From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca: The View from the South, Mexico 1867–1911 9780271030166

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F R O M L I B E RA L T O R EVO LU T I O N A RY OAXACA

FROM

L I B E RA L TO R E VO LU T I O N A RY

OAXACA the

VIEW

from

MEXICO

the

SOUTH

1867–1911

FRANCIE R. CHASSEN-LÓPEZ

The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania

Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the University of Kentucky Research Fund. Maps by Matt McCourt.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chassen de López, Francie R. From liberal to revolutionary Oaxaca : the view from the south, Mexico 1867–1911 / Francie R. Chassen-Lopez. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-271-02370-8 (alk. paper) 1. Oaxaca (Mexico : State)—History—19th century. 2. Oaxaca (Mexico: State)—History—20th century. I. Title. F1321 .C54 2004 972´.74081—dc22 2003027047

Copyright © 2004 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI Z39.48–1992.

In memory of my wonderful parents harry and robby chassen And those Oaxaqueños who inspired and encouraged me Jorge Martínez Ríos, Luis Castañeda Guzmán, Rutila Aguilar Morales, Eloy García Aguilar, and Emilia Garnica Díaz And for bobbi— her heritage, history, and future

C O N T E N T S

list of f igures, tables, and maps acknowledgments introduction

ix

xi

1

part i—infrastructure and economics 1 2 3 4

27

“A Thousand Whistles” 29 From Time Immemorial to the PorWrian Finca: The Land Tenure Question 77 The Commercialization of Agriculture 133 A Promoter’s Paradise: Mining, Industry, and Commerce

part ii—society: class, ethnicity, and gender 5 6 7

8 9 10 11

237

Society, “Decent” and Otherwise 239 Indigenous Usos y Costumbres and State Formation 279 The Indigenous Peoples of Oaxaca: Negotiating Modernity

part iii—political culture and revolution Liberal Politics: The Dual Legacy 351 PorWrian Politics: A CientíWco Governor Precursor Politics 449 Revolution in the South 495 conclusions bibliography index

597

539 551

401

187

349

315

F I G U R E S ,

T A B L E S ,

A N D

M A P S

figures Between pages 304 and 305

Benito Juárez. General PorWrio Díaz. Governor Emilio Pimentel. Zócalo, Main Square of the City of Oaxaca, 1897. Textile Factory of Vista Hermosa, San Agustín Etla, 1897. Mineworkers in Oaxaca, 1901. Village Map of San Pedro Tavich, 1907. Guardamontes, Mountain militia, 1901. City of Juchitán, early twentieth century. Railroad Station, San Jerónimo, 1906. Tehuanas, 1897. Juana Catarina Romero.

ta b l e s 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

The Seven Regions of Oaxaca 32 “Indigenous Races” of the State of Oaxaca, 1902 41 Railroads of Oaxaca 49 Cargo in Tons on the Tehuantepec National Railway 67 Distribution of Oaxacan Haciendas According to Size 109 Increase in Private Holdings 113 Haciendas and Fincas of Importance 114 Major Landholdings in 1906, Tuxtepec District 116 Major Landholdings by Foreign Corporations and Investors, District of Tuxtepec, 1912 117 Districts Registering Rural Fincas and Their Value, 1909 118 Fincas in Pochutla and Miahuatlán in 1896 142

x

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Figures, Tables, and Maps

Distribution and Volume of Oaxacan Coffee Production (in kilos) 149 Distribution of Mexico’s Tobacco Harvest, 1906 161 Oaxacan Tobacco Production, 1907 162 Distribution of Oaxacan Sugarcane Production 169 Value of Cotton Production in Oaxaca (in pesos) 172 Livestock, 1902–1903 177 Wage Labor in Oaxaca, 1907 180 Mexican Mining by Region 191 Major Salt Mines in Oaxaca, 1883 200 Foundries and BeneWciation Plants in Oaxaca, 1908 208 Distribution of the Iguala Mining Tax in Oaxaca 212 Production of Precious Metals in Oaxaca 214 Major Mining Producers in Oaxaca, 1908 216 Price Indexes of Silver and Copper in Mexico 234 Population of the Districts of Oaxaca, 1877–1910 241 Growth of Population in Major Urban Centers in Oaxaca 242 Distribution by Nationality of the Foreign Population of Oaxaca, 1910 253 Magonistas in Oaxaca 472

maps 1 2 3 4 5

Regions and Districts of Oaxaca, 1903 31 Indigenous Languages and Ethnic Groups 40 District Capitals, Towns, and Railroads 50 Regions of PorWrian Development, 1907 122 Centers of Liberal, Magonista, and Revolutionary Activity

491

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

This study has been a long time in the making and I am grateful for the generosity and assistance of many people, although all the errors are my very own. It all began one very hot afternoon in December 1969 in the Barrio Santa María in Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. Relaxing in the Escobar family’s home just before a big family wedding, I met the eminent Oaxacan sociologist Jorge Martínez Ríos. Upon learning that I had a B.A. in history, he began an unrelenting campaign to persuade me to investigate Oaxacan history, and he mentored me until his untimely death in 1974. My friend and cousin, Eloy García Aguilar, joined in this chorus with Jorge throughout our years at the National University. But I did not turn to Oaxaca as a subject of study until 1982, when Eloy arranged for me to bring my students from the Universidad Metropolitana in Mexico City to Tlacolula to organize its incredibly rich municipal archive. I was hooked. From my Wrst trip to Oaxaca, Tía Tila, Eloy’s mother, Rutila Aguilar, took me into her home in Tlacolula with the greatest hospitality. Much of what I know of rural Oaxaca and village life comes from tagging along with her to markets, mills, and Welds. She translated Zapotec and had inWnite patience as she showed me how to cook Oaxacan style. I had married Moisés López Garnica, now my ex-husband, in October 1969, and I owe my love for Oaxaca to him and to my former mother-in-law, Emilia Garnica Díaz, who regaled the family with wonderful tales of her childhood in Tehuantepec, Yautepec, and Tlacolula. But it was Dr. Enrique Florescano who encouraged me to work on the PorWriato as a graduate student, when it was still extremely unpopular at UNAM. He convinced me that it was time to reevaluate this period, mentored me, and directed my doctoral thesis. I am profoundly grateful for his extraordinary intellectual guidance, unstinting support, sage advice, and friendship over the years. For the past two decades I have been privileged to work with an amazing team of Oaxacan social scientists: Anselmo Arellanes Meixueiro, Víctor Raúl Martínez Vásquez, Francisco José Ruiz Cervantes, and Carlos

xii

Acknowledgments

Sánchez Silva. They are my intellectual family, lending me invaluable materials and spending innumerable hours at meetings and meals (and cantinas) discussing the history of Oaxaca. I am eternally grateful to them, for they have become the hermanos I never had. Héctor Martínez collaborated with us on various projects and I appreciate his support during those years. Angeles Romero Frizzi and Manuel Esparza have been generous with their friendship, sources, and critiques. Víctor de la Cruz has also encouraged my work on Oaxaca. Lucero Topete, Wrst as director of the state archives and later as director of the INAH, Centro Regional Oaxaca, has been a wonderful friend and intellectual support since the Wrst day I arrived to do research. All those afternoons, sitting on the patio chatting with Lic. Luis Castañeda Guzmán, were priceless. Don Luis gave unstintingly of his insights, knowledge, and personal archival materials. Don Angel Taracena (and his daughter, Doña Mercedes) and Don Basilio Rojas both shared their personal archives and time unsparingly. During his term as oWcial mayor of the state government, Lic. Heliodoro Díaz Escárraga gave me total support to investigate in the state archives. I am grateful to the many people, some of whom have passed on, who in diverse ways have contributed to this project over the years. In Oaxaca, for their help in so many aspects of this research: Manuel Castro Rivadeneyra, Guillermo Villa Castañeda, Augusto García Moguel, Governor Manuel Zárate Aquino, Roque Carrasco, Cecil Welte, Fidel López Carrasco, Doña Gloria Larrumbe, Claudio Sánchez, and Guillermo Rangel Rojas. In Tlacolula: Hilario López Antonio, Justo Aguilar, Francisco Irigoyen. In Tuxtepec: the Rodríguez Lemus family, and especially Francisco Javier Rodríguez Lemus, Dr. Salvador Ruiz, María Refugio Prats de Herrera. In Ojitlán: Eva Ortiz and Alberto Ortiz. In Valle Nacional: Bartolo Javier Avendaño. In Pinotepa Nacional: Herón García, Angel Noyola, Francisco Carmona, Carmen Martínez López. In Tehuantepec: Juana Moreno Romero, Vda. de Salazar, and César Rojas Pétriz. In Mexico City: Rafael Ruiz, Norberto Aguirre Palancares, Graciela Zayas, Herón García (hijo), and especially Alejandro Méndez Aquino and the Asociación de Escritores Oaxaqueños. I am blessed with an incredible group of friends in Oaxaca whose hospitality, friendship, and support have been vital: Martina Escobar de Aguilar and Lic. Edgardo Aguilar Morales, Dolores Palacios, Vda. de García, Sara Martha Nañez de Aguilar and Ing. Miguel Angel Aguilar,

Acknowledgments

xiii

Marbel Moreno, Bety Sánchez, Rocío Blancas, Paty López, Rosalba Montiel, Eva León, Leticia Martínez Medina, Olga Medina, Martha Martínez Medina, and Irma de la O Medina. I will never be able to truly thank the Arellanes Cancino family, Tuty, Anselmo, Nimcy, Yaaye, and Eliet, for taking me into the warmth and joy of their home, my home away from home. I am equally indebted to Alicia Valdés Kilian for her continuing hospitality, support, and invaluable friendship in Coyoacán. Also in Mexico City, for their enduring friendship, intellectual camaraderie, and hospitality: Luz María Uhthoff, Guadalupe Zárate, Dolores Pla, Andrea Sánchez Quintanar, Fela López Portillo, and Félix Zurita. I am in profound debt to those professors and colleagues whose work has been an inspiration and whose incomparable advice and valuable insights have guided me. Carlos Martínez Assad, Julia Tuñón, and Ignacio Sosa have been inspirations and magniWcent friends. At the risk of injustice to others, I thank Bill Beezley, Raymond Buve, Manny Campbell, Brian Connaughton, Romana Falcón, Heather Fowler-Salamini, Ellen Furlough, Moisés González Navarro, Charles Hale, David Hamilton, John Hart, Peter V. N. Henderson, Gil Joseph, David LaFrance, Linda Lewin, Hernán Menéndez, Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, Rodolfo Pastor, María Emilia Paz, Piedad Peniche, Karen Petrone, Jeremy Popkin, Pablo Serrano, Gerardo Sánchez Díaz, Kristin Stapleton, Gretchen Starr-Lebeau, Mark Summers, Ann Twinam, Paul Vanderwood, Mary Kay Vaughan, Abelardo Villegas, Mark Wasserman, Allen Wells, and Héctor Zarauz López. In the early stages of this research, I received encouragement and intellectual guidance from Ron Spores, John Chance, Florencia Mallon, John Monaghan, Bill Taylor, and Steve Stern, for which I am very thankful. I am particularly grateful to those who extended their hand to me when I Wrst returned to the United States in 1986, among them Steve Stein and Howard Rock in Miami, and Ray Mohl, Fritz Schwaller and the History Department at Florida Atlantic University, who welcomed me and integrated me into their intellectual life. During my undergraduate education at Vassar College in the late 1960s, William Gifford sparked my passion for literature and encouraged me to pursue Latin American history. Although he had retired by the time I arrived, Charles GrifWn cultivated this interest and graciously read and commented on all my papers. In my senior year, David Schalk arrived as a new assistant professor and opened up the world of intellectual history to me. He has been an inspiration and mentor ever since.

xiv

Acknowledgments

I am beholden to two other remarkable institutions. The Facultad de Filosofía y Letras of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México awarded me a teaching assistantship in Latin American Studies, which permitted me to do my doctorate. It was an amazing time to be at UNAM in the 1970s. I was deeply honored to become part of the faculty, in 1976, of the oldest university in all the Americas. I moved to the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Iztapalapa, in 1981. During the spring quarters of 1982 and 1983, the UAM–I commissioned me to work in Oaxaca, organizing and classifying both state and municipal archives in connection with a tripartite agreement with the Archivo General del Estado de Oaxaca and the Archivo General de la Nación. Needless to say, my colleagues, and above all my students, at both institutions have helped me immeasurably to understand Mexico. Many thanks to my splendid research assistants. In Oaxaca, Nimcy Arellanes has given unsparingly of her time. At the University of Kentucky, Hayward Wilkirson, Renee Lazard, and Capt. Kevin Gibson assisted me on different occasions. Many thanks to Matt McCourt, who worked tirelessly on the maps and did a fantastic job. I am also indebted to Sallie Powell and the folks at the University of Kentucky Medical Arts and Photography Lab, who made wonderful reproductions of some of the photos. In addition, I am grateful to be able to publish photos from the Archivo General de la Nación, Instituto de Artes GráWca de Oaxaca, and the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. I deeply appreciate the care and patience of many librarians and archivists, especially my cuates at the Archivo General del Poder Ejecutivo del Estado de Oaxaca. At the Archivo General de la Nación, I am very thankful for the support of Juan Manuel Herrera, Armando Rojas, and many others. I am indebted to the Colección PorWrio Díaz of the Universidad Iberoamericana, especially María Eugenia Ponce, for permission to research and quote from the papers of PorWrio Díaz. Equally I am grateful to Fondo Manuel Brioso y Candiani (the gracious help of Cristina Jarquín when it was in the Escuela de Derecho), the Hemeroteca, and the Biblioteca Francisco Burgoa of the Convento de Santo Domingo of the Universidad Autónoma “Benito Juarez” de Oaxaca, especially the director, my dear friend, María Isabel Grañen Porrúa, the Hemeroteca Pública de Oaxaca, especially Néstor Sánchez, la Biblioteca and Hemeroteca de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, el Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, el Centro de Estudios

Acknowledgments

xv

de Historia de México Condumex, la Biblioteca del Colegio de México, la Biblioteca and Hemeroteca of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, the Biblioteca of the Dirección de Estudios Históricos del INAH, the Library of Congress, and the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley. In Kentucky, I am particularly appreciative of Judy Fugate of Collections Development for all her generous help in searching for materials over the years. Many thanks to our superbly efWcient and cordial Inter-Library Loan Department. I also thank my two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments. And special thanks go to Sandy Thatcher, director of Penn State University Press, for his constant support, patience, and understanding through some very difWcult times. In 1988 I moved to Lexington, and I have received generous support from the University of Kentucky. The University of Kentucky Research Fund and the Graduate School have funded numerous trips to Mexico to continue my research. My colleagues in the Department of History, the Latin American Studies Program, and the Women’s Studies Program have commented on various articles and chapters. My students at the University of Kentucky all can locate Oaxaca on any map, and many of them have visited and fallen in love with my patria chica. Their lively enthusiasm has been my inspiration. In Lexington I have been fortunate to be part of a group of people who have become my family. They have been exceptionally supportive and encouraging and have learned to love Mexican food and Oaxaca. They have seen me through the darkest days with good cheer and extraordinary care. Thank you, Mary Anglin, Joanna Badagliacco, Dwight Billings, Paola Bacchetta, Kate Black, Dave Block, Joan Callahan, Lisa Cligett, Pat Cooper, Lisa and Miguel Contreras, Deb Crooks, Raphi Finkel, Kathleen Fluhart, Beth Goldstein, Kathi Kern, Thomas Hakansson, Roz Harris, Deb Harley, Sandra Kryst, Felisa Lucero, Lisa Markowitz, Dianna Niebylski, Abbey Poffenberger, Chris Pool, Kathleen Pool, Suzanne Pucci, Ellen Riggle, Bob Tannenbaum, Karen Tice, Monica Udvardy, Sherry Velasco, Gil Ware, and Linda Worley. And, of course, my daughter Bobbi López has lived and breathed this research on Oaxaca almost since she was born. For all those newspapers articles she copied for me and the interviews she helped me with, this is her inheritance. Nothing is more rewarding to me than her love for Oaxaca.

Introduction

On April 6, 1896, Chatino Indians attacked the district capital of Juquila in the coastal region of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Numbering some one thousand, they protested against a new tax law as they swept through the area sacking and pillaging. Shouting “Death to all who wear pants,” they struck out violently against the gente decente (whites and mestizos dressed in European garb). They burned the town hall and the judicial archives. They beheaded twenty-two townspeople with machetes, among them two judges, the jefe político (prefect), the municipal president, and other ofWcials. They put the head of the town telegrapher, Liborio Pimentel, on a pike that they paraded through the streets. Ildefonso Zorrilla and Carlos Morales (a visitor to the district) also lost their lives, as did some local merchants whose stores were sacked. The rebels communicated with other Chatino communities, urging them to join in the extermination of the catrines (the fancy dressers). Fearing a caste war, Governor Martín González immediately dispatched the army’s Fourth Battalion, which only recaptured Juquila on April 18. The army’s bloody retaliation included the execution of thirty Chatinos and the exile of many others to Quintana Roo, Mexico’s tropical Siberia.1 The governor then appointed lawyer Carlos Woolrich as Juquila’s new jefe político. He decreed that anyone entering a town under his jurisdiction was henceforth forbidden to wear indigenous dress. Huipiles (indigenous women’s blouses) and camisa y calzón de manta (rough cotton tops and bottoms for men) would no longer be tolerated. Everyone had to dress European-style or be punished. This ruling spawned a new enterprise in Juquila: merchants set up stands at town entrances to rent shoes, jackets, and pants to Indians going to market. To this day, the rebellion is remembered on the Costa as “The War of the Pants.” 1. This uprising is analyzed in Chapter 8 and the appropriate sources are cited there. A caste war refers to the colonial caste system and indicates a race war. All translations in this study are the author’s unless otherwise noted.

2

Introduction

The image of enterprising merchants renting European-style clothing and shoes to Chatinos on their way to market in Juquila in the late 1890s symbolizes the power and Xexibility of negotiation. Some might interpret this “fashion war” between Western clothing and customary indigenous dress as a major collision between liberal modernizing projects and traditional Mesoamerican communities. The story, however, is far more complicated. The tax law threatened small parcels of private property valued at less than $100,2 which previously had not been taxed. The division and privatization of communal land had just been carried out the year before in Juquila. Thus Chatinos lashed out not only against years of discrimination and exploitation but also against the threat to their newly titled properties. They achieved their objective when the governor rapidly revoked the controversial articles in the tax law, and they continued to wear their traditional dress (except in the district capital) despite the new decree. The close examination of confrontations such as the “War of the Pants” permits us to transcend rigid dichotomies of civilization and barbarism so often applied to these actors. Although at times they appeared to be irreconcilably opposed worlds, the encounter of Mexican liberals’ modernizing projects3 with Oaxacan society, especially the indigenous communal villages, exposes not only their conXicts but also their growing linkages and dependencies. In the following pages we will see them engaging with and transforming each other in an ongoing process of contestation, negotiation, and, sometimes, compromise.4 Far from being a facile shibboleth, this approach, with its focus on the dialectic of local, regional, state, and national history, permits us to disentangle the threads of continuity and change over four decades of Oaxacan history, from the triumph of liberalism in 1867 to the opening days of the Revolution in June 1911. Early liberals in the 1820s commenced independent Mexico’s elusive love affair with modernity. They rashly embraced the ideals of the Enlightenment (the belief in reason, science, and technology), convinced that 2. The $ denotes pesos throughout this study. Dollar amounts will be speciWcally noted. 3. There was no one liberal project to modernize Mexico, but various projects. For example, some emphasized education more than others. Elite ideologies were not monolithic. In his study of class, gender, and ethnicity over the long durée in Guatemala, Greg Grandin demonstrates the existence of various elite discourses of the nation of both ladino and K’iche elites. See Grandin, Blood of Guatemala, 13, 128ff. 4. This type of analysis has been used previously; see, for example, Wells and Joseph, Summer of Discontent; Purnell, Popular Movements and State Formation, and the essays in Joseph and Nugent’s edited volume, Everyday Forms of State Formation.

Introduction

3

European civilization would eventually triumph over American barbarism. In order to confront the legacies of three hundred years of authoritarian Spanish corporatism and the communal traditions of Mesoamerica, they rejected their past and shouldered the tasks of what they called modernization.5 For them, modernity signiWed the decline of traditional orders based on rigid hierarchies sustained by religious authority, and the building of modern nation-states and rational, secular capitalist societies populated by dynamic social classes engaged in material progress embodied in the ideas of liberalism. Economic liberalism as ideology as well as public policy proposed to lift restraints in order to facilitate the expansion of a free market. European political economists developed the theory of comparative advantage to explain the division of the world into industrial and agro-exporting nations. Colombian Treasury minister Florentino González expressed the position of many liberal elites in 1847: “Europe, with an intelligent population, and with the possession of steam power and its applications, and educated in the art of manufacturing, fulWlls its mission in the industrial world by giving various forms to raw materials.” Thus the nations of Latin America should not attempt to encourage industry but rather concentrate on carrying out “our mission, and there is no doubt as to what it is, if we consider the profusion of natural resources with which Providence has endowed this land. We should offer Europe raw materials and open our doors to her manufactures.”6 Nevertheless, as the nineteenth century advanced, larger Latin American nations such as Mexico and Colombia took an interest in stimulating their domestic industries and modiWed their policies to include some protective tariffs. 5. Harvey, Condition of Postmodernity, 9; see Hall’s synthesis of modernity in the introduction to Modernity, 8. Néstor García Canclini divided modernity into four basic movements: (1) the emancipating project, which necessitates secularization, increasing individualism, and the rationalization of society; (2) the expansive project, which encompasses the desire to expand society’s knowledge in science, technology, and control of nature, and the production and consumption of commodities based on the proWt motive; (3) the renovating project, which includes the relentless pursuit of “innovation proper to a relation to nature and society that is liberated from all sacred prescription over how the world must be” and “the need to continually reformulate the signs of distinction that mass consumption wears away”; and (4) the democratizing project, which entails an undying belief in the efWcacy of education, art, and “specialized knowledge to achieve rational and moral evolution.” García Canclini, Hybrid Cultures, 12–13. Justo Sierra characterized the Mexican Liberal Reform as a struggle against Spain and the colonial regime in Juárez. 6. Love and Jacobsen, Guiding the Invisible Hand, vii. Florentino González quoted in Nieto Arteta, Economía y cultura en la historia de Colombia, 188.

4

Introduction

Liberalism also encompassed the political philosophy of republicanism, democratic values, and individual civil rights.7 Yet, if in the United States, Britain, and France, this philosophy emerged from a capitalist society, in Mexico the reverse occurred. “Liberalism in Mexico appeared as a program before it could be grounded in reality or historical experience,” wrote Mexican philosopher Abelardo Villegas.8 Therefore, Mexican liberals faced what they saw as the revolutionary task of transforming reality and molding national identity. But not until 1867, after forty years of political and economic turmoil, wars with Conservative foes, and foreign invasions, were triumphant Liberals able to devote their full energies to building this modern Mexico.9 The presidents who guided the liberal project, Benito Juárez (1858–72) and PorWrio Díaz (1876–80, 1884–1911), were both born in the southern state of Oaxaca. Yet scholars and politicians alike have characterized Oaxaca as the antithesis of modernity. Given its imposing mountain ranges and majority indigenous population, they have assumed it to be “backward,” impenetrable by modernity. After 1910, historians of the Mexican Revolution branded Oaxaca as inherently conservative and PorWrista or ignored it altogether. Had Oaxaca been an enemy of the Revolution?10 Was it “passive” and “reactionary,” 7. Perry, Juárez and Díaz, 3, 341. 8. Abelardo Villegas, Filosofía, 91. Geoff Eley also noted this phenomenon: “The encounter with Revolutionary France . . . not only gave sympathetic intellectuals in more ‘backward’ societies a new political language for articulating their own aspirations, it also allowed them to conceptualize their situations as ‘backwardness’ to begin with . . . [but] it was stimulated from the outside rather than being the spontaneous outgrowth of indigenous social development, in response to backwardness rather than progress.” “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures” 309. 9. Daniel Cosío Villegas considered the Restored Republic (1867–76) and the PorWriato (1876–1910) “two distinct moments of a single epoch” of the “modern” history of Mexico. “Between one and the other there is no break in continuity, and less, much less, an historical break.” Cosío Villegas, Llamadas, 106; see also Hale, “Daniel Cosío Villegas,” 7–8; Cosío Villegas’s multivolume Historia Moderna de México. This was also the term used at the time; Mrs. Alec Tweedie’s 1906 biography of the president was entitled The Maker of Modern Mexico: PorWrio Díaz. The present study understands the nineteenth century to encompass the period 1810 to 1910. 10. In 1955 Jorge Fernando Iturribarría published Oaxaca en la historia with precisely the objective of “demonstrating to the public opinion of Oaxaca and the Mexican nation, the unjustly propagated fallacy—which has caused so much damage—that we Oaxacans have always been enemies of the Mexican Revolution.” Oaxacan scholar-politicians Jorge Tamayo and, later, Alfonso Francisco Ramírez tackled the same problem with a similar lack of success. See Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, x; Tamayo, Oaxaca en el siglo XX; Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana en Oaxaca. The term PorWriato, which is

Introduction

5

as often portrayed?11 Inhabited by “passive” peasants who were “immunized against the epidemic of progress,” had it been “bypassed by the tides of modernization?”12 Did it truly maintain “the image of a backward, provincial society, resistant to change?”13 These characterizations reduced discussions of Oaxaca either to its “backward” Indian population or to its “reactionary” government elites, or both. Why and how had this “Black Legend” of Oaxaca emerged?14

commonly used today to refer to the dictatorship of PorWrio Díaz, has negative connotations. PorWrismo was the term employed during Díaz’s regime and by later admirers. 11. In 1975 anthropologist Ronald Waterbury labeled the peasants of Oaxaca “passive” and “reactionary” in a comparison with the Zapatista peasants of Morelos during the Revolution, (see his “Non-revolutionary Peasants”). Although this article (the only one on the subject available in English for more than a decade) analyzed the peasants of the Central Valleys, it reinforced the backwardness thesis. Other scholars employed Waterbury’s characterization to refer to all of Oaxaca. Thus did the “backward” and “reactionary” image of Oaxaca become common currency in Mexican history. See Jacobs, Ranchero Revolt, ix, xx; Brading, “Introduction,” 15; Tutino, From Insurrection to Revolution, 320–21; Wasserman, “Provinces of the Revolution,” 6; LaFrance, “Regional Nature of Maderismo,” 25; Beezley, “Conclusion,” 294. John Hart integrated Oaxaca into his Revolutionary Mexico more than others, but he still gave currency to these stereotypes. Alan Knight included Oaxaca in The Mexican Revolution and later criticized the use of the “crude dichotomy” between revolutionary and nonrevolutionary peasants in “Weapons and Arches,” 41. 12. Ruiz, Great Rebellion, 23. Steven Topik and Allen Wells’s recent study of commodities in Latin America used Oaxaca as an example of a region of southern Mexico that developed “few ties to the international economy.” Topik and Wells, “Introduction,” 10. Wells and Joseph inveigh against the characterization of the henequen peon as passive lumpen as a “gross exaggeration.” Wells and Joseph, Summer of Discontent, 143. 13. Paul Garner’s other early studies of the Sovereignty Movement declared that during the PorWriato there were no “dramatic transformations in either the predominant agricultural mode of production or in the system of land tenure, nor in the form of political or social organizations in the state” (“Federalism and Caudillismo,” 117). See also his “Autoritarismo revolucionario” and Revolución en la provincia. He later recognized “substantial growth in the export sector,” but few others have followed suit; see Regional Development in Oaxaca. More recently Garner has argued that the indigenous peoples were not “resistant to change” and that Oaxaca was not “backward.” PorWrio Díaz, 22–23, 202. Yet Colin Clarke’s recent monograph on Oaxaca still considers it one of the “most backward” states of Mexico. Clarke, Class, Ethnicity, and Community, 37. 14. Mexican Indians have often been depicted as “picturesque individuals who are set in their ways, exotic, poor and downtrodden.” Although anthropologists have criticized these stereotypes, they have formulated new representations of Indians as “exploited peasants, oppressed proletarians, or from another standpoint, the bearers of rich cultural traditions and languages, but the victims of discrimination by mestizos and bureaucrats.” Either way, the Indians come out as “losers.” See Campbell, Zapotec Renaissance, xv. “Black Legend” (the negative history of Spanish rule in the Americas) is from Ruiz Cervantes, “Oaxaca: ¿campesinos no revolucionarios?” 28ff. I have called this the “myth of the passive peasant.” See Chassen [Chassen-López], “¿Capitalismo o comunalismo?”

6

Introduction

These questions about my adopted patria chica confounded me no end as a graduate student at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in the 1970s and later as a professor and investigator of Mexican history, Wrst in Mexico and then in the United States. As a result, I initiated this study in order to answer three central questions: (1) Did Presidents Juárez and Díaz neglect their own state in their drive toward modernization? (2) Did indigenous peoples of Oaxaca act as an obstacle to “progress”? and (3) Had Oaxaca remained at the margins of the Mexican Revolution? I was most perplexed to discover that the ways in which I had been taught to view southern Mexico, and to frame questions, were fatally Xawed. I found myself asking over and over again: What was I missing? What had I been taught to overlook?15 My doctoral dissertation, Oaxaca: Del PorWriato a la Revolución, 1902–1911 (UNAM 1986) began to supply some tentative answers, although I now disagree with many of its conclusions. It was clear that I had to look at a longer period to get at the roots of these questions, and thus I directed my research further into the nineteenth century. Along the way, these queries were modiWed and many more were added. The present book, based on extensive research in state, national, and private archives over two decades, is the Wrst monograph, in English or Spanish, to provide some answers to those questions. It is also designed to open up new avenues of research for others.

An Insurgent Reading of History Undoubtedly, the stereotyping of Oaxaca can partially be attributed to the scarcity of research on this period. Nonetheless, I began to discern political motives lurking behind its misrepresentation. For nineteenth-century liberals, modernization implicitly denoted de-Indianization, the assimilation of the indigenous population into a Mexican national identity.16 15. See the work of Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development, and “Imagining a PostDevelopment Era?” 16. Leticia Reina Aoyama has researched Mexican ethnohistory for more than twenty years, noting that the focus on the nineteenth century is “relatively new” and that there is enormous work yet to be done on that ethnohistory. She has also emphasized nineteenthcentury regimes’ desire to erase indigenous culture by “negation,” “liquidation,” and Wnally “integration” into the national mestizo identity. Reina Aoyama, “Autonomía indígena,” 338–40.

Introduction

7

Oaxaca has historically been the state with the highest and most diverse indigenous population (sixteen distinct ethnicities) in Mexico. These groups have fought tenaciously to retain what they refer to as their tradiciones (or usos) y costumbres desde tiempos inmemoriales (traditions and customs since time immemorial), which encompass not only their lived experience but also their worldview. Oaxaca has represented the indigenous face that “modern” Mexico has not wanted to see in the mirror. The late Guillermo BonWl Batalla reproached us: “There is an attempt to hide and ignore the Indian face of Mexico because no real connection with Mesoamerican civilization is admitted. The clear and undeniable evidence of our Indian ancestry is a mirror in which we do not wish to see our own reXection.”17 The present study returns that face to the mirror. Only by shifting our perspective to view history from the south, instead of from El Centro (Mexico City and its environs, the proverbial center of historical vision), can we detect that Oaxaca has been typecast in the role of the foil: antimodern, backward, barbarous, and reactionary. The Mexico that has wanted to be seen as modern, capitalist, and revolutionary has deWned itself in opposition to traditional, indigenous southern Mexico. Time was linear, societies that were not modern and future-oriented were frozen in a “traditional” or premodern time.18 As modernity’s negative mirror image, Oaxaca has also doubled as villain, representing the backwardness that posed the major obstacle to the progress of modern Mexico. Only an “insurgent reading” of historical works and documents, as proposed by Gyan Prakash for subaltern histories of India,19 might liberate Oaxaca from the disciplinary categories of dominant histories. The present study undertakes such an insurgent reading to read across the grain and see all social categories as contingent on their historical context. My methodology shows the inXuence of political economy, feminism, subaltern 17. BonWl Batalla, Mexico Profundo, 18, 168. 18. This knowledge was used to construct “meta-narratives (large-scale theoretical interpretations purportedly of universal application).” Harvey, Condition of Postmodernity, 9ff., 205. See Fabian, Time and the Other, 31ff. Of course, there have always been indigenous peoples in northern and central Mexico (Nahuas, Yaquis, Otomíes, etc.) but they have rarely appeared in the mirror of modern Mexico. 19. Prakash, “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories,” 369ff., and “Introduction,” 5ff. As much as I am indebted to India’s Subaltern Studies authors, I am wary of the term subaltern, which tends to mask differences of gender, class, and ethnicity. I am grateful to my colleague Paola Bacchetta for suggesting the above works by Prakash.

8

Introduction

studies, and poststructuralism, while it strives for an engaging narrative that keeps buzzwords to a minimum.20 Through the descriptive analysis of how particular processes unfold, it uncovers the interdependence, ambiguities, and heterogeneities that in turn deconstruct stereotypes, foils, and simplistic binaries. Although I have tried to use the terms “modern” and “modernization” in reference to the goals as liberals themselves deWned them, and “tradition” with respect to the frequent indigenous allusions to usos y costumbres, I confess that these terms have surfaced in my own analysis also. Framed as the struggle between civilization and barbarism by early nineteenth-century liberals, the opposition was soon reformulated as the contest between the modern and the traditional. In the twentieth century, these categories have undergirded the formulation of both modernization and dependency theories, as they inspired the opposition between development and underdevelopment. Therefore, we Wnd ourselves continually deconstructing this same dichotomy as it emerges in different guises.21 Patricia Hill Collins observed that “race, class, and gender oppression could not continue without powerful ideological justiWcations for their existence.” The latter are created through the construction of what she calls controlling images, which encapsulate and maintain interlocking systems of race, ethnic, class, and gender oppression, for example, the welfare mother in the United States or the lazy, backward indio in Latin America. Such “images are designed to make racism, sexism, and poverty appear to be natural, normal, and an inevitable part of everyday life,” thus enabling dominant groups to blame the victim for his or her situation. This is realized through the objectiWcation of people by dichotomous thinking.22 20. I have been caught between generations of historians in what Mary Kay Vaughan denoted as the “shift in paradigms” since the 1980s from fundamentally materialist and structural analysis “to one more sensitive to issues of culture, dispersed power, contingency, and representation.” Vaughan, “Cultural Approaches,” 271–72. See also Dirks, Eley, and Ortner, “Introduction,” 30–31. Buzzwords in vogue are hegemony, discourse, decentering, etc. 21. Post–World War II development and modernization theories applied the terms developed to modern and underdeveloped to traditional societies. However, these theories were elaborated in the context of the Cold War, in the struggle between capitalism and socialism, and their purported goal was the elimination of poverty through the spread of capitalism to the Third World. Thus, to label PorWrismo as developmentalist liberalism, as Alan Knight has (“Liberalismo mexicano,” 66ff.), obscures the origins and crucial political context of development theory. 22. Collins, “Mammies, Matriarchs,” 67–75, and “Knowledge, Politics,” 221ff. “Ideology loves dichotomies,” Nancy Fraser warns us in Unruly Practices, 8.

Introduction

9

Grappling with this problem, feminist scholarship has clariWed how the opposition between male and female underlies other supposedly “natural” binaries. Joan Scott emphasized that feminist analysis is all about contesting meaning: “the introduction of new oppositions, reversal of hierarchies, the attempt to expose repressed terms, to challenge the seemingly natural status of dichotomous pairs, and to expose their interdependence and their internal instability.” The study of the colonial reality of India convinced Gyan Prakash that only the “implacable disWguration” of these categories and the unmasking of the politics of knowledge (sexist, racist, and colonialist) inherent in their construction, will allow hidden histories of subaltern peoples to be released.23 Yet I believe that this is also a dialectical process, whereby those suppressed histories will provide the tools necessary to replace this discursive organization of power. While we can expose the underlying logic of power in language and dismantle these controlling images, I am not so convinced that we can, at least at present, discard all dichotomies, as these buried histories are only now emerging. Language and its meanings are constructed on the basis of difference (“implicit or explicit contrasts”) and exclusions.24 The exclusion of women was fundamental to the conceptualization of modern political and economic thought of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The modern world they brought forth restructured gender relations by presuming the existence of a male public sphere (of politics and the economy) and a female private sphere (a domestic “nonpolitical” and “noneconomic” space). Resting on previous assumptions about women’s intimate relations to the natural world, to sexuality, and to domesticity, this division led to the formulation of a new political and social construction of masculinity (based on the experience of the white, Western, heterosexual male) in the individual subject of modern society,

23. Scott, “Introduction,” 7–9, “Gender,” 43–48, and “Experience,” all in Butler and Scott, Feminists Theorize the Political. Subaltern Studies scholars have revealed “the relationship between disciplinary knowledges and the colonial and elite-nationalist strategies of power,” according to Prakash, “Introduction,” 3–17, and “Subaltern Studies,” 1485–89. Ashis Nandy dubbed this the “second colonization,” as quoted in Prakash, “Writing PostOrientalist Histories,” 375–80. 24. “Positive deWnitions,” Joan Scott informs us, “rest always, in this view, on the negation or repression of something represented as antithetical to it.” Scott, “Introduction,” 7. It is precisely through these internally hierarchical dichotomies that meaning and power relations of dominance and subordination are constructed, particularly that of the modern and the traditional.

10

Introduction

founded on the male domain of reason and law.25 Contesting these static dichotomies, scholars have suggested that we visualize such oppositions as interrelated and Xuid points on a continuum, an analytical category now central to postmodern feminism’s challenge to hierarchical binary opposites. In her study of Mexican women’s political participation, Nikki Craske demonstrated how the concept of a continuum “allows for different degrees of participation between the two extremes and the fact that many activities sit between them.”26 It is in those dynamic and Xuid “in-between spaces” that the concept of hybridity becomes invaluable as another conceptual tool that transcends oppositions. Since the term mestizaje is usually restricted to racial mixing and syncretism has a religious connotation, I agree with Néstor García Canclini that hybridization is preferable because it comprehends distinct “intercultural mixtures” as well as political and economic factors. Homi Bhabha afWrmed that, rather than a mixture of identities or elements, it is instead a moment in which “all forms of cultural meaning are open to translation.” Thus hybridity also reveals “the instability of any division of meaning into an inside and outside.” Of course, any identity or process can be described as hybrid, starting from the fact that we all descend genetically from two very different people. Understood as a consequence of colonial power, the concept of hybridity lets us discern what Bhabha calls the “Wssured character” of national histories, how they are “intersected by other histories, other modes of production, other values and identities.”27 But might not the concepts of hybridity and of a continuum contradict each other? On the contrary, I believe they can work in tandem. For example, we can envision agricultural labor arrangements during this period as Xuid, on a continuum in which they Xow back and forth from the extremes of slavery, in Valle Nacional, to wage labor, on PorWrio Díaz’s highly modern coffee Wnca in Cuicatlán, with many points in between, 25. Eley, “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures” 312; Marshall, Engendering Modernity, 2ff. 26. Susan Tiano developed this category in order to appreciate the true scope of women’s work in “Public-Private Dichotomy,” 22–24; Craske, “Women’s Political Participation,” 114. Knight also proposed that dualities be understood as points on a continuum (“Weapons and Arches,” 33), while Guardino recommends that we Wnd a way to bridge them in Peasants, Politics, 8. 27. García Canclini, Hybrid Cultures, 11, 206ff.; Bhabha, “DissemiNation,” 314; Beverley, Subalternity and Representation, 16–17, 86ff.

Introduction

11

including the production of coffee by communal landholders in Santa María Yucuiti. If we focus on communal landholders, we can detect the combination of elements that produces a hybrid economy. While Oaxacan villages struggled to uphold their versions of communal traditions, far from existing since time immemorial, their usos y costumbres had changed over time. The indigenous peoples did not reject the varied forces of modernity outright but contested, resisted, and negotiated, as well as innovated and translated them to their needs. Accordingly, the concept of hybridity helps resolve the “problematic boundaries of modernity.” Arturo Escobar envisaged a hybrid modernity that does not entail adding and mixing in modern and traditional elements “or a ‘sell-out’ of the traditional to the modern,” but instead “a cultural (re)creation.”28 Thus hybridity allows for creativity and agency by all actors. Nevertheless, I would not go so far as to suggest that the latter resulted in the construction of “alternative modernities” by peasants or subalterns.29 To my knowledge, nineteenth-century Oaxacan campesinos did not propose to imitate elite modernity or invent their own versions, but safeguarded their usos y costumbres as they reformulated them with new ideas or practices that they considered advantageous, such as the cultivation of coffee and the expansion of trade or private property. I develop four interrelated themes throughout the three sections of the book that support this larger argument of contestation and negotiation.

State Formation as Contested Terrain The twin processes of the construction of the nation-state and capitalism have neither been imposed from above nor been monolithic but have been contested terrains. While elites developed their schemes of nation building, state formation involved not only the conWguration of the administrative and repressive sectors of the state, the construction of a national identity through the enactment of legitimating ritual, and attempts at the legal and moral regulation of the lives of its subjects, but also the contestation, rejections, resistance, adaptations, innovations, and alternatives presented by the great majority of the population, the middle sectors and 28. Bhabha, “DissemiNation,” 294; Escobar, Encountering Development, 218–20. 29. This is the argument of Mark Overmyer-Velázquez’s dissertation on Oaxaca. See Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar’s edited volume, Alternative Modernities.

12

Introduction

urban and rural working classes of Mexico. The latter is often referred to as popular culture.30 The study of culture has recently undergone a great deal of critical reXection prompted by new theories of power, language, gender, ethnicity, race, and authors’ subjectivity. Now envisioned as a contested terrain, it is seen as inherently political because competing groups seek to redeWne who holds power.31 Unfortunately, the concept of popular culture has become excessively broad; hence, I prefer to think in terms of political culture. InXuenced by François Furet and linguistic studies, Keith Baker’s works on revolutionary France viewed politics as the articulation, negotiation, and implementation of “competing claims they make upon one another and upon the whole.” Thus political culture, “discourses or symbolic practices,” are the vehicles through which claims are made. As a historical creation, political culture is subject to constant revision by its agents as new claims are put forth and old ones reformulated.32 The changing political culture in Mexico, its internal conXicts and alternative formulations, is one of the central themes running through this study. The history of state formation in Liberal Mexico is permeated by conXict and negotiation, a struggle for power on different and interlocking levels not only political but also economic, social, and cultural. At the helm of elite projects of nation building were Oaxaca’s two favorite sons, Benito Juárez and PorWrio Díaz. The present study shows how these two men were intensely involved in the modernization of their native state 30. Popular culture has been deWned as the “symbols and meanings embedded in the dayto-day practices of subordinated groups.” Neither monolithic nor autonomous, it is produced in a dialectical struggle with dominant cultures that takes place “in contexts of unequal power and entails reciprocal appropriations, expropriations, and transformations.” Nugent and Alonso, “Multiple Selective Traditions,” 210–11. See also Joseph and Nugent, “Popular Culture and State Formations,” 15ff. This deWnition of popular culture does not exclude more speciWc forms, such as art and music. For the purpose of this study, working classes include both rural campesinos and urban artisans, laborers and domestic workers. 31. Dirks, Eley, and Ortner, “Introduction,” 6, 22; Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, 123; Alvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar, “Introduction,” 4ff. Edward Said sees culture as a source of identity, “a sort of theater where various political and ideological causes engage one another . . . culture can even be a battleground on which causes expose themselves to the light of day and contend with one another.” Said, Culture and Imperialism, xiii. 32. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, 4, 10. Lynn Hunt deWnes political culture as “the values, expectations, and implicit rules that expressed and shaped collective intentions.” Hunt, Politics, Culture and Class, 10–11, 15–17. I am grateful to my colleague, Jeremy Popkin, for introducing me to Hunt’s and Baker’s writings. See Popkin, “Concept of Public Opinion,” 85.

Introduction

13

and at the same time used it as their springboard and political base from which to rule the nation. They both relied on Oaxacan campesinos to defend them militarily and on Oaxacan middle sectors and elites to represent their interests in national and other state governments. They espoused democracy even as they transferred their patron-client relationships to the national sphere. Both presidents exhibited the profound ambivalence of Mexican liberals toward the majority indigenous population of Oaxaca, yet they were cognizant of the importance of campesinos as actors in state formation. Questions of power, domination, hegemony, and authority are also under intense discussion in many disciplines. Comprehension of the political process has been “radically deinstitutionalized” as the personal has been recognized as political and the political dimensions of everyday life have been evoked. The linkage of politics and culture reveals that power can no longer be understood as the private domain of states and the forces of repression but must be seen as changing and unequal relationships in society.33 The ongoing struggle among Oaxaca’s social classes, ethnicities, and genders to deWne their identities as well as the political entities that make up their nation and to shape its future is another question that inspires this study. An early cradle of liberalism, Oaxacans fought for the Liberal Army in wartime and were major players in the Liberal Reform (1855–67), the Restored Republic (1867–76), and the PorWriato (1876–1911), demonstrating the preponderance of southern politics before the 1910 Revolution.34 Ideologies such as Juarismo, PorWrismo, and Magonismo, whose progenitors were born and nourished in the state of Oaxaca, emerged as national movements. Juarismo, and the Juárez legacy, was reinterpreted and reinvented by successive generations on the state and national stage with differing political groups vying for the title of authentic Juaristas. The Mexican Revolution was initiated under the banner of Juarismo in opposition to PorWrismo, a fact insufWciently recognized by historians. Yet the feeble three-day campaign in Oaxaca of Benito Juárez Maza, the liberal hero’s son, for the governorship in 1910, symbolized perhaps its 33. Dirks, Eley, and Ortner, “Introduction,” 4ff. See Foucault, Power/Knowledge and History of Sexuality, and Fraser’s critique of Foucault in Unruly Practices. On hegemony, see Roseberry, “Hegemony and the Language of Contention.” We will return to Foucault’s concepts in later chapters, but he unfortunately ignored the gendered subtext of power relations. 34. Perry, Juárez and Díaz; Guardino, Peasants, Politics, 188; Thomson, “Bulwarks of Patriotic Liberalism,” 36.

14

Introduction

inadequacy for twentieth-century politics. Magonismo (after the followers of the radical liberal and later anarchist Flores Magón brothers), which surged across Mexico after 1900, sought its roots in Juarismo but transcended it to respond to Mexico’s new mass society. Ironically, Ricardo Flores Magón, another Oaxaqueño intensely dedicated to his patria chica, emerged as the leader of the Wrst national movement to challenge PorWrismo. Although this study concentrates on the history of the state of Oaxaca between 1867 and 1911, it is intertwined with larger national processes and often foreshadows future developments throughout Mexico.

The Power of the Local Since the nineteenth century, thinkers as diverse as Liberals, Marxists, Modernizationists, Dependentistas, and world-systems theorists have perceived Western capitalist expansion as subject and Latin America, Asia, and Africa as object. Sherry Ortner criticized the image of (capitalist) history arriving “like a ship, from outside the society in question” to transform “traditional” Third World regions. The result is not a history of that society, but the impact of (our) history on that society.” She suggests instead that each society be analyzed not only within the larger context but also with respect to its own structures and history. By focusing on process and dialectical relationships within one state, the present study reveals the Xexibility of local and regional factors in their relationships with national and global forces, and vice versa.35 This process has frequently been designated as the decentering of history. Decentering facilitates the emergence of hidden local and regional histories that lie beyond the privileged themes of dominant narratives. Howard Campbell’s Zapotec Renaissance and Jeffrey Rubin’s Decentering the Regime have done this for the study of the COCEI (Coalition of Workers, Peasants and Students of the Isthmus) in Juchitán, Oaxaca. For Rubin, decentering means “that national politics be understood as something partial and complex that coexists with, but is different from, 35. Ortner, “Theory in Anthropology,” 142–43. William B. Taylor has also warned against the tendency to exaggerate the power of “the long arm of the world market.” He calls on scholars to concentrate on “local responses and conditions—not just the relentless pressure of external developments and authority.” Taylor, “Between Global Process and Local Knowledge,” 121–27, 171–72.

Introduction

15

regional and local politics, and that is only one among several locations and kinds of politics.” Center refers “simultaneously to a place (Mexico City), an institutional apparatus of power and decision making, and a set of ‘national’ cultural discourses.”36 This is a fruitful platform for the study of a grassroots political movement that began in the 1970s in order to oppose the postrevolutionary Mexican state (which Rubin argues was not so centralized after all). In her comparative study of peasants in Mexico and Peru, Florencia Mallon used the concept of decentering more broadly. Few historians of regional history today would disagree with her argument that in order to comprehend “subaltern” peoples’ history, “we must decenter our vision of the historical process” as well as concepts of the intellectual and community, of politics, theories of nationalism, and the state.37 However, the operation of decentering requires a center. And although it was common to refer to El Centro in the nineteenth century, the weight of Mexican history remained in its regional dimensions. In December 1846, during the U.S. occupation, Mariano Otero lamented that “In Mexico that which is called national spirit cannot nor has been able to exist, for there is no nation.” Supposedly, centrifugal forces that emerged with the struggle for Independence gave rise to Mexico’s acute regionalism (although colonial historians have recently challenged the existence of a powerful centralized viceregal government).38 To my mind, the concept of decentering as applied to the nineteenth century is imprecise and misleading since it posits the existence of a center and a nation that were both only then in the process of consolidation. Integral to that process in the second half of the nineteenth century was the production of the Wrst ofWcial histories written to forge a uniform and linear narrative of Mexican history and legitimize liberal rule. These 36. Campbell, Zapotec Renaissance, and Rubin, Decentering the Regime, 14–15, 277. The operation of decentering is often, but not always, associated with the postmodern critique of modernity’s universalizing narratives, although that is not necessarily the case with the studies cited here. In fact, Campbell is an outspoken critic of postmodern anthropology; see his Mexican Memoir. 37. She suggests that we begin with Benedict Anderson’s work on the “imagined community,” Mallon, Peasant and Nation, 5ff.; Anderson, Imagined Communities. We will return to Anderson’s theories in Chapter 8. 38. Otero quoted in Hale, Mexican Liberalism, 14. Recent studies have advanced the process of rewriting Mexican history during the PorWriato, but only Wells and Joseph’s outstanding study, Summer of Discontent, provides a perspective on the indigenous south in the Yucatán. On central and northern Mexico, see Rendón Garcini, Prosperato; Thomson and LaFrance, Patriotism, Politics, and Popular Liberalism; Vanderwood, Power of God; Falcón and Buve, Don PorWrio Presidente.

16

Introduction

works dealt mainly with central Mexico, beginning the tradition of what Pablo Serrano Alvarez has dubbed “historiographic centralism.” Postrevolutionary regimes followed this path, sponsoring their legitimizing versions of history, and furthered the creation of a homogeneous national identity based in El Centro. Nevertheless, I strongly agree with Mario Cerutti’s contention that nineteenth-century history needs to focus on regional history because Mexico had yet to develop a truly “national history.”39 Auspiciously, the publication of Luis González’s Pueblo en vilo in 1968 (the same year of the tragic denouement of the student movement, which Wnally interred the myth of the institutionalized revolution), a historical narrative of the small village of San José de Gracia, irrevocably fractured the credibility of centralist histories and sparked a renewed interest in regional history. The latter developed in the 1970s with the expansion of university education in the provinces and the classiWcation of regional archives. Constituting a veritable boom by the 1980s, new regional histories tended to concentrate on northern and central Mexico during the revolutionary and postrevolutionary periods. Regrettably, nineteenth-century historiography was still “held hostage to the Revolution of 1910,” as it was considered mainly as the precursor to that historical watershed. Fortunately there has been a recent surge not only in nineteenth-century studies but also in the “discovery” of “the unknown Mexico” of the south and southeast,40 as the present study demonstrates. Thus I designate the lens of southern regional history as The View from the South, borrowing it from an article by William B. Taylor entitled “Landed Society in New Spain: A View from the South” (1974). Since François Chevalier’s study on haciendas was fast becoming the standard for all Mexico, Taylor synthesized the very different land tenure and labor conditions in colonial Oaxaca in order to demonstrate the dangers of generalizations about New Spain.41 As I was also engaged in discovering 39. Cerutti, Burguesía y capitalismo en Monterrey, 10; Serrano Alvarez, “Introducción,” 20ff. 40. The Wrst quotation is from Wells, “Out from the Shadows,” 172–73, and the second from Martínez Assad, Sentimientos de la región, 63ff. See also Carr, “Recent Regional Studies,” Wasserman, “Provinces of the Revolution,” and Falcón’s prize-winning essay, “Las revoluciones mexicanas de 1910.” Founded in 1953, the Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana (hereafter INEHRM) had already begun the enormous task of sponsoring the history of the Revolution in each state of Mexico. See, e.g., Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana en Oaxaca. 41. In this article and, of course, in his now classic Landlord and Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca. See Chevalier, Land and Society in Colonial Mexico. I am grateful to Bill Taylor

Introduction

17

the multiplicity and diversity of situations in the south, it seemed Wtting to me to revisit this notion as both a tool and a title. The great advantage of a close study of one state (or region or locality) is that it magniWes processes to let us examine in detail not only how change takes place but its limits and constraints. In effect, The View from the South holds up a mirror to the dialectic of change and continuity in the nation as a whole. The focus on regional history enables us to understand not only how capitalism affects a society but also how that society engages and translates new forces and affects capitalism. This is why I prefer to speak of the spread of capitalist relations rather than the impact of capitalism and avoid the use of core/periphery models. Capitalism is not a force independent of the people who create, contest, resist, or appropriate it. Carol Smith, too, has exhorted anthropologists to discover and emphasize the dialectic between local and global factors. She underscored the human aspect, how real people, in her case indigenous people of Guatemala, make their own history and are ultimately responsible for the dynamic capitalism acquires in speciWc regions.42 The present study humanizes the abstract forces of capitalism and nation building by portraying the struggles of real people, elites, middle sectors, working classes, and indigenous ethnicities alike.

Unequal and Uneven Development In his study of slavery as social death, Orlando Patterson reminds us that “all human relationships are structured and deWned by the relative power of the interacting persons.” Therefore, historical process is always conditioned by unequal access to economic, political, and social power and the relations of domination that derive from this inequality. Since the colonial for agreeing to my use of his subtitle. This choice is also heavily inXuenced by having lived so long in southern regions (Oaxaca, Florida, and Kentucky) and my association with colleagues in U.S. Southern and Appalachian History at the University of Kentucky. Steve Stern once suggested that we look at Latin America with “peripheral vision,” but that approach puts us back in the core/periphery binary. See Stern, “Feudalism, Capitalism.” 42. See Cardoso and Faletto on the “internalization of the external” in Dependency and Development in Latin America. Carol Smith underlines the steadfast cultural resistance and heterogeneous local responses to capitalism, declaring that “it would be difWcult to sustain the position that Guatemala turned out the way it did because global capitalism needed that particular pattern.” Smith, “Local History in Global Context,” 193–96, 224–26.

18

Introduction

period, the spread of capitalism in Latin America has been highly uneven and unequal, marked by waves of prosperity and decline. William Roseberry imagined it as an “ongoing process, a series of encounters . . . in unevenly developing spaces and shifting centers and peripheries.”43 The challenge for scholars has been to convey that unevenness; for instance, the increasing differentiation in economic and social spheres exempliWed by the growth of the international division of labor and of boom-and-bust cycles of particular commodities and their impact on speciWc regions. It placed particular regions of Oaxaca within the larger processes of the concentration of capital, investment of foreign capital, and connections with world markets, while others remained on the margins. This economic surge intensiWed capitalist pressure on natural resources and forced villages to Wercely defend their access to elements vital to their survival. Social differentiation between and within social classes, ethnic groups, regions, and local communities increased considerably as the gap between rich and poor widened. Drawing together the focus on the process of state formation and uneven and unequal development of the regions of Mexico also elucidates how and why control of the state apparatus shifted from the hands of southern Liberals to those of the center and the north even before 1910.

Ethnicity, Race, Class, and Gender The gendered subtext of modernity lodged in the false dichotomy of male and female spheres led Catherine Scott to critique theories of modernization. Modernity, with its drive toward technological and material progress and the development of civil society, posed a “set of masculine challenges.” Portrayals of tradition rest on essentialized gender differences. Today, the conceptualization of tradition, of the rural village, is based on the depiction of Third World rural women as backward, religious, family- and community-oriented, illiterate, and domestic, not to mention 43. Patterson also notes that while freedom and slavery exist at the extreme poles of the distribution of power, they are dialectically joined (Slavery and Social Death, 1, 5, 13ff.). Roseberry suggested that we stress uneven development and “uneven proletarianization” and repudiate historical models based on polarizing oppositions such as core and periphery in “Beyond the Agrarian Question,” 351, and Anthropologies and Histories, 198–24. See also Wolf, Europe and the People Without History, 303–4.

Introduction

19

irrational, childlike, dependent, and close to nature.44 As we shall see, these binaries have resonated mightily for the indigenous population of Oaxaca. Although nineteenth-century liberals in Mexico and Latin America were obsessed with the question of race, for many years twentieth-century historians (writing about the nineteenth) failed to see that indigenous face in the mirror. Captivated by nineteenth-century peasant rebellions and the emergence of industrial working classes, they relegated it to the past, except for an occasional rebellious Maya or Yaqui. While historians of colonial Mexico have long recognized the magnitude of race and ethnicity and have made notable progress in this area (perhaps due to more complete Spanish archives), only recently have the histories of women, indigenous ethnicities, and Afro-Mexicans in the nineteenth century been investigated (gays and lesbians are still waiting). Yet Oaxaca was so overwhelmingly indigenous (three quarters of the population) and rural, that except where speciWc exceptions are made, in the present study indígena (which refers to both the indigenous person and the descriptive adjective) and campesino (peasant) are synonymous unless otherwise speciWed.45 Ethnicity must be viewed as a crucial and independent factor of social analysis and cannot be simply reduced to class, as has so often been the case in Mexico, especially for the study of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Ana María Alonso agrees that class can no longer overdetermine 44. Therefore, the challenge of modernization theory was to transform Mexico into a rational, industrial, efWcient, urban, and future-oriented society, in short, into a society based on order and progress. See Scott, Gender and Development, 5, 24, 124ff. See also Talpade Mohanty, “Cartographies of Struggle,” and “Under Western Eyes”; and Parpart and Marchand, “Exploding the Canon.” Catherine Scott calls for a gender-sensitive reformulation of development theory, but postdevelopment writers such as Arturo Escobar (Encountering Development) and Gustavo Esteva of Oaxaca, who is adviser to various indigenous autonomy movements, including the EZLN in Chiapas, are convinced that racist and hierarchical binaries are so intrinsic to development theories that they cannot be reformed. See Esteva, “Development.” 45. See Van Young, “Moving Toward Revolt,” 182. I prefer the term campesino to peasant. In the 1960s Ralph L. Beals explained that “in Oaxaca peasants or campesinos (the local term), include farmers, artisans, rural workers, and traders living in rural settlements. . . . These communities exhibit similar social and cultural characteristics but have distinctive local variations and highly differentiated economies. In many ways Oaxaca peasants do not conform to most of the vague typological deWnitions of the term peasant. They are peasantlike, but they differ markedly from the peasants of Haiti or China or medieval Europe” Beals, “Oaxaca Market Study Project,” 28–29.

20

Introduction

other forms of oppression now that gender and ethnicity have emerged as independent variables that are “key to both the construction of the body personal and the body politic.”46 In the conXict between the Mixtec campesinos of Santa María Yucuiti with the Hacienda de la Concepción, the former were continually subjected to racist denunciations as “tenacious indios,” yet they confronted the hacienda’s administrators, the local jefe político, and even the national government as peasants Wghting for their lands, not as Mixtecs. In contrast, the Chatino uprising against the 1896 tax law knotted issues of class, race, ethnicity, and gender as it threatened a caste war. The focus on the interplay of these factors permits a comprehension of the dynamic and shifting relationships of power and identity in local, regional, state, national, and global contexts, the changing ways social groups engaged with those distinct but interrelated levels of politics.

Questions of Sources The present study, then, is the Wrst to examine the Liberal period as a whole in the history of Oaxaca. The two groups that confronted each other militarily during the 1910 Revolution produced two currents of interpretation of Oaxacan historiography. On one side were the PorWristas, those who defended PorWrio Díaz, and Soberanistas, those who supported the conservative Sovereignty movement (1915).47 Opposed to them were the anti-PorWristas and Carrancistas, who represented the Constitutionalist wing of the Revolution and demonized the PorWriato, portraying the Revolution as the savior of Mexico.48 Almost all writers belonged to one of these two camps before 1975 and many of the works 46. I have made this case previously in “Maderismo or Mixtec Empire?” See also Alonso, “Gender, Power, and Historical Memory” 404–5. Alan Knight is also convinced that social classes cannot be neatly equated with revolutionary factions, although class analysis is still important to the interpretation of the Revolution. Knight, “Weapons and Arches,” 57. 47. See Salazar, “Historia de Oaxaca”; Esteva, Nociones elementales; Taracena, Apuntes históricos and PorWrio Díaz; Brioso y Candiani, Evolución del pueblo oaxaqueño; Ibarra Díaz, Memorias del General de División; Vásquez Cruz, Soberanía. On June 3, 1915, in the middle of the Mexican Revolution, the Conservative elites of Oaxaca reassumed state sovereignty, hoping to sit out the Revolution and maintain control of their state. Oaxaca had made use of this stratagem in 1823, 1858, and 1871. This measure is not equivalent to a declaration of independence. 48. Tamayo, Oaxaca en el siglo XX; Rosas Solaegui, Oaxaca en las tres etapas and Un hombre en el tiempo; Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana en Oaxaca.

Introduction

21

were memoirs and biographies, although probably all of them would consider themselves Juaristas. This study owes a great debt to three narrative historians (who are no longer with us) who pioneered the trails of nineteenth-century Oaxacan history. Jorge Fernando Iturribarría, a lawyer and politician and the most proliWc of the three, wrote in his leisure time. His general history of the state contained the longest piece on the PorWriato (twenty-seven pages) in print until I began to publish my research. Regrettably, his extremely detailed four-volume history of the nineteenth century ends in 1877, the very Wrst year of Díaz’s rule. Although he strove for objectivity in documenting Oaxacan participation in the Revolution, his sympathies for the PorWriato and Sovereignty are evident.49 The writings of Basilio Rojas followed the zigzag pattern of his life. From a powerful coffee-producing family of Miahuatlán, he initiated his political life as an ardent PorWrista and closed the revolutionary period as the apologist for Oaxaca’s most authentic revolutionary Wgure, General Manuel García Vigil. The Wrst two volumes of his autobiography are peppered with picturesque anecdotes of life in PorWrian Oaxaca. His study of coffee in Oaxaca, his Efemérides (the daily syntheses of the newspaper El Avance), his personal archives, to which he generously provided me access, and personal interviews have been priceless sources. Don Angel Taracena, although born in Tabasco, moved to the city of Oaxaca at an early age. His published works, engaging interviews, with colorful reminiscences of PorWrian Oaxaca, his gift of access to unpublished manuscripts, and his gracious hospitality were invaluable. Personally, I have spent many years working in the public and private archives of Oaxaca, organizing, classifying, and researching documents. There is, as I reiterate throughout this study, copious documentation on the lives of elites but not on the indigenous campesinos. Shahid Amin described the problems scholars who study nonliterate peoples face: “The speech of humble folk is not normally recorded for posterity, it is wrenched from them in courtroom and inquisitorial trials. Historians have therefore learned to comb ‘confessions’ and ‘testimonies’ for their evidence, for this is where peasants cry out, dissimulate or indeed narrate.” It is necessary, therefore, to “interrogate the interrogators” so as not to 49. See Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia; Historia de Oaxaca, vol. 4; and Benito Juárez PorWrio Díaz. I was able to interview Rojas and Taracena, but Iturribarría died a few months before I began my research.

22

Introduction

reproduce their discourses.50 Although Oaxacan villages tended to be so consistently litigious that one might question whether testimonies were always “wrenched” from them, the objectives mediating them have led scholars to debate whether we can actually “get in touch with the consciousness of insurgency when our access to it is barred thus by the discourse of counter-insurgency.” This “prose of counter-insurgency” not only denies autonomy of action and a speciWc consciousness to the rebels but also criminalizes their protest, turning it into rural banditry and barbarous attempts to thwart civilization. Although Ranajit Guha believes that most historians, conservatives and radicals alike, have been complicit with the code of counterinsurgency, he thinks that the evidence is to be found where the insurgents and their activities are described.51 This approximation requires that we constantly read in reverse and contextualize all voices in terms of power relations. Often what is not said is as revealing as what is, so we must read between the lines and seek exclusions. The power of the actions of indigenous Oaxacans can often be evinced through the very stridency of elite condemnations of them. Moreover, I do not propose to speak for indigenous campesinos or to rescue their voices from oblivion (that would be, as Michael Taussig has warned, “the ultimate anthropological conceit”),52 nor do I suggest that this is an objective account, recognizing, along with Nancy Fraser, that all interpretations are active “interventions.”53 My Zapotec colleague, 50. I have yet to work in judicial archives, where many scholars have now found abundant material on Mexico’s popular classes. That is my next project. Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory, 1. Colonial historian William B. Taylor noted that “most peasant and Indian history deals with relations between Spanish rulers and Indian subjects or Wlters the subjects’ behavior through the words of Spanish witnesses or of the Indian elite. This is the outsider’s view of rural society, telling us more about Spaniards and rulers than about peasants.” Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 3. On the use of sources, see Vaughan, “Cultural Approaches,” 302ff.; Wells and Joseph, Summer of Discontent, 14. 51. Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency, 15, and “Prose of CounterInsurgency,” 63ff. For Latin America, see Joseph, “On the Trail of Latin American Bandits,” 24, and Van Young, “To See Someone Not Seeing,” 152ff. Florencia Mallon reminds us that there is “complicity, hierarchy, and surveillance within subaltern communities, . . . no subaltern identity can be pure and transparent; most subalterns are both dominated and dominating subjects,” “Promise and Dilemma,” 1511. Raymond Buve criticizes the various stereotypes and ideological distortions associated with the Mexican countryside, particularly the victimized peasant and the rapacious hacendado, in “Paisaje lunar.” 52. Michael Taussig quoted in Escobar, Encountering Development, 153. 53. Fraser, Unruly Practices, 7. As Linda Alcoff reminds us, “Who is speaking, who is spoken of, and who listens is a result, as well as an act, of political struggle.” Alcoff, “Problems of Speaking for Others,” 15.

Introduction

23

Víctor de la Cruz, would vigorously agree and is justiWably wary of nonindigenous ethnohistorians who write for their own interests. He admonishes us that history has served the Mexican elite “to expropriate with impunity the prestigious past of the defeated” for their own beneWt while they continue to oppress the direct descendants of those civilizations.54 Scholars produce competing interventions, heavily inXuenced by their personal history and circumstances, in their attempt to reconstruct history. Consequently, I have also relied on my personal knowledge, particularly having lived in the city of Oaxaca, spent extended periods of time with family in the town of Tlacolula in the Central Valleys, and made innumerable trips to various regions of the state over more than three decades for research, archival organization, and pleasure. For a semester in both 1982 and 1983, as a professor at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa campus, in Mexico City, I was commissioned to work in the Oaxacan state archives, organizing, classifying, and researching primary documents. During other semesters, I directed teams (integrated by UAM students and technical workers from the national and state archives) in the organization and classiWcation of the state archives and various municipal archives in Oaxaca. Above all, for more than two decades I have been privileged to learn from my collaboration with a remarkable team of Oaxacan social scientists.55

Organization of the Book This monograph is divided into three main parts: (I) Infrastructure and Economics, (II) Society: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender, and (III) Political Culture and Revolution. The focus is interdisciplinary and each part builds upon the previous ones. Part I introduces the complex economic, geographical, and ethnic map of Oaxaca. Its four chapters, which trace the interactions among the construction of infrastructure, the privatization of land, the expansion of commercial agriculture and mining, and the 54. De la Cruz, “Indigenous Peoples’ History,” 33. 55. I directed the organization of the series of Gobierno and Fomento in the Oaxacan state archives and the municipal archives of Tlacolula, Teotitlán del Valle, Ixtlán, Tehuantepec, Juchitán, Pinotepa Nacional, and Jamiltepec, in addition to reporting on others (such as Tuxtepec) for the state. I identify this group in the acknowledgements. Together we have published La Revolución en Oaxaca: 1900–1930 and Diccionario histórico de la Revolución en Oaxaca.

24

Introduction

introduction of foreign capital and technology, destroy prevailing stereotypes of Oaxaca. For example, the rapid dissemination of coffee increased pressure for privatization, especially in regions with railroad connections. By the turn of the century, coffee had facilitated the rise of not only large, modern haciendas but also small to middling farms, and had become an important cash crop for indigenous villages. The result was an increasingly unequal distribution of wealth within and among the regions of the state. In Part II, divided into three chapters, I assess how these economic transformations reshaped Oaxacan society, stimulating greater differentiation within and among existing groups in addition to creating new social groups. Waves of immigrants mixed with older elites to reconWgure the ruling class, while an increasingly restless middle class grew in the city and countryside. Commercial agriculture resulted in the rise of an important rancher class in rural Oaxaca, while the mining boom encouraged some expansion in the service sectors. Two chapters of this section explore the usos y costumbres of the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca in order to deconstruct the unproblematic “Indian” into various ethnicities and to underscore changes occurring within and among communities. The analysis of the various strategies used by indigenous peoples serves to “demystify” romantic versions of indigenous resistance while it illustrates how they negotiated modernity and participated in state formation. In Part III, I connect the changing political culture and power relationships within the state with the economic and social transformations discussed in previous sections. I trace the interaction of local, regional, state, and national politics during the presidencies of Benito Juárez, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, and PorWrio Díaz. Conservative, moderate, and radical groups increasingly disputed the interpretation of liberalism. The investigation of the internal mechanisms of local and state politics uncovers the many compromises politicians negotiated with their clienteles and the limits of political liberalism. I bring to light the growing opposition to the dictatorship in several regions, in addition to various revolutionary movements, especially in the geographically peripheral regions of the state. Two decades of research have contradicted the portrayal of Oaxaca as an insigniWcant backwater under these Liberal governments and compelled me to rethink its history. This new version refutes stereotypes as it upsets the linear narration of modern Mexico, laying bare the collusion between universal and modernizing narratives with top-down elite

Introduction

25

projects of nation building. It presents the process of state formation whereby the social classes and ethnicities of Mexico participated in the shaping of the state and national identity. It does not pretend either to tender apologies or make denunciations. Scoundrels and their victims abound in history, but in general campesinos and middle sectors were not saints, nor were elites incarnations of Satan. The subtitle, The View from the South, can be understood on various levels. It is the view of Mexican history from the south that disrupts dominant histories of the Centro. It is the history of the demise of the south as a political power during the late PorWriato in the wake of the rise of the north achieved by the Revolution. In a broader sense, it sheds new light on the engagement and confrontation of peoples of the southern regions of the world at the local level with the expansion of imperialism of the north. As a history of the indigenous south, it holds accountable histories written by modernizing elites that represent indigenous peoples as stagnant and frozen in time. This is especially signiWcant given the recent mobilization of the indigenous peoples of Latin America, including those of Oaxaca, in defense of their culture and regional autonomy. The View from the South provides the vital background for a comprehension of these contemporary struggles.

1 “A Thousand Whistles” The mountain range, which in Puebla and Mexico raises its peaks to immense heights, swoops down and extends into the state of Oaxaca, occupying almost all its territory, which causes its extreme ruggedness. Few and narrow valleys are found and from the tops of the mountains beautiful Xats can be seen which geographers call mesas. From the PaciWc coast, they rise up to a height of nearly 4,000 meters above sea level, to immediately dip into the waters of the Mexican breast. In Oaxaca, the Sierra Madre divides into two branches, which go in separate directions. One heads directly north under the name of the Sierra de Cuasimulco, and the other passes near the city called San Felipe del Agua towards the northwest, and doesn’t meet up again with the other range until they reach the state of Colima. . . . The numerous mountains of this state are covered in their majority by thick and somber forests, a multitude of canyons, and all over an abundant and robust vegetation. The rivers, sometimes quiet and gentle and others torrential, their banks carpeted with an inWnity of plants and bright Xowers, all contribute to surprising landscapes, wild scenes that are characteristic of America. —Padre José Antonio Gay, Historia de Oaxaca

Regional and Ethnic Realities Crossed by three cordilleras—the Sierra Madre Oriental, the Sierra Madre del Sur, and the Sierra Atravesada—Oaxaca’s rugged geography has left an indelible imprint on its history. Lakes are few and a handful of rivers are serviceable for irrigation but not for navigation, with the exception of the Papaloapan. The mountainous terrain, as described above by Padre Gay in 1881, accounts for the physical isolation of many areas and the existence of distinct ecological niches within short distances of each other. It also I am grateful to Mark Summers, Paul Vanderwood, and Sandra Kryst for comments on earlier versions of this chapter.

30

Infrastructure and Economics

helps to explain the survival of the state’s sixteen indigenous ethnic groups and its division into seven distinct geographical regions (see map 1).1 Although the regional history of Mexico has come of age in the last thirty years, studies are vague about deWning their terms and most often geographic or geo-economic criteria are employed to deWne regions. Eric Van Young whimsically observed, “regions are like love—they are difWcult to describe but we know them when we see them.” But we see them as we construct them, because we already have the organizing criteria of the subject of our investigation in mind. That is why they are “good to think,” because they permit us to discern “the relationship among three key variables in the human sciences: sociocultural change, space, and time.” Regions are not micro, as small as villages or towns, nor are they macro, as large as nations.2 They are not static and Wxed but produced historically by the interactions of multiple factors, social, political, cultural, economic, ecological, and geographic. Their “identity is shaped and reproduced by the memories, rituals, and networks of their inhabitants.” Regionalism has been an enormously powerful force in Mexican history and continues to be to this day.3 The dynamics of change and continuity within Oaxaca are incomprehensible without the knowledge of these regions. While the geographical analysis and division of the state into regions is a matter of continuing debate,4 the present study uses the geographic 1. Gay, Historia de Oaxaca, 1. Oaxaca continued to expand its territory with the settlement of various territorial disputes with neighboring states during the period under study. In 1877 it had 86,950 square kilometers; by 1910 it had grown to 92,442. González Navarro, Estadísticas, 9. 2. Van Young also stresses the “plasticity” and “historicity” of regions that are constantly negotiated “by actors within and without.” Van Young, “Are Regions Good to Think?” 3–7; Martínez Assad, Sentimientos de la región, 75. Gilbert Joseph has also observed that “regional history has become a shorthand for all subnational history.” “Introduction,” 3–5. 3. Roberts, “Place of Regions in Mexico,” 228ff. 4. The Oaxacan engineer and geographer Jorge Tamayo carried out various studies on this theme in the 1940s and 1950s, and Reyna Moguel outlined differing possibilities of regionalization in the 1970s. See Tamayo, Geografía de Oaxaca and “Realidad geográWca,” 270–82; Moguel, Regionalizaciones. In his geography of the state (Nociones elementales), Cayetano Esteva presented the districts in alphabetical order, while Alfonso Luis Velasco organized the districts by those bordering on Puebla, Veracruz, and the interior districts. Velasco, Geografía y estadística. Today, most researchers work with eight regions. Demonstrating the processual aspect, the new Sierra Sur region, located between the Central Valleys and the Costa, developed only after the Revolution with the creation of the new districts of Zaachila and Sola de Vega. Today the Sierra Juárez has reverted to its original name of Sierra Norte.

Table 1.

The Seven Regions of Oaxaca

Regions

Districts

Area in sq. km. 1910

Cañada

Teotitlán Cuicatlán

2,316 2,025

Papaloapan

Tuxtepec Choapan

Costa

Isthmus Sierra Juárez Mixteca

1910 Population

Population per sq. km.

Indigenous Groups

40,282 26,494

17.4 13.1

Mazatec, Chinantec, Nahuatl, Cuicatec, Chinantec

5,073 4,533

48,325 14,283

9.5 3.2

Zapotec, Mazatec, Chinantec, Nahuatl Zapotec, Chinantec, Mixe

Pochutla Juquila Jamiltepec

4,569 5,660 4,097

27,666 25,659 46,524

6.1 4.5 11.4

Zapotec Zapotec, Mixtec, Chatino Mixtec, Amuzgo

Tehuantepec Juchitán

6,153 11,133

44,699 64,652

7.3 5.8

Zapotec, Chontal, Huave, Mixe Zapotec, Huave, Mixe, Zoque

Ixtlán Villa Alta

2,555 3,276

32,224 43,044

12.6 13.1

Zapotec, Chinantec Zapotec, Chinantec, Mixe

Nochixtlán Coixtlahuaca Teposcolula Huajuapan Silacayoapan Tlaxiaco Juxtlahuaca Putla (1907 ff.)

4,262 1,018 1,698 4,362 2,430 2,301 (before 1907) 4,198

43,004 18,650 31,936 55,094 32,922 68,866

10.1 18.3 18.8 12.6 13.5 29.9

30,754

7.3

Mixtec, Cuicatec Mixtec, Chocho, Popoloca, Ixcatec Mixtec, Chocho Mixtec, Popoloca Mixtec Mixtec, Triqui Mixtec, Triqui Mixtec

Central Valleys

Total

Centro Etla Tlacolula Yautepec Ocotlán Zimatlán Ejutla Miahuatlán

923 1,999 2,140 6,243 1,028 2,741 1,485 4,225

73,416 36,059 43,979 27,100 39,648 51,910 26,735 46,473

92,443

1,040,398

79.5 18.0 20.6 4.3 38.6 18.9 18.0 11.0

Zapotec, Mixtec Zapotec Zapotec Zapotec, Chontal, Mixe Zapotec Zapotec, Mixtec Zapotec Zapotec

11.25 (avg.)

Sources: División territorial de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos correspondiente al Censo de 1910. Estado de Oaxaca (Mexico City: OWcina Impresora de la Secretaría de Hacienda, 1918); Memoria Administrativa presentada por el gobernador interino, Lic. Miguel Bolaños Cacho al H. Congreso del Estado (Oaxaca: Imprenta del Comercio, 1902); Jorge L. Tamayo, “La realidad geográWca del Estado de Oaxaca,” Ingeniería 17, no. 9 (1943): 269–82; Geografía de Oaxaca (Mexico City: Editora de El Nacional, 1950).

34

Infrastructure and Economics

division in seven regions outlined by Jorge Tamayo and commonly used during the PorWriato: the Sierra Juárez, the Cañada, the Central Valleys, the Isthmus, the Costa, the Mixteca, and the Papaloapan River Basin (the basic statistics of each appear in table 1). These seven geographical regions were composed of twenty-six political-administrative districts (map 1), although Juxtlahuaca was suppressed in 1907, while the new district of Putla was created (map 4, in the following chapter, shows the districts as they were in 1907). These districts were further divided into 516 municipios (municipalities), which in turn were subdivided into 630 agencias municipales (municipal agencies) by 1910.5 A short introduction to each region, as it was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, follows. Th e Ca ñ a da

The districts of Teotitlán and Cuicatlán form the mountainous Cañada (canyon), the most northern of Oaxaca’s regions, bordering on the state of Puebla. The subtropical climate is warm and humid, well suited to the sugarcane Welds and coffee estates on the mountain slopes. Teotitlán del Camino is the small administrative seat along the railroad of the district of the same name, yet nestled in the highlands further east is that district’s commercial hub, Huautla, with a population of eight thousand, many of whom are indigenous Mazatecs. Cuicatlán is the economic center of the next district, home to a small but active Methodist church.6 t h e c e n t r a l va l l e ys

The Cañada leads into the Central Valleys region, the upper drainage basin of the Atoyac River, which enjoys a temperate climate. Approximately seven hundred square kilometers, it is composed of three valleys (Etla, 5. Three more districts were created after 1912 (Zaachila, Sola de Vega, and Mixes) and Juxtlahuaca was reinstated after having been suppressed, changing the conWguration of the map of districts and making a total of thirty districts today. Putla and Jamiltepec are considered part of the Mixteca. Jamiltepec is known as the Mixteca Costa but for geoeconomic purposes is considered part of the coastal region. Yautepec spans both the isthmian and central region. I present my own geoeconomic regionalization in the following chapter. Municipalities are roughly equivalent to counties in the United States. See Tamayo, “Realidad geográWca”, 271–72; Tamayo, Geografía de Oaxaca; División territorial, 1910. 6. The geographical information on the seven regions of Oaxaca is taken from Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca; Esteva, Nociones elementales; Velasco, Geografía y estadística; División territorial, 1900 and 1910.

“A Thousand Whistles”

35

Zimatlán, and Tlacolula) at whose crux is located the Centro district, home to capital city of Oaxaca. Traditional crops (maize, wheat, beans, agave, chile, and squash) predominate on haciendas, ranchos, and indigenous communal lands, while in the more fertile valleys of Zimatlán and Etla sugarcane is also cultivated.7 The stately city of Oaxaca (with a population of 38,000) sits at the heart of the Central Valleys, surrounded by majestic mountains. Called Huaxyacac (place of the huaje, a tree that yields edible beans) by the Aztecs, it originated as a fort during the Mexica Empire’s expansion into Zapotec and Mixtec territory in the late Wfteenth century. The Spanish founded the royal city of Antequera (Oaxaca’s colonial name) at Huaxyacac and the Crown granted its charter in 1532. It became an important commercial and administrative center on the royal highway to Central America. With exquisite Spanish colonial architecture built with the state’s green stone (volcanic tuff), it has been called the “emerald” city.8 During the PorWriato, it was the bustling center of a mining boom. the sierra juárez

The rich veins of the Sierra Juárez’s mountains fed that boom. Closely linked to the Central Valleys, this region was dependent on it for foodstuffs, especially maize, given the low productivity of its rough landscape. Composed of the districts of Ixtlán and Villa Alta, it is inhabited by hardy Zapotec serranos (highlanders). This region of tierra fría (colder temperate climate) was known as the Sierra Norte until it was renamed in honor of the state’s illustrious hero. The Sierra Juárez lies in the center of the mountain ranges of southern Mexico, bordering on the west with the Cañada, on the north with the Papaloapan region, on the east with the Isthmus, and on the south with the Central Valleys. Landlocked, it has no borders with other states or access to railways. Well timbered and watered to support its many mining camps, concentrating plants, and stamp mills, the Sierra Juárez was only accessible on foot, by horse, or by mule train.

7. Centro, Etla, Tlacolula, Ocotlán, Zimatlán, Ejutla, Miahuatlán, and Yautepec were Central Valleys districts in 1910. 8. I am grateful to Angeles Romero, Martha Rees, and Mark Winter for the information on volcanic tuff.

36

Infrastructure and Economics

t h e pa pa l oa pa n r i v e r bas i n

To the north, separated from the rest of Oaxaca by the majestic peaks of the Sierra Juárez and Sierra Mixe mountain ranges, lie the tropical lowlands of the districts of Tuxtepec and Choapan. The Papaloapan river basin region, a large web of rivers and streams, dominates the southeastern portion of the state of Veracruz and the northeastern sector of Oaxaca. Home to the indigenous Chinantecs, where women wear dazzling hand-woven red huipiles (long blouses), this is tierra caliente (hotlands), scorching and insalubrious. These extremely fertile lands produce tropical crops, especially tobacco but also coffee, rubber, sugarcane, cotton, maize, and beans. The more important commercial centers in the district are Ojitlán and Ixcatlán. The district of Choapan borders on the Sierra Juárez and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and was even more remote than Tuxtepec. Also populated by the indigenous Chinantecs in addition to Zapotecs and Mixes, the nearest commercial outlet for its rich but isolated lands was Playa Vicente in the state of Veracruz. the isthmus

To the southeast of the Papaloapan, the large districts of Juchitán and Tehuantepec form the Oaxacan portion of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Populated by various indigenous ethnicities—Zoques to the east, Mixes to the northeast, Huaves on the coast—the great majority are Isthmus Zapotecs who display perhaps the strongest ethnic pride of all the indigenous groups in Mexico; rich and poor alike take pride in their Zapotec language. The isthmian districts have tropical climates in the lowlands in addition to cooler, hilly areas and dense forests, which are home to wild boar, deer, even lions and tigers. These districts enjoyed much prosperity thanks to their haciendas, plantations, and ranches devoted to sugarcane, coffee, citrus fruits, and rubber, as well as maize, beans, chile, and livestock. The Isthmus’s hills and mountains are covered with trees of Wne woods, especially mahogany and cedar, and hide veins of gold and silver. Various “urban” centers have developed along the railroad: Juchitán, San Jerónimo, Ixtaltepec, Tehuantepec, and the newly constructed port of Salina Cruz. The istmeños (inhabitants of the Isthmus) have historically been great traders, especially the women, who run the large and bustling markets.

