 246n14 Noriega, María, 121 (fig.) Nuevo León state, Mexico, 167 El Nuevo Mundo (newspaper), 7, 9, 76, 77(fig.); and laws printed in Spanish, 128; advertisements in, 119, 230; comments on El Éco del Pacífico articles, 149; correspondence in, 240–41n116; editorials, 81, 176; founded, 216–17n3; identifies Juarist cause with Union cause, 81; links with juntas, 110, 216– 17n3; prints Declaration of Independence in Spanish, 176; prints list of military captives taken at Querétaro, 172; reports J. R. Pico detained in Mexico, 139–40; reports Lincoln’s ­assassination, 162, 163 (fig.); reports Maximilian’s execution, 176; reports Union victory in Civil War, 161; reprints Alta California’s editorial on Maximilian’s execution, 173; reprints English-language news­ paper articles in translation, 173; rivalry with La Voz de Méjico, 217n3; supports Juarist cause, 76, 77 (fig.), 216–17n3; supports Union cause, 77 (fig.), 78. See also Ramírez, Francisco P.; Vigil, José María Núñez, Ramón, 128  

 

 

 

 

 

Oakland, CA, 133 Oaxaca, Mexico, 172 Oaxaca state, Mexico, 140 O’Brien, Michael, 148 Occidental (newspaper), 164 Occidental College, 187 Ochoa, Martina, 40, 206n111 “Ode to the Homeland” (poem), 104 Ogazón, Pedro, 60 O’Horan, Tomás, 60 “Old Brazilian” (pseudonym), 117 Olivas, B., 246–47n16 Olivas, F., 246n15 Olson, Culbert, 186 Olvera Street, Los Angeles, 12 La Opinión (newspaper), 3, 189 Oregon, 11; juntas in, 101 Oregon (steamship), 141 Orendain, Hipólita, 111 (fig.) Orfila, Antonio, 180, 246n15

I n de x  •   283

 

Orfila, Antonio, Jr., 180, 183 Orizaba, Mexico, 57, 93, 223n77 Orizaba Proclamation, 58, 89, 126 Orizaba (steamship), 61, 72, 128, 215n81 Orosco y Castelo, Facundo, 115 Oroville, CA: election rally in 1864, 160 Ortega, Jesús González: and Mexican presidential election of 1865, 168, 242n133; brings relief troops to first battle of Puebla, 60; chief justice of Mexican Supreme Court, 168; defends Puebla during siege and second battle, 93, 99– 100, 168, 222n68; monument to in Los Angeles, 189; portrait displayed at Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 155, 174; surrenders Puebla, 100, 223n77 Ortega, Y., 246n15 Ortega [de Hill], Rafaela Sabina Luisa, 82, 218n20 Osburn, William B., 34, 35–37, 203n81 Osuna, Agapito, 206n111  

 

Pesqueira, Ignacio, governor of Sonora state, Mexico, 55, 138, 233nn27–28; rejects Confederate demands, 55; seeks refuge in United States, 138 Petaluma, CA: memorial services for Lincoln, 166 Phelps, T. G., 159 Philadelphia, PA, 146 Philharmonic Hall, San Francisco, 95, 156 Pico, Andrés: asked to form Native California Cavalry, 136; commander, 1st Brigade of California Militia, 136; commands Californios’ company, 36 Pico, José Ramón, 137 (fig.), 232n19; captain of Company A, Native California Cavalry, 137 (fig.); confrontation with Moreno, 139–40; major of Company A, Native California Cavalry, 137 (fig.); pursues deserters, 138–40; recruits for Native California Cavalry, 136, 137 (fig.); rumored detained in M ­ exico, 139–40, 234n33; uses own funds to equip Native California Cavalry, 232n19 Pico, Juan, 232n19 Pico, Pío, last Mexican governor of California: 180, 218n20; participates in Los Angeles junta activities, 180 Piedras Negras, Mexico, 55 Pinole, CA: junta in, 111 Pinto, Ismael, 135 Placer County, CA, 123, 135 Placerville, CA, 46, 66, 127; Chilean junta in, 123; election rally in 1864, 160; junta formed, 108, 109; junta in, 113; memorial services for Lincoln, 166 poder convocatorio. See Cinco de Mayo holiday, “summoning power” of Polk, James K., 25 Pony Express, 217n4 Pope, John, 86 El Porvenir (newspaper), 217n3 Potomac River, 217n7 Potts, A. W., 246n15 Preliminaries of Soledad, 56–57; violation of, 57–58, 126, 168 Presidential Guard (Mexico), 144 Prim, Juan: Spanish general, 56, 57  

 

 

 