“A Thousand Whistles”

37

t h e c o s ta

The Costa (the coastal region not including the Isthmus’s coast) begins at the border with the district of San Carlos Yautepec near the Copalita River to the southeast and stretches up to the border with the state of Guerrero to the northwest. It is composed of three districts: Pochutla, Juquila, and Jamiltepec. Along a coastline fringed with luxuriant vegetation and cocoa palms, hot tropical plains rise up to meet the more temperate, coffee-producing highlands of Pochutla and Juquila, which border the Central Valleys. Here numerous coffee Wncas (estates) with hundreds of thousands of trees thrive. The most northwestern of these districts, Jamiltepec, is also considered part of the Mixteca region, the Mixteca Costa, and borders on the recently formed (1907) Mixtecan district of Putla. The 533 kilometers of Oaxaca’s PaciWc coastline have numerous bays, lagoons, and inlets hosting natural ports such as Huatulco (no longer in use but important in Cortés’s time), Puerto Escondido, and the exquisite natural grandeur of the lagoons of Chacahua. During the period under study, two ports functioned in this region, Puerto Angel in Pochutla and the improvised customs section at Minizo in Jamiltepec. the mixteca

The Mixteca region lies to the north of Jamiltepec, divided between the Mixteca Alta (high) and the Mixteca Baja (lower). From the Costa one travels up into the steep mountain passes of tierra fría to the montaña, (the cold highlands) of the Mixteca Alta. The Mixteca region gets its name from the pre-Columbian Mixtec civilization, whose artwork, gold jewelry, crystal goblets, and brightly hued codices are treasured by museums the world over. Tlaxiaco, a city of more than eight thousand inhabitants (with another four thousand in the outlying villages) in 1910, functioned as its commercial hub and manufacturing center. PorWrians liked to call it their “little Paris” thanks to its lively commerce and cultural development. The districts of Tlaxiaco, Teposcolula, Coixtlahuaca, Nochixtlán, and Huajuapan compose the temperate and extremely rugged Mixteca Alta region, which has the greatest concentration of mountains in the state. It is a major producer of wheat, maize, and wool; sheep and goat herding here date from colonial times, and it is believed that this region is

38

Infrastructure and Economics

enormously rich in coal and iron. The town of Huajuapan de León, a rising commercial center, is beginning to rival Tlaxiaco. It is the Wrst urban center one encounters when entering the state from the Mixteca region of the state of Puebla, and carries on a brisk trade with the cities of Puebla and Tehuacán. The districts of the more isolated Mixteca Baja, Juxtlahuaca and Silacayoapan, raise livestock and are reputedly rich in minerals. Additionally, there are regions that overlap the territory of two or more states. These regions are economically integrated and have geographical, social, and cultural similarities. Oaxaca and Veracruz share two distinctive and strategically important regions: the Papaloapan River basin and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The Mixteca region encompasses extensive territory in the states of northern Oaxaca, southwestern Puebla, and southeastern Guerrero. The Costa Chica (little coast) includes the coastal area of the district of Jamiltepec in Oaxaca and the districts of Abasolo and Allende in Guerrero (the Costa Grande, its large coast, spans an area from Acapulco to the northwest). This is one of the rare areas of AfroMexican population. The history of Oaxaca must also be understood in the light of these dynamic interstate regions. For example, as we shall see, close relations between regions spanning two states inXuenced positions taken vis-à-vis the Revolution. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the great majority of Oaxaca’s population belonged to indigenous ethnic groups, which lived in two thousand pueblos and ranchos dispersed throughout the mountainous terrain of the state. In 1878, of the state’s 753,540 inhabitants, approximately 77 percent were indigenous, 18 percent mestizo, 3 percent black, and 2 percent white. In 1890 the indigenous population was 78 percent and the black population 1.25 percent. By 1902 the population had increased to 948,633 persons, while the indigenous sector had declined to 66 percent of the total, of which 30 percent were Zapotec and 22 percent Mixtec. Unfortunately, PorWrian statistics are unreliable. For example, according to a set of statistics from 1878, only 12 percent of the Mixtecan district of Coixtlahuaca was considered indigenous, yet according to another set from 1890, indigenous peoples accounted for 97 percent of the population of the district!9 Without information on the differing criteria 9. González Navarro, “Indio y propiedad en Oaxaca,” 176; Memoria Administrativa, 1902. These sources did not list white population except in a few districts. In 1900 the population of Oaxaca was 948,633, of whom 468,065 were male and 480,568 female, living

“A Thousand Whistles”

39

used by census takers, this disparity is impossible to explain. Historically, ethnicity has been measured by mono- or bilingualism in Mexico. If 76 percent of the population in 1878 used indigenous languages, the 1910 census recorded that 49 percent of the state’s 1,040,398 inhabitants spoke in indigenous tongues. The 1910 percentage is suspiciously low, especially since the 1930 census, coming as it did after the major literacy crusades of the 1920s, found 56.5 percent of the population still speaking indigenous languages. Thus, during the period under study, the vast majority of the population, somewhere between 65 and 80 percent, can be considered indigenous. Nonetheless, the change in statistics between 1878 and 1910 does indicate some acceleration of the process of mestizaje and acculturation.10 Sources also differ on the exact number of indigenous ethnicities in Oaxaca during this period, enumerating between fourteen and seventeen groups (see map 2). Constructed with data from Governor Miguel Bolaños Cacho’s 1902 Memoria Administrativa, table 2 lists fourteen indigenous ethnic groups, of which two groups, Zapotecs and Mixtecs, composed 51.5 percent of all indigenous population in Oaxaca at that time. Unfortunately, the Ixcatecos were omitted by the report and the Popolocas were erroneously equated with the Chochos. Although very close geographically, the Chochos and Popolocas are distinct groups with different languages, both related to Mixtec. Geography and ethnicity, then, are essential to the comprehension of Oaxacan society, economics, politics, and culture. As John Coatsworth noted, “Mexico is a nation where geography conspires against economics.”11

in 1,123 municipios and agencias municipales. Oaxacans were divided between 8 cities, 4 colonias (colonies), 49 villas (towns), 6 barrios (neighborhoods), 993 pueblos (villages), 151 haciendas (landed estates), 909 ranchos (ranches), 49 rancherías (a small population, often located on a hacienda or ranch), and 59 cuadrillas (type of ranch on the Costa). División territorial, 1900. 10. Statistics from González Navarro, “Indio y propiedad en Oaxaca,” 176–78, División territorial, 1910; Bartolomé and Barabas, “Pluralidad desigual en Oaxaca,” 25. 11. The Popolocas inhabited the most northeasterly section of the Mixteca, spanning the border with Puebla. Directly south lived the Chochos, and a little to the east, the Ixcatecos. See Barabas and Bartolomé, “Notas,” xiv, and Bartolomé and Barabas, “Pluralidad desigual en Oaxaca,” 18ff. See Winter, “Dinámica étnica,” 104–5. Coatsworth, Impacto económico 1:17.

Table 2.

“Indigenous Races” of the State of Oaxaca, 1902

Indigenous Group

Population

1. Zapotec

Region and Districts

Language

283,590

Central Valleys, Pochutla, Juquila, Sierra Juárez, Choapan and part of Tuxtepec, Isthmus

Numerous dialects: Valleys, Tehuano of Isthmus, Nexicho of Sierra, Cajonos in Villa Alta, and Miahuatlán.

2. Mixtec

204,678

Western and southern regions of the state, part of the districts of the Centro, Zimatlán, and Juquila, Jamiltepec, Nochixtlán, Teposcolula, Coixtlahuaca, Huajuapan, Tlaxiaco, Juxtlahuaca, Silacayoapan. Also extends into the states of Puebla and Guerrero.

Mixtec and its dialects, Amuzgo, Chocho, Trique, Cuicateco, Mazateco, and Ixcateco.

3. Trique

2,214

In the heart of the Mixteca, in the districts of Tlaxiaco and Juxtlahuaca, in the highlands in small ranches and villages.

Trique is related to Mixteco.

4. Amuzgo

2,013

Majority live in villages in the district of Jamiltepec, which borders on the state of Guerrero.

Amuzgo is related to Mixteco.

5. Chocho

2,601

Also known as Popolocas. Live in districts of Coixtlahuaca and Teposcolula (and in parts of the state of Puebla). Known for their production of palm hats.

Language related to Mixteco.

6. Cuicatec

13,891

Districts of Cuicatlán and Nochixtlán

Language related to Mixteco.

7. Mazatec

36,979

Districts of Teotitlán and Tuxtepec

Language related to Mixteco.

8. Chinantec

18,051

Live in the region known as the Chinantla, which includes part of the districts of Tuxtepec, Ixtlán, Choapan, Cuicatlán, Teotitlán, and Villa Alta.

Language related to Zapotec.

Table 2.

(continued)

Indigenous Group

Population

9. Nahuatl

Region and Districts

Language

4,592

Live principally in district of Teotitlán and part of Tuxtepec.

Language is Nahuatl.

10. Chontal

9,948

Live in the district of Chontal belongs to the Yautepec and a few villages Nahuatl family of of the Tehuantepec district. languages. Group has no relation to any other in the state of Oaxaca and is thought to be related to the Chontales of Tabasco.

11. Huave

3,486

Live in the pueblos of San Language belongs to Mateo, Santa María, San the Maya family. Francisco, and San Dionisio del Mar in the districts of Juchitán and Tehuantepec. No relation to any other race in the state of Oaxaca. This ethnic group comes from the south, possibly from Nicaragua.

12. Zoque

1,913

Inhabit the Chimalapa pueblos of the district of Juchitán. Related to the Ayook or Mixe group.

Language is of the Zoqueana family.

13. Ayook or Mixe

31,736

Inhabit parts of the districts of Yautepec, Tehuantepec, Juchitán, Villa Alta, and Choapan. Father Gay, the historian, suggested that the Mixes are of European origins, and the common folk of Oaxaca believe the Mixes are related to the Germans.

The Ayook race undoubtedly comes from the south, and its language has notable analogies with the Lule language. Only group unwilling to learn Spanish, and although they are merchants and travelers, they use their own language.

14. Chatino

12,499

Live in the district of Juquila.

Language is related to Zapotec.

Source: Memoria Administrativa presentada por el gobernador interino, Lic. Miguel Bolaños Cacho al H. Congreso del Estado (Oaxaca: Imprenta del Comercio, 1902).

“A Thousand Whistles”

43

“The Herald of Peace and Prosperity” After achieving Independence from Spain in 1821, coup d’états, barracks revolts, civil wars, peasant rebellions, and foreign interventions marked Mexican society for the next Wfty years. But the period was not one of anarchy, as the PorWrian historian Justo Sierra later branded it. Those painful years saw the construction of the Mexican nation-state and Mexican liberalism. They contributed to the gradual process of the formulation of a republican mentality and the concept and exercise of citizenship. They also witnessed numerous efforts to stimulate the exploitation of the nation’s vast natural resources in order to trigger economic prosperity. Yet not until the last French soldiers left Mexican soil and the puppet emperor Maximilian was defeated and executed in 1867 could the triumphant Liberal Party turn its full attention to the enactment of growthoriented policies. Since Independence, Mexican liberals had developed economic programs that they hoped would sweep away obstacles to capitalist growth. Beginning in the 1850s, the Liberal Reform, captained by Oaxacan-born Benito Juárez, moved to destroy the vestiges of colonial privilege, especially those of the Catholic Church and the army, in order to clear the Weld for the triumph of liberalism. But it was the Oaxacan general PorWrio Díaz, Juárez’s one-time protégé, who brought the liberal program to fruition after 1876.12 Because both foreign and native entrepreneurs were loath to invest in a country with an uncertain political future, political stability emerged as the sine qua non of economic growth. Mexicans longed for peace, and who better to achieve it than PorWrio Díaz, the enormously popular military hero of the War of French Intervention? Díaz strove to bring peace by advancing the centralization of government and suppressing civil rights and political activity. As one member of his last cabinet remembered, “Tranquility replaced agitation and order supplanted anarchy. Moldy weapons were exchanged for working tools. The rhythmic explosion of steam and the mysterious Xuids of electricity silenced the burst of gunpowder, 12. Sierra, Political Evolution, 175ff.; Hernández Chávez, Tradición republicana, 17ff. As shall be demonstrated in the following chapters, the continuity between the economic policies of Juárez and Díaz was far greater than historians have usually recognized. See Cosío Villegas, Llamadas, 106, 20–21; San Juan and Velázquez, “Estado,” 277–79; on Liberal programs before the 1850s, see Hale, Mexican Liberalism.

44

Infrastructure and Economics

political conXict gave way to the struggle for economic growth.”13 The Díaz government’s slogan was poca política y mucha administración, which translates as short on politics and long on administration. Another motto of the Pax PorWriana heralded order and progress. An increasingly powerful state, observing only the formalities of democracy, assumed an interventionist policy and became a major promoter of economic growth. Mexican elites opted for a moderate version of liberalism, whose policies were “adopted and adapted” in a “Xexible” manner according to the “needs of the export oligarchy, foreign investors and state ofWcials.”14 At the same time, Díaz’s policy of conciliating former rival political factions, of both Liberals and Conservatives, fostered the consolidation of the Mexican ruling class, now allied in the struggle to create a “modern” Mexico. Mexico elected PorWrio Díaz constitutional president in 1877, just as the international depression of the 1870s was coming to an end. The world market was expanding vigorously and imperialism was on the rise. The modernization project of Mexican liberals coincided directly with these major processes unfolding on the international scene. Providing political stability and establishing positive conditions for foreign capital, “Díaz assigned a role to foreigners in Mexico’s internal economy which has very few parallels in the history of modern states.”15 Benito Juárez had already foreseen the necessity of inviting foreign investors to Mexico, convinced that after so many years of civil strife, domestic resources would not sufWce. Juárez declared that he would “welcome” enterprising foreign capitalists who sought to develop the industries of Mexico. Yet it was only in the Díaz era that Mexico witnessed a massive inXux of foreign investment. Although the total is subject to debate, it has been calculated that U.S. investment grew from 200 million dollars in 1897 to close to 1,100 million in 1911; Great Britain’s from 164 million in 1880 to more than 300 million in 1911, and France’s from less than 100 million in 1902 to close to 400 million in 1911 (all in dollars). The Díaz regime’s encouragement of peace, political centralization, elite conciliation, and economic expansion transformed the Mexican 13. Cardoso, “Características fundamentales,” 267–69; Vera Estañol, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, 7. 14. Topik, “Economic Role of the State,” 141. 15. Vernon, Dilemma of Mexico’s Development, 42–43. Steven Topik and Allen Wells have dubbed this period, in which world trade grew tenfold, the “second conquest of Latin America.” See “Introduction,” 2.

“A Thousand Whistles”

45

economy and society.16 This process, as it developed in local and regional settings in Oaxaca, is examined in the next four chapters. Regional native elites, who owned the land and natural resources, were willing to work with foreign investors as partners or intermediaries because the latter had the vital “capital and technology” to develop those resources. Elite intermediaries smoothed over the process of obtaining land, dealing with local ofWcials on legal and tax matters for foreign capitalists while the ofWcials took a part of the Wnancial beneWts of those investments. While in Mexico City elites acted mainly as intermediaries, in the north they functioned not only as intermediaries but also as entrepreneurs and “active partners with foreign investors.”17 This was also the case for Oaxaca, where industry was on a much smaller scale.

A PorWrian Panacea: Railroads Before foreign capital could be enticed to invest substantial sums of money in Mexico, however, an infrastructure would have to be built. In 1876, when Díaz assumed power, the nation counted no more than 640 kilometers of railroad track, yet by 1910 more than 19,000 kilometers of rails crisscrossed the nation. Railroad freight rates by wagon transport, which were ten cents per ton-kilometer in 1878, fell to only 2.3 cents per ton-kilometer in 1910. Railroads “expedited the process of political centralization . . . the railway’s multidimensional impact became both tool and symbol of modernization in late nineteenth-century Latin America, 16. Pletcher, “México,” 570; Vernon, Dilemma of Mexico’s Development, 42–43. Ciro Cardoso laid out the basic processes that combined to produce capitalist development in Latin America, considering them representative of the “profound socio-economic signiWcance of the PorWriato.” He included the expansion of exports and foreign investment, the introduction of electricity as a source of energy, the import of modern machinery for industrialization, technical advances in mining and other areas, the monetization of the economy, the development of high Wnance and banking, the consolidation of the city of Mexico as the economic and political center of the nation, the abolition of internal customs and certain taxes, and the construction of a railroad network that fostered the beginnings of a domestic market and facilitated direct linkage to the U.S. economy. The social characteristics included profound socioeconomic contradictions, persistent “archaic” elements alongside the most modern innovations, the destruction of numerous artisan sectors by industrialization, violent regional disparities, enormous concentrations of wealth secured by high levels of repression, and boom-and-bust cycles that culminated in the decisive crisis of 1907–1910. Cardoso, “Características fundamentales,” 268–69. 17. Mark Wasserman noted this conXuence in his study of PorWrian Chihuahua, Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution, 84–86.

46

Infrastructure and Economics

not only linking peripheral regions more closely to the international market, but also coupling semiautonomous patrias chicas to an evolving nation-state.”18 Thus was Oaxaca further integrated into the nation. Foreign interests constructed most railroads in Mexico allied with some national capital and with generous subsidies from federal and state governments. The construction of this infrastructure was vital to foreign capital in order to move products, machinery, and primary materials in and out of the nation. Some observers have charged that railroad lines were routes designed to pillage Mexico’s natural resources. Certainly foreign interests did not intend to develop an internal market but to provide transportation for exports, a fact reXected by differential pricing policies. Agricultural export products paid 40 to 76 percent less per kilometer than those destined for the domestic market on the Ferrocarril Interoceánico in 1893, and 44 to 50 percent less in 1899.19 But, in spite of this, new urban centers appeared along these railroad tracks, and formerly isolated regions with no cheap means of transportation were now linked not only to Mexico’s ports but also to the Centro. A domestic market developed, spurred by the commercialization and the monetization of the economy. PorWrio Díaz’s hopes for Mexico and his patria chica soared on the inauguration of the Mexican Southern Railway in 1892: “a thousand whistles in their peculiar hymns to industry will alert the world that today this young nation, after earning its deserved warrior reputation, applies its aptitudes and all its energies to these labors and invites all intelligent and able-bodied men anxious to work, with no distinction as to nationality or race, to share with us the riches that our prodigal land provides for all.”20 And Governor Emilio Pimentel of Oaxaca asserted in 1904: “The future of the people is based on good means of 18. Wells, “All in the Family,” 159–60. James Scobie estimated that in Latin America railroads moved products thirty times faster than previous means of transportation and reduced freight costs to one-twelfth of the cost of oxcarts and mule trains. Scobie’s “Growth of Latin American Cities, 1870–1930” is cited by Wells, ibid., 159–60. In his counterfactural study, Coatsworth also calculated the direct social savings due to railroad freight to be at least $126.7 to $135.8 million, i.e., 10.8 to 11.5 percent of the GNP in 1910. He noted that these minimum estimations are more than two times higher than maximum computations of direct social savings attributable to railroads in the United States, Russia, and Great Britain, Impacto económico 1:46–47, 124, 135, and 2:84–85. 19. Arthur P. Schmidt Jr.’s “The Railroad and the Economy of Puebla and Veracruz, 1877–1911: A Look at Agriculture” is cited in Coatsworth, Impacto económico 2:11. 20. Quoted in Vía Ancha (n.d.). The warrior reputation refers to Mexico’s defeat of Maximilian and the French intervention in 1867. Herrera Canales, “Circulación,” 439. See Gill, Ferrocarrileros, 9, on “the original sin”; see also the opinion of Valadés and Busto cited in Valadés, PorWrismo 1:301, 307, 313.

“A Thousand Whistles”

47

communication. A town, isolated by difWcult terrain, impossible to the point of reclusion of providing the necessary means for advancement, must remain during all the period of that isolation, living in misery and scarcity. Railroads, good roads, and telegraph cables impose themselves on all the villages that desire to participate in the commerce of all civilized centers.”21 Nineteenth-century Latin American liberals equated the expansion of infrastructure with the advance of capitalism and civilization, and rural and indigenous peoples with barbarism. Echoing this theme, Díaz afWrmed that “the whistle of the locomotive in the deserts where before only the savage howl was heard, is the herald of peace and prosperity.” Liberals honestly believed that modernity was the only possible and desirable future for their nation, that those indigenous elements still clinging to tradition would be eliminated, as education transformed them into acculturated Mexican citizens. This struggle emerged as not only economic and political but also social and cultural. As early as 1848, Governor Benito Juárez protested that Oaxaca’s isolation posed a formidable barrier to its economic growth and the export of its products. The lamentable condition of the state’s roads convinced him to propose the introduction of railroad lines, but to no avail. Governor Francisco Meixueiro denounced the same situation in 1879: Oaxaca could produce agricultural crops for export but the lack of an internal market and means of transportation kept its agriculture stagnant.22 It was clear that Oaxaca lacked the necessary capital and technology. Ironically, in 1864 the French constructed the Wrst major road connecting the city of Oaxaca with Tehuacán in the neighboring state of Puebla, in order to facilitate their conquest of Mexico. But even with this highway, the trip from Oaxaca through Tehuacán to Orizaba, Veracruz, still took sixteen days. Governments dedicated considerable efforts to improving the road but it was not until August 1874 that a stagecoach service was inaugurated. Even then it took three days to travel from Oaxaca to Tehuacán and Wve days from Orizaba to Oaxaca; the latter trip cost an expensive $18.23 Hopes were extraordinarily high on November 13, 1892, when President Díaz inaugurated the Mexican Southern Railway in the city of Oaxaca. Addressing an audience replete with cabinet members and the 21. Memoria Administrativa, 1904, 8. According to PeñaWel, in 1906 92 percent of Oaxacans lived in huts. Cited in Valadés, PorWrismo 2:110. 22. See Vía Ancha (n.d.); Cassidy, “Haciendas and Pueblos,” 31–32. 23. Berry, Reform in Oaxaca, 88. Iturribaría, Historia de Oaxaca 4:140–43.

48

Infrastructure and Economics

Oaxacan elite, he saw Oaxaca standing at a “watershed”: “No longer a time of bitterness and blood, but of prosperity. . . . The inauguration of this potent factor of commerce and production will from today on link this country, privileged by nature with rich and abundant fruits and energetic, intelligent and hard-working men, with the commercial world. . . . What does the depreciation of silver matter to us if our coffee, our cocoa beans, our coal and our iron can attract the world’s gold?”24 All was optimism in a nation so blessed by nature. The PorWrians never tired of singing the praises of Mexico as Baron von Humboldt had done on the dawn of the century.25 The enormous obstacles facing the development of Mexico seemed to pale before their enthusiasm: Mexico and Oaxaca needed only railroads, technology, and capital, the PorWrian panaceas, to bring prosperity. Certainly these elements were vital, but they would not be enough. Thus it was that the railroads and other infrastructural works served the export– led growth based on PorWrian policies of economic liberalism at the same time that they contributed to the process of nation building. Access to natural resources and transportation for a growing number of exportable products, both mineral and agricultural, dictated the construction of infrastructure. If Oaxaca had no railroads at all in 1876, by 1910 the state’s railroad systems had 1,829 kilometers of track (see table 3 and map 3). Nevertheless, this process did not bring about the internal economic integration of the state of Oaxaca, as it left important areas outside of the railway network: the Sierra Juárez, the Mixteca, and the Costa. At the same time, it failed to connect the city of Oaxaca with the Isthmus, a rich and prosperous region. The lack of a railroad linkage only encouraged the already Werce separatism of this area. The dream of transforming the Mexican Isthmus of Tehuantepec into a commercial bridge between Europe, America, and Asia would remain just that.

The Mexican Southern Railway The history of the construction of the Mexican Southern Railway provides an excellent example of the conXuence of trends that further integrated Mexico into the world marketplace. The desire of the liberal elites to 24. Cited in Vía Ancha (n.d.). 25. See Humboldt, Ensayo político.

“A Thousand Whistles”

49

bring material progress to Mexico combined with the growing interest of foreign investors to exploit the nation’s natural resources and markets. Along with mining, railroad construction heralded the entry of the Wnancially ambitious trusts into Mexico and led to a fast and furious railroad boom. Governor José Esperón granted the Wrst authorization to build a railroad to Oaxaca in 1875, but planning was interrupted by the Tuxtepec revolt the following year. In March 1878 the federal and state governments signed a contract to initiate the construction of a railroad, originating at a point near Huajuapan de León or Tehuacán, passing through the city of Oaxaca, and terminating at Puerto Angel on the PaciWc coast. Neither of these two projects ever got off the ground. In August 1880 Table 3.

Railroads of Oaxaca Track Width (meters)

Railroad

Concession

Mexican Southern

April 21, 1886

.914

Puebla to Oaxaca

366.60

San Marcos Tlacotepec to Huajuapan

April 20, 1891

.914

San Marcos to Huajuapan

119.78

Veracruz and Isthmian

March 15, 1898

1.435

Córdoba to Santa Lucrecia

420.85

Ejutla

April 16, 1898

.914

Oaxaca to Ejutla, spur to Zimatlán

70.00 3.64

Tehuantepec Nacional

Nov. 11, 1900

1.435

Salina Cruz to Puerto México

304.00

Pan American

Sept. 11, 1901

1.435

San Gerónimo to Arista and border with Guatemala

458.10

Mexican Southern to Tlacolula

Feb. 17, 1904

.914

Oaxaca to Tlacolula

32.70

Mexican Southern – Agrícola de Oaxaca

June 1, 1906

.914

San Juan Chapultepec to Ayoquezco

26.13

San Jerónimo Taviche to San Pablo Huistepec

Nov. 20, 1906

.914

S.J. Taviche to S. Pablo Huistepec

27.20

Total Kilometers

Route

Kilometers

1,829.00

Source: Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas, Cuadros estadísticos de ferrocarriles (Mexico City: Talleres GráWcos de la Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas, 1912).

“A Thousand Whistles”

51

Díaz’s government signed another contract with the state of Oaxaca, which projected a line from Antón Lizardo on the Gulf of Mexico to Huatulco or Puerto Angel on the PaciWc Ocean, passing through Quiotepec in the Cañada and the city of Oaxaca. No construction was initiated here either.26 The scarcity of funds available to the state government posed a major obstacle: it was clear to elites that they needed not only foreign technology but also foreign capital. Governor Francisco Meixueiro charged Matías Romero, Oaxacanborn Mexican ambassador to the United States, with the task of wooing investors to the Oaxacan railroad project. As Juárez’s minister in Washington during the French intervention, he had established important contacts with U.S. leaders. Romero was reputed to be “the foremost ofWcial Mexican supporter of American capital during the Wrst half of the Díaz period.”27 After his retirement from the presidency, Ulysses S. Grant took a twoyear world tour. Arriving in Veracruz in February 1880, he was welcomed by old friends, Matías Romero and General Ignacio Mejía (both Oaxacan politicians and entrepreneurs). During Grant’s visit, Romero and Eulogio G. Gillow (a member of Díaz’s inner circle and later bishop of Oaxaca) asked him to promote “the advantages of railroad building in Mexico among American capitalists,” and Grant seemed to be amenable to this project. In September 1880 Romero informed Grant that he had obtained a concession from the federal government for a track from Mexico City to the city of Oaxaca, in addition to lines going to both coasts, which 26. Via Ancha (n.d.); Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca, 4:143. Allen Wells afWrmed that during the opening years of the PorWriato, minister of Development Vicente Riva Palacio gave state authorities “the right to award speciWc railway concessions at their discretion. But in 1880 his successor, Carlos Pacheco, gave federal authorities the right to grant concessions to both foreign and national promoters, a move designed to lend greater coherence to national railway policy and encourage foreign investment.” Wells, “All in the Family,” 173–74. However, all concessions required approval by Congress until 1899, when the new railroad law was passed. Although this law eliminated congressional approval, it instituted much stricter conditions for the granting of concessions. Coatsworth, Impacto económico 1:50. 27. Pletcher, Rails, Mines, and Progress, 13–14. A native of the city of Oaxaca, Matías Romero was a member of the “Generation of 1857” of statesman who all studied at the ICA in the city of Oaxaca prior to that date. Other members were Marcos Pérez, José María Díaz Ordaz, PorWrio Díaz, Manuel Ruiz, José Justo Benítez, Ignacio Mariscal, Félix Romero (no relation), and Jose María del Castillo Velasco. See Iturribarría, Generación oaxaqueña. Matías Romero wrote various books and innumerable journal and newspaper articles in both Spanish and English in his quest to bring material progress to Mexico, which for him meant attracting U.S. capital. He died in 1898. See Bernstein, Matías Romero.

52

Infrastructure and Economics

included the promise of a federal subsidy of approximately $7,000 per kilometer.28 Romero left Mexico in early October to travel to New York. He arrived at an auspicious time, for interest in Mexican railroads had grown with Díaz’s recent concessions to foreign companies to construct the Mexican Central Railroad and Mexican National Railroad, which would connect Mexico City with the border. Romero spoke to various North American entrepreneurs about his Oaxacan proposal and it caught the attention of Jay Gould, who was vying with Collis P. Huntington of the Southern PaciWc for control of the railroads in western Texas. Gould saw the Oaxacan project as a strategic move into Mexico, which at the same time would bring him into alliance with Grant. Romero hosted a banquet at Delmonico’s in New York on November 11, 1880, for twenty railroad entrepreneurs. Both he and Grant gave speeches lauding the future of Mexican railroad investments, which promised to open the gates to Mexico’s mineral and agricultural wealth. A committee was formed to discuss possibilities, yet hopes of cooperation from these capitalists for railroad construction soon evaporated, although Gould remained interested. Grant and Romero then organized their own company and transferred the Oaxacan concession to it. Because the state of New York did not have a law authorizing charters for overseas companies, Grant and Gould persuaded the state legislature to pass a special law for their project. On March 23, 1881, the Mexican Southern Railroad Company was incorporated in New York City and capitalized at 1 million dollars. Three days later, this new company received control of Romero’s concession, and two days after that Romero and Grant left for Mexico City to get a formal concession from the Mexican government, they hoped with higher maximum freight and passenger rates than stipulated in the original concession (a major condition set by the U.S. stockholders). On their arrival, the Oaxacan delegation to the Mexican Congress offered a banquet in Grant’s honor. But then anti-imperialism raised its head to accuse Grant of attempting to annex Mexico to the United States The ex-president responded that his sole interest was friendly commerce.29 28. Pletcher, Rails, Mines, and Progress, 157–60. 29. Grant was president, General Grenville M. Dodge, representing Jay Gould, was vice president, and Russell Sage became treasurer. Matías Romero, PorWrio Díaz, Francisco Meixueiro, Miguel Castro, Fidencio Hernández, and Ignacio Mariscal, all Oaxacans, were among the company’s shareholders. Pletcher, Rails, Mines, and Progress, 160–63; Via Ancha

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53

The Mexican Congress then discussed the concession and the company received its increase in maximum rates. Subsequently, the administration of president Manuel González reformed this concession so that the line would now pass through the cities of Mexico, Puebla, Oaxaca, and Antón Lizardo, and continue on to the border with Guatemala. Seeking further funding, the company commissioned Robert Gorsuch, a U.S. railway engineer, to write a publicity pamphlet in support of this project. Lauding Oaxaca’s agricultural and mineral wealth, Gorsuch cited the opinion of U.S. ambassador Foster that this state’s coffee was “equal to the best known in any country.” Gorsuch also included Romero’s “opinion” that a well-managed plantation might yield 100 percent on the original investment. In June 1881 surveying for construction of the railroad Wnally began.30 Coincidentally, Secretary of State Frelinghuysen named Grant and William H. Trescot to negotiate a new commercial treaty with Mexico at this same time. Matías Romero and Estanislao Cañedo were Mexican representatives to the treaty commission. Journalists criticized this combination, suggesting that it would lead Grant and Romero to take personal advantage of any agreements they might reach. Nevertheless, the new treaty was signed on January 20, 1883. Twenty-eight categories of Mexican products would be freely admitted to the United States, mostly farm or forest products such as coffee, fresh tropical fruits, henequen, and ixtle Wbers. Conspicuously many of these products came from the state of Oaxaca. Mexico, in turn, lifted tariffs from seventy-three categories of U.S. products, mostly machinery and manufactured goods. Textiles were speciWcally left out in order to protect Mexico’s own nascent industry. (n.d.); Calderón, “Ferrocarriles,” 536–37; see Romero, Informe, 37, and Chassen [ChassenLópez], Regiones y ferrocarriles. 30. Most concessions offered government subsidies, but this one did not and the company believed other restrictions should be softened in compensation. Grant even dreamed of extending this railroad throughout Central America and convinced President Justo RuWno Barrios to give him a concession for 250 miles of railroad in Guatemala. In June 1881 one of Gould’s agents also obtained a concession to run a track from Laredo to Mexico City through Ciudad Victoria in eastern Mexico, with branches to Tampico and Veracruz. Originally designated the Mexican Oriental, Interoceanic, and International Railroad Company, it was combined with the Oaxaca line in May 1883, all under the name Mexican Southern Railroad, and was to be integrated into the Gould network in the southwestern United States. Pletcher, Rails, Mines, and Progress, 163–71; Vía Ancha (n.d.); Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 242–43. Romero himself had invested in coffee plantations in Chiapas and Oaxaca and would soon publish a book on the subject. See Romero, Estado de Oaxaca.

54

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Opposition to the treaty was strong on both sides of the border, postponing ratiWcation for a year. The New Orleans Picayune charged that the treaty favored the Mexican Southern Railroad, precisely the line that would transport products such as sugar, hemp, tobacco, fruits, vegetables, and wood, which would compete with now unprotected products produced in the southern United States. In contrast, the Mexican press feared that the treaty would endanger Mexico’s sovereignty and its Xedgling industries, many also now unprotected from U.S. competition. Despite ratiWcation, this treaty died with the election of Grover Cleveland in 1884.31 Although three or four engineering surveys of the Oaxacan route were commissioned by the company, capital failed to Xow across the border to Wnance the enterprise. Then, duped by shady business associates who milked him for all he was worth, Grant went bankrupt in 1884 and had to sell off his house, furniture, and trophies in order to raise money. People from all walks of life sent him aid, including a 1,000-dollar check from Matías Romero, but the partnership ended here. The general Wnancial crisis of 1884 in the United States destroyed hopes of procuring further capital for the Mexican Southern. The company declared bankruptcy in March 1884, and on May 29 the federal government cancelled the concession. Still not a single kilometer had been constructed.32 Hopes rose again on April 21, 1886, when the federal government gave a concession to Governor Luis Mier y Terán, to construct a less ambitious, narrow-gauge railroad between Tehuacán and the city of Oaxaca. The national press applauded the governor’s effort to rejuvenate the project. In January 1888 José Fenelón received approval for a contract to build a line between the state capital and Tehuantepec. Three months later a new decree merged both concessions and generously conceded an annual subvention of 8 percent of the value of the track for Wfteen years. But once again the lack of Wnancial resources delayed the project; this time the state government fell short. Finally, the British Wrm of Read and Campbell came to the project’s rescue, attracted by the reputed mineral wealth of the state. Sir Rudston Read formed the Mexican Southern Railway Company, Limited, in London on May 27, 1889, obtaining a new 31. Mexico’s list also permitted the entry of certain minerals such as coal, crude petroleum, quicksilver, and sulfur (all needed for the growth of industry) and a few agricultural products. Cited in Pletcher, Rails, Mines, and Progress, 173–77. 32. Ibid., 179–80; Vía Ancha (n.d.); Calderón, “Ferrocarriles,” 536–37, 560–61; Romero, Informe.

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55

concession similar to the previous one. The Mexican government maintained the annual 8 percent subsidy for Wfteen years; equivalent to $2,400 per kilometer, the Wnal subsidy totaled $11,248,805.15.33 After fourteen years of negotiations and setbacks, construction began on September 9, 1889. Builders Wnished the Wrst stretch of track between Puebla and Tehuacán, 127 kilometers, on January 13, 1891. By August of that year, they had concluded the section continuing to Tecomavaca, another 97 kilometers. By the end of 1891 the track had arrived at the Tomellín canyon, and Dick Kee established his restaurant there. The Mexican Southern Railway’s 367 kilometers of track reached its terminal in the city of Oaxaca at the beginning of November 1892 and was inaugurated by President Díaz himself,34 who proclaimed his great hopes for Oaxaca’s future. Stalwart promoter of Mexico’s riches, John Southworth included this description of his trip on the Mexican Southern Railway in his 1901 volume on Oaxaca, for the collection México Ilustrado. one descends into one of the most beautiful canyons of Mexico and one can congratulate oneself on having made the trip to Oaxaca if only for the chance to admire the magniWcent panoramic views which the journey has to offer. The lowest point on the trip is Quiotepec at 1,767 feet above sea level and the heat is so much stronger there than on the central meseta. In the 146 miles covered up to this station, [from Tehuacán] the track has descended 5,324 feet or a little less than a mile!!! From Quiotepec, the line begins to go up again in the middle of cane Welds and all sorts of tropical verdure, until it reaches the peak at Las Sedas, 6,304 feet above sea level, where again it begins to descend. It then traverses one of the most exquisite valleys of the Mexican Republic until it arrives at the city of Oaxaca, situated at a height of 5,067 feet. The travelers cannot help but observe that the condition in which the tracks are kept is Wrst rate.35 On the way up to Las Sedas, the train stopped at Dick Kee’s celebrated restaurant (the only one on the line) and Southworth was delightfully 33. See Ferrocarril de Oaxaca; Vía Ancha (n.d.); Calderón, “Ferrocarriles,” 560. See also Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 243. 34. Ibid.; Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 60. 35. Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 58.

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surprised to read a menu that offered Chinese, Mexican, and American cuisine. The enterprising Mr. Kee explained that he owned a chili ranch in the district where he raised most of the restaurant’s needs, including chickens. If Southworth traveled on the weekend, he may well have made the acquaintance of members of the elite of the city of Oaxaca, who took the train to Tomellín just to feast at Kee’s. Now connecting Oaxaca to Puebla and El Centro, the success of the Mexican Southern Railway was immediate. In its Wrst year alone, it transported 143,037 passengers, the median trip being about 108 kilometers. Tickets were expensive: in 1893, a Wrst-class ticket from Puebla to Oaxaca cost $11.23, while second-class was $7.49 and third-class $5.61. In just three years, by 1895, the company began to show a proWt, which steadily increased.36 Soaring land prices and the multiplication of coffee Wncas and sugar mills backed by foreign, national, and Oaxacan capital reXected the considerable impact of the railroad on the Cañada region. By 1907 the increasing volume of freight rendered the existing number of railway cars insufWcient and extras had to be borrowed from the Interoceanic Railway and other companies. Given the scarcity of coal in Mexico and its importation at the beginning of the century, railroad companies investigated the possibility of changing over to petroleum as a fuel. The Sonoran Railroad and the Tehuantepec National Railway were among the Wrst to experiment with petroleum. The Mexican Southern Railway quickly followed suit and soon established an agreement with the English-owned Mexican Eagle Oil Co. of Pearson and Son to bring in petroleum from the Isthmus. This changeover to petroleum, a recently discovered fuel plentiful in Mexico, promised greater proWts.37 In January 1909 the directors of the company announced that they had concluded negotiations for purchase of the spurs of the Mexican Southern Railway, the Ejutla, the Agrícola, the Taviche, and the Tlacolula lines. In July of that year, it was announced that the company would be leased to the Interoceanic Railroad as of January 1, 1910, until the termination of its ninety-nine-year concession. Through this leasing arrangement, the 36. Via Ancha (n.d.); Periódico OWcial del Gobierno del Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca (hereafter PO), June 27, 1893. This narrow track was not quite as safe as Southworth would have us believe. Reports of accidents, especially derailments causing injuries and even deaths, were frequent. See, for example, El Imparcial, August to September 1907. 37. La Unión, Nov. 17, 1907; El Imparcial, Jan. 14, 1908.

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railroad passed into the control of Ferrocarriles Nacionales when the Mexican railroad system was consolidated by Treasury Minister Limantour.38

The Spurs of the Mexican Southern Railway In 1898 the concession for the Wrst spur of the Mexican Southern Railway was concerted for the construction of a narrow-gauge track, which spanned seventy kilometers from the city of Oaxaca to Ejutla. Built by Mexican railroad entrepreneur Luis García Teruel, it was inaugurated in August 1901. The Oaxaca & Ejutla railway traversed an important mining region of the Central Valleys. In February 1911 the manager of the Ejutla line, Mr. Orchard, was exploring the possibility of extending the line to Miahuatlán, but this project was suspended by the coming of the Revolution.39 The second spur from the Mexican Southern, built by the wealthy Spanish immigrant Wenceslao García, connected the city of Oaxaca with the town of Tlacolula, traversing another important mining region. Although the concession dated from February 1904, progress was slow and trains did not reach Tlacolula until 1910. On Jan. 1, 1907, construction began on the Ferrocarril de Oriente, which would link the El Tule station of the Tlacolula line with Magdalena Teitipac, in accord with the arrangements between Wenceslao García and Mr. Price, the new line’s owner.40 Thus, the smelter at Magdalena Teitipac would be joined to the main line of the Mexican Southern Railway. This spur was never Wnished because of the economic crisis, which hit in 1907. Various projects aimed at connecting the stations of the Oaxaca & Ejutla Railroad to speciWc mining camps in the Zimatlán and Ocotlán districts. Table 3 lists the spurs completed: the Agrícola de Oaxaca, the San Juan Chapultepec line (connecting the state’s largest smelter to the 38. Mexican Year Book (1909–10), 308; El Correo del Sur, Oct. 26, 1909; Vía Ancha (n.d.). See Coatsworth on the “Mexicanization” of the railroads, Impacto económico 1:59–60 and 2:77–79. 39. Its stations were Oaxaca, Coyotepec, Teruel, Zimatlán, Ocotlán, San Pedro, San Martín de los Cansecos, El Vergel, Bonequi, and Ejutla. Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 9; Mining World, July 3, 1909, 67; Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 23. The latter, based on a reading of the Oaxacan newspaper El Avance, provides a brief summary of each day’s news. 40. This line passed through the towns of Tlalixtac, El Tule, Abasolo, San Juan Guelavía, and Tlacolula. See PO, March 19, 1904; La Unión, Nov. 24, 1907.

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main line) to Ayoquezco in the district of Zimatlán, and the Taviche line. The construction of a railway, which would link the city of Oaxaca with San Jerónimo Taviche and San Pablo Huixtepec, would provide an outlet to Taviche, one of the most active mining areas. In July 1904 Gustavo P. Hubp obtained a concession for a line from Ocotlán to San Jerónimo Taviche, later canceled by the government for lack of compliance with contract stipulations. In March 1906 North American miner Charles Hamilton obtained a concession for the establishment of a railroad from San Jerónimo Taviche to San Pablo Huixtepec, passing through Santa Inés Yatzechi, which would include a steel bridge.41 In July 1907 Charles Hamilton and Henry Catlin escorted a group of United States capitalists about Oaxaca to investigate future investment possibilities, among them the purchase of the railroad lines of the Oaxaca y Oriente, Urbano y Agrícola, and San Juan Taviche. But the crisis of 1907 hit the railroads as well as mining and agriculture. J. A. Chisholm, general manager of the Mexican Southern Railway, took advantage of the crisis to expand the Southern’s control of feeder lines. He purchased the Agrícola line and the still uncompleted spur to San Juan Taviche. At the same time, he obtained the tram lines of the city of Oaxaca and the Oaxaca and Tlacolula line, which had only reached El Tule. These acquisitions permitted the Mexican Southern to complete the lines both to Taviche and Tlacolula.42 The Oaxaca-Taviche line experienced constant management problems. Popularly referred to as El Miserable (the miserable one), the tracks and bridges suffered from numerous defects and there were constant difWculties with the owner of the Oaxaca & Ejutla line because the lines crossed 41. By September of the same year the company had invested $331,385.54. PO, July 20, 1904; Mensaje, 1905, 70; Mensaje, 1906, 44–47. The question of the spurs of the Mexican Southern Railway is confusing because different names are used to refer to the same spurs. The March 20, 1910, edition of El Correo del Sur announced the inauguration of what it called the Ferrocarril Agrícola de Oaxaca (the spur connecting San Juan Chapultepec to Ayoquezco) but stated that it left Ocotlán to arrive in San Jerónomo Taviche; another spur, Hamilton’s, would go from Taviche to San Pablo Huixtepec. The map of this period shows the railroad starting in the city of Oaxaca and passing through San Isidro, Jalpa, Trinidad, Zimatlán, San Nicolás, San Pablo, Ocotlán, Guebesche, Cima into Apóstol (neighbor to Taviche) as a line distinct from that of Ejutla. 42. On July 28, 1907, La Unión editorialized: “We congratulate the active and entrepreneurial Mr. Hamilton for his brilliant initiatives which will always beneWt Oaxaca for the jobs it will generate and consequent monetary circulation it will stimulate.” See also Mining World, July 3, 1909, 67. The enterprising Charles Hamilton was to stay in Oaxaca, and after the Revolution he opened the Wrst Ford motor car distributor in the city.

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each other near Ocotlán. These disagreements caused suspension of service at times. Regrettably, the inauguration of the line took place after the heyday of Oaxacan mining had already passed. In 1909 all the spurs were absorbed by the Mexican Southern Railway, which was then leased to the Interoceanic Railway, which in turn was integrated into the Ferrocarriles Nacionales.43 The original project to extend the Mexican Southern Railway to Tehuantepec, joining it to the Tehuantepec National Railway and the Pan American Railroad, was revived from time to time. This connection would have provided an essential linkage and given cohesion to the state’s rail network. In July 1907 the project reappeared on the drawing board precisely to facilitate the transport of people and cargo between Mexico City and the now thriving port of Salina Cruz. This trip required several changes: setting out from Salina Cruz on the Tehuantepec National Railway, switching to the Veracruz-Isthmian Railway, and then transferring to the Mexican or to the Interoceanic to Mexico City, a total of four to Wve days of transport. A direct line from Salina Cruz to the city of Oaxaca would cut the time and distance considerably, routing the cargo directly through Puebla to Mexico City. Various North American investors were interested in this prospect, among them a Colonel Sweeny of New York, who made a reconnaissance trip to the area. Charles Hamilton was also involved in this enterprise and believed that construction would begin in 1907.44 Unfortunately, this vital line was never built. In addition, in the Wrst decade of the twentieth century in the city of Oaxaca and its environs, there were various railways moved by animal traction. “El Urbano” was 11.5 kilometers long and the Ferrocarril Urbano Oaxaca y Oriente, property of Wenceslao García, had an extension of 7.5 kilometers within the city. The Ferrocarril of San Felipe connected this village with the capital with 5.3 kilometers of track. The railway of the Oaxaca Smelting and ReWning Co. ran 4.3 kilometers from the city to the smelter.45 Another means of transportation used to supplement the railroads were portable Decauville tram tracks, narrow tracks of sixty to seventy 43. El Correo del Sur, March 20 and June 29, 1910. Mensaje, 1909, 26–27. The OaxacaTaviche line continued to function until 1992, but after the Revolution the track past Ocotlán on the Ejutla line was pulled up. 44. El Imparcial, July 17, 1907; La Unión, July 21, 1907. 45. See AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gobierno, Fomento, Estadísticas, Varios Distritos (hereafter Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.); División territorial, 1910.

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centimeters, which mines or haciendas throughout Mexico used to transport products via animal traction. The Ayotla Sugar Mill built a fourteenkilometer track (which probably ran to the Mexía station of the Mexican Southern Railway nearby), as did La Escuadra and San Francisco mines in San Juan Taviche. La Natividad, La Resurrección, and El Placer mining interests in Ocotlán actually used human traction to pull their trains.46

The Tehuantepec National Railway The history of the vision to connect the Gulf of Mexico and the PaciWc Ocean can be traced back to the suggestion of Charles V to Hernán Cortés that Cortés investigate this possibility. Cortés explored the Coatzacoalcos River to its source on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, believing that a strait uniting the two oceans would be of “immense utility” to his Imperial Majesty. Spanish ofWcials also displayed interest in the Isthmus, commissioning several reports and surveys. Viceroy Antonio M. de Bucareli ordered engineer Agustín Cramer to carry out just such a survey of the isthmus in 1774, which resulted in his strong recommendation to build a canal.47 After Independence, despite an 1824 government decree recognizing the desirability of interoceanic communication, federal authorities did not grant the Wrst concession until 1842, when President Santa Anna negotiated with Don José de Garay. The latter commissioned the Italian engineer, Gaetano Moro, to study the region. Throughout the nineteenth century, the project continued to spark interest among Mexicans and politicians and entrepreneurs from the United States, France, Great Britain, and 46. AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D. Other businesses that used these portable railways, generally to connect with the nearest railroad station, were the Tecomaxtlahuaca Sugar Mill, the Cía. Explotadora de Montes, S.A., and the Hacienda of Guendulain, all three in the Cuicatlán district, and the Natividad Mine in Ixtlán. Wells found that Yucatecan hacendados used Decauville tramways to connect to railroads (“All in the Family,” 178). During popular protest in the early days of the Revolution in 1911 in Yucatán, bands “raided the hacendados’ living quarters, then smashed henequen processing plants and tore up stretches of Decauville tram tracks in the best Luddite fashion.” Joseph, “Rethinking Mexican Revolutionary Mobilization,” 155. Portable tracks had become a symbol of the oppression brought on by capitalist agriculture. 47. Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas (hereafter SCOP), “Reseña histórica,” 21; Román, “Ferrocarril de Tehuantepec”; and “Tehuantepec Railway and Terminal Ports,” in the Engineer, Aug. 27, 1909.

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Italy, but concessions and studies accumulated with no tangible results.48 The Wrst railroad to link the Atlantic and PaciWc Oceans was Wnally built in Panama by a U.S. company in 1855. Nevertheless, the struggle to construct a canal persisted, with entrepreneurs vying to obtain concessions from the governments of Colombia (over Panama), Nicaragua, and Mexico. The increasing rivalry between the United States and Great Britain led to the signing of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850), which stipulated that neither of these nations could build a canal without mutual consent. By the late 1890s the United States had entered the international arena as an industrial nation ready to defend its prerogatives as the dominant power in the Caribbean and Central America. Great Britain, more concerned with its colonies and trade in Asia and Africa, eventually conceded hegemony in the area to the United States, as British and American policy objectives now seemed to coincide. When the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1902 superseded Clayton-Bulwer, Britain acquiesced in the United States’ desire to build a canal unilaterally. This feat would only be accomplished after Panama had been “liberated” from Colombia by Teddy Roosevelt’s “Big Stick” policy.49 The history of the construction of the Tehuantepec National Railway must be appreciated within this international context precisely because it entailed questions not only of local and national development but also of national security, as various foreign nations took an active interest in the project. The United States considered the route basic to its national security as well as to intercontinental and international commerce: control of this strategic isthmus should not fall into unfriendly hands. In 1872 Captain R. W. Shufeldt, chief of the navy’s reconnaissance expedition for the Isthmus and Nicaragua, had asserted that the proximity of each isthmian area to U.S. territory determined its importance in “an inverse relationship to its distance from that center.” He maintained that a canal crossing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec would be equivalent to a “prolongation of the Mississippi River to the PaciWc Ocean” and consequently turn the Gulf of Mexico into an “American lake.” This would permit the United States, in time of war, to control the Gulf and close it off to any potential enemies. The objective was to make “our territory circumnavigable,” as the Mexican isthmian project would bring New Orleans fourteen hundred 48. SCOP, “Reseña histórica,” 12–13. 49. See LaFeber, New Empire and Panama Canal; Guerra, Expansión territorial, 57ff.; Bemis, Latin American Policy.

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nautical miles closer to San Francisco than would the proposed canal route through Darien in the province of Panama in Colombia.50 Both houses of the U.S. Congress discussed the Mexican isthmian question a number of times, and various North Americans and Mexicans took part in concessions, which failed to come to fruition. Edward Learned of New York received the concession (in 1878) that actually constructed the Wrst thirty-Wve kilometers of track. Granted a subsidy of $7,500 per kilometer by the Mexican government, the latter canceled the concession in 1882. Captain James B. Eads, a civil engineer from the United States who surveyed the Isthmus in 1881, projected the construction of a ship railway but failed to Wnd sufWcient Wnancing. Delfín Sánchez, a Mexican engineer and speculator, took over the railway concession in 1882 with a contract stipulating that the line be completed and opened for trafWc by February 1885, but he too was unsuccessful. Colonel Edward Mac Murdo of London and New York then took up the challenge, but he died before much could be done and the Mexican government was forced into an expensive agreement with his widow in order to rescind the contract.51 Finally, Chandos Stanhope of Great Britain and E. L Carthell and J. H. Hampson of the United States acquired this concession. They began construction in February 1892 and promised to extend it to Salina Cruz by June 1893. This association collapsed with the withdrawal of Hampson and Carthell, leaving Stanhope hopelessly strapped for funds. He formed a new syndicate to build the last sixty kilometers in nine months (promised a payment of 1,113,035 dollars from the government). On September 11, 1894, the Wrst train traveled the 310 kilometers of track between Coatzacoalcos and Salina Cruz in ten hours and twenty minutes. But this railway line failed to meet either the expectations of the Mexican government or the demands of international commerce. The track could not sustain sufWcient weight and terminal ports had not been constructed to accommodate international maritime trafWc. In May 1896 Congress 50. SCOP, “Reseña histórica,” 14; Diario del Hogar, Nov. 12, 1904; Railroad Gazette, July 15, 1904. 51. Valadés, PorWrismo 1:183–85, 308–11; Molina Enríquez, Grandes problemas nacionales, 435, 443. “Tehuantepec Railway,” Engineer, Aug. 27, 1909, 205. Delfín Sánchez supposedly received government subsidies: $700,000 to start and later another $733,134 for material, work completed on 108 kilometers, and as an indemnization for having the contract canceled in 1888. John Coatsworth cited him as the type of railroad entrepreneur who collected concessions and spent his time convincing foreign capitalists of their plausibility. Sánchez never completed a single railroad, selling his concessions mainly to English investors. Coatsworth, Impacto económico 2:92.

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conceded to Díaz the faculties to lease the line to a company, which would overhaul the track (into standard gauge) and construct the vital port facilities.52 After all these frustrations, the track would have to be rebuilt. In 1891 the boom in railroad construction prompted the creation of a separate ministry, the Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas (Communications and Public Works) to oversee Mexico’s infrastructural development. In his 1898 report, Treasury Minister José Yves Limantour suggested that transportation construction be “harmonized” with the requirements of the export sector and the need to integrate the outlying regions into the nation. This resulted in the overhauling of existing legislation and a new railroad law in 1899. Limantour insisted that Mexico develop a rational policy toward the construction of infrastructure with clear goals and more stringent government supervision. This redeWnition of policy on the national level coincided with the plans for the reconstruction and improvement of the strategic Tehuantepec National Railway.53 In this context, the Mexican government signed an agreement with Pearson and Son for this project. The Wrst contract with Pearson was dated June 1896 and the Wrm took possession of the railroad on December 16, 1899. By this time the Mexican government had already spent millions of pesos on the interoceanic route, with disastrous results. Despite U.S. interest in the project (most likely to counterbalance it), an exasperated PorWrio Díaz sought a solution through his personal friend, Weetman Pearson (later elevated to the peerage as Lord Cowdray). This highly respected English civil engineer and contractor had succeeded where others had failed, not only in building the monumental drainage canal servicing Mexico City but also in the difWcult rehabilitation of the port of Veracruz. If anyone could save the Tehuantepec railway, it was Pearson. However, this also meant that having Wrmly established his inXuence in Veracruz, he would now go on to build and control two more of Mexico’s most strategic ports.54 52. Calderón, “Ferrocarriles,” 556–59; “Tehuantepec Railway,” Engineer, Aug. 27, 1909, 205. 53. Coatsworth, Impacto económico 1:57–58. 54. This concession was modiWed on April 2, 1898, and on subsequent occasions until a deWnitive agreement was reached in May 1904. SCOP, “Reseña histórica,” 16; Mundo Ilustrado, April 2, 1905. Pearson rebuilt the harbor at Veracruz and also supplied the port with a modern sanitary system and water supply. The Pearson Company meanwhile took over the tramways of Veracruz, a railroad running to Alvarado, and a Xeet of steamers

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Infrastructure and Economics

With his loyal assistant, John Body (later to become manager of the Tehuantepec National Railway), Pearson surveyed the existing track kilometer by kilometer. Famous for his engineering feats throughout Great Britain and the United States (he had constructed the tunnel under the East River in New York City), and a man whose fees corresponded to his fame, he wrote his son that the reconstruction of this line and habilitation of the ports was “certainly the most serious business we have ever undertaken.” Although Pearson drove a hard bargain, General Díaz considered the Tehuantepec railroad so vital to Mexican security that he demanded it be kept under government control. The Mexican government would initially put down $5 million free of interest; additional costs of rolling stock, working equipment, and portage facilities would be divided equally between the Mexican government and the Pearson Company. Pearson also agreed to build and equip ports at both termini of the railroad at the expense of the federal government. These ports had to be equipped to accommodate the largest, most up-to-date freighters in all weather, be ready for trafWc by May 1903, and be completed by 1905. A contract of partnership and lease also gave the Pearson Company the right to manage the railway, ports, and dry dock for a period of Wfty years, beginning in May 1903. For this they would receive beneWts of 37.5 percent of the net proceeds for thirty-Wve years and 26 percent for the remaining Wfteen years.55 This ambitious project entailed not only the reconstruction of the existing railroad track but also the construction of two modern ports. Puerto México (today Coatzacoalcos) was a thriving town of 2,400, which enjoyed the advantage of being on the large and navigable Coatzacoalcos River. Nonetheless, the new harbor works had to be designed to protect the dock facilities and the vessels anchored there, because the town was totally exposed to the devastating hurricanes of the Gulf of Mexico. At Salina Cruz a harbor had to be built from scratch given the complete lack of natural conditions for protection, although the ocean tended to be

to navigate neighboring rivers. “Tehuantepec Railroad vs. the Isthmian Canal,” ScientiWc American, July 26, 1902. 55. Young, Member for Mexico, 102. Pearson is remembered mostly in Mexico for his ownership of the Mexican Eagle Oil Company, which had a reputation for rapacious exploitation. Ironically, this was his Wrst move into big business, a move in which he was encouraged by his friend Díaz, since before then he had worked only as an engineer. “Tehuantepec Railroad,” ScientiWc American, July 26, 1902, 57.

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more peaceful than on the Atlantic. Still, the construction would be tremendously expensive, since a 3,300-foot breakwater had to be built in order to form a large harbor of ninety acres, with four thousand feet of quay space. These plans forced the company to relocate the original town and erect a whole new town further removed from the water’s edge, as the land where the town originally stood would soon be under water. Salina Cruz would receive modern urban planning, with ample straight thoroughfares and a modern water supply and drainage system.56 In January 1901 Pearson enthusiastically informed the Times of London that while an interoceanic canal would not be ready for years, his rail and port service would soon be functional and equipped with the most modern machinery available. Merchandise unloaded in one port would be loaded onto a ship at the opposite terminal within twenty-four hours, and at a much lower cost than that of the Panamanian railroad. For trade on the New York–San Francisco route, the reduction in nautical miles would be more than a thousand. Pearson declared boldly: “While years of futile endeavour and millions of capital have been expended in the hitherto abortive Panama scheme, and while the Nicaragua Canal proposal, with its estimated expenditure of 30 million pounds, is still in embryo, we are within measurable distance of the completion of a cheap and practical pathway for the commerce between the Atlantic and the PaciWc Oceans, realizing the dream of Charles V of Spain.”57 Pearson believed he could Wnish the construction and have the railroad operating by June 1903, despite the fact that he had to reduce many of the heaviest gradients, straighten numerous curves, and replace all the wooden bridges with steel ones. In September and October 1902, various storms and earthquakes hit the Isthmus, resulting in a serious setback. The greatest calamity was a hurricane that destroyed the Titan dredge, speciWcally 56. “Tehuantepec Railroad,” ScientiWc American, July 26, 1902, 58. 57. Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 63–64; AGN, SCOP, Sección Ferrocarriles, Exp. 2/761-1. I thank Armando Rojas of the AGN for bringing this Wle to my attention. In July 1902 an article in the ScientiWc American stated that “Negotiations are in progress for a regular steamship service from Salina Cruz, the PaciWc terminal for the line, direct with Yokohama; another to Yokohama via other ports; and also a direct steamship line to San Francisco, while the Pearsons are also contemplating the inauguration of other steamship services to other ports. On the Atlantic side, English steamship companies trading with the East have arranged for a regular steamship service direct from Liverpool to Coatzacoalcos, immediately the dock accommodation is provided. From these facts it will be recognized that the success of the Tehuantepec Railroad is assured.” “Tehuantepec Railroad,” ScientiWc American, July 26, 1902.

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designed and constructed for this enterprise at a cost of $500,000. The newly built station at Salina Cruz was also partially destroyed, as were several port buildings.58 Work on the port of Salina Cruz soon advanced with the construction of an electrical plant. The Tehuantepec Railway was also one of the Wrst in Mexico to use oil as fuel, which resulted in a 30 percent savings over coal. By 1905 fourteen locomotives used petroleum, while another twenty-three were in the process of being adapted. At that point the oil was still imported from Texas, but Pearson’s own Mexican Eagle Company would soon provide the needed fuel. That same year, General Díaz surveyed the works at the port of Salina Cruz, accompanied by Pearson.59 For the 1907 inauguration, four special railroad cars made the journey from Mexico City to the Isthmus. The president traveled in the second car with his cabinet. The diplomatic corps traveled in an accompanying car, the “Thompsoniana,” property of the U.S. ambassador, David E. Thompson. When the retinue arrived at the Santa Lucrecia station of the Veracruz and Isthmian Railway, they were greeted by a huge triumphal arch that proclaimed: “Mexican Isthmian Route, the World’s Commercial Bridge. The prophecy of Humboldt fulWlled by the far-seeing energy of General Díaz and his government.”60 After Santa Lucrecia, the train began a steep climb to enter the Malatengo Canyon, where the route had been blasted directly through rock and chasms, to arrive at Rincón Antonio. Known as the “divide,” here the Pearson Company had created a modern British-style town, modeled from a sandy waste, that housed the yards and shops and was populated entirely by the railroad company and its employees. Then the entourage traversed the Chivela Pass, the highest point on the track at 730 feet above sea level. On a sunny day, they could enjoy the awesome experience of viewing both oceans from the same spot. Finally, on January 23, 1907, President PorWrio Díaz, surrounded by the diplomatic corps, members of his cabinet, and representatives of Oaxacan elites, pushed the button on the electric crane that lifted Wfteen sacks of 58. El Imparcial, Aug. 17, 1902; also see Sept. and Oct. 1902; “Tehuantepec Railway,” Engineer, Aug. 27, 1909. 59. El Imparcial, July 25, 1905; El Mundo Ilustrado, April 2, 1905. During the PorWriato, Mexico was forced to import much of its coal. 60. Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 251; El Mundo Ilustrado, Jan. 27, 1907; El País, Jan. 24, 1907.

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Hawaiian sugar from the ship Arizona onto the freight cars on the railroad. The train began its trip to Puerto México amid the applause of the audience. The Arizona was not the only ship in port waiting to be unloaded. The Japanese ships Manchuria and Maru were waiting their turn. Also in port were the tugboat Ramón Corral and the dredges Méjico and General Díaz.61 The entire project, from beginning to end, was extraordinarily expensive. The Tehuantepec National Railway cost the Mexican government more than $80 million, and the loans and bonds from overseas that footed the bill triggered a barrage of criticism. In his presidential message of September 1907 the president answered his critics: during the Wrst Wve months of operation, 123,000 tons of merchandise crossed the Isthmus, for a monthly average of 24,600 tons, which promised to increase rapidly. Díaz was correct about this: sixty-seven ships were anchored in Salina Cruz in 1906–7, and by 1908–9 this number had increased to ninety-six. The increment in the cargo transported was also considerable (see table 4).62 In December 1909 there were six million kilos of coffee and forty to Wfty thousand tons of sugar waiting to be loaded for shipment to the United States. The railroad management had already ordered 710 new freight cars in order to meet the demands of trafWc. A plan to construct a new track in order to have two lines, one in each direction, was in the works. Between Puerto México and Salina Cruz, there were thirty-four stations on a track 310 kilometers long. The trip took twelve and a half Table 4.

Cargo in Tons on the Tehuantepec National Railway

Cargo

1907

1908

1909

Atlantic to PaciWc PaciWc to Atlantic Local

100,250 192,614 68,871

101,180 248,853 78,773

221,597 331,677 145,810

Total

361,735

428,806

699,084

Source: The Mexican Year Book: A Statistical, Financial, and Economic Annual Compiled from OfWcial and Other Returns (London: McCorquodale & Co., Ltd., 1909–10). 61. El País, Jan. 24, 1907. 62. Román, “Ferrocarril de Tehuantepec.” See Bulnes, Verdadero Díaz, 120, 284; El Tiempo, April 3, 1901. See the “Informe Presidencial” in El Imparcial, Sept. 17, 1907; Mexican Year Book (1909–10), 602.

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hours up and ten and a quarter hours down to Salina Cruz. In 1909 two trains could leave each port daily, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Passenger transport on this line was limited, but the coaches were the most modern available and included Pullmans on the stretch from Santa Lucrecia to Salina Cruz.63 In addition to serving as a commercial bridge for international trade and a signiWcant outlet for the products of southern Mexico, above all the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, it was believed that this rail link would stimulate commerce with Central and South America. Some Latin American nations recognized these possibilities, and by July 1907 Chile had named Guillermo Samuel Buchanan vice-consul for Salina Cruz. By 1910 consular representatives of the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Chile, Guatemala, and El Salvador resided in the port.64 The vision of making the Isthmus into the commercial bridge of America was fast becoming a reality. By 1914, however, the inauguration of the Panama Canal delivered a rude awakening, the canal totally eclipsing the prospects of the Tehuantepec National Railway.

The Pan American Railway President Díaz awarded one of the PorWriato’s most controversial railroad concessions to U.S. Ambassador David E. Thompson. With the backing of the United States Banking Company, Thompson obtained the concession for the construction of the Pan American Railway in 1901. Initiating its route at the San Jerónimo station of the Tehuantepec National Railway, the Pan American traversed the district of Juchitán and the dense forests of the state of Chiapas, arriving at the Guatemalan border by way of Tapachula. This concession included permission to construct a spur between Tonalá and Puerto Arista.65 63. El Correo del Sur, Dec. 22 and 25, 1909; “Tehuantepec Railway,” Engineer, Aug. 27, 1909. 64. In 1902 the Mexican government named a commission to study the possibilities of inter-Latin American trade, mainly the viability of placing Mexican products in southern markets. The commission’s conclusions pointed out that the major obstacle to such commercial exchange was the lack of means of communication among the sister republics. El Imparcial, Feb. 1, 1907, and July 27, 1907; Mexican Year Book (1909–10), 601. 65. Nicolau D’Olwer, “Inversiones extranjeras,” 1078, 1184; Calderón, “Ferrocarriles”, 591. In Thompson’s case, the State Department ignored the “safe rule” whereby a diplomat

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69

Formed in New Jersey in 1901, the Pan American Railway Company had an elite board of directors: besides Thompson, Díaz himself was a member, as were Lt. Colonel PorWrio Díaz Jr., Pablo Macedo, and Rosendo Pineda (a Juchitecan ally of Díaz), E. N. Brown, J. B. Body, and the wealthy Guillermo Landa y Escandón of Morelos. This railroad received a hefty government subsidy of $12,000 in silver per kilometer under a ninety-nine-year lease.66 Fifty kilometers had been built by 1902 and 196 kilometers by 1904, although the main line was not Wnished until 1908. It stretched 458 kilometers from San Jerónimo, passing through Zanatepec and Tapanatepec before arriving in the state of Chiapas and continuing on to Suchiate on the border with Guatemala. Haciendas and ranches appeared along the track in the district of Juchitán, now that their products had an outlet. They were now also connected to Mexico City through the Tehuantepec and Veracruz-Isthmian lines.67 This railroad was so poorly constructed that bridges and tracks would frequently wash away during the rainy season. Hugh Pollard described his trip on this route. Travel on the Pan-American was slow, trains moved at a snail’s pace thanks to decaying, second hand equipment. Tracks were constantly rotting due to the tropical climate and thousands of “voracious” ants, which inhabited the rails. Derailments were frequent and passengers and crew alike had to get out to assist in moving the train back on track. At stops along the way, the sweltering heat could be assuaged by purchasing tropical fruits—papaya, mango or zapote, a luscious round, brown delight. No sooner did Thompson resign his ambassadorship in refrained from developing business interests in the nation to which he is posted. Thompson also owned a hacienda and large plantation near Veracruz. See Schell, “American Investment in Tropical Mexico,” 248. 66. Mexican Year Book (1909–10), 324. Thomas Benjamin afWrmed that progressminded Chiapanecan governor Emilio Rabasa was instrumental in the formation of the Pan American Railroad Co. Benjamin, “Passages to Leviathan,” 86. 67. In 1909 the spur to Puerto Arista was determined to be too costly and was pulled up (Calderón, “Ferrocarriles,” 591). In 1910 a new line was projected that would link the states of Campeche and Tabasco with this rail system. According to a contract signed by Minister Leandro Fernández with William Prim Wood and A. L. Van Antwerp, of the Veracruz, Campeche, and Tabasco Railroads Construction Company, a railroad would be built that would traverse these states starting from a station on the Tehuantepec line. The company would receive a subsidy of $7,500 per kilometer for a maximum of 750 kilometers. This concession was still standing in 1912 but no information is available as to whether any track was actually laid down. El Correo del Sur, May 14, 1910; SCOP, Cuadros estadísticos, 13.

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1910, than he expedited the sale of the Pan American Railroad to the Mexican government. It was integrated into the national network organized by Limantour while the colonization company associated with the Pan American retained control of and continued to speculate with its large tracts of land.68

The Veracruz and Isthmian Railway One of the strategic objectives of the federal government was to connect the Ferrocarril Mexicano (Veracruz to Mexico City) with the Tehuantepec National Railroad, providing railroad linkage from the nation’s capital to the Isthmus. Designated the Veracruz and Isthmian Railway, only the track from Córdoba to Motzorongo, forty-six kilometers in the state of Veracruz, had been built by 1898. Related to this concession was another given to V. N. Read to build the vital link between the cities of Oaxaca and Tehuantepec. Authorities, however, refused to permit the transfer of this part of Read’s concession. After various proposals, he obtained permission to construct a railroad beginning at a point along the Ferrocarril Mexicano between Córdoba and Paso Del Macho, in the state of Veracruz, toward another point along the Tehuantepec National Railway, between Santa Lucrecia and Ojapa. This concession also gave him the option of building a spur between the port of Veracruz and a point on his main line north of the Papaloapan River. The subsidy was the most generous we have seen so far, reXecting the signiWcance of this line for the Mexican government: $16,000 per kilometer if the line did not extend beyond 350 kilometers and $8,000 per kilometer (not including the Wrst ten kilometers) for the spur. Read transferred his concession to entrepreneurs Alfred B. Mason and Henry J. Bowdoin, who organized the VeracruzPaciWc Railroad in Baltimore with capital of 10 million dollars.69 Work began in 1899 with the reconstruction of the CórdobaMotzorongo stretch, plus another Wve kilometers. By 1903 the line and the spur were completed, with a total length of 421 kilometers. Nevertheless, the track was almost unusable due to deWcient construction; derailments were common and income did not meet expectations. The company went 68. Schell, “American Investment in Tropical Mexico,” 249; Hugh B.C. Pollard’s Busy Time in Mexico cited in Henderson, “Modernization and Change,” 243–44. 69. Calderón, “Ferrocarriles,” 588–90; PO, Jan. 28, 1905.

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71

bankrupt and the government nationalized the line in 1904. Designated the Veracruz and Isthmian Railway after 1908, the government invested heavily to improve the track, although it continued to lose money.70 This railroad built a spur into the district of Tuxtepec. With two stations in Oaxaca, El Hule and Agua Fría, it expedited transportation to and from this rich region of commercial agriculture. At El Hule, passengers could board a steamboat run by the Veracruz Mexico Railways or take a raft or rowboat (two to three hours) to get down the Papaloapan River to the district capital of Tuxtepec. It was also the destiny of those unfortunates who were transported to labor on the notorious tobacco plantations of Valle Nacional. The Veracruz and Isthmian Railway linked this area with the port of Veracruz and the Centro, further integrating the interstate region of the Papaloapan River basin.

Failed Railroad Projects As demonstrated above, railroad construction in Oaxaca was an arduous task, with numerous false starts and then whole stretches of track sometimes having to be rebuilt. Various projects to construct railroads that would connect the Mixteca with Puebla, or the Isthmus or the coast with the city of Oaxaca, failed. Perhaps the most publicized of these were the attempts to link the Mixteca with Puebla and the Centro. President Díaz had high hopes for his ancestral land, as illustrated by his speech at the inauguration of the Mexican Southern Railway: “I beseech you to toast with me because the day is not far when a thousand furnaces loaded with Mixtecan iron and coal will illumine the world from the altars which we will build in Yucucundo and Saniza to the industry of the century, the industry of coal and iron, the basis and bread of all industry.”71 Two major efforts were initiated but both collapsed: the Ferrocarril Carbonífera (Carboniferous Railroad), which would connect the city of Puebla with Tlaxiaco, and the San Marcos Tlacotepec Railroad, linking Huajuapan de León to that city. The origin of the Carbonífera was a contract celebrated between the minister of Development, General Carlos 70. Calderón, “Ferrocarriles,” 590–91. 71. Cited in Vía Ancha (n.d.). This was a particularly high hope of Díaz because, as noted earlier, Mexico still imported coal at this time. The nation had coal and iron deposits such as those of the Mixteca but the lack of infrastructure made their exploitation prohibitive.

72

Infrastructure and Economics

Pacheco, and Manuel Romero Rubio (Díaz’s father-in-law) and José Revuelta for the construction of a line between Puebla and Tlaxiaco. This concession, dated August 25, 1881, included rights over both a railroad and a telegraph line for ninety-nine years, to begin in Puebla at any point on the railway going to Morelos or Acapulco. It speciWcally stated that the track would traverse the coal regions, but no subsidy was mentioned. By 1884 the company had completed twenty kilometers. But no further track was laid down and the short piece of track was pulled up in 1889.72 The other line that attempted to penetrate the formidable mountains of the Mixteca belonged to Luis García Teruel, who built the Ejutla spur of the Mexican Southern Railway. This 1898 concession initiated its line at the San Marcos Tlacotepec station of the Mexican Southern Railway and passed through Acatlán, Puebla, in order to reach Huajuapan de León. The subsidy on the stretch from San José de Gracia to Huajuapan de León would be $4,500 (150 kilometers) and $6,000 per kilometer from San Marcos to San José. By 1898 thirty kilometers were in place. In 1910 the line stretched 131 kilometers, but the remaining 120 kilometers to Huajuapan were never constructed, despite the fact that in 1904 the authorities extended the contract.73 Those who envisioned a railroad spanning the Mixteca persisted. In August 1907 a new project for a line to join the city of Puebla and the Mixteca appeared. In November of the same year the press in the state capital reported on the possible construction of a railroad from the town of Itundujia, in the highlands of Putla, to the coast, motivated by the proposed exploitation of mining wealth of the montaña Mixteca by Mr. Adams of the Oaxaca Coal & Iron Co., to be Wnanced by a company of New York capitalists.74 Another line envisioned a railway that would start in Puebla and traverse the coal-mining region of Tezoatlán and Tlaxiaco, terminating in the lagoon of Chacahua on the PaciWc coast of Oaxaca, a natural port conducive to habilitation. This would provide a crucial boon to the economy of the Mixteca. In May 1910, on learning of this possibility, the wealthy 72. Cited in Méndez Aquino, Historia de Tlaxiaco (Mixteca), 223–24. I appreciate the author’s lending me this manuscript before it was published. Calderón, “Ferrocarriles,” 560. 73. Calderón, “Ferrocarriles,” 596–97; PO, Feb. 27, 1904. Nevertheless, according to a modiWcation of this contract published in the state’s ofWcial newspaper in 1904, the original concession had been granted in April 1891. 74. El Imparcial, Aug. 19, 1907; La Unión, Nov. 17, 1907.

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73

merchant and municipal president of Tlaxiaco, Luis Vega, sent a telegram to Díaz supporting the plan and praising him for his desire to bring “progress to even the Republic’s most isolated villages.” On March 11, 1912, another concession was granted for a 400-kilometer line between Puebla and Chacahua with a subsidy of $10,000 per kilometer (with the exception of the Wrst hundred kilometers, built from Puebla southward). Whether this refers to the previous concession or a different one is not clear.75 Despite all these concessions, only those Wrst twenty kilometers of the Carbonífera were actually laid down. No rail route would connect the Mixteca with Puebla, the PaciWc, or the Gulf coast. Don PorWrio’s carboniferous dream never materialized. With the construction of the port of Salina Cruz and the increase in international trafWc, a group of North American capitalists showed interest in connecting the city of Oaxaca with the coast. The concession, dated May 3, 1909, projected a line that would begin in the port of Salina Cruz, “paralleling the PaciWc coast line, terminating in the port of Acapulco, with the possibility of a prolongation to the ports of Zihuantanejo and even Manzanillo and another track leaving at the point where the line would cross the Río Verde on to the city of Oaxaca.”76 But this was just one more railroad project that failed.

Other Infrastructural Works Impressive advances were made in the installation of telegraph lines during this period, along with other infrastructural projects: telephone lines, postal service, port rehabilitations, roads, bridges, and electrical facilities. The modernization of the economy demanded this construction to expedite transport, communication, and trade, and political stabilization and consolidation of power by the central government and the uniWcation of the nation required it. In 1887 the Mexican telegraph network stretched

75. CPD, Telegrams, leg. 69, caja 3; El Correo del Sur, May 14, 1910; SCOP, Cuadros estadísticos, 13. 76. In February 1911, El Avance, of the city of Oaxaca, reported that the Ministry of Communication and Public Works had conceded an extension of another year for the initiation of construction on the Oaxaca-Acapulco Railroad. El Imparcial, Sept. 14, 1907; SCOP, Cuadros estadísticos, 23; El Correo del Sur, Jan. 20, 1910; Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 23.

74

Infrastructure and Economics

seventeen thousand kilometers, and by 1900 it reached seventy thousand. Every city in Oaxaca of more than eight thousand inhabitants was integrated into the system.77 While military commander in Tehuacán in 1867, General PorWrio Díaz took the initiative of ordering telegraph installations extended to the city of Oaxaca in order to communicate with the state governor, who, at the time, happened to be his brother, Félix. The line connecting Oaxaca to Orizaba in Veracruz was inaugurated on January 1, 1868. The next telegraph line tied the city of Oaxaca to Ixtlán in August 1876. These were three eminently political lines (Ixtlán was home to the Serrano caudillos, now allied with Díaz after Juárez’s death). Later, Tehuantepec, the Mixteca, the Cañada, and Pochutla were linked by telegraph to the state capital. Another network united all the important urban centers of the Central Valleys region. Tehuantepec was connected to Acapulco by a line that went through the district capitals on the PaciWc coast. By the close of the nineteenth century, Oaxaca had one of the best telegraph networks in the country.78 Once the telephone was introduced in Mexico, it quickly made its way to Oaxaca. By 1891 all the Central Valleys districts as well as Ixtlán had lines linking them to the state capital. During Governor Emilio Pimentel’s administration (1902–11), great efforts were made to extend the telephone network throughout the state. In July 1907 this governor inaugurated the telephone network of the Tlacolula district, which included 170 kilometers of lines. The same year saw the construction of a network in the Ocotlán district in the Central Valleys. Both of these districts were important mining centers, and by 1908–9 the network extended throughout the district of Ixtlán. By late 1911, Choapan, Yautepec, and Nochixtlán were the only districts that did not report telephone installations. There were 331 telephones belonging to the government and 282 private telephones in the state in 1911. The majority of the private phones were located in the districts that were experiencing the most economic

77. The state “concedes permission to the railroad companies to erect telegraph lines parallel to the railroad tracks, but it limits contracts with other private interests. It gives the state governments the lines that it considers indispensable to their maintenance of order, but it conserves the principal ones, which permits it to stay informed of what occurs throughout the Republic.” Valadés, PorWrismo 1:318. 78. Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 244–45; AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.

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75

growth: Centro (120 telephones), Pochutla (34), Cuicatlán (18), Tuxtepec (16), Huajuapan (14), and Jamiltepec (12).79 The postal system also developed during this period. By 1891 mail was handled by nineteen post ofWces and thirty-Wve municipal agencies in nineteen of the state’s twenty-six districts. At the beginning of the twentieth century, various municipios clamored to be included in the postal service in order to overcome their isolation. Infantry Major Antonio Martínez expressed this aspiration, but his request was denied in 1900. He addressed President Díaz on his town’s need for communication: “Commercial activity is growing daily in the village of Chalcatongo and other towns of the montaña; the relations of these town plazas with others in the center of the Republic, and last but not least, the political importance of this region to all branches of public administration” justify access to postal service.80 The installation of street lighting in the major cities constituted another modernizing element in PorWrian Mexico. Carlos Solomon, a North American residing in Oaxaca, installed the Wrst public lighting in the city of Oaxaca at the beginning of the 1890s. Later, Lorenzo San Germán established the Wrst service to provide electric lights in private homes, a service that functioned for only a few hours each night. By 1896 Governor Martín González had installed electric lights in the governor’s palace. In 1890 the Compañía de Luz y Fuerza, organized by Federico Zorrilla, received a concession for public lighting and electrical power. Zorrilla established a hydroelectric plant in Vista Hermosa and another thermoelectric plant fueled by gas, both destined to provide power for the city of Oaxaca, in hopes of stimulating new industry. The Vista Hermosa plant was also well situated to generate motor power for the nearby textile factory of the same name, also the property of the Zorrilla family. This concession was bitterly criticized throughout the Wrst decade of the twentieth century. Service was deWcient and extremely expensive. The political opposition protested that in spite of the faulty service, not a 79. Velasco, Geografía y estadística, 378. See La Unión, July–Aug. 1907; Pérez García, Sierra Juárez 1:278. AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D. Pochutla, Cuicatlán, and Tuxtepec were major areas of commercial agriculture, as was Jamiltepec. Huajuapan’s sugar production had stimulated its economy. 80. Velasco, Geografía y estadística, 379; Pérez García, Sierra Juárez 1:279. It is not known whether Chalcaltongo, an important commercial center of the Mixteca Alta, with a population of four thousand in 1910, got its post ofWce at this time. CPD, Letters, leg. 27, caja 5, Jan. 4, 1902; División territorial, 1910.

76

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single centavo in Wnes had been applied to the company because of the friendship between Zorrilla and the governor. Public lighting also appeared in other urban centers in the state. It arrived in Tlaxiaco in 1910, when the lawyer Ricardo Sodi received a concession, also in the hope of stimulating industry in this commercial hub. Soon Juchitán and Tehuantepec were also illuminated by electricity.81 Wagon roads were also extended during this period, and bridges were constructed, especially by the railroad companies. The “PorWrio Díaz” bridge over the Atoyac River on the outskirts of the city of Oaxaca was a strikingly modern steel construction. Many districts outside the railroad network concentrated their efforts on maintaining their roads in good condition and building new ones. For example, in 1910 a new road was built between Juquila and Jamiltepec because the old one had become impassable during the rainy season, being Xooded by rivers and overrun by “huge alligators.”82 The creation of an infrastructure in Oaxaca opened up the state’s rich natural resources to both Mexican and foreign interests. European and U.S. capitalists invested in railroads, silver, gold, and copper mines, coffee Wncas, and rubber and tobacco plantations, as did Oaxacans, both individually and in partnership with foreign capitalists. The elites’ control of land and natural resources combined with foreign capital and technology and linked whole areas of the state with the global economy as purveyors of primary products. In addition, it made the land adjacent to the tracks much more attractive for exploitation and led directly to the surge of land privatization, particularly land held by indigenous communal villages. The construction of this infrastructure transformed land tenure patterns and reduced Oaxaca’s isolation. Yet the failure to join the city of Oaxaca with Tehuantepec and with the PaciWc coast was devastating to the PorWrian hopes for the internal development of the state. The Oaxacan rail network resembled a magnet in the shape of a wide horseshoe, attracting the state’s products to the port of Salina Cruz in the south and toward the ports of Veracruz (through the Cañada) and Puerto México to the northeast. It did not activate an internal economic articulation, nor did a thousand whistles ever quiet the “savage howl” to which Díaz had referred. In sum, railroad construction fell painfully short of the PorWrian panacea for the modernization of Oaxaca. 81. Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 245–46; Proceso de la administración, 7; El Correo del Sur, Jan. 18 and March 20, 1910; Mensaje, 1906, 43–47; Mensaje, 1908, 43. 82. El Correo del Sur, Jan. 21, 1910.

2 From Time Immemorial to the PorWrian Finca: The Land Tenure Question The Congress of this State is convinced that in a just, equitable, and liberal system, laws should be conceived in terms of rigorous equality, . . . dispositions that granted fundos legales only to indigenous peoples are diametrically opposed, and against whom perhaps this same privilege converted them into a kind of ward of the state . . . this same Congress desiring to forever exile any signs of that hateful distinction between Indians and Spaniards, since we are all sons of the same soil and brothers by nature, considers it our duty to issue this decree. —Decree Prohibiting Further Concession of Fundos Legales, Oaxacan State Congress, 1824

Introduction: A Deity, Half Feline, Half Reptile The ancient Zapotecs and Mixtecs regarded the land, in its generic sense, as a deity, the mother goddess, half feline, half reptile. This sacred being, in turn, engendered deities of plants, animals, and minerals, in addition to humans. The relationship between the people and the land signiWed a religious bond, a sacred union. The land provided the people with their sustenance, and they in turn respected and sacriWced to it. Therein lies the root of the different conceptions of landholding between the indigenous worldview, in harmony with natural resources, and the European mercantile mentality, anxious to own and transform them into commodities. If the land were divine, it could hardly become private property in the Western sense of the word.1

1. Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 22; Romero Frizzi, “Epoca Colonial,” 113. The Mixtec people of Santiago Nuyoo see the land and the natural world as inhabited by divinities called nu ñu‘un. Monaghan, Covenants with Earth and Rain, 99ff.

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The origins and particulars of pre-Columbian communal landholding must be understood in order to comprehend the later development of land tenure in Oaxaca.2 The communal organization based on reciprocity, on tequio, the obligatory service of comuneros (holders of communal property and therefore members of a corporate village) to the community, dates from this period. The colonial pueblo (a village community also signifying the people) of Zapotec commoners of the Valley of Oaxaca was a “land-based entity,” which “remained their major unit of identiWcation.”3 The indigenous peoples’ collective usos y costumbres clashed with the liberalism favored by many of the Latin American elites and middle classes. At the center of this antagonism lay a cultural conXict: ethnic, not class, differences led to opposing visions of legality and property. The indigenous concept of property was neither private nor individual but social and communal.4 For liberals, identity resided in the individual acting in a free-market system for personal gain. The legal system in such a society existed to guarantee individual rights and the sanctity of private property. Land and labor were commodities, to be bought and sold. They provided a livelihood and wealth could be extracted from them, a means to an end, hardly a sacred union. Arriving in the New World, Europeans associated the native populations with wilderness and savagery for their intimacy with “barbaric” nature. The conXation of nature and the indigenous peoples of America (later expanded to include most Third World peoples) furnished the Western male with the right to conquer and dominate, forcing nature and the native populations to serve the needs of “civilization.” Women had also historically been stereotyped as closer to nature than men, which likewise 2. Unfortunately, we know relatively little about the speciWcs of pre-Columbian communal land tenure in Mesoamerica, given Spanish destruction of codices, which would have provided more information. The majority of the material available deals with communal landholding during the colonial period. 3. Whitecotton, Zapotecs, 193. José Miranda argued that the indigenous peoples of preColumbian Mexico could not be understood in separation from the land because they “lived by it and for it.” Miranda, “Propiedad communal,” 168ff. Taylor stressed that the village continued to be the “fundamental unit of peasant society in central and southern Mexico” during the late colonial period. Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 152. 4. A number of anthropologist and sociologist colleagues have warned me against the use of the term communal, given its distinct meanings in different disciplines. I have chosen to use the term, and its Spanish equivalent, comunero, not because of my own preference but because it is preferred by the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca and appears in their historical documents. I also refer interchangeably to their usos y costumbres, or customs and traditions, from time immemorial for the same reason.

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provided the justiWcation for their domination. The oppositional model of civilization (the city and “modern” Western values) and barbarism (“backward” rural areas retaining “traditional” values), articulated by Argentina’s Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and loaded with gendered and racist metaphors, resonated loudly throughout Latin America.5 Liberal elites, intent on modernizing Mexico, tended to vilify indigenous communalism, which they considered to be the greatest obstacle to modernity. In 1861, faced with the task of enforcing laws that demanded the privatization of corporately held lands, Governor Ramón Cajiga complained that Oaxaca’s Indians were “egotistical” and stubbornly clinging “to their ancient customs, they resist all innovation, all reforms. . . . They consider themselves superior to the law, manipulating judicial procedures and promoting fully unjust and intriguing lawsuits” in order to retain their lands and avoid taxation.6 By the turn of the century, the popularity of Positivist philosophy (combined with the racism of social Darwinism) led to even more vehement denunciations of Mexico’s indigenous peoples. In 1909 Judge Esteban Maqueo Castellanos, representative of the elitist CientíWco clique and owner of Oaxaca’s largest hacienda, insisted that the spirit of individualism and the “love of private property” had to be fostered among the Indians before “the imperfect and absurd socialism” of their villages could disappear. Emilio Pimentel, governor of Oaxaca (1902–11), declared: “The sacriWce needed is unimportant, if we would be successful in penetrating with the light of education that dense layer of our society which resists the ordinary means, and whose ignorance is the great hindrance to the Wrm progress of this nation.”7 5. See Kirkpatrick Sale on the contrast between European antipathy to nature and the indigenous embrace of it; Conquest of Paradise, 75ff. On the U.S. attitude, see Pike, United States and Latin America, 4ff.; on women, nature, and culture, see Ortner, “Female to Male,” 73ff. See also Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Facundo. One of the many ironies here is that Western capitalists’ ruthless exploitation of natural resources has resulted in profound ecological devastation. 6. Quoted in Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 450. 7. Positivist theory, in its quest for peace and stability, served to justify the dictatorship, while social Darwinism provided a facile explanation for the misery of the mestizo and indigenous masses. Much in vogue in Europe, racist social theories explained the “historical progress” of superior races. Francisco Bulnes formulated a pseudoscientiWc theory based on race and alimentation that located maize consumers on the bottom of the scale. Wheat eaters were at the top and rice eaters in the middle. See Bulnes, “Tres razas humanas,” 137–58; Maqueo Castellanos, “Algunos problemas nacionales,” 93; Mensaje, 1906, 32–34. Among Positivists, opinion varied on the intellectual capacity of indigenous peoples. See González

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The virulence of the liberals’ language reXects the tenacity and success of Oaxaca’s indigenous peoples in the defense of their communities and their lands. Leticia Reina characterized the “great rebellion” of the middle nineteenth century, in which the Zapotec pueblos of the Isthmus defended their natural resources, as a collision between “the logic of modernization” and “the logic of communitarianism.”8 This historical confrontation, however, was not conWned to the Isthmus, having surfaced in most of the seven geographical regions of PorWrian Oaxaca. What was the impact of capitalism on land tenure? How many villages were dispossessed, and of how much land? How did communal villagers impact the way capitalism developed in Oaxaca? What percentage of communal lands survived the PorWrian modernization project? Determined to transform agriculture into a modern capitalist enterprise, PorWrian policies encouraged not only the expansion of infrastructure but also the cultivation of exportable cash crops. These actions provoked a massive land transfer from villages and the public domain into private property. Precisely how this occurred in the different regions of Mexico is still subject to debate. For many years scholars believed that under the Díaz regime not only had the privatization process and dispossession of campesino lands been almost universal, but also that the hacienda had come thoroughly to dominate the Mexican countryside. George McBride had concluded that, by 1910, 96 percent of the campesinos of Mexico no longer possessed land. Fifty years later, that statistic still appeared in monographs and texts on Latin America, giving the impression that communal landholding had been annihilated by the march of capitalism. Only a few scholars dissented, as among them José Miranda, who afWrmed that 41 percent of the indigenous communities of Mexico retained some of their ancient lands in 1910, given their resistance to the process.9 Navarro, Historia moderna de México: El PorWriato; Vida Social, 150–51; Powell, “Mexican Intellectuals,” 23; Molina Enríquez, Grandes problemas nacionales. 8. Reina Aoyama, “De las reformas borbónicas,” 261. 9. Coatsworth linked PorWrian railroad construction between 1877 and 1884 to “widespread assaults on the property holdings of Indian free villages,” in order to obtain land apt for export agriculture, in “Railroads, Landholding, and Agrarian Protest,” 48–71. Andrés Molina Enríquez had emphasized the prevalence of the seigneurial hacienda in PorWrian Mexico in a 1909 study that inXuenced many writers after the Revolution, Grandes problemas nacionales. See also McBride, Land Systems of Mexico, 154. Frank Tannenbaum stated that by 1910 nearly half the rural population of Mexico resided on these large estates and that 82 percent of rural communities were located on haciendas and ranchos (Mexican Agrarian Revolution, 30–34). A map, on page 33, of the proportion of the rural population living on haciendas was later cited by numerous authors, such as Katz, “Labor Conditions,”

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Although it is generally recognized that statistics available for the PorWriato are unreliable and incomplete,10 recent research has forced the revision of many of these beliefs about PorWrian land tenure. For example, scholars have found widespread growth of modern, capital-intensive haciendas and signiWcant ranchero economies. Donald Stevens has demonstrated how indigenous communities in San Luis Potosí were able to reclaim their lands from neighboring haciendas with the aid of PorWrio Díaz himself. Ricardo Rendón Garcini discovered collective purchases of haciendas or ranchos by villages in Tlaxcala, instead of the reverse. Thus, during the PorWriato, it was possible for villages not only to retain and reclaim lands but also to purchase them and become capitalists themselves. Raymond Buve concludes that this new research has Wnally transcended the ideological distortions imposed by ofWcial histories of poor exploited peasants victimized by cruel hacendados.11 Nonetheless, for many authors Oaxaca still remains the favorite example of a backward economy neglected by PorWrian modernization. The present study, to the contrary, demonstrates how land tenure in the state reXected a notable diversity, which resulted from the spread of capitalist relations. The communal villagers of Oaxaca were quite successful in their battle to retain or reclaim their favored form of land tenure and proved themselves versatile and innovative in Wnding strategies to do so. Despite this success, millions of hectares were privatized and transformed into private properties, producing coffee, tobacco, sugarcane, indigo, cotton, rubber, and citrus fruits for national and international markets. These transformations took place, above all, in the geographically peripheral regions denoted here as those of PorWrian development: the Papaloapan river basin, the Isthmus, the Cañada, and the Costa.12 1, and Burns, Latin America, 196. As Jean Meyer pointed out, although Tannenbaum employed the statistics provided in his text of those living on haciendas and ranchos, the map title said only “Haciendas,” and this led to confusion. See Jean Meyer’s critique in “Haciendas y ranchos,” 486ff. Unfortunately, Miranda did not provide his sources in “Propiedad comunal,” 181. 10. On this problem, see Coatsworth, “Railroads, Landholding, and Agrarian Protest,” 51, and González Navarro, “Tenencia de la tierra,” 62–86. 11. Katz presents the diversity by region in “Labor Conditions.” See also Stevens, “Agrarian Policy.” Rendón Garcini enumerated the purchase of 44 estates or parts of them by 41 distinct villages (39 in Tlaxcala, 2 in Puebla) between 1862 and 1908. Often two or more villages worked in common to carry out these transactions Rendón Garcini, Prosperato, 114ff.; Buve, “Paisaje lunar,” 121ff. 12. I have developed this geo-economic regionalization as my research on Oaxaca has advanced over the years. See Chassen [Chassen-López], “Precursores,” 40–42; “Oaxaca”

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Furthermore, the mentality of individual capitalist gain penetrated the communal villages, which had always been internally stratiWed and never had been egalitarian utopias. Since the colonial period, villagers could acquire private plots in addition to their communal parcels, leading to an increasing internal differentiation. Rich campesinos functioned as communal landholders and individual entrepreneurs at the same time.13 Cash crops began to be cultivated on village communal lands. What emerges is a dynamic and diverse spectrum of situations on a continuum moving between the extremes of communal and private landholding. Thus, despite the signiWcant expansion of private property that this chapter traces, the survival of communal land tenure in the villages still Wgured as the salient characteristic of Oaxaca in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as it does today. This factor is fundamental to understanding the development of agriculture in the state, in particular with respect to: (1) change and continuity in the patterns of land tenure, (2) agricultural production, (3) labor relations, and (4) engagement, resistance, and rebellion in the countryside. The present chapter deals with the Wrst, while the following chapter examines the second and third factors. Chapters 6 and 7 explore the fourth aspect, with some overlap.

From Time Immemorial: Village Communal Lands The indigenous peoples of Oaxaca frequently legitimized their actions and protests by referring to the usos y costumbres desde tiempos inmemoriales, thereby conveying the image of a sacred, ancient, and timeless repository of traditions by which they lived. In reality, their way of life, beliefs, and land tenure have been dynamically constructed and reconstructed over time. Nevertheless, land use and distribution related intimately to the organization of pre-Columbian society. The lands of the ancient Mesoamerican (Ph.D. diss.), 87–88; “Oaxaca,” 172–73; and Chassen [Chassen-López] and Martínez, “Desarrollo económico,” 289ff. Following Paul Garner, I originally used the term “peripheral” to describe these districts, referring to their geographical location. But given the common center/periphery model and the fact that the use of “peripheral” associates them with an inferior position with respect to the Central Valleys (regardless of my intention), I have opted for the term regions of PorWrian development. I am aware that development is also a loaded term and therefore questionable. 13. Gibson, Aztecs, 263; see Chance, Conquest of the Sierra, 142–49, 179ff.

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civilizations had been divided into several kinds, distinguished by different colors on pre-Columbian maps in Nahuatl, lienzos (long strips of cloth). The calpullali (lands possessed by macehuales, the commoners) were light yellow; the pillali, those of the nobles (pilli in Nahuatl, principales in Spanish) were Xeshy red; and the tecpantlalli, those of the local ruler (Señor principal) or of the palace were Wery red. In addition to the commoners who worked the land communally, the mayeques (a class of landless serfs) labored on the lands of the principales. Slaves were also held by some principales but as a group they did not play an important role in the Mesoamerican economy.14 The calpulli (lineage) controlled the majority of lands and consisted of a community of communal landholders joined by blood ties and kinship since “a time of great antiquity.” This land was distributed to the members of the calpulli (never to anyone outside the lineage) in order that families could sustain themselves, and was handed down from generation to generation. Land could not be sold or transferred but could be rented by the elders to a neighboring calpulli for reasons of great need.15 On their arrival, the Spanish found the rural indigenous peoples living in “clustered agricultural settlements rather than compact villages or towns.”16 Oscar Schmieder analyzed the organization of nucleated settlements, of dispersed Welds circling compact villages, characteristic of the Zapotec and Nahua civilizations: Starting on the outskirts of each settlement, the villages cleared one after another of the surrounding parajes [small units of land]. Preparing them for cultivation was a task carried out collectively by all the men of the village. When a paraje was ready, it was 14. There were also lands devoted to the upkeep of priests and the temples, and others to the maintenance of the royal ofWcials, but these were not denoted by special colors. Kirchoff, “Land Tenure in Ancient Mexico,” 353–59. It is open to question whether the principales held the lands worked by the mayeques as private property; see Zorita, Life and Labor in Ancient Mexico, 183ff. For a useful synthesis, see Katz, Situación económica, 49ff.; Gibson, Aztecs, 257ff. Ronald Spores suggests that private property may have appeared before the conquest among the Mixtecs. Spores, Mixtecs, 67–68. According to Whitecotton, a slave trade existed in the Valley of Oaxaca before the arrival of the Spanish (Zapotecs, 150ff.). 15. Florescano, Origen y desarrollo, 37; Zorita, Life and Labor in Ancient Mexico, 106ff.; Katz, Situación económica, 46ff. It could be forfeited only if it had not been cultivated for two consecutive years. If a person, such as a newly married son, lacked land, he could apply to the elders of the calpulli for his parcel. 16. McBride, Land Systems of Mexico,” 112–16.

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subdivided into equal lots and each family received one of these subdivisions called a milpa (a corruption of the Nahua word, the root of which is milli, cultivated Weld). . . . As development went on and new parajes were cultivated, it happened that each family came normally into possession of several lots, each located in a different paraje. . . . By its nature this system of Weld dispersion impeded the dissolution of the villages. Since no one owned a large, contiguous area, but everyone owned instead several small ones, scattered over several miles, it became impossible to abandon one’s home in the pueblo in order to live on one’s Weld.17 Campesinos would receive a mix of superior and inferior lands in fertility dispersed throughout the holdings of the village, usually three or more separate plots. For the Zapotecs, Weld dispersion in different parajes led to larger and compact settlements, which facilitated the differentiation of activities and the development of crafts, arts, religion, and even science. Among the more isolated Mixe of Oaxaca, families cleared their own land and created separate farmsteads.18 Also an Iberian custom, Castilian villages held distinct types of communal lands: (1) propios, rented out by town ofWcials to defray expenses of the town; (2) ejido, land outside the city gates (from the Latin exitus), for the common use of townspeople for the threshing and winnowing of grain, for keeping bee hives, a slaughter pen, or other purposes; (3) pastos comunes or dehesas, as common pasturelands for Xocks and herds; and (4) montes, hillsides held by some towns as open woodlands.19 Thus, communal landholding, which remained an essential feature of rural New Spain, had two distinct sets of roots, indigenous and Spanish. 17. “The individual lots which each family received as private property were originally equal in size . . . but through inheritance or sale the lots changed owners. More aggressive families accumulated lots, others lost them. The original uniform subdivision of the paraje into milpas thus changed in the course of time and became highly irregular.” Schmieder, Settlements, 15–16. Although Schmieder mentions the sale or transfer of units, his text clariWes that he is referring to the “ancient difference in social organization” between Tzapotec and Mixe settlements (76–77). 18. For the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, after the huge population decline, Taylor estimated that the average size of a parcel was between 5.6 and 8.5 acres, about twice the size of the indigenous holding today. Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 77, who cites Marc Bloch, French Rural History; see also Chance on settlement patterns of Zapotecs, Mixes, and Chinantecs in the Sierra (Conquest of the Sierra, 72, 88ff.). 19. McBride, Land Systems of Mexico, 106–7; Florescano, Origen y desarrollo, 35.

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The arrival of the Spanish led to a major reorganization of land tenure in New Spain. Various conquistadors were rewarded with encomiendas (entrustments), tracts of land from whose inhabitants the encomendero (holder of the trust) received tribute in return for providing them protection and evangelization. Encomiendas were not private property. Thus villages continued to function communally, now paying tribute not only to their indigenous cacique (chief) but also to the encomendero. Parallel to the encomienda, the Crown granted land, mercedes, as private property to individuals, to religious orders, to caciques and principales, and as communal lands to villages.20 As the Spanish settlers and religious orders exerted increasing pressure on the land of New Spain, the Crown acted to ensure the livelihood of the indigenous population, protecting the source of its royal tribute. The Spanish monarchs issued numerous decrees to this end: in 1532 they ordered that “The Indians shall continue to possess their lands, both arable tracts and grazing lands, so that they do not lack what is necessary.” Despite this policy, European diseases devastated the indigenous population of Mesoamerica, leaving numerous towns and villages depopulated or abandoned. Estimates of the population of the Mixteca Alta indicate a decline from 530,000 in 1532 to 42,000 in 1720. That of the Central Valleys descended from an estimated 350,000 souls to a low of 40,000 to 45,000 by 1630.21 The recomposition of the land tenure system of New Spain then responded to a number of factors: the encomienda, the expansion of private property, the increase of property under the control of religious orders, the control and privatization of some lands by principales, the survival of communal villages, and the catastrophic decline of the indigenous population. 20. Encomiendas usually lasted only two to three generations and did not necessarily result in the transformation of land tenure within the territory, although some encomenderos were able to establish private haciendas within them. Gibson, Aztecs, 262ff. See Lockhart, “Encomienda and Hacienda.” 21. Cited in Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 67. By 1598 they also decreed that no land grants should be conferred that were prejudicial to pueblos de indios, indigenous communities. The Crown also forbade non-Indians to reside in these villages. This prohibition created the parallel existence of Repúblicas de indios and Repúblicas de españoles. The Crown’s decision to protect the indigenous villages was not only a “paternalistic preoccupation” but also a counterweight to the possible growth of an encomendero nobility. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 16–17. Spores cites the data from S. F. Cook and Woodrow Borah, Essays in Population History, in Mixtecs, 223, as do Romero Frizzi, “Epoca Colonial,” 136, and Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 17–18.

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This situation encouraged the Crown to regulate landholding through the process of composición, extending a deed, which conWrmed the holding once it had been duly surveyed and measured. Haciendas used this system to claim legal title, although surveys were rarely exact. Villages could also take advantage of this system to acquire títulos primordiales (titles that would hold up in court centuries later), indicating royal legitimization of their lands. Unfortunately, many indigenous pueblos did not become aware of this opportunity and failed to obtain formal title, which later put them at a great disadvantage in the legal defense of their lands.22 By royal decree, the towns were required to have different types of land. The most fundamental was the fundo legal, the town site, which after 1687 was to measure 600 varas (1,650 feet) from the door of the last house in the town.23 Lands granted by the Spanish Crown to indigenous communities (lands that could not be bought or sold but could be rented out) also included ejidos, communal pastures; propios, lands farmed or rented out in order to provide income necessary to cover the community’s municipal expenses; and tierras de común repartimiento, which were distributed among the families of the community for their individual sustenance. In addition, the villages set aside lands for religious festivals and cofradías (sodalities) and tracts to be “allotted to landless townsmen and ‘servants’ of the community.” During the colonial period, some villagers also began to acquire privately owned tracts.24 Although numerous pueblos today descend from pre-Columbian villages, others do not. Spanish colonialism’s reorganization of the land tenure system directly affected the pueblo and destroyed the kinship bond on which the Mesoamerican calpulli had been based. As a result, the calpulli evolved into a “place unit” rather than a lineage. Indigenous 22. McBride, Land Systems of Mexico, 56–57, 125; Gibson, Aztecs, 270ff. After the peak population decline, the Crown “became actively involved on a grand scale in fully deWning the composition and boundaries of communities throughout New Spain.” In the Mixteca, the composiciones system reached its height between 1680 and 1720, and numerous existing titles to community lands were deeded in this period (Spores, Mixtecs, 222). 23. Often, the last house might be quite a few kilometers from the town center. Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 58–69; McBride, Land Systems of Mexico, 124; Romero Frizzi, “Epoca Colonial,” 144–45. 24. Powell, “Liberales,” 655; Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 68; Whitecotton, Zapotecs, 193–200; Spores, Mixtecs, 131–34. The propios were not always “for public use for they belonged to the municipal council as a judicial entity and were often rented out to private interests in order to raise income to cover municipal costs.” Florescano, Origen y desarrollo, 35. See also Fraser, “Política de desamortización,” 631–33.

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people were pressed into military service or forced to labor in the mines or scattered throughout New Spain; disease gravely diminished the population and led to the demise of numerous villages and the policy of congregaciones.25 Pueblos nuevos (newly established villages) tended to ignore kinship ties, which also resulted in the demise of the calpulli, especially as caciques increasingly lost their power by the eighteenth century. This process was more gradual in Oaxaca, since the Spanish population was small and caciques maintained their power longer there than elsewhere.26 Thus village residents known as vecinos (literally, neighbors) became the hijos del pueblo (sons of the village) in indigenous pueblos. Land then became an even more fundamental factor of cohesion for the indigenous village. The villages of Oaxaca were extraordinarily successful in retaining their lands during the colonial period. Mercedes conceded to indigenous villages and their caciques were more numerous than those granted to Spaniards. The Indians of the Central Valleys, the Isthmus, and the southern highlands received more estancias de ganado mayor (cattle ranches) than did Spaniards. The indigenous peoples of the province of Antequera quickly learned how to use the Spanish legal system to defend themselves, gaining the reputation of persistent litigators. Taylor estimated that indigenous communities and individuals continued to control “two-thirds of the agricultural land during the last century of Spanish rule.”27 Criticizing Frank Tannenbaum’s assertion that the Spanish had reduced the Indians to holding isolated and mountainous lands, he countered: “This thesis assumes that the Indian was either completely passive or too weak to resist any Spaniard who took an active interest in ownership. In fact, 25. The Spanish Crown established rules for the organization of new towns based on the Castilian model. It ordered reducciones or congregaciones, the congregating of the remaining population of various pueblos (decimated by disease) in one place to form a new town, creating pueblos nuevos alongside pueblos viejos (old towns). New towns could also arise from the breaking off of barrios, neighborhoods, from pueblos viejos, as was the case of Guelatao (birthplace of Benito Juárez in the Sierra Juárez), or from new settlements. Spanish settlers established the pueblo nuevo of Villa Alta in the northeastern highlands of Oaxaca. To conquer the rebellious Mixes, the Spanish constructed a garrison nearby with Tlaxcalteca Indians as soldiers, who later established the new Nahuatl-speaking town of Analco. Schmieder, Settlements, 23, 67; Chance, Conquest of the Sierra, 37, 43. 26. The villages of New Spain “came to lose their former character as groups of closely related families, and as a result mere residence served to establish among them the right to hold a share of the village lands.” McBride, Land Systems of Mexico, 128. 27. Romero Frizzi, “Epoca Colonial,” 137; Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 107–8, and “Landed Society in New Spain,” 397.

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Valley Indians were quite aggressive in defending their lands by litigation and by force, though other local studies may show they were not typical in this respect. Their aggressiveness helps explain the survival of their lands and institutions.”28 This resourcefulness in Wnding strategies to defend themselves continued into the twentieth century.

The Liberal Reform: Division and Privatization of Communal Lands At mid-century, the majority of Mexican lands were corporate holdings, divided between the extensive real estate of the Catholic Church held in mortmain and the communal lands of the indigenous villages. In order to achieve a capitalist economy under liberal principles, the regime of private property would have to be made universal so that land could circulate as a commodity. Privatization thus emerged as one of the key tenets of the Liberal Reform, headed by the Oaxacan president, Benito Juárez. The Lerdo Law of June 25, 1856 (later incorporated into the 1857 Constitution), the cornerstone of this new economic policy, decreed the disentailment of Church real estate and the privatization of village communal lands. The latter was to be distributed as private parcels among the comuneros or to those who rented the lands, while remaining lands could then be sold in public auction, Wrst to villagers and then to outside private interests.29 Already twelve states had issued laws to end corporate landholding during the 1820s, so the Lerdo Law emerged as the “culmination” of a policy that had been developing for three decades. In Oaxaca, the local congress began its assault against communal property in an 1824 decree, quoted at the beginning of this chapter. It declared its liberal principles: 28. Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 197. Taylor goes on to cite, on the same page, Emilio Rabasa’s statement, in Evolución histórica, that given the long history of indigenous litigiousness, not to speak of boundary encroachments, “foreign capital does not dare engage in agriculture in Oaxaca because its lands cannot be guaranteed; even oaxaqueños prefer to invest in other endeavors.” This will be shown to be completely mistaken in the following pages. 29. The Reform laws did not demand the distribution of all village lands: nevertheless, the Lerdo Law was vague with respect to which lands of the communities could be exempted from the alienation process (those denoted “destined exclusively for public service”). Interpreting Article 8 of this law, Fraser assumed that the ejido (communal pastures) would be reserved for the village and that in strictu sensu, only the ejido and fundo legal were exempted from alienation, while the propios, montes, aguas, and tierras del común repartimiento were to be privatized. Fraser, “Política de desamortización,” 633ff.

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“The Congress of this State, convinced that in a just, equitable, and liberal system, laws should be conceived in terms of rigorous equality, that either protect or punish, but with no other distinction among citizens than that of merit or virtue.” It was the state’s responsibility to establish the “legal uniformity” necessary to “the welfare and felicity of the State,” to which “the Leyes de Indias and other dispositions that granted fundos legales to the indigenous peoples” were “diametrically opposed.” Since the Congress was most interested in “forever exiling any signs of that hateful distinction between Indians and Spaniards, since we are all sons of the same soil and brothers by nature, and thus it considers it its duty to decree” the termination of the granting of fundos legales. This decree also recognized the state’s duty “to foment agriculture and to distribute the necessary land equally among all its citizens,” since some “pueblos had immense landholdings that were idle while others did not have enough to survive.” It recommended that a land distribution law be written. Given opposition, this decree was modiWed in 1830 to let existing fundos stand. Again in 1827, the governor recommended passing laws against communal landholding. In 1849 and 1851, several years before the Ley Lerdo, Juárez, as governor of Oaxaca, had issued decrees that facilitated the privatization of municipal lands. Pueblos were required to survey and sell at public auction “lands, ranchos, water sources, forests, houses, and other holdings,” and to render detailed reports on the state of municipal funds. Ten years later, in 1862, the state government complained that it still had not received this information.30 In his second period as governor, Juárez promulgated the Lerdo Law and the 1857 Constitution in Oaxaca. The new Constitution prohibited civil corporations from acquiring or administering real estate, yet Article 68 of the state constitution of the same year (published by Juárez) recognized the municipalities’ rights to manage communal lands, contradicting the national magna carta. Loyal to his liberal faith, Juárez wanted to put corporate lands into circulation, but he was concerned that the initial goal of the Lerdo Law be respected, in order to aid “those of the indigenous race, so deserving of sympathy and a better lot.” He wrote to President Comonfort twice to make sure that communities would be able to distribute the lands among native villagers before lessees could impose their rights. Comonfort passed a resolution on October 9 to facilitate 30. Ibid., 623; Tutino, “Agrarian Social Change,” 119–120; Colección de leyes 1:16–17; Esparza, “Tierras de los hijos,” 387–93.

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indigenous access to land ownership, removing transfer and sales taxes. Later, on September 5 and 7, 1860, as president, Juárez decreed two similar measures. Nevertheless, he eventually recognized that the law was more often used to dispossess indigenous people than to turn them into individual proprietors.31 Delayed by the Wars of the Reform and French Intervention (1857– 67), the process of transforming land into a commodity took decades. During Liberal administrations between 1856 and 1876 in Oaxaca, Church lands were disentailed and some communal lands, mainly in the Central Valleys region, were privatized. Charles Berry analyzed this process during the Reform in Oaxaca, arguing that the closer the district to the centers of power controlled by Liberals, the greater the success of alienation of communal lands. Up until 1867, only 604 communal properties had been alienated, the majority of them in Zimatlán, Ocotlán, Teposcolula, and Jamiltepec. By the beginning of the PorWriato (1876), the Church was no longer a landed power, although the alienation of communal lands faced continued resistance. However, more recent studies have found that adjudication also began early in outlying areas.32 Despite a steady stream of government decrees insisting on the alienation of communal lands (1859, 1862, 1864, up through 1894), the process moved slowly in Oaxaca. “With tiresome insistence the Oaxacan authorities battled to alienate the lands of the indigenous communities,” and with equally strong resistance the communities defended themselves. In 1878 Governor Francisco Meixueiro admonished the villages of Oaxaca, which had yet to obey the Lerdo Law, and initiated a new battle against communal landholding in the state. According to one source, in 1878 1,097,229 hectares (hs.) of communal lands were registered, valued at $20,511,200. Numerous decrees followed to force privatization of these lands, but again results were not encouraging.33 31. Campeche’s constitution also continued to recognize certain corporate holdings (Guerra, México 1:274). See also Hamnett, Juárez, 67–68; Esparza, “Tierras de los hijos,” 394. 32. The majority of the 604 communal properties alienated were located in the districts of Zimatlán (180), Ocotlán (94), Teposcolula (83), Jamiltepec (61) and Miahuatlán (30). Thus, according to this data, privatization had not yet begun in Juchitán, Tuxtepec, Silacayoapan, or Nochixtlán. See Berry, Reform in Oaxaca, 181–83; Monaghan, “Disentailment”; and Pastor, Campesinos y reformas. 33. González Navarro, “Indio y propiedad en Oaxaca,” 177–83. See Memoria Administrativa, 1902, particularly the section referring to the Ministry of the Interior for a list of laws and decrees (part of this volume lacks enumeration); Berry, Reform in Oaxaca, 177–81;

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Governor Chávez’s decree of June 26, 1890, reinforcing instructions from the Ministry of Development in Mexico City, demanded that all villages maintaining communal lands distribute them within two months. Circular No. 10 of February 24, 1893, stated that despite the threat of judicial action, the 1890 circular had not had the desired effect: . . . be it because of ignorance, for lack of public funds to pay the necessary costs of mapping out the village lands, or because of the villages’ attachment to communal possession of lands, the case is that very few municipalities applied the land distribution law. The government of this state is adamant in its intention to execute the Constitution and the Reform Laws with respect to the alienation of communal property. It has also observed, however, that only the rich have taken advantage of acquiring these lands, due to the laxity of some village authorities.34 Observing these enormous changes in the regulation of landholding at mid-century in very distinct areas of the world (Mexico, Bolivia, Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, northern India), Joel Migdal afWrmed that “Land tenure laws were hoes preparing the ground for the deep and broad sowing of the expanding world economy. The harvest of land grabs, export-oriented plantations, and vast increases in tenancy and landless laborers meant new rural class relations.”35 But it can also be argued, in the case of Mexico, that a number of prominent Oaxacan liberals (Juárez, the early Díaz) were genuinely determined to transform the indigenous comunero into a private owner. This enduring objective questions the image of the alienation process in Oaxaca as simply a cover-up for a giant land grab. While many villages did lose large tracts of land, often the most fertile, to entrepreneurs and speculators, the state did make repeated Esparza, “Proyectos de los liberales,” 282ff.; Chassen [Chassen-López], “¿Capitalismo o comunalismo?” 34. It continued: “In view of these results, on March 10 of last year, Circular No. 10 ordered the political authorities of the districts to carry out the distribution of communal lands. . . . Lamentably, the government has been convinced that dispositions such as these, so beneWcial to the villagers, have been equally ineffective to achieve their important goal.” PO, June 26, 1890, and March 10, 1893. General Martín González, who succeeded Chávez in the governorship, repealed the 1890 decree and others to use laws that were less imperative. See Esparza, “Tierras de los hijos,” 398–99. 35. Migdal, “Capitalist Penetration,” 60–63.

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efforts to ensure that the campesino or campesina not be deprived of the basic means of family support, although the 1890 circular blames the victim for the rich’s taking advantage of land. The decree of February 24, 1893, spelled out the process by which individuals could acquire village lands. Now, if private interests solicited communal lands of a particular pueblo, the interested parties could be held accountable for the initial survey costs. This process permitted the lands to be divided into those to be distributed among the comuneros and those that could be acquired individually, in parcels of less than a thousand hectares.36 If the villages lacked funds or dragged their feet, this process accelerated privatization. The introduction of commercial agriculture and the construction of the railroads facilitated changes in the countryside. The plethora of government decrees relating to privatization Wnally brought results, as aspiring capitalists and speculators, attracted by lands in the vicinity of the railway stations, forced the division of communal lands.37 The expanding cultivation of coffee in the Cañada, the Costa, the Papaloapan River basin, and the Isthmus, the production of tobacco in Tuxtepec and Jamiltepec, and the growth of ranching on the Isthmus and the Costa, all described in the following chapter, provided the impulse to privatization. According to Manuel Esparza’s preliminary count of more than a thousand Wles in the state archives, the major process of privatization took place in Oaxaca between 1880 and 1910, with the decade of 1890 experiencing the greatest number of transactions. Between 1889 and 1903, 37,533 property owners received 5,060,085 hs., 4,208,218 of which were privatized, in what he referred to as the Cañada-Tuxtepec and the IsthmusCoastal regions, designated in the present study as the regions of PorWrian development. Thus, despite opinions that PorWrian economic modernization ignored Díaz’s home state, it is now clear that this was not the case. The spread of capitalism and liberal land laws resulted in a signiWcant modiWcation of the land tenure system. However, in various instances, the villages themselves initiated the process of privatization as a means of protection, simultaneously resisting, innovating, and adapting to new economic forces. As BonWl Batalla noted, “resistance, innovation, and 36. Circular No. 10, Feb. 24, 1893, in PO, March 10, 1893. 37. See Chassen [Chassen-López], Regiones y ferrocarriles; Chassen [Chassen-López], “¿Capitalismo o comunalismo?”; Coatsworth, “Railroads, Landholding, and Agrarian Protest,” 48ff.

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appropriation” were the “three primary processes that have made possible the persistence of Indian cultures.” This anthropologist rejected characterizations of indigenous peoples as “conservative” and “resistant to change,” since they have changed much over time, as the present study demonstrates.38 Many comuneros became private owners of small plots and cash-cropped on both types of parcels. Some campesinos worked their own parcels as well as working seasonally on middling to large tracts of privately held land. Both men and women were active on the different levels of this transformation. In 1895 the population of Oaxaca was 884,909, of which 287,713 males and 68,472 females were economically active. Circulars and decrees referring to the alienation process made clear that communal lands were to be distributed to all heads of families, including widows with children. Another portion could be parceled out to single men over twenty-one or younger men who lacked legal guardians. Originally these parcels were to be equal and valued at not more than $100 each. The remaining land could then be sold, Wrst to heads of families from the pueblo in question, and Wnally at public auction to anyone. Women were also active in this transformation of land tenure. Comuneras, almost exclusively widows with children, received parcels of land according to legal speciWcations. Women inherited land as daughters or widows and also purchased those being auctioned, usually as independent widows or wives with the necessary licencia marital (the marital permission of their husbands required by law).39 Each pueblo initiated the process of privatization by carrying out a census of its population to determine who was eligible to receive lands. In 1895 the district capital of Juquila, in the heart of the coastal coffee country, conducted its census and found 182 men and 58 women eligible. Because the value of the parcels was not to exceed $200, according to the cost of land in that region, each person received a generous ninety-sixhectare parcel.40 38. Esparza, “Proyectos de los liberales,” 288ff.; BonWl Batalla, Mexico Profundo, 132. 39. Censo 1895, in Estadísticas históricas de México 1:256. If the village did not have sufWcient lands to give a parcel worth $100, then the value could be reduced, as long as everyone received an equal parcel. Reglamento, June 26, 1890, PO, June 26, 1890. The 1862 law had decreed that the equal parcels could be for a value of up to $200, so confusion exists as to the limit of hectares. Esparza, “Proyectos de los liberales,” 294–95. See Chassen-López, “‘Cheaper than Machines,’” 29. 40. Esparza, “Proyectos de los liberales,” 294–95.

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In the pueblo of Chilchotla, in the coffee-producing mountains of the district of Teotitlán near the border with Puebla in the Cañada region, the villagers solicited the distribution of communal lands in 1890. The eligible population consisted of 112 married men, 31 single men, and 50 widows. According to the map of this land distribution in the state archives, in December 1893 each person received equal parcels of ten hs. of land and six hs. of montes (indicating that forests were also distributed). SigniWcantly, the map reveals that all the parcels of the women were segregated into a special section. No reason is given for this organization. But since many of the widows were out in the Welds working their own land, perhaps custom dictated that it would be unseemly for them to work alongside married men.41 Threatened by a takeover by Eugenio Schnetz in 1887, a group of Chinanteco Indians of Ozumacín, in the rich tropical district of Tuxtepec, solicited privatization. A total of ninety thousand varas in equal lots were distributed among 153 recipients: 78 married men, 35 single men, 5 widowers, 34 widows, and, unusually, one single woman by the name of Manuela Santiago. The women received the Wrst parcels on the list, again all of them contiguous in a special female sector.42 An important aspect revealed by this data on privatization of communal lands is the role of widows. In these three cases, the number of widows receiving land seems inordinately high: 26 percent of recipients in Juquila and Chilchotla, and almost 23 percent in Ozumacín. It does not correspond at all to the available statistics and general picture that we have of women in agriculture in the PorWriato. In addition, it brings up the question of the high number of widows in these towns. For 1882, 52.83 percent of the deaths were male, compared to 47.17 percent women in Oaxaca.43 While the female mortality rate was substantially lower, it still would not account for the considerable number of widows in these villages. This raises the question, how many of them were actually widows? Were some single women with children and no husbands perhaps 41. AGEPEO, 1890 Adjudicaciones (hereafter Adjud.), leg. 27, exp. 1, Teotitlán, Chilchotla; Chassen-López, “‘Cheaper than Machines,’” 34. See Silvia Arrom’s discussion of the importance of propriety and tradition as a basis for legal restrictions pertaining to women, in Women of Mexico City, 59. 42. AGEPEO, 1887 Adjud., leg. 37, exp. 15, Tuxtepec, Ozumacín. The documents spells Schnetz’s name in a variety of ways, including Chuetz. This is the only case I have found of a single woman receiving land. 43. González Navarro, Estadísticas sociales, 159.

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designated as widows so as not to be a burden to the municipal authorities? Generally, municipal authorities cared for widows and orphans of the village. The subject of widows as landowners is still open to investigation. Various towns reluctantly solicited the distribution of their communal lands as private property because they feared losing them to Mexican or foreign capitalists and speculators. This may have prompted the privatization process, cited above, in Chilchotla and Juquila, both located in regions where private coffee Wncas were proliferating in the late nineteenth century, as was the case in Ozumacín. The spread of capitalist agriculture in the various regions of the state on lands originally owned by the villages often met with steadfast resistance from the indigenous communities. Others, seeing the writing on the wall, solicited the division of their lands in private parcels to avoid losing them to outside interests. Having received their individual parcels of land, the villagers often deposited the deeds for safekeeping with the local cacique or the guardián de tierras, an elected ofWcial whose task it was to distribute land among cultivators. Having done so, they would return to their ancestral system of communal landholding.44 Sometimes even this was not enough. Affected by land speculation, ranching on neighboring Wncas and ranchos, and the introduction of cash crops, the Chinanteco villagers of Usila, in the district of Tuxtepec, initiated the privatization process. In 1882 village lands had been duly distributed among the comuneros as private property, with each of them paying $5 for a land title. They established their homes on these parcels and began to plant cash crops such as coffee trees and a little tobacco, as well as the traditional maize and beans.45 The Usileños’ situation worsened as the greed of speculators and investors for the rich lands of the Papaloapan river basin increased. It was not enough to become a private owner; campesinos still had to resist and defend their newly privatized lands. 44. The lands of Teotitlán attracted interest because of construction of the Mexican Southern Railway. Juquila had its outlet in the nearby coffee port of Puerto Angel and later the improvised port of Minizo on the PaciWc Ocean. Frank Tannenbaum describes this process in The Mexican Agrarian Revolution, 66–67. This system was probably so widespread in Oaxaca that authorities were persuaded formally to recognize the campesinos’ preference for communal lands in Oaxaca after the Revolution. This may well be the case with the lands of Juquila, which were distributed in 1895, according to Wles in the AGEPEO. Yet in the 1970s anthropologist James Greenberg estimated that the Chatino communities of Juquila had lost only 10 percent of their communal lands during the PorWriato. Greenberg, Blood Ties, 22. 45. AGEPEO, 1908 Adjud., Tuxtepec, Usila, leg. 43, exp. 25, and 1909 Adjud., leg. 43, exp. 27.

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In 1897, in league with the municipal authorities, the Wrm of Vives y Nouvelares obtained a large tract of land in Usila, which included the parcels of some of the villagers and threatened others. The Usileños protested to the jefe político, who informed them that their titles were not legal after all. Fourteen of them, including the two women in the group, were forced to accept an arrangement with this Wrm that, in effect, left it in control of the disputed territory (the document implies that they ended up as laborers on their own land). In 1903 the Usileños again protested to the newly appointed jefe político, but to no avail. In 1908, adding insult to injury, they were pressured by the municipal president of Usila to pay taxes on this land to which they supposedly held title but did not control. In addition, it was rumored that Vives y Nouvelares was about to fence in the land to use as pasture for livestock, which would force them to look for new lands to cultivate. The state authorities turned a deaf ear to their plight in 1908 by claiming that the case was not within their jurisdiction. In 1909 seventeen Usileños protested again. Only three of them had signed the Wrst petition, because the complaint was against the expansion of the company into lands of different villagers with the collusion of local authorities.46 Although the villagers were represented in Oaxaca by the opposition lawyer Juan Sánchez, their case does not seem to have been resolved. Although the privatization process in Oaxaca did not result in a wholesale takeover of lands and the formation of large haciendas, as it did elsewhere, a considerable transformation of land tenure occurred. On the one hand, a de facto land reform took place: upon petition by villagers for privatization, former comuneros received small parcels with which to support themselves and their families, resulting in the proliferation of minifundios, above all in the Mixteca. On the other hand, much of former communal land sold to villagers or outsiders served as the basis of new private agricultural enterprises dedicated to commercial agriculture, or fell into the hands of speculators. The process of distribution of land was extremely uneven; the best and most fertile lands, particularly those with access to some means of transportation, were privatized, while poorer lands farther from railroads or ports were left untouched. This accentuated the social and economic differentiation within some regions, and especially between the regions of PorWrian development and the more 46. Ibid.

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traditional areas. John Monaghan’s comparison of the neighboring Mixtec villages of Santa María Yucuiti and Santiago Nuyoo illustrates a number of aspects of this process of differentiation. The story of the former’s long struggle to save its lands from the powerful Hacienda de la Concepción is narrated in Chapter 6. But since the hacienda had no interest in the territory of neighboring Santiago Nuyoo, whose property did not have high commercial value, it went unscathed and managed to keep its communal lands.47 Therefore, the Reform Laws were not implemented uniformly in the Mixteca but were enforced mainly where individuals or companies applied pressure to privatize corporate property for commercial purposes. Not everyone deemed the division of the lands of the pueblos a negative force, for it also provided enticing economic opportunities for ambitious individuals (whether indigenous or mestizo). In some cases, it resulted in confrontation between enterprising locals of both sexes. Immediately after the publication of the Lerdo Law, Brígida Mendoza, a widow in the district capital of Juquila, asked for privatization of the plot of municipal lands, “Macahuites,” which she said she had been renting (for $5 a year) and was her only source of income. But she ran up against Don Miguel Calleja (the use of Don in the documentation denotes high socioeconomic status), who had already applied for the same land in addition to tracts belonging to other towns nearby. This conXict of interest forced the authorities to investigate the situation. It turned out that though Sra. Mendoza was unable to sign her name on her petition, she was enterprising enough not only to get her bid in early for the lands she rented but also to include in her own petition lands her neighbors had been cultivating, in an effort to beat them out and expand her own holdings. Nevertheless, her ambitions collided with Calleja’s even more audacious petition. He evidently won out thanks to his inXuence over the local authorities, although the tract of land he applied for was considerably reduced. Calleja did get the widow’s parcel, though, because she lacked the correct papers to prove she had been renting the land for so many years,48 a common problem because renters’ contracts were often verbal. Although illiteracy put many people at a disadvantage, a considerable 47. See John Monaghan, “Disentailment,” on Yucuiti (I thank the author for affording me the original English version, which I cite here), and Covenants with Earth and Rain, on Nuyoo. 48. AGEPEO, 1857, Adjud., leg. 17, exp. 3, Santa Catarina Juquila.

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pool of lawyers and tinterillos (scribes with some legal knowledge, but often unscrupulous characters) ready to litigate land conXicts were always available for a fee. The state government was aware of the speculation in land, especially the heightened activity during the 1890s. In an ofWcial accord dated November 1, 1893, the governor warned the jefes políticos of Etla, Teotitlán, Villa Alta, and Pochutla against “conscience-less speculators who have denounced as baldíos [public domain], the communal lands of the villages.” They were required to report on this situation and at the same time to assure any threatened villages that “the government would go to any length to see they would not be despoiled.” Nevertheless, leaving jefes políticos in charge of adjudications led to much favoritism and corruption.49 For example, the authorities of San Pedro el Alto, Pochutla, sought justice from the governor in 1879: . . . since time immemorial we have possessed the land where our rancherías are located to the west of the Cerro de la Pluma and continuing down to the Copalita river. The trapiches, cane Welds, fruit and coffee trees, and other plantings that have provided us with our subsistence have always been here until the coffee invasion of the districts of Miahuatlán and Pochutla, which, without our consent, has taken over part of our lands under the pretext that this will improve the situation of the inhabitants of our pueblo. While the new neighbors respected the lands under cultivation, we did not resist when they cleared the mountainsides to establish themselves but now not only do they trample on our unquestionable right of possession and treat us with contempt, but also are attempting to evict us from our own lands.50 The “new neighbors” were the coffee Wncas that had acquired some of their lands through the process of adjudication and now also coveted San Pedro’s communal lands. A frequent stratagem was to get a neighboring village to claim the lands the private interest wanted and then have that village rent or sell it to the Wnca. The village would proWt by receiving the 49. AGEPEO, 1893, Adjud., leg. 2, exp. 3, Centro; see Falcón, “Jefes políticos” 245ff. 50. Cited in Arellanes Meixueiro, “Finca cafetalera,” 301.

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rent for lands not theirs, and this ploy would initiate another of Oaxaca’s inter-village conXicts, in which legal processes lasted for decades. In this case, Río Hondo in Miahuatlán had claimed communal lands belonging to thirty San Pedro families and rented it to cafetalero (coffee producer) Benito Mijangos. In the meantime, the jefe político of Miahuatlán stated that his job only “consisted in providing the mountain pueblos with means of transportation and all that I can do to aid the development of coffee which I am convinced will later make this district great.”51 Clearly, these government ofWcials were on the side of coffee “progress.” Campesinos might resort to violence when their patience had run out, for example, after litigation dragged on interminably through the late 1890s and early 1900s. The comuneros of Benito Juárez, a colony of residents of San Mateo Piñas in the coastal district of Pochutla, waged an ongoing battle in defense of communal lands against the expanding interests of German coffee producer Leo von Brandestein, which at one point turned violent when the comuneros took up arms. As in the case of Usila, Brandestein protested that he had legally purchased the Cafetal San Pablo (almost 3,000 hs.), while the comuneros of Benito Juárez insisted that part of his holdings were their communal lands. Perhaps because of the violence and persistence of the campesinos of Benito Juárez, Brandestein Wnally sold this property to the British company of Rosing Brothers, which took over various individual Wncas in the area.52 On the basis of these precedents, Governor Pimentel intervened directly when another member of this major coffee-producing family, Rito Mijangos, attempted to take over the communal lands belonging to the district capital, San Pedro Pochutla, in 1904. Pimentel did not permit Mijangos to proceed with denunciation procedures, whereas the local jefe político might well have acceded to pressure. In a letter to PorWrio Díaz, the governor explained that such a precedent might lead to serious problems throughout the region. No friend of campesinos, Pimentel evidently 51. Ibid.; Chassen [Chassen-López], “¿Capitalismo o comunalismo?” 164ff.; Esparza, “Proyectos de los liberales,” 271ff. 52. Widow comuneras joined with their neighbors in these protests too. See Holms, Directory, 309; AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; Gob., Jan. 1912, Pochutla Quejas Particulares; Adjud., 1913, leg. 22, exp. 26, Pochutla, Huatulco; Garner, Regional Development in Oaxaca, 32–33; Chassen-López, “‘Cheaper than Machines.’” Since the land under question was also claimed by the villagers of Huatulco, foreign interests kept this dispute alive in order to divide and conquer the comuneros. Women were also present in defense of Huatulco’s interests.

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feared the possibility of a strong reaction from them. On another occasion, a commission of campesinos from Yautepec sought an audience with the president in order to save their communal lands from privatization. According to Carlton Beals, Díaz “listened carefully, embraced them, wept copiously over their miseries and restored—a few miserable acres.”53 Thus, the privatization of land was not always successful if it might threaten campesino livelihood and provoke them into a violent reaction. Opposition notwithstanding, the speculation and privatization went on apace. While, as mentioned above, the ex-comuneros of Chilchotla received ten hs. of land and six hs. of forests each, the remaining lands, well suited for coffee production, were auctioned off to private owners. In 1893 alone, Wfty tracts of land were sold (Wfteen of them close to a thousand or more hs. each) to forty-one persons, three of whom were women. Both Rafaela Gómez and María de Jesús Gómez bought 508 hs., each at a cost of $550. Angela Olivares bought 1,001 hs. for $1,100 in Chilchotla and the following year acquired another 1,000 hs. in Teponaxtla, in the nearby district of Cuicatlán. Manuela Muñoz and partners picked up 3,000 hs. in Teponaxtla for $3,300 in June 1894. Among the forty-one purchasers of Chilchotla’s land were Rafael Reyes Spíndola (later the CientíWco editor of Mexico City’s El Imparcial), who picked up two lots for a total of 750 hs. General José María Vega and Gildardo Gómez (a well-known Oaxacan liberal) each acquired 1,000 hs.54 The largest (Wve leagues) of thirteen tracts of land alienated in Pinotepa Nacional in the coastal district of Jamiltepec in 1856 went to Marcelina Melo, the only female purchaser, for $500. Plutarco Gazga, Juan Pedro Díaz, Nicolás Tejada, and four other men picked up four leagues each. Of nine tracts of land privatized in Tlacamama, Jamiltepec, between 1856 and 1876, Francisco González acquired three leagues, while Wve men and 53. CPD, Letters, leg. 29, caja 39; Beals, PorWrio Díaz, 197. It is unclear which Yautepec sent this delegation; there is a San Carlos Yautepec in Oaxaca but also various others in other states. Brunk reports that Yautepec, Morelos sent a delegation to see Díaz in spring 1905 and this may well be the one Beals refers to. Díaz was known to cry publicly and privately, and his enemies dubbed him “the crybaby of Icamole,” a reference to the battle of Icamole, which Díaz lost during the Tuxtepec revolution. 54. A relationship between the two Gómezes has not been established. Not all villages losing communal lands had women among their buyers. For example, Cuyaltepec and Teotilalpan, both in Cuicatlán, had no female purchasers. AGEPEO, 1895, Adjud., leg. 9, exp. 32. Etla, Cuicatlán, Teotitlán, Teposcolula, Huajuapan, Coixtlahuaca, Juxtlahuaca, Pochutla, Jamiltepec, Tlacolula, etc. See also, on Manuela Muñoz y socios, AGEPEO, 1894, Adjud., leg. 6, exp. 26, Cuicatlán, Teponaxtla.

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Bárbara Díaz bought one league each.55 With proposals to construct a railroad through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and increasing production of coffee, sugar, rubber, indigo, citrus fruits, and livestock, Juchitán and Tehuantepec (to a lesser degree) became prime targets for capitalist land speculation. Privatization proceeded immediately after the publication of the Lerdo Law. In Zanatepec, Julio and Luis Nivón adjudicated over Wve and one-quarter leagues between 1857 and 1864, while Genoveva de la Rosa made the largest purchase, of seven leagues, for $1,533. In Tapanatepec, of seven adjudications (whose extensions were not speciWed) in 1856–57, four went to men and three to women. In 1857 the jefe político of Juchitán auctioned off 74,224 hs. of communal lands to various purchasers against the will of the pueblo of San Juan Guichicovi. On resale, more than 44,500 hs. of this land ended up in hands of the Woolrich family and another 26,700 hs. in the possession the De Gyves family.56 Thus it is clear that privatization accelerated in the geographically peripheral areas of Oaxaca at a much earlier date than previously believed. According to Karl Kaerger, after the signing of the Pearson concession to reconstruct the Tehuantepec National Railway across the Isthmus and to construct modern port facilities in Puerto México and Salina Cruz in the late 1890s, “the North Americans arrived en masse and planted . . . millions of coffee trees on the lowest slopes of the mountain chain which encircles the isthmus.”57 The U.S. interest in exploiting the agriculture of the region responded to two concerns: Wrst, the Isthmus was considered a zone of strategic interest for U.S. national security. If the new railroad was going to be in British hands, at least the surrounding lands should be under U.S. control. Second, with a railway spanning the Isthmus, tropical products in demand in the U.S. market would now be easier and cheaper to transport. 55. A league is equivalent to 5,572.7 meters, 5.5 kilometers, or approximately three miles. The price for a league ranged from the $41 paid by Francisco Ramírez in 1856 to Díaz’s $333 twenty years later, demonstrating the increase in the value of land. AGEPEO, Adjudicaciones, leg. 9, exp. 32, 1895, Etla et al. 56. Women were most active in land acquisition in Juchitán in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The women of the isthmian districts of Juchitán and Tehuantepec were famous for their economic activity. Historically they controlled local commerce in the markets and were fond of wearing heavy gold jewelry to advertise their wealth. AGEPEO, 1895, Adjud., leg. 9, exp. 32; Arellanes Meixueiro, Oaxaca, 68. 57. Kaerger, Agricultura y colonización, 78.

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In Mexico City, half a dozen companies appeared, with ofWces in the provinces to encourage the development of the south. These companies purchased enormous extensions of lands, subdivided them, supposedly prepared them for irrigation, and then sold them at staggering prices, between $5 and $25 an acre, to U.S. companies. In 1899 El Imparcial reported on the formation of a company in Chicago with the object of investing in isthmian agriculture. The Tehuantepec Mutual Planters Company planted bananas, 810 hs. of sugarcane, and 570 hs. of orange trees, the largest orange grove in the country. By 1904, the same company was sending railroad cars loaded with tomatoes directly to the United States. By 1901 the Mexican Land & Coffee Company controlled 8,311 hs. and the Mexican Tropical Planters Company held over 20,000 hs. in Santa María Chimalapa.58 Thus foreign investors took an active part in this land grab in Oaxaca, especially on the Isthmus, in the Papaloapan region, and in the Cañada. The Texas Company (Texaco) invested in land speculation as far south as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. According to John Hart, more than 100 million acres, 22 percent of Mexico’s land surface, belonged to American owners. In addition, Wfteen thousand colonists from the United States lived in Mexico in 1910, occupying portions of Sonora, Chiapas, Veracruz, Oaxaca, and other states. One of the largest investors in land, William Randolph Hearst, owned a network of companies holding between 6.6 million and 7.5 million acres in Chihuahua, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Chiapas, and Campeche.59 In an article on corrupt business practices in PorWrian Mexico, William Schell Jr. questioned the legitimacy of various plantation companies, arguing that they were only “fronts designed to defraud U.S. investors.” Some of these dubious enterprises were located along the Tehuantepec National Railway in the isthmian district of Juchitán. This district was promoted as “Uncle Sam’s district.” But far from weeding them out, ofWcials in Washington stiXed investigations of fraud by the consul general’s ofWce when it looked as though they might threaten U.S. investment and the politics of Dollar Diplomacy in Mexico.60 58. Arellanes Meixueiro, “Porvenir agrícola,” 35; El Imparcial, July 21, 1899; Cossío Silva, “Agricultura,” 47, 65; Esparza, “Tierras de los hijos,” 404–5. 59. Hart does not name the companies individually (Revolutionary Mexico, 156–60). 60. Schell, “American Investment in Tropical Mexico,” 219–47. Undoubtedly, the most outrageous swindles took place in the rubber industry, discussed in the next chapter.

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James R. Parsons was sent down to Mexico to investigate the allegations of fraudulent business practices. A number of companies had refused to supply the necessary information to the consul: the Mexican Plantation Co. burned its Wles rather than let them be seen. When this report came out, a considerable number of U.S. companies had to liquidate, sixteen of them situated along the Tehuantepec Railway.61 Surely “one of the biggest fakes on record” was the Pan-American Land and Colonization Company, connected to the Pan American Railway (see Chapter 1) through interlocking directorates. President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hay envisioned this railroad as a strategic link in the railway uniting the U.S. with South America, since it ran to the Guatemalan border and was fundamental in limiting further European expansion in the Western hemisphere. Parsons was offered a minister’s post in Europe but he refused, and soon afterward his death in a streetcar accident ended the investigation. The appointment of David E. Thompson as ambassador, a major promoter of the Pan American Railway, relieved any remaining tensions in the American business community in Mexico.62 Despite the privatization of a considerable portion of Oaxaca’s territory and the ongoing speculation, numerous villages managed to retain their communal lands, especially if they were in isolated regions, which did not experience the spread of capitalist agriculture. The jefe político of Putla characterized a number of the villages under his jurisdiction when he described San Juan Copala: “This village is very ancient and its inhabitants are of ‘raza pura’ [pure race, meaning full-blooded Indians]. Its lands produce sugarcane, fruits, and cereals. The land is held communally or by the municipal government, and has belonged to the village since time immemorial.”63 Rosendo Pérez García, historian and ethnographer of the Sierra Juárez, calculated that communal lands made up 473,454 hs., while private holdings were only 14,365 hs. of the twenty-six municipios of his 61. Ibid., 243. Parsons’ consular report targeted stock companies, rather than companies owned by individuals, as the worst offenders, making exaggerated declarations about fertility and nonexistent developments in order to deceive unsuspecting “widows, school teachers and others who can ill afford it.” These companies either distributed the capital invested as dividends for insider stockholders or diverted it to other enterprises. 62. Ibid., 244–50. 63. Of the village of Itundujia high up in the mountains of the southern cordillera, he wrote, “The land belongs to the commons or to the municipal government. The village’s property rights are ancient.” AGEPEO, April 1912–13, Gob., Fom., Límites Territoriales, Centro.

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region. Thus communal landholding continued to prevail even twenty years after the Revolution.64 According to François-Xavier Guerra, 92.3 percent of the pueblos of Oaxaca held some communal lands in 1910. A 1923 report on San Pedro Mixtepec stated that the municipality “possessed over 20,000 hs. of very fertile lands” of which fewer than 600 hs. were being used. In the 1920s McBride asserted that it was “not at all uncommon” to see landholding pueblos not only in Oaxaca but also in Guerrero, Jalisco, Veracruz, Tlaxcala, and parts of Puebla.65 Unfortunately, the present state of research on land tenure in Oaxaca during this period does not permit us to posit a percentage of communal lands retained in 1910. We do know, however, that a sizable portion of the state’s lands remained under the control of the pueblos. Oaxaca’s singular characteristics can be appreciated when contrasted with statistics from a northern state such as Coahuila. Approximately 85 percent of the population of Oaxaca resided in free rural villages in 1910, as compared to 30 percent in Coahuila. In Oaxaca, 72 percent of all properties were 10 hs. or smaller, while a bare 10.7 percent of the state was held in properties of more than 5,000 hs. In contrast, in Coahuila only 16 percent of all properties were 10 hs. or smaller, while 90.7 percent of the state was held in holdings of more than 5,000 hs.66 These data demonstrate the enormous differences between a state dominated by haciendas, such as Coahuila, and one where smallholdings and free rural villages remained strong. The survival of so many free rural villages also explains a widespread retention of communal lands in Oaxaca’s case. But as Taylor noted for the colonial period, the survival of village lands in Oaxaca may not be representative of the situation in other states of southern or central Mexico. Perhaps in the future it may be proved that PorWrio Díaz favored the campesinos of his native state above others. 64. Pérez García, Sierra Juárez, 1:229–30. This land had probably remained in communal holdings also owing to the liberal clientelism in the Sierra during the second half of the nineteenth century (see Chapter 8). The land of the Sierra Juárez was extremely mountainous, however, and the region was not self-sufWcient in grain production. 65. Guerra does not provide his source for this statistic in México 1:282. Mixtepec statistics cited in Tannenbaum, Mexican Agrarian Revolution, 63. While Mixtepec’s lands were fertile, both fertility and access to transportation increased the pressure for privatization. McBride, Land Systems of Mexico, 135. Wasserstrom afWrms that even by Independence, the landholding system in Chiapas had been more disrupted than that of Oaxaca (Class and Society, 64–65). 66. Tannenbaum, Mexican Agrarian Revolution, 55–57.

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As a holdover of liberal clientelism from the Wars of Reform and French Intervention, he may have protected them from total dispossession of their lands. The survival of the communal land system by Oaxacan campesinos can also be inferred from Governor Miguel Bolaños Cacho’s 1902 statement that “this Government has not withdrawn its attention from the need to distribute and privatize communal lands and does worry about providing each citizen with a piece of property which would raise him up from poverty, and if it has not been able to attain this goal in the state, it is because of the apathy and indolence of the indigenous class.”67 The proponents of modernization continued to battle with the defenders of communal usos y costumbres.

The Hacienda: The View from the South Despite the fact that Oaxaca was the sixth-largest state in size in 1910, the hacienda never dominated the land tenure system there as it had in central and northern Mexico. The rugged geography of the state reduces its Xatter terrain with an incline of up to 0.15 (providing larger tracts of potentially arable land) to only 24 percent of the total surface area, mainly the lowlands along the PaciWc from the Costa Chica to the Isthmus, the Papaloapan region, and the Central Valleys. Using data from the 1910 Census, Ronald Waterbury calculated that haciendas covered only 8.1 percent of the total territory of the state, while in the sugar-producing state of Morelos they encompassed 43.9 percent of the land.68 Some scholars have suggested that the minimum size for a hacienda is 1,000 hectares and that properties of lesser size should be considered ranchos, while others have set a minimum of 2,000 or 2,500 hs.69 But size 67. Quoted in González Navarro, Historia moderna de México: El PorWriato; Vida Social, 201–2; Memoria Administrativa, 1902, 10. In Chihuahua also privatization was still taking place under Governor Creel in 1905; see Lloyd, “Desamortización tardía,” 201ff., and Nugent and Alonso, “Multiple Selective Traditions,” 217. 68. See Esparza, “Proyectos de los liberales,” 288ff.; Waterbury, “Non-revolutionary Peasants,” 417. 69. Frank Tannenbaum opted for 1,000 hs. and pointed out that the smaller haciendas might often be more valuable than the larger ones: “On the average, the value (per hectare) of the 1,000-hectare hacienda is ten times as great as that of the hacienda having 100,000 hectares or more” (Mexican Agrarian Revolution, 91–93). Moisés González Navarro (Historia moderna de México: El PorWriato; Vida Social, 211) and John Womack (“The Mexican Economy,” 101) agreed on 1,000 hs. Jacobs, (Ranchero Revolt, 63) opted for 2,000 hs. and George McBride (Land Systems of Mexico, 25) for 2,500 hs.

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is only one factor to be taken into account; others are fertility and access to water, labor, and transportation facilities. Taylor resisted setting a numerical limit and deWned the colonial hacienda as “a new economic entity devoted to supplying local markets with both grain and animal products.”70 Since in Oaxaca the minimum size of haciendas Xuctuated wildly, depending on the source, Taylor’s deWnition is the most useful. Instability characterized the Oaxacan hacienda during the colonial period. By the eighteenth century, it was more common to sell a hacienda for delinquency of mortgage payment than for the death of the owner. Despite growth in mining and commerce encouraged by the Bourbon Reforms, the hacienda failed to prosper because of this debt and instability. A marked contrast arose between indigenous and Spanish land tenure in colonial Oaxaca, as opposed to central or northern Mexico. The most signiWcant difference was the maintenance of the “territorial integrity and economic independence” of the Indian communities, which limited the possible expansion of the Spanish-owned haciendas. John Thomas Cassidy found that this characterization of the hacienda’s debt and instability also held true for the Wrst eighty years after Independence. Hacendados tended to be relatively poor in comparison with miners or the historically dominant merchants of Oaxaca.71 Colonial Antequera afforded a prime example of how the limitations of a hacienda’s market determined its potential for development. Although the production of cereals in the Central Valleys far outstripped the needs of its limited regional market, the rugged Oaxacan terrain, deWcient transportation networks, low demand due to widespread self-sufWciency among indigenous peoples, and the dearth of urban or mining centers that might generate increased demand resulted in the restriction of productive capacity.72 The average debt of peons on Oaxacan haciendas was surprisingly high: 80 percent of the debts were far above the legal limit of $6 and many were closer to $35.5 per debtor. This was another indicator of the “strong negotiating position” of indigenous Oaxacans, who could often 70. For 1643 Taylor counted forty-one haciendas in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca. Landlord and Peasant, 121–23. 71. Ibid., 7–8, 195ff., and Taylor, “View from the South,” 397. Eight haciendas changed hands eighty-nine times, thirteen times by inheritance, and seventy-six by sale. Taylor, “Haciendas coloniales,” 88–89. Cassidy, “Haciendas and Pueblos,” 70–71, 75. 72. Florescano, Origen y desarrollo, 88–89, 94, 129. On the question of colonial haciendas and the development of markets, see Romero Frizzi, “Epoca colonial,” 141ff.

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count on their own lands to sustain them. While numerous haciendas depended on seasonal labor from neighboring villages holding communal lands, it was not in their interest to have full-time peones acasillados (resident peons) common in central and northern Mexico. These factors increased the negotiating power of campesinos and help to explain the limited expansion of the hacienda in Oaxaca. Terrazgo (sharecropping) constituted the traditional relationship between labor and the hacendado in Oaxaca. The terrazguero received a parcel of land in usufruct from the landowner for which he or she had to pay with a share of the harvest, which might be el partido (a Wfth), el tercio (a third), or la media (half, in which case the cropper was called a mediero). The terrazguero might also enjoy the privileges of pasturing his or her animals on hacienda lands, and also had to fulWll the faena (two hours of work each Sunday on hacienda upkeep). These conditions varied from region to region and from hacienda to hacienda. The terrazgo relationship expanded throughout the nineteenth century, while debt peonage diminished.73 The renting of communal lands to individual entrepreneurs was not uncommon during the colonial period. In the Mixteca, the creation of haciendas arose from the process of (illegal) “privatization” of communal lands. Possession gradually evolved into a form of private property for the renter, especially in areas where commercial agriculture made inroads. Rodolfo Pastor argues for the existence of an informal privatization process in parts of the Mixteca even before the 1856 Lerdo Law, especially in those frequent cases where communal lands were rented out by the villages to Indians, mestizos, or Spaniards. A similar process took place in Sonora and Sinaloa in the decade before passage of the Lerdo Law.74 Between 1856 and 1914 the Mexican hacienda experienced its “golden age.” Huge landed estates emerged, located mainly in central and northern Mexico: the Hacienda de Cedros in Zacatecas dominated 754,912 hs. and the Terrazas family in Chihuahua purportedly controlled between 5 and 7 million hs. In 1909, Positivist Andrés Molina Enríquez argued that the Liberal Reform’s supposed desamortización (breaking up of corporate real estate) had in practice resulted in an amortización (concentration of land), since it facilitated the consolidation of often larger landholdings from Church and communal lands.75 73. Taylor, “Haciendas coloniales,” 91–92; Cassidy, “Haciendas and Pueblos,” 175–76. 74. Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 363ff., 459; McBride, Land Systems of Mexico, 134. 75. Leal and Huacuja, Fuentes, 9; Katz et al., Servidumbre agraria, 7.

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In the south, haciendas tended to be smaller than in northern or central Mexico. The median size for a Oaxacan hacienda in 1910 was 3,328.8 hs., while even in the much smaller state of Morelos it was 5,112.1 hs. Haciendas often included villages, railway stations, ranchos, or rancherías, within their conWnes. The Hacienda of Cuauhtempan in the Teotitlán district of Oaxaca, property of General Ignacio Mejía, consisted of 8,811 hs. in 1900 and included two railroad stations, San Antonio and Mejía, within its territory.76 Although haciendas tended to be less extensive in the south, in Oaxaca the term was used so freely that it included properties that were quite small. Based on Cayetano Esteva’s 1913 data (see table 5), Francisco José Ruiz Cervantes found that more than half of the properties would not be considered haciendas by most scholars, Wtting more appropriately into the category of middling (thirty to three hundred hectares) and small (fewer than thirty hectares) landholdings. Likewise, the 1912 jefe político reports to the governor listed 450 “important” properties, many of which could not even remotely qualify as haciendas (e.g., properties of thirty hs.).77 On the other hand, although the hacienda did not dominate the Oaxacan rural landscape during the PorWriato, the breakdown in table 5 indicates the existence of a number of sizable landed estates on the eve of the Revolution. In the late PorWriato, Matilde Castellanos, the widow of wealthy Italian entrepreneur Esteban Maqueo and mother of Esteban Maqueo Castellanos, a noted PorWrian judge, was the largest landlord in the state. On her husband’s death, she inherited the Haciendas Marquesanas, sugar estates and mills, which had originally belonged to Cortés as part of the Marquesado del Valle. In the early twentieth century she owned the Hacienda and Sugar Mill of Santo Domingo (at 77,500 hs., the largest hacienda in the state) and the Hacienda La Venta (41,000 hs.), both in Ixtaltepec in the district of Juchitán.78 76. Waterbury, “Non-revolutionary Peasants,” 417; see Southworth, OfWcial Directory of Mines and Estates, for the extensions of haciendas in the different states of Mexico. Tannenbaum, Mexican Agrarian Revolution, 105–6; see Mapoteca Nacional (MN), Colección General, Oaxaca, Mapa 3094, Croquis Hacienda Cuauhtempan. Mejía had been Juárez’s secretary of War during the French Intervention. 77. Ruiz Cervantes, “De la bola a los primero repartos,” 347; Esteva, Nociones elementales. The jefe político reports are located in AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D., and Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D. 78. Santo Domingo also produced cotton, indigo, beans, and maize. In 1910 it had a population of 220 inhabitants divided equally between women and men. La Venta was

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The Trápaga brothers immigrated to Oaxaca from Spain in the middle of the nineteenth century and amassed a fortune, which included one of the three textile factories in the state. They and their children married well, for instance, with the family of the wealthy miner and landowner Juan Baigts. By 1912 María Trápaga owned the cereal-producing Hacienda Blanca (840 hs.) in Etla, and Margarita Trápaga owned San Pedrillo Hacienda (75 hs.) in the Tlacolula district. Guadalupe Baigts, owner of the Hacienda of San Isidro Catano in Etla, with 8,780 hs., produced cereals and livestock.79 The Hacienda of Mexía in the district of Zimatlán belonged to L. C., widow of Fenelón. While under her control the hacienda expanded from 800 to 1,053 hs. The same could be said for Sra. Luz Gil de Ugalde’s Table 5.

Distribution of Oaxacan Haciendas According to Size

Size (in hectares) 1 to 100 101 to 1,000 1,001 to 5,000 5,001 to 10,000 10,001 to 20,000 20,001 to 30,000 30,001 to 40,000 40,001 to 50,000 50,001 to 60,000 60,001 to 80,000 Total

Number of Properties

Extension

42 96 58 14 6 3 1 3 1 1

2,280 43,913 137,890 109,429 90,066 78,220 30,200 133,330 50,908 77,500

225

753,736

Percentagea 6 18 15 12 10 4 18 7 10

Percentage of total land of haciendas Source: Based on a table constructed by Francisco José Ruiz Cervantes, “De la bola a los primeros repartos,” in Historia de la cuestión agraria: Estado de Oaxaca,vol. 1, coord. Leticia Reina Aoyama (Mexico City: Juan Pablos Editor, S.A., Gobierno del Estado de Oaxaca, Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca, Centro de Estudios Históricos del Agrarismo en México, 1988), 347. Ruiz Cervantes used information from Cayetano Esteva, Nociones elementales de geografía histórica del Estado de Oaxaca (Oaxaca: Tip. San Germán Hnos., 1913), 25–35. a

dedicated to sugarcane and maize production. See Brasseur, Viaje por el Istmo, 131; División territorial, 1910; AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D. 79. See AGEPEO, 1904, ConXictos (hereafter Conf.), leg. 49, exp. 30; and Holms, Directory, 311. It is not clear in this case whether the name, Guadalupe, referred to a male or female since it can be used for either sex, but the San Isidro hacienda had originally been owned by Trápaga and Company. AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.

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Hacienda of Cinco Señores, in the Centro district, which grew from 131 hs. to 305 hs. by 1912. Administered by the partnership of JoseWna Berges y Hermanos, the Hacienda of Guadalupe of Cacaotepec, in the rich Etla district, also expanded considerably under her control. In 1906 Guadalupe registered only 80 hs. but by 1912 it had 1,756 hs. These haciendas, in addition to those of the Trápaga Baigts, had originated in the colonial period and produced staples, including sugarcane, for the brisk market system of the Central Valleys.80 Molina Enriquez stereotyped the Mexican hacienda as a traditional, un-businesslike entity producing staples such as maize, wheat, beans, chile, nopales, squash, and alfalfa for local markets. Haciendas failed to attract foreign capital because “in our country, the hacendado, like a good criollo, is not a farmer, but on one hand, a feudal lord, and on the other, a rentier. The true agricultural entrepreneur in Mexico is the ranchero.”81 Nevertheless, recent research has revealed the limits of this highly inXuential analysis and demonstrated the varying degrees of capitalization of haciendas during the PorWriato. The haciendas of the Central Valleys of Oaxaca supplied the larger market of the district capital and the PorWrian mining boom. Unfortunately, since no study has followed up on Taylor’s and Cassidy’s for this period, conclusions on the development of the PorWrian hacienda are tentative. In addition to the traditional haciendas, whose roots could be found in the colonial period and the early nineteenth century, another type of agricultural enterprise appeared. Allen Wells and Gilbert Joseph have characterized the henequen estate that brought great prosperity to the Yucatán during the PorWriato as a hybrid because it represented a “complex transition” from a more traditional rural society to capitalist plantation agriculture.82 A new hybrid holding arose in Oaxaca, also in 80. The problem with all of these statistics is that they are government data and owners reduced the extension of their holdings when answering state inquiries in order to pay lower taxes, particularly the censo on real estate, a fact on which Esteva comments in Nociones elementales, 35. See Holms, Directory, 309; Southworth, OfWcial Directory of Mines and Estates, 220; AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D. Further research needs to be done to evaluate whether or not the surviving colonial haciendas expanded during the PorWriato. 81. Molina Enriquez, Grandes problemas, 151ff. See Leal and Huacuja’s division of PorWrian haciendas into traditional (Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero, etc.), transitional, and modern, the last highly specialized and capitalized, favoring free wage relations and employing the latest technology in responding to national and international markets (Fuentes, 10–11). 82. Wells and Joseph, Summer of Discontent, 144–45.

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response to national and international demand, devoted to cash crop production, which I have called the PorWrian Wnca.

The Emergence of the PorWrian Finca Oaxaca frequently appears in works on Mexico as the prime example of a state bypassed by PorWrian agricultural modernization projects.83 Nonetheless, the present study, based on primary research, exposes the intimate relationship between the widespread process of privatization, the construction of infrastructure (particularly railroads), the arrival of foreign investment, the diffusion of cash crops, and the commercialization of agriculture, precisely in what it designates as the regions of PorWrian development. It reveals the intricate patterns of land tenure in Oaxaca in the second half of the nineteenth century, which mirrors the growing complexity and hybrid situations throughout the Mexican countryside in general. The increase in the number of larger private landholdings provides a major indicator of this change. Depending on the region of the state, properties might be designated Wncas (Papaloapan, Costa, and Isthmus), plantations (Papaloapan), or cafetales (coffee-producing holdings), ranchos, ingenios (sugar mills), and trapiches (small, rustic sugar mills) elsewhere. General confusion reigned as to the distinctions between these terms and they were often used interchangeably. Esteva’s 1913 list of the state’s haciendas or Wncas included holdings of twenty-two, twenty-Wve, and thirty hs., properties hardly considered haciendas elsewhere. In 1912 jefes políticos registered properties of ten to twenty hs. as Wncas. Rendón Garcini observed that properties were arbitrarily classiWed depending “on tradition and the likes and dislikes of the proprietor” during the PorWriato. He found as much variety in Tlaxcala as I have in Oaxaca. To complicate the matter further, some ranchos were located within the haciendas themselves.84 83. Cassidy detected some slight change in agriculture in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, but only in tobacco and coffee-producing Tuxtepec. Garner mentioned Tuxtepec as the one area of PorWrian economic growth, citing Cassidy. Cassidy, “Haciendas and Pueblos,” 135; Garner, A Provincial Response, 31–32, 40. 84. The value of haciendas in Tlaxcala Xuctuated between $4,000 and $280,000, while ranches were valued at between $200 and $50,000 in 1892. Rendón Garcini, Prosperato, 96–97; Esteva, Nociones elementales, 255–35; AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.

112

Infrastructure and Economics

Despite this confusion, table 6 demonstrates a substantial increase, of between 100 and 400 percent (depending on the sources used in the comparison), in the number of private agricultural holdings (excluding minifundios) during the PorWriato. The information supplied by the sources in table 6 is broken down in table 7 in order to illustrate the distribution of the growth of private property by district. Between 1883 and 1912, a remarkable increase in private holdings occurred in Cuicatlán, Teotitlán, Tuxtepec, Choapan, Juchitán, Tehuantepec, Pochutla, Juquila, Putla, and Jamiltepec, precisely the districts where commercial production of tropical and subtropical products and foreign investment increased notably.85 The extremely fertile district of Tuxtepec in the Papaloapan river basin, producer of a rich assortment of cash crops in addition to traditional staples and livestock, provides the most striking example of change. In 1883 Tuxtepec contained only one major hacienda, yet by 1912 the jefe político reported 123 properties, equivalent to 23 percent of all private holdings in the state. Information on forty-four holdings provided for 1906 is presented in table 8, which demonstrates the diversity of Wncas and products. The extent of foreign investment in the agriculture of the Papaloapan region in 1912 can be seen in table 9. But the Papaloapan was not the only district to undergo signiWcant transformation during the PorWriato. Although the cultivation of coffee had been introduced into Oaxaca in the early nineteenth century, it became a major crop with the decline of the cochineal dye trade. Table 10, constructed with data from Esesarte (1909), demonstrates the proliferation of Wncas producing coffee and other cash crops, once again mainly in the regions of PorWrian development.86 The impressive expansion of private property dedicated to the cultivation of cash crops or livestock, and the uneven growth pattern detected in the regions of PorWrian development as compared to those dedicated to traditional crops, provide the basic elements to illustrate the development 85. The introduction of cash crops such as coffee, tobacco, and rubber will be discussed in the following chapter. See Chassen-López, “Slavery in the South,” for the speciWc case of the Papaloapan region. 86. Martínez Gracida, Colección de cuadros sinópticos (see section on Tuxtepec); Sánchez Silva, “Estructura de las propiedades agrarias,” 111. On coffee, see Rojas, Café, Chassen [Chassen-López], “Oaxaca” (Ph.D. diss.), 95ff., and Chassen-López and Arellanes, “Origins of the Grano de Oro.” Three districts appear here: Villa Alta, Miahuatlán, and Yautepec. Although considered part of the Sierra Juárez, the portion of Villa Alta bordering with Choapan is tierra caliente and apt for tropical agriculture. Both Miahuatlán and Yautepec are border districts of the Central Valleys; the former borders on Pochutla and the latter on Tehuantepec, Esesarte, Geografía.

The Land Tenure Question

Table 6.

113

Increase in Private Holdings

Source and Year Navarro y Noriega, 1810 Murguía y Galardi, 1826–28 Massot de DeLafond, 1857 García Cubas, 1857 Memoria, 1879 Martínez Gracida, 1883 Memoria, 1902 Holms, 1906 Jefe Político Reports, 1908 Esesarte, 1909 Southworth, 1910 División Territorial, 1910 Jefe Político Reports, 1912 Cayetano Esteva, 1913

No. of Haciendas and Fincas 83 68 60 81 98 105 229 203 233 431 210 194 450 227

Sources: Fernando Navarro y Noriega, Memoria sobre la población del reino de NuevaEspaña (1814), cited in George McCutchen McBride, The Land Systems of Mexico (1923; reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1971). E. Massot de DeLafond is cited as Nassos Lafond (see Reina Aoyama, Historia de la cuestión agrarian mexicana: Estado de Oaxaca, vol. 1), and even as Rossas Lafond (Francie R. Chassen [Chassen-López], “Oaxaca: del PorWriato a la Revolución, 1902–1911”), given the existence of a handwritten copy of this study of land tenure in Oaxaca, which is extremely difWcult to decipher, in the INAH’s library. However, in the Mapoteca Nacional, I came across an 1857 map (Colección Manuel Orozco y Berra, Oaxaca, #1731) corresponding to the study of the same year, which clearly spells the surname “Massot.” Cited by Reina Aoyama, “De las reformas borbónicas a las leyes de Reforma,” in Reina Aoyama, Historia de la cuestión agraria mexicana: Estado de Oaxaca, 1:183–267. See also Moisés González Navarro, “Indio y propiedad en Oaxaca,” Historia Mexicana 8, no. 2 (1958): 183–84; John Thomas Cassidy, Haciendas and Pueblos in Nineteenth-Century Oaxaca (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1981), 50–51; Manuel Martínez Gracida, Colección de cuadros sinópticos de los pueblos, haciendas y ranchos del Estado Libre y Soberano del Oaxaca. Anexo No. 50 a la Memoria Administrativa presentada al H. Congreso (Oaxaca: Imprenta del Estado, 1883); Memoria Administrativa presentada por el gobernador interino, Lic. Miguel Bolaños Cacho al H. Congreso del Estado (Oaxaca: Imprenta del Comercio, 1902); P. G. Holms, The Directory of Agencies, Mines, and Haciendas (Mexico City: American Book & Printing Co., 1905–6); AGEPEO, 1908, Gobierno, Memoria Administrativa, Varios Distritos; Juan A. de Esesarte, Geografía del estado de Oaxaca (Oaxaca: Talleres de Imprenta de Julián S. Soto, 1909); John R. Southworth, The OfWcial Directory of Mines and Estates of Mexico (Mexico City, 1910); División territorial de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos correspondiente al Censo de 1910: Estado de Oaxaca (Mexico City: OWcina Impresora de la Secretaría de Hacienda, 1918); AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gobierno, Fomento, Estadísticas, Varios Distritos; AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gobierno, Fomento, Estadísticas, Varios Distritos; Cayetano Esteva, Nociones elementales de geografía histórica del Estado de Oaxaca (Oaxaca: Tip. San Germán Hnos., 1913).

Table 7.