Pacheco, Romualdo: and Velázquez case, 118; California state senator, 136; ­California state treasurer, 118; idea for Native California Cavalry, 136 Pachecoville, CA, 66; election rally in 1864, 160 Pacific Navigation Company, 72 Pacific Street, San Francisco, 20, 116 Páez, Adán, 1–2, 193n3 Páez, José, 193n3 Páez, Josefa, 193n3 Palmieri, Eddie, 2 Panama, 61, 223n75 Paraguay, 98 Paris, France, 56, 58 Payot, Henry, 70 Peace Democrats. See Copperheads Peninsula Campaign, 85–86, 88, 143 Pérez, Antonio, 206n111 Pérez, Antonio G., 73–74 Pérez, Ignacio I., 180, 183 Peru, 98, 122; immigrants from, 15, 16, 39, 40, 97 Peruvian flag: displayed at Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 103; displayed at Mexican Independence Day celebrations, 154  

 

 

284  •   I n de x

 

 

“Pronunciamiento de Orizaba.” See Orizaba Proclamation property taxes, introduction of in California, 29 Prudhomme, C. J., 246n15 Puebla [de los Ángeles], Mexico: bishop of, 71; cathedral, 60; declares allegiance to Juárez government, 172; first battle of, 1, 11, 58–61, 63 (fig.), 101, 107, 108, 115, 122, 131, 140; first battle of as perceived by Latinos in California, 58, 69, 91–92; French casualties at second battle of, 222n68; historiography of first battle of, 58; memory of first battle of, 11, 14, 75, 91–92, 94, 95, 99, 101, 103, 115, 117, 125, 130, 131, 174; Mexican prisoners after second battle of, 223n77; news of first battle of Puebla spreads in California, 61–62, 61 (fig.); reactions in ­California to news of first battle, 11, 62–64, 63 (fig.), 74, 90, 140; reactions in California to news of second battle, 96–100, 116–17; siege and second battle of, 75, 92, 93–95, 96, 100, 101–2, 115–16, 120, 125, 216n86 Puebla de Zaragoza. See Puebla [de los Ángeles]  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Querétaro, Mexico, 74, 172–73 Quintero, Julián, 206n111  

racial classifications: in Latin America, 21– 22, 48; in United States, 21–23, 48 Ramírez, Francisco: grandfather of Francisco P. Ramírez, 12 Ramírez, Francisco P., 12, 13–14, 177; and English language, 15–16, 45, 46–47; and ethnic terms for Latinos, 40–41, 204– 5n95; and Manuel Domínguez case, 23; and publication of laws in Spanish, 19– 20, 128; and San Francisco junta membership dispute, 114; background, 12, 41; Cinco de Mayo speeches, 97–100, 106; closes El Clamor Público, 41, 50; democratic ideals, 46, 49, 81, 176, 244n165; early career as newspaperman, 15–17, 40, 46; editor of El Nuevo Mundo, 81, 176, 217n3; founds El Clamor Público, 16–17;  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

honorary member of Los Angeles Guards, 35; identifies Juarist cause with Union cause, 81; linguistic abilities, 15–16, 46, 176; on Confederates, 81; on education, 43; on filibusters, 30, 49; on juntas, 118; on Maximilian, 81; on slavery, 49–50; publishes Declaration of Independence in Spanish, 49, 176, 244n165; relocates to Sonora state, Mexico, 50; rivalry with Vega, 114, 217n3; role in juntas, 113, 114, 217n3; state translator, 128; supports Juarist cause, 81, 82; supports Union cause, 81. See also El Clamor Público, El Nuevo Mundo Ramírez, Juan María, 12 Ramírez, Pascual, 109 Ramírez, Ramón, 154, 239n94 Ramonet, Francisco G., 92, 140 Ramos, José de la Cruz, 227n39 Rancho El Chino, battle of, 24 Rancho La Goleta, CA, 82, 218n20 Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, 220n46 Rancho San Vicente, CA, 220n46 Randall, A. G., 154 R. B. Gray and Co., 69 R. de Cuevas, Dolores de, 103 Red Bluff, CA: junta in, 111 Redona, José, 206n111; lieutenant, Company D, Native California Cavalry, 182 (fig.) Redona, José S., 182 (fig.) Reese River, NV: junta in, 7, 111 Rendón, Alejo, 206n111 Rentería, José: co-editor of La Voz de Méjico, 152 Rentería, José: Latino wounded and captured in Mexico, 141–42 Republican Party, 79, 147, 148, 156, 160, 161 Restaurante Aguila de Oro, San Francisco, 126, 127 Restaurante Mejicano, San Francisco, 126 Reyes, Juan, 135 Richmond, VA, 52, 85, 86, 88, 132; Confederate capital, 51, 174; siege of in 1864– 1865, 141. See also Peninsula Campaign Rifleros de Los Angeles, 179 Rio Bravo, 170 Rio Grande, 132, 134

I n de x  •   285

 

 

 

 

Robarts, Juan, 233n26 Roblet: French bugler at first battle of Puebla, 59 Rocha, Antonio, 37 Rocky Mountains, 37 Rodríguez, Manuel E., 78, 91, 107; cites articles on Civil War from international press, 89; controversy over commemorating Zaragoza’s death, 71; editor of La Voz de Méjico, 58, 64, 147; editorial comments, 64, 68–69, 71, 76, 79, 85, 87, 89–90, 93, 94, 95, 109, 110, 129, 130, 147; editorial comments on juntas, 110; editorial on Emancipation Proclamation, 85; editorial on expected siege of Puebla in 1863, 93; identifies Juarist cause with Union cause, 89–90; on Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 95–96; on Confederate sympathizers, 147; on Confederates, 89, 90; on France, 87; on Spanish language, 130; president of San Francisco junta, 215n80; recognizes patriotism of Latina women, 68; reports first battle of Puebla, 58–61, 211n25; reports formation of juntas in California, 109–10; reports reactions in California to first battle of Puebla, 62; reports reactions in California to second battle of Puebla, 94; reports second battle of Puebla, 96; urges formation of junta in San Francisco, 109, 110. See also Latino sword of honor Rodríguez, Petra, 127 Rogers and Villalón, jewelers: 215n69 Rojas, José María, 206n111 Rojo, Manuel Clemente, 15, 16, 40, 43 Romario, Rosario, 206n111 Romero, Matías: meets with Lincoln, 54; Mexican ambassador to the United States, 54, 145–46; Mexican foreign minister, 54; and M. G. Vallejo’s visit to Washington, DC, 145–46 Romo de Velasco, Refugio, 175, 244n163 Rosea, Antonio, 135 Rough and Ready, CA, 20 Ruiz, Alejo, 60 Ruiz, José, 71 Ruiz, Petra, 206n111  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ruiz, Prudencia, 206n111 Ruiz de Burton, María Ámparo, 146, 236n65 Russia, 81 Russian Hill, San Francisco, 104, 152 Sacramento, CA, 28, 62, 133; Chilean junta in, 111, 123; election rally in 1864, 160; enlistment in U.S. armed forces at, 135; junta formed, 92, 110; junta in, 140; memorial services for Lincoln, 166 Sáenz, Pedro, 72 Salas, L., 215n82 Salazar, Ignacio, 108 Salazar, Rodolfo, 186 Saligny, Alphonse Dubois, count of, 210n20; French ambassador to Mexico, 56; in political satire, 126; role in French Intervention, 56–58 Salinas, Vidal, 108 salsa music, 2 Saltillo, Mexico: temporary headquarters of Juárez government, 167 San Andreas, CA, 62, 66, 116; junta in, 119– 20; memorial services for Lincoln in, 166 San Andrés, CA. See San Andreas, CA San Benito County, CA, 123 San Blas, Mexico, 13 Sánchez, Bernardino, 20 Sánchez, D., 246n15 Sánchez, Francisco, 37 Sánchez, George J., 5 Sánchez, José Antonio: recruits for Native California Cavalry, 136; political activity, 138, 233n24 Sánchez, J. Ramón, 20, 246–47n16 Sánchez, Manuel, 20 Sánchez, Tomás, 36. San Diego, CA: schools in, 207n126 San Fernando, CA, 36 San Fernando, pantheon of (Mexico), 71 San Francisco, 12, 22, 30, 33, 41, 61, 65, 66, 69, 70, 115, 118, 119, 120, 123, 125–26, 127, 128, 129, 139, 164, 172, 175, 212n56; Chilean central junta in, 123; Chileans in, 20, 39, 68, 127; Chilean Independence Day celebrated in, 122; Cinco de Mayo holiday celebrated in, 56, 95, 104–5, 153, 175, 222n66; Confederate ­sympathizers

286  •   I n de x

 

 

 

 

 