Haciendas and Fincas of Importance

Districts

M.G., 1883

M.A., 1902

H., 1906

J.P., 1908

Sth., 1910

D.T., 1910

J.P., 1912

Est., 1913

Centro Coixtlahuaca Cuicatlán Choapan

25 — 2 1

28 1 7 22

28 — 12 7

15 1 28 8

27 — 15 7

26 — 8 —

10 — 24 31

31 — 13 8

Ejutla Etla Huajuapan Ixtlán Jamiltepec

9 10 1 — 1

11 12 6 — 3

11 8 2 — 1

11 12 3 — 10

11 10 2 — 1

10 9 3 — 1

12 22 12 — —

11 10 2 — 4

Juchitán Juquila Juxtlahuaca Miahuatlán Nochixtlán Ocotlán Pochutla Putla Silacayoapan Tehuantepec Teotitlán

1 2 1 8 1 8 — — 1 3 1

19 3 8 11 2 10 1 — 2 6 26

14 7 — 6 — 9 3 5 1 6 17

13 11 — 8 2 10 — 19 1 17 5

14 7 — 6 — 10 3 5 1 6 20

3 12 — 9 1 12 51 4 — — 6

61 10 — 10 8 10 56 16 2 6 12

6 7 — 8 2 10 3 6 1 6 17

Teposcolula Tlacolula Tlaxiaco Tuxtepec Villa Alta Yautepec Zimatlán Totals

— 13 3 — — 4 10

— 13 3 21 — 5 9

— 8 — 44 — 5 9

— 6 — 38 — 5 11

— 7 — 44 — 5 9

— 12 — 13 — 6 8

— 10 — 123 — 7 8

— 9 — 49 — 5 9

105

229

203

234

210

194

450

227

— no holdings listed Table constructed by Francie R. Chassen [Chassen-López], Héctor Martínez, and Carlos Sánchez Silva. In 1906 the district of Juxtlahuaca was divided between the district of Tlaxiaco and the newly created district of Putla (Putla also received some land from Tlaxiaco, which includes its former haciendas). Sources: [M.G., 1883] Manuel Martínez Gracida, Colección de cuadros sinópticos de los pueblos, haciendas y ranchos del Estado Libre y Soberano del Oaxaca. Anexo No. 50 a la Memoria Administrativa presentada al H. Congreso (Oaxaca: Imprenta del Estado, 1883); [M.A., 1902] Memoria Administrativa presentada por el gobernador interino, Lic. Miguel Bolaños Cacho al H. Congreso del Estado (Oaxaca: Imprenta del Comercio, 1902); [H., 1906] P. G. Holms, The Directory of Agencies, Mines, and Haciendas (Mexico City: American Book & Printing Co., 1905–6); [J.P., 1908] AGEPEO, 1908, Gobierno, Memoria Administrativa, Varios Distritos; [Sth., 1910] John R. Southworth, The OfWcial Directory of Mines and Estates of Mexico (Mexico City: 1910); [D.T., 1910] División territorial de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos correspondiente al Censo de 1910: Estado de Oaxaca (Mexico City: OWcina Impresora de la Secretaría de Hacienda, 1918); [J.P. 1912] AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gobierno, Fomento, Estadísticas, Varios Distritos, and AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gobierno, Fomento, Estadísticas, Varios Distritos; [Est., 1913] Cayetano Esteva, Nociones elementales de geografía histórica del Estado de Oaxaca (Oaxaca: Tip. San Germán Hnos., 1913).

116

Table 8.

Infrastructure and Economics

Major Landholdings in 1906, Tuxtepec District

Proprietor

Property Name/Location

Crops

Víctor Ahuja Albuerne Sucs. American Sugar Co. Balsa Hermanos Balsa Hermanos Aniceto Bravo Leonardo Carvajal José Casanova Cultur, Maas, Chappy Eizaguirre & Cía. Juan Eschiovanni Cándido Fernández Manuel Fernández Peón Fernando Gallegos Arcadio Gallegos Marcelino García Manuel J. García José Y. Gómez M.P. Gómez Manuel Lagunas Andrés Landeta

Carolinas/Tuxtepec La Isabel/Ojitlán Vista Hermosa/Soyaltepec Providencia/Valle Nacional San Juan del Río/Jacatepec Tonatal/Ojitlán El Refugio/Soyaltepec La Palma/Valle Nacional Santa Rosa/Ojitlán Málzaga/Soyaltepec Eschiovanni / Soyaltepec San Cristóbal/Valle Nacional El Mirador/Valle Nacional Tlacuache/Ojitlán La Esperanza/Ojitlán El Platanar/Ojitlán San Antonio/Valle Nacional Puerto Escondido/Ojitlán Cerro Mojarra/Soyaltepec — /Valle Nacional Acatlán/Soyaltepec

José Larrañaga Bonifacio López Isidro Martínez Prisciliano Martínez Inocencio Menéndez Gregorio Monteagudo Palmer and Pinkan

San José/Ozumacín El Hule/Tuxtepec La Trinidad/Valle Nacional La JoseWna/Ozumacín Arroyo Culebra/Ojitlán La Comuna/Valle Nacional La Concordia/Usila

Palmer and Pinkan

La Estrella/Usila

Casimiro Pérez

Paso Nazareno/Ixcatlán

L.H. Pinto y Cía.

Mano Márquez/Ozumacín

Maize, tobacco 4,540 Tobacco 550 Maize, sugarcane 550 Tobacco 36 Maize, tobacco 1,200 Tobacco 1,600 Maize 8,000 Tobacco 53 Maize, tobacco 19,350 Coffee, maize 10,000 Coffee, maize 400 Coffee, tobacco 4,265 Maize, tobacco 1,198 Tobacco 1,000 Tobacco 1,500 Maize, tobacco 1,000 Tobacco 55 Tobacco, maize, beans 400 Sugarcane, maize 9,048 Tobacco 22 Rice, maize, sugarcane, 4,000 tobacco, coffee, rubber Coffee 1,012 Various crops 1,626 Tobacco 22 Coffee 150 Maize, tobacco 4,500 Tobacco 28 Maize, coffee, tobacco, 827 beans Maize, coffee, tobacco, 500 beans Cotton, coffee, maize, 5,000 beans Tobacco, coffee, rubber, 700 maize, cocoa beans Maize 7,400 Tobacco 36 Sugarcane, maize 20 Tobacco 2,838 Tobacco 1,800 Cotton , tobacco 15,803 Tobacco, maize, beans 900 Maize 846

The Plantation Co. Antonio Plio Joaquín A. Rivera Carmen M. de Rodríguez Test. De J. B. Rodríguez José Sánchez Ramos T.H. Suling G. A. Trinker

San Bartolo/Tuxtepec La Mar/Valle Nacional La Miniatura/Mayoltianguis Santa Fe/Valle Nacional Los Pochotas/Ojitlán Playa Grande/Jalapa de Díaz Paso Novillo/Ojitlán San Antonio Encinal/ Tuxtepec Tuxtepec Development Co. Choapam/Chiltepec Viya Hermanos El César/Ozumacín Viya Hermanos El Ideal/Ojitlán Viya Hermanos Montebello/Ojitlán Total Hs.

Various crops Coffee, beans, maize Maize, sugarcane Maize, sugarcane

Size (hs.)

1,380 1,000 1,100 3,714 119,969

Source: P. G. Holms, The Directory of Agencies, Mines, and Haciendas (Mexico: American Book & Printing Co. 1905–6).

The Land Tenure Question

Table 9.

117

Major Landholdings by Foreign Corporations and Investors, District of Tuxtepec, 1912

Proprietor

Property Name/Location

Crops

Alvo Plantation Co. American Co. American Exporting Co. American Sugar Co. Balsa Hermanos Balsa Hermanos Balsa Hermanos Balsa Hermanos Balsa Hermanos Balsa Hermanos Balsa Hermanos & F. de la Fuente Berengard y Socios Henry Catlin Henry Catlin Cerro Mojarra Plantation Co. Chillian Exploration Co. Alexander Cook B. H. Cuming D.C. Disbrow J. W. Edward French Agricultural Association Haddison, Hill, McKay Joliet Tropical Co. Mexican Agricultural Co. Obispo Rubber Co. Rhode Island Co. Viya Hermanos Viya Hermanos

El Porvenir/Soyaltepec Santa Beatriz/Ixcatlán Yale/Acatlán Vista Hermosa/Soyaltepec San Juan del Río/Jacatepec Sepultura/Valle Nacional Hondura de Nanche/Valle Nac’l. Chinantlilla/Valle Nacional La Ratonera/Valle Nacional Paso Limón/Valle Nacional San Bernardo/Valle Nacional

Bananas Coffee, pasture Rubber, pasture Sugarcane Maize, tobacco + Tobacco, maize Tobacco, maize Tobacco, maize Tobacco, cattle Tobacco, cattle Tobacco, maize

El Ideal/Ojitlán Santa Rosa/Ojitlán La Esperanza/Acatlán Cerro Mojarra/Soyaltepec

Sugarcane, maize Maize, tobacco Rubber, pasture Sugarcane, maize

Mano Márquez/Ozumacín La Concepción/Tuxtepec La Candelaria/Tuxtepec La Esmalta/Tuxtepec San Antonio Encinal/Tuxtepec La Esperanza/Tuxtepec

Rubber, maize Cotton, maize Maize, beans + Sugarcane, maize Maize + Yuca +

Santa Margarita/Soyaltepec Joliet/Acatlán Agua Fría/Tuxtepec San Silverio/Tuxtepec La Estrella/Usila Montebello/Ojitlán El César/Ozumacín

Viya Hermanos J. H. White J. H. White

Santa Elena/Ozumacín San Bartolo/Tuxtepec San Vicente/Tuxtepec

Bananas, maize Rubber, pasture + Maize, fruita Rubber Rubber, coffee Maize, sugarcane Tobacco, rubber, fruit Tobacco, maize Maize, pasture + Sugarcane, maize

Source: Archivo General del Estado de Oaxaca, Feb. 1912, Gobierno, Fomento, Estadísticas, Varios Distritos. Foreign corporations are identiWed by foreign names for lack of information. Therefore, except for Balsa Hermanos and Viya Hermanos, Spaniards and Cubans are not identiWed. + Listing is unreliable; foreign investors would hardly come to Tuxtepec to raise only maize. For example, we know that Joliet Corporation specialized in bananas. a Fruit probably referred to bananas.

118

Table 10.

Districts Registering Rural Fincas and Their Value, 1909

District Cuicatlán Choapan Juchitán Juquila Miahuatlán Pochutla Tehuantepec Teotitlán Tuxtepec Tuxtepec Villa Alta Yautepec Totals

Infrastructure and Economics

Number of Fincas

Value in Pesos

27a 37a 10a 34b 29a 151a 5a 26a 47a N/+ 12a 53a

1,442,609 700,000 219,876 1,971,475 900,000 4,000,000 100,000 1,300,000 1,000,000 2,000,000 150,000 200,000

431

13,983,960

Source: Juan A. de Esesarte, Geografía del estado de Oaxaca (Oaxaca: Talleres de Julián S. Soto, 1909). a Coffee Wncas b Fincas producing coffee, rubber, cocoa beans, and other products N/+ Numerous but uncounted tobacco Wncas

of a new type of landholding, here designated as the PorWrian Wnca. Finca is a generic term used to denote haciendas, ranchos, or any type of landholding or parcel of land, and was commonly applied to agrarian properties during the PorWriato. Oaxacan economist Anselmo Arellanes Meixueiro has long objected to my use of this term to qualify a historically speciWc type of landholding. He contends that a Wnca refers to any type of landholding property, whether urban or rústica (rural), for tax purposes, although he concedes that during the PorWriato Wnca was most frequently associated with coffee-producing properties. I do not dispute this, but since the nomenclature of the period is so confused, I have chosen to use PorWrian Wnca in order to distinguish it from haciendas and landholdings, which originated in earlier periods. For the purpose of this study, PorWrian Wnca denotes an agrarian enterprise dedicated to cash-crop agriculture and/or livestock integrated into the national and international markets during the PorWriato. Increasing in signiWcance after 1880, this type of landholding was of medium (thirty to three hundred hs.) to large

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119

(more than three hundred hs.) size, often located in previously communal lands in the regions of PorWrian development.87 Conversely, this argument is backed up by the analysis of the districts, which maintained relative stability in the number of haciendas observed in table 7: Centro, Ejutla, Etla, Miahuatlán, Ocotlán, Tlacolula, Yautepec, and Zimatlán. These districts constituted a zone of production of a wide variety of traditional staples, including maize, beans, maguey, squash, and sugarcane, supplying the state capital and the surrounding mining areas, encompassed by the market system of the Central Valleys.88 A third group of districts registered no haciendas at all: Coixtlahuaca, Teposcolula, Tlaxiaco (after 1907, when it no longer included territory incorporated into the district of Putla),89 Ixtlán, and the higher portions of Villa Alta, districts where most of the mountainous land was divided between minifundia and communal and municipal holdings. In addition, another group of districts registered a very low number of haciendas: Huajuapan, Nochixtlán, Silacayoapan, Tlaxiaco (before 1907), and Jamiltepec (where ranchos predominated).90 87. Rendón Garcini, Prosperato, 98; Arellanes Meixueiro, Reforma agaria, 4, 10, 55. Given that Oaxaca is a state with so much of its land held by smallholders, I have chosen to make my own distinctions as to what constitutes small, medium, and large holdings. Rendón Garcini, in his study of Tlaxacala, considered small parcels to have up to 100 hs. (in Oaxaca, 100 hs. could qualify as a hacienda or at least a medium sized rancho), 100– 1000 hs. a medium sized holding, and over 1,000 hs. a large estate, see Prosperato, 101. 88. The market system of the Central Valleys of Oaxaca dates from the pre-Columbian period but has undergone notable changes over the centuries, see Cook and Diskin, Markets in Oaxaca. Many of the haciendas here during the PorWriato were the same as those studied by Taylor and Cassidy, although ownership and size Xuctuated over time. 89. The districts of Tlaxiaco, Putla, and Juxtlahuaca had a rather unstable history in the second half of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Since the Revolution, all three districts have maintained their independent existence. Originally, Tlaxiaco was among the Wrst 25 districts to be created. The state government then established the district of Juxtlahuaca from a part of Tlaxiaco but soon suppressed it integrating it into Tlaxiaco once again. It was then again established but suppressed in 1906 when the government created the district of Putla from part of what had been Juxtlahuaca and the southern part of Tlaxiaco, see Memoria Administrativa, 1902. In Martínez Gracida, Colección de cuadros sinópticos, and the Memoria Administrativa of 1902, Tlaxiaco registered 3 haciendas and Juxtlahuaca registered 1 respectively. But once Putla was created, it registered the 3 haciendas, and Tlaxiaco no longer counted any haciendas. 90. Various districts registered high Xuctuations in the number of properties. This can be attributed to the discrepancies in the usage of categories of agrarian properties. The difference in the number of properties for Cuicatlán, Choapan, Juquila, Pochutla, and Teotitlán are probably due to the confusion as whether to count cafetales as haciendas or ranchos or Wncas because these are the major coffee-producing districts.

120

Infrastructure and Economics

With respect to the districts, which demonstrated the most impressive growth in the number of larger private holdings, it must be emphasized that these are almost invariably the geographically peripheral districts, those bordering on other states or on the PaciWc Ocean. Carlos Sánchez Silva constructed a regional division using economic criteria from three sources: Southworth (1910), the Jefe Político Reports (1912), and Esteva (1913). These data disclosed that not only 80 percent of the private agricultural properties but also the majority of foreign landowners or companies were located in the districts of these regions.91 Based on the seven geographical regions and various sources cited above, the present study uses the following geo-economic regionalization of the areas of PorWrian development as represented on map 4: (1) (2) (3) (4)

Papaloapan: Tuxtepec and Choapan districts Isthmus: Juchitán and Tehuantepec districts Cañada: Cuicatlán and Teotitlán districts Costa: Pochutla, Juquila, Jamiltepec, and Putla districts92

The inclusion of the districts of Jamiltepec and Putla (often referred to as the Mixteca Costa) in the Costa (although Putla has no coastline) is justiWed in that both these contiguous districts produced tropical and subtropical products such as cotton, sugarcane, tobacco, and coffee for national markets. The growth of private holdings in these areas, while not as spectacular as that of Pochutla or Juquila on the Costa, was still sizable. The Costa Chica’s prosperous economy led to the habilitation of the improvised port of Minizo, near Pinotepa Nacional, as an outlet 91. Sánchez Silva, “Estructura de las propiedades agrarias,” 108ff. I have also used Sánchez Silva’s original unpublished paper, “Análisis de fuentes sobre la estructura de las propiedades agrarias del Estado de Oaxaca (1910–1913)”, 1984, which lists all the properties. Unfortunately, the sources used here do not differentiate between foreign and Mexican capital. Sánchez used the name of the owner to indicate this difference, which can be misleading. This indicator does not show Spanish or Cuban proprietors, so important in the Tuxtepec zone, nor does it distinguish foreign investment from that of foreign immigrants to Mexico. And it is not sensitive to partial foreign investments in Mexican ventures or foreign ventures bought out by Mexicans. 92. I have discussed this geo-economic regionalization with Héctor Martínez, Carlos Sánchez Silva, Anselmo Arellanes, Francisco José Ruiz Cervantes, and Víctor Raúl Vásquez Martínez at different moments over the past years, and appreciate their comments. See Tamayo, Geografía de Oaxaca and “Realidad geográWca”; Sánchez Silva, “Estructura de las propiedades agrarias,” 119–20.

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121

for the products of the region. Therefore, the spread of capitalism not only encouraged privatization and cash-crop production but also led to the proliferation of capitalist Wncas and the varied agricultural map of Oaxaca.

Land Surveys and Colonization Schemes The question of colonization and surveying companies is directly related to the privatization of land in late nineteenth-century Mexico. The survey and measurement of baldíos and their sale by private companies was probably the most scandalous of all ventures between the government and the private sector. Strong believers in encouraging European immigration to invigorate Mexico’s economy and race mixture, Mexican liberals watched enviously as European immigrants settled in the United States and later Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Brazil. InXuenced by Argentine Juan Bautista Alberdi’s dictum, “to govern is to populate,” so fashionable in nineteenth-century Latin America, a series of colonization laws were put on the books (1875, 1883, 1894) authorizing the formation of surveying companies.93 In payment for their services, these companies received approximately a third of the lands surveyed. They also retained the right to acquire the second third at “ridiculous prices,” while the federal government reserved the remainder as national lands. These land concessions resulted in the creation of numerous holdings in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Guerrero, San Luis Potosí, Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, Sinaloa, Durango, and the territory of Baja California. Most studies cite Jesús Silva Herzog’s statistics that between 1890 and 1906, 16.8 million hs. were surveyed by these companies. Supposedly one stockholder acquired 7 million hs. in Chihuahua and another in Oaxaca bought up 2 million hs. Another source afWrmed that 300,000 hs. passed into private hands on the coast of Oaxaca, while Stanley and Barbara Stein declared that four concessionaires received more than 5.7 million acres in Oaxaca.94 93. See González Navarro, Historia moderna de México: El PorWriato; Vida Social, 187ff. 94. Vera Estañol, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, 21–22; Silva Herzog, Breve historia, 16–17; Bellingeri and Gil Sánchez, “Estructuras agrarias,” 316; Stein and Stein, Colonial Heritage of Latin America, 142.

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While it is incontestable that the dealings of the surveying companies in Mexico resulted in enormous land grabs, their extent has been exaggerated. Moisés González Navarro’s numbers on Oaxaca are far less impressive: 622 hs. of national lands valued at $224 adjudicated and another three titles were extended over 23,603 hs. valued at $74,413. For lack of vacant lands, another 131,111 hs. were adjudicated, and for composition of lands, another ten titles were conceded with an extension of 176,327 hs. valued at $64,659. The present study found no supporting evidence for any of the claims in millions of hectares or for even 300,000 in Oaxaca, and, unfortunately, these authors fail to provide their sources. The only thing akin to such claims was the authorization of a concession to PorWrio Díaz Jr. and Weetman Pearson, Lord Cowdray (owner of the Mexican Eagle Oil Company who reconstructed the Tehuantepec National Railway) for the exploration of petroleum and coal in the municipal lands of Juchitán, Tehuantepec, Pochutla, Juquila, and Jamiltepec in 1902. This concession, located along the coast of Oaxaca, did not entail the sale or possession of any lands but simply exploration rights; nonetheless, it was never used and expired in 1904.95 Thus the privatization of baldíos did not engender huge latifundios in Oaxaca as in other states. As we have already seen, the largest holdings in the state, the Haciendas Marquesanas and the Hacienda de La Compañia (50,000 hs. in Ejutla) both originated in the colonial period. Recently John Hart has argued that landowners from the United States “gained hegemony along most of Mexico’s PaciWc coastline, from Chiapas to Sonora,” and that although in Oaxaca they were fewer in number, they were “equally powerful.” The three Parraga brothers of New York bought “two hundred miles of salt beds and adjoining territories,” the salinas of Tehuantepec. They constructed canals and ovens, in addition to warehouses, to process the salt on their “privately owned beaches,” 95. González Navarro, “Indio y propiedad en Oaxaca,” 181–82, and Estadísticas sociales, 42, 220. José L. Cossío listed Wve baldío concessions between 1883 and 1886 stemming from the surveys for Oaxaca (none of which coincides with the years cited by Silva Herzog as that of the 2 million-hectare purchase). One was a contract with Daniel Levy, to colonize 16,000 hs. that would be received from the land being surveyed by the Cid y León Company in the municipality of Ojitlán, Oaxaca, and Veracruz. (Diario OWcial, March 16, 1885). In addition, Cossío also reported that a foreign company whose name he did not specify possessed sixty-Wve salt mines in the districts of Juchitán and Tehuantepec. Cossío, ¿Cómo y por quiénes? 95, 72–76, 132–34. See discussion of petroleum exploitation in Chapter 4.

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although they were harassed by local Istmeños and their authorities. In addition, Hart says that the Gulf Hardwoods Company purchased the 125,000-acre Hacienda de Chivela to export that rich resource to the United States.96 Unfortunately the date of either acquisition is not cited, and while we do know there was a decided effort to obtain land all along the Tehuantepec National Railway, a two-hundred mile concession has not appeared in Oaxaca sources, nor were American landowners hegemonic on the Oaxacan coastline. Colonization schemes, foreign or national, were rare in Oaxaca and were usually unsuccessful. The earliest attempt took place in 1828, when a French colony on the Isthmus failed. At mid-century, the infamous merchant concern of Jecker, Torre, and Co. (whose claims later provided Napoleón III an excuse to intervene in Mexico) had surveyed various lands in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. With the cooperation of President Comonfort, the intention was to colonize the Isthmus in order to create Comonfort City, but this concession expired in 1882.97 The steep highlands, the tropical lowlands, and the lack of infrastructure did not lure foreign or national settlers to Oaxaca’s sparsely populated areas; and only two colonization projects took hold. Frederick Stark Pearson, a capitalist from Boston (a major stockholder in the Mexican Telegraph Company) and associates purchased Agua Fría, a tract of 58,000 acres in the Tuxtepec district, near the point where the Tehuantepec National Railway crosses into Oaxaca. They founded the Mexican Agricultural Land Company of Oklahoma in order to develop a colony, Wrst known as Medina. They built a town from scratch with Americanstyle houses and streets named after the leaders of the American Revolution, and they sold the land in plots to 330 buyers. The buyers were mostly Americans and a few Mexicans enticed by the exaggerated claims in the promotional literature. The colonists were ill prepared for the 96. Hart, Empire and Revolution, 188–93. His source is the Special Claims Commission and the American Mexican Claims Commission of the Washington National Records in Maryland. 97. Brasseur, Viaje por el Istmo, 35; Lejeune, Cultivo del tabaco en México, 11; Esparza, “Tierras de los hijos,” 391–92. On this project, see Castañeda Guzmán, “Compañía oaxaqueña,” 143–63. According to Francisco Bulnes, Lic. Francisco Leonardo Fortuño obtained the plans of the surveyed lands on the Isthmus and formed a syndicate with seven powerful ofWcials with the objective of constructing a railway, and then, having acquired the lands at a paltry price from the government, intended to sell them at a proWt to foreign investors interested in sugarcane and tropical fruit plantations. Bulnes, Verdadero Díaz, 155–56.

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hardships they would face. By 1910 Medina had some 160 Americans residents, who soon changed the name of the town to Loma Bonita.98 The Mexican Agricultural Land Company used some of the property to produce tropical fruit, especially bananas for export. A group of farmers from Kansas purchased another twenty thousand acres from them. By 1912 the colonists had extensive landholdings, but the Revolution loomed on the horizon. In June of that year the governor received a complaint from the U.S. Embassy on behalf of a Mr. G. N. Grigsber [sic, Grigsby], owner of the “Peoria Ranch” in Medina. Threatened by “bandits,” Grigsby hoped to obtain protection. The state government, however, couldn’t even locate Grigsby or Medina; the governor’s secretary Wrst telegraphed the jefe político of Juchitán, who informed him that Medina was located in Tuxtepec. When Wnally contacted, the jefe político of Tuxtepec had already ordered the Rurales to protect Grigsby. Nevertheless, the colonists Xed when the American consul advised them to abandon Medina and return to the United States because they could no longer be safeguarded against hostile forces. According to Hart, the settlers lost their homes and land with the Revolution. Interestingly, neither Medina nor Loma Bonita appeared in the 1900 or 1910 División territorial. In fact, none of the Mexican land tenure sources refer to the existence of the Medina colony or to Grigsby.99 The history of the colony has yet to be unearthed. Julio Fenelón, (son of Juan Fenelón, a French doctor who immigrated to Oaxaca in the nineteenth century) undertook another brief colonization effort. He acquired land in Tepinapa, in the area of the Chinantla, located in Choapan, to found the Colonia Fenelón. Evidently Fenelón had enough leverage to appeal directly to the president for support against state government demands. In March 1905 PorWrio Díaz intervened in his favor to forestall payment of the censo, the real estate tax. Governor Pimentel had to explain to the president that Fenelón had divided up his 98. Hart, Empire and Revolution, 196, 250–51. See Hart for the experience of the Pierce family of nine who bought Wfty-eight acres for 10 dollars an acre in Medina in 1909. Loma Bonita is the pineapple capital of Oaxaca today. 99. Ibid., 251, 302–3; AGEPEO, June 1912, Gob., Tranquilidad Pública, Tuxtepec. However, according to U.S. consular documents, a G. N. Grigsby of the Anderson Electric and Equipment Co. of Chicago protested unjust evaluations of his properties in Tuxtepec to the U.S. State Department in June 1920. In the same year, Dr. Paul Manley attested that he had bought 1,618 hs. from a J. P. Gonigan, who owned a large holding jointly with Grigsby in the same district, so perhaps not all was lost. AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; NA, State Dept. Consular Docs. Roll 183, Doc. 812.512.2571.

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land for the establishment of an agricultural colony and then sold the lots to various buyers without advising the state government. On the presentation of a list of those colonos, the state promised to deal with them in the future.100 Between the case of Medina and the Fenelón colonos, the state government’s knowledge of colonization efforts left much to be desired. The jefe político’s report of an inspection of various villages in the Colonia Fenelón in May 1905 provides a rosy picture of its progress and labor conditions there. In Jocotepec, the Wncas of “Estela,” “Santa Teresa,” and “Socorro” (the Wrst two producing coffee and rubber, the third coffee and sugarcane), employed laborers who were well paid and well treated. The jefe político also relayed the colonos’ complaints about the falta de brazos (labor scarcity, literally, lack of arms), such that they were forced to send agents to Villa Alta in order to contract peons. He differentiated the positive treatment accorded indigenous workers in his district from the notorious abuses prevalent in neighboring Tuxtepec. He described the Wnca owned by a Scot, Cristóbal McGregor: I had the opportunity to personally visit the galleys where the laborers [mozos] lived on those Wncas and they seemed to me to be in good hygienic conditions. I looked over some of the peons’ accounts, which I found scrupulously correct and I observed the humanitarian treatment accorded and the moderate work load given them. With these guarantees, the inhabitants of Jocotepec also work on these Wncas when their own agricultural labors permit and they are always content with this situation. The “Santa Teresa” Wnca is equipped with the machinery (run by steam) to process the coffee beans, which motivates production in the whole region and gives a good idea of the progress of our state to foreign tourists who frequently visit the region.101 For a brief period, the colonization of the sparsely populated district of Choapan lived up to the expectations of nineteenth-century liberals. Nevertheless, despite its rich tropical lands, Choapan remained outside 100. CPD, Letters, leg. 30, caja 9, 1905; PO, June 3, 1904. 101. It is not clear whether the Colonia Fenelón included more than one municipality or whether the jefe político was referring to other colonies in the district, on which we have no information. AGEPEO, 1905, Gob., Jefaturas Políticas, Choapan.

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the PorWrian infrastructural network, with no accessible railroads or modern ports. Products had to be transported by mule teams to other commercial centers such as nearby Playa Vicente in the state of Veracruz. Widespread banditry and the Revolution soon destroyed the efforts of the colonos. By August 1912 the jefe político informed the governor that the majority of the coffee Wncas had been abandoned, especially those belonging to foreigners.102 Despite recent attempts to portray him as a liberal Robin Hood, as we shall see below, the notorious bandit Santanón terrorized the region. So it was that the colonization of Choapan failed, despite having once been a showplace for tourists.

The Rise of the Rancheros Because the PorWrian government required frequent reports from the jefes políticos primarily on “important” haciendas and Wncas, information on smaller properties is more difWcult to locate. Nevertheless, the notable increase of ranches and medium-to-small properties during the PorWriato has been one of the major Wndings of recent research on land tenure. This trend is also visible in Oaxaca, where small landholdings usually dedicated to subsistence agriculture were common, especially since the eighteenth century. In addition to communal holdings, villagers could also own private property: the buying and selling of lands, even of communal lands (which was illegal), was common practice. Pastor has asserted that possession gradually evolved into a form of private property by the renter, especially in areas where commercial agriculture made inroads. He has argued for the existence of an informal privatization process in parts of the Mixteca prior to the 1856 Lerdo Law. The proliferation of subsistence minifundios (small holdings of Wve hectares or fewer) in this region conWrms his thesis. The beneWciaries of this development in the Mixteca were numerous, from rich white or mestizo renters, to rich Mixtecs, to ranchers from the valleys, to local merchants, and even to poorer Indians.103 In the Sierra Juárez, smallholdings and communal lands also remained the dominant form of land tenure. One jefe político of Ixtlán reported the following to the state government: 102. AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D. 103. Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 459ff.

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In this district there are no haciendas or Wncas of any importance, which provide continuous work for laborers, as can be observed on haciendas and Wncas that employ numerous workers in various forms of labor. Almost all the inhabitants of this district work their small plots of land, which they own or rent. The landowners who possess larger holdings are very few in number and tend to employ two to ten laborers during Wve or six days to prepare the Welds for planting or for other jobs needed for cultivation.104 Various factors explain the growth of small private holdings in Oaxaca in the later nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth: “A middle class of smallholders, comparable perhaps to the rancheros of the north, existed in the pueblos. . . . In the absence of primogeniture, large families (which were an important factor in its accumulation) ordained its eventual division. The existence of minifundia is apparent by the end of the century.”105 While private property had proliferated in Oaxaca by the twentieth century, minifundio expansion demonstrated that not all new holdings entered the network of commercial agriculture. Small landowners producing for local markets and subsistence minifundistas struggled to survive throughout the state. For example, in 1888, in the town of San Sebastián Teitipac in the Tlacolula district, 393 parcels of land belonged to 152 men and 50 women (probably widows but not speciWed). Most of the owners held at least two separate parcels, one of maize and one of wheat. The one hacienda in the village, Santa Rosa Los Negritos, hired the villagers to work as laborers on a seasonal basis, which supplemented their meager income. The village listed 225 male and 50 female wage laborers for 1907.106 In 1888, in Santa Catarina Adéquez in the Nochixtlán district of the Mixteca, 65 men and 8 women owned small plots, although the latter held the smallest parcels of land. In Santiago Patlanalá in Silacayoapan, there were 11 female and 127 male landowners, and once again women 104. When this ofWcial referred to small plots, it is not clear whether they were minifundios or communal lands—probably the latter if Pérez García’s statistics on the survival of communal lands in this region are to be believed. AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas. 105. Cassidy, “Haciendas and Pueblos,” 262–63. 106. AGEPEO, 1888, Gob., leg. 96, exp. 17, Estadísticas and Gob., 1908, Datos y estadísticas para la Memoria Administrativa, V.D. The village population was 1,061 in 1910, according to the División territorial, 1910.

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generally owned the smaller parcels. In Michapa, in the same district, a particularly fertile village located on a river bank, there were no women landowners at all.107 Nevertheless, women did play a signiWcant role among small landowners also. The women of San Sebastian Teitipac made up 25 percent of the smallholders in 1888 and almost 15 percent of the wage laborers in 1907 (although many of the campesinos probably also worked as seasonal laborers). In Santa Catarina Adéquez and Santiago Patlanalá, women formed 11 percent and 8 percent of landowners, respectively. Recent studies have underscored the signiWcant growth of ranchers during the PorWriato in states as diverse as Sonora, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, and Guerrero. In Oaxaca, too, ranchero growth was impressive, although available statistics are contradictory. Different sources used distinct criteria to deWne a rancho, criteria not speciWed along with the data. For example, in his 1903 Anuario Estadístico, Antonio PeñaWel enumerated only three ranches for Pochutla, evidently omitting cafetales, although these might also have raised livestock. In contrast, the 1910 División territorial listed forty-one and the Jefe Político Reports of 1908 listed 645 ranches for Pochutla, Wgures that undoubtedly included some or all cafetales. The number of smallholdings in Juchitán varied from 143 in 1903, to 464 in 1908, to 213 in 1910. Both these districts contained prosperous ranching sectors, but accounting for such sizable Xuctuations is near to impossible. A third problem arose in that the word “rancho” was often used to designate rancherías (small settlements located within ranchos or haciendas). If we compare data from 1903 and 1908, there was a statewide gain of 2,907 ranches in Wve years, which is untenable. If we compare the statistics between 1903 and 1910, the gain of 232 ranches illustrates a more logical expansion.108 Although numerous ranchos in Oaxaca traced their roots to the agricultural and livestock labores and estancias (small estates) of the colonial period,109 in the later nineteenth century the growth of middling and small landholdings, and particularly of ranches, paralleled the increase in the number of larger private holdings. Additionally, both 107. AGEPEO, 1888, Gob., Estadísticas, leg. 96, exp. 4, 10 and 11. I owe the geographical description of Michapa to Ron Spores’s vast knowledge of the Mixteca. 108. See for example, Schryer, Rancheros of PisaXores; Jacobs, Ranchero Revolt; Aguilar Camín, Frontera nómada; Rendón Garcini, Prosperato. For the statistics, see Anuario estadístico, 1903; AGEPEO, 1908, Gob., Memoria Administrativa. 109. Taylor, “Haciendas coloniales,” 86–87.

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increases take place precisely in the regions of PorWrian development, in this case in Tuxtepec, Juchitán, Pochutla, and Jamiltepec. The privatization process had advanced rapidly in Jamiltepec. A list of lands adjudicated in this district by December 1856 showed just how early the process began and included the surnames of Baños, Díaz, Gazga, and Pérez, important PorWrian ranchers from Pinotepa. Available information is sketchy, making it difWcult to assess the exact quantity and value of individually adjudicated land. One source indicated that 198 people received 409,418 hectares valued at $63,837. By 1891 Alfonso Luis Velasco listed 227 ranches in the district, yet when the jefe político inventoried ranches, owners, and livestock in 1902, the total exceeded 636 ranches. The district seat of Jamiltepec alone had more than forty ranches, as did the municipality of Pinotepa Nacional. SigniWcantly, ranching here prospered at the expense of the ancient communal lands of the indigenous peasants, as the rural middle class privatized the best lands and turned them into pasture.110 The Mixtec population continued to own lands both individually and communally, but many were reduced to working as tenant farmers or jornaleros (day laborers) on these ranches. In the early days of the 1911 Revolution, the Mixtecs would attempt to recoup their lands. Various authors have emphasized the role of ranchers as vital actors in the Mexican Revolution, particularly in the Maderista and later in the Carrancista ranks. In Oaxaca, too, many ranchers in Tuxtepec, Jamiltepec, and Juchitán joined the Maderistas and Carrancistas. The Mixteca, initially a Maderista stronghold but later Soberanista, also had an important rancher element. A relationship might well be posited among the ranching regions, economic growth, and revolutionary activity, as Chapter 11 suggests. PorWrian Wncas and ranchos arose mostly in the regions of PorWrian development, which encompassed more than half of the state’s territory. Thus, far from being marginalized by the forces of modernization, 110. Anuario estadistico, 1903; División territorial, 1910; AGEPEO, Aug. 1902–Feb. 1903, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Centro; Esparza, “Proyectos de los liberales,” 292. This Wgure is still an approximation because in some cases, for instance that of Dámaso Gómez in Jamiltepec, the source notes only “various ranches” without listing the exact number. For information on the Mixteca districts, see Martínez Gracida, Colección de cuadros sinópticos; Esteva, Nociones elementales, 190; Atristáin, Notas de un ranchero, 13. Cash values are unreliable because owners would undervalue lands in order to pay the lowest possible amount in taxes and 6 percent rent on privatized lands. See AGEPEO, 1815–1912, Reparto Agrario (hereafter R.A.), Grupo II, caja I, and 1901–3, Adjud., Centro, leg. 2, exp. 17.

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Oaxaca had been affected by the transformations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As we shall see in the next chapter, the uneven pattern of the spread of capitalist relations of production and cash crops in Oaxaca paralleled the same phenomenon detected throughout Mexico and Latin America.

3 The Commercialization of Agriculture In mineral and agricultural resources, it is the principal state of Mexico. . . . Coffee, sugarcane, tobacco, Indian rubber, vanilla, cochineal dye, indigo, wood of all kinds for dyes, hides, and tropical fruits are found in great abundance. . . . Rich mines abound in great number in different regions of the state, many of them of gold and others of silver with veins of gold. I believe that Oaxaca is richer in minerals than California, and will provide great quantities of these precious metals when capital arrives and the establishment of easy means of communication removes the obstacles that until today have impeded the progress of this important industry. —Matías Romero, Delmonico’s Restaurant, New York City

Matías Romero could hardly contain his enthusiasm in the speech, quoted above, promoting the Wrst Mexican Southern Railroad project in New York. He summarized the Humboldtian vision of Oaxacan wealth, held by many liberals, that the PorWrian panaceas of capital, technology, and railroads were all that was needed to modernize Mexico. In 1907 Mexico City’s El País boasted that the tobacco of the Isthmus was of higher quality than that of Cuba and that its cocoa beans were superior to those of Guayaquil. As late as 1913 Esteva charged that an “embryonic” Oaxacan agriculture promised an “exuberant” future.1 This promising “modern” future did not depend on the articulation of a domestic economy driven by an internal market, as in industrialized nations, but on an export-oriented economy, a legacy of the colonial period, now promoted by the economic liberalism of the Mexican elite. The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the rapid integration of the world market and the rise of mass industry in Europe and the 1. Romero quoted in Vía Ancha (n.d.); El País, Jan. 23, 1907; Esteva, Nociones elementales, 18–24; on the marvels of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, see El Mundo Ilustrado, April 2, 1905.

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United States brought about by striking technological advances in transportation and industry. The concentration of capital and increasing competition among these nations led to the export not only of manufactured goods but also of capital itself in order to capture new markets and control sources of primary materials and foodstuffs in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Outward expansion, championed by economic liberals among the mercantile, mining, and landowning elites of Latin America, generated considerable prosperity by the 1890s. The encouragement of export agriculture in Mexico, one of the key elements of PorWrian economic policy, proved so successful that cash crops grew at an annual rate of 6.29 percent between 1877 and 1910. Although only 5.7 percent of foreign investment went into agriculture in Mexico during this period, it acted as a key stimulus, and its signiWcance was greater than this Wgure implies.2 As elsewhere, the new railroads, ports, and roads facilitated this growth. But, as we have seen, the transformation of infrastructure and land tenure was far from complete in Oaxaca. The spread of capitalist relations resulted in uneven development and unequal distribution of resources and wealth. It was a “piecemeal process of economic regional specialization,” illustrated by the rise of sugar in Morelos, cotton in the Laguna, coffee in Veracruz, and henequen in Yucatán. Former exporting regions receded as new centers of export production emerged. Increasing specialization in coffee opened up “frontier” regions in Antioquia in Colombia, São Paulo in Brazil, the highlands of Central America, and the states of Veracruz, Chiapas, and Oaxaca in southern Mexico.3 The production of coffee, tobacco, and rubber in Oaxaca’s regions of PorWrian development spawned new social classes, new cities and towns, new transportation and communication networks, in addition to immigration, as it had in these other regions of Mexico and Latin America. Germans, Spaniards, Cubans, and Canary Islanders arrived in the state as representatives of external forces. Although many stayed to become members of the local agrarian bourgeoisies of Pochutla and Tuxtepec, 2. Cossío Silva, “Agricultura,” 94; Bellingeri and Gil Sánchez, “Estructuras agrarias,” 317–22. 3. Spencer, “Soconusco,” 123–24. See Roseberry, “Beyond the Agrarian Question,” 351–52, and Roseberry, “Introduction,” 14–15; Tomich, “‘Second Slavery,’” 106–10. The coming of the railroads opened up peripheries such as the lower South in the United States and the western section of the state of São Paulo in Brazil (Tomich, “World Slavery and Caribbean Capitalism,” 114–15), to which we add the Papaloapan, isthmian, and Cañada regions of Oaxaca.

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they retained their international linkages. Small landowners, rancheros, and comuneros also chose or were coerced to produce cash crops, which led to their direct or indirect linkages to national and international markets.4 While numerous sectors beneWted during the years of prosperity, the export of primary products subordinated local as well as national elites to the vicissitudes of prices in the world market. This, in turn, resulted in boom-and-bust cycles. The spread of capitalist relations did not make for stable, sustained growth, nor did it result in a full transition to free wage labor.5 Taking the view from the south allows us to discern the importance of national, regional, and local factors and their interaction with global forces. In turn, it helps us untangle the variety of labor relations, across regions and within a speciWc unit of production. For example, the demand for cheap labor to produce needed raw materials could inspire a retreat to less free, supposedly “precapitalist” forms of labor.6 In southern Mexico, it led not only to illegal slavery but also to the importation of Asian labor in the form of indentured servants, and the expansion and intensiWcation of the system of debt peonage. In Oaxaca a wide spectrum of labor strategies arose, moving on a continuum from slavery to debt peonage to tenant farming and sharecropping, to seasonal labor by comuneros, to free wage labor. In effect, as Steve Stern has suggested, a characteristic of colonial and neocolonial situations is precisely the tendency to “combine variegated labor strategies” into a “uniWed package,” which here 4. The International Harvester arrived in Mérida as the epitome of U.S. imperialism, until Olegario Molina became the International Harvester’s accomplice, signing secret pacts with it. See Wells, Yucatán’s Gilded Age, and Joseph, Revolution from Without. 5. As free labor expanded in Europe, it became more “unfree” in the peripheral areas of the world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Stanley and Barbara Stein considered the “loss of personal freedom” in the New World central to its colonial heritage, “part of Africa’s and Latin America’s contribution to the development of liberty in western Europe.” Stein and Stein, Colonial Heritage of Latin America, 43–44. 6. Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory discredited the linear equation of capitalism and free labor. Nonetheless, Wallerstein continued to assume that the needs of the core (as subject) determined production and labor relations in a tripartite paradigm of the division of international labor: free labor in the core, sharecropping in the semiperiphery, and forced labor (slavery and “coerced cash-crop labor”) in the periphery during the colonial domination of the New World (see Modern World System). In his polemic with Wallerstein, Steve Stern held that this theory obscures the agency of other forces and internal contradictions in the periphery. Stern’s “law of diversity” views the world-system as only one of three “motor forces,” the other two being “popular strategies of resistance and survival within the periphery, and the mercantile-elite interests joined to an American ‘center of gravity,’” (Stern, “Feudalism, Capitalism,” 857ff.). The present study bears Stern out.

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we would denote as hybrid. Thus the production of a speciWc crop or the mining of a particular metal would exhibit different and dynamic combinations of labor strategies, shaped by the interplay of various factors, local, regional, national, and global.7 Chapter 1 explored the construction of infrastructure and its failure to articulate a state system, while Chapter 2 analyzed the changing patterns and growing complexity of land tenure. The present chapter demonstrates how the dynamic interplay of global, national, and local forces resolved questions of production and labor in the development of commercial agriculture. It reveals, for example, that the rise of slavery in Tuxtepec or enganche labor in Juquila was determined not by the demands of global capitalism or imperialism but by local and national factors, however subject to external pressures. Ultimately, the dynamic emanated from the negotiations and changing relationships between the forces in play in Oaxaca.

Coffee: The Golden Bean Still Mexico’s most important agricultural export today, coffee, Latin America’s grano de oro (golden bean), emerged as a major cash crop during the PorWriato, whose economic policies encouraged commercial agriculture.8 For Oaxaca, it became not only a major export but also the catalyst of capitalist transformation. The history of coffee in Oaxaca illustrates the growth of a complex network of relations between local, regional, national, and international forces produced by the increasing popularity of this commodity. Demand for coffee spiraled as the nineteenth century progressed, and was similar to the trend of other subtropical and tropical products. As 7. Stern, “Feudalism, Capitalism,” 870–72; see also Buve, “Paisaje lunar,” 140. David McCreery’s studies of the debt peonage and the mandamiento system in late nineteenthcentury Guatemala led him to consider it “‘An Odious Feudalism,’” 99–117. 8. According to statistics from 1994, Mexico is Latin America’s third-largest and the world’s Wfth-largest exporter, after Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, and the Ivory Coast. Despite productivity below that of Brazil, Colombia, and Costa Rica, Mexico’s arabica coffee is in high demand owing to the superior quality of its café de altura (high-grown coffee, mostly cultivated above 1,000 meters). USDA, Tropical Products, FTROP, 4-1994, 1–95; Nolasco Armas, Café y sociedad en México; Chassen-López, “Coffee in Mexico,” 273–76, and Chassen [Chassen-López], “Café: los orígenes del grano de oro.”

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Steven C. Topik has explained, coffee “helped slake the great bourgeois and proletarian thirst of industrial capitalism in Europe and North America.” Annual per capita consumption in the United States increased from 3 pounds in 1830 to 6 pounds during the Civil War to 10 pounds in 1900. The period between 1830 and 1930 became Latin America’s “coffee century” as it produced 95 percent of the world’s coffee. By 1880, ships that docked at the small port of Puerto Angel on the PaciWc coast of Oaxaca were transporting sixty-kilo bags of beans to Hamburg, a major center of European coffee distribution.9 PorWrio Díaz took an active interest in the development of coffee in his native state. Always well stocked with Oaxaca’s Wnest coffee by his friends, he proudly served it at his home on Cadena Street in Mexico City. At one point Díaz owned “El Faro,” one of the largest and most modern coffee Wncas in Cuicatlán, with over half a million coffee trees. The true pioneer of coffee cultivation in southern Mexico was Díaz’s high school classmate and fellow Oaxacan, Matías Romero, who served as ambassador to Washington under both Juárez and Díaz. Convinced of coffee’s brilliant future in Mexico, Romero Wrst purchased a modest Wnca in the Soconusco region of Chiapas and later acquired the “Río Grande el Frío” in Juquila. He penned numerous articles for the Mexico City press on coffee and its methods of cultivation from the 1870s until his death in 1898.10 Sources differ on the origins of coffee cultivation in Oaxaca. According to José María Murguía y Galardi (1826), coffee was already prospering 9. Topik, “Coffee.” I appreciate the author’s lending me this article in manuscript. Per capita consumption rose to sixteen pounds in 1960 (Roseberry, “Introduction,” 3; and Jiménez, “From Plantation to Cup,” 39–41). Matías Romero still believed in 1886 that upon completion of the road between Oaxaca and Puerto Angel, Puerto Angel would replace Acapulco as the major PaciWc port not only for Oaxaca but also for most of central Mexico. This was not to be. See Romero, Estado de Oaxaca, 131. 10. In 1904 PorWrio Díaz requested coffee from Colonel Feliciano García in the district of Miahuatlán, his comrade in the War of French Intervention (CPD, Telegrams, leg. 63, caja 1, 1904). Basilio Rojas believed that Díaz had founded El Faro but this is not corroborated elsewhere (Rojas, Café, 76). The owners put this Wnca up for sale in April 1894 but rejected an offer of $75,000 as too low. It is not clear exactly when Díaz purchased the property, but by 1901 he was the owner. In March 1902 José Sánchez Ramos, Díaz’s administrator, informed him that the cafetal was in very good condition and would bring in a thousand quintales more beans this year than last, approximately 3,300 quintales. El Universal, April 11, 1894 (and throughout the 1890s); Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 61; CPD, Telegrams, leg. 61, caja 2. See Bernstein, Matías Romero; Rojas, Café, 49; Spencer, “Soconusco,” 126. Romero’s best-known work on the subject was a compilation of articles on coffee in Mexico, published in Spain in 1886 as El Estado de Oaxaca.

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in Villa Alta in the opening years of the nineteenth century. In the 1830s, German traveler Eduard Muhlenpfordt observed coffee cultivation not only in Quiechapa, located in the district of Tehuantepec, but also in Zaachila and Jamiltepec, which he claimed rivaled that of Orizaba or Córdoba, Veracruz. According to Matías Romero, José María Cortés, the parish priest of San Agustín Loxicha in Pochutla, was the Wrst person to plant coffee trees in his orchard in 1854, although only for personal consumption. After 1864, the company of Martínez Brothers planted a number of trees on the banks of the Totoltepec River in Pochutla.11 Their success inspired cochineal merchants from the neighboring district of Miahuatlán to attempt more widespread coffee production. The production of grana cochinilla (cochineal dye) had been the most lucrative enterprise in Oaxaca in the late colonial and early national period. At the height of the boom, cochineal sold for $5 a pound in Miahuatlán, while the cost of production was a mere thirty-two to thirtysix centavos a pound, resulting in magniWcent proWts. Nevertheless, by 1863, when synthetic dyes had appeared, the price of cochineal had fallen below the cost of production to twenty-four centavos a pound, leaving the producers deeper and deeper in debt. Compromised by the end of this boom, the strapped cochineal merchants sought an alternative product in which to invest to recover and pay off their debts.12 In the Wrst months of 1874, a group of merchants from Miahuatlán formed a company whose shareholders included Ramón Ruiz and Juan María and Juan Francisco Mijangos, which introduced large-scale coffee cultivation to Oaxaca. Selecting San Isidro del Camino (located between the towns of Miahuatlán and Pochutla) as the ideal site to initiate planting, they encountered the tenacious resistance of local Zapotecs opposed to any use of their lands by outsiders. Foiled by this opposition, the Miahuatlán merchants Wnally established their Wrst cafetal, which they 11. Murguía y Galardi, Estadística del Estado, iv. I am indebted to Carlos Sánchez Silva for Wnding the information in Murguía. The Encyclopedia Mexicana states that coffee was under cultivation in Agualulcos in 1800 (“Café,” Encyclopedia Mexicana 2:1142). Muhlenpfordt, Ensayo de una descripción Wel, 15ff.; Romero, Estado de Oaxaca, 122, 124. William Schell Jr. cites William Henry Bishop’s Old Mexico and Her Lost Provinces (New York, 1883), which states that “Germans . . . developed many coffee estates, mainly in Oaxaca, from the 1840s.” Schell, “American Investment in Tropical Mexico,” 220. The date here is incorrect and is probably the 1880s. 12. Romero, Estado de Oaxaca, 78–79, 101–3; Rojas, Café, 51. In Colombia, merchants who had suffered from the failure of tobacco cultivation encouraged the turn to coffee. See Palacios, Coffee in Colombia, 80ff.

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optimistically named “La Providencia,” on a mountain, the Cerro de la Pluma (hill of the feather), located some twelve kilometers from the district seat of Pochutla. The district authorities also tried to frustrate this enterprise, considering it an invasion by Miahuatecos. Nevertheless, the coffee entrepreneurs found support in Governor Miguel Castro (a personal friend of Ramón Ruiz), who advocated the economic progress of the state. His intervention permitted the merchants to plant the Wrst forty thousand cafetos (coffee trees) in 1875 (and another forty thousand the next year), as they had arrived at an agreement with the pueblos of Santa María Ozolotepec and San Mateo Río Hondo, which owned the property in question.13 Other Miahuatecos followed the lead of these pioneers, and coffee trees appeared on the mountain slopes of numerous villages throughout Pochutla and the neighboring district of Juquila (both of which Romero had singled out as propitious for coffee cultivation). Another early believer, the Spaniard Francisco Quijano, shareholder and manager of Quijano y Cía., had planted cafetos in Totoltepec, Pochutla, in 1873. Two years later he was lending money to Miahuatlán’s merchants to further their coffee enterprises and eventually took over a good part of the shares of “La Providencia.”14 Basilio Rojas, a Miahuateco rural teacher (grandfather of the future historian, who was his namesake) commanded respect throughout the coastal region for his efforts to improve rural education. Also an entrepreneur, he had been involved in the cochineal trade and then in the efforts of the original Miahuateco coffee venture. In addition, he solicited a parcel of land from the town of Santo Domingo Coatlán in Miahuatlán to begin planting coffee on his own. Although the town had only about twenty families, it controlled so much land that it took six hours to walk from north to south and three hours from east to west on it. But since as a corporate village no “foreigners” or “outsiders” could own land, the villagers decided to confer the honor of being an hijo del pueblo on Don Basilio in order to concede him land. Because he was of advanced age (sixty-eight years), however, he requested that this privilege be bestowed on his son, Vidal, instead, and the villagers consented. Thus the Rojas

13. Rojas, Café, 48–53, and En ancas de Rocinante, 9; Romero, Estado de Oaxaca, 103–28. 14. Romero, Estado de Oaxaca, 104, 111.

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family founded the Wnca of “Regadío” in Santo Domingo, which by 1880 had twenty-Wve thousand coffee trees.15 The frontier characteristic of the expansion of coffee in Miahuatlán and Pochutla parallels the same in Antioquia, Colombia, and São Paulo, Brazil. In all these cases, coffee cultivation opened up new lands in areas with scarce population. For example, if in 1877, when the coffee migration had already begun, Pochutla had 11,335 inhabitants, by 1910, its population had grown to 27,666. At the same time, population density increased from 2.5 to 6.1 inhabitants per square kilometer under the impact of coffee fever.16 Suffering from the declining tax revenues of the cochineal trade, the state government attempted to encourage cash-crop enterprises. Governor José Esperón, whose family had extensive sugar interests in the Mixteca, issued Decree No. 15 on January 13, 1875: Art.1—In order to protect the cultivation and exportation of coffee and sugar in this state, the following incentives are granted: I. Each person who proves to have planted and have 1,000 coffee trees in production, will be exempted from military duty and all municipal posts. II. Each person who has 20,000 coffee trees in production will earn the right to an award of 1,000 pesos, having this quantity increase with an equal sum for every additional 20,000 trees in production. III. To the person who exports the Wrst 100 quintales of processed coffee, an award of 300 pesos will be given. IV. To the person who exports more than 250 and up to 500 quintales of coffee, an award of 1,000 pesos will be given. V. To those who export over 200 quintales of coffee, although they are not the producer, an award of one peso per quintal will be granted . . . counting from the publication of this law. Art. 2.—These concessions will last for twenty years counting from the publication of this law.17 15. Vidal also later established the cafetal “Jamaica” in the Juquila district. Rojas, Café, 57–68; En ancas de Rocinante, 1–29, and Epístolas, 342–47, 361–62. 16. The population in Juquila increased from 16,286 to 25,659 and in Miahuatlán from 35,122 to 46,473 inhabitants during the same time period. See Busto, Estadística de la República Mexicana; División territorial, 1910. 17. Article 3 read, “The Executive hereby receives the needed faculties to regulate the present decree, taking care that the awards be granted exactly.” Rojas, Café, 72. Governor Teodoro Dehesa of Veracruz also granted tax exemptions to producers of coffee, tobacco, sugarcane, etc. see Fowler-Salamini, “Gender, Work, and Coffee” 56.

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Promoted by authorities and encouraged by increasing prices on the international market, coffee cultivation met with almost immediate success throughout the state. By 1880 Cerro de la Pluma had been elevated to the status of a town, now Pluma Hidalgo, with a population of 309 persons. Numerous new cafetales materialized on its mountain slopes of fertile soils and humid climate. In 1880 the Pochutla/Miahuatlán coffee region had twenty-six Wncas, each with between 2,000 to 140,000 coffee trees. By 1896 the total had jumped to forty-three Wncas (listed in table 11). Pluma Hidalgo’s prosperity resonated in the region and money circulated freely. Its processors used the latest technology and machinery more modern than that of Coatepec, Veracruz, in the heart of Mexico’s most important coffee producing center. By 1909 the frequent conversations of Pluma’s planters, over French champagne and Veracruz’s Wnest cigars, resulted in the organization of a coffee growers’ union that sought to further develop agriculture and technology in Oaxaca.18 As seen in table 11, while ownership of these Wncas varied, Mexicans, particularly Miahuatecos such as the Ruiz, Mijangos, and Rojas families, Wgured prominently among Wnqueros. To a lesser degree, Spanish interests resident in Mexico, such as Quijano & Cía. and other foreign individuals, such as Gustavo Stein (German consul in the city of Oaxaca), also invested. According to historian Basilio Rojas, the Miahuatecos were also responsible for spreading coffee cultivation to other districts of the state. Jesús Rojas, son of Don Basilio the elder, moved to Choapan, “taking with him the teaching about coffee, which soon spread to Villa Alta and Yalalag and the land of the Mixes; don Benito Mijangos, son of Don Juan María [one of the founders of Pluma], took off in the direction of Tuxtepec.” The inXuence of the Miahuatecos also stretched into the districts of Teotitlán and Cuicatlán in the Cañada.19 By 1912 numerous cafetales were in production in Teotitlán: Cataluña (Allende, Díaz y Cía., 500 hs.), Carlota (Jorge Cook y Socios, 3,500 hs.), San Rafael (Rafael Mijangos, 2,950 hs.), María Luisa (Agustín MacClean, 4,262 hs.), Netzahualcoyotl (M. Gamboa Moreno y Hnos., 3,500 hs.) 18. Martínez Gracida, Colección de cuadros sinópticos (Pochutla); Rojas, Café, 78–84; El Correo del Sur, Nov. 25, 1909. Café Pluma is still Oaxaca’s premier coffee today. 19. Rojas, Café, 78. The Mexican Southern Railway traversed the districts of Teotitlán and Cuicatlán and provided a much needed means of transportation. But Teotitlán’s best coffee-producing lands were high up in the sierra and Wnqueros still had to transport their coffee long distances by mule to the railway stations.

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Fincas in Pochutla and Miahuatlán in 1896 Value in Pesos

No name 450 No name 200 La Sirena 2,880 El Gavilán 14,250 Virginia 1,085 El Carmen 1,260 Santa Ana 953 La Victoria 2,195 La Cabaña 3,798 Santa Cruz y Santa Elena 9,270 El Lirio 250 La Gruta 2,175 Guerreo [sic] 3,315 Los Angeles 1,430 San Luis 1,430 No name 1,150 El Gólgota 6,600 La Paz de Dolores 8,025 Las Nieves 545 Natividad 425 La Favorita 640 San Javier 3,544 Regadío 3,140 Consolación 5,534 El Faro 986 América 875 San Francisco 420 El Triunfo 7,430 Esmeralda, Independencia 4,450 y Miramar Parián 200 Eureka — Nubes — Mercedes — Concordia — Progreso — Monte Cristo — Copalita — El PacíWco — El Retiro — Asunción —

Municipality

Owner

San Felipe Lachillón Santa María Ozolotepec Xanica Xanica Pluma Hidalgo Pochutla Santa María Ozolotepec Santa María Ozolotepec Santa María Ozolotepec Santa María Ozolotepec Santa María Ozolotepec Santa María Ozolotepec San Mateo Río Hondo Santa María Ozolotepec Santa María Ozolotepec San Mateo Río Hondo Pluma Hidalgo San Mateo Río Hondo Santa María Ozolotepec Santa María Ozolotepec Pluma Hidalgo Pluma Hidalgo Santo Domingo Coatlán Pluma Hidalgo Pluma Hidalgo Pluma Hidalgo Santa María Ozolotepec Santa María Ozolotepec San Mateo Río Hondo

Dionisio Ruiz Ambrosio Cortés Pedro Díaz Jacinto Jarquín Francisco S. Mijangos Juan I. Velasco Lucio Ruiz Lucio Ruiz Juana Ruiz de Pérez Agustín Arangoa Ramón R. Ruiz Ramón R. Ruiz Nemesio Ortiz Francisco Ramos Agustín Arangoa Aurelio Jarquín Nabor Alderete Gregorio Ruiz Miguel Jarquín Silverio Ortiz Efreén [sic] Rojas Efreén [sic] Rojas Vidal Rojas Antonino Rojas Francisco Zavaleta Casildo Ramírez José García y Hno. Ramón Ruiz y Cía. S. Quijano y Gustavo Stein

Santa María Ozolotepec Pluma Hidalgo Pluma Hidalgo Pluma Hidalgo Pluma Hidalgo Pluma Hidalgo Pluma Hidalgo Pluma Hidalgo Pluma Hidalgo Pluma Hidalgo Pluma Hidalgo

Juan Agapito García Alberto Belderráin Alberto Belderráin Alberto Belderráin Alberto Belderráin Rito Mijangos Rito Mijangos Pablo Martínez Pablo Martínez Pablo Martínez Jesús S. Sánchez

Source: Basilio Rojas, El Café: Estudio de su llegada, implantación y desarrollo en el Estado de Oaxaca (Mexico City, 1964). a Don Agustín Arango appears as an owner, but in fact these properties belonged to his brother-inlaw, the jefe político Feliciano García.

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and Rebanaqc (Tardan Hnos., 250 hs.), among others.20 From this list, it appears that foreign owners were those best able to survive the vicissitudes of coffee production. Cuicatlán witnessed an even more impressive spurt of growth, above all in coffee and sugar. Manuel Allende, a wealthy Spaniard who now resided in the city of Oaxaca, owned Unión Ibérica, one of the richest cafetales in this district. Finca production began in 1890, and within four years he had recouped all the original capital invested and more impressive proWts were estimated for the future; but these hopes were dashed with the coming of the crisis of coffee production. Other important coffee Wncas were Batavia (Ceylán E. Limón Socios, 361 hs.), México y Londres (Marcelo y Collado, 300 hs.), San José (Carlos Castro y Hnos., son of Governor Miguel Castro, 1,400 hs.), Unión Francesa (Pouillon Hnos., 1,209 hs.), and PorWrio Díaz’s El Faro.21 Table 10 in Chapter 2 also demonstrates the enormous impact of the golden bean, as it enumerates 431 Wncas (most of which produced coffee) in eleven districts by 1909. Coffee became Oaxaca’s major cash crop and export during the PorWriato, leading to the privatization of thousands of hectares of communal lands and the transformation of agrarian life in these areas. Mexico exhibited considerable diversity with respect to types of landholding, with large Wncas of more than a hundred thousand trees that were similar to the highly capitalized plantations of Brazil, medium-size Wncas like those common in Colombia and Costa Rica, and small to marginal parcels, often held by indigenous landowners and communal villages. Coffee brought isolated regions and small indigenous producers into the international division of labor. Mexico’s three major producers, Veracruz, Chiapas, and Oaxaca, displayed all these types of landholdings. Still, coffee subordinated both large and small producers alike to the vicissitudes of prices on the international market.22 20. AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Teotitlán. 21. El Universal, April 3, 1894; AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D. El Faro does not appear in these reports. 22. Veracruz, Chiapas, and Oaxaca continue to be the major coffee-producing states of Mexico. Nolasco Armas, “Características socioeconómicas,” 36ff; Topik, “Coffee,” 40–41. On diversity, see Roseberry, “Introduction,” 5ff., “Beyond the Agrarian Question,” 352–56, and Anthropologies and Histories, 168–69. Despite the fact that Mexico has been a major producer of coffee since the late nineteenth century, new studies of the impact of coffee in Latin America fail to include the Mexican experience. See, for example, Roseberry et al., Coffee, Society, and Power.

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By 1912 more foreign interests had invested in coffee, as they had access to the capital and technology necessary to compete in the face of increasing supply brought on by the expansion of coffee cultivation throughout Latin America. In fact, foreign interests proWted from the crisis of overproduction in the 1890s. For example, in the Miahuatlán/ Pochutla region numerous cafeteros were forced to abandon their Wncas, some losing everything to creditors. With their Wnancial backing by European export and import companies, foreign concerns were able to take over some of the best Wncas at rock-bottom prices. The crisis of 1896–97 caused the Miahuatecos to forfeit their hegemony in Oaxacan coffee production.23 Many of these new investors were English and German. Many of the Germans already had investments in Guatemala and Chiapas. As was the case with Oaxaca, “The German colonists in Guatemala, and later in Soconusco, did not pioneer in coffee cultivation, but usually purchased established Wncas and enlarged them, improved cultivation methods, and utilized modern processing machinery imported from England and the United States.”24 Even with this growing German presence, coffee production, like that of henequen, remained largely in Mexican hands, in contrast to the overwhelming foreign exploitation of Mexico’s mineral wealth during this period. Distribution and commercialization of coffee on the international market, however, fell increasingly into the hands of foreign merchant houses. As in Guatemala, where connections with German merchants tied much of the production to German markets, much of Pochutla’s coffee went to Hamburg.25 While coffee exerted pressure to privatize lands for the establishment of larger Wncas, small landowners and comuneros also learned to cultivate this cash crop. By the 1890s, the Chatino pueblo of Teotepec already 23. Rojas, Café, 86. Discussing the Soconusco region, Spencer declared that “The Germans’ key to success, however, was their European Wnancial backing. Most of the immigrants originally came from the Hanseatic towns of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck. As the employees of export-import companies, they traveled and lived abroad, pursuing business interests for the Wrm and themselves. The trading Wrms often helped their employees become independent landowners, in exchange for regular consignments of the best coffee. . . . The other source of capital for planters in Soconusco was German trade companies (established in the 1850s) in the Mexican ports of Mazatlán and Manzanillo.” Spencer, “Soconusco,” 133. This was probably the case with Germans in Oaxaca but further research is needed to develop these relationships. 24. Spencer, “Soconusco,” 129. 25. Smith, “Local History in Global Context,” 206; Secretaría de Economía Nacional, Café.

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cultivated sufWcient coffee to pay their tithe in it. In effect, the municipal government of Juquila imposed a tax of three pesos per arroba of coffee in an effort to discourage this activity in Chatino villages because the increasing number of villagers planting coffee had reduced the labor supply for the large Wncas.26 Competition between small and large producers was on the rise. The Rincón region (composed of nine pueblos) of the highland district of Villa Alta in the Sierra Juárez has a warm and humid climate, ideal for coffee cultivation. The people of these villages were extremely poor because they could not produce sufWcient food to feed themselves. Yearly they suffered periods of severe hunger, which often forced them to go begging in neighboring pueblos. In his travels through the Rincón, Fidencio Hernández (the elder), caudillo of the Sierra Juárez, realized that the climate was very similar to that of the rich coffee-producing regions of Orizaba and Córdoba in Veracruz. In the 1870s he began to transport and distribute coffee seedlings to the villages, but the campesinos would lose or fail to plant them. Finally he demanded that any family that did not plant twenty-Wve coffee trees each year would be Wned $100 (a sizable sum at that time). He sent periodic commissions to check up on the plantings and count each family’s cafetos. After four or Wve years the Wrst trees began to produce berries, and the pizca (harvest) coincided with the time of food scarcity in the Rincón. Now, instead of begging, entire families harvested their coffee, and purchasers traveled to the villages to pay for the harvest not with money but with needed foodstuffs, maize, bread, salt, aguardiente (cane liquor), and cotton cloth and thread. Although this situation was not devoid of exploitation, coffee cultivation had ended the years of hunger in the Rincón. Hernández became an important coffee merchant as he monopolized the purchase of the harvest in this region. Although originally coerced into production, the Villaltecos adapted well to this new crop and, according to Pérez García, they eventually were grateful for the innovation, which solved the food problem. The people of San Pedro Yaneri hung a plaque in their municipal building with the inscription: “To the undefeated General Fidencio Hernández, benefactor of these pueblos who introduced coffee here.”27 26. Bartolomé and Barabas, Tierra de la palabra, 41. 27. Pérez García, Sierra Juárez 1:273–74. Thereafter, supposedly, they would intone a prayer of thanks in Zapoteco after every meal: “Schalenu diuci schalenu Fidenciu Rnandez, va gutagutu” (thanks to God and Fidencio Hernández for this food).

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The expansion of coffee cultivation transformed patterns of labor and land tenure in various regions of Mexico. But because coffee often opened up sparsely populated regions, producers constantly lamented la falta de brazos. Matías Romero afWrmed that in all his travels through the state, he had not found even one coffee Wnca whose owner or administrator admitted having sufWcient labor. He complained, “with respect to the Indian inhabitants of the villages which exist near the coffee Wncas, it is observed how difWcult it is to get them to work as day laborers,” despite the fact that this would improve their standard of living. Unable to fathom the reason for this resistance, Romero undertook a brief study of their situation and concluded that the only solution was to employ sharecroppers (terrazgueros or colonos), as in Brazil. In order to insure a stable work force, he suggested that a certain number of families be relocated to the Wncas and given sufWcient land for their own crops, be they coffee or other fruits, and be allowed to raise their own domestic fowl.28 Despite Basilio Rojas Sr.’s success with indigenous laborers, the history of the defense of communal lands by Oaxaca’s indigenous peoples dictated that this would be far more problematic than Romero imagined. In their efforts to contract laborers, coffee Wnqueros resorted to the enganche (hook), a cash advance used as an entrée into a debt peonage system. Documents from 1895 located in the municipal archives of Tututepec refer to the use of this system by the “Hacienda Esmeralda.” The Chatinos of Yolotepec, in Juquila, declared that Wnca administrators used to arrive in nearby villages with offers of monetary advances for those who would work as peons. If the Chatinos refused, they were forcibly recruited with the collusion of the district authorities and only allowed to return to their villages once the seasonal demand for labor passed.29 Finqueros were compelled to seek cheap labor from the more densely populated central states of Mexico, especially to hire seasonal labor during the pizca, which lasted from November to February. This alternative was more common before coffee prices began to plummet in the 1890s. One witness described processions of workers from the central states 28. In Mexico there were various experiments to import labor from Asia, such as the cases mentioned in Chapter 5 for Pochutla and Juchitán, and transportation of Asians to the Yucatán. According to Spencer, a contingent of laborers from Tahiti was brought into Chiapas, but almost all died of smallpox (“Soconusco,” 131). See also Romero, Estado de Oaxaca, 134–47. 29. Bartolomé and Barabas, Tierra de la palabra, 42. “La Esmeralda” later became famous for its rubber production.

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marching across Mexico to seek work on the Wncas of Miahuatlán and Pochutla in 1894.30 While the price of coffee remained high, this was a viable method, but when it began to fall, wages followed suit. As noted in the preceding chapter, the expansion of coffee cultivation intensiWed the pressure of Wnqueros and speculators to privatize communal lands, which would soon all produce coffee and at the same time free up the labor, forcing the ex-comuneros to work for a wage. Some workers were permanently tied to estates through debt peonage, but sharecropping, tenant farming, and wage labor were more common. As Mexican campesinos learned the particulars of coffee farming, they began to cultivate trees on their own parcels to earn a little extra cash, and the number of small producers increased.31 Coffee production, during the PorWriato as well as today, can be understood only by taking into account the gendered division of labor and the family as the unit of economic analysis. On small, medium, and large Wncas alike, family labor was vital. Men usually prepared the land for planting, cared for the seedlings, and pruned the trees as they grew. Women and children (as young as six years old) weeded and harvested (though men did also), supposedly better suited to harvesting given their greater patience in picking only the ripe berries. For the most part, men were also responsible for cultivating the subsistence crops: beans grown between the rows of coffee trees, bananas to shade them, and corn and pasture on neighboring parcels. As was customary in Oaxaca, women and children received half or less of the daily wage of men or were paid by piecework.32 In 1907 El Imparcial reported that an abundant harvest of coffee was in the ofWng but “nothing promising” could be expected with respect to prices. The scarcity of labor was becoming critical because Wnqueros 30. El Universal, March 20, 1894. As governor of Chiapas, Oaxacan Rafael Pimentel permitted the recruitment of highland Indians to work on the PaciWc coffee plantations (Spencer, “Soconusco,” 131). 31. This, no doubt, is the origin of the polarization among landholders that exists in twentieth-century Mexico. In 1985, 95 percent of the producers held 56 percent of the land, while the other 5 percent controlled 44 percent. See Nolasco Armas, Café y sociedad en México, 123. 32. See Romero, Estado de Oaxaca, 139ff. Women also worked in the coffee-processing plants as early as the PorWriato, favored for their skill in sorting superior- and inferiorquality beans. In order to survive, “nineteenth-century Mexican rural family members shared diverse agricultural activities in a complex household in which multiple income earners, including women, contributed to family income” (Fowler-Salamini, “Gender, Work, and Coffee,” 51ff.).

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could no longer maintain previous salary levels. In 1909, as prices declined, so did production, because the Wnqueros had large quantities of coffee in storage awaiting prospective buyers. Some districts could not maintain their production under these adverse conditions: in Teotitlán, numerous coffee producers were behind in the payment of their taxes and on the verge of auctioning off their properties. “This zone lived through an ephemeral boom, and although it possesses very rich lands, its producers do not have efWcient transportation, given the scarcity of freightage and good roads.”33 Mexican coffee production jumped from 4.6 million kilos in 1874 to a high of 50 million in 1907. But with production increasing in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Guatemala, high prices could not be maintained. Since it takes four or Wve years for a tree to produce acceptable beans, the expanding supply triggered a crisis in the 1890s. While the price of coffee on the U.S. market Xuctuated between 24 and 17 cents per pound between 1860 and 1895, the price fell to 11.5 cents in 1898 and then plummeted to 7 cents per pound in 1900.34 After 1896 and the continuing decline in prices, production followed suit. In 1895 Oaxaca harvested 10 million kilos of coffee, making it Mexico’s number one producer, followed by Veracruz (5 million kilos) and Chiapas (914,000 kilos). By 1907, with a harvest of 3.7 million kilos, Oaxaca fell to number three, behind Veracruz’s 33 million and Chiapas’s 8.7 million kilos. During the Wrst decade of the twentieth century, Oaxaca’s volume stabilized at 2 to 3 million kilos a year, as shown in table 12. Cafeteros produced more and more coffee for less and less value. By 1900 the future no longer appeared as bright as it had twenty years before. Increasing competition had tempered the boom, and Mexican production dropped to 35.7 million kilos by 1910.35 Coffee cultivation did fulWll many of the earlier expectations of Matías Romero and Basilio Rojas Sr., but the crisis of the 1890s chilled the hopes of others. In Wve out of seven regions of the state,36 the expansion of coffee had a permanent impact on land tenure, agricultural production, and 33. El Imparcial, Oct. 7 and Aug. 6, 1907; La Unión, June 20, 1909, and Aug. 4, 1907. 34. Jiménez, “From Plantation to Cup,” 43–44; Anuario estadístico, 1896; Palacios, Coffee in Colombia, 34; see Roseberry, “Introduction,” 21. 35. Anuario estadístico, 1895, 1900, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907; Secretaría de Economía Nacional, Café. 36. The districts of Miahuatlán, Pochutla, Juquila, Juchitán, Villa Alta, Tuxtepec, Teotitlán, Cuicatlán, and the new district of Mixes are still signiWcant producers today.

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Table 12.

149

Distribution and Volume of Oaxacan Coffee Production (in kilos)

District

1896

1900

1903

1905

1906

Cuicatlán Choapan Etla Huajuapan Ixtlán Jamiltepec Juchitán Juquila Juxtlahuaca Miahuatlán Pochutla Tehuantepec Teotitlán Tuxtepec Tlaxiaco Villa Alta Yautepec Zimatlán

160,000 118,000 — 279 4,602 — 30,653 83,600 — 24,938 1,777,790 5,060 73,600 770,040 1,288 460,240 48,500 920

300,000 70,000 132 210 48,000 15,000 24,960 106,260 1,100 1,500 875,000 106,000 176,000 220,988 1,725 320,242 10,000 —

145,400 92,470 — — 207 36,800 28,339 62,684 265 37,356 317,580 141,720 504,499 433,544 1,550 3,640 — —

120,000 99,427 1,300 — 43,862 28,044 76,400 67,400 775 10,940 1,116,600 26,942 496,716 468,800 1,900 138,117 58,800 —

220,800 108,451 600 — 18,259 40,000 91,700 85,527 775 21,518 1,153,400 30,792 395,790 228,100 1,960 145,135 58,800 —

Totals

3,559,510 2,277,117

1,806,054

2,756,023

2,601,607

Sources: Anuario estadístico de la República Mexicana, 1896, 1900, 1903, 1905, 1906. Dirección General de Estadística a cargo del Dr. Antonio PeñaWel (Mexico City: Tipografía de la Secretaría de Fomento, 1897, 1901, 1905, 1908, 1910).

labor relations. It intensiWed the pressure exerted by entrepreneurs and speculators to privatize communal lands held by indigenous villages and to buy out small landowners in the areas apt for cultivation. The dispossession of campesinos provided the land and some of the necessary labor, as they were forced to work for a wage to supplement their subsistence. It also led to the growth of small and marginal producers.

Tobacco in Death Valley The disruption and devastation of Cuban society and economy wrought by the struggles for independence, the Ten Years’ War (1868–78), the Guerra Chica (1878–80), and Wnally the Cuban War for Independence (1895–98) led directly to the introduction and expansion of tobacco in the Papaloapan region, especially the district of Tuxtepec. As the international

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demand for high-quality leaf intensiWed, Cuba was less and less able to supply it. Island producers resorted to secretly importing leaf from Mexico and even Pennsylvania in order to maintain Cuban exports. The Wrst signs of soil exhaustion in the prime tobacco vegas (valleys) of Vuelta Abajo encouraged the migration of Spaniards, Canary Islanders, and Cubans in search of new lands. They soon discovered that the lush valleys of the Papaloapan River basin in southern Veracruz and northeastern Oaxaca were ideal for the production of tobacco.37 Ramón Balsa, a Spaniard, introduced tobacco into the district of Tuxtepec. As a young man he had immigrated to Cuba, learned the tobacco business there, and then moved on to Mexico. He Wrst worked as a tobacco classiWer in San Andrés Tuxtla and later established “La Prueba,” which would become one of the port of Veracruz’s largest cigar factories. Traveling through Oaxaca, Balsa recognized that the soil and climate of Ojitlán, Valle Nacional, and the surrounding areas were ideally suited for tobacco cultivation. He acquired lands near Valle Nacional and began to employ the methods learned in Cuba. Word spread, and in the late 1870s more Cubans and Canary Islanders, attracted by the low cost of production, settled in Valle Nacional and other valleys in Tuxtepec. Spaniards, above all Galicians and Asturians, continued to arrive. By 1894 the tobacco of Valle Nacional obtained a higher price on the international market that the most prized Cuban product of Vuelta Abajo, although it did not maintain this advantage for long.38 In his 1883 survey of the districts of Oaxaca, Manuel Martínez Gracida listed only one hacienda for Tuxtepec, yet by 1912 it had more large landholdings (123) than any other of Oaxaca’s twenty-six districts, 23 percent of agrarian properties of the state. If there had been 19,578 inhabitants in this sparsely populated district in 1877, by 1910 the number of inhabitants had risen to 48,325 (the largest increase in the state), 37. On the economic impact of the Cuban war for independence that began in 1895, see Pérez, Cuba Between Reform and Revolution, 132–36. Just as the migration south (from patriarchal to industrial slavery) had done for new cotton lands, this led to a more exploitive labor system. See McMichael, “Slavery in Capitalism”; Lejeune, Cultivo del tabaco en México, 6–8. 38. Lejeune, Cultivo del tabaco en México, 13–14. According to Cassidy, Víctor Ahuja and Cándido Fernández were close friends from Asturias: the Wrst would be the progenitor of the powerful Bravo Ahuja family, while the second was inXuential during the PorWriato, although he ended his days in poverty. Cassidy, “Haciendas and Pueblos,” 241, 252. See also Cossío Silva, “Agricultura,” 83. According to García Hernández, Balsa Hermanos owned ten tobacco haciendas in the region by 1910 (Tuxtepec ante la historia, 75).

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very much a frontier settlement pattern.39 Attracted by fertile lands and the railroad/river transportation, Tuxtepec also received the greatest foreign investment in agriculture of all the districts of Oaxaca. Some North American and European Wrms bought out bankrupt or strapped smaller producers during the crisis of the 1890s and later, during the 1907 crisis. For instance, in 1906 the Cerro Mojarra hacienda belonged to M. P. Gómez; six years later it was controlled by The Cerro Mojarra Plantation Company. Four years after that, the Joliet Tropical Plantation Company held 2,295 hs. in Tuxtepec. By 1912 a growing number of larger landholdings had passed into the hands of foreign companies and individual foreign entrepreneurs; among the latter, Spaniards, Cubans, and Canary Islanders were still the major producers.40 Unfortunately, information on the size and proprietors of landholdings is uneven and sources are contradictory, and proprietors would frequently not report the correct size of their properties. Nevertheless, as demonstrated by table 8 (Major Landholdings in 1906, Tuxtepec District) and table 9 (Major Landholdings by Foreign Corporations and Investors, 1912, District of Tuxtepec) in the preceding chapter, a major transformation of land tenure occurred in Tuxtepec during this period. These data also reveal that tobacco was not the only cash crop prospering in the district, but that coffee, cotton, sugarcane, cocoa beans, rubber, and, after 1909, bananas were also signiWcant products of the Papaloapan region. The production of maize and beans on so many of these properties conWrms that the inhabitants generated their own foodstuffs. By 1903 Tuxtepec was also the third-largest producer of livestock among the districts of Oaxaca.41 39. See Martínez Gracida’s chapter on Tuxtepec in Colección de cuadros sinópticos; Sánchez Silva, “Estructura de las propiedades agrarias,” 111ff.; Busto, Estadística de la República Mexicana; División territorial, 1910. 40. For instance, Daniel Levy, a French capitalist, Eugene Schnetz, a French engineer, and Mexican colonel Cid y León had 16,000 hs. of land surveyed in order to invest in a tobacco plantation in the Valley of Santa Rosa in Ojitlán. They believed that Santa Rosa would yield even Wner tobacco than Valle Nacional. Lejeune, Cultivo del tabaco en México, 27– 45. See also Holms, Directory, 309–12; and for 1912 information, consult AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D. On the Joliet Plantation, see NA, Records, roll 183, 812.512.2571. 41. See Esteva, Nociones elementales. Unfortunately, the 1912 Wles in the AGEPEO do not list the size of the holding, but the data from Holms, Directory, and J. R. Southworth, OfWcial Directory of Mines and Estates, whose numbers match, demonstrate the expansion of medium and small holdings, although it is doubtful that all smaller holdings were counted. See Sánchez Silva’s discussion of these sources in “Estructura de las propiedades

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These tobacco estates, however, did not reach the proportions of some of the enormous haciendas of central and northern Mexico. In 1912 the largest tobacco holding was “Santa Rosa” in Ojitlán, with an extension of 19,350 hs., property of the European Wrm Cultur, Maas, Chappy & Company. “Playa Grande” in Jalapa de Díaz registered 15,803 hs.; in Soyaltepec, “Cerro Mojarra” and the notorious “Málzaga” haciendas owned between 9,000 and 10,000 hs. The majority of haciendas ranged from 1,000 to 5,000 hs.: Víctor Ahuja’s “Carolinas” had 4,540 hs., and Cándido Fernández’s infamous “San Cristóbal” had 4,265 hs. Tuxtepec’s rich tobacco haciendas can be equated in size and fertility with the highly productive sugar haciendas of the state of Morelos.42 The district of Tuxtepec was sparsely populated by Chinantecos, most of whose land was held communally by villages. When foreign immigration began, the demand for privatization increased dramatically. The most notorious case was surely Balsa Hermanos’s purchase of the lands of San Mateo Yetla for $37 and a bottle of aguardiente; a similar “sale” took place in Jacatepec.43 Some Chinanteco villages reluctantly solicited the distribution of their communal lands into private property because they feared losing them to Mexican or foreign capitalists, as we have seen in the case of Ozumacín, when threatened by a takeover in 1887. However, once the villagers received their private parcels, pressure mounted for them to sell out to larger interests. A few foreign Wrms were able to appropriate newly parceled lands, and Usileños ended up as day laborers on their own lands. Adding insult to injury, they were forced to pay taxes on this land. Tobacco merchant companies of the port of Veracruz also invested in land in Tuxtepec. Often purchasing small, noncontiguous pieces of land, they established the habilitado system, common in the neighboring region of the Tuxtlas in Veracruz, which entailed the leasing of land to sharecroppers through avío (loan) contracts. The Wrm of Rendón y García arranged such sharecropping contracts with a number of tenants, which

agrarias,” 108–13. On livestock, see Chassen [Chassen-López], “Oaxaca” (Ph.D. diss.), 125–26, 452. 42. Holms, Directory, 309–12; Southworth, OfWcial Directory of Mines and Estates, 219–22; see Esteva, Nociones elementales. On the sugar haciendas, see Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution. 43. Cassidy, “Haciendas and Pueblos,” 241ff.; García Hernández, Tuxtepec ante la historia, 74.