in, 147–48, 237n74; demographics, 7, 183; English-language newspapers, 15, 129, 147, 164, 231n91, 240n106, 242n138, 243n158, 244n163; enlistment for Juarist forces at, 141–42, 144; enlistment for Native California Cavalry in, 136, 137 (fig.); enlistment for U.S. armed forces at, 133, 136, 137 (fig.); fires, 198n27; French sympathizers in, 149–50; international port of entry to California during Gold Rush, 6, 13–14; Latino militia in, 151, 152–53, 157–58; Latino militia participates in 1864 election rally, 153, 157–58; Latino-owned businesses, 20, 95, 126–27; memorial services for Lincoln, 166; Mexican Independence Day celebrated in, 152–53, 175, 213n56; Mexican women boycott French merchants, 116; police, 114; Presidio, 177; riots following Lincoln’s assassination, 162–65; schools, 129, 207n126; Spanish-language newspapers, 6, 7, 9, 15, 75–76, 77 (fig.), 93, 149, 212n53, 217n3 (see also: El Éco del Pacífico, La Voz de Méjico, and El Nuevo Mundo); U.S. and Mexican flags displayed at political rally in 1864, 157– 58; U.S. armed forces stationed at, 133, 164–65 San Francisco Bay, 144, 145 San Francisco Bay Area, 111 San Francisco Board of Education, 129 San Francisco Bulletin (newspaper), 147 San Francisco College, 142 San Francisco La Crónica, 15, 16 (fig.), 17, 18 (map), 30–31, 40–41; advertisements in, 205n110, 207n129; editorials, 40–41 San Francisco Industrial Exhibition, 175 San Francisco junta, 72, 111 (fig.), 118; composition of membership, 114; dispute over membership, 114; formed, 109, 110; participates in memorial services for Lincoln, 166; supports Juárez’s continuance in office in 1865, 169–70 San Gabriel, CA, 34, 36, 205n95; mission, 180 San Joaquin, CA, 26 San Joaquin Valley, CA, 39 San José, CA, 31, 39, 41, 127, 201n57; enlist 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ment for Native California Cavalry in, 136, 137 (fig.); junta in, 111; women’s junta in, 121; Zaragoza mourned in, 71 San Juan Bautista, CA, 66; Chilean junta in, 123; junta in, 111; junta requests vote in 1865 Mexican presidential election for Mexican citizens resident in California, 169 San Juan Capistrano, CA, 35, 202n61 San Leandro, CA, 66, 159; 1864 election rally in, 159; junta in, 111 San Lorenzo, CA, 66 San Luis Obispo, CA, 66, 68; junta formed, 109; junta in, 111 San Luis Obispo County, CA, 64, 82, 141 San Luis Potosí, Mexico, 74, 144, 172 San Martín Tesmelucan (church), Mexico, 71 San Miguel Atlautla, Mexico, 1, 193nn2–3 San Pablo, CA: Chilean junta in, 123 San Pascual, battle of, 24 San Pedro, CA: port of, 159 San Ramon, CA: Union Club in, 160 San Salvador, El Salvador, 39 Santa Ana, CA, 36; junta in, 7 Santa Barbara, CA, 12, 22–23, 160; militia in, 151; no junta during French Intervention, 240n107; schools in, 207n126; Presidio, 232n19; support for Lincoln’s reelection, 160, 240n107 Santa Barbara County: elections in, 31, 34–35, 82, 160, 202n73; enlistment for Native California Cavalry in, 136 Santa Barbara County Court of Sessions, 31, 35, 60, 65 Santa Barbara La Gazeta (newspaper). See Santa Barbara Gazette Santa Barbara Gazette (newspaper), 15, 17, 18 (map) Santa Barbara Guards, 35, 204n88 Santa Clara County, CA, 115, 121 Santa Cruz, José, 135 Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz County), CA, 39 Santa Cruz (Mariposa County), CA, 66, 155 Santana, Carlos, 2 Santiago Canyon (CA), 36 Saragossa Guard. See Zaragoza Light Guard Saturday Review (magazine), 89

I n de x  •   287

 

 

 

Sears (corporation), 189 Second Texas Rifles (C.S.A.), 132 Seferino, 202n61 Sepúlveda, Juan [Capistrano], 202n61; captain of Los Angeles Lancers, 37– 38; treasurer of Wilmington junta, 91, 220–21n46 Sepúlveda, Juan María, 220–21n46 Sepúlveda, Ralph, 183 Sepúlveda, Ygnacio, 150 (fig.), 238n83; captured at Querétaro and imprisoned, 172–73; career, 150 (fig.), 150–51; Confederate sympathizer, 147, 150; early release due to U.S. diplomatic intervention, 173; French sympathizer, 150–51; magistrate in Maximilan’s government, 151, 172, 179 (fig.), 238n84; relationship with Brent, 150, 238n84; returns to Los Angeles, 150 (fig.), 173 Sepúlveda [de Guirado], Ester, 233n24 Sepúlveda [de Redona], María Fermina, 206n111 Sepúlveda family, 150 (fig.), 221n46 Seven Days Battles, 85 Seward, William H., 54–55 Shasta, CA, 20 Shiloh, battle of, 85, 219n31 Sibley, Henry H., 132 Sierra Nevada, CA (mountain range): foothills of, 111 Sigala, Matías, 128 Siglo XIX (newspaper), 65, 73, 215n79, 216n83 Silva, Jesús, 97 Silva, Manuel, 122 Silva, María, 206n111 Silvas, José Librado, 206n111 Silver City, NV: junta in, 111 Silvestre, 206n111 Silvia, Francisco, 127 Sinaloa state, Mexico, 20, 144 16th Artillery Battalion Band (U.S.), 186 Slaughter, General, 173 slavery: abolition of in Latin America, 49; abolition of in Mexico, 48; Confederates secede to maintain it as an institution, 51, 52 (fig.); in United States, 47– 50, 51; Latinos support abolition of in the United States, 49, 82–85. See also  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lincoln, Abraham, emancipation of the slaves Smith, Bernardo, 94 Sociedad Hispano-Americana: ceases to function, 185; celebrates Cinco de Mayo in Los Angeles in 1910–1923, 183, 184; foundation of, 247n20 Sociedad Patriótica Chilena in New Alma­ den. See New Almaden, Chilean junta in Sociedad Patriótica Mejicana, 109. See San Francisco junta Sociedad Voluntaria del 4 de Septiembre de 1861, 129 Solano, Basilio, 227n39 Solorzano, Pablo, 109–110 “El sombrero blanco” (song), 183, 184 Somosa, Agustín, 109 Sonoma, CA, 66, 113; junta in, 111, 218; memorial services for Lincoln, 166; Vallejo home in, 66, 145, 172, 236n61 Sonoma County, CA, 20 Sonora, CA, 62, 121 (fig.), 127; Cinco de Mayo celebrations in, 103–4, 178; firemen take part in Mexican Independence Day celebrations, 154; immigrants from Sonora state (Mexico) settle in, 14; junta in, 103, 127; Latino militia in, 151, 152, 154; Latino miners in, 33; Latino-owned businesses, 20, 127; Mexican Independence Day celebrations in, 107, 154; Velázquez case, 117–18; women’s junta in, 104, 121 (fig.), 178 Sonora desert, 134, 138 Sonora Restaurant, 20, 127 Sonora state, Mexico, 12, 20, 50, 55, 56; attempted conquest by Walker, 30; emigration to California from during Gold Rush, 14; plans to relocate California Latinos to, 24, 42, 200nn44–45, 207n122. See also Pesqueira, Ignacio Sonora Union Democrat ( newspaper), 127 Soto, Rosaura, 103, 178, 245n6 Soto, Sancha, 245n6 South Carolina, 53 Southern Rifles, 38 Spain, 76, 122, 123 Spanish-American War, 191 Spanish language: anglicisms in, 30, 45–46,

288  •   I n de x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

129–30, 203n81, 205n110; Atlantic Americans learn, 129, 204n89; in education, 44–45; 1864 presidential campaign in, 156, 157(fig.), 158, 159, 160; in California, 14–20, 129–30; mandated publication of laws in, 15, 17–20, 128; translations of Civil War news into, 75–78, 161; unifying factor in Latino culture, 14–20; use of in business, 129 Spanish-language media in California: advertisements for Cinco de Mayo events, 95, 179 (fig.), 181, 181 (fig.), 182 (fig.), 189; advertisements in, 9, 95, 119, 128, 129, 137 (fig.), 157 (fig.), 185 (fig.), 179 (fig.), 181, 181 (fig.), 182 (fig.), 189, 205n110, 207n129, 208n134, 214n57, 215n69, 222nn63–64, 229n75, 229– 30n77, 230–31n90, 232n19, 245n8, 246– 47n16; and 1864 presidential ­election, 156–61, 157 (fig.); and volunteers from California to fight the French in Mexico, 117; anticipate second battle of Puebla, 93; as communications medium, 9, 14– 15, 39, 66; as advocate for Latino issues, 15, 42; as source for population data, 6– 9; as source for Latino cultural life, 7–8, 125; caution in discussing Latino militias, 151–55; caution in discussing Latino volunteers going to fight in Mexico, 141–42; circulation of, 17, 18 (map), 78; cite articles on Civil War from international press, 8, 86, 161; correspondence in, 7, 8, 9, 17, 24, 32, 34–35, 38–39, 42, 45, 55, 62, 68, 71–74, 76, 81–82, 94, 99–100, 105–6, 108–9, 154, 160, 215–16n82, 222n61, 224n19, 239n94, 240n107, 240–41n116; editorials in, 15, 17, 19–20, 23, 24, 27, 30–31, 36, 37–38, 40–42, 47, 49–50, 52–53, 64, 65, 68–69, 71, 76, 78–83, 87, 89–90, 93, 94, 95, 103, 110, 113, 116, 117, 118, 125–26, 129, 140–41, 149, 152, 156, 159, 161, 176, 189, 200n41, 203–4n86, 204–5n95, 209n147, 213n56, 216n83; editorials on Cinco de Mayo, 95, 103, 189; editorials on Civil War, 52–53, 79– 81, 85, 86, 89–90; editorials on French Intervention, 79, 81, 82, 89–90, 93; editorial comments on reprinted articles  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