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permitted them the Wrst option on harvests. But Francisco Rendón wanted to eliminate sharecropping arrangements in favor of haciendas with salaried managers, and did so wherever he could consolidate land parcels to create larger holdings.44 The tobacco boom caused property prices to soar in Tuxtepec. The large Cerro Mojarra plantation in Soyaltepec, valued at $12,196 in August 1895, was worth $235,000 fewer than eight years later. This increase can be attributed to the growing value of the land itself and to the clearing and planting; “the cost of buying and establishing the tobacco plants was the fundamental cost of any commercial operation. Once established, they represented the real assets of the estate.”45 But the chronic labor shortage increased the going price for contratas (contract laborers) before the 1907 crisis and the construction of the Veracruz and Isthmian Railway, which by means of a spur connected Tuxtepec to its main line at two stations, El Hule (today Papaloapan) and Agua Fría. The local Chinantecos resisted being reduced to peonage on the growing number of Wncas and haciendas, yet the expansion of commercial agriculture could not proceed without a resolution to the labor shortage. They fought to keep their own land but were frequently forced up into the mountains to survive on subsistence agriculture. As a young boy, Bartolo Avendaño occasionally worked on Cándido Fernández’s Hacienda San Cristóbal. According to Don Bartolo, the Chinantecos would cultivate a little of their own tobacco and the hacendados only rarely, in times of need, would employ them, and then mainly as house servants. However, the region was so sparsely populated that labor had to be imported into the district.46 Impersonating an American capitalist interested in tobacco cultivation, John Kenneth Turner visited the region and was so horriWed by the 44. For instance, Francisco Rendón signed an avío contract with Frenchman Pedro Bernard in April 1891; Rendón provided the land in Ozumacín and $12 for every thousand plants sown. The capital advance was charged on favorable terms against the upcoming harvest, over which Rendón exercised an option. He sponsored other such agreements, even supplying wagons and oxen to certain habilitados. Rendón continued to back independent producers. See Cassidy, “Haciendas and Pueblos,” 249–50. 45. Ibid., 244–45. 46. Avendaño, interview. Don Bartolo Javier Avendaño was eighty-eight years old at the time of the interview. I am indebted to the Rodríguez Lemus family of Tuxtepec for their hospitality in 1982 and 1983 and especially for arranging this interview. The use of Chinantecos as house servants was conWrmed by the anthropologist Margarita Nolasco Armas, who was raised in the region (personal conversation, July 1984).

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wretched working conditions that he dubbed Valle Nacional “the Valley of Death.” Deceived by promises of high pay, workers from all over Mexico accepted cash advances from labor agents. These contractors operated in various cities, shipping men, women, and children out to die on these haciendas. In 1907 Leandro López, a labor agent in Mexico City, submitted a list to the governor of Oaxaca of thirty-three contratas destined for the Hacienda of San Silverio. This group included four women and twenty-nine men between the ages of twenty-two and forty who came from seven different states in the central valleys of Mexico, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, México, Veracruz, and the Federal District.47 Other contratas were shanghaied off the streets of Mexico City and other urban centers. Minor delinquents, petty thieves, pickpockets, “unruly” factory workers, and agricultural peons were often dispatched to the region instead of to jail; political dissidents met the same fate. Drunks who had fallen asleep on the streets of any Mexican city might awaken to Wnd themselves on a train to Tuxtepec. The planters either dealt directly with jefes políticos or with labor agents. The notorious woman slaver of Tuxtepec, Pancha Robles, acquired contratas for $40 a head from various jefes políticos and then sold them for $65 to the planters. After the 1907 crisis the planters paid only $45 for men, while women and children were usually half-price.48 The collaboration of political ofWcials was vital in assuring a steady stream of workers for these tobacco estates; as many as Wfteen thousand workers a year were supplied to the planters. The jefes políticos of the four largest cities of southern Mexico worked in tandem with the labor agents. When prisoners were sent to the vegas of Tuxtepec instead of 47. For example, Francisco Rivera of the city of Oaxaca applied to the state government for the right to be the exclusive agent in the city of Oaxaca, submitting a copy of the contracts he used. See AGEPEO, Dec. 1902, Gob., Cuestiones Laborales, Oaxaca de Juárez. The agent stated that the workers were to be sent to the San Silverio hacienda, but the governor of Oaxaca advised the governor of the federal district that they were destined for the Miramar Hacienda. Three of the women and three of the men were married (presumably to each other, as they appear together on the list); all the rest were single. AGEPEO, Feb. 1907, Gob. Cuestiones Laborales, Tuxtepec. 48. Gruening, Mexico and Its Heritage, 335. Turner says that men cost $60 apiece before the crisis (Barbarous Mexico, 54–67). In Chiapas, in order to get workers to sell to the monterías in Chiapas and Tabasco, agents paid the Wnes of Indians who had been jailed. Benjamin, “Trabajo en las monterías,” 513. Governor Cahuantzi wanted to send thieves and political troublemakers of Tlaxcala to Oaxaca (Rendón Garcini Prosperato, 48).

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jail, both the jefe político and the labor agent each got a share of the fee. Cándido Fernández contracted with the jefe político of Pachuca for Wve hundred workers a year at $50 apiece. These contratas were guarded en route by the Rurales (Mexico’s rural police force), while this ofWcial even obtained special discount rates for group transport on the national railroads. For such a lucrative business, this jefe político was not beyond charging helpless people with imaginary crimes. The notorious jefe político of Tuxtepec, Rodolfo Pardo, a slave owner and member of the tobacco elite himself, and Manuel Lagunas, the mayor of Valle Nacional, both received a take of the slave trade.49 In Tuxtepec, men, women, and children slept in barracks with no privacy, guarded day and night. Anyone returning runaway workers collected a reward of $10 per head. The contratas worked from six in the morning to six in the evening, policed by an army of overseers wielding whips and canes (mostly Cubans and Spaniards). Turner estimated the lifespan of a laborer in Valle Nacional to be seven to eight months, and no longer than one year. The Spanish overseer of the Hacienda de Málzaga, Angel Sustaeta, was notorious throughout the region for his merciless treatment of the contratas.50 Very few survived the horrors of Death Valley to corroborate Turner’s account. But José Ramírez, of Cuilapan in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, a slave on Cándido Fernández’s Wnca, somehow managed to sneak a letter out to his wife: Valle Nacional, San Cristóbal Finca May 2, 1905. Señora Julia Vázquez, Cuilapam, Oaxaca. My Dear Wife, Since last 20 April and due to false information given by the corporal that I was trying to desert, Sr. José Casanueva ordered me put out in the sun and whipped at all hours of the day, denying me any food and then taking me out to work all tied up. I have become like Christ on the cross and if this continues I will surely die, please pray to 49. Turner, Barbarous Mexico, 54–73. Alan Knight states that Rurales were also used to police plantations in Oaxaca. Mexican Revolution, 34. 50. The following verse circulated in the district: “Si te vas a la contrata, no te vayas a enredar, que el que va a Málzaga, su muerte es infernal” (If on contract you’re working, better not to get involved, for one who goes to Málzaga, an infernal death’s awaiting). This hacienda was one of the Wrst targets of Maderista revolutionaries in 1911, as we shall see in Chapter 11. Chávez, “Episodio de la Revolución”; Turner, Barbarous Mexico, 54–57, 64–67, and 86 for a description of the bejuco (whipping cane); Angel Taracena, interview.

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God for me. This is the way these infamous and vile men treat us poor workers, who are so unfortunate that we have to work to buy bread for our children. Here there is no law or justice beyond the will of these infamous men. I cannot address the Judge of Tuxtepec because they permit us no means of communication. When you receive this letter please apply to the state governor, who is the father of all of us for he is the only one capable of getting me freed from the misfortune, plead with him because a man’s life lies in the balance. I embrace my four children and pray to the Patron Saint of our town. I can send you no money because I have none and I myself am almost naked. Goodbye my beloved wife, José Ramírez.51 Sra. Ramírez pleaded with the governor to intervene on her husband’s behalf, but his fate is unknown. Denunciations of this type of situation appeared occasionally in the national press, to no avail. The radical press of Oaxaca repeatedly condemned the abuses taking place in Tuxtepec and demanded that a law be written to stop them.52 The state government published Decree No. 43, demanding “respect for the individual rights of workers, to be sure that they are hired with an advance which is completely voluntary, to be followed by punctual payment of salaries stipulated, and to make sure humanitarian treatment is accorded to the class of persons.” It was sent to all the jefes políticos in 1905 but had no palpable effect on this iniquitous slavery. That same year, Governor Pimentel had to justify to the president why he believed that delinquents rejected by the military draft should be sent to Tuxtepec. A few of these prisoners had protested their sentence and one of the cases had made its way to the Supreme Court. The governor asked him to ensure that the judges would not “weaken the actions” of the state government “because thus would many rogues thrive.” Díaz responded that he would take the matter up with his friends on the court.53 51. AGEPEO, 1905, Gob., Cuestiones Laborales, Tuxtepec, and July 1907, Gob., Cuestiones Laborales, Tuxtepec. 52. Ibid. The governor’s secretary solicited information from the jefe político of Tuxtepec on this case, but the Wle contains no response from Tuxtepec or any notation of action taken by the government. Turner, Barbarous Mexico, 57ff.; Avendaño, interview; González Navarro, Historia moderna de México: El PorWriato; Vida Social, 237–39. See also El Imparcial (Mexico City), May 15, 1902, and Nov. 20, 1907; El Bien Público, Aug. 15, 1905. 53. Colección de Leyes 25:331–33; CPD, Letters, leg. 30, caja 1.

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The president had only to read his mail to learn of the horrors of Tuxtepec. Numerous letters in the Díaz archives prove that the common people of Mexico still believed they could appeal directly to the hero of the French Intervention on personal matters. Feliciano Betancourt, having escaped to the El Hule railroad station, addressed this letter to Díaz: I inform you that by my misfortune they have deceived me and brought me to Valle Nacional, where I have lost a leg as a result of a wound I got while laboring here. Today I have arrived in El Hule without resources and not being able to work. At a loss in this critical situation, frankly I take the liberty to ask help of one of the nation’s heroes. . . . I advise you that if God gives me life and you concede it to me, I will see you soon in the capital and I will report to you on what I have seen in this godforsaken Valle Nacional, valley of tears and crimes, that the Mexican territory will always look upon with disdain. Now that God has given me license to leave that hell so that I can be of help to all those left behind there in misery, I plead with you to deign to do me the favor of hearing me out and help me Wnd work that I may sustain my body. . . . F. Betancourt54 Betancourt never did get to tell his story personally to the president, but he was sent to work on the Tehuantepec National Railway.55 Women not only labored in the Welds but also were responsible for the maintenance of the male slaves: cooking, sewing, and cleaning. When Turner, who calculated that women made up one-Wfth of the laborers on the tobacco estates, asked the mayor of Valle Nacional why the planters did not install cheap mills for the grinding of corn, the mayor replied, “Women are cheaper than machines.”56 People were herded into dirt-Xoor 54. CPD, Letters, leg. 30, caja 9. 55. Ibid. Almost all the letters in the Díaz archives contain annotations in pencil by Díaz’s personal secretary, Rafael Chousal, noting the response or course of action taken. This letter had no annotation, but two weeks later another letter arrived from Betancourt, reiterating his situation. This one had a brief note in Chousal’s handwriting—“See if this was the one recommended to Body”—meaning that Betancourt was probably sent south to see John Body, director of the Tehuantepec National Railway, to get a job, far from the Mexico City press and the president’s ear. 56. See Chassen-López, “‘Cheaper than Machines,’” 39ff.; Turner, Barbarous Mexico, 66.

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barracks with barred windows at night to sleep. Depending on the size of the hacienda, these held from seventy to four hundred people, men, women and children together: And on not a single ranch did I Wnd a separate dormitory for the women or the children. Women of modesty and virtue are sent to Valle Nacional every week and are shoved into a sleeping room with scores and even hundreds of others, most of them men, the door is locked on them and they are left to the mercy of the men. Honest, hard-working Mexicans are taken into Valle Nacional with their wives and children. If the wife is attractive in appearance she goes to the planter or to one or more of the bosses. The children see their mother being taken away and they know what is to become of her. The husband knows it, but if he makes objection he is answered with a club. Time and time again I have been told that this was so, by masters, by slaves, by ofWcials. And the women who are thrust into the sardine box must take care of themselves.57 Supposedly the contratas’ salaries were accredited to personal accounts or paid in scrip to be used at the hacienda’s company store, where prices were inXated. Constantly behind, they could never hope to work off the debt: most died Wrst. In 1907 the jefe político reported that male laborers received 75 centavos and female workers 44 centavos a day in the Tuxtepec district. This was one of the highest salaries reported in the state, and certainly the highest of all female salaries. Could the valley of tears, notorious for its deplorable working conditions, have had such high salaries? Highly unlikely: Don Bartolo remembered with resentment how Chinantecos earned only 25 centavos, while the contratas earned 3 reales, or 37½ centavos, a day.58 On the surface, labor relations conformed to the legal system of debt peonage. Nevertheless, in the legal slave economies of Cuba, Brazil, and the southern United States, slaves were able to purchase their liberty; in the slave system parading as debt peonage in Tuxtepec, freedom was not for sale. Only the Revolution would Wnally destroy slavery in Valle Nacional. 57. Turner, Barbarous Mexico, 65. 58. See Chassen [Chassen-López], “Oaxaca” (Ph.D. diss.), 103–10; Turner, Barbarous Mexico, 54–64; Avendaño, interview.

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Because the devastating 1944 Xood destroyed the district archives of Tuxtepec and those of many of the municipalities in the region, sources available to investigators are limited.59 This is painfully evident in the search for evidence of revolt and more “everyday” forms of resistance, such as escaping, shirking, foot dragging, stealing, or insubordination. We do know that escape was frequently attempted, given the employment of guards, bounty hunters, and Feliciano Betancourt’s testimony. No evidence of any revolt or organized violence in Tuxtepec before 1911 has appeared. Considering that it was Turner’s intent to exaggerate the hopeless condition of the workers of Death Valley, he provides very little information on types of resistance, other than escape through alcohol. The problem of investment capital was almost as chronic as that of labor scarcity in Tuxtepec. Thus, Wnancing was sought mainly through avío contracts with merchants, who in turn were interested in assuring a constant supply of tobacco. Most of these merchants were located in the port city of Veracruz, although some producers were sponsored by North American and European wholesalers. Victor Ahuja, an Asturian tobacco merchant, lent capital to a number of concerns in the region while becoming a planter himself. He controlled the production of his own haciendas and also those whose harvest he underwrote at a discount, which could reach as high as 12.5 percent. Planters were still able to show a proWt, because labor was so cheap and prices were still high.60 Consolidating his control over a number of properties, which would form the San Cristóbal hacienda in Valle Nacional, Cándido Fernández paid $24,643 for what was estimated at the time to be 5,267 hs. He contracted for a number of loans in order to undertake a large-scale development of the property, among them an April 1900 loan from the Banco Internacional e Hipotecario for $100,000 at 9 percent interest. Only six years later, in May 1906, Fernández gave the New York Wrm of J. E. Gillespie a ninety-day option to buy the estate for $230,000 (although

59. In 1982 I was commissioned by the AGEPEO to survey Tuxtepec’s district archive. Unfortunately, the massive Xooding of the Papaloapan in 1944 had destroyed almost all documents. Today Wles date from 1945. 60. José González y Cía., which owned the extensive Corriente Fijera plantation in Soyaltepec, depended on funds advanced by the Wrm of Crodall Muller of Bordeaux. Flavio Morales, owner of the Vista Hermosa hacienda in Ojitlán, signed contracts Wrst with Rendón y García and later with Zaldo Hermanos, both located in Veracruz during the 1890s and early 1900s. See Cassidy, “Haciendas and Pueblos,” 245–47.

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the sale did not proceed at this time), which demonstrates the spiraling value of tobacco haciendas in the region.61 In 1896 Tuxtepec’s production reached 1,114,295 kilos, valued at $1,927,730. Although it hit 3,050,941 kilos in 1903, the value had plummeted to $759,284. In 1906 El Imparcial reported that Mexico’s upcoming tobacco harvest (which eventually reached 25 million kilos) would be “superior in quantity, although inferior in quality, to last year’s.” The distribution by region is indicated in table 13. This signiWed that tobacco exports would decrease, because European buyers wanted only superior quality leaf. In 1907 Oaxacan production declined to 1,064,760 kilos; considerably fewer than the previous year. In March 1908 Tuxtepec’s harvest found “the growers generally lamenting the low demand and price of their product.” The history of coffee repeated itself with tobacco, as expanding supply on the international market led to a decline in prices, forcing growers into the vicious cycle of producing more and more for less and less proWt.62 Tuxtepec’s prosperity now hinged on international demand, dependent on the vicissitudes of the price of tobacco on the world market. By 1909, even before the revolutionaries liberated the haciendas’ slaves, hastening the system’s decline, the production of bananas began a new economic cycle. Although tobacco production failed to serve as the basis for sustained economic development, the transformations brought about by the tobacco boom, and, to a lesser degree, the local production of coffee, rubber, cotton, and bananas had irreversible consequences for the region. Once the railroad connection was established and the best land privatized, the Papaloapan River Basin became the richest agricultural producer in the state. Its self-sufWciency in foodstuffs and diversity of products acted as a cushion against hard times. However, once tied to the banks and tobacco distributors of the port of Veracruz and Córdoba, the region remained in rich Veracruz’s economic sphere. Prosperous Tuxtepecanos resented

61. Ibid., 251–52. The merchant house of Galainena y Cía in Veracruz lent him $65,000 in October 1901 at 12 percent interest and an option on the coffee and tobacco harvest for the express purpose of a massive planting. The sum of these debts indicates the increase in value of San Cristóbal as it was used as collateral. That Fernández could pay off Galainena y Cía. by July 1902 attests to the considerable proWts to be made in cash-crop agriculture in Tuxtepec. 62. Anuario estadístico, 1896; Anuario estadístico, 1903; El Imparcial, Feb. 12, 1906, and March 15, 1908.

The Commercialization of Agriculture

Table 13.

161

Distribution of Mexico’s Tobacco Harvest, 1906

Place

Production (in kilos)

San Andrés Tuxtla Acayucan Córdoba Tlapacoyan Tepic, Ojitlán, Valle Nacional Playa Vicente Districts of Chiapas and others of Oaxaca San Luis Potosí Total

2,500,000 750,000 7,500,000 3,750,000 6,250,000 2,500,000 1,250,000 500,000 25,000,000

Source: El Imparcial, Feb. 12, 1906.

the state taxes they were forced to pay to one of Mexico’s poorest state governments in the city of Oaxaca.63 This prosperity also resulted in the formation of a middle sector of Wnqueros, ranchers, and merchants who supplied the area with needed imports while distributing the region’s products. As it grew, this sector chafed under the political and economic power of the tobacco hacendados who controlled all the services and politicians. It was no coincidence that this restless middle class, not the starving “slaves” of Valle Nacional, would initiate the Revolution in Oaxaca in 1911. Tuxtepec was not the sole producer of tobacco in the state, although its leaf was the highest grade and the most exportable. Table 14, which provides the distribution for 1907, indicates that Jamiltepec on the Costa Chica and Putla in the Mixteca harvested even greater quantities (but of inferior quality and not exportable) than Tuxtepec for that year. Artisans of the montaña region of the Mixteca (Alta) used it in the manufacture of cigars and cigarettes in cottage industries for local consumption.

Other Cash Crops ru b b e r Throughout most of the nineteenth century, rubber had been gathered from wild rubber trees in the Amazon. As industrial demand for tires in 63. This relationship intensiWed in the 1950s when the Temascal Reservoir was built on the border between the two states (the town of Soyaltepec was submerged), giving an enormous economic boost to the region.

162

Table 14. District Choapan Jamiltepec Juchitán Juquila Ocotlán Putla Tuxtepec Zimatlán Total

Infrastructure and Economics

Oaxacan Tobacco Production, 1907 Production (in kilos) 12,400 27,000 2,500 3,200 1,440 542,050 475,000 1,000 1,064,590

Source: AGEPEO, 1908, Gobierno, Memoria Administrativa, Varios Distritos.

the auto industry grew, particularly in the early twentieth century, entrepreneurs sought other sources in Asia and Latin America. In Mexico production barely reached seventy-seven tons in 1887, but then prices began to spiral on the international market. In 1889 the Ministry of Development signed a ninety-nine-year contract with José García, Manuel Ramírez Varela, and José Ramos Leal, permitting them to plant Wfteen thousand rubber trees. The government agreed to pay a subsidy of three centavos for each tree planted, in addition to a tax exemption for all imported machinery and tools. These subsidies were important because rubber calls for capital and patience, as new plants require about ten years of maturation. Rubber production accelerated in the decade of 1890, and although prices dipped in 1901, they revived after 1903 and stimulated a “fever of acquisition.”64 In Mexico, English investors seemed to be the most gullible in the wave of speculation, which followed rising rubber prices. The Wrst concession in Oaxaca, mentioned above, whose shadowy history is difWcult to trace, was a constant object of fraud. This concession later passed into the hands of the ubiquitous Delfín Sánchez (of railroad concession fame), who, in association with his partners, sold it to various U.S. companies. Given the constant problems of labor scarcity and the unhealthy conditions in 64. Wasserstrom, Class and Society, 113–14; Cossío Silva, “Agricultura,” 110–11. According to Schell, Mexican rubber could only be tapped once a year (twice if the tree was older than eight years). Brazilian rubber (Hevea species) could be harvested three times a year. Schell, “American Investment in Tropical Mexico,” 234; Henderson, “Modernization and Change,” 240ff.

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the region, Sánchez ended by abandoning their project after several years. By 1902 an English Wrm had acquired this land, “La Esmeralda” (later “Esmeralda y Zaragoza”), a rubber-producing hacienda in the Juquila district. By 1912 the hacienda had expanded to 17,022 hs. and produced coffee and cocoa beans in addition to rubber. British investors had probably been inXuenced by Ambassador Henry Nevill Dering’s hyperbolic statement, that a plantation with one hundred thousand trees might cost no more than $25,000 yet produce $120,000 annually.65 English investors scrambled to get in on what turned out to be the Oaxacan rubber bubble. The British companies, then, offered their stock on the London Stock Market at enormously inXated prices, as the boom in automobiles progressed. José Yves Limantour, the Mexican Treasury minister, denounced this fraud to the British ambassador in 1902, amazed at “the credulity of British investors, the facility with which they put their money in mines that only exist on paper and companies which emit stock for a value one hundred times their real worth, such as the Esmeralda Rubber Plantation, which he himself had rejected for $25,000 dollars and then was put on the London market valued at 500,000 pounds.”66 This particular company later was taken to court on various counts of fraud, among them publishing false information in their investment brochures. Such were the rubber plantation swindles in Britain that the trade of rubber plantation securities was banned on the London Stock Exchange in 1909.67 Rubber also emerged as an important product in the district of Choapan. Cristóbal MacGregor, the Scottish settler in Choapan, was a man with an early ecological conscience. In order to obtain rubber of as high a grade as that produced in Eastern India, in 1905 he was investigating the “best way to process rubber, utilizing new technology for Mexico to extract the most rubber without damaging the plant.” By 1910, however, most of Choapan’s Wncas had been abandoned thanks to the ravages of the bandit Santanón. A few foreign concerns also cultivated rubber on Tuxtepec’s haciendas, and after 1909 there was an attempt to promote rubber cultivation in Putla.68 65. Valadés, PorWrismo 1:261; Memoria Administrativa, 1902; AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D. 66. Cited in Nicolau D’Olwer, “Inversiones extranjeras,” 107. 67. Ibid., 112. See Schell’s account of these rubber plantation swindles in “American Investment in Tropical Mexico,” 113ff. 68. AGEPEO, 1905, Gob., Jefaturas Políticas, Choapan; El Correo del Sur, Nov. 12, 1909.

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The Isthmus of Tehuantepec was also touted as ideal for rubber production. Hailed as the “spine” of the Americas, American investors were encouraged to “get a hold of a vertebra before it is too late.” Promoters hawked their securities as “better than a savings bank,” as each one had the support of a certain number of acres of rubber trees and afforded much higher returns than low interest rates. The Mexican and U.S. governments worked in tandem to stimulate interest in tropical export agriculture, the former desiring the investment of foreign capital and the latter seeking to expand its inXuence on the strategic isthmus. Together they assured the public that such investments were safe. Yet, on the contrary, here, too, unsuspecting American and British investors were callously bilked by ruthless frauds, particularly in rubber.69 The Ubero Plantation Company established an estate in the vicinity of the Tehuantepec National Railroad on the border with Veracruz. This Boston company, capitalized at 250,000 dollars, invested not only in rubber but also took an unusual interest in the promotion of isthmian agriculture. In 1901 it offered to donate one hundred hectares of land (valued at $500) to the government for the establishment of an experimental agricultural station near the railroad depot. In its proposal, the company noted that various companies were already experimenting with different types of crops on the Isthmus, with new seeds and techniques, above all with respect to rubber and pineapple.70 In effect, an agricultural research station was set up through the auspices “of a relative of Díaz” and Congressman Thomas Moran, on land of the Ubero Plantation Company. A few years later, Consul General Parson’s exposé of U.S. companies in Mexico cited the Ubero Company as one of the biggest frauds. In order to “prove” its claims of extraordinary productivity, this company had even obtained coffee on the New York market to resell as its own. According to Parsons, the Ubero Plantation

69. According to consul general Parsons, “a single company sold $250,000 of worthless rubber plantation securities to Philadelphia teachers.” See Schell, “American Investment in Tropical Mexico,” 222ff. 70. It hoped to provide local planters with the latest information through the publication of a bulletin. Nicolau D’Olwer, “Inversiones extranjeras,” 1109; CPD, Letters, leg. 27, caja 2. Wasserstrom cites India Rubber World, which reported that the Ubero was originally capitalized at a million dollars. In Chiapas, rubber was combined with cutting Wne hardwoods in the jungle around Palenque. Wasserstrom, Class and Society, 113–15. On Chiapas, see Henderson, “Modernization and Change,” 239ff.

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companies had not invested the millions of dollars they reported but only 70,000 dollars in “bona Wde improvements.”71 No statistics on rubber production in Oaxaca have been found prior to 1873. In 1896 the state produced 7,738 kilos (valued at $6,490). By 1905 the harvest reached 10,124 kilos (valued at $20,167), and Tuxtepec, Juquila, and Choapan were the major producers. Despite the frequent frauds, by 1902 rubber plantations made up more than 62 percent of U.S. investment in agriculture in Mexico, and by 1912 U.S. companies cornered 68 percent of rubber interests in Mexico.72 ba n a n as As a fruit for internal consumption, bananas were popular throughout Mexico. They were Wrst cultivated in Tabasco for export in competition with Central American countries. The Huasteca Development Company of Mexico City speculated in land in Mexico, in San Luis Potosí as well as Oaxaca, and then resold the land to unsuspecting American investors. In September 1905 Pablo LeRoyal solicited a tax exemption from the government for extensive lands acquired by the company from speculators José Castellot, Enrique C. Creel, and Olegario Molina (all prominent CientíWcos) in the district of Tuxtepec. The company had purchased “El Porvenir” and “San Francisco” plantations in the municipality of Soyaltepec for more than $140,000, intending “to devote them to the foundation of a colony, which would have as its goal the exploitation of the region’s natural resources.”73 Nevetheless, in 1907 Huasteca sold twentyseven thousand acres to Colonel J. M. Bain and J. H. Henderson of Pittsburgh. These men formed the Jantha Plantation Company and sold it in parcels to Americans from western Pennsylvania—but not as colonists. They contracted the Alvarado Construction Company to clear the land, 71. Schell does not identify this relative (“American Investment in Tropical Mexico,” 225–27, 243). With the Revolution, the Ubero Co. complained to the state government, through the U.S. embassy, that the violence on the Isthmus had made it impossible to contract workers and it doubted that it would be able to continue production, AGEPEO, June 1912, Gob., Peticiones y Reclamos, Istmo. 72. Anuario estadístico, 1896 and 1905. Schell estimates U.S. investment in Mexican rubber at 75 million dollars by 1913 (“American Investment in Tropical Mexico,” 237–38). 73. The Huasteca Development Co. insisted that it had invested heavily in the habilitation of the lands and was paying off the capital plus interest, and thus needed the exemption. AGEPEO, Sept. 1905, Gob., Fom., Permisos y Contratos, Tuxtepec.

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plant, and maintain two hundred bananas trees per acre. By 1912 six hundred U.S. investors owned 8,705 acres of banana trees in Soyaltepec.74 The Massinesson Plantation Co. of Pittsburgh purchased eleven thousand hectares along the Tuxtepec River and planted a million shoots of Roatán (Gros Michel strain) imported from Jamaica. Its Wrst banana crop reached Tlacotalpan for export in 1909. The cultivation of this product quickly spread throughout the region. The Joliet plantation, which cultivated rubber and cattle, soon planted bananas. However, this boom did not take off until the 1920s, after the Revolution and World War I, when the large U.S. fruit companies arrived in Tuxtepec.75 s u g a rc a n e The Spanish had introduced sugarcane production in Oaxaca. During the colonial period, the Isthmus and Ejutla and Miahuatlán were important producers. Zimatlán’s production only gained signiWcance after Independence. In the Mixteca Costa region, sugarcane increased as the eighteenth century progressed. Initially there were numerous small trapiches, but by the latter half of the century, rich Spanish ranchers had bought these out and continued to expand their holdings, “converting the zone into a sugar emporium.”76 By 1811 Gabriel Esperón, a Spaniard, had purchased two trapiches and with them began the formation of what was to become the Hacienda de la Concepción and the Esperón family’s sugar empire. He continued renting other trapiches with an eye to cornering sugar production in the Mixteca. During the struggle for Independence, he attained the rank of colonel by rallying his peons to Wght in defense of the Spanish Crown. In 1822, exiled to Spain for his royalist stance, he left his business dealings in the care of his sons, José and Esteban. Don Gabriel returned twenty years later in time to privatize much of the land the Esperón family had 74. Hart, Empire and Revolution, 195; AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D. 75. Cossío Silva, “Agricultura,” 52; García Hernández, Tuxtepec ante la historia, 78. Labor conditions improved considerably during the banana boom as unions were organized in Tuxtepec. Gruening, Mexico and Its Heritage, 140. Arellanes dubbed the banana boom Oaxaca’s “Panamanian years.” Arellanes Meixueiro cites Tuxtepec Moderno (1925), which states that Roatán bananas were only introduced in 1909 (“Del Camarazo al cardenismo,” 98ff., and “Orígenes del movimiento obrero,” 402ff). 76. Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 126–28; Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 235ff.

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been renting from the surrounding indigenous villages. Meanwhile, the sons had founded the prosperous merchant house of Esperón Hermanos, with ofWces in Puebla and Oaxaca, run by Esteban Esperón. By 1868 the sugarcane of Tlaxiaco made up one Wfth of the state’s production: by the PorWriato, La Concepción had emerged as the largest cane hacienda in the region and the family had successfully monopolized sugar production in the Mixteca.77 The century-long confrontation between the Mixtec village of Santa María Yucuiti and the Hacienda de la Concepción is narrated in Chapter 6. During the late PorWriato, the Hacienda de la Concepción reached 8,775 hs. Manuel Figueroa’s “Jicaltepec” hacienda (9,440 hs.) and Luis Vega’s “San Pedro” hacienda (2,200 hs.) were also important sugar producers in the Mixteca. Sugarcane also thrived on the Mixteca Costa, where twenty-one aguardiente factories and numerous sugar mills functioned in 1914.78 The Cañada region was also ideally suited for sugarcane. The Hacienda of Guendulain and the Mill of Tecomaxtlahuaca, both in Cuicatlán, had been signiWcant producers since the colonial period. In 1846 Fernando Rojas founded the Trapichito of Rojas, which later became the Rancho of Guadalupe Obos. In Teotitlán, the ranch of Cuautempam and the Hacienda and Mill of Ayotla, (both founded during the colonial period) belonged to General Ignacio Mejía during the PorWriato, and later passed into the hands of Francisco Martínez Arauna. They covered 10,000 hs. and 4,500 hs., respectively.79 As mentioned in the previous chapter, the largest property in the state, the Hacienda and Mill of Santo Domingo, in Juchitán (77,500 hs.), belonged to Matilde Castellanos. She was the widow of Esteban Maqueo, an Italian immigrant who had purchased the eight estates originally belonging to Cortés in partnership with José Joaquín Guergué, a leading Oaxacan businessman and politician. It cultivated sugarcane, cotton, 77. Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 461ff., 504ff; see Martínez Gracida, Colección de cuadros sinópticos, on Tlaxiaco. 78. AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D., and and Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; see Holms, Directory; Southworth, OfWcial Directory of Mines and Estates; Atristáin, Notas, 14; and Esteva, Nociones elementales, 189–90. 79. Martínez Gracida, Colección de cuadros sinópticos (Cuicatlán and Teotitlán). In 1825 the state government compensated the Ayotla sugar mill $9,000 for the liberation of its slaves. González Navarro, “Indio y propiedad en Oaxaca,” 175. AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D., and Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.

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indigo, maize, and beans, and raised livestock. The Hacienda de la Venta (also a cane producer, with 41,000 hs.) in the same district also belonged to Matilde Castellanos. With Santo Domingo, it formed part of the Cortes’ Haciendas Marquesanas. In Tehuantepec, Félix Rueda’s sugar-producing Hacienda Los Cocos Viejos had 6,000 hs.80 Not all sugar haciendas were large, and a plethora of smaller properties (thirty to three hundred hectares) also cultivated cane. As with coffee, it was not necessary to have large extensions of land, but an abundant water supply for irrigation was needed for sugarcane to be successful. Beginning in 1880 with a small piece of land on the outskirts of the city of Tehuantepec, Juana Catarina Romero purchased more land from small proprietors in the vicinity to form a Wnca, which she named “Santa Teresa” after her favorite saint. She planted sugarcane, producing Wrst piloncillo (unreWned sugar loaf) and later sugar. A perfectionist, she traveled to Havana to learn about the latest technology and the particulars of the sugar industry and returned with examples of the prized “Habanera” cane shoots for planting, which explained her success. In effect, the sugar mill of “Santa Teresa de Jesús” won both a silver medal and a Grand Prize at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1904, and Wrst prize in the world sugar competition at the Crystal Palace in London in 1908.81 By 1912, although Santa Teresa had an extension of only twenty-eight hectares, it was valued at $150,000, making it the most highly capitalized Wnca in the district and the only estate with a telephone. The largest Wnca in Tehuantepec, “Santa Cruz” (thirty-Wve hectares), which belonged to the heirs of Alberto Langner, was valued at $80,000. Both employed irrigation to cultivate their sugarcane, but Juana Cata had equipped Santa Teresa with the latest machinery and technology imported from Germany. Her mill reWned much of the sugar from other producers in the region and also had extensive orchards. Juana Cata also ran a distillery where 80. Hamnett, Juárez, 23, 28, 40; AGEPEO, Jan. 1912 and Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; see Holms, Directory; Southworth, OfWcial Directory of Mines and Estates. 81. The Wnca “Santa Teresa” today belongs to Juana Cata’s great-grandaughter, Doña Juana Moreno Romero. Doña Juana no longer cultivates sugar but now grows sorghum, evidence of the green revolution on the Isthmus. Moreno Romero Vda. de Salazar, interview; Villalobos, “Doña Juana C. Romero,” 3; Rojas Pétriz, “Una tehuana,” 15. Doña Juana Moreno Romero Vda. de Salazar kindly showed me these medals during her interview in July 1996.

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she produced the regions’s Wnest aguardiente.82 The Isthmus continued to be the center of sugar production during the PorWriato, as indicated in table 15. A number of localities thrived on a cane economy before the PorWriato. Matías Romero narrated the particulars of cheap panela (hard round cakes of molasses of which pieces are broken off to use as sweetener) production in small rustic sugar mills common in Loxicha, which served the Pochutla region in 1880s. A small landowner needed very little investment to produce panela and could produce maize for subsistence at the same time.83 But Romero was frustrated by how little value the campesinos Table 15.

Distribution of Oaxacan Sugarcane Production

District Cuicatlán Tehuantepec Centro Huajuapan Tuxtepec Silacayoapan Juchitán Ejutla Zimatlán Tlaxiaco Teotitlán Ocotlán Putla Jamiltepec Total

1903 Production (in kilos)

1907 Production (in kilos)

7,500,000 2,803,701 2,229,500 1,984,150 1,927,400 1,324,861 1,318,580 1,230,000 910,255 770,000 — 405,000 — —

9,000,000 153,108 854,300 3,450,000 26,025 154,600 9,000,000 302,000 691,290 20,000 6,000,000 1,812,685 875,000 600,000

22,403,447

32,939,008

Source: AGEPEO, 1908, Gobierno, Memoria Administrativa, Varios Distritos. There are no statistics for Jamiltepec and Teotitlán in 1903, which does not mean there was no production—just no report. The district of Putla was not created until 1907, and its production was subsumed under that of Tlaxiaco and Juxtlahuaca before that year. 82. AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Asuntos Agrarios, unclassiWed Wle, Jefe Político report, Tehuantepec. Villalobos asserted that Juana Cata continued to increase her landholdings and formed other Wncas of lesser value, such as those of Santa Clara and San Juan, but these do not appear in any of the jefe político reports. See Villalobos, “Doña Juana C. Romero,” 3; Ríos V., Tehuantepec, 104; Covarrubias, Mexico South, 232. 83. A campesino needed only a small wooden mill (worth $15), twelve clay pots ($6), and four mules ($40 apiece) to power the mill and as transport. Romero calculated how much they earned selling their product at low prices, only $25 after overhead. He Wgured that with a similar effort a campesino could plant Wve thousand coffee seedlings rather than four thousand cane seedlings, and net a proWt of more than $500 a year for only three to four months of work. Romero, Estado de Oaxaca, 143–45.

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attached to their family’s labor (since women and children worked in the Welds also), and concluded that coffee would eventually be much more proWtable. In fact, coffee Wnally did outdistance panela as a major product in Loxicha. A similar situation existed in other areas of Oaxaca, particularly in the district of Juquila, where smallholders in pueblos such as Panixtlahuaca also historically produced panela for regional consumption in addition to subsistence crops. Panela permitted the inhabitants a little cash to buy necessary products (coffee expanded here too, but not until the 1950s).84 While coffee did bring in extra cash as Romero imagined, it subordinated the villages to the imperatives of outside forces, the national and international markets, making them far more dependent, much less autonomous and self-sufWcient, than they had been as producers of panela. The PorWrian push toward cash-crop agriculture also emphasized cane production, as evidenced by the 1875 decree on coffee and sugar cultivation. In 1873 Oaxacan cane production was valued at $195,899. By the Wrst decade of the twentieth century, its value Xuctuated between $250,000 and $650,000. Table 15 lists the districts that were the major producers. Their uneven production can be attributed to problems of planting and climate, above all questions of water supply. These statistics reveal the increasing importance of sugarcane production in more than half the districts of the state. But Oaxacan production lagged far behind that of major sugar-producing states such as Morelos: in 1907 Morelos produced fourteen times more sugar than Oaxaca.85 c o t to n Cotton production of manta (rough cotton cloth) dates from the preHispanic period and was a component of tribute payment. By the 1550s Villa Alta had become a major center of commercial agriculture and trade not only in cotton and cotton cloth but also in cochineal and cocoa beans. The cotton was grown locally in the warmer lowlands of Villa Alta, and 84. Bartolomé and Barabas, Tierra de la palabra. Jorge Hernández Díaz studied the negative aspects of coffee expansion in Juquila and entitled his studyEl café amargo (bitter coffee). 85. Memoria que el Ejecutivo del Estado . . . a 1873; Anuario estadístico, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906; Waterbury, “Non-revolutionary Peasants,” 425. According to the German agronomist Karl Kaerger, the Central Valleys region was the only place in the world where sugarcane and wheat could be produced side by side (Agricultura y colonización, 181).

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the indigenous inhabitants of the highlands, mostly women, were forced to weave cotton textiles. By the late eighteenth century, annual production reached more than sixty thousand mantas, and the district still paid its tribute in cotton cloth.86 However, this production had declined during the nineteenth century. The Mixteca Costa also emerged as a thriving center of cotton production on large plantations such as Jicayán during the colonial period. The conquest devastated the population of the region; from approximately seven thousand inhabitants in 1550 it fell to twenty-Wve hundred in 1650. This decline led to the importation of African slaves from the coast of Guinea to work the cotton plantations, giving the area a greater cultural and racial mix. Jamiltepec continued to be an important cotton producer during the later nineteenth century, and its cotton was used in the textile manufacturing centers of Veracruz, Puebla, Mexico, and Orizaba. In addition, the region gained fame for its beautiful indigenous textiles.87 Cotton also Xourished in the Teotitlán and Tuxtepec districts as a result of the decline of the South’s production in the United States during the Civil War. The campesinos of Huautla in Teotitlán sold their harvest in Veracruz, while other pueblos of that district sent their harvest to Tuxtepec. Almost all the pueblos in Tuxtepec, among them Jalapa, Ojitlán, Soyaltepec, and Tuxtepec, also cultivated cotton. Choapan and Villa Alta continued to produce cotton during the nineteenth century, although its production declined considerably. But Villa Alta and Choapan had to send their harvest to Playa Vicente in the nearby lowlands of Veracruz, which, like Tuxtepec, became a center of the commercialization of cotton. As always, however, labor scarcity limited production; in Huautla peons could keep as much as half the cotton they gathered daily in payment for their labor.88 86. By the 1660s the post of alcalde mayor was the most lucrative in Oaxaca. See Chance, Conquest of the Sierra, 97–119. 87. This was due not only to the arrival of European diseases but also to the widespread introduction of cattle and other livestock, which turned cultivated land into pasture. Spores, Mixtecs, 11–12; Takahashi, “De la huerta a la hacienda”; Ryesky, “Desarrollo socioeconómico”; Dalhgren de Jordan, Mixteca, 94ff; Tibón, Pinotepa Nacional, 17; Esteva, Nociones elementales, 188–89. See also Cassidy, “Haciendas and Pueblos,” 229–32. On the economy of the Costa see Atristáin, Notas de un ranchero, 11–16. 88. Romero, Estado de Oaxaca, 84–93; see also de la Fuente, Zapotecos de Choapan, 144–46.

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The establishment of three textile factories in Oaxaca during the second half of the nineteenth century stimulated cotton production in the state. In the Wrst decade of the twentieth century, however, cotton began to decline as a result of increased production in northern and central Mexico, above all the booming Laguna region, where the latest technology increased productivity. In addition, the Xourishing district of Tuxtepec produced harvests now superior to those of Jamiltepec. Table 16 shows the Xuctuating value of production. In 1904 Mexico’s cotton production was valued at $15,955,323, of which Oaxaca contributed only $152,104, or less than 1 percent. Concerned with the decline of this product, the state government tried to encourage production unsuccessfully, as will be seen in Chapter 9.89 Still, nothing could halt the deterioration of Oaxaca’s cotton crop. Oaxaca’s low productivity in sugarcane and cotton, a result of traditional methods of cultivation, coupled with high transportation costs, made it almost impossible to compete with those areas of Mexico where commercial agriculture had greatly increased productivity, especially sugar in Morelos and cotton in the Laguna.

Table 16.

Value of Cotton Production in Oaxaca (in pesos)

District

1873

1896

1904

1907

Jamiltepec Juquila Pochutla Choapan Teotitlán Tehuantepec Ixtlán Tuxtepec Juchitán

153,200 82,000 9,400 6,855 1,695 1,004 1,000 — —

400,000 5,500 243 2,595 — 299 — 48,325 —

65,250 10,028 — — — 5,354 — 71,557 4,000

47,500 29,600 — 750 — — — 19,905 —

Total

255,154

456,962

156,189

97,755

Source: Memoria que el Ejecutivo del Estado presenta al H. Congreso del mismo del período de administración pública del 17 de setiembre de 1872 al 16 de setiembre de 1873 (Oaxaca: Imprenta del Estado, 1874); Anuario estadístico de la República Mexicana, 1896, 1904. Dirección General de Estadística a cargo del Dr. Antonio PeñaWel (Mexico City: Tipografía de la Secretaría de Fomento, 1897, 1906); AGEPEO, 1908, Gobierno, Memoria Administrativa, Varios Distritos.

89. Estadísticas históricas de México 1:372.

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c o c oa , r i c e , a n d i n d i g o Other important cash crops in Oaxaca were cocoa beans, rice, and indigo. The production of indigo, principally on the Isthmus, continued to Xuctuate: from 34,510 kilos in 1892, reaching a high of 62,363 kilos in 1894, falling to 9,504 kilos two years later. After 1900 production ranged between 26,749 kilos in 1903 and 4,209 in 1905. Rice cultivation seemed to be increasing by the middle of the 1890s, hitting a high of 400,000 kilos, but it fell to between 130,000 and 280,000 kilos during the Wrst decade of the twentieth century. Cocoa bean production appeared to be taking off, reaching 27,495 kilos in 1896 but falling in the Wrst decade of the 1900s to a volume that Xuctuated between two and four thousand kilos.90 None of these crops had the economic impact of coffee, tobacco, or even rubber. Eventually all stabilized at lower volumes and prices than had been achieved in the 1890s.

The Staples of Life and Livestock On village communal lands, haciendas, and PorWrian Wncas, Oaxaca’s staple crops—maize, beans, wheat, chickpeas, potatoes, chile, chía, and maguey—continued to be produced, especially for local and regional consumption. The general trend of this production paralleled that of cash crops: a continued increase, reaching a production high in the mid1890s, followed by a considerable decline and Wnally relative stabilization between 1903 and 1906 at substantially lower volumes than the previous decade.91 Maize production, 995,043 hectoliters (hls.) in 1892, reached a maximum of 1,663,063 hls. in 1894, falling to 985,252 hls. in 1906. The state’s production of beans followed a similar trend, with a volume of 42,775 hls. in 1892, a maximum of 132,881 hls. in 1895, falling to 34,093 hls. 90. Anuario estadístico, 1896, 1900, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906. 91. Basing his argument on a critique of the Estadísticas económicas del PorWriato (published by the Colegio de México), John Coatsworth challenged the thesis that while the cultivation of commercial crops increased during the PorWriato, traditional crops decreased considerably, which led to the importation of basic staples. Nevertheless, the statistics available for Oaxaca tend to support the Wndings of Estadísticas económicas, a general decline in traditional staples vis-à-vis an increase in commercial crops. Coatsworth, “Anotaciones,” 167–87.

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in 1906. The volume of wheat production in 1892 was 3,921,684 kilos, reaching 8,407,374 kilos in 1894, entering the twentieth century with Xuctuations between 1 and 2.5 million kilos a year (for example, 2,449,147 kilos in 1906). Potato production fell by one-third between 1892 and 1906, while the production of green chiles and dry chiles rose in the mid1890s, to return to the 1892 volume by 1906. One eminently Oaxacan and indispensable product, the affordable liquor mezcal, practically crashed in this period for reasons still to be ascertained. Most probably this was a case of underreporting, given that a production of 83,142 hls. in 1892 plummeted to 4,678 hls. by 1906.92 Districts that concentrated on staples retained their strength with respect to maize and beans. The Central Valleys continued to provide the staples for the state capital and surrounding mining areas, contributing between 1909 and 1911 almost 54 percent of the state’s maize, 45 percent of beans, 51 percent of wheat, and 34 percent of green and dried chiles. Teposcolula, Ejutla, and Zimatlán continued as important maize producers for the entire period under study, while Huajuapan, Juquila, Juchitán, and Nochixtlán increased their maize output considerably. In particular, the districts of PorWrian development raised their production of maize and beans, thanks to the demand of their growing populations. In 1892 the important bean producers were Cuicatlán, Jamiltepec, Tlacolula, and Ixtlán.93 Although further research is required, staple production tended to suffer somewhat because of the expansion of commercial agriculture of tropical and semitropical products. The curve of production followed a similar trajectory, with signiWcant growth in the 1890s decreasing in the Wrst decade of the twentieth century. The agricultural crisis that affected most of Mexico in 1910 also had an impact on Oaxaca. Ruiz Cervantes found that maize production between 1909 and 1911 attained only 64 percent of what it had been in 1901, and bean production also fell 43 percent in the same period. Harvests were lost throughout the state, forcing the state government to import grains and set up grain-distributing committees in various districts.94

92. Anuario estadístico, 1896, 1900, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906. Without a clear series of statistics the asseverations made here are subject to change. 93. Ibid.; Ruiz Cervantes, “De la bola a los primeros repartos,” 338–41. 94. Ruiz Cervantes, “De la bola a los primeros repartos,” 338–40.

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l i v e s to c k According to Southworth (1901), the breeding of livestock constituted a successful enterprise in the majority of the state’s districts, Xourishing particularly in Etla, Nochixtlán, Jamiltepec, Juxtlahuaca, Huajuapan, Ixtlán, Juchitán, Tehuantepec, Juquila, Miahuatlán, Pochutla, and Villa Alta. Jamiltepec, Juchitán, Tehuantepec, and Tuxtepec were the most important producers of ganado mayor (larger stock, such as cattle and horses) while the districts of the Mixteca, Sierra Juárez, and the Central Valleys raised more ganado menor (smaller species, such as sheep, goats, and pigs) in addition to some cattle. During the colonial period, ranching had been a signiWcant activity on many of the haciendas in the Central Valleys and also on the smaller landholdings such as estancias or labores. The estancias of Xaagá, San Bartolo, and Santo Domingo Buenavista later consolidated their holdings to become haciendas, combining both agricultural and livestock pursuits. The Isthmus of Tehuantepec experienced a major ranching boom between 1580 and 1620, reorienting considerable land and labor resources to Spanish control and leaving a lasting impact on the region.95 On the Costa Chica, cattle and horse breeding maintained its importance from the colonial period throughout the nineteenth century. Each year there would be a cattle drive that departed from Jamiltepec (and was joined by cattle from Ometepec in the neighboring state of Guerrero) in which thousands of cattle would be driven all across central Mexico to the mountains of Teziutlán in northern Puebla. Costeño cattle and horses were also transported to the markets of Tlaxiaco and Acapulco. As with the expansion of cash-crop agriculture, ranching prospered with the alienation of communal lands, as the rural middle class privatized the best lands and turned them into pasture. For example, in 1902 there were twelve ranchers with the surname of Baños in Pinotepa, whose ranches had between twenty and one hundred head of cattle and between 95. Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 128–31; Zeitlin, “Ranchers and Indians,” 23ff. In the district of Juchitán the largest cattle enterprises were: in Ixhuatán, Las Conchitas (1,225 hs.), Xocoapa (1,225 hs.), La Isla (1,755 hs.), and Pozo San Juan (1,600 hs.); in Niltepec, Cerro Venado (1,500 hs.), El Roble (1,500 hs.), Los Organos (3,174 hs.), San Juan Viejo (4,000 hs.), and San Vicente Chocolate (4,000 hs.); in Ixtaltepec, La Chivela (29,000 hs.); in Tapanatepec, Guadalupe (4,049 hs.), Santa EWgenia (4,049 hs.), El Caoba (1,000 hs.), Santa Bárbara (1,500 hs.), and San Vicente (2,090 hs.). Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 27ff.; AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.

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Wve and ten horses. Darío Atristáin (a rancher-historian cited here frequently) owned Wfty head of cattle, twelve horses, and two mules in Tapextla. Cristóbal Cortés, a ubiquitous Wgure in indigenous rebellions on the Costa (as we shall see) had Wfty head of cattle and ten horses in Tlacamama.96 Horse breeding was also important in Juquila, Juchitán, and Tuxtepec (all regions of PorWrian development). The stronger the economic development in terms of both production and commerce, the more prevalent the trend toward cattle ranching. In addition, the breeding of mules proved vital to commerce in so mountainous a state. The Costa was again the most signiWcant breeder given its need to transport its products by mule train to markets such as that of the Mixteca Alta. The data in table 17 present the information provided by jefes políticos from sixteen of the most active livestock-raising districts for 1902–3. With respect to cattle, the isthmian districts, above all Juchitán, which had the highest number of cattle in the state, and Tehuantepec to a lesser degree, the coastal districts of Jamiltepec and Juquila, and Tuxtepec were most signiWcant producers. The more isolated district of Silacayoapan also had considerable numbers of cattle, horses, and ganado menor. In the eighteenth century the Mixteca’s ganado menor, primarily sheep, gained importance for suet in the production of candles. Owners of these Xocks did not hold estates in Wxed territories but instead possessed “Xoating haciendas” whose livestock yearly traveled an established route over long distances. With Independence, this enterprise entered a period of decadence thanks in part to the industrial production of wax.97 The ganado menor of the Mixteca maintained its colonial predominance into the PorWriato: Nochixtlán and Silacayoapan continued to be the major producers of sheep and goat products, followed in importance by Ocotlán, Coixtlahuaca, Jamiltepec, and Tlaxiaco, according to the data in table 17. Information about porcine production is scarce; in some districts it was not reported at all. This absence of information tests 96. Takahashi, “De la huerta a la hacienda”; Esteva, Nociones elementales, 190; Atristáin, Notas, 12–13; AGEPEO, Aug. 1902–Feb. 1903, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Centro. María Elia Zárate told Gutierre Tibón that her property-owning family had been reduced to “peons,” in Pinotepa Nacional, 27. 97. AGEPEO, 1902–3, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Ganadería, V.D. See Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 140ff. According to Martínez Gracida, the breeding of ganado mayor and menor, especially sheepherding, continued as an essential element of the Mixtecan economy in the later nineteenth century, above all in Teposcolula and Coixtlahuaca (Colección de cuadros sinópticos).

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Table 17.

177

Livestock, 1902–1903

District

Cattle

Horses

Mules

Sheep

Goats

Pigs

Centro Coixtlahuaca Choapan Etla Huajuapan Jamiltepec Juquila Juchitán Nochixtlán Ocotlán Silacayoapan Tehuantepec Teotitlán Tlacolula Tlaxiaco Tuxtepec

928 463 479 780 1,945 21,968 8,681 28,298 1,996 1,229 6,991 4,989 1,519 1,322 789 13,909

124 177 — 91 6 3,414 1,005 1,997 1,046 739 920 649 90 161 63 1,668

88 1 — 106 3 548 659 292 110 120 205 212 50 52 84 166

280 1,269 — 750 25 1,267 25 154 34,140 3,550 14,896 113 — 954 1,540 75

3,677 7,640 — 1,480 355 5,127 60 105 75,705 9,125 12,750 385 — 741 1,915 9

92 — — 88 — 772 — 1,080 40 — 156 870 — — — 956

Totals

96,286

12,150

2,696

59,038

119,074

4,054

Source: AGEPEO, 1902–3, Gobierno, Fomento, Estadísticas.

the imagination, considering consumption, especially on holidays: either people neglected to collect information on this subject or producers, especially small ones, were reluctant to report correct numbers.98 Despite the diffusion of livestock production, especially in the regions of PorWrian development, once again a comparison with the north or central regions illustrates the smaller scale of the Oaxacan economy. By the early twentieth century the number of livestock per capita in the state was still comparatively low. Although production was important for the regional markets, in 1902 the total livestock census of the state made up only 3.7 percent of the national Wgure, a far cry from Jalisco’s 10 percent, Chihuahua’s 8 percent, or Michoacán’s 7.4 percent.99 However, incomplete data impede an adequate analysis of the subject, especially in order to trace parallel trends to agriculture. 98. AGEPEO, 1902–3, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Ganadería, V.D. 99. Estadísticas Económicas cited in Garner, A Provincial Response, 40.

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Changing Labor Relations in Agriculture: “The Complex Web” In the previous pages we have looked at the transformation of land tenure and agricultural production, and have been introduced to working conditions on the Wncas and haciendas producing coffee, tobacco, other cash crops, and traditional staples. The expansion of cash-crop agriculture transformed not only patterns of land tenure but also labor relations. Varied local responses to the spread of capitalism led to the emergence of a complex network of labor relations, which combined diverse forms of labor. Four factors characterized labor relations in Oaxaca on the eve of the Revolution: (1) the widespread survival of comuneros, (2) the incomplete disassociation of the producer from his or her means of production (the slow formation of an agricultural labor force dependent only on daily wages), (3) the existence of informal slavery in Tuxtepec, and (4) the limited use of the peon acasillado as compared to central and northern Mexico. According to one study for 1890–91, the average daily wage of a jornalero in Oaxaca was the lowest in the nation—23 centavos in comparison with 31 centavos for Puebla and Querétaro, 43 centavos in Veracruz, and much higher wages in the northern states, which generated a national average daily wage of 42½ centavos. Table 18 presents data from 1907 by district provided by the jefes políticos on the number of jornaleros, male and female, and their daily wages. Unfortunately, we do not know how they deWned the term jornalero. From the data alone, it is clear that the deWnition varied greatly. For example, Villa Alta, where most sources failed to register any Wncas or haciendas (although Juan A. de Esesarte listed twelve Wncas there), registered almost the greatest number of jornaleros in the state: 6,387 males and 5,350 females. Communal landholding remained common in this district, although we do know that the villages grew coffee, the condition imposed by Fidencio Hernández. In addition, the data on women laborers for Tlacolula, Miahuatlán, and Yautepec (the latter two did have some coffee Wncas) are also inexplicably high. Such elevated numbers of jornaleros leads us to believe that comuneros and minifundistas, who may have worked seasonally on Wncas, were also labeled jornaleros, as were women who worked in the coffee harvest. Therefore, as Jean Meyer emphasized, the use of the term jornalero does not necessarily indicate the size of the wage-labor

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force.100 Jornalero could be interpreted as any kind of agricultural worker, and thus this data can only serve as a guide. Table 18 reveals that the total number of jornaleros in the state in 1907 (with only two districts missing) was 122,125, of which 103,842 were men (about 85 percent) and 18,283 were women (amazingly, almost 15 percent). The last Wgure is an extraordinary statistic if compared to the 1900 census, which lists no female laborers at all in Oaxaca, or the 1910 statistic of women in Mexico as only 2 percent of those engaged in agriculture.101 Women, then, were more active in agriculture than originally believed, especially in the regions of PorWrian development. Many of the districts with predominantly traditional agriculture, haciendas, minifundios, or communal lands, have none or show a very low number of jornaleras: Ejutla, Ocotlán, and Zimatlán in the Central Valleys districts, and Huajuapan, Nochixtlán, Silacayoapan, and Teposcolula in the Mixtecan districts. Most of the districts of PorWrian development showed a sizable number of female jornaleros, as in Pochutla (20.7 percent), Juquila (12 percent), Jamiltepec (6 percent), Tuxtepec (13.7 percent), Tehuantepec (24.5 percent), Teotitlán (13.7 percent), and one-third of the wage laborers in Cuicatlán. The one anomaly in this group is Juchitán, which had the largest number of laborers in the state yet no women at all, although historically it had been the district where women were known to enjoy the greatest economic independence, as well as Tehuantepec, which counted almost one woman in four laborers. Juchitecan writer Andrés Henestrosa remembered that when his mother inherited their rancho in Ixhuatán on the death of his father in the early years of the twentieth century, she worked side by side with the Weld hands. If a woman ranchera could do this, campesinas had little choice.102 100. Cited in Arellanes Meixueiro, Oaxaca, 90; Esesarte, Geografía, 99; Meyer, “Haciendas y ranchos,” 491–94. 101. AGEPEO, Gob., 1908, Datos y estadísticas para la Memoria Administrativa, V.D.; Towner, “Monopoly Capitalism.” 102. Henestrosa, Remoto y cercano ayer, 17–18. There are other questions here—for instance, the high number of female laborers in certain districts of the more traditional Central Valleys. Etla, one of its richest districts, produced maize, wheat, and sugar on various haciendas for local markets, especially for the city of Oaxaca. The sizable number of women in Tlacolula would tend to depend on how the jefe político deWned jornalero. We have seen a high number of female property owners and jornaleros in the case of Teitipac in Tlacolula, and also in Ixtlán. Along with this information on wages, a number of the jefes políticos explained that many of these wage laborers were communal landholders who worked on the Wncas and haciendas temporarily.

180

Table 18.

Infrastructure and Economics

Wage Labor in Oaxaca, 1907 Wage Laborers

District Centro Cuicatlán Choapan Ejutla Etla Huajuapan Ixtlán Jamiltepec Juchitán Juquila Miahuatlán Nochixtlán Ocotlán Pochutla Putla Silacayoapan Tehuantepec Teotitlán Teposcolula Tlacolula Tlaxiaco Tuxtepec Villa Alta Yautepec Zimatlán Total Total Workers

Daily Wages (centavos)

Men

Women

Men

Women

5,372 3,000 3,489 5,791 1,134 1,600 2,995 8,000 12,818 4,414 10,101 455 859 814 1,927 45 2,151 3,173 955 4,755 — 9,810 6,387 3,388 10,409

496 1,500 44 45 359 — 811 500 — 581 3,977 — — 223 108 4 700 581 — 925 — 1,570 5,350 509 —

50 62 25–50 25–50 25–50 31 38 31 75 37–50 31 25 31–50 25–50 25–100 25–37 20–75 50 15–25 25–44 25 75 25–37 37 38

25 30 12–25 25 6–19 — 18 18

103,842

18,283

25–30 18 — — 12–25 37 — 9–25 31 — 15–25 44 12 25 —

122,125

Source: AGEPEO, Gobierno, 1908, Varios Distritos, Datos y Estadísticas para la Memoria Administrativa. Note: All districts of the state are included except Coixtlahuaca (no information available) and Tlaxiaco (data evidently in error, i.e., data show a total of 224,575 workers for a district with a population of 68,000). The daily wage for men in Salina Cruz, Tehuantepec, was $1, and for women in Tehuantepec it was 25 centavos.

The lower the social class of women, the more difWcult their situation. The female minifundistas in the Mixteca had smaller parcels than the men, although some privatizations, for instance in the Cañada, distributed equal parcels. If widows could receive lands, they were also open to attack by neighbors’ efforts to take over their lands. The wages of jornaleras were far inferior, usually one-half the pay of men for the same

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work. In Etla and Tehuantepec, women received only 6 or 9 centavos, while men in their district received 25 to 50 centravos a day. Men received up to a peso in the inXationary port of Salina Cruz, but women earned only 25 centavos a day. These data also indicate higher wages in regions of PorWrian development where cash-crop agriculture expanded and Wncas tended to be of more recent vintage, and lower wages where communal villages and traditional haciendas predominated. There is very little evidence on female terrazgueras. No matter the region or the crop, women still only earned half of what their male counterparts took home. This analysis coincides with research on women in other areas of Mexico during the PorWriato, in particular Heather Fowler-Salamini’s study of Veracruz. In the coffee-producing cantons of Córdoba, Orizaba, and Jalacingo, she found even greater female participation; women formed between 21.7 and 34.6 percent of the rural laborers. Women earned onethird to one-half of what men did, as was the case in Oaxaca, although in the rich state of Veracruz the pay scale was often considerably higher. Traditional gender ideology justiWed the two-tier wage scale as it considered “‘women’s work’ as temporary, seasonal, lower-paying work.” Unfortunately, the present study does not have the data to delve into the rural household unit to examine the gendered division of labor. Undoubtedly, many women were working the double shift, juggling productive and reproductive tasks, either as female heads of households or as agricultural laborers. Capitalism demanded the inclusion of a cheap labor force, especially in Mexico, where the lament of the falta de brazos was constantly heard. In times of crisis, or as the price of cash crops declined so that more had to be produced to receive the same income, even more women entered the labor market “to supplement the shrinking rural household income.”103 Based on information from the 1912 Jefe Político Reports, one study compared the labor conditions in two regions of the state: Ocotlán, a traditional mining district of the Central Valleys, and Juquila, a Costa district of commercial agriculture. There were nine haciendas in Ocotlán of small and medium size, ranging between 100 and 1,400 hectares, whose origins could be traced to the colonial period. They belonged to members 103. In the case of Córdoba, women made up about 23 percent of the laborers and 30 percent of the farmers. Only the Centro district of PorWrian development compared favorably with Veracruz’s wages, about 50 centavos a day in the coffee cantons. Fowler-Salamini, “Gender, Work, and Coffee,” 52, 60–68.

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of the Central Valleys oligarchy: the Mimiaga y Camacho, the Baigts, and the Trápaga Tejada families. They cultivated traditional staples such as maize, beans, wheat, chickpeas, and maguey, while only two produced some sugarcane.104 Each hacienda employed between ten and 350 workers and used a variety of labor arrangements, mainly peones and medieros. The Hacienda of Yaxé exploited a mine where one-quarter of the laborers also worked, while the Hacienda Santa Rosa contracted peons from neighboring villages to meet its labor needs. Campesinos worked between eight and nine hours daily, from six in the morning until Wve in the afternoon, with two to three hours for meals. Jornaleros received a daily wage of 25 to 50 centavos, depending on the hacienda. In a third of the haciendas, the Sunday faena was obligatory. Terrazgueros had to pay an annual rent of $1 to $9 for use of their lands, which could be paid in cash or with a speciWed number of days of labor on the hacienda. In Oaxaca the owner usually contributed very little in terms of material support, so that campesinos had to provide the means with which to prepare the lands, plant, and harvest. Maize production would be divided in half between terrazguero and owner, while usually a third of the alfalfa and frijol harvests would be handed over, although this varied from hacienda to hacienda. Written contracts were not customary. Workers and owners agreed on their conditions verbally, relying on the usos y costumbres of the hacienda. Few conXicts between workers and hacendados are mentioned, but since the owners supplied the information for these reports, the workers might well have offered a different version. There were two types of punishments for laborers: expulsion from the hacienda or, in extreme cases on the Haciendas of San José and Buenavista, the leva (consignment to the army). There were no peones acasillados or indebted peons or tiendas de raya in Ocotlán, common characteristics of haciendas in northern and central Mexico. The Oaxacan terrazgo relationship predominated on the estates of the Central Valleys.105 In Juquila, Wfteen haciendas, the majority of which had been established during the PorWriato, reported to the jefe político. These haciendas cultivated coffee, rubber, sugarcane, cocoa beans, and corozo (palm from which oil is produced), and ranged from 130 to 8,500 hectares. Some of 104. Martínez Medina, “Condiciones de trabajo,” 12–13. 105. Ibid., 13–18.

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the owners were members of the elites of the state capital (Luis Esperón and Francisco Zorrilla), while others included Miahuateco pioneers in coffee cultivation. Two foreign companies operated in Juquila: the Indian Rubber Co., Ltd. of London and the Coruba Plantation Co. of New York.106 The number of laborers per hacienda Xuctuated between six and eighteen, with the exceptions of Aurora, Virginia, and El Refugio, which employed from 50 to 150 peons daily. The harvest season demanded an increase of 20 to 80 percent of the labor force, including a large number of women and children. Daily wages began at 37.5 centavos and could rise to 50 centavos. The haciendas belonging to foreign companies and businessmen from the city of Oaxaca tended to pay higher wages than local interests, but all laborers worked at least ten hours a day. The pizca was paid by piecework, women and children earning one centavo per liter of berries. In addition, a faena of two hours was expected of all workers on Sunday mornings. In general, there were no sharecroppers, and only one tenant farmer on the Hacienda of San Rafael, who paid his rent with 10 percent of his coffee harvest. The reports did not mention any labor conXicts, written contracts, or tiendas de raya. Supposedly the laborers had no debts, worked freely, and could leave the haciendas at will.107 Nevertheless, as mentioned above in the section on coffee, there is evidence of forced labor or enganche relationships in Juquila for earlier dates. The case of Juquila provides further evidence of the spread of capitalist relations in the regions of PorWrian development: the extension of private ownership, cash crops, and foreign capital. The use of female jornaleros, as compared to none in Ocotlán, demonstrates the increasing demands of cash crops, as do the combination of higher wages, freedom of movement, and absence of sharecropping. On the other hand, Ocotlán, with its staple crops and terrazgo labor arrangements, maintained traditional characteristics108 despite the fact that it was an important mining center, which catered to a brisk regional market. The labor conditions of the indigenous Mixtecs on the Costa Chica (which caused the only agrarian rebellion in the state in 1911) led the 106. Ibid.; Esesarte, Geografía, 64. Where Martínez Gracida found only two coffee haciendas in Juquila for 1883, Esesarte counted thirty-four Wncas by 1909. 107. Martínez Medina, “Condiciones de trabajo,” 13–18. 108. Ibid.

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Mixtecs to appeal for support to the Maderista revolutionary leader Manuel Centurión. The communal lands of the pueblos of Pinotepa, Ixcapa, Tlacamama, and Jicaltepec had been under the control of the Cacica Margarita Rodríguez, who probably adjudicated them as her own property through the Lerdo Law. However, at some point they had been taken over by local ranchers. The Mixtec hoped the Revolution would fulWll its promise to return lands: We complained of the bad deeds of the landowners, that we are much prejudiced by these hard labors, they charge us very high rents, that we are not free to sell the products of our labors, our harvests of cotton and maize, because we cannot sell our cotton to anyone except to the person who rents us the land and these landowners pay us whatever they please, and supposing that the price of cotton is one peso Wfty centavos, the landowners pay us seventy-Wve centavos, and at best, they pay a peso. This is what we told Mr. Senturión [sic] and we continued to tell him also that the lands belonging to these landowners we believe to be rightfully ours because Sra. Margarita Rodríguez, Cacique of these lands and of the village, left them to us so that we could maintain ourselves with them and the result is that we are in a very bad state and we wanted the said Mr. Senturión to tell us if effectively we could be the owners of these lands.109 The Mixtecs also protested that whereas historically they took salt at no cost from the mines belonging to the town, they now had to pay a fee of $3. Where before their livestock grazed freely on the town’s common pastures, they were now charged 50 centavos yearly per head. In addition, the ranchers’ cattle grazed freely, often causing destruction of the tenant farmers’ crops.110 Although far from the extremes of Tuxtepec, this case synthesizes many of the negative results of the expansion of commercial agriculture—not only the loss of communal lands, of traditional rights of access to natural resources and pastures, and their relative productive autonomy, but also the increasing dependency on the landowner and on 109. I have not located any information on this cacica. See AGEPEO, May 1911–12, Gob., Abuso de Autoridad, Jamiltepec. 110. The denouement of this story is narrated in Chapter 11. See ibid.; Tibón, Pinotepa Nacional, 26–28; Chassen-López, “Maderismo or Mixtec Empire?”

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the Xuctuating prices of cotton. The Papaloapan region witnessed, perhaps, the worst abuses of the PorWriato in Valle Nacional and neighboring towns. The rise of slavery in this region formed an extreme reaction to the general labor scarcity of PorWrian Mexico. As an isolated, sparsely populated region, there were no large numbers of dispossessed campesinos to satisfy the labor hunger of the tobacco Wncas, and therefore labor had to be brought in from outside. The terrible conditions of Tuxtepec can be understood but never condoned in the context of Mexico’s labor scarcity. In stark contrast, El Bien Público singled out the Hacienda del Corte in Guichicovi on the Isthmus as “an example, which should be imitated by Sr. Emilio Pimentel and the slavers of Valle Nacional.” This “progressive” hacienda, founded in 1899, belonged to a Milwaukee company, the Isthmus Plantation Association. By 1901 it consisted of 200,000 coffee, 45,000 rubber, 25,000 vanilla, and 28,000 cocoa trees, in addition to 4,000 hectares lying fallow. The Plantation Association had ordered the construction of more than one hundred well-kept houses for the workers and their families and supplied the machinery for cutting lumber, in addition to shower houses for the employees. They built a well-equipped school for the children of the laborers, but the manager, Mr. Oest, had trouble hiring a teacher. When the jefe político failed to take an interest in providing a state teacher, Oest offered to pay a $30 subsidy over the normal salary (out of his own pocket) for the teacher and also kept a supply of medicine for his workers.111 In most of Oaxaca, with the glaring exceptions of Tuxtepec and Pinotepa, various factors extenuated extreme situations that existed in other regions of Mexico, such as massive land takeovers and widespread debt peonage. The success of the ongoing struggle of the indigenous communities to retain much of their village lands and customary rights and the general labor scarcity during this period gave them a strong bargaining position. Their parcels of communal land or terrazgos safeguarded them from becoming landless laborers. Some authorities also protected them so that they could maintain communal land as a source of their livelihood. Taylor and Hamnett’s observations on the colonial period still held true; the campesinos of Oaxaca continued to be good negotiators. Thus 111. El Bien Público, Jan. 1, 1906. See Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 68. This source locates the hacienda in Palomares, but the more accurate archive Wle places it in Guichicovi. AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.

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landowners devised combinations of strategies and labor arrangements in order to resolve the constant problem of labor scarcity, especially during harvest season. Henequen cultivation in the Yucatán also spawned a complex array of labor arrangements. Although he recognized a “structural similarity” between slavery and debt peonage, Wells advised against the “characterization of the entire labor system as ‘slave-like’ or as ‘neo-slave’” (as European travelers tended to characterize Mexican labor conditions), because it “not only obscures the issue with inXammatory rhetoric but prevents a thorough understanding of a complex system of coerced labor that enmeshed distinctive labor types into a rapidly expanding commercial enterprise.” In both Tuxtepec and in Yucatán slavery was interwoven with a complex and dynamic system of labor relations. Local conditions combined with regional, national, and international factors to engender a “complex web of labor relations” that evolved with the expansion of commercial agriculture in Mexico.112 The changes in agriculture brought about during the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were substantial. In the decade of 1890, above all between 1893 and 1895, agricultural prosperity reached its height, the arrival of the railroad coinciding with high international prices for cash crops. But when prices fell, so did production, but supply always seemed to outstrip the demand. The spread of capitalist relations in agriculture signiWed a deeper descent into dependency on the vicissitudes of the world market. The arrival of the mining boom in the 1890s would bring this dependency and instability into even sharper relief.

112. Wells believes that in Yucatán slavery could only be applicable to the contingent of Yaquis forcibly transported there from Sonora (Yucatán’s Gilded Age, 163–66, and “From Hacienda to Plantation,” 114ff.).

4 A Promoter’s Paradise: Mining, Industry, and Commerce The treasures that lie below this fertile soil are not limited to precious metals: in addition to an inWnity of silver and gold veins, which cut through the great wak and other rocks of Silurian formation, the mining industry Wnds abundant seams of iron, copper, antimony, anthracite, and petroleum. Lastly, common salt (sodium chloride) is exploited in Tehuantepec and other points on the PaciWc Coast to the great advantage of owners. All these riches, nevertheless, remain inert for lack of capital; up until now their exploitation has been on a small scale and mining production has been insigniWcant in quantity due to its slow development. —Manuel de Anda, Mining Engineer (1880s report)

“The treasures that lie below this fertile soil” Expectations for the future of mining in Oaxaca ran as high as they had for commercial agriculture. Oaxaca had been the site of great preColumbian civilizations. Zapotec, and especially Mixtec, artisans had produced exquisitely worked pieces of gold, silver, and crystal. Aztec art could hardly compare with the treasures that Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Caso had discovered in Tomb Seven of Monte Albán. Under Spanish colonial rule, the economy had prospered with the production of cochineal dye, cotton textiles, gold, and silver. Now liberal elites considered it their mission to bring the historical promise of mining to fruition, to see it Xourish as it had in ancient times. And once again, they promised more than they delivered. Mining began soon after the arrival of the Spanish. Within the enormous territory that Charles V awarded Hernán Cortés along with the title of Marqués del Valle came gold mines on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The Spanish worked placer mines in Etla until the 1540s and other mines

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already known to the Zapotecs. In the late 1570s, the Spanish discovered silver in Teitipac and a few years later initiated the exploitation of silver in San Baltazar Chichicapan and Santa Catarina Minas in the Central Valleys. Mining also had begun in the Sierra regions of Ixtlán and Villa Alta, but the early development of this industry coincided with the demographic catastrophe visited upon the indigenous peoples of New Spain. Labor scarcity became the major obstacle to expansion, in mining as well as agriculture. Since only encomienda Indians could be forced to work in the mines, production generally declined after 1640.1 The eighteenth-century Bourbon Reforms revived mining in Oaxaca. In 1777 the formation of a local audiencia (committee) expedited, in the name of the king of Spain, the Wrst direct titles of mining property in Oaxaca. The Crown appointed Juan Bautista and Juan Francisco Echarri as the two territorial mining deputies for the province. By the end of the eighteenth century, these brothers had become the most important miners in Oaxaca, with holdings mainly in the silver-rich Sierra Juárez. Fausto de Elhuyar, the director general of mining for New Spain, enumerated thirty-six active mines in Oaxaca, producing silver, copper, and lead in his 1794 report.2 After Mexican independence, the British began to invest in Mexican mining, but the interests of the Mexican Mining Company in the Sierra Juárez aborted, as did many other early British enterprises, in part because of the complete lack of infrastructure. In the following years mining languished, although some small-scale operations survived. Since 1824 Oaxacans had advocated the founding of a mint in the hope that it might activate mining, but without success. In 1849, when the cochineal industry had already initiated its decline, Governor Benito Juárez addressed this question. Finally, by means of an agreement with the federal government on August 14, 1857, Juárez established a mint that functioned for twenty years, but it did not begin to revive mining until the 1870s. The Liberal Reform had instituted a system of mining deputations in order 1. Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 17; Chance, Race and Class, 50, 69–71, and Conquest of the Sierra, 92–97; Berthe, “Minas de oro,” 122ff; Cadenhead, “Documents,” 283–87. 2. “Informe sobre la minería en el Estado de Oaxaca,” in Memoria Administrativa, 1902. There were seven active mines in Betolatia; four in Ixtepeji; eight in Amatlán; four silver and two copper mines in Calpulalpan; Wve in Real de Talea; one in Zolapa; two lead mines in Yucundó, and three lead mines in Huejolotitlán. Hamnett, Politics and Trade, 159. “Informe rendido por . . . ,” cited in Velasco, Geografía y estadística, 398–99; on Villa Alta, see Chance, Conquest of the Sierra, 94–97.

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to stimulate production (those of Oaxaca were established on November 27, 1857), but they also failed to attain their objective. Mining prospects did not improve until after the defeat of the French Intervention and the restoration of the Republic (1867). By 1872, thirty-eight mines of gold, silver, petlanque, bronze, and sulphur in the districts of Zimatlán, Tlacolula, Villa Alta, Ixtlán, and Ocotlán, and sixteen beneWciation plants (stamp mills and concentrating plants) were in operation.3 Precious metals, especially silver, continued to be Mexico’s basic exports during the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, pre-Independence levels of production had not been regained. Between 1781 and 1800 New Spain produced 11,000 tons of silver, yet between 1841 and 1860 production fell to 6,000 tons; and by the 1861–80 period it reached only 9,000 tons.4

The Boom Begins Growth-oriented economic policies of Liberal governments rapidly targeted the rejuvenation of the mining industry throughout Mexico. Once again, the PorWrian panaceas of capital, technology, and infrastructure were sought to make this a reality. But Wrst, in order to attract the needed investment, existing legislation had to be revised and made uniform throughout the nation. Consequently, General Carlos Pacheco, minister of Development, promulgated a new mining code that went into effect on January 1, 1885. Although this law permitted investors to acquire unlimited amounts of property, it upheld the Spanish legal tradition, which considered natural resources to be royal (now national) property. This did not encourage foreign capitalists, who expected to obtain complete control over their property, be it above or below the ground. Therefore, the government reformed the code again on June 4, 1892, instituting the principle of private property of the subsoil in Mexico. A mining fundo (a mining property composed of an undetermined number of pertenencias, each one equal to one hectare, 100 meters by 100 meters) now included irrevocable and perpetual rights over the subsoil upon timely payment of 3. Esteva, Nociones elementales, 36; Hamnett, Juárez, 76–79; Berry, Reform in Oaxaca, 25; Juárez, Epistolario, 113; Pérez García, Sierra Juárez 1:264.; Memoria Administrativa, 1902; Memoria Administrativa, 1872, cited by Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 4:90. 4. Rosensweig, “Desarrollo económico,” 412.

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a federal tax. This law also abolished the mining deputations and in their place created 140 mining agencies to negotiate concessions throughout the nation.5 This new legislation, accompanied by generous tax exemptions conceded to miners, achieved the desired results. In 1893 there were 797 mining concession titles registered in the nation. By 1900–1901 the total had increased to 11,865, and by 1910–11 to 30,837. If in 1892 the production of precious metals still predominated, the following years witnessed the rising importance of industrial metals (copper, lead, zinc, iron, and antimony) and fuels (coal, graphite, and petroleum). Between 1892 and 1911, the production of precious metals increased 197 percent, while that of industrial metals jumped 507 percent. Mexico’s liberal economic policy along with its abundant mineral resources made it an ideal supplier of industrial metals for the heavy industry and mass production of developed nations. Encouraged by railroad construction and other infrastructural works, Mexican mining received a huge infusion of foreign capital, which by 1911 was calculated to total $817,199,140. United States investments in mining went from an estimated 3 million dollars in 1888 to 55 million four years later according to the Mining Directory—95 million dollars according to Barlow’s census of the same year. By 1911 U.S. investors controlled 61.7 percent of foreign investment in Mexican mining, with a total of 249,500,000 dollars ($499 million). The French had invested $179,552,000 (21.8 percent of the foreign capital) while the British had $116,887,140 (14.1 percent).6 During the second half of the nineteenth century, the focus of mineral production moved from central to northern Mexico. In 1900 the northern states of Chihuahua, Durango, Baja California, and Hidalgo, followed by Sinaloa, Sonora, Zacatecas, Coahuila, and San Luis Potosí in the Centro, accounted for 75 percent of the national production, (although by 1907 their share had fallen to 57 percent). Modern, large-scale mining developed in the north under the aegis of powerful U.S. trusts such as the American Smelting and ReWning Company and Phelps Dodge. The Cananea Copper Company owned a huge mining complex in Sonora near the Arizona border. It employed 5,500 workers in 1906 and operated the 5. If the taxes were not paid, the property could revert to the government. See Bernstein, Mexican Mining Industry, 27–28; Nava Oteo, “Minería bajo el porWriato,” 341. 6. Guerra, “Territorio minado,” 35; Nava Oteo, “Minería bajo el porWriato,” 339, 349, and “Minería,” 179; Nicolau D’Olwer, “Inversiones extranjeras,” 1091, 1103–4.

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largest smelter in Mexico. The exploitation of copper in the north soon made Mexico the second-largest copper producer in the world.7 The distribution of mineral production by region between 1877 and 1907 can be appreciated by looking at the Wgures in table 19. Although the contribution of southern mining to Mexican production was minimal compared to that of the northern and central regions, in regional terms, mining did affect the south. It inserted it further into the international division of labor, stimulating the construction of railroads, bringing in foreign capital, and subordinating the region to international markets. Oaxaca emerged as a promising “land of tomorrow,” a region of extremely rich mines awaiting the arrival of capitalist entrepreneurs. As early as 1877, the U.S. consular agent in Oaxaca received inquiries from investors “disposed to invest in mines and work them with the best processes and machinery.” In 1901 Southworth, that indefatigable promoter of Mexico’s riches, declared that Oaxaca’s “great wealth consists in her varied and extensive mineral deposits, which will eventually result in making her into one of the richest states in the Republic of Mexico.” As late as 1908 he reported that only a “tenth of the mineral zones of the state have been exploited.” In a letter to the Oaxaca Herald, George Clark wrote, “We miners have a vast, rich and magniWcent Weld, here in the grand old state of Oaxaca, to operate and develope [sic], with its mountains reeking with gold, silver, lead, antimony, iron and coal, with its incomparable climate and natural advantages.” In April 1907 the Taviche camps impressed the experienced miner R. W. Ford, who declared

Table 19.

Mexican Mining by Region

Region North PaciWc North Central Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean PaciWc South

1877 (%)

1900 (%)

1907 (%)

42.3 9.1 47.1 0.1 1.4

48.7 23.2 26.8 — 1.3

42.4 14.4 41.1 0.02 2.1

Source: Guadalupe Nava Oteo, “La minería bajo el porWriato,” in México en el Siglo XIX: Historia económica y de la estructura social, coord. Ciro Cardoso, 339–80 (Mexico City: Editorial Nueva Imagen, 1980).