in, 76, 88, 149, 208n145; ethnic terms for Latinos in, 40–42; identify Juarist cause with Union cause, 78–82, 87, 89– 90; in early 20th century, 184; in 1980s, 2–3, 189; influence, 78; links with juntas, 78, 115, 120, 215n80; on Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 2, 3, 57, 95–96, 96–100, 103, 105–6, 105 (fig.), 154–55, 174–75, 178– 79, 179 (fig.), 180–81, 181 (fig.), 182 (fig.), 183, 189; on Jefferson Davis, 81, 87 (fig.), 158, 170, 237n72; on national morale, 90; poetry published in, 64, 104, 116–17; political analysis in, 79, 80, 81, 82–83, 86; print dispatches, 8, 58–61; publication of laws in, 15, 17–20, 128; quote Mexican newspapers, 8, 58, 73, 216n83; report Civil War, 75–79, 77 (fig.); report filibustering, 29–30; report first battle of Puebla, 58–61; report reactions to first battle of Puebla, 61–64; report reactions to second battle of Puebla, 94, 96–100, 115–17; report second battle of Puebla, 96, 100; reprint articles from other newspapers, 8, 17, 76, 86, 87–90, 161, 200n41, 216n83; support democratic ideals, 79–80, 82; urge Latinos to vote in U.S. elections, 5, 82–83, 156–61, 157 (fig.); use Associated Press articles in translation, 76, 87–88. See also El Amigo del Pueblo; El Clamor Público; El Éco del Pacífico; El Heraldo de México; Los Angeles La Crónica; Los Angeles Star; El Nuevo Mundo; La Opinión; San Francisco La Crónica; Santa Barbara Gazette; La Voz de Méjico “Spanishtown,” 122; at New Almaden, CA, 104 Splivalo, Agustín G.: president of HispanicAmerican Union Club of Lincoln and Johnson, 160 Springfield, IL, 54 squatters, 27–28, 31, 35 Stanislaus, CA, 33 Stanley, Edward, 35, 203–4n86 State of Maine (steamship), 143, 234n44 Stearns, Abel, 44–45, 107 St. Mary’s College, Baltimore, MD, 142 Stockton, CA, 30, 62, 66; junta in, 111; memorial services for Lincoln, 166  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I n de x  •   289

 

 

 

 

 

Stockton Herald (newspaper), 224n14 Stockton Street, San Francisco, 95 Stockton Times (newspaper), 28 El Sudamericano (newspaper), 18 (map) Sumner, Edwin V., 133, 147 Sutter Creek, CA: Chilean junta in, 123 The Synapse (newspaper), 2

 

 

Talamantes, José Dámas, 37 Tapia, Francisco, 62–64 Tapia, Santiago, 193n1, 193n3 Target (corporation), 189 Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, 126 Tenochtitlan: legend of founding, 69 Tepic, Mexico, 12 Terpsichore Hall, San Francisco, 157 Texas, 30, 55, 83, 134, 135, 170; occupied by Confederacy, 83, 134, 135, 167; ­Republic of, 30 Third Street, Marysville, CA, 154 3rd Toluca Light Regiment (Mexico), 59 Tienda Española (store), 20 Topolobampo, Mexico, 144 Tostado, Luis A., 142 Trinidad, 206n111 Triple Alliance, 56–57 Tubac, Arizona Territory, 138, 233n26 Tucker and Co., 69, 72 Tucson, Arizona Territory, 134 Tujunga Pass, CA, 236n70 Tuolumne County, CA, 28, 40, 62, 63 (fig.), 64, 79 Tuolumne County Court, 34 Tuolumne River, 14 Turnverein Hall, San Francisco, 152 Tuttletown, CA, 28 Twist, W. W., 38, 204n92  

 

Ukiah, CA, 135 “Un Californio” (pseudonym), 24 Union Brass Band of Los Angeles, 181, 246n15, 247n16 Union cause identified with Juarist cause, 70, 78–82, 88–89, 114, 155, 156, 158, 159– 60, 162, 165, 174, 190 Union Clubs, 160 Union Franco-Américaine (newspaper), 164 Union Party. See Republican Party  

 

Unionville, NV, 129 United Farm Workers movement, 186 United States armed forces, 24, 51, 52, 132, 133, 134–35, 138, 147, 151, 162; patrol San Francisco after 1865 riots, 164–65 United States army band, 159 United States Census, as source for population data, 6, 8; definition of “Hispanic,” 9; list of Hispanic surnames, 195n19; undercounts in, 8 United States Civil War, 11, 14, 47, 53, 54, 56, 77 (fig.), 83, 86, 125, 131, 132, 136, 151, 154, 165, 168, 170, 171, 173, 174, 190, 191; begins, 51; confusing news reports, 78– 79, 85–86, 219n31; early years of, 78–79; national morale during, 78–79, 85–86, 90 United States Constitution, 48, 50, 51 United States flag, 134, 146 (fig.), 175; displayed at Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 97, 99, 103, 104, 105, 155, 173–74, 175, 178, 186, 191; displayed with Mexican flag in U.S. election rallies in 1864, 157 (fig.), 157–58, 159; displayed at Mexican Independence Day celebrations, 154 United States–French relations, 87 United States neutrality laws during Civil War, 140–41, 151, 153 United States Post Office, 189–90 United States State Department, 173 United States Supreme Court, 50 United States War Department, 133, 136 University of California, Berkeley, 2 University of California, Irvine, 186 University of California, Los Angeles, 6, 44 (fig.) University of California Medical Center, San Francisco, 2 “Un Mejicano” (pseudonym), 227n44 Ureta de Berna, Juana, 119 Urquides [de Guirado], Vicenta, 133, 231n8 Utah Territory, 37 Utah War, 37, 38  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vaca, Estipula, 68 Valdez, J., 246n15 Valdez, Julián, 125 (fig.) Valenzuela, Cesaria, 40, 206n111