7. Guerra, “Territorio minado,” 35. See Pletcher, Rails, Mines, and Progress, 237; Nava Oteo, “Minería,” 194.

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that nowhere in Alaska or Colorado or Montana had he seen so many mines with veins as rich as Taviche’s. This enormous mineral wealth had persuaded him to remain in the “most mineralized Weld of America”8 (Oaxaca’s major mining centers are located on map 3 in Chapter 1). But despite his praise, quoted at the opening of this chapter, mining engineer Manuel De Anda acknowledged that there were problems facing Oaxacan mining. Above all, veins tended to be narrow, in contrast to those of Guanajuato and Zacatecas. The direction of these veins was not constant and their sinuous rhumb made them particularly difWcult to exploit. Yet he believed that once under exploitation, the proportion of precious metal to the mass of the matrix would be eight times greater than those of the above-mentioned states.9 Nevertheless, the methods employed in most Oaxacan mines were outdated compared to the technology already available in other regions of Mexico. In 1883 Manuel Martínez Gracida and Cosme Vázquez published a valuable study that enumerated 184 mines in the state, with a total value of $1,493,900. These produced 93,792 cargas (one carga equals 300 lbs.), yielding a proWt of $106,209. There were also forty-eight abandoned mines valued at $48,000, thirty-four beneWciation plants, six of which were foundries that processed close to $61,000 of gold, $275,104 of silver, 17,800 quintales (one quintal equals 101 lbs.) of iron, and 1,222 quintales of lead. They estimated the total value of these plants to be $350,000. In addition, there were sixty-seven coalWelds valued at $3,350,000; 134 salt mines, and 122 limestone quarries under exploitation.10 Interim governor Miguel Bolaños Cacho cited 1898 as the initiation of the mining boom in Oaxaca in the wake of the recuperation of the depression of the 1890s.11 Nonetheless, mining had begun to be revitalized in the late 1880s and early 1890s, once the Mexican Southern Railway began construction. A symbiotic relationship between railroad construction and mining existed throughout Mexico: capitalists invested in the railroads in 8. On a visit to southern Mexico, John Hays Hammond, a North American, described the state of Oaxaca as “the most exceptional region of the world where the richest and most diverse metals are found.” Quoted in Valadés, PorWrismo 1:256, and Nicolau D’Olwer, “Inversiones extranjeras,” 992–93; Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 8, and Minas de México, 174; Oaxaca Herald, April 22 and June 9, 1907. 9. He declared that “the product of the mines of the Sierra de Ixtlán, of Totolapa and Talea, etc. can be estimated in approximately $200,000, scarcely a hundredth of the total of our mines.” Report cited in Velasco, Geografía y estadística, 28–31. 10. Ibid., 35–36. 11. Memoria Administrativa, 1902, 20.

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hopes of reaping proWts from mining, while miners were encouraged by the prospect of cheap, accessible transportation. Thus the Oaxacan mining boom took off with the completion of the Mexican Southern Railway in 1892 and continued to swell, with ups and downs, until 1907, when the effects of the world economic crisis took a heavy toll on the industry. Some recuperation took place between 1908 and 1912, but mainly among the larger and more established mines, which could afford more advanced technology. Thus the construction of the railroads permitted the development of mining in Oaxaca as it did in other regions of the country. Easier and cheaper transportation overcame the isolation of rich mining Welds and transported their lower-grade ores to smelters, sometimes at great distances from the mines. Marvin D. Bernstein afWrmed that Oaxacan copper ores were transported to smelters as far away as Wales during this period. The construction of the spurs of the Mexican Southern Railway, to Tlacolula, Ocotlán, Taviche, and Ejutla, directly corresponded to the transportation requirements of the mines in the Central Valleys. The Mexican Southern reported that between 1905 and 1907 it delivered 200,237 tons of heavy machinery to the state. The majority of this machinery was for mining—for example, a shipment of thirty-seven tons for the “Boston Mine Co.”—although other industries did import machinery. The railroads actively publicized the state’s possibilities: the central ofWce of the Mexican Southern Railway, located in Puebla, produced pamphlets in English on the mines of Oaxaca that it distributed to potential investors.12 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, various private agricultural and mining agencies were established in the state, designed to distribute information and expedite investment by cutting red tape for enterprising capitalists. Both Gustavo Stein, German vice-consul and longtime resident, hacendado, and mining entrepreneur, and Manuel Campos Galván devoted much energy to their agencies. Galván expedited procedures while Stein supplied the capital. Galvan’s newspaper advertisement offered the following services: Applications and management of all bureaucratic procedures for all types of agricultural and mining affairs, especially with respect 12. Bernstein, Mexican Mining Industry, 33; La Unión, Sept. 8, 1907; Oaxaca Herald, April 22, 1907.

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to information services.—This agency will take charge of the acquisition of mining claims and rural real estate, from explorations, surveys, assays claims and bureaucratic procedures, even including the delivery of acquired property titles. . . . We will also manage surveys, land measurements and mining claims, fractioning claims, evaluations, explorations, installation of machinery, irrigation works, mortgages, purchase and sale of rural farms and mining claims, boundary markers, assays, hiring and supervise labor and the acquisition of baldíos. Sole agents in Oaxaca of the Decauville Aine Establishment, producers of portable steel railroads.13 Of course, investors could be grossly overcharged by this system or be duped just as easily as they had been in the rubber boom in Juquila or the land speculation on the Isthmus. Nonetheless, foreign capitalists were often dependent on these intermediaries in order to deal with the Mexican bureaucracy. Mining in Oaxaca developed rapidly in the Wrst decade of the twentieth century. Between July 1901 and June 1902, 296 claims (composed of 106,060 pertenencias) were Wled in the districts of Ocotlán, Ejutla, Miahuatlán, Yautepec, Pochutla, Juchitán, and Tehuantepec. In Tlaxiaco, Huajuapan, Juxtlahuaca, Teposcolula, and Nochixtlán, thirty new claims (448 pertenencias) were made. By 1907, 13,022 pertenencias had been staked out in nineteen of the twenty-six districts of the state, involving gold, silver, lead, iron, copper, and antimony mines.14 Although admirers’ praise of Oaxaca’s natural wealth and promising future never corresponded to reality, mining was not as unsuccessful in Oaxaca as the pessimistic Francisco Bulnes charged when he wrote, “rare is the mining company which has not failed, leaving its stockholders without their shirts.”15 Oaxaca had become, as Bernstein aptly characterized it, a “promoter’s paradise,” a superb place to promote, especially among unsuspecting foreigners, but not a great place to invest. “Despite 13. El Anunciador de Oaxaca, Sept. 5, 1897. 14. Bernstein, Mexican Mining Industry, 374. The number of 106,060 is extremely high because in Miahuatlán alone 101,699 pertenencias were claimed, which also seems exaggerated. AGEPEO, July, 1902, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Oaxaca de Juárez; Memoria Administrativa, 1907. 15. Bulnes, Verdadero Díaz, 160.

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a tremendous number of deposits indicated on mineral maps of the state, Oaxaca has always been a modest and erratic gold producer because of unfavorable geologic factors, such as shallow veins and excessive faulting.”16 The arrival of the Revolution destroyed much of the industry in the state, causing major capital Xight.

The Mining Zones Oaxacan mining can be divided into several zones, discussed below. The Wrst zone, the Sierra Juárez, spanned the districts of Ixtlán and Villa Alta. Its most productive mines were La Natividad, El Banco, and Castresana, and its most important beneWciation plants were Castresana, Socorro, Cinco Señores, and Yavesía. The Cía. Minera de Natividad y Anexas, Cía. Minera El Banco y Anexas, Mexican-American Gold Mining & Milling Co., Santa Gertrudis Mines Ltd., and the Sierra Juárez Exploration Co., Ltd. had major investments in the zone during this period. Silver dominated the Sierra Juárez’s production, although it was often accompanied by gold.17 La Natividad mine in the Sierra Juárez was the largest, richest, and longest-running mine in the state, forming part of a matrix of veins that covered an entire mineral zone, traversing three large hills and two deep streams. Discovered and claimed by the Echarri brothers in 1785, it was abandoned in 1828 when the last brother left with the expulsion of the Spanish from Mexico. La Natividad then passed into the hands of the powerful Goytia family, which lost a small fortune trying to drain the water that had invaded it. In 1875 Manuel Dublán (Juárez’s brotherin-law) organized a new company to exploit the mine. Capitalized at $250,000, the majority of shares were held by English stockholders, with the remaining shares in the hands of the Oaxacan oligarchy. Constantino Rickards, Juan S. Trápaga, Francisco Quijano, and Demetrio Sodi sat on the board of directors. By 1906 La Natividad, the most productive and technologically advanced mine in the state, employed 450 workers. 16. Bernstein, Mexican Mining Industry, 71, 6. 17. For each zone, only a few companies are cited as examples, not the full list. Sources for mining regions are from Southworth, Minas de México and OfWcial Mining Directory of Mexico; Holms, Directory; Esteva, Nociones elementales, 37–41; “Minería en el Estado de Oaxaca.”

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English engineer Huntington Adam managed the enterprise, whose beneWciation plant had a capacity of one hundred tons of mineral per twentyfour hours. The following years saw the installation of a modern cyanide plant, one of very few in Oaxaca.18 The second mining zone, the Tlacolula district, included the municipalities of Tlacolula, Totolapan, Santa Catarina, Santa Ana del Valle, Teotitlán del Valle, and San Juan and San Sebastián Teitipac. The principal mines of this zone were La Soledad, La Leona, La Tapada, La Victoria, El Cacalote, La Tehuana, and El Placer. Silver was the most important product, with gold and lead present to a lesser degree. The region exported the richer metals, while the low grade ores were processed in the beneWciation plants of Totolapan, La Leona at the Hacienda Santa Catarina, and El Placer in Teotitlán del Valle. The construction of La Soledad BeneWciation Plant at Magdalena Teitipac, in the closing years of the PorWriato, included a spur to the Tlacolula railroad, but this was never completed. The Boston & Oaxaca Mining and Milling Co., Brill & Vickery, Bonifacio Martínez, G. M. Houston, Rickards Hnos., G. W. Thompson, and the Tlacolula Gold Mining & Milling Co., among others, operated in this zone.19 Southworth called the third zone Taviche, but in truth it encompassed a much larger area than San Juan and San Pedro Taviche, covering not only the district of Ocotlán but also parts of Tlacolula, Ejutla, and Miahuatlán. The mines were mainly gold and silver, some mixed with copper ores. In Miahuatlán, there were gold mines and others of lead and copper. The mines at Chichicapan had been worked by the Zapotecs in pre-Columbian times and later by the Spanish. Oaxaca’s two most productive mines outside of La Natividad of Ixtlán, La Escuadra and San Juan, were located here. Both belonged to Juan Baigts, a French immigrant and pioneer of modern mining in the state. A long and acrimonious litigation ensued over the ownership of these mines between Baigts and 18. The Esperón, Castro, Meixueiro, Dublán, Prado, Quijano, Cházari, Trápaga, Allende, Maqueo, Sodi, Fenochio, and García y Goytia families were shareholders. Hamnett, Politics and Trade, 159. See Informe sobre el Grupo de Propiedades Mineras “Banco y Anexas,” 5; Southworth, OfWcial Mining Directory of Mexico; Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 4:142; Holms, Directory, 214; El Correo del Sur, March 2, 1910; AGEPEO, 1815–1912, Grupo II, caja 1. See Martínez Gracida, Colección de cuadros sinópticos, for more information on early mining in the Sierra Juárez. 19. Holms, Directory, 214; Southworth, OfWcial Mining Directory of Mexico; AGEPEO, 1815–1912, Grupo II, caja 1.

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197

the American engineer, Charles Hamilton. When the lawsuit reached the Supreme Court in Mexico City, Baigts appealed to his friendship with President Díaz to force a questionable decision in his favor. It was later revealed that Hamilton had the more valid claim, but the outcome was settled. President Díaz was not loath to intervene to favor his friends’ interests.20 Although the area had been worked in colonial times, mining in this zone was the most recent in the state; production began in earnest after 1901–2. Baldomero Mining Co., Max Friend, Charles and Adolf Fuos, Alfred Oest, Kling & Bye, Mimiaga Hnos., El Rosario Syndicate Ltd., Taviche Mining Co., and Vickery-Thompson Mining Co. were most active in this zone. Tomás Grandison and the Hnos. Esperón had combined their interests to control six mines in Ocotlán. In Ejutla the important mines were Los Ocotes (copper), San Martín, San José, and La Alianza. George Clark, Teziutlán Copper Mining & Smelting Co., and Manuel Bustamante were the most active entrepreneurs in Ejutla and Miahuatlán.21 Three other important zones existed in the districts of Zimatlán, Etla, and Nochixtlán. The Peras zone corresponded to parts of both Zimatlán and Etla, where the richest and oldest gold mines in the state operated. The principal mines were Rowley, Carmen Chico, La Purísima, El Rosario, and Los Reyes, in addition to various beneWciation plants. The Peñoles and Tepantepec zone, in the Etla district, separated the zones of Peras and El Parián. The main product here was also gold, and El Rosario and Las Angustias were the principal mines, accompanied by a number of beneWciation plants. The last zone of the three was El Parián, near the station of the Mexican Southern Railway of the same name, spanning the border of the Etla and Nochixtlán districts. Here, the mines of El Rescate (including a beneWciation plant), El Sacramento, and La Soledad also produced gold. In these three zones, Los Reyes Gold Mining & Milling Co., Manuel Muñoz Gómez, Guillermo de Landa y Escandón, Cía. Minera el Nuevo 20. Ibid. General Ignacio Mejía and Benito Hampshire, an early British immigrant, had acquired the Escuadra Mine in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1890 Juan Baigts bought the mine from General Mejía, equipping it with up-to-date technology, making him the true pioneer of modern mining in the camps of Taviche and Ocotlán. Sources on this lawsuit are CPD, Letters, leg. 30, caja 9; La Unión, Aug. 4 and Oct. 20, 1907; El Correo del Sur, Nov. 30, 1909, Jan. 9 and May 20, 1910; El Imparcial, Oct. 20 and Nov. 29, 1907. 21. Southworth, Minas de México and OfWcial Mining Directory of Mexico; Holms, Directory; Esteva, Nociones elementales, 37–41; “Minería en el estado de Oaxaca”; AGEPEO, 1815–1912, Grupo II, caja 1.

198

Infrastructure and Economics

Rosario y Anexas, Pittsburgh-Oaxaca Mining Co., and Georgia-Mexico Mining & Milling Co., among others, operated.22 The Juquila zone on the PaciWc coast included mines in the municipalities of Sola de Vega, Teojomulco, and Santiago Minas, with abundant lead ores rich in silver. There were approximately thirty claims in this region. Emile Lefrançois, Cía. Indiana Oaxaca, and the Cía. Minera de Teojomulco (controlled by U.S. capital) worked mines in this zone. The southeastern districts of Yautepec, Tehuantepec, and Juchitán might also be considered another zone of mineral exploitation. There were gold placers in the Tehuantepec river and six gold claims in this district, in addition to lead and silver sites in Lachiguiri. La Soledad Mine in San Carlos Yautepec belonged to Rickards Brothers and contained one of the richest veins in the state. A U.S. company later took an option on this enterprise and built one of the few cyanide plants in Oaxaca. The most important companies in this zone were Estrella del Mar Cía., Minera La Mascota, and Tehuantepec Silver Mines Co. There were also various mines in the Pochutla district, nine of iron and manganese, and four of gold and silver, three of which belonged to coffee producer Leo Von Brandestein.23 The mountainous Mixteca districts of Tlaxiaco, Juxtlahuaca, Silacayoapan, Teposcolula, and Huajuapan also had veins of silver and gold. Alfred Oest had interests in Wve silver and gold mines in Silacayoapan, while A. B. Carstens and Domingo Tomacelli had invested in two antimony mines in Putla. But above all, the Sierra Mixteca possessed considerable coal and iron deposits. The coal of Coahuila had to be carried more than eight hundred miles in order to fuel Mexico City, while the Mixteca was only three hundred miles from the nation’s capital. President Díaz himself had invested (with various partners, among them Governor Miguel Castro) in various Mixtecan coal mines, three in Etla, four in Huajuapan, and two in Silacayoapan by 1883.24 Were cheap transportation to be available, the Mixteca could viably supply the energy needs of central Mexico. The failure to resolve the crucial problem of railroad transportation left the area with only a pack-train trail from Tlaxiaco to 22. Ibid. 23. Southworth, Minas de México and OfWcial Mining Directory of Mexico; Holms, Directory; Esteva, Nociones elementales, 37–41; “Minería en el estado de Oaxaca”; AGEPEO, 1815–1912, Grupo II, caja 1. 24. AGEPEO, Reparto Agrario Grupo II, caja 1, 1815–1912; Birkinbine, “Industrial Progress of Mexico,” 196; Romero, Estado de Oaxaca, 47–48; Martínez Gracida and Vásquez, Cuadro estadístico.

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199

the El Parián station of the Mexican Southern. The exploitation of the Mixteca’s minerals remained Don PorWrio’s carboniferous dream. In the Mixteca, Elías Bolaños Ibáñez (soon to be a Maderista chieftain) owned six mines, among them the Otilia, Encarnación, and Caraniolo, producing argentiferous lead ores and employing about a hundred laborers. The A. B. Adams Incorporated Company of Mexico City obtained a concession to explore the coalWelds and iron mines in almost all the Mixteca districts, in addition to Jamiltepec and Juquila. It then formed the Oaxaca Iron & Coal Co. capitalized at $10 million. The engineers of this company surveyed the region in 1906, testing the extent of the deposits and proving the existence of coal beds with veins as wide as twenty feet. By 1909 this company controlled more than two hundred hectares of mines in Tezoatlán alone. They were understandably interested in reviving the Mixteca Railroad project. John and Henry Birkinbine visited the coal deposits exploited by this company, which convinced them to invest in this enterprise. They described a July 4 celebration held in Tlaxiaco by the company engineers and the novelty of seeing English signs in the town, such as “shu shine” and “barber shop.” Unfortunately, no production Wgures for the Oaxaca Iron and Coal Co. have appeared in any sources cited here.25 There were numerous salt deposits throughout the state as can be seen in table 20, which lists the major deposits and their production for 1883. The salt Xats on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec had been exploited in ancient times by the Zapotecs, Huaves, and Chontals, who considered them communal property. Salt production formed the basis of their trade with surrounding communities, from the Central Valleys to as far south as Guatemala. As we shall see in Chapter 7, when the federal government privatized these Xats, the indigenous Zapotecs rebelled, and strife in this region continued for a good part of the nineteenth century. By 1901 the salt Xats in the districts of Juchitán and Tehuantepec annually produced about 3 million kilograms. The salt mines of Salina Grande and La Pastoría were located in Tututepec, the ancient capital of the Mixtecs on the PaciWc coast, and others were mined in the districts of Teotitlán, Silacayoapan, and Teposcolula.26 25. See Southworth, Minas de México and OfWcial Mining Directory of Mexico; Holms, Directory; Esteva, Nociones elementales, 37–41; “Minería en el estado de Oaxaca”; Lawton, “Mining in Oaxaca,” 232; Birkinbine, “Mixteca Country,” 210–12, and Birkinbine, “A Trail Through the Mountains,” 211–13; AGEPEO, 1815–1912, Grupo II, caja 1. 26. Martínez Gracida, Colección de cuadros sinópticos; Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 32, 26, 48; AGEPEO, 1815–1912, Grupo II, caja 1.

Table 20.

Major Salt Mines in Oaxaca, 1883 Natural — Processed — Vol. in Value Vol. in Value No. of arrobasa (in pesos) arrobas (in pesos) Workers

Name

Owner

Location

Salina Cruz de Estacada Devaguichi Salina de la Isla Salina Guave Salina Cruz Salina del Marqués Salina del Garrapatero Salina de Colorado Salina del Fraile Salina del Rosario Salina Punta de Agua Ixtapa La Escotillac [sic] Salina Grande Salinitas Costea Descabezadero Salina del Nanche Monroy Alotengo Salina Grande La Pastoría

Mpio.b of Juchitán Mpio.b of Juchitán Mpio.b of San Francisco Mpio.b de San Dionisio Echeverría y Hnos. Echeverría y Hnos. Mpio.b of Astata Mpio.b of Astata Mpio.b of Tehuantepec Echeverría y Hnos. Mpio.b de Huilotepec Justo Ziga Mpio.b of Cosualtepec [sic]d Nicolás Tejada Nicolás Tejada Nicolás Tejada Pedro Aguirre Pedro Aguirre Dámaso Gómez y socios Nicolás Tejada y socio Mariano León y socios Mariano León y socios

Juchitán 150,000 Juchitán 14,000 San Francisco del Mar 190,000 San Dionisio del Mar 12,000 Tehuantepec 600 Tehuantepec 180,000 Astata 600 Astata 600 Tehuantepec 1,200 Astata 3,600 Huilotepec 2,400 Huatulco Cosualtepec Pinotepa Nacional Pinotepa Nacional Pinotepa Nacional Pinotepa Nacional Pinotepa Nacional Huasolotitlán [sic]e Pinotepa Nacional Jututepec [sic]f Jututepec [sic]f

75,000 7,000 50,000 6,000 300 90,000 300 300 600 1,800 1,200 25,000 12,000 10,000 5,000 8,000 10,000 6,000 6,000 12,000 22,000 6,000

12,500 6,000 5,000 2,500 4,000 5,000 3,000 3,000 6,000 11,000 3,000

100 30 75 25 2 150 2 2 4 12 6 40 25 18 9 14 18 10 10 20 35 10

Source: M. Martínez Gracida and Cosme D. Vásquez, Cuadro estadístico de la minería en el estado libre y soberano de Oaxaca (Oaxaca, 1883). a One arroba equals 25 lbs. or 11.5 kilos b Municipality c La Escobilla d Cozoaltepec e Huajolotitlán f Tututepec

Mining, Industry, and Commerce

201

Located near Magdalena Apasco in the district of Etla, La Peña onyx quarries were the largest in the nation. While most of the marble for the construction of the ornate Post OfWce Building in Mexico City came from Italy, Etla’s high-quality onyx was also used. Although a spectrum of hues existed, a beautiful green predominated. The quarry covered an area of thirty acres, of which twelve were being worked. Owned by Pérez, Marín, and Fenochio, it utilized the latest machinery and employed 150 workers, and its onyx gained the Premium at the Exposition of París.27 The PorWrian zeal for extracting the nation’s natural resources led not only to the exploitation of mining and metallurgy but also to the development of petroleum deposits. PorWrio Díaz ordered his compadre, Governor Martín González, to extend all amenities to the business ventures of General Hipólito Charles, representative of the Cía. Petrolera de Pochutla. In 1904, with Jacobo Grandison (president) and Guillermo Meixueiro (secretary), Charles organized the Cía. Petrolífera de Puerto Angel, S.A. Usher Carson of Kansas City, owner of Oklahoma oil Welds, leased Wfty thousand acres in 1909 in the Jamiltepec district for oil exploration. Nonetheless, all attempts to Wnd this “black gold” in Oaxaca came to nothing.28 Weetman Pearson, Lord Cowdray, the builder of the Tehuantepec National Railway and founder of the Mexican Eagle Oil Co., also sought oil in Oaxaca in partnership with PorWrio Díaz Jr. In a telegram dated March 21, 1902, the latter assured Pearson that he had obtained a concession that included all the communal lands in the districts of Tehuantepec, Pochutla, Juquila, and Jamiltepec for the exploitation of minerals, oil, and coal. Nevertheless, this extraordinary business venture also failed and the concession was cancelled by the state government in May 1904.29 Petroleum did not come even close to being a promoter’s paradise in Oaxaca.

27. Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 70; Oaxaca Herald, April 22, 1907. 28. CPD, Letters, leg. 27, caja 4, Feb. 1, 1902; PO, Nov. 5, 1904; Lawton, “Mining in Oaxaca,” 232. 29. The concession was canceled because no work had begun on it. CPD, Telegrams, leg. 61, caja 2; PO, May 25, 1904. While PorWrio Díaz Sr. sat at the helm of the nation, his son, PorWrio Díaz Jr., known as “PorWrito,” was active in numerous business deals, having established his own engineering Wrm, PorWrio Díaz y Compañía. On his railroad contracts and surveying deals in Yucatán, see Wells, “All in the Family,” 174.

202

Infrastructure and Economics

The Miners As in the case of coffee, a number of merchants turned to mining with the decline of the cochineal trade. An 1873 list of miners reveals how numerous Liberals invested in this industry, including Miguel Castro, Ramón, Pablo, and José Meixueiro, Ignacio Mejía, and the Vasconcelos family, along with the Englishmen Constantino Rickards and Tomás Grandison. A decade later Spanish residents such as Francisco Quijano, Juan Trápaga, Wenceslao García, Manuel Larrañaga, and Ignacio Noriega appeared on mining tax rolls, as did other inXuential Oaxacans, among them Francisco Mimiaga, Joaquín María Guergué, and generals PorWrio Díaz and Albino Zertuche. Also by 1883, the names of the ubiquitous Gustavo Stein, Juan Innes, Juan Baigts, Federico Fleber, and Enrique Guerrier began to appear with mining interests.30 These new immigrants, English, French, Italian, German, and United States citizens, who had settled in the state in the mid- to late nineteenth century, are often referred to as avecindados, (those born abroad who established permanent residence in the state). Some had been attracted by the cochineal dye boom and others by mining. They would make a substantial impact on the local economy. Oaxacan capitalists would ally themselves with the avecindados who had access to greater capital sources and technology. Thus what came to considered “Oaxacan” capital included a numerous sector of inXuential foreign-born entrepreneurs.31 In effect, with the inauguration of the Mexican Southern Railway in 1892, the Xow of foreign capital into Oaxacan mining functioned as a major stimulus to local investment. Although checked by the crisis of the mid-1890s, mining investment soared after 1897 until the crisis of 1907. The new character of mining investment in the late 1890s was colored by the arrival of many United States interests. By the Wrst decade of the twentieth century, George Houston, Max Friend, Maurice Clark, William and C. T. Wallace, Harold Elton, Charles Hamilton, D. C. Kling, H. W. Catlin, F. M. Leonard, and L. R. Hamer became familiar names on 30. Memoria Administrativa, 1873. The 1883 statistics listed 128 mines (of all types) that had been denounced in Oaxaca, but 81 had been legally abandoned (cited in Romero, Estado de Oaxaca, 42–48). The origin of the Mexueiro surname dates back to the colonial period and would seem to be Portuguese or Galician or perhaps even Sephardic. 31. See the brief discussion on cochineal in Chapter 3. On foreign avecindados, see Chapter 5.

Mining, Industry, and Commerce

203

Oaxacan tax rolls. On the eve of the Revolution, U.S. investment controlled 81 percent of the total investment in Mexican mining, and had a powerful presence in Oaxaca also.32 By 1910 more than forty U.S. companies were functioning in the camps of Taviche. In June 1907 the consul general of the United States in Mexico City reported that between 1902 and 1907 more than 10 million dollars gold of U.S. capital had been invested in Oaxaca. In the same period Jalisco received a similar sum, and only Guanajuato admitted a higher investment, of 12 million dollars. Ocotlán, with more than three thousand inhabitants by 1910, housed numerous U.S. and English miners; some even set up their own stores and import-export businesses. Certainly many of the miners were adventurers, but George Clark zealously defended his countrymen, protesting that they were “good, orderly, serious, clean and industrious” fellows, that not one “bum” could be found among them.33 The foreign community of Oaxaca grew very rapidly with the mining boom. According to available sources, mining camps and investments in Oaxaca tended to be of medium size. Some individuals began with very little capital, working their own claims, but most companies offered stock options to gain funds. Others, such as Charles Hamilton and D.C. Kling, came to Oaxaca as company managers and branched out on their own, becoming major promoters and investors themselves. John Body arrived as manager of the Tehuantepec National Railway for Weetman Pearson and later obtained control of twelve mines in Zimatlán, although only the La Luz was a steady producer. He also ran La Providencia foundry in that district. Intrigued by the fabulous stories of Oaxacan riches, mediumsize companies formed in the United States and Great Britain, investing between 100,000 and 1 million dollars. For example, the Mexinati Mining Co. with headquarters in Cincinnati and New York, incorporated in Arizona in 1906 with a declared capital of 600,000 dollars, while the Santa Catarina Mining and Milling Company, headquartered in Brookline, Massachusetts, had capital of 150,000 gold dollars. The Georgia-Mexico 32. See Distribution of the Iguala/mining tax in the Memoria Administrativa, 1907; Hart, Revolutionary Mexico, 142. 33. AGEPEO, 1815–1912, Grupo II, caja 1; Mexican Year Book, 1909–10, 399. See Bernstein, Mexican Mining Industry, 73–74; for the report see Oaxaca Herald, April 22, 1907. Clark, quoted in the Oaxaca Herald, does not explain why he felt the need to defend his colleagues.

204

Infrastructure and Economics

Mining Co., organized in June 1906 with a capital of 500,000 gold dollars, emitted half a million shares at 1 dollar par value (most of its stockholders were Georgia residents). It invested in various mines in Ocotlán and Zimatlán. Other medium-size companies were the Boston & Oaxaca Mining Co., the English Wrms Rosario Syndicate, Ltd. and the Sierra Juárez Exploration Co., Ltd.34 Oaxaca did not attract investments from the large U.S. trusts. Worked on a relatively small scale given the characteristics of the mineral veins in the state, Oaxacan mining was not conducive to the modern technology and large-scale complexes favored by the British or North American monopolies. Capitalists from central Mexico also invested in Oaxacan mining. Guillermo de Landa y Escandón had interests in the Peras zone in Zimatlán, and entrepreneurs from Puebla controlled the Esmeralda Mining Co. Although the name of a company might be in English, it did not necessarily follow that its capital was all foreign, as shares or even whole companies were frequently purchased by Oaxacans or nationals who maintained the original name. The reverse situation was also common. There were some larger companies, such as the American Consolidated Mining & Milling Co. of Waco, Texas, which owned eighty separate claims in the state capitalized at $10 million, that employed some one hundred laborers. This company expanded by buying out the properties of other companies such as the Cía. Mexicana Explotadora y BeneWciadora de Minas Auríferas.35 Such a small number of workers for such a high capital leads us to believe that, as in the rubber industry, fraud was common in mining also, although further research is needed to substantiate this.

Technology and Labor Working conditions in the mines of Oaxaca left much to be desired, and if Bernstein is to be believed, the salaries in Oaxaca were the lowest in Mexico. They began at 25 centavos a day, but usually ran between 50 and 75 centavos (a far cry from the three pesos daily at Cananea) and rose according to the skills required. In addition, Oaxacan and foreign workers 34. Southworth, OfWcial Mining Directory of Mexico and Estado de Oaxaca. 35. Southworth, Minas de México, OfWcial Directory of Mines and Estates, and Estado de Oaxaca; Holms, Directory; Memoria Administrativa, 1904 and 1907; Anuario estadístico, 1903, 1904, 1905, and Oaxaca Herald, April 22, 1907.

Mining, Industry, and Commerce

205

were paid according to distinct pay scales; for example, a foreign carpenter would earn between $1 and $4 a day while a Oaxacan would receive between $1 and $1.50 a day for the same work,36 a discriminatory system that prevailed throughout the nation. Southworth reported: Labour is cheap, and, when it is properly directed, is quite efWcient. The ruling wage for miners in Colorado is $3 [dollars] gold per day, in Oaxaca it is 50 cents gold. The three shift system prevails in Colorado, the miner working 8 hours a day; in Oaxaca there are only two shifts, the miner working 12 hours a day. The payroll of a Colorado mine employing 100 men on each shift will amount to $900 gold per day, while a similar mine in Oaxaca would only cost $100 gold. The majority of Oaxaca’s mineworkers are of pure Indian blood and are noted for their gentleness and sobriety.37 Despite this high praise for “docile” Oaxacan workers, labor was not always so cheap and depended on regional conditions. For example, at the Mimiaga family’s Hacienda San José in Ocotlán, the peons of the hacienda were also obligated to work in the mines. When engaged in their regular agricultural activities on the hacienda they earned between 25 and 50 centavos a day, but when they were sent to the mine, the daily wage increased to between 50 centavos and $1.25. In Tlacolula salaries varied between 32 centavos and $2 daily. In the La Natividad mine, mechanics, carpenters, blacksmiths, and masons, who worked ten-hour days outside the mines, earned between $1 and $3, while the peons received 75 centavos daily. In the interior of the mine, barreteros (drillers) and mine carpenters worked eight and a half hours for $1.25, while the peons worked ten hours for 87 centavos a day. The barreteros also could be paid by piecework, receiving $1.12 for each meter drilled, and $1.25 per meter if they worked fulltime.38 36. Bernstein, Mexican Mining Industry, 86; AGEPEO, Reparto Agrario Grupo II, caja 1, 1815–1912; see “Informe sobre el Grupo de Propiedades Mineras,” 40. 37. Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 54. Not everyone held this high opinion. E. M. Lawton, U.S. consular agent in Oaxaca, called the Mexican mine laborers “erratic,” with “a strong penchant for holidays, religious or others” and a fondness for mezcal or aguardiente. Lawton, “Mining in Oaxaca,” 233. 38. Report by the owner of the hacienda in AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D., and 1907, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Tlacolula. Work in the mines was mostly done

206

Infrastructure and Economics

The concentration of workers per mine in Mexico intensiWed during the PorWriato given the tendency toward larger mines. In 1898 the average number of workers per mine was sixty-seven, increasing to ninety-six by 1907. The average for Oaxaca was deWnitely below the national average given the predominance of small-scale enterprises. La Natividad, at its height, employed no more than 450 workers. Los Reyes Gold Mining & Milling Co. employed about three hundred workers, and the Cía. Minera de La Escuadra had about two hundred, as did the Cía. Explotadora and BeneWciadora de Minas Auríferas in Ocotlán. But these were truly exceptional cases. Some mines employed one hundred but the average in the state was much closer to Wfty workers per mine and many mines used no more than twenty to thirty laborers. If we add up the number of workers per mine cited by Holms, there were more than Wve thousand workers in the mines of Oaxaca in 1906, certainly a modest number considering that at the same time there were that many employed at Cananea alone.39 In 1873, twenty-nine beneWciation plants processed silver, gold, lead, and iron. Nevertheless, with the exception of Cinco Señores, Castresana, and Santa Gertrudis in the Sierra Juárez, most of them worked on a small scale. In 1883 Martínez Gracida listed several beneWciation plants in the Sierra Juárez that had no more than two to four workers. This was typical of the pre-PorWrian “small beneWciation plant whose owner was content to reWne and coin a few bars of silver, which would provide him with enough to support his laborers and his family.”40 The technology used in many of these plants probably dated from colonial times; the process was done by hand. Barreteros used steel-tipped iron rods to loosen the ore to prepare for blasting, or steel wedges were employed to dislodge the minerals. They would later break up the lumps of ore between two Xat stones. Some mines were fortunate to have stamp mills to pulverize the ores, to prepare them for the inefWcient Spanish mercury process, which resulted in the loss of considerable quantities of metals.41 on a contract system, according to Lawton, “where the contractor himself takes a hand, sees to it that his assistants put in their best licks” (“Mining in Oaxaca”, 233). 39. Nava Oteo, “Minería bajo el porWriato,” 345; Holms, Directory, 210–17. 40. Memoria Administrativa, 1873, Haciendas de BeneWcio. Martínez Gracida, Colección de cuadros sinópticos (Villa Juárez [Ixtlán]). The quote is from Rosenzweig, “Desarrollo económico,” 408. 41. This description follows a more detailed explanation of this process in Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club, 75–76.

Mining, Industry, and Commerce

207

In the 1890s, two factors had a major impact on the beneWciation of minerals in Mexico. First, the McKinley Tariff of 1890 imposed duties on plumbeous metals imported into the United States for beneWciation. This served to stimulate the establishment of plants in Mexico, which could treat the lead and, later, other metals. Second, and equally important, was the construction of the Wrst cyanide plant in Mexico in 1893. This process permitted the treatment of low-grade ores to obtain gold, and consequently the value of Mexico’s gold production jumped from $3 million to $50 million. The cyanide process had an even more notable impact on silver beneWciation, reducing costs considerably (to $4 per ton). Between 1905 and 1910, many older plants closed, as cyanide plants Wnally superseded the colonial patio process.42 Oaxacan ores processed in the state were generally of low grades. High-grade ore would be sent to the smelters at Teziutlán (Puebla), San Luis Potosí, Aguascalientes, Monterrey, and even as far off as Wales. Holms did not list a single cyanide plant in Oaxaca in 1906, although eleven beneWciation plants employed electrical or steam power. The novelty for Oaxaca in this period was the use of electricity as a source of power in the reduction process. Nevertheless, by 1908 Oaxaca’s plants and foundries were in the process of being modernized. Although the information in table 21—Foundries and BeneWciation Plants in Oaxaca, 1908—is incomplete, it demonstrates that the most important plants were located in the major zones: the Peñoles zone in Etla, La Natividad in Ixtlán, Taviche and Ocotlán, Tlacolula, and Peras in Zimatlán (the plants in the Taviche-Ocotlán did not provide complete statistics on labor and production). The incomplete data gives a total of 309 workers (which included ten women and eleven children) who earned between 25 centavos and $2 a day. The highest salaries were in Natividad, Peras, and Taviche. Although seven of these plants still used the colonial patio process, another seven had steam power ranging from forty horsepower at John Body’s La Providencia to 240 horsepower at la Natividad, followed by one hundred at El Carmen in Peras, and ninety horsepower at Los Reyes. Eight included concentrating plants, but only three had established cyanide plants by early 1909—El Nuevo Rosario in Peñoles, the Tlacolula Gold Mining and Milling Co. in Santa Ana del Valle, Tlacolula, and Los Reyes Gold 42. Nava Oteo, “Minería bajo el porWriato,” 349. Bulnes, Verdadero Díaz, 233; Bernstein, Mexican Mining Industry, 31.

Table 21.

Foundries and BeneWciation Plants in Oaxaca, 1908

Name 1. El Nuevo Rosario y Anexas 2. El Rescate 3. La Natividad 4. Taviche Mining and Milling Co. 5. Zaragoza 6. San Juan de Dios 7. El Conejo Colorado 8. El Corazón de Jesús 9. San José 10. La Leona 11. La Soledad 12. El Placer

No. of Workers

Owner

Municipality

Cía. Minera El Nuevo Rosario Ricardo del Río Cía. Cía. Minera de Natividad Taviche Mining and Milling Co.

Peñoles, Etla

48a

Telixtlahuaca, Etla

40b

Value (pesos)

Silver

9 k. 200g

12,000

—

1,280

—

Gold

S. Jerónimo Taviche, Ocotlán

—

1 k. 600g. 90 k. 180 g —

Agustín Hidalgo y Cía. Juan Baigts

Sta. Catarina Minas, Ocotlán Yaxe, Ocotlán

—

—

—

—

—

—

Conejo Colorado Mining Co. American Consolidated Co. T. Grandison y Hnos. Rickards Hnos.

S. Gerónimo Taviche, Ocotlán Yaxe, Ocotlán

—

—

—

—

—

—

San José, Ocotlán

10

Ixtlán

Hacienda Sta. Catarina, Tlacolula Bonifacio V. Magdalena Teitipac, Martínez Tlacolula Boston and Oaxaca Teotitlán del Valle, Mining Co. Tlacolula

100

6 k.

120,239

96 k. 510g. —

Value

$3,281

7,200

1080 k.

34,560

35 k. 345g. 109 k.

1,122

1 k. 400 g.

50

20c

—

19d

648 g.

725

5e

1 k. 800 g

2,245

3,564

Iron

Value (pesos)

13. Hacienda de BeneWcio

Sta. Ana del Valle, Tlacolula

14.

Peras, Zimatlán

20

Peras, Zimatlán

4

Peras, Zimatlán

6

15. 16. 17. 18.

Tlacolula Gold Mining and Milling Co. Los Reyes Los Reyes Gold Milling and Mining Co. La Montaña Guillermo de Landa y Escandón El Carmen Guillermo de Landa y Escandón La Providencia Juan. R. Boddif La Reforma A. Altamirano

2

Textitlán, Zimatlán 25 S. Bernardo, Zimatlán 10

Total

Source: AGEPEO, Reparto Agrario Grupo II, Caja 1, 1815–1912. k. = kilo(s) g. = gram(s) a including two children b including ten women and two children c including four children d including two children e including one child f John R. Body

309

Not working 31 k. 769 g.

40,000

15 77 6 923 — —

19,600

k. g. k. g.

159 k. 4,197 g.

9,000

8 k.

256

— — 212,289

1,329 k. 1,255 g.

44,500 k. 4,000 12,000 k. 5,080 42,833

56,500 k. 9,080

210

Infrastructure and Economics

Mining and Milling Co. in San Miguel Peras in Zimatlán. A cyanide plant was also later installed in La Natividad in Ixtlán. But technology lagged behind in Oaxaca.43 Two smelters were built in the Wrst decade of the twentieth century. Rich lead mines had originally been worked under Spanish rule in Magdalena Teitipac, approximately eighteen miles south of the city of Oaxaca. Exploited again during the French occupation, these mines were later purchased by W. H. Robinson and George Houston, who then sold them to Lloyd R. Hamer & Co., who immediately began to modernize the enterprise and build a smelter. Hamer sold a half-interest in the smelter to Henry Catlin Co., a New York banking Wrm. Hamer and Catlin then organized a new company, the Magdalena Smelting & ReWning Co., capitalized at 5 million dollars gold, which included the smelter as well as the mines, which were the richest in lead in the state. They also began to promote a railroad connection to the Tlacolula spur of the Mexican Southern.44 The most encouraging, yet eventually tragic, event was the construction of the Oaxaca Smelting and ReWning Co. Using the most advanced technology to reach a projected daily capacity of Wfteen hundred tons of ore, this smelter would conceivably free Oaxacan mining from the burden of paying the transportation and treatment costs to send its minerals to smelters to the center of the Republic, thereby liberating the industry from the domination of the ore buyers who congregated in the city of Oaxaca. After signing the contract with investors in 1905, Governor Pimentel expressed the high hopes for this project that “once realized, will be reputed to be one of the most important . . . promoted in favor of the public wealth and on behalf of the working classes by the present administration.”45 Organized in 1905 and incorporated under the laws of the state of Massachusetts, where the American Loan and Trust Company of Boston put up a substantial part of the capital, the Oaxaca Smelting and ReWning Company was built on a hillside in the town of San Martín Mexicapan, across the Atoyac River from the city of Oaxaca. A Wve-kilometer 43. Southworth, Minas de México, 178. See Holms, Directory, 210–17; Mexican Year Book, 1909–10, 598; Southworth, OfWcial Mining Directory of Mexico. On the use of electricity in the mines of Oaxaca, see Oaxaca Herald, April 22, 1907; AGEPEO, 1815–1912, Grupo II, caja 1. 44. See Southworth, OfWcial Mining Directory of Mexico; El Imparcial, Oct. 4, 1907. 45. Mensaje, 1908, 71–72.

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spur linked the plant to the Mexican Southern Railway, facilitating easy transportation to and from the plant. Some of the most high-powered entrepreneurs in Oaxaca sat on its board of directors: T. J. Ryder, president; John B. Body, vice president; Henry W. Catlin, secretary; and Charles Hamilton, general manager. The smelter began operations in the summer of 1907 with a daily capacity of Wve to six hundred tons. Almost immediately its huge furnaces ran into serious technological difWculties.46 Disastrously, its inauguration coincided almost exactly with the devastating impact of the 1907 depression. Business after business began to lay off workers, leaving the enormous, spanking-new installations without ore to process. In just a few months, by November 1907, the smelter was forced to liquidate its mechanics and suspend operations. Only watchmen were left on the scene.47 This mammoth smelter, slated to modernize and inject new life into Oaxacan mining, lapsed into abandon and decay, a sad reminder of the promoter’s paradise.

Public Policy The state government had enormous faith that the growth of the mining industry would bring prosperity to Oaxaca. It strived continually to attract and stimulate foreign investment and technology. In 1901 the government sponsored the establishment of a special course in mineral essays at the Instituto de Ciencias y Artes, the local college, since it hoped “to direct the activities of some of its sons toward a branch of industry of so much interest to private and public sectors.” The government also actively supported the construction of smelters, aware of the loss to Oaxaca of having to send its ores outside the state to be reWned.48 After the abolition of the mining deputations, the Republic was divided into 140 mining agencies subject to the newly created Ministry of Development. The four agencies of Oaxaca were located in Ejutla, Nochixtlán, Tehuantepec, and the state capital. The agents were charged with executing all bureaucratic procedures, such as regulating mining claims within 46. This plant was also known as the San Martín smelter. Oaxaca Herald, April 22 and June 9, 1907; La Unión, Oct. 20, 1907; Southworth, OfWcial Mining Directory of Mexico; El Imparcial, Sept. 14 and Oct. 2, 1907. 47. El Imparcial, Aug. 29, 1907; La Unión, Oct. 20 and Nov. 24, 1907. 48. Memoria Administrativa, 1902, 47; Memoria Administrativa, 1904, 33.

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their zones. The state’s judicial system was frequently called upon to resolve lawsuits between miners. Many of the mines were the objects of litigation, for example, the case of La Escuadra in the Baigts-Hamilton conXict mentioned above.49 In 1901, under Governor González, the state legislature passed a new law on this industry. Since mining had shown itself to be “remunerative for entrepreneurs, the government imposed on it a proportional cost of the public upkeep.” However, given the scarcity of trained experts capable of checking the periodic production reports now required of miners, the government proceeded to circumvent its own new law, through the payment of the iguala (a yearly contribution by means of Wxed quantities). The latter excused miners from having to comply with some of the law’s requisites, supposedly “in order to regulate the tax equitably.” Governor Pimentel went even further to indulge miners and industrialists. First, he managed to have the percentage of the tax on mining production lowered from 2 to 1.5 percent in 1905. Then he continued to ignore this tax on production established by law and reafWrmed the iguala system (see table 22).50 In addition, the governor permitted the miners themselves Table 22.

Distribution of the Iguala Mining Tax in Oaxaca

Year

Iguala (in pesos)

1902 1904 1905 1909 1910

16,000 15,000 13,000 13,000 13,000

Sources: Memoria Administrativa presentada por el gobernador interino, Lic. Miguel Bolaños Cacho al H. Congreso del Estado (Oaxaca: Imprenta del Comercio, 1902); Mensaje leído por el C. Lic Emilio Pimentel, Gobernador Constitucional del Estado ante la XXIIIa Legislatura del mismo (Oaxaca: Imprenta del Estado, 1905); Mensaje leído por el C. Lic Emilio Pimentel, Gobernador Constitucional del Estado ante la XXVa Legislatura del mismo (Oaxaca: Imprenta del Estado, 1909); El Correo del Sur, May 17 and June 26, 1910. 49. These agents could be arbitrary and abuse their powers. Miners could complain and an agent could be quickly replaced. Each edition of the Periódico OWcial published recent concessions of new claims. For example, PO, Jan. 2 and 16, 1904; CPD, Letters, leg. 27, caja 1, Jan. 2, 1902. In 1907 a civil judge of the city of Oaxaca exhorted the court of Ocotlán to declare a receivership for various mines belonging to the Baldomero Mining Co., which was being sued for $47,000 for the unlawful exploitation of its properties. See La Unión, Aug. 11, 1907; El Imparcial, Aug. 13, 1907. 50. It is not clear which of the requisites were circumvented but it is interesting that, despite various Wles on mining in the state archives, very few periodic reports on production

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to decide how much they wanted to pay and how it would be distributed among them. In 1910, the amenable process of establishing the iguala operated as follows: miners representing thirty mines in production met with the governor in the salon of the Palacio de Gobierno. Pimentel addressed the meeting, reminding them that the 1909 iguala had been $13,000 (a sum considerably inferior to what would have been paid if the 1.5 percent tax was imposed). He politely asked if they agreed to pay the same quantity for the present year, and the miners unanimously accepted. Thus did Pimentel openly favor the interests of the economically powerful at the expense of state revenues. In 1909 he professed that the government, “by all means at my disposal, desires to foment the development of a mining industry, which with time and capital will convert this federal entity into one of the richest states of the Republic.”51

Production: From Boom to Bust Table 19 indicates that the contribution of the PaciWc South to national mining production was minimal. Unfortunately, little data are available on production in Oaxaca and what exists is sporadic, seriously limiting the analysis of the development of mining in the state. The volume of the production of precious metals increased constantly during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth to compensate for the fall in prices, at an average annual rate of 2 percent. Although the price of gold did rise between 1877 and 1907 owing to scarcity, silver, Mexico’s major export, continued to depreciate throughout the period. The value of both metals fell rapidly between 1907 and 1911.52 Table 23 (Production of Precious Metals in Oaxaca) shows 1902 as the highpoint of Oaxaca’s production before the 1907 crisis; its value of $1,012,271 equaled 1.1 percent of the national production. This is, admittedly, a dubious comparison because it compares the Oaxacan production, have surfaced. Memoria Administrativa, 1902, 32; Mensaje, 1904, 24, and Mensaje, 1905, 48. 51. Quoted in El Correo del Sur, May 17, 1910, and explained by Pimentel in his Mensaje, 1904, 24, and Mensaje, 1905, 48; Mensaje, 1909, 20. 52. See Estadísticas económicas del porWriato 2:78–79, 80–99, 112–13, 134–35; Nava Oteo, “Minería”, 202, and “Minería bajo el porWriato,” 370–71.

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Table 23.

Production of Precious Metals in Oaxaca National

Years 1877–1878 1899–1900 1900–1901 1901–1902 1902–1903 1903–1904 1904–1905 1905–1906 1906–1907 1907–1908 1908–1909 1909–1910 1910–1911

Oaxaca

Value (in pesos)

% (1900 = 100)

% of exports

26,366,298 86,251,743 93,440,125 92,898,695 103,436,663 106,019,921 108,535,748 113,485,203 109,830,347 130,076,938 140,335,451 142,493,066 145,677,785

28.2 92.3 100.0 99.4 110.7 113.5 116.2 121.5 117.5 139.2 150.2 152.5 155.9

64.9 55.6 58.1 52.8 54.6 53.5 53.2 54.0 51.0 54.9 55.7 52.1 50.6

Value Oaxaca % of (in pesos)a National % — $ 623,278 — 1,012,271 721,125 526,968 688,355 — — — — — 1,200,000

— .72 — 1.09 .70 .50 .63 — — — — — .82

Sources: Estadísticas económicas del porWriato, vol. 2, Comercio Exterior de México 1877–1911 (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1960); Anuario estadístico de la República Mexicana: 1900, 1903, 1904, 1905, Dirección General de Estadística a cargo del Dr. Antonio PeñaWel (Mexico City: Tipografía de la Secretaría de Fomento, 1901, 1905, 1906, 1908); The Mexican Year Book: A Statistical, Financial, and Economic Annual Compiled from OfWcial and Other Returns (London: McCorquodale & Co., Ltd., 1912). a This represents all Oaxacan mining production, including lead, copper, and other minerals. The great majority of production was gold and silver.

including gold, silver, lead, copper, and iron (a fraction of its production), with the national volume of precious metals, but it does provide an idea of how small Oaxaca’s contribution was to national production. The declared capital value of some of the Wrms is available but there is no documentation as to the production of individual companies. Analysis of Oaxacan mineral production is complicated by the following factors. Despite the fact that, as of 1901, each company was required to Wle a monthly report on production, only one such report has been located in the state archives. Only the annual production of the state is accessible, with no analytic breakdown by zone or company. Isolated data are available; for example, the Victoria and Tapada mines in the Tlacolula district yielded more than $600,000 to the owners, Brill and Vickery. The very high quality ore of Juan Baigts’s Escuadra mine produced shipments valued at between $10,000 and $25,000 a week. La Natividad was

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always a major producer of very rich ores, as was the San Francisco Mine at Taviche, property of the Tehuantepec Silver Mines Co. The latter netted the company more than $46,000 from just one twenty-Wve-ton shipment. Production data is available only for the Tlacolula zone, thanks to that one 1907 report submitted by the jefe político, although the report admits that its data are not complete. This zone produced 3,105,422 kilograms of ore valued at $11,742.51 for 1907.53 Unfortunately, this information does not go very far in illustrating the extent and production of Oaxacan mining. Incomplete production data for 1908 are presented in table 24 (Major Mining Producers in Oaxaca, 1908). For example, the column of production in kilos does not afford a true total of the volume of production. It is clear from the statistics that some mines have submitted their production of mineral ores before any processing and other have tallied silver and gold after processing. This accounts for the sizeable disparity between the production of La Natividad as compared with La Escuadra in Taviche. Thus the total of this column is misleading. The total value of the production can be compared with that of other years; for example, the Wgure of $932,400 does compare with the Wgures in table 23. Unfortunately, the absence of statistics for the crucial crisis year of 1907 does not permit us to evaluate the signiWcance of the 1908 data, if it represents a deepening of the crisis. Production data on foundries and beneWciation plants, 1908 (table 21) demonstrate that while the production of gold had increased from $61,000 to $212,289 in the intervening years, that of silver had declined from $275,104 to $43,833. Nevertheless, these totals are only partial, since Taviche failed to provide the data on 1908 production and labor. In addition, statistics on production for 1908 in tables 23 and 24 do not coincide. For instance, La Natividad mine in Ixtlán reported a production of 24,504 kilos valued at $386,542, but we do not know whether that included the $120,239 of the gold produced or the silver processed at the foundry. Thus, no conclusions can be drawn from this incomplete information. Although revolutionary “disturbances” did not seriously affect the mining districts, many small to medium-size operations suspended work 53. “Decreto. Contribución sobre el producto de las minas,” 2; Southworth, OfWcial Mining Directory of Mexico, 149–58. One company failed to supply the requested information. AGEPEO, 1907, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Tlacolula.

216

Table 24.

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Major Mining Producers in Oaxaca, 1908 Value of Production Production (in kilos) (in pesos)

Name

Owner

Municipality

Minerals

Natividad

Cía. Minera Navidad y Anexas

Ixtlán

Gold and silver

24,504

386,642

La Escuadra

Juan Baigts

San Gerónimo Taviche, Ocotlán

Gold and silver

1,400,000

120,000

San Juan

Juan Baigts

San Gerónimo Taviche, Ocotlán

Gold and silver

1,300,000

100,000

Conejo Blanco

Conejo Blanco, S.A.

San Gerónimo Taviche, Ocotlán

Gold and silver

760,000

50,000

Natividad y anexas

T. Grandison and Hnos. Esperón

Hacienda San José, Ocotlán

Gold and silver

4,000,000

50,000

El Zapote

Cía. Minera Zapoteca

San Gerónimo Taviche, Ocotlán

Gold and silver

200,000

40,000

La Tehuana

Cía. Minera “La Tehuana”

Hda. Sta. Catarina, Tlacolula

Gold and silver

35,000

35,000

San Martín

Cía. Minera San Martín y Anexas

Hda. El Vergel, Ejutla

Gold and silver

200,000

20,000

La Parada de San Ignacio

Rickards Hnos.

Hda. Sta. Catarina, Tlacolula

Silver sulWte with gold and iron

865,030

18,758

Rowley

Los Reyes Gold Mining and MillingCo.

Peras, Zimatlán

Gold

400,000

16,000

El Rosario y Anexas

Cía. Minera el Nuevo Rosario y Anexas

Peñoles, Etla

Gold

9.2

12,000

Carmen Chico

Los Reyes Gold Mining and Milling Co.

Peras, Zimatlán

Gold

600,000

12,000

La Magdalena

Guillermo de Landa y Escandón

Peras, Zimatlán

Gold and iron pyrite

500,000

10,000

El Cacalote

Bonifacio V. Martínez

Magdalena Teitipac, Tlacolula

Lead with gold and silver

107,000

8,600

El Guillermo de Regenerador Landa y Escandón

Peras, Zimatlán

Gold and iron pyrite

450,000

8.000

Natividad

Teojomulco, Juquila

Silver dust

160

8,000

Cía. Indiana Oaxaca

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Table 24.

217

(continued)

Name

Owner

Municipality

Minerals

La Tapada

Cía. Minera “La Victoria y Tapada”

Hda. Sta. Catarina, Tlacolula

Silver and Gold

La Luz

Juan. R. Boddia

Lanira, Zimatlán

San Rafael

Los Reyes Gold Mining and Milling Co.

Santa Anita

Value of Production Production (in kilos) (in pesos) 23,328

6,700

Iron

750,000

6,500

Peras, Zimatlán

Gold

300,000

6,000

Guillermo de Landa y Escandón

Peras, Zimatlán

Gold and iron pyrite

300,000

6,000

El Placer

Boston & Oaxaca Mining Co.

Teotitlán del Valle, Tlacolula

Gold and silver

600,000

4,200

Currie

Los Reyes Gold Mining and Milling Co.

Peras, Zimatlán

Gold

200,000

4,000

El Carmen

Guillermo de Landa y Escandón

Peras, Zimatlán

Gold and iron pyrite

200,000

4,000

Total

932,400

Source: AGEPEO, Reparto Agrario Grupo II, Caja 1, 1815–1912. a John R. Body

during 1911, yet this was not the case with the two major producers, La Natividad in the Sierra Juárez and San Juan in Taviche. Oaxacan production was calculated at $1.2 million for 1911 of which $1 million alone corresponded to the La Natividad and San Juan mines, the former now equipped with a cyanide plant. Since the Wgures for 1906–7 (the peak years of Oaxacan mining) are not available, there is no way to estimate whether this represented a recuperation. However, the sum of the mining tax on gold and silver as represented by The Mexican Year Book (without specifying which one, though the Wgures do not coincide with the iguala for that year) demonstrates the end of the boom: from a high in 1904–5 of $6,215 to a low in 1909–10 of $282.54 The period of greatest expansion for the Mexican mining industry came after 1900. Despite the fact that a general economic crisis occurred 54. Mexican Year Book (1912), 24, and Mexican Year Book (1909–10), 598.

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in 1907, national production of metals almost doubled between 1900 and 1910. Mexico continued to receive an “extraordinary inXux of foreign capital” toward the end of the PorWriato, attributable to “a general European bonanza in the Wrst two years of the twentieth century, to the growing economic independence of the United States and the stabilization of the Mexican peso.” Mining began to recuperate in 1908 with the increase in silver production and the construction of cyanide plants. The appearance of new capital sources and the completion of more railroads aided in the revival. A new federal mining statute went into effect on January 1, 1910, which attempted to regulate mining enterprises more closely and to reestablish public property over the subsoil.55 Oaxaca also enjoyed renewed prosperity, but not as much as some other states. The analysis of the iguala indicates a certain stability of production. It is likely, however, that Pimentel indulged miners more than usual, trying to soften the impact of the depression by maintaining low taxes in spite of recovery. Unfortunately, the data on the iguala in table 22 are incomplete and do not permit a measurement of the impact of the crisis. By 1909, the 1905 level had been recuperated, illustrating the revival. Missing here are the key Wgures for 1906–8, which would demonstrate the impact of the depression. The recovery can be attributed to the recouping of the larger, more established concerns and the demise of many smaller enterprises. In 1909 El Correo del Sur, one of the city of Oaxaca’s major newspapers, initiated the publication of a new column entitled “Mining Notes.” A survey of this column between 1909 and 1910 provides a rather contradictory picture of Oaxacan mining. The editors tried to be optimistic and occasionally indicated that “mining movement is initiating again” or that “the perspective for mining in Oaxaca recently presents a rather more favorable future.” J. W. Durst, a North American with investments in Taviche and the Sierra Juárez, visited Oaxaca in 1909 and was surprised by how depressed the situation had become since 1907. His comments incensed the editors, who snapped back: “We believe that instead of voicing opinions on things about which we know, he should invest his capital in other industries which are yet to be exploited.”56 55. Nicolau D’Olwer, “Inversiones extranjeras,” 1162; Bernstein, Mexican Mining Industry, 49, 83. 56. This column revealed the vicissitudes of the industry. It reported on purchases and sales of mines, development of claims and beneWciation plants such as the sale of the Gold

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Ezra M. Lawton, the U.S. consular agent in Oaxaca, considered the 1907 crisis a mixed blessing, since the industry might now become grounded on a sounder basis. Critical of promotional tactics, he characterized Oaxacan mines on the eve of the depression as “over-capitalized and under-developed,” with owners having “an exaggerated idea of the value of their properties.” “[M]any groups of claims of doubtful value were taken up,” he continued, “the general idea being that anything would furnish bait for the inexperienced investor.” The crisis modiWed the situation by making miners more realistic. “Good prospects” could be purchased for from “one-half to one-tenth of their former estimated value,” while the questionable concerns had been taken over by the government for nonpayment of taxes. In 1909 Lawton welcomed a “gradual return of prosperity” for mining on a more “conservative” foundation. For that year he calculated 150 American mining companies or individuals in Oaxaca and estimated their combined investment to be about 10 million dollars. The capital of British and other foreign concerns would have increased the total foreign investment considerably.57 Complicating the situation of mining in Oaxaca was the failure of the United States Banking Co. in 1910, which caused the bankruptcy of various merchants and mines. Work was suspended on the construction of a cyanide plant at the San Francisco mine in Taviche by the Tehuantepec Silver Mines Co., since its director had deposited all its funds in the failed bank. The revival of mining in Oaxaca never fulWlled the expectations held by both Oaxacans and foreign investors. When the Revolution arrived, an erratic business became too great a risk and capital took Xight: the boom became a bust.58 King Mine, the Bernis mines’ plans for modernization, and the construction of El Guebeshe’s new beneWciation plant. It also listed the closing of mines, suspension of operations, and public sale of machinery at auction. El Correo del Sur, Notas Mineras, Sept. 3, Nov. 14, 1909, and July 6, 1910, and generally throughout 1909–10. 57. Lawton, “Mining in Oaxaca,” 232. 58. El Correo del Sur, Feb. 23, 1910. See Lawton, U.S. Consular Agent in Oaxaca to ViceConsul General in Mexico City, April 1, 1912. Lawton reported that the U.S. population of the Central Valleys of Oaxaca is the lowest in many years. “During the last rebellion [Maderista] there were nearly three times as many, and before the Wnancial stress of three or four years back, nearer Wve times as many.” NA, Dept. of State, roll 274–17, 812.00.3609. Garner quotes British diplomatic sources on the closing of business and capital Xight in general from Mexico (A Provincial Response, 124–25, n. 45). Mining engineer Tomás Barrera, in his Guía geológica de Oaxaca, repeatedly lamented what he call the “annihilation” of mining in Oaxaca, believing it could be proWtably revived, 41, 43, 60, 79, 81.

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Industry Modern manufacturing in Oaxaca never achieved the same level of prosperity that mining and agriculture had during the PorWriato. The survival of the indigenous communal villages and their artisan production posed a formidable barrier to the possible development of industry, depriving it not only of a market but also of labor. A large textile industry that might have taken advantage of the state’s cotton production failed to develop. That production was consumed in part by factories in Puebla and Veracruz, states that experienced considerable growth in the textile and other industries with concomitant market expansion. The 1910 census listed 11,605 textile workers for Oaxaca, of whom only 570 were employed by the state’s three textile factories. The remaining 11,035 worked in small workshops, cottage industries, and local home production.59 Indigenous textile production limited the development of the internal market, the fundamental stimulus to the textile industry. During the government of General Félix Díaz (1867–71) permission had been granted to two Englishmen, Thomas Grandison and a Mr. Mowatts, for the construction of a textile factory in Santa Cruz, Zimatlán. However, the Sierra Juárez caudillo Fidencio Hernández intervened to persuade these entrepreneurs to reconsider the location. Consequently, the concession was modiWed in January 1873 so that the factory could be built at Xía, near the town of Ixtepeji in the Sierra Juárez. Completed in 1875, by 1878 the Xía factory produced one thousand arrobas of thread and Wfteen thousand pieces of manta (the rough Mexican cotton favored by the Mexican campesinos and laborers) annually, to be sold in the Sierra Juárez and the city of Oaxaca. Mule trains transported the raw cotton from the lowlands of Tututepec in the coastal district of Juquila up to the Sierra Juárez, a twenty-day trip. This factory also used cotton from Tehuantepec and Juchitán. In 1910 construction began on an electrically powered plant in the city of Oaxaca, the projected new site of the Xía factory, but the Revolution frustrated this project.60 Of the three textile factories, two were located in San Agustín Etla, near the city of Oaxaca and vital sources of hydraulic power. Founded in 59. González Navarro, Huelgas textiles, 229. 60. Pérez García, Sierra Juárez 2:273–74. Sánchez Silva notes that in 1866, Agustín López and Manuel Ximeno inaugurated Oaxaca’s Wrst textile industry, powered by pedals on the Hacienda de ValdeXores in Zimatlán. See “Don José Zorrilla Trápaga,” 3.

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1875, the San José factory, with 5,232 spindles, belonged to the family of Spaniard Juan Saenz Trápaga, who had begun his fortune in the cochineal industry. The Vista Hermosa factory, established in April 1885 with four thousand spindles, belonged to his nephew, José Zorrilla Trápaga. The latest machinery for both factories had been imported from England and transported to Oaxaca by mule train. They both used the cotton produced in Jamiltepec by Spanish-owned haciendas. By 1901 Vista Hermosa had increased its spindles to six thousand and employed four hundred laborers; the factory ran both day and night shifts. Still a stunning example of PorWrian architecture, the factory was located conveniently close to the Etla station of the Mexican Southern Railway. Its machinery used hydraulic power and its textiles were regarded highly, having received awards at the International Exposition in Paris in 1900.61 In 1877 Xía was valued at $175,000 and by 1902 produced 327,000 kilograms annually with a labor force of 148 men and 115 women. The men received a salary of 60 centavos while the women were paid 40 centavos a day. Vista Hermosa produced 206,000 kilograms annually by 1902. Here the labor force consisted of 170 men, earning between 37.5 centavos and $1, and six women, who received 25 to 50 centavos daily. San José, valued at $230,000 in 1877, produced 138,073 kilograms, with 160 men earning between 37.5 centavos and $1 per day by 1902. In 1905 the three textile factories operated with a total of 16,565 modern spindles and 523 looms. While the factory labor force reached 599 in 1902, three years later it had declined to 570.62 The Ruiz Brothers founded a shoe factory in the city of Oaxaca in 1878. In 1896 they built a new factory, importing the machinery from Europe and the United States, which employed four hundred workers. Its shoes and boots were sold throughout the nation. The Mascota Brewery, also in the state capital, employed Wfty men in 1902. In September 1903 a group of prominent Oaxacan capitalists purchased this factory and formed the Cía. Cervecera de Oaxaca in order to modernize it.63 61. Memoria Administrativa, 1885, 47; Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 71. Sánchez Silva believes that Vista Hermosa was the most important textile factory of southeastern Mexico in 1895 (“Don José Zorrilla Trápaga,” 9ff.). 62. González Navarro, Huelgas textiles, 138–40. Boletín de estadística Wscal, 223; AGEPEO, 1902, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Centro. 63. Among the stockholders were the miner J. T. Wallace, José Zorrilla, owner of the Vista Hermosa textile factory, and Alberto Holm, a merchant and vice-consul of Portugal in Oaxaca. Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 73; AGEPEO, 1902, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Centro; Oaxaca Herald, April 22, 1907.

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In the city of Oaxaca, La Opera factory employed 260 women in the production of cigarettes made from tobacco of inferior quality produced in the state (the best tobacco was exported). In addition, many other smaller establishments contracted one to three female cigarette makers. In Tlaxiaco cottage industries producing cigarettes from the tobacco of nearby Putla and Jamiltepec Xourished. A soap factory also operated in the state capital, La Oaxaqueña, which belonged to Frenchman Luciano Laugier.64 One of the most important industries on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec was the exportation of industrial and Wne woods; the Cía de Maderas de Salina Cruz was a leader in this Weld. Near the train station in San Jerónimo, a medium-size brewery, the Cervecería del Istmo, operated. Sugarcane production in Putla and the Mixteca Costa supported three sugar mills and twenty-one aguardiente factories in Jamiltepec, where there were also various cotton gins on the eve of the Revolution. While Pinotepa Nacional had earned national fame for its Wne machetes, local artisans also did excellent carpentry work. Two other popular industries on the Costa Chica were the production of coconut candies and beautifully adorned jícaras (gourds).65 Despite the existence of these industries, Interim Governor Bolaños Cacho reported in 1902 that “With respect to manufacturing and industry . . . it has always been very unsatisfactory in this state.” Small workshops of artisans predominated: hatters, weavers, bakers, carpenters, saddlers, in addition to small mills and blacksmiths employing one to three hired laborers. There were also numerous trapiches and a few larger ingenios, where not only sugar but also panela and aguardiente were produced. Numerous small plants manufactured the state’s favorite liquor, mezcal.66 Thus, even with the arrival of the railroad and the construction of modern ports, industry did not make much headway, being constrained by the limits of local and regional markets and labor scarcity. 64. Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 73ff.; PO, July 7, 1907; Memoria Administrativa, 1902, 33. A Mr. Dause hoped to construct a factory that would conserve and bottle the chicozapote fruit for export to the United States, where he believed it would gain popularity, but I have not been able to Wnd any further information on this enterprise. La Unión, June 20, 1909. 65. PO, March 20, 1904; AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; Atristáin, Notas de un ranchero, 114; Esteva, Nociones elementales, 189–90. 66. Memoria Administrativa, 1902, 20. See AGEPEO, 1902, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Centro.

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Commerce and Finance Since pre-Columbian and colonial times, the site of the city of Oaxaca had functioned as an important commercial and administrative center of southern Mexico,67 and only during the PorWriato did it acquire the veneer of a mining city. Historically, then, Oaxaca’s richest merchants have held the reins of economic and political power, particularly given the instability of the hacendados, the insecurity of mining, and the weak industrial development. But by the late nineteenth century, Oaxaca’s merchant elites were forced to share their power with newer sectors of the bourgeoisie, which proWted from the economic boom. At the same time, the merchants further diversiWed their investments and beneWted from the prosperity of mining and commercial agriculture. As will be discussed in the following chapter, the economic boom transformed the proWle of the ruling elites. Commerce increased considerably as a result of the general economic growth and prosperity of Oaxaca. By 1892, at the time of the arrival of the Mexican Southern Railway, the city of Oaxaca already had its own chamber of commerce. The habilitation of the PaciWc ports afforded the state more outlets to export overseas and to other Mexican states. The pages of local newspapers attest to the interest of numerous national and international concerns in Oaxaca, especially those of the English language paper, the Oaxaca Herald.68 With the economic upsurge of the PorWriato, new commercial ventures were launched in which foreigners resident in Oaxaca were particularly visible. Among the best-known importing companies were the French Wrms of Gaymar and Spitalier, E. Laugier y Cía., and Luis Raynaud; the Germans Enrique Hinrichs & Cía. and Alberto Holm; the English J. & C. Innes (in Oaxaca and Ejutla); and the Spanish M. Allende y Sobrino, and Francisco Quijano. Ignacio Esperón and the San Germán brothers were important importers in the state capital, while Juana C. Romero y Cía. became the major importing Wrm on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Various Wrms founded branches in neighboring towns such as Ocotlán, a mining center with numerous foreign residents; in 1895 the Díaz Brothers founded a commercial house there. Mowatt and Grandison, the owners of the Xía 67. Murphy and Stepick, Social Inequality in Oaxaca, 17ff. 68. AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D. Stern Brothers of New York advertised in El Correo del Sur and offered to send its catalogue to any interested party (Oct. 27, 1909).

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factory, also specialized in the importation of industrial machinery in the city of Oaxaca.69 Oaxaca exported a myriad of products: precious metals, mineral ores, cochineal dye, coffee, hides, palm hats, sugar, cocoa beans, wax, wool, cattle, cotton, pita thread, tobacco, vanilla, dye-woods, Wne woods for furniture, medicinal plants and herbs, indigo, fruits, marble and alabaster, antimony, cigars, mica, cigarettes, iron, salted meat, and mezcal. The state imported olive oil, steel bars, olives, almonds, carpets, mercury, caps, small wares of haberdashery and notions, hardware, beer, crystal wares, clothing and cloth, conserves, chandeliers, liquors, pharmaceuticals, books, perfumes, Wne porcelain and china, machinery, furniture, paper, hats, musical instruments, arms, wines, lingerie, and jewels.70 One of the most important exporting Wrms was Seckbach y Cía., which specialized in minerals and coffee. It established a branch in the city of Oaxaca in 1894 and another in Ocotlán in 1901. In 1900 other exporters were Tolis y Renero, San Germán Hermanos, Alberto Holm, Ignacio Esperón, Gustavo Stein, A. y M. Allende y Cía., and the Cía. Aviador de la Mina Natividad. By 1909 Seckbach y Cía., Allende, and Holm were still leaders in this Weld, but new names appeared, including Rafael Olivera Toro, Tomás Kennedy, the Mexican Products Co., Federico Ruiz, and U.S. consular agent E. M. Lawton. Evidently some of the larger concerns operated as import-export companies, for instance Alberto Holm, the San Germán brothers, Manuel Allende, and Ignacio Esperón.71 Following the general trend of the PorWriato, French concerns occupied a signiWcant place within commerce and trade, above all with regard to the importation of luxury items from Europe and the United States. In Oaxaca, “La Ciudad de México” store, founded in 1896 by Garnier, Bellón y Cía., proved so successful that the company inaugurated another branch, “La Barata,” where eight employees sold imported high-quality clothing. The most important hardware business of Oaxaca, “El Gallo,” was owned by the French company of A. Philippe and managed by Maximiliano Reimers, stocking all necessary implements for agriculture and mining.72 69. AGEPEO, 1900, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Centro. 70. See Esteva, Nociones elementales, 11; Velasco, Geografía y estadística, 371–73. 71. Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 56; AGEPEO, Jan. 1909, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Centro. 72. AGEPEO, 1900, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Centro; Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 62, 69–70.

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Oaxaca’s increasing export of minerals and cash crops stimulated this burgeoning trade in international manufactures and luxury items. But this economic relationship was superimposed on a pre-Columbian system of regional markets that had served the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations, and later the Aztecs as they expanded their empire into southern Mesoamerica. As Scott Cook and Martin Diskin pointed out, the integration of the Central Valleys of Oaxaca into the world economy “did not deprive it of its own structure and dynamic.” The creation of the separate repúblicas de indios in the early colonial period resulted in the protection of indigenous institutions such as the marketing system. The latter has continued to function in modiWed form into the present.73 These marketing circuits took advantage of the state’s diverse ecological niches, affording a variety of tropical, subtropical, and temperate products that existed in close proximity to each other. Eduard Muhlenpfordt, a German architect who lived in Oaxaca in the 1830s, was highly impressed not only by the large and bustling market plazas of Oaxaca’s towns and villages but also by the great variety of products available. He described Chilateca in the Central Valleys as a “little village . . . that stands out for its large market each Friday. Indians from the far off highlands come all the way here with the products of their labor. This market has been functioning since many years before the conquest.” He noted that in a small area of highlands and deep valleys in Teposcolula, one found a great variety of products, temperate (e.g., wheat, beans, maize) and tropical (e.g., cochineal, bananas, sugarcane). The inhabitants of Chicahuaxtla in the Mixteca Alta cultivated pineapples and bananas, which they could trade for the maize they lacked.74 Another characteristic of this system is village specialization. Teotitlán del Valle and the Jaliezas (Santo Tomás, Santo Domingo, and Santa Cecilia) are still known for their weaving, just as Coyotepec and Atzompa are famous for their pottery. Coixtlahuaca is still an important producer of palm hats, which are prized throughout Mexico and overseas. On market days, numerous commercial agents come into its pueblos to purchase these hats. The indigenous people of the area can be seen weaving the palm as they walk from place to place; in fact, distances are calculated by 73. See Cook and Diskin, “Peasant Market Economy,” 9ff. 74. In the village of Etla in the Central Valleys, one could Wnd “all kinds of products from Welds and orchards as well as industrial products manufactured by the Indians.” Muhlenpfordt, Ensayo de una descripción Wel, 71–94.

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the number of hats that can be woven along the way. Artisans and traders emerged as vital cogs of these cyclical markets, which generated intercommunity trade. Although we know that in the pre-Columbian period the major centers of indigenous population had daily markets, today these regional markets function cyclically; “a series of marketplaces operate on a rotating basis on separate days of the week and in different locales.”75 The Central Valleys had (and still have) nine primary city and town plazas (the city of Oaxaca, Ayoquezco, Ejutla, Etla, Tlacolula, Ocotlán, Zimatlán, Zaachila, and Miahuatlán) and eight secondary village plazas. The Sierra Juarez had twelve plazas (including Ixtlán, Villa Alta, Natividad, and Talea), the Sierra Mixe nine village plazas (including Ayutla, Juquila Mixes, Mixistlán, Totontepec, and Zacatepec), and the isthmian system eight plazas (including Juchitán, Matías Romero, Mogoñé, Salina Cruz, and Tehuantepec—today these have daily plazas). In the Mixteca a similar system functioned, with the plazas of Tlaxiaco, Putla, Huajuapan, and Nochixtlán dominating their respective regions. During the nineteenth century, the internal commerce of the Mixteca consisted of the exchange of wheat and maize among the subregions Mixteca Alta and Baja, the importation of salt, cotton, tobacco, and fruits from the Mixteca Costa to the highland regions. On the main road, once the royal highway, between Oaxaca, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and Central America, Tlacolula still serves as the distribution center for the Sierra Juárez, the coffee from the districts of Villa Alta and Choapan, and the lands of the Mixes. The Sunday market welcomes indigenous peoples in their multihued dress and diverse languages from all over the region: Serrano, Valley, and Isthmus Zapotecs, Mixes as well as Mixtecs.76 Matías Romero’s description of panela production in the Loxichas before the arrival of coffee or the bustling economy of Juchitán, which will be described in Chapter 7, should dispel lingering doubts about “autarkic” indigenous communities. Far from being “static” or “closed” to trade, “these indigenous communities were highly involved in trade within the limits of their regions.”77 With the products from distinct 75. Cook and Diskin, “Peasant Market Economy,” 9ff.; Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes, 69. 76. Beals, “Oaxaca Market Study Project,” 33ff.; See Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 456. 77. Sánchez Silva points to Muhlenpfordt’s observations and Pastor’s analyses as well as more recent works, such as Cook and Diskin’s Markets in Oaxaca and Cook and Binford’s Obliging Need, to underscore the historical continuity of this “dynamic sector of indigenous

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ecological niches and with specialized village artisan production accounting for so many daily needs, this marketing system severely limited the potential for mass production in the state. Some of the centers of these market systems, as we have seen in the case of the city of Oaxaca, extended their economic relations far beyond their immediate region. Juana C. Romero y Cía. of Tehuantepec earned considerable proWts importing European textiles to the Isthmus, transforming and adding to the fabrics of the elaborate dress of Tehuanas and Juchitecas. Nochixtlán and Tamazulapan, other important trading centers of the Mixteca, made headway into larger market circuits in the midnineteenth century owing to their production of wheat and Xour, traded by mestizo merchants. As the PorWriato advanced, Huajuapan, dominated by its entrepreneurial Spanish colony, began to rival the market city of Tlaxiaco as the commercial capital of the Mixteca. For example, the Solana family in Huajuapan established proWtable commercial ties with Puebla and the Atlantic port cities as outlets for the Mixteca’s products.78 Interstate economic networks developed on several of Oaxaca’s border regions, acting as a signiWcant stimulus to growth. The Mexican Southern Railway strengthened commercial ties with Tehuacán, Puebla, and Mexico City, particularly for the Cañada, Central Valleys, and Mixteca regions. Export Wrms and banks in the port of Veracruz and in Córdoba distributed the products of the Papaloapan river basin (Tuxtepec and Choapan districts) in the northeast. The distinctive Jarocho culture of Veracruz pervaded and dominated the entire river basin region for economic and geographical reasons. The Isthmus’s commercial relations, especially after the reconstruction of the Tehuantepec National Railway, afforded it direct contacts with the commerce.” Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes, 70ff. A 1970s look at the Nochixtlán market system demonstrates how so many of the basic necessities of indigenous Mixtecs in this region could be satisWed: with reed baskets from Chindúa and Jaltepectongo, ponchos and blankets from Yodocono, cheese from Etlatongo and Nochixtlán, candles from Topiltepec, pottery from San Miguel Adéquez, cattle from Yucuita, sheepskins from Yanhuitlán, brooms from Zachío, and petates (palm mats to sleep on) from Zahuatlán. Warner, “Survey of the Market System,” 110–15. 78. Chassen [Chassen-López], “Juana Cata: Empresaria,” 17ff.; Méndez Aquino, Historia de Tlaxiaco (Mixteca); Marroquín, Ciudad mercado. PorWrians considered Paris the epitome of style and culture; numerous provincial cities compared themselves with this European capital. Certainly Mérida’s claim was stronger than Tlaxiaco’s. See Wells, “All in the Family,” 186. Once the Pan American Highway passed through Huajuapan in the 1940s, it eclipsed Tlaxiaco as the commercial center of the Mixteca.

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United States and other nations, and connected it more closely with el Centro, Veracruz, and Chiapas. The Costa Chica ranching region on the PaciWc coast maintained strong ties to Acapulco and places as far away as Teziutlán, Puebla, thanks to its cattle trade. Pochutla had its own port, Puerto Angel, which permitted this coffee-producing region to establish direct contact with European cities, in particular Hamburg. Thus Oaxacan commerce established trade relations with regional, national, and international partners. Merchants and ranchers of Pinotepa Nacional took advantage of the opportunities offered by PorWrian economic policies; nevertheless, the region’s major problem was transportation. All attempts to bring a railroad to the coast ended in failure. Even though mule trains carried the tobacco, fruits, cotton, and sugar from the coast up into the mountains of the Mixteca Alta to supply the highland commercial center of Tlaxiaco, and cattle drives went to Puebla, the region’s best and cheapest means of transportation was the sea. The Costa Chica’s prosperous ranchero economy forced the habilitation of an improvised port, a customs section at Minizo, near thriving Pinotepa Nacional.79 Thus domestic trade grew as a result of the boom in mining and commercial agriculture. The growth of import and export activity in Oaxaca had a concomitant impact on the internal commerce. The pre-Columbian market systems continued, as did the annual fairs, which were customary in the district capitals. The popular Tlacolula fair lasted for seven days each October, while Miahuatlán, Ejutla, Etla, Juquila, and Jamiltepec also continued to celebrate their annual fairs.80 However, these fairs began to decline in the wake of the crisis of 1907. By 1910 the Jamiltepec fair “was quite sad, as never before” because “the effects of the crisis were 79. See Chapter 1 of this study and Chassen [Chassen-López], Regiones y ferrocarriles, and “Oaxaca” (Ph.D. diss.), 185. Although the habilitation of Minizo was sponsored by the state government in the city of Oaxaca, the prosperous ranchers of Pinotepa tended to resent the impositions coming from the city of Oaxaca, certainly the taxes charged by the state on its growing commercial prosperity. Profesor Francisco Carmona, municipal president, emphasized this same situation in conversation in May 1983. He insisted that Pinotepa had always had stronger ties to Acapulco and Ometepec and resented the intromission of the state government in the city of Oaxaca. He claimed that the town received more Wnancial support from the government of Guerrero in joint projects than from its own state. But then, Carmona was a member of the Partido Auténtico de la Revolución Mexicana and had won his election against the PRI’s ofWcial candidate. As politics function in Mexico, an opposition municipal government would not receive much aid from the PRI state government. 80. Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 4:114–15; El Correo del Sur, Oct. 13, 1909; Memoria Administrativa, 1902.

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still being felt.” The only exception was the Juquila fair each December, related to the commemoration of the Virgin of Juquila, a place of religious pilgrimage venerated throughout the Republic. In 1909 this fair was still deemed “magniWcent,” attended by merchants from Zimatlán, Ejutla, Ocotlán, Tlacolula, Ixtlán, and Etla.81 Before 1907 at least, mining, cash-crop agriculture, and the importexport trade had invigorated regional markets, as Oaxaca was further integrated into the world market. But by 1911 Oaxaca was the state with the lowest ratio of retail sales per inhabitant: $6.57, lower than Chiapas’s $8.84 and Guerrero’s $8.07, and far below Morelos’s $33.28, Sonora’s $27.20 or Yucatán’s $40.18 per capita.82 Isolated regions, subsistence communities, and the likely survival of barter in regional markets limited the development of the state’s domestic economy. While perhaps a guide, these data can be as misleading as per capita statistics, since they fail to account for the unequal distribution of wealth, concealing huge social cleavages between the rich and the poor. Oaxaca’s elites were certainly modest in comparison with Yucatan’s “Casta Divina,” the Terrazas of Chihuahua, or the sugar hacendados of Morelos. In effect, the statistic for Yucatán underscores this problem for a state whose majority was made up of very poor Mayan peons laboring on henequen haciendas. Although Oaxaca’s elites tended to be less wealthy than those of other states, and it therefore follows that its commercial ratio would be lower, wealth may well have been better distributed and less skewed. Before Díaz’s rise to power, only one port, Puerto Angel, functioned on Oaxaca’s three-hundred-mile PaciWc coastline. Puerto Angel had grown as a result of coffee production in the surrounding Pochutla and Juquila districts. By 1883 it was exporting 166,218 kilos of coffee annually. It lost its preeminence to Salina Cruz, the PaciWc terminal of the Tehuantepec National Railway, constructed at great cost to the federal government. From a population of 738 inhabitants in 1900, Salina Cruz grew to 5,076 by 1910, including numerous merchants and representatives from foreign nations. In 1900 Puerto Angel had only eighty inhabitants, a Wgure that fell to sixty-nine in 1910.83

81. El Correo del Sur, Dec. 23, 1909, Jan. 15, 1910. 82. Pastor, interview; Rosenzweig, “Desarrollo económico,” 415. 83. Rojas, Café, 43; González Navarro, Estadísticas, 11, División territorial, 1900 and 1910.

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Salina Cruz emerged as a PorWrian boom town, thanks to its strategic geographical location. In 1904–5, Wfty-three ships of diverse Xags docked in the harbor, while in 1908–9, ninety-six ships arrived in the port. By 1910 the following shipping lines served Salina Cruz: the AmericanHawaiian Steamship Co., Deutsche Dampfschiffahrts Gesellschaft, Kosmos, La Cía. Naviera del PacíWco, the PaciWc Mail Steamship Co., the Canadian-Mexican PaciWc Steamship Co., the Jebsen Line, Toyo Kisen Kaisha, and the Salvador Railway Co. Ltd. Steamship Service. In contrast, only ten foreign ships docked at Puerto Angel in 1904–5 and six in 1908–9. By 1910 Salina Cruz was mainly involved in foreign trade while Puerto Angel was limited to national commerce, as a port for the Mexican company, Cía. Naviera del PacíWco, S.A.84 The deteriorating price of coffee also contributed to the downfall of Puerto Angel. Minizo, the improvised customs port mentioned above, was the third port on the PaciWc. It provided an outlet for the rich cattle, cotton, and tobacco production of the Costa Chica. Pressured by the commercial Wrm of C. del Valle y Cía. of the coastal elite, Governor Pimentel arranged with the Ministry of Communications that the Cía. Naviera del PacíWco’s ships would make an obligatory stop at Minizo every twenty days. This temporarily resolved the problem of Pinotepa’s lack of means of transportation, since none of the projected railroad projects ever reached the coast.85 With the boom in mining, agriculture, and commerce, the demand for credit increased. In the late 1880s a group of prominent Oaxacans visited General Díaz to advocate for the establishment of a branch of the Banco Nacional de México, which they argued would offset the usury of local moneylenders and provide access to funds for economic development. Always attentive to the welfare of his patria chica, Díaz persuaded the directors of the Banco Nacional to found this branch. Given the threat of bandits, the crucial problem facing this project was how to transport the initial funds of $800,000 (no railroad yet existed). The directors of the Banco Nacional asked the president for an escort of Rurales or even an army detachment to accompany the transport of this money. Díaz replied that a detachment of soldiers would call even more attention to the party. The progress-minded Bishop of Oaxaca, Eulogio Gillow, came up with an original solution. President Díaz advised the bank ofWcials that 84. Mexican Year Book (1909–10), 602–3. 85. See Atristáin, Notas de un ranchero, chap. 1; Mensaje, 1908, 35–36; El Imparcial, Jan. 4, 1908; La Unión, July 4, 1909.

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their representative and the $800,000 in bills would travel to Oaxaca with Gillow: “I will put the treasurer who will carry the funds in contact with the bishop and traveling together, with the object of maintaining the utmost reserve, the money will surely arrive at its destination. Thus, if the illustrious Mr. Gillow treats the bank’s employee as one of his most intimate friends, having placed the valise in the coach, or on the prelate’s litter during the day and under his bed at night, until they arrive in Oaxaca.”86 Thus did the Catholic Church enable the establishment of a branch of the Banco Nacional de México in the city of Oaxaca in 1888. By 1909 Juana C. Romero (a close friend of Gillow, who by then was archbishop) functioned as its representative in Tehuantepec and in Salina Cruz, while the Maritime Agency looked after its interests in Puerto Angel.87 By means of a concession signed in July, the Banco de Oaxaca opened its doors in November 1902. By 1907 this bank was capitalized at $1 million. José Zorrilla was president and Guillermo Trinker, an Englishman who had managed the Xía factory, was manager. By July of the same year Jacobo Grandison, of the bank’s board of directors, traveled to Mexico City to solicit an increase in the bank’s capital to $3 million from the Ministry of the Treasury, but only $2 million was authorized.88 Hit hard by the crisis of 1907, the Banco de Oaxaca was absorbed by the Banco Oriental de México, with headquarters in the city of Puebla. After June 1909 the Banco Oriental assumed all the rights and concessions originally property of the Banco de Oaxaca, including the branch in Tehuantepec (it also absorbed the Banco de Chiapas). R. Weeke y Cía. and Angel M. Alburne y Cía. represented its interests in Ocotlán and Tuxtepec respectively. Evidently the new arrangement prospered, as it later proceeded to open new branches in Tlaxiaco and in Huajuapan, strengthening the already strong economic ties between Puebla and the Mixteca oaxaqueña. By 1909 the Banco de Oaxaca had capital of $8 million.89 86. Gillow was still a bishop at the time. Gillow, Reminiscencias, 262–64. 87. Chassen [Chassen-López], “Juana Cata: Empresaria,” 18; Directorio OWcial Bancario, 251. I am grateful to Gerardo Sánchez Díaz of the Universidad Michoacana for providing me with this source. 88. Mexican Year Book (1909–10), 260; El Imparcial, July 5, 1902; Oaxaca Herald, April 22, 1907; La Unión, July 14, 1907. 89. The bank’s representative in Huajuapan was Mateo Solana. Mexican Year Book (1909–10), 260; La Unión, June 27, 1909; El Correo del Sur, Sept. 18, 1909, and March 7, 15, 1910; Directorio OWcial Bancario, 250.

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Inaugurated in May 1901 with Carlos Peterson as director, the United States Banking Co. opened a branch in Oaxaca with capital of $2 million. It represented several North American Wrms, including the Chase National Bank of New York, the Merchants Loan & Trust Co. of Chicago, the First National Bank of Boston, and the Royal Bank of Canada. Díaz Hermanos functioned as its representative in Ocotlán. The United States Banking Co., especially, served mining interests in the state and transactions with North American banks.90 Nevertheless, in January 1910 news broke of a major scandal: the victim of fraud by one of its ofWcers, the bank had to close for several days. Accused of embezzling an undisclosed amount of bank funds, the national manager, George Ham, was forced to resign. A new manager was appointed and the bank was reopened, but this setback seriously affected various Oaxacan depositors.91 The establishment of bank branches and representatives in other cities and towns of Oaxaca took place mostly in the regions of PorWrian development. Oaxacan economic growth was also reXected in the increase of insurance companies, but unfortunately data are limited. In early 1892 Zorrilla y Cía. became agents for the North British and Mercantile Company of London, Ltd. Partners Mowatt and Grandison functioned as the representatives for the Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York. By 1904 the well-known lawyer Jesús Acevedo represented the American Surety Company, and in 1909 Arturo Fagoaga became agent for the Mexican Cía. de Seguros “La Nacional.”92

The 1907 Crisis and the End of the Boom With respect to the general condition of business, I would have liked to give you as satisfactory a report as I did on the situation of public Wnance, but, unfortunately, this is not the case. The adverse circumstances of the foreign stock market since the beginning of the present year have worsened daily to the point of producing a scarcity of money so generalized that it can be said, 90. Oaxaca Herald, June 9, 1907; Southworth, Estado de Oaxaca, 56; Directorio OWcial Bancario, 250. 91. See El Correo del Sur, Jan. to Feb. 1910. 92. PO, Jan. 27, 1904; advertisements in El Correo del Sur, Aug. 10, 1909; Sánchez Silva, “Don José Zorrilla Trápaga,” 14.

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without exaggeration, that at the moment an almost universal Wnancial crisis exists. . . . Mexico succeeded, up until four or Wve months ago, to maintain herself isolated from the inXuence of these disturbing factors. But the scarcity of funds, which I just mentioned, has paralyzed all foreign investment in our country, and as a result, has obliged the credit institutions to reinforce their reserves of precious metals, or at least to not call on them any further, and to refuse assistance to any new business ventures that are not of absolute necessity.93 In this manner did President Diaz present the crisis to the nation in his annual state of the union speech in September 1907. Sources of capital began to dry up in the United States at the close of 1906 and interest rates rose as inXation spread. In a few months, by the middle of 1907, metal prices had deteriorated: the value of copper on the international market was cut in half. A Wnancial panic ensued, characterized by a severe scarcity of gold and credit, followed by bank closings.94 The crisis rapidly spread from the United States to Europe and to Mexico. Miners and metallurgy interests, along with merchants, industrialists, and hacendados, suffered this crisis as credit sources evaporated. The plummeting price of mineral products seriously affected Mexican mining, as demonstrated by the price indexes in table 25. For 1905–6, silver represented 40 percent and copper 25 percent of Mexico’s mineral exports. Copper mines were almost paralyzed by the crisis, which was particularly devastating to the largest copper mine in Mexico, Cananea in Sonora, not to mention Los Ocotes in Ejutla. Table 25 shows that the fall of copper was greater than that of silver and did not recover by 1910. The decline of silver was part of a long-term trend, which included the impact of the 1905 Monetary Reform, which rejected the previous bimetallic system and put Mexico on the gold standard. Thus, after the 1905 Reform the vicissitudes of the international market determined the price of silver. The 1907 crisis had its greatest impact on northern Mexico, but serious repercussions were also felt in the Centro, chieXy in San Luis Potosí and Hidalgo.95 93. “Informe Presidencial” in El Imparcial, Sept. 17, 1907. 94. Flamant and Singer-Karel, Crisis y recesiones económicas, 49–51. 95. Ibid. See Cockcroft, Intellectual Precursors, 36ff.; El Imparcial, Sept. 8, 1907; Ruiz, Great Rebellion, 60–64, 120–29.

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Table 25.

Infrastructure and Economics

Price Indexes of Silver and Copper in Mexico

Silver (1900 = 100) 1902 1906 1908 1909

— — — —

90 108 86 83

Copper (1900 = 100) 1892 1900 1907 1908 1910

— — — — —

69 100 126 80 77

Source: François-Xavier Guerra, “Territorio minado (Más allá de Zapata en la Revolución Mexicana),” Nexos 65 (1983): 31–47.

Oaxaca, too, soon felt the impact of the crisis. By August 31, 1907, twenty-two mines in Taviche were paralyzed for lack of credit and several mines suspended operations in the Sierra Juárez. Ejutla’s “Los Ocotes” began to lay off many workers who had no hope of Wnding other jobs in mining. Whereas in 1906 Holms had listed more than Wve thousand workers employed by the Oaxacan mining industry, in 1908 jefes políticos reported only 1,636 laborers, four hundred of whom were employed by La Natividad (down from 450 in 1906) and 310 of whom worked at the La Escuadra and San Juan mines in Taviche.96 In October 1907 a Taviche miner lamented to El Imparcial the notorious “decay and lack of activity which exist in the new claims, not only because the new mining ventures are in themselves difWcult to get off the ground decisively, but also because most of the newer enterprises lack funds. As is commonly known, for the last few months money has been very scarce.” The older, more established mines continued to function on a smaller scale than usual, while the newer ones were harder hit. By December 1907 this crisis had set off an exodus of foreign investors, above all those from the United States. In Tlacolula the majority of mining enterprises were paralyzed, among them the important Wrms of Rickards Hnos., R. Newberry, Trápaga-Díaz Ordaz, and the La Victoria y Tapada mines. Some interests functioned with a reduced labor force while others were totally ruined. When the state government asked the jefes políticos to report on the mines in their districts, twelve reported that there were no mines in production in their districts, among them 96. El Imparcial, Aug. 31, Sept. 9, Oct. 10, 1907; La Unión, Oct. 20, 1907.

Mining, Industry, and Commerce

235

Miahuatlán, Villa Alta, Putla, Silacayoapan, and Tehuantepec, where mines had recently been worked.97 Not only did the price of metals decline, but other cash crops throughout Mexico were hard hit, especially henequen, tobacco, and cotton.98 The crisis struck at the heart of the prosperity based on the export of mining and commercial agriculture, as the prices of metals, coffee, and tobacco deteriorated. Even the price of “contratas” in Valle Nacional fell. Having been integrated into the world market as a supplier of primary materials, Oaxaca learned the harsh lesson of dependency, the tendency of the prices of these products to Xuctuate and decline while those of foreign manufactures, now imported into the state, remained steady or even rose. In his message to the local congress in 1908, Governor Pimentel attempted to diminish the effects of the crisis, saying, “as is natural, the waves of this economic perturbation in their extended expansive movement have reached us, but fortunately, in a quite attenuated manner.” But those waves had already engulfed the great hope of Oaxacan mining, the Oaxaca Smelting and ReWning Co., which went bankrupt before it even got off the ground. The Cía. Fundidora de Magdalena Teitipac, the state’s second-largest smelter, also suspended operations. The contract negotiations on the loan for the construction of the long-awaited drainage of the city of Oaxaca had to be postponed once again. Even the state’s recently established Mounted Police experienced no labor shortage, as was feared, since so many workers and miners had been laid off as a result of the crisis.99 Along with mining and export agriculture, commerce reeled under the impact of the crisis. According to the civil court Wles, twenty bankruptcies and seizures were registered for the month of December 1907 alone, while in normal times there might be three bankruptcies a month at most. By June 1908 the scarcity of coinage intensiWed, and speculators began to proWt enormously from the situation when monthly interest rates hit 12 percent. In the same year, retail losses for the merchants of the city 97. El Imparcial, Oct. 29 and Dec. 12, 1907; AGEPEO, 1907, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Tlacolula, and 1815–1912, Grupo II, caja 1. 98. Cockcroft, Intellectual Precursors, 36ff. According to Wells and Joseph, henequen declined from a high of almost 10 cents a pound in 1902 to less than 4 cents a pound in 1911 (Summer of Discontent, 100). 99. Mensaje, 1908, 32–35; Mensaje, 1909, 5, 26.

236

Infrastructure and Economics

of Oaxaca forced them to Wre many employees and reduce the salaries of those who remained.100 Although in some parts of the country a similar decline in traditional agricultural production accompanied this crisis, given the lack of credit available, this did not seem to be the case of Oaxaca. The decline in the price of cash crops for export, which had clearly been the trend since the late 1890s, became ruinous in 1907, yet maize harvests were abundant in various regions of the state (in the Central Valleys, however, heavy rains damaged this crop in September 1907). On the coast, cotton had a bonanza harvest, most of which was sent to Puebla.101 Despite the desire of the governor to dismiss this crisis as temporary, it heralded the beginning of the end for the boom of the Oaxacan export economy. The lack of a Wgure for the total mining production for 1906 and 1907 handicaps our analysis of the high point of the boom and the possibility of evaluating a post-1908 recovery. Some recovery did take place, as production of the major mines reached $932,400 in 1908 and $1.2 million in 1911. But only the larger interests ($1 million of that $1.2 million was attributable to Natividad and Taviche), or those with good transportation to railroad depots (reinforcing the symbiotic relationship between mining and railways), could now survive. In sum, the results of mining in Oaxaca were discouraging. Despite extensive investments, a twenty-year boom became a bust with the 1907 crisis and the Revolution. The PorWrian panaceas of infrastructure, capital, and technology had not been sufWcient to bring continued success to Oaxacan mining. While some investment did return in the 1920s to larger mines such as Natividad and those at Taviche, the state never fulWlled its PorWrian promise. While coffee recovered in the 1920s to become a major export and bananas replaced tobacco as Tuxtepec’s new cash crop, Oaxaca would never again be a promoter’s paradise for miners.

100. El Imparcial, Dec. 28, 1907, Jan. 8, 1908; see Ruiz, Great Rebellion, 121. 101. Ruiz, Great Rebellion, 80–87; González, “Liberalismo triunfante,” 256–57. See El Imparcial, Aug., Oct., Nov., Dec., 1907; La Unión, Nov. 1907.

5 Society, “Decent” and Otherwise The wages paid are in accordance with the environment of the region and (on the level of the cost of living and remuneration of labor in other lines of work) have been progressively increasing in the last few years. The economic conditions of the workers of this factory [Xía] are fundamentally different from those of other industrial centers of the Republic since most of the workers are small landholders and almost no one depends exclusively on textile labor in order to live. This leads to a situation in which the moment an individual is no longer satisWed with the wage as compared to the labor conditions, he abandons the latter to dedicate himself to the former, be it the cultivation of a small piece of land or other work where there is always a demand for strong arms. —1912 Report by Jefe Político of the district of Ixtlán

Demographics Using a metaphor typical of PorWrian modernizers, Manuel María de Zamacona declared that statistics constituted “the only compass by which the ship of state could be effectively navigated.” The May 1882 founding of the General Directory of Statistics within the Ministry of Development therefore signiWed an important step for the administration of “order and progress.” But this statistical fervor centered on elite and middle-class pursuits. Government ofWcials solicited data on haciendas and Wncas “of note,” and on industrial and commercial establishments, but rarely required reports on campesino or worker activities unless politically motivated. In addition, the validity of this information has been questioned by scholars, particularly with respect to under-enumeration and the consideration of women.1 1. Cited in González Navarro, Historia moderna de México: El PorWriato; Vida Social, 3–4, 8–12. According to this author, statistical literature became more widespread in Mexico,

240

Society: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender

During the nineteenth century, Mexico went through two demographic phases: Wrst, one of crisis and transition, and then one of population growth. In the last twenty years of the nineteenth century Mexico accelerated its economic expansion, encouraged by liberal modernizing policies and its integration into the global economy. Consequently, the 0.7 annual mean of population growth before 1877 increased to 1.3 between 1877 and 1884, and to 1.6 between 1884 and 1895.2 As the nation grew, so did Oaxaca: between 1885 and 1895 the state’s population increased from 761,274 to 872,902 inhabitants, an annual mean growth rate of 1 percent. Although Oaxaca’s growth rate was below the national average of 1.6 percent, it did not show negative growth, as did Colima, or as slow a rate as San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, or Aguascalientes. Still, compared to the very high growth of northern states such as Coahuila (5.5), Baja California (4.1), Chihuahua (3.6), or central states such as Veracruz (3.9), Oaxaca’s rate was unimpressive.3 But colonial Antequera’s population had been considerable, while many of the highgrowth states, with the exception of Veracruz, had been sparsely populated prior to the PorWriato. When the economy began to expand between 1877 and 1895, the average rate of annual growth was 9,300 inhabitants in Oaxaca. During the major period of expansion, between 1895 and 1910, this rate increased to 10,400 persons a year. By 1910 the state’s population had reached 1,040,398 inhabitants, the Wfth largest in the nation. In sum, Oaxaca’s relatively modest demographic growth appears to correlate positively with the economic expansion experienced for the 1895–1910 period.4 This trend is further corroborated by the analysis of the changing distribution of Oaxaca’s population in the state’s twenty-six administrative districts, as seen in table 26. A parallel emerges between those districts experiencing the greatest economic growth and those with substantial population increase. The latter, Cuicatlán, Teotitlán, Juchitán, Tehuantepec, Jamiltepec, Juquila, Pochutla, Tuxtepec, and Tlaxiaco (which until 1907 included most of the area that later comprised the district of Putla), above all in the federal district, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Nuevo León, and Jalisco after 1895. Coatsworth, “Anotaciones”; see Chassen-López on women in “‘Cheaper than Machines.’” 2. Urías Hermosillo and San Juan Victoria, “Población y desarrollo,” 130–64. 3. Ibid., 165. 4. División territorial, 1910, 6. The average growth for the PorWriato was 9,800 people a year. González Navarro, Estadísticas, 68.

Society, “Decent” and Otherwise

Table 26.

241

Population of the Districts of Oaxaca, 1877–1910

District

1877

1891

1895

1900

1910

Centro Coixtlahuaca Cuicatlán Choapan Ejutla Etla Huajuapan Ixtlán Jamiltepec Juchitán Juquila Juxtlahuaca Miahuatlán Nochixtlán Ocotlán Pochutla Putla Silacayoapan Tehuantepec Teotitlán Teposcolula Tlacolula Tlaxiaco Tuxtepec Villa Alta Yautepec Zimatlán

58,350 14,894 17,695 11,021 21,234 24,128 34,771 25,895 36,627 27,782 16,286 15,519 35,122 34,771 29,828 11,335 — 25,789 24,438 25,989 30,091 37,373 44,541 19,578 44,362 22,414 43,723

60,244 16,551 19,706 11,343 23,289 29,275 40,465 26,937 39,033 36,775 19,187 17,732 37,816 39,571 32,796 13,597 — 27,485 24,437 28,505 31,265 40,937 53,648 20,254 46,405 22,759 41,115

66,381 16,924 22,142 11,763 24,121 30,475 44,811 27,254 44,995 44,966 21,661 20,265 40,963 41,300 33,573 20,807 — 27,360 31,757 35,576 31,081 41,417 64,617 30,717 40,150 24,134 45,699

71,716 17,247 23,864 14,128 24,968 33,417 45,042 29,015 50,185 52,182 23,762 21,139 42,807 42,305 34,056 22,739 — 29,252 34,948 36,556 32,814 41,862 68,275 37,808 44,324 25,255 48,244

73,416 18,650 26,494 14,283 26,735 36,059 55,094 32,224 46,524 64,652 25,659 — 46,473 43,004 39,648 27,666 30,754 32,922 44,699 40,282 31,936 43,979 68,866 48,325 43,044 27,100 51,910

733,556

801,127

884,909

947,910

1,040,398

Total

Sources: 1877: Emiliano Busto, Estadística de la República Mexicana, 3 vols. (Mexico City: Imprenta de Ignacio Cumplido, 1880); 1891: Alfonso Luis Velasco, Geografía y estadística del Estado de Oaxaca de Juárez (Mexico City: OWcina TipográWca de la Secretaría de Fomento, 1891); Censo General de la República Mexicana veriWcado el 20 de octubre de 1895 a cargo del Dr. Antonio PeñaWel (Mexico City: OWcina Tip. de la Secretaría de Fomento, 1899); División territorial de la República Mexicana formada con los datos del censo veriWcado el 28 de octubre de 1900: Estado de Oaxaca (Mexico City: Imprenta de la Secretaría de Fomento, 1906); División territorial de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos correspondiente al Censo de 1910: Estado de Oaxaca (Mexico City: OWcina Impresora de la Secretaría de Hacienda, 1918).

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Society: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender

were precisely the districts of PorWrian development. The remaining districts either had a slow growth rate, stagnated (Teposcolula), or exhibited negative growth (Villa Alta). During the PorWriato, as other regions of Mexico rapidly urbanized, Oaxaca witnessed moderate growth in its cities, as shown in table 27. The capital city grew from 26,366 inhabitants in 1877 to 38,011 in 1910, about a 50 percent increase, as did other state capitals such as Puebla, Jalapa, and San Luis Potosí. Mérida doubled, Chihuahua tripled, and Monterrey and Pachuca quintupled their populations during the same period, yet other capital cities, such as Guanajuato, Tlaxcala, and Tuxtla Gutiérrez, saw a decline.5

Table 27.

Growth of Population in Major Urban Centers in Oaxaca

Cities/towns Oaxaca – CV Juchitán – I Tehuantepec – I Tlaxiaco – M Huautla – Ca Zaachila – CV Ojitlán – P Tlacolula – CV Ejutla – CV San Agustín Loxicha – C Salina Cruz – I Miahuatlán – CV Zimatlán – CV Ixtaltepec – I Huajuapan – M Ixcatlán – P San Jerónimo – I Chalcatongo – M

1896

1900

1910

32,437 10,820 9,415 8,535 5,924 5,814 5,583 5,377 5,254 — — — — — — — — —

35,049 11,538 10,386 8,056 7,975 6,311 3,964 5,283 4,609 4,978 738 5,564 4,870 3,815 3,766 3,648 2,982 4,192

38,011 13,891 11,013 7,847 8,127 6,205 4,762 4,934 3,733 6,206 5,976 5,178 5,108 4,899 4,549 4,217 4,026 4,007

CV = Central Valleys I = Isthmus M = Mixteca P = Papaloapan Ca = Cañada C = Costa Sources: Anuario estadístico de la República Mexicana: 1896, Dirección General de Estadística a cargo del Dr. Antonio PeñaWel (Mexico City: Tipografía de la Secretaría de Fomento, 1897); División territorial de la República Mexicana formada con los datos del censo veriWcado el 28 de octubre de 1900: Estado de Oaxaca (Mexico City: Imprenta de la Secretaría de Fomento, 1906); División territorial de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos correspondiente al Censo de 1910: Estado de Oaxaca (Mexico City: OWcina Impresora de la Secretaría de Hacienda, 1918). 5. González Navarro, Estadísticas, 9.

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243

Two urban networks developed: Tehuantepec, Salina Cruz, Juchitán, San Jerónimo, and Ixtaltepec on the Isthmus, and Zaachila, Zimatlán, Tlacolula, Ejutla, Miahuatlán, Etla, and the city of Oaxaca in the Central Valleys. In addition, there were a few other modest urban centers dispersed throughout the state: Tlaxiaco, Huajuapan, and Chalcatongo in the Mixteca, Ojitlán and Ixcatlán in the Papaloapan region, Loxicha in the Costa, and Huautla in the Cañada. These towns in the regions of PorWrian development responded to the need for service sectors to support commerce and cash-crop agriculture. For example, Salina Cruz, a tiny Wshing village of 135 inhabitants in 1891, became a bustling port, terminus of the Tehuantepec National Railway, with 5,957 inhabitants in 1910. Huautla and San Agustín Loxicha, strategically located in the center of major coffee-producing regions, both doubled in population between 1883 and 1910, as did San Jerónimo (today Ciudad Ixtepec), the station on the Tehuantepec railroad where the Pan American Railway initiated its track.6 But despite urban growth, the majority of the population still lived in rural pueblos. For 1910, Moisés González Navarro calculated a rural population of 74.4 percent (the national average was 71.3 percent), with only 25.5 percent concentrated in towns and cities (as opposed to a national Wgure of 28.7 percent). According to Waterbury’s calculations, based on the same 1910 census, the rural population of Oaxaca was even greater: 86.7 percent.7 These data coincide with what we have seen so far: heavy emphasis on agriculture, both commercial and subsistence, combined with a modest growth of industry.

Class and Gender Liberal modernization not only transformed major rubrics of the economy and culture but also resulted in the reconWguration of society during the second half of the nineteenth century. New social classes appeared 6. Other urban centers were located in the Papaloapan, Ojitlán, and Ixcatlán; in the Cañada, Huautla de Jiménez; in Pochutla, San Agustín Loxicha; and Tlaxiaco, Chalcatongo, and Huajuapan de León in the Mixteca. Velasco, Geografía y estadística, 192; División territorial, 1910, 11, 45. In the Central Valleys and the Mixteca, the urban centers grew slowly or even decreased, as in the case of Ejutla, Tlaxiaco, and Tlacolula. The city of Oaxaca and the town of Chalcatongo in the Mixteca Alta grew as important commercial centers. See Martínez Gracida, Colección de cuadros sinópticos. 7. González Navarro, Estadísticas, 150; Waterbury, “Non-revolutionary Peasants,” 417.

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Society: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender

and existing ones were redeWned as the social structure became more complex. Greater differentiation emerged among the different regions of Mexico, within social classes, and within and between indigenous communities. This unequal development generated a more unequal distribution of wealth; the gap between the rich and the poor grew wider, as did that between urban and rural Mexico. In Oaxaca, too, society underwent a transformation. Various waves of immigrants, who may have come to make their fortune but remained to live in the state and intermarried with established elites, reconWgured the oligarchy. The oligarchy also made room for liberal elites, who climbed the political or military ladders, increasing their wealth along the way. The middle class also expanded with the growth of professional and service sectors in the cities and of rancheros and smallholders in the countryside. A new class of laborers worked in the mines and factories, on the railroads, and in ports. The number of jornaleros, the salaried working class in the rural areas in which women participated with almost 15 percent of the total, increased notably. By Marxist accounting, distinct social classes are deWned by their positions in the process of production. Marx infelicitously characterized the French peasant class as living in similar conditions, likening them to the “simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes.” While Marx did not take credit for discovering the existence of social classes, he did show that their “existence is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production.” Perhaps because the most obvious transformations taking place during the later nineteenth century were precisely in the realm of production, Marx and Engels’s approach to class has been quite inXuential in Mexican historiography. Class analysis has attracted scholars not only because it is historical and dynamic (dialectical) but also because it is structural, that is, tied to the development of economic and political structures. More recently, Marxists have understood this deWnition to include the unequal division not only of value and circulation of power but also of knowledge within society.8 Locally, regionally, and statewide, the dynamic process of the reconWguration of social classes in Oaxaca paralleled similar transformations throughout the nation. For example, indigenous comuneros emerged as 8. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, 124 and 136ff. (Letter to J. Wedemeyer, March 5, 1852). See Stavenhagen, Clases sociales, 28ff. and Kearney, “Introduction,” 5–15.

Society, “Decent” and Otherwise

245

small landowners, rancheros, sharecroppers, jornaleros, or mineworkers, liberal politicians became miners and hacendados, and Spanish immigrants prospered as Wnqueros or industrialists. As the nineteenth century progressed, a small minority beneWted enormously while others lost considerable resources. In order to understand the dynamics of Oaxacan society from within, this analysis needs to consider not only social class but also ethnicity, race, and gender. The present chapter focuses on class and gender while the following two deal with ethnicity and race. t h e c h a n g i n g p o s i t i o n o f wo m e n The Spanish legal system, which continued to dominate after Independence, permitted women to buy, sell, rent, inherit, administer, and bequeath property. They also had the right to enter into business partnerships. Widows and emancipated single women could manage their own affairs independently, while wives and daughters needed their husband or father’s consent (licencia) to act. However, the legal codes of 1870 and 1884 changed the situation signiWcantly when they recognized women as legal heads of households and widows were Wnally given the patria potestad (the powers inherent in legal guardianship) over children or wards. These codes also freed single women from patria potestad at age twenty-one.9 While women legally maintained the ownership of their inheritance, dowry, or arras (property given to the bride by the groom on marriage), their husbands generally exercised virtual control over their property, short of the right to sell it. Wives could challenge poor administration in court, but this was rare. Property acquired during marriage was jointly owned, and only bienes parafernales (clothes, jewels, or property received during the marriage through inheritance or donation) were under the wife’s sole control.10 Although elite women had historically been sizable property owners, despite considerable restrictions, women did gain further legal rights during this period. As noted earlier, modernity reconWgured gender roles. Liberals challenged “tradition-centered patriarchal authority” in public politics in the 9. A single woman could be emancipated by her father voluntarily or by court order if he was guilty of abusing her. Their emancipation was automatic if he was ill, guilty of incest, or banished from Mexico. Arrom, Women of Mexico City, 58 and “Changes in Mexican Family Law,” 305–17. 10. See Arrom, Women of Mexico City, 68–75.

246

Society: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender

hope of substituting “masculinities organized much more around technical rationality and calculation.” Nevertheless, explicit spatial relations deWned these gender roles, with women in the casa, the home or private sphere, and men in the calle, the street or public sphere. Throughout Latin America, women’s identity was inextricably tied to motherhood and symbols of nurturing, self-sacriWce, and moral superiority. The Catholic newspaper of the city of Oaxaca, La Voz de la Verdad, declared in 1910: “The domestic household is the source of all social virtues and in it the seeds of all great and heroic deeds are guarded as if it were a sanctuary. Each private home must be a reXection of society’s home; the states [of Mexico] are worth not more nor less than the sum of all the families of which they are composed.”11 A disciplined and moral family and home resulted in a well-run state. Yet despite these ideals of gender and morality espoused by PorWrian reformers as well as the Catholic Church, reality deWed dualistic models. Poor and working women always had to work in the calle, as did “bad” women like prostitutes and those who owned the majority of cantinas and pulquerías in the state capital. But precisely with the spread of capitalism, women in all social strata became more active in the economy, as we have seen, and in politics, as we shall see. In fact, 20 percent of the property owners of the city of Oaxaca in 1910 were female. During the PorWriato, the medical and legal professions Wnally permitted women to study and then practice. More women became teachers and worked in the service sectors. They continued to be a source of cheap labor for textile and other factories, but now on a much larger scale than ever before.12 An expanding economy demanded the inclusion of women in the work force much earlier than conventionally assumed, even as liberals praised women as guardians of the home. Women of all social classes were engaged in agricultural pursuits, not only as elite hacendadas but also as owners of small and medium-size tracts of land. In the wave of land speculation that hit the state, women bought up newly privatized lands. They appear in documents as communal landholders in villages protesting the loss of lands to private producers or 11. The Wrst quotations are Mary Connell’s, cited by Nugent and Alonso, “Multiple Selective Traditions,” 228; La Voz de la Verdad is cited by Overmyer-Velázquez, “Visions of the Emerald City,” 200. 12. Overmyer-Velázquez, “Visions of the Emerald City,” 57, 218; Towner, “Monopoly Capitalism,” Ramos, “Señoritas PorWrianas.”

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247

speculators. Women became recipients of parcels in the process of privatization of communal lands and they, too, put their names on petitions as terrazgueras, protesting abuses by landlords. Women and children picked Oaxaca’s growing coffee harvests. They, as well as men, were transported to the infamous tobacco plantations of Valle Nacional to work as slave labor.13 Their presence in industry and commerce also increased during this period as they labored in textile and cigarette factories and served as dependents in growing commercial ventures. The quantity, quality, and level of participation varied according to the unequal distribution of wealth. Elite women were owners of haciendas and Wncas, and speculators in privatization of communal lands. Their numbers were less impressive but their economic power was far greater than that of women of other social classes. It should not surprise us that the lower the social class, the more exploitive the economic situation. The campesinas of the Mixteca held the smaller parcels, while widows receiving communal lands were cordoned off into a particular area. They were excluded from political positions within the community (no woman signed any of the documents reviewed in this study as a village representative). As wage laborers, they earned half or less of what men earned for the same work. On the tobacco plantations, women lived the worst nightmare of PorWrian Mexico. The lower the social class of women, the more they were subjugated by the double yoke of economic inequality and patriarchy. Undoubtedly many women were conWned to the home, where the harsh labor of reproduction, cooking, cleaning, and raising children was not considered “work.” But recent studies have proved that women of all social classes were a signiWcant force in agriculture, industry, and commerce. Hence, we need to envision them on a dynamic continuum that permits differing and changing degrees of participation.

The Vallistocracia: Reshaping the Oaxacan Oligarchy The city of Oaxaca contained a small nucleus of interrelated family networks with roots in the colonial period and interests in commerce, haciendas, mines, industry, Wnance, and urban real estate. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, access to this circle was restricted and social 13. See Chassen-López, “‘Cheaper than Machines.’”

248

Society: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender

mobility was reserved for a limited few, increasingly foreigners, and often was gained through intermarriage. This oligarchy, which dominated the state capital and the Central Valleys region, had economic and political tentacles reaching out into the other regions of the state, especially the Sierra Juárez and the Mixteca, to neighboring states, and to the nation’s capital. Oaxacans from other regions refer to inhabitants of the Central Valleys as Vallistos (valley people). But given the aristocratic pretensions of the ruling elites of the Central Valleys, Oaxacan scholars have recently dubbed them the “Vallistocracia.”14 During the colonial period, Spanish and criollo merchants dominated the city of Oaxaca, obtaining fabulous proWts, above all from the cochineal trade but also from the cotton production and textiles of Jamiltepec and Villa Alta, respectively. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Spanish Echarri, Murguía, Larrazábal, Bonavía, Fagoaga, Villasante, Goytia, Guergué, Larrañaga, and Iturribarría families were important merchants. The Camacho, Mimiaga y Elorza, and Castillejos families were notable hacendados. The latter formed a poorer fraction of the elites, often unrelated to the merchants either by family or economic dealings, since landed estates were not often proWtable, and did not stay within one family for long. Six mayorazgos had been entailed in Oaxaca during the colonial period: Ramírez de Aguilar, Jáuregui Pinelo, Maldonado, Bohórquez, Lazo de la Vega, and Guenduláin.15 By the late nineteenth century, these holdings had been divided into smaller estates among various families. After Independence, the remaining Oaxacan colonial elites received an infusion of new, foreign blood, predominantly Spanish, approximately 14. See Portillo et al., Oaxaca. This work includes a study of the city, block by block, listing the owners of all real estate. The term Vallistocracia was coined by Víctor de la Cruz in “Razones de Juchitán,” although Víctor Raúl Martínez Vásquez elaborated the concept in Movimiento popular y política, 28ff. 15. See Hamnett, Politics and Trade, 3, and the glossary, 156ff., for a full list of families of the colonial oligarchy. See also Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes, 148. The Fagoaga, Camacho, Mimiaga, Larrazábal, Esperón, Bonavides, Candiani, Valverde, Gil, Bustamante, Ramírez de Aguilar, and Villasante families, among others, continued to enjoy economic power during the PorWriato, while others lost some of their former wealth and position. For example, Manuel María Mimiaga y Camacho had interests in various mines in Ocotlán and owned various houses and lots in the city of Oaxaca, the haciendas of El Vergel (Ejutla), El Rosario (Centro), San José Lagarzona (Ocotlán), and the coffee Wnca San Francisco Mil Aguas in 1910. He was federal deputy representing Zimatlán in 1902 and the central district in 1904. Southworth, OfWcial Directory of Mines and Estates, 221; AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; Portillo et al., Oaxaca; Chance, Race and Class (on textile production); Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 153ff.

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249

between the 1830s and 1880s. A second wave of foreigners arrived after 1890, many of them from the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. In addition, the Liberal Reform’s disentailment of church wealth and communal lands abetted the rise of a group of liberal politician-entrepreneurs. The merchants continued to be the dominant fraction of Oaxaca’s ruling elites in the nineteenth century. The blending of these diverse components, the old colonial families, Liberal politicians, and two waves of immigrants, led to the recomposition and modernization of the Vallistocracia by the eve of the new century.16 The Spaniards made up the most numerous group of immigrants of the Wrst nineteenth-century wave. Many of them have already appeared in previous chapters: Antonio and Manuel Allende (miners and hacendados), José Gómez Trápaga, José Trápaga, Luisa Trápaga Zorrilla, José and Juan Sáenz Trápaga (industrialists and hacendados), José, Manuel, and Nicolás Zorrilla (hacendados, industrialists, and Wnanciers), and Dámaso Gómez (merchant and hacendado in Jamiltepec). Frequently, one or two Spanish immigrants would settle in a region, and if prospects were good, promptly sent for relatives. For example, born in Santander, José Zorrilla Trápaga came to Mexico in 1846 at age seventeen at the invitation of his uncle, Juan Sáenz Trápaga, a merchant in Oaxaca. By 1897, when José died, José Zorrilla y Cía. owned various haciendas, the Vista Hermosa textile factory, an import-export Wrm that dealt in coffee, leather, and tobacco, and was also agent for the Banco Nacional de México. His son, José Zorrilla, inherited the factory, was president of the Bank of Oaxaca, a member of the executive board of the Cía. Cervecera de Oaxaca, stockholder in the Cía. Ferrocarril Agrícola y Urbano de Oaxaca, and served as both federal and local deputy on various occasions. In 1904 he was elected mayor of the city of Oaxaca. These avecindados arranged advantageous marital alliances with other groups while maintaining strong ties to Spain. José Zorrilla Trápaga married the wealthy Josefa Tejada. One son, José Zorrilla Tejada, married Consuelo Guergué, of that powerful family, and another son, Francisco, married Juana Zertuche, daughter of general and governor Albino Zertuche.17 Although there 16. Governor Miguel Castro’s Memoria Administrativa, 1873, included a list of foreign residents and permits us to distinguish between immigrants who arrived before that date and those who came after. See Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes, 176; Chance and Taylor, “Estate and Class,” 469. 17. Also included were Leopoldo and Ramón Cajiga (hacendados); Juan Ramón, Gregorio, and Miguel Cobo de la Peña (hacendados); José Antonio and Alejo Larrañaga

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has been no study on the inXuence of the Spanish community, it cannot be underestimated in the analysis of the PorWrian elites (or for presentday Oaxaca). By the 1870s, various English citizens also resided in Oaxaca. Constantino Rickards, a miner, and Juan and TeóWlo Innes, hacendados in Ejutla, had originally been cochineal merchants. Thomas Grandison founded the Xía textile factory in the Sierra Juárez and Benito Hampshire invested in land. Some Germans also arrived in the Wrst wave: Enrique Hinrichs, a merchant and hacendado, later became German vice-consul in Oaxaca. Various French citizens made their home in Oaxaca: Juan Baigts, the richest miner and hacendado in the state, and Francisco Audiffred, a merchant. Henry de Gyves, the French consul on the Isthmus, and his son Fernando, both owned haciendas. Thomas H. Woolrich, a Canadian, became a major merchant in Tehuantepec. The Italian contingent included Emilio Brachetti, Raymundo Manzano, Count of Manzano Trovamala, both hacendados, the Sodi family, descendants of engineer Carlos Sodi, and the wealthy Maqueo family, owners of the Haciendas Marquesanas and of a major commercial Wrm in Mexico City, Maqueo Hermanos.18 At the same time, the Oaxacan elites received another infusion of new blood from a group of aggressive politicians and soldiers from humble backgrounds. The triumph of the Liberal Reform and its nationalization of church and communal lands set the stage for the rise of this new sector of the Mexican bourgeoisie. Cognizant of new economic measures, (hacendados); Francisco Quijano (merchant); Fernando and Félix Solana (hacendados and merchants in Huajuapan). Memoria Administrativa, 1873; Oaxaca Herald, April 22, 1907; El Imparcial, Oct. 26, 1907; Belmar, Breve reseña histórica, 102; PO, Jan. 20, July 13, 1904, July 1 and 17, 1907. On the Zorrilla, Allende, and Maqueo families, see Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes, 150ff. and “Don José Zorrilla Trápaga,” 4ff. 18. Born in France, Baigts initially engaged in commerce but later became the administrator of the Hacienda of Yaxé in Ocotlán, which belonged to Juan Trápaga López. The mines of San Juan and La Escuadra in Taviche formed the basis of his immense fortune. He married Concepción Trápaga, daughter of Juan Trápaga, uniting these two families. He also owned, with Federico Zorrilla, the hydroelectric plant at San Agustín Etla and was a stockholder in the Cía. del Ferrocarril Agrícola y Urbano de Oaxaca. The Baigts family owned the following haciendas and ranches: Buenavista and La Chucuvica in Ocotlán; San Nicolás Quialana in Zimatlán; Alemán, Rancho Estanzuela, San Isidro, Rancho Naranjos, Rancho Narváez, San Isidro Catano, and Rancho San Nicolás in Etla. El Correo del Sur, July 5, 1910; El Imparcial, Oct. 26, 1907; AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; Oaxaca Progresista, Aug. 1910; Berry, “Ciudad de Oaxaca,” 58; Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 4:90; Brasseur, Viaje por el Istmo, 130. Esteban Chapital, Bernardo Berges, a hacendado, and Julio Liekens, a hacendado in the Isthmus, also numbered in the French contingent. On the Innes family, see Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes, 151.

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they were quick to take advantage for their personal enrichment. PorWrio Díaz and Ignacio Mejía, both generals and heroes of the War of French Intervention, acquired modern cash-crop Wncas and engaged in other various enterprises in railroads, mining, and industry. Likewise, two Serrano soldiers who rose through the ranks, Francisco Meixueiro and Fidencio Hernández, and the Serrano politician Castro, also increased their fortunes considerably during these troubled years. Miguel Castro emerged as the principal silver miner in Villa Alta in the Sierra Juárez at the same time he occupied various political positions, including the governorship.19 Those who had fought or supported the Liberal cause during the midnineteenth century derived great advantages from their policies: war in Mexico facilitated a social mobility much more restricted in peacetime. The extraordinary career of Juana Catarina Romero is a prime example. An illiterate twenty-year-old Zapotec cigarette vendor, she Wrst met the young Liberal captain, PorWrio Díaz, in 1858 in Tehuantepec during the War of the Reform. Oral tradition links them romantically, and Juana Cata, who never married, was purported to be Díaz’s one enduring love. While this cannot be proved, they did become lifelong friends. During the War of the Reform, the vivacious young Zapoteca sold her cigarettes to the soldiers stationed in the region, Liberals as well as Patricios (Conservative forces in Tehuantepec), and played cards and dice with them. She soon became an invaluable source of information for the Liberal army and one of the most formidable spies in Tehuantepec. Initial support from high-placed Liberals in Tehuantepec and Mexico City, along with her incredible business acumen, permitted her to increase her fortune. By the late 1890s she had emerged as the wealthiest and most powerful person, the cacica of Tehuantepec. As we have seen, she not only ran the most lucrative textile import Wrm in the region but also the Santa Teresa sugar mill.20 Although many of the immigrants from Spain, France, Italy, and Great Britain, who joined the ranks of the economic elites as avecindados, resided in Oaxaca by the 1870s, a second wave of foreigners arrived during 19. See Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes, 151. 20. Toledo Morales cited in Rojas Pétriz, “Una tehuana de historia,” 7ff.; Ríos V., Tehuantepec, 97; Covarrubias, Mexico South, 226; AGEPEO, 1895, Adjud., leg. 9, exp. 32; Krauze, Místico de la autoridad, 109–10; Villalobos, “Doña Juana C. Romero,” 2; Chassen [Chassen-López], “Juana Catarina Romero” and “Juana Cata: Empresaria.” See the description of the beautiful and strange young Indian woman said to be Juana Cata in Brasseur, Viaje por el Istmo, 159–60. Díaz does not mention her at all in his Memorias.

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the 1890s. While this wave had a considerable Spanish contingent, it was heavily North American and German, with a sprinkling of other nationalities. Attracted by PorWrian economic policies, this second group came to invest, but charmed by the beautiful valleys of Oaxaca and its delightful climate, many in both waves stayed to make Oaxaca their permanent home. Some of the sons of the immigrants studied professional careers, as in the case of the lawyers Constantino Rickards Jr. and Carlos Woolrich (son of Wrst wave immigrants), who maintained their elite status.21 Within the second wave, Germans went into mining, commerce, or beer brewing, but above all engaged in coffee production. As we have seen, Germans cashed in on Oaxacans’ failing Wncas in the 1895–97 economic crisis, purchasing them at rock-bottom prices. So it was that Leo von Brandestein, Martin Stekens, and Enrique Hoffman acquired their Wncas in Pochutla and Juquila. Two German and Austrian residents of Oaxaca were merchants and also vice-consuls: Alberto Holm for Portugal and Gustavo Stein (who succeeded Enrique Hinrichs) for Germany. Maximilian Reimers managed the largest hardware business in the state, owned by A. Philippe and Co.22 Numerous French citizens also arrived in the second wave: Luciano Laugier founded a soap factory; Gustavo and Luis G. Bellón and Paul Louis Raynard were merchants. Pablo Souberville owned the exclusive Hotel Francia, whose restaurant was favored by the local elites. The French engineer Félix Foex was hired to direct the Experimental Agricultural Station on the outskirts of the city of Oaxaca. The foreign population in Oaxaca, although small, had a signiWcant impact on society. The number of foreign-born residents grew considerably during the PorWriato, especially in the last decade: from 260 in 1878, to 814 in 1900, to 2,026 in 1910. The population in 1910 comprised 1,622 men and 404 women. This situation encouraged intermarriage with young women, with those of the elites if possible, which factored in as an important element of the reconWguration of the ruling class. The Spanish

21. William Trinker came from Great Britain to manage the Xía factory for the Grandisons and later went into banking. The North Americans were largely attracted by the mining boom and included Charles Hamilton, Myron Walker, Frank Leonard, Harold Elton, Ezra M. Lawton, and Charles Arthur, a dentist. Lawton and Arthur served as U.S. viceconsuls. Elton was put on trial and executed by the Carrancista government in Oaxaca as a Soberanista collaborator. 22. Spencer, “Soconusco,” 129, 133–34. This type of information comes from the various books published by Southworth and the Memorias of the different governors.

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contingent continued to predominate: in 1887 there were 294 Spaniards in Oaxaca but by 1910 this Wgure had reached 530. The distribution of the resident foreign population resident in 1910 is shown in table 28.23 Mexican economist Fernando Rosensweig characterized this process of elite formation throughout Mexico from the early nineteenth century on: “there were foreign residents, merchants, artisans and able mechanics, and even consular agents, who dared to found factories of textiles, cigarettes, paper, dinnerware, glass, explosives, and other products.” Those French, English, Spanish, and North American citizens contributed “decisively” to the creation of a capitalist mentality in Mexico. Many of these entrepreneurs did not bring savings from abroad but actually invested capital that had been accumulated internally by responding to the needs of Mexico’s domestic market. This group “can be clearly differentiated from the classic direct foreign investment, principally oriented toward the export sector and conceived of as a source of dividend for the country where the investment originated.”24 They become signiWcant components in the conWguration of the PorWrian bourgeoisie. Two major Wgures of the economic elites of Nuevo León were both immigrants: Patricio Milmo, an Irishman, and the Hernández brothers, Spaniards. Therefore, researchers must be careful to distinguish foreign from national capital. Foreign surnames cannot automatically be equated with foreign investment, for this would ignore the avecindados who stayed, intermarried,

Table 28.

Distribution by Nationality of the Foreign Population of Oaxaca, 1910

Germans Austro-Hungarians Arabs Cubans Chinese French Guatemalans Dutch

82 8 52 118 262 64 40 9

English North Americans Japanese Italians Portuguese Swiss Turks Total

128 499 10 42 7 11 87 2,026

Source: División territorial de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos correspondiente al Censo de 1910: Estado de Oaxaca (Mexico City: OWcina Impresora de la Secretaría de Hacienda, 1918).

23. González Navarro, Estadísticas, 34–35; División territorial, 1910, 9–10. 24. Rosenzweig, “Desarrollo económico,” 429.

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and emerged as fundamental factors in the development of the Mexican bourgeoisie.25 Like other Latin American bourgeoisies at the turn of the century, the Oaxacan elites did not divide into clearly delineated economic sectors, i.e., industrial, agrarian, mining, or Wnancial. Powerful families would make parallel investments in diverse sectors, as was the case with the Castro and Allende families, who invested in both mining and haciendas, or the Zorrilla family, with investments in industry, electrical power, banking, and haciendas.26 But merchants continued to be the dominant parties in Oaxaca’s ruling elites, although during the PorWriato they were compelled to share power with miners, Wnanciers, and investors in commercial agriculture. Clearly, more research is needed to understand this process in Oaxaca. The Vallistocracia believed, as did other elites throughout Mexico, that their nation lacked the necessary capital and technology to foster economic development. The list of investors in the La Natividad mine demonstrates how these groups combined forces, as it included members from the Esperón, Castro, Meixueiro, Dublán, Prado, Quijano, Cházari, Trápaga, Allende, Maqueo, Sodi, Fenochio, and García y Goytia families. The Oaxacan elites were anxious to associate with foreigners in myriad enterprises and even to establish advantageous marital alliances. Thus little evidence of nationalist tension, common in northern Mexico, has surfaced for Oaxaca. The linkage between foreign resident-investors and the Vallistocracia grew stronger as the PorWriato progressed and they mingled at social and sports functions. In July 1905 the marriage of lawyer Constantino Rickards Jr. and Adela Durán, daughter of General Juan Durán, was quite an affair. Joaquín Sandoval, general secretary of the state government, General Lorenzo García, chief of the military zone, attorney Jesús Acevedo, and German vice-consul Enrique Heinrichs served as witnesses for the legal ceremony.27 25. Cerutti, Burguesía y capitalismo en Monterrey, 231ff. and 145ff., and “Empresarios,” 73. 26. See Cassidy, “Haciendas and Pueblos,” 97–98; Southworth, OfWcial Directory of Mines and Estates, 221; AGEPEO, Feb. 1911, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; Holms, Directory, 311; Southworth, Minas de México; Portillo et al., Oaxaca; PO, Aug. 13, 1904; El Imparcial, July 14, 1902. 27. Of course only a few of these foreigners entered the ranks of the economic elites. González Navarro, Historia moderna de México; El PorWriato; Vida Social, 168; El Imparcial, July 17, 1905. In Mérida also, members of the elite also pooled their capital in joint stock companies; see Wells and Joseph, Summer of Discontent, 133.

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In addition, each clique of foreigners had its particular celebrations, to which it invited Oaxaca’s high society. The Spanish celebrated the Westas of Covadonga, traditionally organized by the consul Francisco Gómez Trápaga. The French colony fêted July 14, Bastille Day. In 1905, during this festivity, a serenade was held in the Jardín de la Constitución in order to collect funds to aid the victims of severe Xoods in Guanajuato. The Anglo-American colony organized frequent dances and dinners, often held in the Oaxaca’s beer gardens. Mrs. Hamer organized a church garden party in November 1907 for the North American community, with the objective of collecting funds to buy a lot for the construction of a Presbyterian Church. By 1909 a Methodist school with eighty pupils functioned in the city of Oaxaca.28 A symbol of the increasing importance of the Anglo-American community in Oaxaca was the publication, between 1906 and 1910, of a bilingual newspaper, the Oaxaca Herald. Mexico City’s inXuential English newspaper, the Mexican Herald, sent the personnel necessary to give its Oaxacan offspring its start. Representing itself as the only English newspaper published between Mexico City and Buenos Aires, the Oaxaca Herald inXuenced journalism in Oaxaca by initiating modern investigative reporting.29 The Anglo-American community in Oaxaca also introduced new sports, especially tennis and baseball. The Oaxaca Tennis Club (founded by José T. Wallace, the manager of a brewery) had its schedule published by El Correo del Sur so the public could attend. Two bowling alleys also opened, the Eden Saloon and Confectionary and the Toledo Bowling Alleys. Nevertheless, baseball was the most popular sport. Originally, North Americans formed teams to play among themselves, but Oaxacans quickly followed suit, so that the two nationalities faced each other on the diamond. Clubs had names like “Reforma,” “Ocotlán” (of the miners from that district), “XX” (Twentieth Century), and later “1910.” July 4 was always celebrated with games. Various foreign residents played for these clubs. So popular did baseball and tennis become that by October 1907 a sports society was organized, which later became the Country Club 28. El Imparcial, July 1 and 12, Aug. 31, 1907; La Unión, Nov. 24, 1907; El Correo del Sur, Dec. 28, 1909, July 1, 6, 1910. 29. Oaxaca Herald, April 22, 1907. It generally was eight pages long with six columns per page and cost 5 centavos. When I researched this study only three copies were available, but there is now a collection in the Periodical Library of the Universidad de Oaxaca.

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of Oaxaca. Various members of the elites bought shares in this organization, among them the Esteva, Wallace, Arthur, Zorrilla, and Franco families, exemplifying the unity of the members of the ruling elites, whether Oaxacan or foreign.30 The Vallistocracia did not fall short of other PorWrian elites in their desire to emulate French haute cuisine. On the eve of elections in June 1910, Governor Pimentel hosted a banquet at “El Edén” restaurant for seventy-two friends. The menu, as published in the press, included “Sauterne—Potage Printanie. Boeufs Eruillés avec truffes. Hors d’oeuvres— crepinettes de porc, purée avec pommes. Vino francés—Huachinango Madrilegne—Filets de Veau—Sauce Maderé—Punch a la Romaine—Asperges—Sauces Blanches—Champagne—Dindonneaux Rotes—Salades— Pudding Gabinet—Fruits de Saison—Café o Thé.”31 Surely missing from the repast were the Oaxacan delicacies, such as tlayudas (enormous tortillas), quesillo (local string cheese), tasajo, (salted beef), and mezcal that urban working classes and campesinos might serve. As the cultivation of the Wne arts was an integral part of the modernizers’ agenda, Governor Emilio Pimentel announced a plan to construct a modern theater. La Democracia gushed, “Given the notorious need to construct a theater in Oaxaca, that would be consonant with her level of culture, it [the plan] satisWes the indispensable aesthetic and hygienic requirements of buildings of its kind.” The “Luis Mier y Terán” Theater (today “Macedonio Alcalá”), an exquisite ediWce that still crowns the corner of Independencia and 5 de Mayo streets, would later serve as the site of many a gala affair. It was one of the Wrst projects announced by Pimentel after taking ofWce, but problems of Wnancing and construction delayed its opening until September 1909. This magniWcent inauguration was crowned by the presence of the Italian opera company, headed by the famous tenor Michele Sigaldi.32 30. El Correo del Sur, e.g., Nov. 5, 1909, Feb. 10, 1910; Oaxaca Herald, June 9, 1907; El Imparcial, May 26, 1905, and Oct. 8, 1907. Marcelino Muciño, a journalist from Puebla, was brought to Oaxaca to edit the Wrst sports magazine in the state, Score. Muciño soon became an important editor in Oaxaca, publishing inXuential papers such as El Correo del Sur (1909–11) and later El Avance (1911–13). Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 10–12. On the popularity of baseball during the PorWriato, see Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club, 17ff. 31. El Correo del Sur, June 21, 1910. 32. The board of directors read like the society page of local newspapers and demonstrated how the Vallistocracia had incorporated foreign residents into the board, among them William Trinker, Luis Bellón, and Juan Baigts. Democracia, Dec. 14, 1902. This company

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Although it had always had a hand in politics, the Vallistocracia often left the daily tasks of politics to a small sector of allies among uppermiddle-class professionals, lawyers, and doctors. PorWrio Díaz handpicked all the governors of Oaxaca from among his military cronies until 1902. When the president chose the elitist lawyer Emilio Pimentel to replace him, the Vallistocracia became more directly involved in local politics. Jacobo Grandison and Lauro Candiani33 served as deputies to the local congress, while Manuel María Mimiaga y Camacho became a federal deputy. The relations of the hegemonic Vallistocracia with other regional oligarchies of the state varied; usually, the nearer the region to the city of Oaxaca, the closer the relations of ruling elites. The regional elites of the Cañada maintained close ties with the Central Valleys, ties that were strengthened further with the inauguration of the Mexican Southern Railway. The Sierra Juárez was, perhaps, the region most intimately linked to the Central Valleys. Historically a center of Liberal political power, it depended on the valleys for its basic foodstuffs; its population held small private and communal landholdings with no haciendas at all. The elites owned mines but resided mainly in the city of Oaxaca (Allende and Castro families). They left political matters in the hands of the Serrano caudillos, Guillermo Meixueiro, Fidencio Hernández, and Federico Toro (a local cacique), whose rise in the Liberal ranks had facilitated the accumulation of economic power. The ruling powers in the Sierra were an integral part of the Vallistocracia.34 concluded its run with a presentation of Verdi’s Aida, Xoridly described by the local press: “the artiWcial illumination fused with the splendid light from the eyes of our most distinguished ladies; Xoral perfume mixed with breath coming from their perfumed carmine lips, the orchestra announced with sweet, lulling notes an impression of the agreeable moment that awaited” (El Correo del Sur, Sept. 11, 1909). 33. Jacobo L. Grandison, son of Thomas Grandison, inherited the Xía factory from his father. Jacobo also owned the coffee Wnca Esperanza in Pochutla and was president of the Compañía Petrolífera de Puerto Angel, S.A., stockholder in the Cía. del Ferrocarril Agrícola y Urbano de Oaxaca, and served as local deputy between 1907 and 1911. AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; PO, Nov. 5, 1904, July 17, 1907, July 14, 1909; El Imparcial, Oct. 26, 1907; Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 264; Prida, De la dictadura a la anarquía, 265–66. Colonel Lauro M. Candiani owned the Hacienda de la Soledad (also known as Hacienda de Crespo) in the Centro district and various houses and lots in the city of Oaxaca. He served as local deputy between 1903 and 1911. Southworth, OfWcial Directory of Mines and Estates, 220; AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; Holms, Directory, 311; Southworth, Minas de México; Portillo et al., Oaxaca; Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 264; PO, Aug. 6, 1904, July 5, 12, 1905, July 2, 17, 1907. 34. On the elites in the Cañada, see García, Sierra de Huautla, and in the Sierra Norte, Pérez García, Sierra Juárez, vols. 1 and 2.

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The oligarchy of the Mixteca, the Fagoaga, Pimentel, Vega, and Solana families was also closely connected to the ruling elites of the Central Valleys. The powerful Esperón family, the region’s major sugar producers, resided in the state capital. Nonetheless, the elites of Tlaxiaco and Huajuapan, the region’s two chief economic centers, also had important linkages to the neighboring Mixteca regions in Puebla and Guerrero, and to the cities of Puebla and Mexico.35 This permitted them to enjoy more autonomy than their counterparts in the Sierra Juárez. The elites of the Costa were also intimately tied, socially and economically, to the Vallistocracia. Certainly this was the case for the coffee elites of Pochutla and Juquila and the wealthy Gómez and del Valle families of Jamiltepec. Dámaso Gómez, a Spanish immigrant, controlled the largest hacienda, numerous ranches, and, by 1902, more cattle than anyone else in the ranching district of Jamiltepec. These elite families frequently preferred to live off their wealth in the city of Oaxaca or Mexico City rather than on the Costa, intermarrying with each other and the oligarchy from the state capital.36 The powerful tobacco oligarchy of the Papaloapan region, which had a stranglehold on economics and politics of the district, was geographically isolated from the state capital by the imposing peaks of the Sierra Madre. As we have seen, this tobacco elite, many of whom were Spaniards, Cubans, and Canary Islanders, was linked to the banking and merchant interests of Córdoba and the port of Veracruz. Although a number of the haciendas were run by foreign Wrms and merchant houses of Veracruz, many individual hacendados lived on their estates. Surprisingly, no town in the region was refurbished to display the district’s enormous prosperity, as in the case of Tlaxiaco or Tehuantepec. Owners preferred 35. On the Spanish elites of the Mixteca during the colonial period, see Romero Frizzi, Economía y vida, and Pastor, Campesinos y reformas; on Tlaxiaco during the PorWriato, see Méndez Aquino, Historia de Tlaxiaco (Mixteca), 226ff. 36. In 1892 Gómez, a forty-eight-year-old rancher and cotton producer, owned property worth $200,000. Cosme Del Valle was the second richest man in the district with property in Pinotepa worth $100,000 in 1892. The Spanish presence in the region dated from the colonial period, when forty Spanish families settled there and started cotton and cattle production. Tibón, Pinotepa Nacional, 19; AGEPEO, Aug. 1902–Feb. 1903, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, Centro and Padrón Comercial, 1892, in Gobernación, 1831–98, Caja suelta. See the social pages of El Correo del Sur and El Avance, 1909–13. Eleazar del Valle and Alfredo del Valle, sons of Cosme del Valle and María de Jesus Parada, married Flora and Josefa Gómez, respectively, daughters of Dámaso Gómez and Lorenza Sánchez. I am grateful to Francisco José Ruiz Cervantes for this information.

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to travel frequently to the port of Veracruz and Mexico City to enjoy life’s luxuries. Nevertheless, locals still tell anecdotes about Cándido Fernández, the owner of San Cristóbal Wnca. Supposedly, in order to Xaunt his wealth, he asked permission from PorWrio Díaz to tile the main hallway of his house with gold pesos. Díaz replied that no one had the right to tread on the national emblem of Mexico but that he might lay the gold pesos sideways. That of course would have consumed far more pesos, and Fernández desisted.37 This regional oligarchy maintained political ties to the state government in the city of Oaxaca and kept the local politicians and police of Tuxtepec conveniently in their pockets. Some of them also knew PorWrio Díaz personally, since after his failed Rebellion of La Noria in 1871 he had retired to work his own Wnca, “La Candelaria,” in Tlacotalpan, Veracruz, on the Papaloapan River, close to Tuxtepec. An important source of taxation for the state government, the administration in the state capital usually considered it in its best interest to maintain positive relations with the Tuxtepecanos.38 Although the Vallistocracia clearly dominated the oligarchies of the Sierra Juárez, the Cañada, the Mixteca, and the Costa, and maintained relatively good relations with that of Tuxtepec, interaction with the ruling elites of the Isthmus was historically tense. In addition, relations between the inhabitants of its two major cities, the Liberals of Juchitán and the Conservatives of Tehuantepec, were also marked by conXict. The Isthmus had also absorbed various immigrants of Oaxaca’s Wrst and second waves. Its strategic location as the site of a future interoceanic nexus, Wnally realized in the Tehuantepec National Railway, enhanced its political and 37. This story and the following one were told to me repeatedly during my research and reiterated by Bartolo Avendaño. Cándido Fernández had a run-in with the law from which even Díaz could not save him. A U.S. citizen turned up in a group of contratas and died there. Turner says it was because, dying from starvation, the American stole the entrails of a steer and ate them raw. The U.S. embassy in Mexico City investigated the case and took Cándido Fernández to court. The body was exhumed, and in order to get out of jail, Fernández had to sacriWce his fortune. For a short version, see Turner, Barbarous Mexico, 75. In Tuxtepec, they say Fernández died a beggar in Córdoba, Veracruz. A number of people identiWed a poor woman, who sat near the marketplace everyday, as Fernández’s daughter, but she refused to speak with me. 38. According to García Hernández, thirty haciendas dominated the district in 1910, the economic base of the “emergent” agrarian bourgeoisie of the region. He names the Jiménez, Bravo, Ahuja, Cué, Prats, Marín, Pérez, Moreno, and Plata families in particular, who were able to privatize the best lands under the desamortization laws (Tuxtepec ante la historia, 74). Prats de Herrera, interview; Ruiz, interview.

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economic importance for national as well as international interests and security. Since the colonial period, the Isthmus had developed a vigorous agricultural and commercial economy. The Istmeños controlled much of their own export economy, although the merchant elites of the city of Oaxaca were always seeking to expand their presence in the region. This led to conXict and a strong desire among many Istmeños to become independent of Vallistocrat tutelage. They had actually done so, brieXy, in the early 1820s and for two years under the last (extremely conservative) regime of Santa Anna. After this experience, separatism surfaced in sporadic support for the creation of a new state of the Isthmus, which would include territory from the states of both Veracruz and Oaxaca. Thus the Istmeños were the only elites to challenge the Vallistocracia’s control. While the merchant and landowning families of the region maintained connections in the state capital and in Mexico City, separatist sympathies lay just beneath the surface.39 The colony of Oaxacans that resided in Mexico City organized an association that functioned as an inXuential interest group in the nation’s capital. This group, the Oaxacan Fraternal Society, went en masse each year to congratulate the president on his birthday, September 15. Félix Díaz (the president’s nephew) served as president in 1902 and Fidencio Hernández (son of the deceased caudillo of the Sierra Juárez) served as secretary. Numerous Oaxacans belonged to the society while they resided in Mexico City, often working in some ofWcial capacity. For example, in December 1907 the association elected Benito Juárez Maza as president, Félix Díaz as Wrst vice president, Miguel Bolaños Cacho as second vice president, Juan Dublán as treasurer, and, as honorary president and vice presidents, PorWrio Díaz, Ignacio Mariscal, and Félix Romero, respectively.40 Curiously, this organization brought together enemies such 39. Héctor Zarauz López believes the confrontation between the elites of Juchitán and the Vallistocracia was a “constant” of the “complex Isthmian politics.” He sees Juchitecan separatism as a manifestation of the desire for democratization and for local autonomy (PorWriato, 194–95). 40. Manuel Olivera Toro, Miguel Bolaños Cacho, Cristóbal C. Chapital, Esteban Maqueo Castellanos, José María Castellanos, Juan Dublán, Ignacio Canseco, Constancio Peña Idiáquez, Manuel San Juan, Demetrio Sodi, Luis López Masse, Benjamín Bolaños, Francisco Belmar, and Manuel Brioso y Candiani were members of both the PorWrian administrative elite and the Sociedad Fraternal Oaxaqueña, which was almost a Masonic order. El Imparcial, Sept. 10, 1902, April 3, 1905, and Dec. 19, 1907.

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as Benito Juárez Maza and Félix Díaz, and Miguel Bolaños Cacho and Fidencio Hernández, to further the political interests of the state.

The Upper Middle Class: The ICA Elite Although a small group of middle-class professionals had launched the nineteenth-century Liberal Reform, industrialization, urbanization, and commercialization resulted in an increase in the size and strength of the urban and rural middle sectors in Mexico. In Oaxaca these middle sectors can be divided into two strata: the upper middle class, a homogeneous group of professionals, above all doctors and lawyers, and the lower middle class, more heterogeneous, composed of teachers, bureaucrats, small merchants, employees, poorer lawyers, small landowners, administrators, overseers, and ranchers. A small group of professionals, located primarily in the city of Oaxaca or in political posts throughout the state as district judges or jefes políticos, composed the upper middle class. This group, which in large part supported itself through bureaucratic positions, depended heavily on the Vallistocracia for patronage. The role of Oaxaca’s Wrst college provides the key to understanding this sector. One of the earliest centers of secular and liberal learning founded in Mexico after Independence, the Instituto de Ciencias y Artes (ICA) opened its doors on January 8, 1827.41 Other important Institutes of Science and Art had been founded in Toluca and Zacatecas, but Oaxaca’s was the most inXuential in nineteenthcentury Mexico. Established as an alternative to the Seminario Conciliar de Santa Cruz, the local seminary in the city of Oaxaca, the ICA became a major center of higher education for southern Mexico. The emergent state required the formation of leaders schooled in secular studies, in political economy as opposed to theology. Students in early nineteenth-century Oaxaca, among them Benito Juárez, Marcos Pérez, and later PorWrio Díaz, began their education at the seminary and then transferred to the ICA. The ICA’s Wrst generations, which in addition to Juárez and Díaz included Ignacio Mejía, 41. Basilio Rojas referred to them as the higher middle class (clase media superior). Rojas, interview. Fray Francisco Aparicio served as the ICA’s Wrst director, following in the tradition of liberal clerics of the Independence movement. Silva y Escobar, Instituto de Ciencias y Artes, 21.

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Ignacio Mariscal, Manuel Dublán, Matías Romero, Justo Benítez, José Esperón, and Félix Romero, became presidents, cabinet ministers, federal deputies, governors, and men of letters. Juárez, Dublán, Félix Romero, and Esperón also went on to serve as directors of the Institute.42 The Wrst generation to graduate during the PorWriato also provided Mexico with a brilliant group of leaders. Almost all lawyers, they became extremely inXuential in government and society and included Rosendo Pineda (Juchitecan deputy, founder of the “CientíWcos”), Emilio Pimentel (founder of the CientíWco group and governor of Oaxaca), Rafael Pimentel (brother of Emilio and governor of Chiapas), Rafael Reyes Spíndola (founder of modern journalism in Mexico, of the semiofWcial PorWrista newspaper El Imparcial), Eutimio Cervantes (secretary of government to Governor Martín González and sometime personal lawyer of PorWrio Díaz), Aurelio Valdivieso (senator from Oaxaca and director of the ICA), and Emilio Rabasa (governor of Chiapas, judge, and historian). Rabasa had been born in Chiapas, a state whose elites were accustomed to sending their sons to study at Oaxaca’s ICA.43 By 1902 students had a choice of completing high school preparatory studies at the ICA or taking the shorter courses on commerce, pharmacy, obstetrics, instrumentalism, telegraphy, and mineral assay. After completing high school, they could pursue one of two university careers: law or medicine. The structure of the ICA and its curriculum went through various reforms during the nineteenth century. An 1885 decree, formulated by Emilio Rabasa, Emilio Pimentel, and Dr. José Antonio Alvarez, instituted a new modernizing and “scientiWc” curriculum in accord with the Positivist philosophy in vogue in Mexico at the time.44 During the Wrst decade of the twentieth century, the institute continued to enjoy its reputation as educator of the elites of southern Mexico. 42. Pardo, Breve estudio, 11–12. Iturribarría attempted to explain this phenomenon, in which one provincial school formed so many important politicians in a short period of time, in Generación oaxaqueña. 43. Professor Fidel López Carrasco called the Wrst generation of the ICA to graduate during the PorWriato the Siete Sabios (the seven wise men), borrowing the term from the nickname of the later famous generation of Vicente Lombardo Toledano and Manuel Gómez Morín in Mexico City. López Carrasco, interview. Sons of the powerful Moguel and Corzo families of Chiapas also studied at the ICA. 44. See Memoria Administrativa, 1902. The object was to “attain a complete education and the best preparation for the necessities of practical life, with the study of science, and according to the order of intellectual development achieved by the age and progress of intellectual culture” (Pardo, Breve estudio, 15).

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Universities in the United States accepted its preparatory diploma as the equivalent of a U.S. high school education, permitting sons of the elites (especially those of the foreign community) to continue their education north of the border. Women, by contrast, were excluded from the ICA elite, even though women in Mexico City had begun to enter professional careers. Only in the Normal School for Women was a female intellectual presence felt, and this school catered primarily to middle-class women.45 An ICA degree greatly improved one’s chances of securing a position in the PorWrian political apparatus, and a number of graduates living in the city of Oaxaca also taught at the institute, which was considered an honor. Joaquín Sandoval, who studied law at the ICA with Rosendo Pineda and Emilio Pimentel, later served as judge in the districts of Coixtlahuaca, Teposcolula, and Cosamaloapan (Veracruz), as district judge for fourteen years in Puebla, as deputy to the federal Congress, and as magistrate on the state Supreme Court. In 1902 Pimentel appointed him secretary of government, a post he held until 1911, frequently functioning as interim governor during Pimentel’s absences.46 The upper middle class was small indeed. In 1906 twenty-eight lawyers, thirty-eight medical doctors, and sixty-Wve clergymen practiced in the city of Oaxaca. Three hundred students were registered at the ICA and half that number at the seminary. The total student body of the two normal schools, one for men and the other for women, did not exceed one hundred students. Even so, by the Wrst decade of the twentieth century, as population increased, social and political mobility became more limited. Diminishing opportunities sent a number of young lawyers who graduated from the ICA in the Wnal decade of General Díaz’s tenure into the liberal opposition.47 The same system that encouraged the modernization 45. La Unión, Nov. 24, 1907. 46. During the Pimentel administration, Joaquín Atristáin, oWcial mayor (similar to lieutenant governor), taught law. In the medical school, Dr. Aurelio Valdivieso (senator), Dr. Ramón Pardo (director of the ICA), and Dr. Fernando Sologuren (also a part-time archaeologist) lectured. Other professionals, such as Rodolfo Franco, an engineer, Francisco Salazar, historian and state treasurer, Dr. Alberto Carriedo, a well-known writer, and Dr. Gildardo Gómez (municipal president of the city of Oaxaca), taught classes at the institute’s high school. Memoria Administrativa, 1907, Instrucción Pública; ABR, Informe del Sr. Alfonso Gómez Zorrilla. 47. Cited in Ruiz Cervantes, “Situaciones culturales en Oaxaca,” 94. Heliodoro Díaz Quintas was named a judge in Etla and Constantino Chapital became alternate federal deputy and mayor of Oaxaca, Castañeda Guzmán, interview; PO, June 4, 1902; El Imparcial, July 14, 1902.

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of Mexico with its concomitant growth of the middle sectors now deprived these sectors of bureaucratic positions and a political voice.

Lower-Middle Sectors: The Rise of the Rancheros The recent regional history of Mexico has produced an increasingly sophisticated analysis of urban and rural middle sectors, composed of teachers, small merchants, bureaucrats, private salaried employees, middling policemen and military ofWcials, small landholders, and ranchers. In particular, revisionist historians have reassessed the signiWcance of the ranchero. Comparing his research on northern Hidalgo with case studies from other parts of Mexico, Frans Schryer estimated that these rancheros might have controlled almost one-third of its population and its arable land by the close of the PorWriato. Nevertheless, due to the ranchero’s low status and “the relatively small size of the estates owned by even the wealthier rancheros in comparison to the huge haciendas, this rural class was socially almost invisible to those revolutionaries who came from urban areas and to the intelligentsia who formulated the ideologies of the Mexican Revolution.” The growing economic importance of rancheros, reevaluated in states such as Guerrero, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, and Sonora, is seen here in the regions of PorWrian development, particularly in Tuxtepec, Jamiltepec, Juchitán, and Pochutla.48 As we shall see in Chapter 7, a ranchero of Juchitán, Gregorio Meléndez, captained the Juchitecos during the isthmian wars in defense of their communal rights and customs. In the case of the ranching district of Jamiltepec, middle-class merchants and ranchers, such as the Baños, Pérez, and Carmona families of Pinotepa, wielded considerable economic and political power, while they sought more local autonomy. María Aguirre de Pérez owned a large commercial establishment in Pinotepa and turned the communal lands she had privatized lands in Tlacamama into ranchos.49 48. See Schryer, Rancheros of PisaXores; Jacobs, Ranchero Revolt; Aguilar Camín, Frontera nómada; Rendón Garcini, Prosperato; Buve, Movimiento revolucionario en Tlaxcala; González, Pueblo en vilo. In Schryer’s words, “the development of capitalist agriculture in rural Mexico and the accompanying changes in land tenure gave rise to a complex social structure, characterized by a new class of rich peasants, or small, landowning commercial farmers, generally referred to as rancheros” Schryer, “Sierra de Jacala,” 166. 49. See Chassen-López, “Maderismo or Mixtec Empire?”

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The history of Sebastián Ortiz in the Papaloapan region provides an excellent example of lower-middle-class development in the regions of PorWrian development. Born in 1882 to Chinantec peasants in San Lucas Ojitlán, Tuxtepec, Ortiz began school in his hometown but then moved to Cuicatlán to complete his primary education. Returning to Ojitlán, he went to work in the Welds alongside his parents and later became a small merchant and rancher-farmer. Between 1907 and 1909 he also taught school in his store, charging each of his seventy-Wve students 35 centavos a month for classes. By 1907 he had become afWliated with the opposition Mexican Liberal Party. In 1910 he joined the Antireeleccionists and later led the Wrst Maderista rebellion in the state of Oaxaca.50 The lower middle class encompassed both urban and rural middling and small merchants. Many of them arose from the foreign population, particularly Spaniards, Chinese, and Turcos. Unfortunately, there is very little data on these groups; the Spanish usually worked as grocers, bakers, and pawnshop keepers. Immigrants from the Ottoman Empire, consisting mainly of Lebanese and Syrians, were lumped all together as “Turcos” (a denomination common throughout Latin America). They became small merchants, often traveling salesmen, centering their activities in the isthmian city of Juchitán.51 Numerous immigrants were brought in as cheap labor, as in the case of Chinese laborers for the coffee Wncas of Pochutla and the construction of the Tehuantepec National Railway. None of these immigrants received the warm welcome accorded Europeans. By 1903 there were 175 Chinese in the state engaged in commerce as small shopkeepers or working as cooks, launderers, gardeners, and wage laborers. They were located mainly in the isthmian districts: eighty-one in Juchitán and sixty-six in 50. With the Revolution, he was appointed jefe político, Wrst of Cuicatlán and later of Tuxtepec. When the conservative Bolaños Cacho became governor in 1912, Ortiz was dismissed from his post and was executed in 1914 in Cuicatlán by order of this governor. Breve reseña de la vida de Sebastián Ortiz, mimeograph provided by Alberto Ortiz during his interview of July 1983. I deeply appreciate Mr. Ortiz’s help and that of Mrs. Eva Ortiz in a separate interview on July 23, 1983. Alberto and Eva were both children of Sebastián Ortiz. AGN, Gobernación, Sección 1a, 1907, Tranquilidad Pública, Revoltosos Magonistas, caja 3, exp. 1. I am grateful to historian and AGN archivist Manuel Herrera for locating this invaluable Wle for me. Also see AGEPEO, June 1911, Gob., Correspondencia, V.D. 51. González Navarro, Historia moderna de México: El PorWriato; Vida Social, 156. No studies have appeared on the “Turcos” of Oaxaca, but their descendants are still inXuential on the Isthmus, e.g., the Musalem family of Juchitán. On the Lebanese immigrant experience in Mexico, see Carlos Martínez Assad’s moving novel, En el verano, la tierra.

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Tehuantepec. In Ocotlán there were six and in San Jerónomo Taviche two Chinese dedicated to “culinary arts.” In the Centro district, three Chinese owned the Hotel “Quincogley.”52 Although they made up the major intellectual component of the lower middle class, teachers earned very low salaries (about a peso a day), a precarious situation with little hope of advancement. Aware of widespread discrimination and injustice, many remained staunch liberals and later joined the opposition to the dictatorship, as in the case of Sebastián Ortiz. In order to better their situation, the teachers in the city of Oaxaca formed a mutual society led by Juan Sánchez, a lawyer-teacher and steadfast dissident who earned a meager living as administrative secretary of the ICA. Sánchez Wrst studied at the normal school and then struggled for many years to complete his law degree. Because of his humble background and his protracted legal studies, he was ridiculed by the lawyers of the upper middle class. He participated in the opposition to the dictatorship and later became the president of the Antirreeleccionist Party of Oaxaca in 1909. Committed to the improvement of conditions for the mass of the population, Sánchez fought for social justice and often defended the exploited laborers and campesinos (as he did in Usila; see Chapter 2) in court.53 It was precisely from the ranks of the Oaxacan lower middle classes that the most dedicated members of the radical political opposition arose. 52. A petition from a “Commission Charged with the Study of Asiatic Immigration in Mexico City” inquired about the number of Chinese and Japanese in the state, and about whether there was any interest on the part of agriculturalists or industrialists in employing them. Only Ocotlán (suggested importation of 500), Juchitán (300), and Putla and Atoyaquillo in Tlaxiaco (500 and 800) showed any interest. The jefe político of Pochutla reported eight Chinese residents in Pochutla and Pluma Hidalgo who were engaged in commerce and wrote: “I inform you that generally the Asiatic race does not arouse sympathy in these towns, perhaps due to exaggerated reports which circulate with respect to their vices and low competence in agriculture.” AGEPEO, Nov. 1903, Gob., Movimientos de Población, Centro. 53. See Ruiz, Great Rebellion, 53; Cockcroft, “Maestro de primaria.” Sánchez produced a short book, Vida literaria de Juárez, which included unknown ofWcial documents of this leader’s life. Published by the Masonic lodges of the city of Oaxaca, it was distributed gratis to laborers at the celebration of the anniversary of Juárez’s death on July 18, 1905. El Avance, April 27, 1911; La Unión, June 27, 1908. When the radical sectors supported his candidacy for the governorship in the difWcult 1912 election, the conservatives published a newspaper entitled Juan Tabla (“John Woodhead,” an allusion to the long amount of time it took him to get his law degree at the ICA), with the sole object of ridiculing him. Belmar, Breve reseña histórica, 106; Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana en Oaxaca, 17–18. See also Juan Tabla; El Bien Público, Aug. 1, 1905.

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Their economic situation and their education helped them see that this regime’s policies did not favor their economic and political futures. Thus teachers, shopkeepers, rancheros, and artisans joined opposition organizations, together with a group of disaffected professionals.

Artisans and Laborers Artisans and laborers, located mainly in the state capital, regional cities, railroad depots, and mines, composed part of the working classes of the state. Oaxaca has a long tradition of indigenous artisans, and many villages specialize in a particular item produced in the homes, such as wool sarapes and rugs in Teotitlán del Valle, black ceramics in Coyotepec, and machetes in Pinotepa Nacional. In addition, as we saw in Chapter 4, although there were 11,605 textile workers in 1910, all but 570 of them worked not in factories but in small cottage industries or as individual producers.54 Indigenous wool and cotton weaving was widespread and impeded the development of an internal market so necessary as a stimulus to the textile industry. The salaried working class of Mexico, composed of laborers in textile, beer, shoe, and paper factories, miners, and railroad and port workers, emerged as a new social class during the PorWriato. Institutions reported 570 textile and 400 shoe-factory workers in Oaxaca at the turn of the century. While the working class made up 15 percent of the economically active population in Mexico in 1910, this percentage is too high for an agricultural state such as Oaxaca. Nonetheless, the numbers of laborers in industry, commerce, and transportation probably reached its high in early 1907, before the economic crisis.55 Living conditions and wages varied widely. Peons on the Mimiaga family’s Hacienda de San José were obligated to work in both the mines and the Welds, but for the former work they received a higher wage. As the jefe político reported in the passage that opens this chapter, in the Xía textile factory in the Sierra Juárez, the possibility of returning to a parcel of land gave workers an excellent bargaining position and contributed to the continual increase in wages and frequent changes of 54. González Navarro, Huelgas textiles, 229. 55. Rosenzweig, “Desarrollo económico,” 438. For example, as we saw in Chapter 4, while mine workers numbered 5,155 in 1906, by 1910 their numbers had dwindled to 2,032.

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occupation.56 This advantage, coupled with the extreme geographical dispersion in so rugged a state as Oaxaca, made union organization particularly difWcult, since the ownership of a piece of land afforded many an alternative occupation to fall back on. Only one step away from their campesino origins, workers did not see the beneWt of unions that might improve their conditions. In contrast, mutual societies characterized artisans’ social organization in Oaxaca. The Sociedad de Unión y Protección Mutua de Empleados (Union and Mutual Protection Society of Employees), founded in 1894 as a multiclass organization in which managers and administrators also participated, is still in existence today. Tereso Villasante, the wealthy merchant, was vice president in 1904, an indication of the cooperation between workers and management. In August 1872 Francisco Vasconcelos brought together more than three hundred workers and artisans of the city to organize a mutual aid society. By 1880 this more class-based Artisans’ Society had set up headquarters in the former Church of Santa Catarina. It functioned throughout the PorWriato and organized various expositions of its handiwork. Miguel and Rafael Cuevas Paz owned a carpentry shop in the state capital. Both brothers were members of the executive committee of the mutual society and Miguel was elected secretary in 1910. By the last decade of the PorWriato, many members of the Artisans’ Society had moved into the opposition.57 Artisans (water carriers, carpenters, hat makers, deliverymen, and others, even domestic servants) all had to register with a gremio (guild) by law and hand over 10 percent of their monthly income to that association. They were required to follow a stringent code of conduct, set out by the municipal government, that “guaranteed the moralization” of the capital’s laboring class. As Mark Overmyer-Velázquez has noted, these 56. AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D. 57. PO, June 25, 1904; El Imparcial, Dec. 12, 1907; AGEPEO, Feb. 1911, Gob., Asociaciones Políticas y Sociales, Centro. Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 21. By January 1911 the employees of local groceries had petitioned the governor and the local chamber of commerce to intervene in order to establish rest on Sundays, since the seventh day of rest had been conceded to the clothing store employees. It is unclear whether this petition was supported by the Mutualist Society. Vasconcelos (grandfather of future governor Eduardo Vasconcelos) was later elected municipal president of the city of Oaxaca. Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 4:112–14; El Avance, Jan. 1, 1911. Most of the notes in this study that cite El Avance for 1911 are taken from Basilio Rojas’s Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, although I did get to see some original editions of this paper. See also La Unión, Sept. 1, 1907.