290  •   I n de x

Valenzuela, Juan, 203n81, 204n95 Valenzuela [de Pico], Juana, 232n19 Valle, Benito, 123 Vallecito, CA, 20, 62; Chilean junta in, 123 Vallejo, CA, 144 Vallejo, Mariano Guadalupe, 66, 235–36n61; acquaintance with Grant, 145–46; and juntas, 114; commander of Mexican forces in California before 1848, 142, 146 (fig.); concern for proper design of Mexican flag, 145; continuing ties to Mexico, 142, 145, 146, 236n67; donates Mexican flag to La Voz de Méjico’s offices, 145; meets Lincoln, 145; patriotic U.S. citizen, 142, 145, 146; trip to Mexico City, 146; trip to Washington, DC, 145–46; uses influence to have son Uladislao sent home, 144 Vallejo, Platón: education, 142, 143–44; joins New York Sanitary C ­ ommission of Volunteer Surgeons, 143; medical practice after the war, 144; studies medicine at Columbia University, 142, 143– 44; surgeon at Mare Island naval base, 144; treats wounded during Civil War, 142–43 Vallejo, Uladislao, 142, 214n59; and capture of Maximilian at Querétaro, 172; captured and sent home ill, 144; donates to Latino sword of honor, 144; returns to Mexico with Vega, 144; serves in Mexican army, 144, 178; serves in Presidential Guard (Mexico), 144 Vallejo family, 214n59; donate to Latino sword of honor, 66, 68 Valles, Señor, 96 Varela, Ygnacio, 109 “Varios Mejicanos” (collective pseudonym), 109 Vega, Plácido: and juntas, 114, 118, 217n3, 227n36, 235n54; and El Nuevo Mundo, 216–17n3; and Velázquez case, 118; as Juárez’s personal envoy to California, 114, 144, 217n3, 226–27n36, 239n93; correspondence of, 235n52, 239n93; former governor of Sinaloa state, 144; in San Francisco, 144, 217n3; returns to Mexico with arms and Californio vol 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

unteers, 144, 235n54; disputes with Ramírez, 114, 217n3 Velasco, M., 246n15 Velázquez, Ramón, 117–18 Venezuela, 98, 223n75 Ventura, CA: election rally in 1864, 160; French sympathizer in, 148–49 Veracruz, Mexico, 23, 54, 56, 57, 92 Vermeule, T. L., 26 Veytia, Justo, 13–14, 39; and Foreign Miners’ tax, 32; arrival in California, 13, 39, 202–3n75 “V.G.” (pseudonym), 240–41n116 Vidal, Gregorio, 135 Vidaurri, Santiago: allies with ­Confederacy, 55, 167–68; captured in Mexico City, 173; challenged by Juárez, 167–68; editorial on, 168; executed, 173; flees to Texas, 168; governor of Coahuilla and Nuevo León states, 55, 167, 172; negotiations with Confederacy, 55, 167; plays Juárez’s government off against Confederacy, 167; returns to Mexico, 170; serves in Maximilian’s government, 171; smuggling, 55, 167 Vietnam War, 191; protests against, 186 Vigil, José María, 216–17n3; Cinco de Mayo speech, 104; editor of El Nuevo Mundo, 216–17n3 vigilantes, 34, 35, 36–37, 203n81 Vignes, Louis, 207n133 Villagoy, Jesús, 228n56 Villalobos, Señor, 178 Villalón, Juan V., 122 Villalón, Señor, 69, 215n69 Villanueva de Williams, Jesús, 177 Villegas, Señor, 169 Virginia, 52 Virginia City, NV, 116; celebrations of Cinco de Mayo in, 57, 174–75; junta in, 111, 166, 174; junta’s hall in, 174; junta’s reaction to Lincoln’s assassination, 165; Latinos volunteer to fight for Juarist cause, 140; memorial services for Lincoln, 166; women’s junta in, 121 Visalia, CA, 148; memorial services for Lincoln, 166 Volante (ship), 13

I n de x  •   291

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vons supermarket chain, 189 La Voz de Chile (newspaper), 217n3 La Voz de Chile y de las Republicas Americanas (newspaper), 9, 77 (fig.) La Voz de México (newspaper), 7, 9, 76, 77 (fig.)152; advertisements in, 95, 128, 137 (fig.), 157 (fig.), 214n57, 215n69, 222nn63–64, 229n75, 229–30n77, 230– 31n90, 232n19; and Mexican presidential election of 1865, 169; and recruitment for Juarist forces, 140–42; and Velázquez case, 118; comments on El Éco del Pacífico articles, 149; coordinates fundraising for Latino sword of honor, 65–68, 78, 91; correspondence in, 55, 62, 68, 71–74, 81–82, 94, 99– 100, 105–6, 108–9, 154, 160, 215–16n82, 222n61, 224n19, 239n94, 240n107; editorials, 64, 65, 68–69, 71, 76, 79–80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 87, 89–90, 93, 94, 95, 103, 110, 113, 116, 117, 118, 125–26, 129, 140– 41, 149, 152, 156, 159, 161, 213n56, 216n83; founded, 61; links with juntas patrióticas, 91, 92, 94, 107–8, 110; offices of, 145, 159, 162–64; on Cinco de Mayo, 95–96; prints Mexican government’s acknowledgments of juntas’ contributions, 94; prints military dispatches, 58–61; reports Civil War, 35, 75, 85– 86; publishes Emancipation Proclamation in Spanish, 84–85, 84 (fig.); publishes Hill’s political analysis, 82–83; reports first battle of Puebla, 58–61, 61 (fig.); reports founding of Los ­A ngeles women’s junta, 121; reports irregularities in Central Managing Junta’s audit, 153; reports Lincoln’s assassination, 162; reports Lincoln’s reelection, 161; reports Maximilian’s downfall, 171; reports second battle of Puebla, 96; reprints articles from Mexican newspapers, 58, 73, 216n83; reprints editorial on Vidaurri, 168; reprints English-language newspaper articles in translation, 87– 88, 89–90, 168, 171; retracts Mexicanonly invitation, 113; rivalry with El Éco del Pacífico, 65, 92–93, 164, 212n53; rivalry with El Nuevo Mundo, 217n3;  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

supports Juarist cause, 58, 76, 77 (fig.), 93, 156; supports Lincoln’s reelection, 82–83, 156–61, 157 (fig.), 159, 161; supports Union cause, 77 (fig.), 78, 156. See also Mancillas, Antonio; Rodríguez, Manuel E  

 

Waite, James Alonzo, 45, 208n137 Walker, William, 30, 49 Walton, John, 4 Wansylvanin, María Ermita, 206n111 War Democrats, 156, 239n98 War Department (U.S.), 133, 136 War of the Reform, 53, 53 (fig.), 54, 83, 149–50 Warren, William C., 123 Washington, DC, 26, 34, 51, 52, 54, 86, 132, 133, 145–46 Washington, George, 165; memory invoked in Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 99, 106; portrait displayed at Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 155, 174 Washington District, Alameda County, CA, 66 Washington (state), 135 Washington Street, San Francisco, 20, 215n69 Washington Times (newspaper), 171 Waterloo, battle of, 59 Watson, James, 196n69 Watsonville, CA, 66, 135, 148 Weekly California Express (newspaper), 16 Wells Fargo, 145 West End Hotel, 129 West Point, CA, 66 White House, 190 Whittier, CA, 188 (fig.) Who Would Have Thought It? (novel), 146 Williams, Manuelita, 177; background of, 226n34 The Willows (amusement park), 128 Wilmington, CA, 162; Californios in junta in, 91, 113; junta formed, 91–92, 109, 220–21n46, 225n22; junta in, 111. See also Camp Drum Wilmington Journal (newspaper), 139–40 Wilson, Carmelita, 154 women’s juntas. See Juntas patrióticas de señoras

292  •   I n de x

 

 

 

 

 

Worcester, MA, 82 World War I, 191 World War II, 185–86, 187, 188 (fig.), 191 Wright, George C., 136, 147 Wyke, Charles: British ambassador to M ­ exico, 56  

“X.C.” (pseudonym), 244n162 Yaqui Indians, 114; in Native California Cavalry, 136 Ybarra, Gerónimo, 37 Ybarra, Ylario, 37 Yndart, Ulpiano, 147, 237n72 Yorba, B. A., 246n15, 246–47n16 Yreka, CA, 66, 130; junta in, 111 Yuba County, CA, 109  

Zacatecas state, Mexico, 60 Zaragoza, Ignacio, 78, 90, 107, 238n86; at first battle of Puebla, 59–60, 62; compared to Bolívar, 70; compared to Washington, 70; controversy over commemorating his death, 71; death of, 70, 91, 215n74; memory invoked at Cinco de Mayo celebrations, 105, 175, 191; portraits of, 70, 97, 103, 104, 155, 175; p­ osthumous tributes to, 70–72, 91, 94; sword of honor made for him in Mexico, 65. See also Latino sword of honor “Zaragoza Anthem,” 104 Zaragoza Light Guard, 151, 238n86, 239n93; members of in Marysville junta, 151 Zaragoza Restaurant, 127 zouaves, 59, 96

I n de x  •   293

 

 

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