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“registries also provided a medium through which the government could reinforce its rigid class- and race-based notions of modernity.”58 The Catholic Church wielded an enormous ideological and social inXuence in Oaxaca during the PorWriato, and its roots sank deep into all social sectors. More than a million Roman Catholics frequented 1,340 churches in 1910, with an average of 774 parishioners per church, which was far fewer than the national average of 1,211; only the states of México and Puebla boasted more churches than Oaxaca. The Wrst Society of Catholic Workers in the city of Oaxaca was founded as early as 1885. According to its statutes, its objective was “the moralization of the working class through Christian education, the founding of Catholic schools which teach children the same lessons, and the formation of a common fund for associates to receive assistance in times of necessity and sorrow.”59 Usually directed by members of the elites, especially professionals, these societies took a paternalistic attitude toward their working-class members. In his Wrst annual report, Dr. Fernando Sologuren, president of the society in 1886, condemned the “atheistic education” espoused by the Mexican government. He believed that Catholic Worker societies needed to “defend the bulwarks which must be erected against the declared enemies of the Church. What are these bulwarks? Catholic education, Christian doctrine for children and the moralization of workers.”60 Thus, once again, the Church went on the offensive against liberalism in order to win over the growing laboring class. In the following years interest in these circles waned and membership decreased. In 1905, as union organization expanded throughout Mexico, the archbishop of Oaxaca, Monseñor Eulogio Gillow, urged the revival of workers’ circles. Under the threat posed by anarcho-syndicalism and socialism, Catholicism’s new offensive proved quite successful. The new Catholic Workers Circle of Oaxaca, founded in 1905, functioned out of 58. Overmyer-Velázquez, “Visions of the Emerald City,” 164–64. 59. The exact population was 1,036,740 persons. González Navarro, Estadísticas, 13; Garner, Revolución en la provincia, 30. When Dr. Manuel de Esesarte, a Liberal mayor, tried to remove the Virgin of the Soledad from her niche overlooking the city street in front of the La Soledad Church, the public reaction was so vehement that his political career never recovered. Much of the information on the Catholic Workers Circles was supplied by Luis Castañeda Guzmán in various interviews and through materials he generously lent to me. see Estatutos de la Sociedad de Obreros Católicos, 3. 60. Memoria de Solemne Asamblea, 7–8.

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the Carmen Alto Convent. Members were mainly artisans and employees but included some factory and transportation workers. Gillow spared no cost to equip the convent for this purpose. It had large halls illuminated by electric lights that housed billiard tables, two bowling alleys, and a gymnasium. He even organized the “Gillow” baseball team. On Sundays he gave lectures. He also initiated a savings association, giving the workers’ circles bonds from the mortgage bank for $5,000.61 The 1907 regulations stipulated that the Catholic Workers Circle be formed of artisans, farmers, and industrialists, and that those outside these professions could be honorary members and protectors. Its slogan was “God, Morality, Work, and Union,” and Saint Joseph and the Virgin of Guadalupe were its patron saints. Its objectives were similar to those of the original workers’ circles. Members were required to fulWll their religious duties in general and to ensure that no member of their families read “bad literature,” profaned the holy days, engaged in forbidden games, or frequented cantinas. By 1907 the circles had two thousand members. On Sundays as many as four hundred workers visited the Carmen Alto Convent in order to use its gymnasium, baths, and library. By 1910 membership had fallen to 1,781, of which only a third were active at meetings.62 Archbishop Gillow’s usually successful intervention to organize these circles failed when he visited Vista Hermosa in 1906. He had been invited by management because “socialist” (pro-union) ideas were gaining popularity among the workers. Gillow expostulated on the evils of socialism, which, he said, “uses the workers and students of diverse nations to disturb the social peace and tranquility of families.” At the end of his sermon, the majority of the workers stood up and left the chapel, leaving only thirty-two workers to participate in the creation of Vista Hermosa’s Catholic Workers Circle. Shocked, Gillow learned afterwards that socialist elements from neighboring states had already proselytized at Vista Hermosa and a new workers’ newspaper had begun to denounce the exploitive conditions at the factory.63 Nonetheless, Gillow continued to combat any doctrine opposed to Catholic teachings. 61. See Gillow, Veinte años, 57–59; Overmyer-Velázquez, “Visions of the Emerald City,” 169. 62. Reglamento del Círculo Católico, 3–4. La Unión, Oct. 28, 1907; El Correo del Sur, Jan. 11, 1910. 63. Esparza, Gillow durante el porWriato, 85–86.

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Despite the fact that Oaxaca was one of the Wrst states to regulate the textile industry (in 1868, prior to the better-known efforts of José Vicente Villada in the state of Mexico and Bernardo Reyes in Nuevo León), there were frequent problems in the textile factories. In October 1905 the workers of the San José Factory lodged a complaint with the governor’s ofWce. Whereas the workers had already been forced to accept a wage deduction of 10 centavos to pay for the December 8 Westa of “La Purísima Concepción,” the new owner wanted to increase it to 25 centavos per worker. They protested that this “would unduly hurt us, because our wages, the product of our labor, are already too small and hardly pay for our subsistence.” No information on the outcome is available.64 The Zorrilla family’s Vista Hermosa factory experienced the most conXict. The liberal Oaxacan newspaper El Bien Público reported on the deplorable conditions in this factory in January 1906, accusing the municipal president and jefe político of being the factory manager’s “puppets.” The workers complained that owners also imposed a weekly 25-centavo quota on all the workers for two months to pay for a religious Westa: The president collects and the manager naturally administers these funds, which often reach hundreds of pesos. If the manager desires to have a music teacher for his children, then he organizes an orchestra among the workers, who pay for the professor and buy their instruments from the manager at higher prices than in the stores, and the municipal president makes sure to jail anyone who fails even one night to attend these classes. The teachers, whom the Casa Zorrilla pays to teach all the children of the workers, establish odious distinctions among the students and are concerned only about the education of the manager’s children.65 Thus class distinctions were also mirrored within the factory. In mid-1906 in Veracruz, textile workers founded the combative union “Gran Círculo de Obreros Libres,” which soon had eighty branches throughout Mexico. González Navarro afWrmed that one of these was 64. See González Navarro, “Indio y propiedad en Oaxaca,” 188. The general secretary of the government responded that this problem was not within his authority and that they should direct themselves to the ofWcial to whose work this complaint corresponded (he did not mention whom); I found no further communication on this subject. AGEPEO, Oct. 1905, Gob., Cuestiones Laborales, Etla. 65. El Bien Público, Jan. 14, 1906.

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in Oaxaca; it may well have been the “socialist” organization at Vista Hermosa. He also writes that by December 1906 one Oaxacan textile factory was paralyzed, as many others throughout Mexico had been in the lead-up to the fatal confrontation in Río Blanco in January 1907, where massive repression took the lives of so many workers.66 There were, in fact, two strikes at Vista Hermosa in the Wrst half of 1907, but no evidence has surfaced to link them to the nationwide textile conXict. The Wrst strike was motivated by poor treatment and the unjust Wring of various workers. The continuing presence of the abusive maestro mayor caused the second strike, in August 1907. Editor Pereyra Mejía of La Unión severely belittled the striking workers, criticized their “imitative spirit,” and accused them of wanting the “press to take some notice of us, so that our compatriots at Río Blanco, see that, they are not alone with their attitudes toward striking, but that there are brothers who second them.”67 His bias against unionization and strikes (which were illegal) and in favor of Catholic Workers Circles, left the working class with no outlet in the mainstream press in the state capital. Information on other strikes in the state is still sketchier. The jefe político of Ixtlán reported that there had been a strike “more or less” ten years before at the Xía factory due to workers’ refusal to conform to a corrective measure of the managers, but it was short-lived and since then peace had reigned. Only in May 1911 had the Revolution caused problems. A workers’ society did exist at the Xía Factory in September 1907. Railroad workers and employees on the Tehuantepec National Railway had struck in 1903 and interrupted trafWc. The federal government asked the governor to intervene “to exercise vigilance in order to avoid any disturbances of public order” at that time. A strike broke out in La Natividad mine, where the chief miner, Ascensión Martínez, had organized the workers in a mutual aid society, which soon became a resistance league or union. In 1911 its Wrst strike “coincided” with the burning of the interior of the mine, leaving many victims and halting work for months.68 In effect, by 1912, in all of Oaxaca’s twenty-six districts, only two 66. I have not found any other sources that support this assertion. See González Navarro, Historia moderna de México: El PorWriato; Vida Social, 331, 329. On the Río Blanco conXict, see his Huelgas textiles. 67. La Unión, Aug. 11, 1907. 68. AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; La Unión, Sept. 29, 1907, and Jan. 1903, Gob., Cuestiones Laborales, Tehuantepec; Rosendo Pérez García, “Primeros doce años del siglo XX,” 8. I am grateful to Anselmo Arellanes for lending me this work.

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unions existed, while other workers’ organizations were listed as mutual aid societies, which were legal during the PorWriato. In Ocotlán the September 15th Mutual Aid Society served the San Juan mineworkers in San Jerónimo Taviche. In the district of Tehuantepec, the Benito Juárez Workers Union of Salina Cruz, which included the port’s stevedores, and the Mexican Railroad Workers Alliance of Salina Cruz were active. Various mutual aid societies and the Catholic Workers Circles continued to dominate in the Centro district. The state capital’s brewery reported the existence of a “Commercial Association” but gave no further detail.69 Although union organization and militancy escalated rapidly throughout Mexico in the Wrst decade of the twentieth century, this was not the case in Oaxaca. Unions and mutual societies did not extend to domestic work, one of the most common occupations at the turn of the century. In 1895 Oaxaca had a total of 6,846 domestic workers—2,116 men and 4,730 women. In 1910 this total had increased to 8,162, of which 2,576 were men and 5,586 women. Elite families had many servants and middle-class families usually had at least one domestic worker. Serrano Zapotec families frequently sent their sons to the city, placing them as domestic servants in the houses of the rich so they could acquire an education, or at least become literate in Spanish and learn a trade. They also sent their daughters to earn money for the family but not necessarily for education. This was the story of twelve-year-old Zapotec-speaking Benito Juárez, who followed his sister to the city of Oaxaca, where she worked as a cook in the home of Antonio Maza. She helped him obtain a position as servant to bookbinder Antonio Salanueva so that he could go to school. What followed is now part of national history, but this path was far from unique and continues to this day in Oaxaca.70

On the Margins of Society Although one of PorWrio Díaz’s most trumpeted achievements was the near eradication of banditry in the countryside, local gavillas (gangs) still terrorized a few of Oaxaca’s regions at the turn of the century. Governor 69. This information comes from 1912 jefe político reports. Only three districts reported labor organizations at all. AGEPEO, Sept. 1912, Gob., Organizaciones Políticas y Sociales, Centro and April 1911, Gob., Organizaciones Políticas y Sociales, Tehuantepec. 70. Cited in Garner, Revolución en la provincia, 43; see Juárez, Apuntes.

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Pimentel proudly described the arrest of Juan España (who had threatened the highway between the city of Oaxaca and Tlacolula) in his 1907 administrative report, but Saturnino Jarquín, a wily cattle rustler who operated further south in the districts of Tlacolula and Yautepec, wasn’t captured until June 1910.71 Undoubtedly, Santana Rodríguez, the infamous “Santanón” who operated on the border between Oaxaca and Veracruz, was the most notorious bandit of southern Mexico in the late PorWriato. The devastation he wrought in the Oaxacan district of Choapan contributed to the Xight of many of its settlers, especially those of foreign origin. In June 1910 Santanón led an assault on the rich Hacienda “Bella Vista.” He ordered his men to torture Roberto Voigt, the hacienda manager, and his wife, to make them confess the whereabouts of their money. Unsuccessful, the bandits murdered Voigt and two ranch hands, leaving Mrs. Voigt tied up. Then they rode into the Hacienda “La Paloma,” terrorized the manager, Guillermo Guinguer, and got away with $4,000. El Correo del Sur reported that “the American owners of the neighboring Wncas are justly alarmed at these events and the managers of the haciendas ‘Santa Inés’ and ‘Taveo,’ on learning of these threatening events, have immediately emigrated.” The panicked inhabitants appealed to the authorities for help, as they suspected that Santanón intended to appropriate the proceeds of the upcoming rubber harvest, valued at more than $50,000.72 With the recent emphasis on peasant agency and the deconstruction of the discourse of counterinsurgency, Santanón’s reputation has recently been refurbished. Given Santanón’s opportune alliance with the Mexican Liberal Party, Elena Azaola Garrido recast him as a social bandit à la Hobsbawm in her study of the 1906 Magonista rebellion in Acayucan. She justiWed Voigt’s death by explaining that Voigt had previously mistreated Santanón. But evidence of local support by laborers or neighboring campesinos has yet to surface to support this theory. PorWrista forces reported that Santanón met his death on October 17, 1910.73 71. Jarquín was almost caught in 1908 near Totolapan, still known today for its bandits and drug trafWckers. The district of Tehuantepec also was plagued with banditry, although the state government denied this. AGEPEO, 1907, Gob., Memoria Administrativa, Centro; El Imparcial, Jan. 10, 1908; El Correo del Sur, July 2, 1910; see El País, July 26, 1910; PO, Aug. 20, 1910. 72. El Correo del Sur, June 4 and 17, 1910. A polemic on this subject appeared; see Latin American Research Review 25, no. 3 (1990). 73. Azaola Garrido, Rebelión y derrota; Hobsbawm, Bandits, 181ff.; Vanderwood, Rurales mexicanos, 47–48. According to a Wle in AGEPEO in January 1911, Santana

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Undoubtedly, during times of the breakdown of governmental authority, bandits and other delinquents are quick to take advantage of disturbances for personal gain.74 With the outbreak of the Revolution, the Mixteca ranching town of Itundujia declared itself “revolutionary” and denounced the local authorities as PorWristas. In 1910 Itundujia had a sizable population of 3,559 persons almost as large as that of Putla, its district seat. But in August 1911 the revolutionary jefe político of Putla reported that This town is dispersed almost in its entirety in cuadrillas and ranches at great distances from the center of the town, undoubtedly in order to take advantage of the arable Welds and to protect the borders of the immense territory it possesses. These cuadrillas and ranchos by reason of being so distant, more than just cattle rustlers, it can be said that they are bandits by profession, and the cause is that by residing in the densest regions of the mountains, where the arm of the authorities takes a long time to reach and for that reason it has not been possible nor will it be to subjugate them so that they may purge the bad conduct which they observe, committing all type of crimes. All keep quiet and do not inform the authorities of what occurs, upon the threat of death by the thieves; thus, the authorities vainly search for a light by which to carry out some just action, according to its faculties.75 The authorities of Putla sought assistance in men and arms from the state government in confronting the bandits. who repeatedly insisted that they were revolutionaries and not thieves. After 1911 their enemies labeled them “Zapatistas” or “Vasquistas,” given their proximity to the states of Morelos and Guerrero and the frequent Zapatista incursions in the region.76 Rivalries between local towns played a part, since Itundujia Rodríguez, “a native of Acayucan, inhabitant of the Ranchería la ‘Palmilla’ in the district of Tuxtepec,” was sentenced to two years of forced labor for wounding Epifanio Pastrana. AGEPEO, May 1911, Gob., Robos y Bandoleros, Tuxtepec. Were there two Santana Rodríguezes from Acayucan, or did a new bandit take the same name? 74. In January 1911 a mill in Tlalixtac de Cabrera was burglarized and the Hacienda de Zoritana in Ejutla was assaulted, resulting in the death of one of the defenders. The following month, a gavilla from neighboring villages ravaged the town of Jalpan in the Centro district. Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 17, 20, 24–25; División territorial, 1910. 75. AGEPEO, Nov. 1911–12, Gob., Robos y Bandoleros, Putla. 76. Ibid.

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threatened Putla’s control, just as Ixtepeji had threatened Ixtlán’s in the Sierra Juárez. Other groups, such as prostitutes, orphans, beggars, and delinquents, also functioned on the margins of society. Little study has been done on these groups, with the exception of recent work on sex workers, but the judicial archives of the period have yet to be explored. In its drive to enforce morality, the PorWriato took to regulating all walks of life. The PorWrian elites wanted to extirpate “vice and inculcate values of thrift, sobriety, hygiene, and punctuality in succeeding generations of workers through state regulation of alcohol, prostitution, gambling, vagrancy, and public space.” So it was that between 1891 and 1908 the municipal government of the city of Oaxaca published twenty-eight regulations dealing with diverse topics, including weights and measures, markets, cemeteries, the sale of alcohol, police protection, and prostitution.77 The economic boom in the city of Oaxaca spawned a concomitant boom in the sex trade, and hundreds of young women who migrated to the city, perhaps looking for work in domestic service, ended up as sex workers. In 1890 there were only twenty-seven registered prostitutes in the city of Oaxaca, a Wgure that jumped to 218 by 1892, the year of the inauguration of the Mexican Southern Railway and the beginning of the mining boom. By the Wrst decade of the twentieth century, the average number of registered sex workers hovered at around 137 women, a rather high Wgure when compared to similar studies on the city of Guatemala.78 As in other states, such as Chihuahua, the municipal ofWcials responded to this growth by restricting the space allotted to this commerce to a “red zone,” which consisted of the “last two blocks of the city,” far from public buildings or schools. Women worked as individuals or they lived in brothels, which were divided into three classes. Each registered sex worker was required to pay a monthly tax and undergo monthly medical exams. The Marquesado’s Regulations on Prostitution of 1907 stipulated that prostitutes had to “behave and dress with decency,” not speak to men in the street if they were accompanied by women or children, and not visit “honorable families.” But numerous unregistered, clandestine sex workers did not obey these rules. Using available photographs, Overmyer-Velázquez discerned that the boom in sex work transformed 77. French, A Peaceful and Working People, 63ff.; Overmyer-Velázquez, “Leyendo la ciudad,” 5–6. 78. Overmyer-Velázquez, “Mediating Modernity,” 2ff.

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the “face of prostitution.” Previously the profession had been dominated by dark-skinned indigenous women, but after 1892 a visible “whitening” occurred, as many sex workers now came from outside the state. After 1905, accordingly, foreign sex workers were required to register with the city. Even dress reXected a process of Europeanization, which suggests that sex work was susceptible to modernization. But as Oaxaca’s economic boom waned, so did sex work. Between 1909 and 1911 the number of sex workers registered annually had fallen to forty-Wve.79 Although no statistics are available on the number of beggars, the editors of El Correo del Sur referred to them as a social “plague.” With the same desire to regulate the other elements on the margins of “decent” society, the municipal government only permitted the beggars of Oaxaca to beg for public charity on Fridays. But even this restriction was not enough for the editors, who insisted that “false beggars, dressed in dirt and misery, imitated the conditions of the truly needy and brazenly defrauded their neighbors.” The Hospicio de la Vega cared for the orphans of Oaxaca and taught them a trade. But the problems of increasing indigence were such that by January 1911 Francisco Salazar, Carlos Sodi, and clerics Pedro Rey and Manuel Aguirreolea planned to establish an asylum for beggars, hoping to get support and funding from the governor and the archbishop.80 It is not clear whether they were successful, as their plans coincided with the coming of the Revolution. While social transformation was palpable as new classes emerged and others were reconWgured, the unequal distribution of wealth continued to be a deWning characteristic of Oaxacan society. The dismal failure of liberal economics for most Mexicans was evident in banditry and begging, in the considerable loss of lands by indigenous pueblos, and in the corresponding increase in the number of salaried rural jornaleros and jornaleras. No other sector of society suffered more under the modernizing policies of its native sons than the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca.

79. Ibid. 18ff.; French, A Peaceful and Working People, 77; Reglamento de prostitución, 4ff. 80. El Correo del Sur, Nov. 20, 1909; Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 20.

6 Indigenous Usos y Costumbres and State Formation [I]f instead of 11 million Indians scattered over our countryside and mountains, we had the same number of foreign immigrants of all or whatever nationality, we would be a nation thirty times richer, stronger, and more respected. Then, if this is true, and indeed it is, it is because the indigenous race is the obstacle to our progress; and if it hinders progress, it is because it is not prepared for it. —Esteban Maqueo Castellanos, “Algunos problemas nacionales”

The Indio and the Indígena Spanish colonialism’s encounter with the indigenous peoples of the New World produced not only the mestizo (the “mixed” offspring of Spanish and indigenous people) but also the monolithic indio (Indian).1 When the Spanish took control of land, labor, and natural resources, they also appropriated the right to name and to speak. The invention of the category of the indio not only overshadowed the rich multiplicity of civilizations encountered in the Americas but also deprived the indigenous peoples of their original identities and reduced them to “a diminished, uncertain social identity,” that of the despised “Indian.” Yet the members of the many different cultures of America rejected the negative label of “indio,”2 referring to themselves as indígenas or naturales (natives) as 1. I am especially grateful for the incisive comments of Sandra Kryst, Linda Lewin, Monica Udvardy, and Paul Vanderwood on Chapters 6 and 7. In addition, this chapter draws deeply on the rich ethnohistorical work of John Monaghan. 2. Varese, “Ethnopolitics of Indian Resistance,” 58. This has been an object of study for centuries; for instance, see Borah, “Race and Class in Mexico”; Morner, Race Mixture, or, for Oaxaca, Chance, Race and Class. Carol Smith reminds readers that “Indians” is a “social category used by social scientists, census ofWcials, and non-Indian Guatemalans— but by very few Indians. Indians recognize themselves as members of speciWc communities,

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opposed to Europeans and criollos (whites of European descent) and, later, mestizos, later lumped together as gente decente (decent folk) or gente de razón (people who reason).3 This distinction is evident in documents in state or municipal archives signed by indigenous peoples. After Independence, Mexicans continued to use these nomenclatures despite the federal Constitution and the Oaxacan state constitution (or 1824 decree on fundos legales), which abolished social distinctions and established the equality of all citizens—at least on paper.4 The division of society into “civilized” persons who reason and “indios” who supposedly do not reason unmasks the “silent violence” of concepts, the power of language to erase histories, to subjugate and marginalize peoples. Thus colonialism exercised its power not only through the threat of physical coercion but also “through its cognitive dimension: its comprehensive symbolic order which constituted permissible thinking and action,” in an attempt to prevent alternative worlds from coexisting with them. Spanish colonialism feminized and infantilized the indigenous peoples of the Americas through numerous controlling images. Allegedly having a diminished capacity for reason, like European women and children, indigenous peoples were considered legal minors, and, like women of whatever culture or nationality, they were thought to be closer to nature and less capable than men of controlling their sexual impulses.5 The burning of pre-Columbian codices that Catholic priests saw as the work of the devil, and the destruction of indigenous political institutions which usually, but do not always, correspond to the smallest administrative division, the municipio.” Smith, “Introduction,” 3. On occasion, indigenous people do refer to themselves as indios; see Friedlander, Being Indian in Hueyapan. 3. John Chance translated these last two terms as respectable people and rational people in Race and Class, 127. Recently, historians of India, “inspired by the well-meaning dogmas of American cultural anthropology,” have referred to the middle class “by the name it had given itself, bhadralok, ‘respectable folk.’” Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 35. 4. On Sept. 17, 1822, the Sovereign Constitutional Congress of the nation established that upon giving the name of any citizen, the racial origin of a person must be omitted, in any public or private documents. González Navarro “Ideas raciales,” 565. 5. “Silent violence” comes from Butler and Scott, “Introduction,” xiv. Ironically, the ruler of the Aztecs was called the tlatoani, which means “he who speaks.” The last quotation is from Helen Callaway, taken from Chandra Talpade Mohanty, introduction to “Cartographies of Struggle,” 15. In a provocative article, Laura Lewis “underscores the ways in which Spanish/Indian, male/female hierarchies and relations of domination and subordination were constructed in colonial discourses.” She draws an interesting parallel between “enclosure” of women and the establishment of closed repúblicas de indios during the colonial period. See Lewis, “‘Weakness’ of Women,” 73ff.

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by the Spanish, had disastrous consequences for the identity of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Intent upon denying them the history of a once unifying political framework, Spaniards devastated the centers of the ethnicity’s “collective memory,” a devastation that “brought with it the destruction and pulverization of the global ethnic memory and, much later, the appearance of a memory concentrated on recalling and recording local events.”6 This “atomization” of once powerful civilizations strengthened local identity.7 Localism, therefore, does not derive from some innate failing of indigenous peoples, as is often supposed. Its historical roots are to be found in Spanish colonialism’s suppression of pre-Columbian political institutions and ethnic memory. As the Spanish consolidated their domination and moved to erase preColumbian history, the loyalty and identity of indigenous peoples were reafWrmed through a growing attachment to land and the community. For the indigenous Mesoamericans, participation in a larger group outside the village community related above all to pre-Columbian shared languages, customs, dress, historical memory, and, often, a shared enemy. The Zapotecs, on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec or in the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca, still refer to themselves as the “speakers of Zapotec.” The term “Zapotec” comes from Nahuatl (the Aztec language) and is the name the Aztecs applied to this civilization. With dialectical variations, the Zapotecs refer to themselves as the “Bini Za” or “Binnizá” (which some authors translate as those who speak the Zapotec language). Víctor de la Cruz, however, afWrms that binni means people and za signiWes cloud, while the Zapotec language was didxazá, with diidxa’ meaning word or language, thus denoting cloud language or language of the cloud people. The Mixes describe themselves as the “people of the sacred language,” while the Chatinos refer to their territory as the “land of the word.” The Mixtecs, however, identify themselves as the “people of the place where it rains” or as the “cloud people.” The Triquis, whose language is related to Mixtec and whose territory is located in the heart of the Mixteca Alta, name themselves “the complete word.” The people of Yalalag in the Sierra Juárez not only refer to themselves as “peoples of the Zapotec language” but also recognize an afWnity with peoples who spoke different dialects of Zapotec. They extend that afWnity to other ethnicities, such 6. Florescano, Memory, Myth, and Time, 110. 7. BonWl Batalla, Mexico Profundo, 23.

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as the neighboring Mixes or Chinantecs, because they were all “peoples of idioma,” meaning people who speak an indigenous language rather than Spanish.8 Language provides a vital element of a shared indigenous ethnic identity. But even while indigenous peoples maintained their own languages under Spanish colonialism, as their lineages and ethnic ties grew weaker and Spanish colonial government grew stronger, many, although not all, lost the power to record their own history. The Mayas, who produced the Books of Chilam Balam, were one exception. In Oaxaca, the Mixtecs produced an earlier work, Vindobonensis Codex, or The Book of the Council, which narrated the origins of this ethnic group from the time of their birth from the sacred tree of Apoala. During the colonial period, the Cuicatecos still traced their lineages and their land rights back 450 years and continued to record them.9 But even as these indigenous peoples struggled to preserve their histories during colonial domination, they too rewrote history to reXect the demands of the present. Erasures and corrections appeared on codices and lienzos, modiWcations that eliminated some actors and enhanced the role of others: the land rights or lineages of living principales took precedence over earlier ones. In the Mixteca, as well as on the Isthmus and in the Central Valleys, history was modiWed according to changing needs.10 Thus ethnic memories survived, not as immobile customs and traditions from time immemorial, but as all that has been considered “traditional,” practices that have been historically constructed and reconstructed over time.

The Meaning of Community: “Don’t We All Eat from the Same Tortilla?” What, then, has “community” meant to the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca? How can subtle differences be detected not only over time but also 8. De la Fuente, Yalalag, 15, 217, and Zapotecos, 153; Chance, Conquest of the Sierra, 9–10; Campbell, Zapotec Renaissance, 9; de la Cruz, Flor de la Palabra, 17, and “Indigenous Peoples’ History,” 29ff.; Romero Frizzi, Historia de los pueblos, 31–32; Flannery and Marcus, Cloud People. For example, there are at least seven dialects of Zapotec alone. 9. Romero Frizzi, Historia de los pueblos, 63ff. 10. Ibid., 111ff. Of course, each generation produces its own version of history.

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across the state’s great diversity of ethnicities? The present study has attempted to respect that imposing diversity, referring to the speciWc ethnicity of actors and consciously trying to avoid when possible the constant use of Indian as a general marker. While the evolution of identity from lineage-based to land or village-based can be outlined, it is far more difWcult to trace the development of the concept of community. General characterizations are drawn not only from primary sources but also from relatively recent ethnographies. Clearly, all sources must be read critically; differences between indigenous ethnic groups, as well as changing historical and social contexts, must be noted. The advanced agriculture of the isthmian Zapotecs, for example, contrasted with the neighboring Huaves, who were dependent on Wsh and salt production. Despite these reservations, the present study assumes shared characteristics in the process of Mesoamerican community making.11 John Monaghan spent almost three years in the Mixtec village of Santiago Nuyoo in the 1980s. Fluent in Mixtec, this anthropologist listened carefully to what Nuyootecos themselves had to say about the ñuu (community). He relates how, during a bitter debate over land, one frustrated tañuu (“father of the community or respected elder”) Wnally arose and asked, “Don’t we all eat from the same tortilla?” This query quieted the anger simmering in the meeting. For a community that often suffered the ravages of hunger, everyone present instantly felt ashamed at this rebuke.12 But when Monaghan asked the Nuyootecos to deWne what they meant by community, he soon realized that no one deWnition would satisfy everyone. The Nuyootecos explained that they had served in various cargos (ofWcial positions in the civil-religious hierarchy) “because it was the will of the ñuu,” or that they tilled the Welds not for themselves or their family “but to feed the ñuu.” Such responses led Monaghan to suggest that community be conceptualized as “enactment,” as process, as relations between people and groups rather than an “established entity out of which action Xows.” He noted that the Nuyootecos used verbs and active nouns to describe their daily life as a continuing process, indicating that they 11. Undoubtedly the use of the more recent and vast wealth of contemporary anthropological sources to imagine historical situations, referred to as ethnographic upstreaming, has serious pitfalls (Van Young, “New Cultural History,” 226, and also “To See Someone Not Seeing,” 136ff.), but I have attempted it nevertheless. 12. Monaghan, Covenants with Earth and Rain, xi–xii, particularly his discussion of anthropological approaches to the Mesoamerican community, 3ff., and the concept of nakara, the sharing of food and clothing among people, 36ff.

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did not conceive of their community as unchanging but as an entity that “unfolds through time.”13 Thus, repeated Nuyooteco references to “customary practices,” or the appeals of other villages to usos y costumbres desde tiempos inmemoriales, should not lull us into a belief in Wxed and timeless traditions. The highland Zapotecs of Yalalag (Yalaltecos) had great affection for their village and considered solidarity to one’s pueblo of primary importance. People’s actions reXected not only on their families but on the entire village; thus the maintenance of the unity among Yalaltecos held the highest value, as it did for Nuyootecos. But, as Rodolfo Pastor has reminded us, indigenous communities were far from egalitarian utopias in the pre-Columbian, colonial, or any other era. In effect, scholars have found that both Zapotec and Mixtec societies were highly stratiWed on the eve of Conquest. The extension of cash cropping and mining (especially from the late eighteenth century on), which encouraged the spread of capitalist relations, only deepened internal social differentiation within and among the indigenous villages.14 In the nineteenth century, indigenous communities represented societies where identity tended to be collective rather than individual. In the countryside, as opposed to the city, wrote BonWl Batalla, there is “a unity of human beings and the natural world, which is the reference point for human knowledge.” The people of Nuyoo did not see the world as separated into “the organic and inorganic, or matter or spirit, but instead see a single life force underlying existence.” Within this holistic worldview, they did not erect boundaries between the economic and social, or the political and social, the specializations so characteristic of modernity.15 Tilling the Welds apportioned to the family and cultivating those of the community as part of tequio were also inseparable. Time was not linear but cyclical, following the seasons and the agricultural way of life. Economic categories based on an individualistic homo economicus cannot

13. Ibid. 12ff. Cynthia Radding also conceives of the community in terms of relationship and process; see Wandering Peoples, 17. 14. De la Fuente, Yalalag, 209–11; Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 346; Carmagani, Regreso, 200ff.; Zeitlin, “Ranchers and Indians”; Whitecotton, Zapotec; Spores, Mixtec Kings and Mixtecs. Chance and Taylor saw the rise of social classes stemming precisely from this period, “Estate and Class.” 15. BonWl Batalla, Mexico Profundo, 26ff.; Monaghan, Covenants with Earth and Rain, 130.

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fully illuminate the workings of a holistic society based on, perhaps, a homo communalis, and may even obscure them. The común (commons) referred to the collective identity of a pueblo, to the property held in common and natural resources available to its members. It also entailed the reciprocal obligations and privileges, which bound its members to the pueblo (see Chapter 7). The concept of the commons also existed among the villagers of England in the age of the commercial revolution. E. P. Thompson developed the theory of the moral economy to describe the beliefs and traditions of those English villagers and their faith in the commons. This theory has since been employed by various scholars, most notably by anthropologist James Scott in his studies of Southeast Asia. In order to explain peasant actions, he developed the idea of a subsistence ethic, which arises from a fear of food shortage and the general vulnerability and insecurity of the community, and encompasses their idea of “economic justice and exploitation.” Scott emphasized that this ethic involved “patterns of reciprocity, forced generosity, communal land, and work-sharing,” which “helped to even out the inevitable troughs in a family’s resources.” Various historians, among them John Tutino and Alan Knight, have also applied these ideas to the Mexican peasantry. The notion of a moral economy and a subsistence ethic go a long way to explain the situation of Oaxaca’s villages. But this scholarly explanation prioritizes the economic, albeit a moral economy, and arises from a modern disciplinary interpretation. It is problematic in that fails to capture the Mesoamerican peoples’ holistic and uniWed worldview and sense of the común, which would not separate the economic from other aspects of life.16 One had to be a recognized hijo del pueblo in order to enjoy the usufruct of village lands. Since villages were usually closed to “outsiders,” only someone as respected as the rural teacher Basilio Rojas, the elder, could request that the Zapotec village of Santo Domingo Coatlán bestow this honor on his son Vidal. But membership in the común of a pueblo also brought with it various responsibilities: tequio, the payment of various contributions and quotas, and, for adult men up to the age of Wfty 16. Thompson, “Moral Economy of the English Crowd”; Scott, Moral Economy, 2ff., 197. See Tutino, From Insurrection to Revolution, 17ff.; Knight, Mexican Revolution, 158–64, and “Weapons and Arches,” 33ff. The Oaxacan activist and scholar Gustavo Esteva has recently called for a return to the commons in the light of our globalizing and individualistic world (“Regenerating People’s Space”).

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(or sixty, depending on the pueblo or ethnic group), participation in what has been called the civil-religious hierarchy or the cargo system. The anthropological literature on the cargo system is vast, and here our discussion can be brief.17 The cargos (charges) are services owed by the hijos del pueblo (in exchange for use of pueblo lands) to two parallel but interrelated structures, the secular civil government and the religious organization of the church and patron saints. While pre-Columbian village power structures had been based on the rule of nobles, the Spanish Crown introduced a system into indigenous pueblos similar to that in Spanish municipalities, which were ruled by cabildos (town councils). The cabildos were made up of a gobernador (governor) appointed by the Spanish and annually elected regidores (councilmen, their number depending on the population of the pueblo), alcalde (judge), mayor (police chief), escribano (scribe), and Wscal (servant of the church responsible to the local priest). This replaced the system of succession based on lineage. The symbol of power in the civil-religious hierarchy was (and continues to be) the vara de mando (the staff of power), which is passed on to new authorities in an elaborate ceremony.18 During the colonial period, only caciques, principales, and the outgoing ofWcials were able to vote, although cabildo elections were usually carried out in the presence of the whole pueblo. Spanish ofWcials were wary of getting involved in internal politics (although those elected required conWrmation) and only intervened in local elections in emergencies such as uprisings. The eighteenth century witnessed the decline of the power of the caciques and the rise of commoners, both economic and political. Indigenous cabildos emerged as centers of conXict in which commoners now competed with principales for political control. Participation in the cargo system evolved into the means by which commoners could 17. For example, DeWalt compared and contrasted various analyses of the cargo system from twenty-six studies, which led him to posit striking similarities and some differences in distinct Mesoamerican ethnicities. See DeWalt “Changes in Cargo Systems,” 87ff.; Chance, Conquest of the Sierra; de la Fuente, Zapotecos de Choapan and Yalalag; Monaghan, Covenants with Earth and Rain; Cook and Diskin, Markets in Oaxaca; Carmagnani, Regreso de los dioses and “Local Governments”; Kearney, Winds of Ixtepeji; Cordero Avendaño, Vara de mando. The cargo system continues to function today in many villages of Oaxaca. 18. Pueblos that were too small to have their own cabildo were subject to a larger one. Chance, Conquest of the Sierra, 132–34; Menegus Bornemann, Del señorío indígena, 91ff. See Cordero Avendaño, Vara. The vara is still ceremoniously passed on today to the incoming mayordomo (person in charge of a religious celebration), for example, honoring a saint’s day.

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achieve principal status. More and more, commoners demanded the right to vote, although in Villa Alta they were not successful until the establishment of the Republic abolished the distinction between nobles and commoners.19 A man’s status and prestige within a community was parallel to his age and years of experience in different cargos. The number and order of cargos used to be very exact, and usually amounted to nine during a lifetime. Upon completion of the last cargo, a person, now mature if not elderly, achieved the status of anciano (an ancient) or principal or pasado (those who had passed through all the cargos). These men no longer had to pay the normal contributions and do tequio, yet they served the pueblo for the remainder of their days as members of the Consejo de Ancianos (Council of Elders), the pueblo’s wise men, who made its Wnal decisions. In a pioneering article on the Cuicatecos in 1906, Elfego Adán listed the cargos in the order in which one had to complete them before being admitted to this Consejo:20 I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

Topil del cura Topil o policías del Ayuntamiento Jefe de los Topiles Suplentes de Regidores Regidores propietarios Mayordomo de la iglesia Presidente o agente municipales Alcalde Consejero

Church-keeper Messenger or policeman for Town Council Chief of aides/messengers Substitute Councilman Councilman Steward of the Church Municipal President or Municipal Agent Judge Adviser on Consejo de Ancianos

The list and its order varied among pueblos, regions, or ethnic groups. The Wrst four positions were considered lower services, while the last Wve carried higher status. Church positions were similar to those of the municipal government and were also renewed yearly. The Junta Vecinal 19. De la Fuente, Yalalag, 211ff.; Chance, Conquest of the Sierra, 132ff.; Menegus Bornemann, Del señorío indígena, 93ff. I am grateful to Margarita Menegus for sharing her work with me. 20. De la Fuente, Yalalag, 212–15; Carmagnani, “Local Governments,” 118–19; Adán, “Cuicatecos actuales,” 154.

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(neighborhood committee) ran the Church’s administrative affairs, while the religious ofWcials, such as the mayordomos of the various saints’ Westas, were in charge of those celebrations. Although this system had been introduced by the Spanish, it became an integral part of what Oaxacan pueblos considered their usos y costumbres desde tiempos inmemoriales, indicating once again how these had been transformed over time. With good reason, Antonio García de León described the indigenous community as an indocolonial syncretization.21 Employing metaphors of patriarchy, Nuyootecos envisioned the community as a “great house” and the municipal president as the “father of the community.” Cargo service, then, was similar to the nurturing and love needed to support a household. Those men who had already served as president were called tañuu, “fathers of the ñuu,” while their wives held the title of ñañuu, “mothers of the ñuu.” But, just as sustaining a household required resources and sacriWces, so did the sustenance of a cargo. The holder had to use his private resources in order to “feed” the community as the community had fed his family. Thus personal wealth was channeled into the community, effecting a redistribution of resources, what some anthropologists have interpreted as a leveling mechanism. Nuyootecos complained that cargo service caused them to become “thin,” that it “ate up” their households, metaphors for a town that suffered periods of hunger. So, while villagers considered cargo service a duty that brought them status, they also grumbled about its costs. Self-sacriWce was intrinsic to this service; the people of Nuyoo noted that a cargo holder “suffers the punishment of community.”22 This system of entwined but parallel structures of government in the pueblos, ensconced in gendered metaphors of home, parents, children, and duties, was hardly a secular institution of the type liberals desired to promote in Mexico. When the Constitution of Cádiz became the law of the land in 1812, it called for the establishment of the municipal system throughout New Spain. Cabeceras were to be transformed into 21. De la Fuente, Yalalag, 223–24. See the list of cargos for the Zapotecos of Choapan in Zapotecos, 189–90; for cargos in Ixtepeji, see Kearney, Winds of Ixtepeji, 16ff.; García de León, Resistencia 1:124. See Carmagnani’s breakdown of positions for the colonial period in “Local Governments,” 116–17. The civil and religious cargo systems were each autonomous, yet in the fulWllment of one’s obligations or effort to become a consejero, they were considered as all part of one system. 22. Monaghan, Covenants with Earth and Rain, 248–55. (I use the pronoun “his” above since no information has appeared on female mayordomos until the later twentieth century.)

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municipalities and cabildos were now designated ayuntmientos. Members continued to be elected yearly by adult males, and questions of importance were still discussed openly at town meetings, but Wnal decisions were often made by the most inXuential members of the ayuntamiento, local merchants, the Consejo de Ancianos, or some combination thereof. In nineteenth-century Mexico, the pueblos continued to hold elections and read government documents publicly to the assembled común.23 Indigenous peasants thus maintained some customs, which they jealously guarded. At the turn of the century, Zapotecs were highly patriarchal and still practiced the custom of hanging out the bed sheets to prove a bride’s virginity. Pérez García’s idyllic narration of the usos y costumbres of the Serrano Zapotecs in the 1950s emphasized traditions such as respect for elders and authorities, whose hands children were obliged to kiss in obeisance. Curfew was at eight o’clock, after which no one could walk through the streets unaccompanied and without a large torch or they would be punished by the police. People married very young and marriages were arranged by the parents. Older people had to attend the very early weekly rosario in the main church. Men were obligated to fulWll their tequio, and were called upon by a chorus in Zapoteco. Although they would occasionally get drunk, they were of “peaceful temperament, good family leaders and lovers of education for their children.” They loved music and took pride in forming village bands. They spoke almost exclusively in Zapotec, though Spanish was learned in school. Pérez García asserted that since the lands were communal, there were no disputes among neighbors.24 But we should be suspicious of accounts that smack of such romanticism. As much as villages valued solidarity among the constituent households and saw their identity as collective, a necessity undoubtedly

23. De la Fuente, Yalalag, 214–15; on this democratic feature, see Schmieder, Settlements, 41–42. 24. Adán, “Organización social,” 55ff.; Pérez García, Sierra Juárez 2:304. The Zapotecs had great faith in the spells and the healing of brujos (poorly translated as witches). Brujos tended to be males or females above the age of forty-Wve who specialized in the arts of divination, healing, midwifery, spells, and religion. Among the particular beliefs, which varied among ethnic groups, many believed in the existence of a tona. On the birth of a child, an animal was also born in the wilderness; this animal became the child’s tona, “their best friend, half of their being, their other self” and from then on the animal and the child shared the same destinies. Ibid., 292–98; Martínez Gracida, Razas indígenas, 94ff.; Adán, “Organización social,” 62ff.

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determined by the subsistence ethic, there was also, as in any close-knit community, tension, a “negative undercurrent of suspicion, fed by gossip, envy, half-truths, and sharp dealings.” Recognition of yatuni (envy), described as a “burning pain inside oneself” akin to heartburn, serves as a healthy antidote to utopian versions of village life. Such envy typically arises among people, households, or groups of people, and is generally considered by anthropologists to result from a breach of the tradition of reciprocity. Yatuni also provoked conXict between neighboring villages, as in the enmity between Santa María Yucuiti and Santiago Nuyoo, two villages that play a prominent role in this study. Yatuni between villages reinforced the internal solidarity of a village and functioned as a form of social control (see Chapter 9).25 Eric Wolf coined the term closed corporate peasant community (CCPC) more than forty years ago to describe Mesoamerican communities. He characterized them as “corporate organizations, maintaining a perpetuity of rights and membership; and they are closed corporations, because they limit these privileges to insiders, and discourage close participation of members in the social relations of the larger society.” He contrasted these with “open” peasant communities, which emerged in response to cash cropping. Historians and anthropologists working all over the globe appropriated the model and interpreted it as it suited them. The CCPC model became lodged in the academic imagination and the literature employing, debating, or debunking the theory has grown rather large.26 Despite numerous critiques, Scott Cook observed that scholars still become entangled “in the conceptual shackles of the CCPC model and the economic dualism (i.e., local peasant economy versus external capitalist economy) that underlies it.”27 Oaxacan villages have often been used as prime examples of closed communities, but fortunately this model has fallen out of favor today. The emphasis on process and reciprocal relations has served to extinguish any remaining embers of this simplistic and dualistic image of backward campesinos closing themselves off to the world. Community, the enactment of reciprocal relationships among 25. Monaghan, Covenants with Earth and Rain, 130–36. 26. Wolf, “Closed Corporate Peasant Communities,” 2, 7, and “Vicissitudes,” 325ff. James Greenberg provides a useful summary of the theories of CCPC in the beginning of Santiago’s Sword, 2ff. and “Capital, Ritual, and Boundaries,” 67ff. 27. Cook, “Towards a New Paradigm,” 328. Cook is responding here directly to Frans J. Schryer’s “Class ConXict.”

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members, is a dynamic process.28 Whether they were Zapotec, Mixtec, Huave, or Mazatec, that social and territorial unit, the común of the pueblo, provided people with their sense of identity, duty, and entitlements. When the Nuyooteco elder admonished his neighbors, they immediately recognized that, in many ways, they did “all eat from the same tortilla.”

Ethnicity, Race, and Class The indigenous villagers of Oaxaca have been portrayed historically as a bulwark of tradition, as the major obstacle to the Mexican elites’ struggle for modernity, as exempliWed by the statement of Judge Esteban Maqueo Castellanos that opens this chapter,29 but it should now be evident that they contested, resisted, negotiated, and innovated with new forces, even as they represented themselves as steadfastly defending their usos y costumbres. In fact, we suspect that the more they insisted on their customs and traditions from time immemorial, the more these customs were actually changing. In their drive toward modernization, Mexican liberals wanted to see indigenous campesinos forsake those customs and turn into industrious farmers and factory workers. As capitalist relations spread throughout Mexico, new social classes did appear, speciWcally the urban proletariat, the rural working class, and the middle classes. At the same time, social differentiation intensiWed in the countryside as private property expanded. As a result, scholars have analyzed Mexican society primarily in terms of social class, often failing to see the reXections of ethnic Mexico in the mirror. If they did see those reXections, it was only as vestiges of a dying past. For nineteenth-century Mexican liberals, the modernity they so fervently sought signiWed nothing less than the “de-Indianization” of the nation. The analysis presented in previous chapters buttresses Michael Kearney’s contention that while class analysis may provide a vital theoretical 28. Cynthia Radding captures this in her deWnition of community: “the ethnic and political relationships that bind individuals to a recognized social unit and territorial base” (Wandering Peoples, 17). We should note that models such as the CCPC, which at Wrst seem quite useful and are later discarded, permit us to clarify our concepts and categories as research advances. 29. Maqueo Castellanos, “Algunos problemas nacionales,” 83.

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framework, social difference is more often recognized as gender, “race,”30 or ethnicity in everyday life. The ringing denunciations of the “tenacious” and “barbaric” indios and of the ethnic and multiethnic protests against the rapacity and exploitation by gente de razón conWrm this. For that reason, ethnicity has considerably more “potential to mobilize groups so deWned.”31 Certainly this is the case in strongly indigenous southern Mexico, as contrasted with the more mestizo central and northern regions. As Greg Urban and Joel Sherzer put it, “Ethnic groups are interest groups competing for resources, and they mobilize languages, rituals, and other aspects of culture to do so. Their manipulations, however, already presuppose that they accede to state sovereignty, that they are self-organizing groups within the purview of an external authority, although their perception of self-interest may motivate them to overthrow the regime in power, or to seek some form of autonomy.”32 Ethnicity is a dynamic process often contingent on conXict. Based on his studies of the isthmian Zapotecs, Campbell identiWed indigenous ethnicity as “simultaneously a weapon in political struggles with ‘ethnic’ others and a contested terrain of competing interests within communities and nations. From this perspective, ethnicity is a multi-sided, historical process in which ethnic identities and ethnic groups are constituted dynamically in social practice.”33 It is not Wxed but a process dependent on historical circumstances: Oaxacan history vividly reveals the ebb and Xow of ethnic identiWcation. The eighteenth-century inhabitants of southern New Spain identiWed themselves according to the village in which they lived rather than as 30. With respect to distinction of population by race, physical anthropologists have rejected race as a scientiWc form of classiWcation. Moreover, as Brackette F. Williams has pointed out, social scientists “now recognize that the prototypical features of the races of mankind were invented, transferred, and institutionalized during colonial maneuvers to justify conquest, slavery, genocide, and other forms of social oppression” (“A CLASS ACT,” 431). 31. The militancy of indigenous ethnic movements in Latin America today has encouraged scholars to study the historical background. However, as Kearney stresses, the present resurgence is taking place in an era of globalization and “postdevelopment,” very distinct conditions from those of Wfty or a hundred years ago. The present study takes this difference into account. On recent developments of Mixtec ethnic identity outside Oaxaca, see Kearney, “Mixtec Political Consciousness,” and Nagengast and Kearney, “Mixtec Ethnicity.” 32. Urban and Sherzer, “Introduction,” 4. See Williams, “A CLASS ACT,” 401ff., on the historical evolution of the term “ethnicity”; Smith, “Introduction.” 33. Campbell, “Zapotec Ethnic Politics,” 11–12; “Cocei: Class and Politicized Ethnicity,” “Tradition and the New Social Movements.”

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members of an ethnic group. Scholars such as William Taylor, John Chance, Angeles Romero Frizzi, Miguel Bartolomé, and Alicia Barabas have also seen ethnicity as relative to historical context, considering it of secondary importance in the social analysis of colonial Oaxaca (the Chatinos, who have historically maintained their ethnic allegiance, provide an exception to this rule). Taylor and Chance, in a now classic debate on estate and class, argued that the eighteenth century saw the increasing formation of social classes in Oaxaca. Both consider the origins of colonial movements in Oaxaca to be located in local or regional problems and not in ethnic differences.34 In contrast, although the Conquest “disarticulated the indigenous world,” Marcello Carmagnani posited a process of “ethnic reconstitution” that allowed the indigenous peoples to slow down that “disarticulation” and by 1620–30 had allowed “a new form of indigenous identity to appear.” This long durée process enabled indigenous societies to “reelaborate their ethnic patrimony as a future project,” the result of a “collective will” that attempted to safeguard their customs and traditions. Certainly there was a reorganization of village society in New Spain (see Chapter 2), which affected ethnic identity. And although Carmagnani afWrmed that this new ethnicity was not Wxed, he treated it as a given for the remainder of the colonial period. The impressive archival information that he marshals to substantiate this thesis refers mainly to the defense of territory and communal village life and can serve as well to support the opposite position, as enunciated by Taylor and Chance. Since Carmagnani never directly deWnes “ethnicity,” one wonders whether ethnicity can simply be reduced to the defense of the Mesoamerican communal traditions of village life, or whether it is also something more.35 Identity, individual or collective, is forged from difference. Beyond the relationship to a speciWc territory, economic condition, language, or religion, ethnicity encompasses historical memory and arises from conXict, but not all conXict. In existing documents, the villagers of Santa María 34. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 142–54; Bartolomé and Barabas, “Pluralidad desigual en Oaxaca,” 81; Barabas, “Rebeliones e insurrecciones,” 213ff.; Chance, “Dinámica étnica,” 148, 159–61; see Taylor and Chance, “Estate and Class.” 35. Carmagnani, Regreso de los dioses, 13ff. and 180ff. Stern employs Carmagnani’s concept of ethnic reconstitution in Secret History of Gender, 29, 249. See Chance’s critique of Carmagnani in “Dinámica étnica,” 148, 159–61. Andeanists have developed the idea of ethnogenesis to characterize the reconstitution of ethnic identity. See Thurner, From Two Republics, and for Mexico see Radding, Wandering Peoples, 249ff.

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Yucuiti in the Mixteca (whose story is narrated below) or those of Usila in the Papaloapan region did not refer to themselves as Mixtecs or Chinantecos, respectively, even as the landowners and governmental ofWcials never tired of racializing the confrontations, contemptuously referring to them as indios. Yet, as we shall see in the Juchiteco struggle for autonomy (Chapter 7) and the Mixtecs of the Costa Chica (Chapter 11), ethnic identity goes beyond village and communal identity. In their research on the recent revival of ethnicity among Mixtec immigrants in northern Mexico and California, Carole Nagengast and Michael Kearney concluded that there is nothing “automatic” about ethnicity. It is one of multiple identities people can have, “one way (among others) in which people deWne themselves and are deWned by others who stand in opposition to them.”36 These multiple identities—ethnicity, class, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and nationality—are not discrete or compartmentalized but experienced concurrently. Although identity today tends to be much more fragmented than in the past, nineteenth-century Mexicans had multiple identities based on these factors, and it is therefore important to understand their interplay. If ethnic reconstitution did take place, it was not a constant but a dynamic surging in conXict with an “other” to fade away in the aftermath. The alliance of isthmian Zapotecs, Zoques, Chontales, and Huaves against the state government during the isthmian wars of the mid-nineteenth century suggest only the temporary emergence of a shared multiethnic indigenous identity. The sixteen indigenous groups, however, were not the only oppressed ethnicities in Oaxaca. Located mostly in villages directly on the PaciWc Coast, the Afro-Mexican population of Oaxaca provides another example of how ethnicity may or may not become a signiWcant social factor. By 1890 this population had been greatly diminished by the process of mestizaje. The Afro-Mexicans of the Costa Chica descended from slaves who had escaped the cotton and sugar plantations in that region during the colonial period. In the nineteenth century, in the districts of Jamiltepec and Juquila, many made their living by Wshing. The Afro-Mexicans did not own land but possessed some livestock and planted maize, cotton, tobacco, and some fruit as tenant farmers. In 1914, local rancher Darío Atristáin classiWed the population of Jamiltepec according to race and 36. They deWne ethnicity as a “social construction formed from the interface of material conditions, history, the structure of the political economy, and social practice.” Nagengast and Kearney, “Mixtec Ethnicity,” 62; Kearney, “Mixtec Political Consciousness,” 113ff.

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found 50 percent Mixtec, 35 percent white, and 15 percent Afro-Mexican, indicating how the middle class, probably much of which was mestizo, avoided the use of this category. Other authors preferred to use the term mulato rather than negro, implying an advanced state of assimilation for people of African descent.37 Available sources do not indicate that AfroMexicans on the coast of Oaxaca acted in terms of their ethnicity during the period under study. Most probably, many intermarried with indigenous people or mestizos and were subsumed by those groups. A few Costa Chica villages, such as Collantes or Corralero in Oaxaca and nearby Cuajinicuilapa in Guerrero, nevertheless maintained their Afro-Mexican identity. As we shall see, they formed the contingents of the Maderista (and later Carrancista) armies of the mestizo rancheros of the Costa Chica that crushed the agrarian rebellion of indigenous Mixtecs in 1911.38

From Colony to Republic It is still debated whether the transition from colony to Republic improved or worsened the situation of campesinos, whether indigenous, Afro-Mexican, or mestizo. Both John Tutino and Jean Piel have argued that independence brought deteriorating social and economic conditions for indigenous peasants in central Mexico and the Andes, respectively. For example, while the colonial Spanish government had mediated between the hacienda and the village, the government of the Mexican Republic permitted private owners to encroach upon communal lands and natural resources and defended the cause of private property. Peter Guardino disagrees, considering the period after Independence positive for campesinos, at least in Guerrero, owing to wide suffrage, municipal autonomy, and lack of strong centralized control.39 Clearly, this is an issue that must be contextualized according to region and whether changes were economic, political, or social.

37. Atristáin, Notas de un ranchero, 12; see the sources cited by Ryesky in “Desarrollo socio-económico,” 50–51. Guardino refers to the sharecroppers of the Guerrero coast as mulattoes in Peasants, Politics, 116. 38. See Aguirre Beltrán’s classic study of an Afro-Mexican pueblo, Cuijla; see ChassenLópez, “Maderismo or Mixtec Empire?” for this story. 39. Tutino, “Agrarian Social Change,” 101; Piel, “Naciones indoamericanas,” 23; Guardino, Peasants, Politics, 8–98, 214.

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The increasing economic liberalism of the new federalist state of the 1820s and the goal of creating a modern nation-state composed of equal individuals clashed with the colonial reality of Mexico. In effect, the actual practice of liberalism strayed very far from these goals, as both the elites and the pueblos of Mexico defended their immediate interests and molded the new institutions to their needs at the regional and local levels. Consequently, politics became a question of componenda (compromise), if not tranza (transaction), on both sides.40 The conception of power as a commodity possessed by and centered in elite institutions (so characteristic of portrayals of Latin American politics, especially dictatorships) is being replaced by the interpretation of power as “a relation of force” that circulates through many mechanisms in “regional and local forms and institutions” and is distributed unequally on “shifting Welds of force.” The ability to dominate a Weld arises from the control of knowledge, scientiWc and technological, various types of disciplinary institutions (such as hospitals, prisons, and schools), and in all kinds of social relationships (e.g., between employer and worker, husband and wife). While the historical process is always conditioned by unequal access to economic and political power and the relations of domination that derive from these inequalities, this notion of power permits us to see it as “capillary,” circulating between different social groups. The present study exposes the exercise and circulation of this local, capillary power, among those whom others supposed to be passive and “powerless” campesinos. As we shall see, outsiders in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have often characterized Oaxacan pueblos almost exactly in Foucault’s words as “islands of dispersed power,” although we should not underestimate their varied and reciprocal linkages to the rest of society.41 Fundamental to the implementation or consolidation of these relations of power is the production of a discourse, of a justifying and legitimizing truth.42 We have witnessed this in elite formulations of regimes of truths, 40. Componenda means compromise, literally composing and crafting something out of different parts, while tranza is a transaction, but one that supposes illegal or questionable action, including cheating. 41. Foucault stressed that “Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power.” Power/Knowledge, 88ff., 207, and History of Sexuality, 90ff.; Scott, “Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference,” 35–38. 42. “We must produce truth as we must produce wealth.” Foucault, History of Sexuality, 93–94.

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creating and refurbishing discourses of “civilization” and “modernization” in confrontation with the “barbarian” usos y costumbres. At the same time, indigenous peoples forged their discourses on the basis of their changing interpretations of custom and tradition, on the ethnic memory that they were able to salvage in the face of the devastating obstacles posed by colonial and national regimes. Given the violence of the Wrst century of contact and the impact of the demographic catastrophe, the Spanish Crown had seen the wisdom of protecting the indigenous population. Far from altruistic, this policy recognized that this population formed the major source of labor and tribute for the empire. Royal authorities sustained the usos y costumbres of corporate villages as a counterweight to the establishment of an aristocracy of encomenderos. Land rights were legalized by the extension of títulos primordiales by the Crown. Having separated society into the repúblicas de indios and repúblicas de españoles, the colonial state functioned as mediator.43 As we have seen, the indigenous peoples also enjoyed the Crown’s protection because colonial authorities considered them, like women, “perpetual minors” with an inferior capacity to reason. Enrique Florescano discerned a “triple separation” produced by the establishment of the repúblicas de indios with respect to society as a whole: they were “territorial and ethnic in the Wrst place,” since republics or communities were limited to indigenous inhabitants and prohibited Spaniards, blacks, and castes. In urban centers, indigenous peoples were also made to live apart from the white and mestizo population. In second place was the “legal” separation, insured by “special laws, judges and courts dedicated to protecting their rights in a private and paternalistic manner.” Finally, economic separation reinforced the economic priorities of the Spanish and criollos. “This multiple ethnic, territorial, legal, political, social, and economic segregation” devastated historical and ethnic memory and reinforced localism, a “social memory and solidarity reduced” to a locality.44 As the indigenous peoples’ recollection of lineages and pre-Columbian polities faded, memory attached more directly to the land.

43. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 16–17; Katz, “Rural Uprisings,” 79; Menegus Bornemann, Del señorío indígena, 172ff. 44. Florescano, Memory, Myth, and Time, 111. See also Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 16–17; BonWl Batalla, Mexico Profundo, 76–78.

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The repúblicas’ governing system evolved along the lines of the Spanish municipality, with corresponding land rights and the requirements of tribute and labor owed to the Spanish Crown. Nevertheless, Andrés Lira afWrms that the term municipio was not commonly used during the colonial period, at least not until the actual creation of municipios with the 1812 Constitution of Cádiz. Indigenous peoples inhabited pueblos or repúblicas, while the Spanish lived in cities, villas (towns), and reales de minas (royal mining centers). These pueblos de indios were privileged corporate entities based on medieval Spanish jurisprudence that had at least Wfty tribute payers (about 360 inhabitants), with communally held land, annually elected indigenous ofWcials, and a consecrated Church. In 1803 there were 4,081 pueblos de indios in New Spain, 873 of which were located in the Intendencia of Oaxaca. The Spanish government considered the inhabitants vecinos (residents) of these pueblos, but they referred to themselves as hijos del pueblo or naturales. They actively guarded their autonomy and the Crown only began to wrest privileges from them with the establishment of Wscal inspection during the Bourbon Reforms.45 The new Republic of Mexico established the bases for citizenship in its 1824 federalist Constitution. Supposedly, the citizen was an individual, functioning in a society of participating and informed men (as legal minors, women were not considered citizens) that formed the basis for a republic. The liberal model of the state demanded the eradication of previous loyalties, especially corporate or local loyalties, replacing them with allegiance to the nation-state. Thus the indio, no longer legally a minor, became a citizen with all the corresponding obligations, principally paying all taxes (no longer just an annual tribute) and subject to military service. Although Conservatives disapproved of this plan as unrealistic, “all racial and social distinctions were legally erased, at least on paper” and “it was forbidden to use their previous nomenclatures in documents and in public and social relations. Judicially, therefore, Indians were erased from the national human map.”46 45. Pueblos smaller than this were pueblos-sujetos, subject to one of the pueblocabeceras (head pueblos). Lira cited in Tanck de Estrada, Pueblos de indios, 19ff.; Guerra, México 1:253–73. 46. Miranda, “Propiedad comunal,” 177; Escalante Gonzalbo, Ciudadanos imaginarios, 35–40, 65; Hale, Mexican Liberalism, 248ff. Of course, not many people paid attention to these demands. Archival documentation is full of references to indios.

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Thus Mexican liberalism Wnds its origins in the 1812 Constitution of Cádiz and not in the 1824 magna carta. The former constitution aimed to abolish the repúblicas and establish in their stead municipalities inhabited by citizens. Although the Constitution of Cádiz supposed a society composed of individual citizens, now including indigenous peoples (but not castas, blacks, or women), François-Xavier Guerra considered the result a “hybridization of the new and the old.” Antonio Annino notes that while the state endeavored to turn comuneros into individuals, the practice of citizenship actually “slipped” into its opposite for various decades. The history of nineteenth-century of Oaxaca demonstrates how communal pueblos reinterpreted and adapted citizenship as a collective enterprise, thereby directly intervening in the process of state formation.47 In fact, many new citizens of Spanish America conceived of a uniWed nation as “plural.” Their nation was based not on a pact between abstract individual citizens but on a “pact among pueblos,” intrinsic to which was a corporate and communitarian concept of society. The villagers who participated in politics were not the egalitarian individuals of liberalism but privileged and territorially based vecinos (neighbors or locals) as deWned by the old regime. Cynthia Radding has noted that indigenous peoples of northern Mexico also conceived of their relationship with the Spanish Crown as a “pact of reciprocal obligations.” They transferred this pact to the new Mexican nation, a fact “revealed by the language of protest they employed during the nineteenth century against Liberal reforms regarding land tenure and village governance.”48 Thus the attachment to land as a source of identity for indigenous pueblos was reinforced by this early interpretation of citizenship. The 1824 state constitution established that citizens had to be avecindados in Oaxaca (having the qualities of a vecino). All electoral laws from 1812 to 1855 stipulated that only vecinos could vote, be elected to ofWce, or serve as primary or secondary electors. A vecino had to make an honest living 47. Guerra, “Soberano y su reino,” 34ff. and México 1:253ff. See Annino, “Ciudadanía versus gobernabilidad,” 64ff.; Carmagnani and Hernández Chávez, “Ciudadanía orgánica mexicana,” 372. 48. Guerra, “Soberano y su reino,” 36–42; Radding, Wandering Peoples, 12–13. Marcello Carmagnani and Alicia Hernández Chávez have noted that “the persistence of vecindad [as the foundation of citizenship] for over a century in Mexico gave citizenship the connotation of being organic to the locality which the vecino inhabited” (“Ciudadanía orgánica mexicana,” 372–73).

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and inhabit the pueblo for a minimum of one year. Although the Liberal Reform tried to transform this collectivized vecino into an individual resident as the foundation for citizenship, the effort was only partially successful. I share the view of Marcello Carmagnani and Alicia Hernández Chávez that this de facto basis for citizenship continued throughout the PorWriato and that individualism emerged as the axis of citizenship only with the Mexican Revolution.49 Independence, however, had disrupted the mediating function of the state. The new Mexican state was endemically weak, politically, administratively, and Wscally, a contested terrain where regional elites struggled among themselves to control the national government. As the Mexican state emerged as the political instrument of elites (although control changed hands frequently among its factions), it no longer mediated between social groups as had the Spanish Crown, nor were there Leyes de Indias to protect indigenous communities’ corporate rights. Given the ongoing economic and political crises of the Wrst half-century of Independence, as elites attempted to squeeze more proWts out of the countryside, social tensions escalated.50 In Oaxaca, this led to frequent conXict. Nineteenth-century Mexico witnessed the liberal elites’ struggle to build a modern nation-state and establish the conditions for capitalist development. This entailed a series of assaults by the state on the usos y costumbres of indigenous campesinos, considered to be a principal barrier to progress. Mexican campesinos responded to these assaults by turning the period into one of almost constant rural rebellion. These confrontations resulted in a long series of negotiations and, sometimes, compromises: the liberals continually tried to impose their concepts and practices while the pueblos defended their communities and worldviews, often redeWning and reshaping those same liberal institutions. They transformed the municipio into the vehicle through which they shielded themselves “from the most threatening aspects of liberal equality.”51

49. See Constitución particular del Estado de Oaxaca, in Colección de leyes 1:49ff. and 106ff.; Carmagnani and Hernández Chávez, “Ciudadanía orgánica mexicana,” 373ff. 50. Tutino, From Insurrection to Revolution, 242–43, and “Agrarian Social Change,” 103–6; Florescano, Etnia, estado y nación, 486. 51. Annino, “Ciudadanía versus gobernabilidad,” 74.

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Assaults on Usos y Costumbres Although liberals had legislated the elimination of “odious distinctions” per Oaxaca’s 1824 decree against fundos legales, reality did not reXect this goal. The new federal regime’s Wrst offensive against indigenous autonomy attempted to abolish the repúblicas de indios and to Wrmly establish the municipal system. The Oaxacan constitution of 1824 declared that “Oaxacans are all equal before the law,” hence anyone could inhabit a municipio. Nevertheless, this constitution continued to recognize repúblicas, which had supposedly been suppressed. What might appear to be confusion actually revealed conciliation in a state with an overwhelmingly indigenous population. If, on the one hand, the constitution stated that pueblos of three thousand inhabitants would have ayuntamientos and be the seats of municipalities, it also afWrmed that in the rest of the pueblos, “where ayuntamientos were not to be established, there would be a municipality that will be known by the recognized name of república, which will have at least one alcalde and one regidor.”52 So, while the state was partially successful in imposing the municipal system, it still had to recognize the indigenous repúblicas, evidence of their capillary power. This municipal reform had palpable results in the Mixteca. Localities of more than one thousand inhabitants were eligible to be the town seat of a municipal government, which in turn was directly responsible to state government. Other communities would be reduced to municipal agencies dependent on their town seat. The Mixteca, with 220 pueblos divided among eighty-seven repúblicas in 1826, was reduced to seventeen municipios a year later. These new municipios were mostly controlled by mestizos, achieving a transfer of local power from indigenous to mestizo hands in many cases.53 Thus the new state dealt a devastating 52. The constitution declared that “the sovereignty of this State resides originally and exclusively in the individuals of which it is composed.” Nevertheless, an 1825 decree spelled out differences with respect to “elections in ayuntamientos and Repúblicas.” See Constitución particular del Estado de Oaxaca, in Colección de leyes 1:49ff. and 106ff. I greatly appreciate Carlos Sánchez’s comments on this question and for suggesting Annino’s article. See Guardino on the transition from repúblicas to municipios in Guerrero, Peasants, Politics, 83ff. 53. Escalante Gonzalbo, Ciudadanos imaginarios, 64; Tutino, “Agrarian Social Change,” 106. According to Pastor (Campesinos y reformas, 420), during the colonial period an indigenous pueblo could have an autonomous government if it had eighty tributaries (about 360 persons); this number differs from the Wfty tributaries cited by Tanck de Estrada above. Reina Aoyama divides struggle between liberals and campesinos in the nineteenth century

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blow to the political autonomy of some indigenous communities, subordinating them to local municipal governments while it continued to recognize the autonomy of others. But where the state lacked the ability to consolidate numerous repúblicas into municipalities, ideally mestizocontrolled ones, it was better to have power dispersed among hundreds of isolated indigenous pueblos or repúblicas. As late as March 1848 Governor Benito Juárez decreed the establishment of a new república in the Hacienda de Buena Vista (since it had more than Wve hundred inhabitants), which he rationalized by the need to facilitate a better administration of justice.54 The longevity of repúblicas in Oaxaca is related to a conciliatory policy but at the same time is a classic case of divide and rule. Two further assaults on the indigenous communities went hand in hand: the expansion of the tax base and the privatization of land. The universally detested capitación increased from 24 to 46 percent of the state’s income between 1844 and 1852, producing an impressive transfer of wealth from the majority population to the elite-controlled government. No wonder recurrent tax revolts were a familiar feature of nineteenthcentury Oaxaca. Local uprisings against the capitación took place, for example, in San Juan Copala in the Mixteca in 1843, and rebels rejecting the head tax communicated with each other in Oaxaca and in the nearby regions of Guerrero, Puebla, and Mexico. This protest spread two years later to Tlaxiaco, Juxtlahuaca, and Putla. When the Juárez administration assumed power in 1847, it found it almost impossible to collect the capitación on the Isthmus. One ofWcial complained in 1849 that the inhabitants of Petapa, Tehuantepec, and Juchitán opposed the tax and looked upon the state government’s Wscal needs with the “utmost indifference.”55 into three periods: (1) 1824–40, in which indigenous people lose their legislative and judicial autonomy; (2) 1840–76, in which they are stripped of the economic autonomy; and (3) 1876–1910, in which their political autonomy is suppressed (“Autonomía indígena,” 341ff.). I do not believe that the results of liberal policies were quite so successful or that we can make such clear temporal divisions. In effect, I envision the assaults on indigenous autonomy as concurrent rather than linear. 54. See Colección de leyes 1:521. The 1857 state constitution makes no reference whatsoever to repúblicas. 55. Carmagnani, Regreso de los dioses, 236; Reina Aoyama, Rebeliones campesinas, 235ff., and “De las reformas borbónicas,” 255ff.; Abardía M. and Reina Aoyama, “Cien años de rebelión,” 435ff.; Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes, 133ff.; González Navarro, “Venganza del sur,” 680ff.; Barabas, “Rebeliones e insurrecciones,” 248ff.; Guardino, Peasants, Politics, 155–61; Hamnett, Juárez, 41.

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In 1850 Juchitecos complained that “citizens were always harassed with taxes, duties, and forced labor requirements.” In 1875 the district judge of Juquila threw the Chatino authorities of Quiahije in jail for failure to pay the capitación. The villagers met, protested, and resorted to violence. The jefe político called in the armed forces to put down the village uprising. A reorganization of the tax system led to uprisings Wrst in Pochutla in 1880 and then on the Isthmus in Tehuantepec and Juchitán in 1880–81. In fact, protest on the Isthmus frequently erupted into violence where privatization of communal lands and salt Xats combined with protests against excessive taxation, imposition of unpopular jefes políticos, and the demand for regional autonomy. Spanning various regions and threatening to become a caste war, the 1896 tax rebellion posed the most serious challenge to the state in the 1890s (see Chapter 8).56 The 1856 Lerdo Law, included in the 1857 Constitution, represented another major assault on the indigenous usos y costumbres. The traditional bases of campesino subsistence—communal landholding and separation of self-ruling pueblos from the Spanish and mestizo population—had been outlawed in the name of the Mexican nation and the rights of citizenship. But again reality demanded negotiation and compromise. Although the 1857 state constitution no longer referred to repúblicas, it still discussed control of communal lands in opposition to the 1856 Lerdo Law, another indication of the dispersed but real power of the indigenous pueblos. In Chapter 2, we saw how the privatization of land was a highly complicated process against which some pueblos fought and to which some adapted, even creating innovations in the process. Despite their principles, liberals negotiated and compromised with pueblos on municipal government, tax, and land questions throughout the nineteenth century. With respect to the colonial period, Taylor has revealed the instability and debt of Oaxaca’s haciendas as communal villages wielded power over them. John Chance has demonstrated that, in the Sierra Juárez, money was to be made in trading cochineal and textiles produced by the indigenous peoples. Romero Frizzi has shown the importance of Spaniards in the commerce in the Mixteca and their reliance on the indigenous economy, and Brian Hamnett has conWrmed that much of the wealth of the Spanish ruling merchant elites in the eighteenth century arose from the 56. Bartolomé and Barabas, Tierra de la palabra, 42; de la Cruz, Documents in Anexos, Rebelión de Che Gorio, 62; Zarauz López, PorWriato, 78–85; Terrones López, “Istmeños y subversión,” 165; see Chapter 8 in this volume on 1896 rebellion.

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production of the indigenous villages.57 But did colonial systems of production by indigenous pueblos continue to be the basis of elite wealth after Independence? Sánchez Silva argues that while Oaxacan elites never tired of blaming the Indian for obstructing progress, they actually posed the real obstacle to modernization. Since the indigenous population formed a lucrative source of wealth for the elites in the late colonial period, the latter saw no reason to alter this system with Independence and instead just added new types of exploitation to the old. During the colonial period, exploitation was indirect since the indigenous peoples maintained direct control of the process of production of cochineal and cotton textiles. Merchants traded these products internationally, enjoying healthy proWts, a percentage of which the state then collected as tribute. As long as the process of production continued in the hands of the indigenous villages, the elites were content with the status quo. Indigenous villages were far from antagonistic to production for proWt and did not recede into a state of autarky after Independence. On the contrary, their notable “orientation to marketing” is demonstrated by the fact that they produced more cochineal dye in the Wrst forty years of Independence than they had between 1780 and 1820. Merchant elites had no interest in disentailing lands belonging to the indigenous villages while the cochineal trade was still proWtable.58 With Independence, merchant elites replaced the colonial tribute with the capitación in order to fund the new state government and further dispossess the indigenous peoples of their wealth, a process, Sánchez Silva argues, that was the Wscal means of accumulation of capital. Having demonstrated that the indigenous villages provided the principal source of wealth for the Oaxacan elites and state government, he then goes to the other extreme and accuses the elites of being incapable of modernizing the state because they refused to give up this colonial form of capital accumulation.59 57. Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, and Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion; Chance, Conquest of the Sierra; Hamnett, Politics and Trade; Romero Frizzi, Economía y vida. 58. In a society in which only 13 percent of the population was nonindigenous and twothirds of the land was held by indigenous ethnic groups, Oaxaca was a “land of Indians,” Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes, 48ff.; see also 73ff. Leticia Reina Aoyama has argued that Oaxacan communities entered a state of autarky after Independence (“De las reformas borbónicas,” 185–87, 196–98 and “Pueblos,” 140), which Sánchez Silva strongly refutes. Fernando Escalante repeats Reina Aoyama’s thesis in Ciudadanos imaginarios, 59. 59. Sánchez Silva calls this domination “the torrid romance between politics and business.” Indios, comerciantes, 200; see also 110–26, 143ff.

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Oaxacan elites were forced to change their means of accumulation with the deWnitive decline of the cochineal trade, which coincided with the Liberal triumph over the French in the late 1860s. As they turned to other products, especially coffee, to recoup their losses, they were caught up in the transformation of production, politics, and social conWgurations with the expansion of the world market and foreign investment in the last thirty years of the nineteenth century.60 Evidently Oaxacans too participated in this drive to modernity, as the assaults on the indigenous usos y costumbres accelerated. Yet communal pueblos also transformed themselves as they resisted and innovated in the defense of their customs and traditions. Inspired by Nancy Farriss’s classic analysis of the second conquest of the indigenous peoples of the Yucatán in the eighteenth century, Marcello Carmagnani deemed the period between 1847 and 1853 a second conquest of the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca. Although his research centered on his theory of the reconstitution of ethnicity in the colonial period, Carmagnani dedicated the larger part of his conclusions to this idea of a second conquest, providing only slim and unconvincing evidence. Although he judged that the latter was only partial, he concluded that it resulted in a second “collapse of ethnic identity.”61 Although liberals may have proposed modernizing society, the results were far from complete and can hardly be termed a “second conquest” in Oaxaca. Sánchez Silva also rejects Carmagnani’s theory, remarking that what Carmagnani imagines as a “violent rupture” in a six-year span was actually the consolidation of a “long process.”62 Personally, I disagree with both these interpretations. In fact, Sánchez Silva complains that elites did not embrace economic modernization until the cochineal trade declined in the 1860s. Thus, the period between 1847 and 1853 did not witness this rupture. Moreover, the isthmian indigenous groups’ nineteenth-century struggles to defend their usos y costumbres demonstrated the strength of ethnic and multiethnic identity. During precisely the period that Carmagnani cites as the “second conquest,” the great isthmian wars were raging, as we shall see in the next chapter. There never was any second conquest, 60. Taylor, “Between Global Process and Local Knowledge,” 170, and Migdal, “Capitalist Penetration,” 70. See Hobsbawm, Age of Empire, 34ff. 61. Carmagnani, Regreso de los dioses, 230ff.; see Chance’s critique of the theory of ethnic reconstitution in “Dinámica étnica,” 159. 62. Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes, 56–57, 185–87.

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and it is questionable whether the liberal project of individual citizenship was ever actually consolidated in Oaxaca. Liberals frequently needed to secure campesino military, logistical, economic, or political support during both wartime and peacetime. Therefore, on the three questions vital to liberal principles (land, municipal autonomy, and taxes), they often found themselves compromising with indigenous villages. As long as the latter could oblige liberal leaders or the state government to retreat or at least to negotiate, they had some leverage to mold the Liberal program to their needs. Thus it is not surprising that Mexican Liberals often enjoyed signiWcant popular support.63 The political realities of patron-client relationships repeatedly forced compromise and deferred the attainment of Liberal objectives. The two converging goals of Liberal leaders, the diffusion of capitalist relations of production and the consolidation of the nation-state, come to life in the story of one indigenous village. Santa María Yucuiti’s Werce struggle in the defense of its usos y costumbres, and against the expansion of the most powerful sugarcane hacienda of the Mixteca, illustrates how indigenous campesinos shaped this conXict. It reveals the process by which this Mixtec village integrated new economic forces into its usos y costumbres while it rejected subordination, and how it learned to play politics on local, regional, state, and national levels.

Santa María Yucuiti, One Pueblo’s “Tenacious” Struggle The Mixtec village of Santa María Yucuiti64 sits high up in the mountains of the Mixteca in the district of Tlaxiaco. Historically, it had land in different ecological niches: some, above two thousand meters, suitable for the cultivation of temperate crops, such as potatoes and maguey, and some, below one thousand meters, where coffee, bananas, and other tropical and subtropical fruits Xourish. Its lower lands sloped down to the west toward the Cañada of Yosotichi. Traversed by a river, this fertile canyon is particularly suited to the cultivation of sugarcane, a fact quickly discovered by the Spanish in the early colonial period. The expanding 63. On this subject in Puebla, see Thomson, “Popular Aspects of Liberalism,” 287, and Mallon, Peasant and Nation. 64. In the documentation and secondary sources, Yucuiti is also spelled Yucuhiti, Yucuhite, and Yucuite. I have chosen to use the most common and simplest spelling.

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cultivation of this crop turned into “an ecological disaster” for the Mixtec communities, once their populations began to recover from the impact of European diseases. The mountain villages depended on lands in the cañada for corn in July and August, called the yoo tama, the “months of starvation,” after the mountain-harvested maize supply had run out. If they lost control of these lands, the villagers would be forced to seek work outside the community in order to buy the desperately needed corn, thus providing labor for haciendas and trapiches, which soon dominated the cañada.65 By the mid-nineteenth century, the Cañada of Yosotichi had become not only a center of commercial agriculture, producing 20 percent of the state’s sugar and a sizable quantity of sugarcane brandy, but also a site of social and cultural mestizaje. The prosperity of the haciendas and sugar mills in the cañada contributed to the rise of the district capital of Tlaxiaco by stimulating its manufactures and commerce. The economic power of the Esperón family, which owned the largest hacienda, La Concepción, gave the Esperóns increased political muscle in Tlaxiaco. As Alejandro Méndez Aquino has observed, the “success of the Esperón family was the success of Tlaxiaco.”66 The Hacienda de la Concepción developed from the lands the Spaniard Gabriel Esperón originally rented from the Mixtec villages of the cañada (see Chapter 3). As the Esperón family expanded its holdings and eventually adjudicated them under the 1856 Lerdo Law, the hacienda grew to more than eight thousand hectares, dwarWng all other private holdings in the area. The population of the hacienda mushroomed from 210 to 949 between 1857 and 1890. This growth resulted from an expanding need for labor, water sources, and timber for fuel, placing the hacienda on a “collision course with the indian communities of the mountains, who controlled the streams and most accessible forests.”67 Thus the hacienda attempted to take over the mountainsides and streams belonging to Yucuiti. 65. John Monaghan wrote a moving account of the struggles of this pueblo in “Disentailment” (which I cite here, 1–9), which was later published as “La desamortización de la propiedad comunal en la Mixteca: Resistencia popular y raíces de la conciencia nacional,” in Romero Frizzi, Lecturas históricas, 3:343–86. Monaghan had access to the muncipal archive of Yucuiti when he was living in the town. He advised me that much of this archive was later destroyed in a storm (personal communication). 66. Monaghan, “Disentailment,” 1–18; see also Méndez Aquino, Historia de Tlaxiaco (Mixteca), 213. 67. Monaghan, “Disentailment,” 9–12.

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Had the Esperóns been renting lands from Yucuiti in the decade prior to the 1856 disentailment law, they might have been able to purchase the lands they coveted. But since they hadn’t, they had to seek other means to obtain them. Fortunately for them, since the late sixteenth century Tlaxiaco had disputed control of lands in the cañada with the cacicazgo of Ocotepec, to which Yucuiti had belonged. This dispute was revived in the early eighteenth century, when Tlaxiaco also demanded control of some of the mountainsides as well as lowlands in the cañada. Although in both instances the Crown settled the disputes in favor of Yucuiti, the latter lost de facto control of much land. When the Esperóns wanted to privatize land in the cañada and on the mountainsides under the Lerdo Law, they used their political inXuence. Tlaxiaco renewed its ownership claim and then turned around and sold the lands as private property to the Hacienda de la Concepción.68 The villagers had to go to court again to save the lands, where they cultivated the maize so vital to the survival of their community. Monaghan has divided this history into three periods of intense litigation between Yucuiti and the Esperón family and Tlaxiaco: 1860–63, 1867–75, and 1889–96. José Esperón’s appointment as a high state ofWcial, and Wnally as secretary of government to Governor Ramón Cajiga in 1863, marked the Wrst period. Esperón used his position to emphasize the need to carry out the Lerdo Law in Oaxaca, issuing numerous circulars urging disentailment of community lands. Fortunately for Yucuiti, the radical liberal PorWrio Díaz forced Cajiga and Esperón from power in 1863. The villagers realized then that it would be in their interest to ally themselves with the enemies of their enemies. When Díaz later escaped from the French in 1865 and arrived in the Mixteca to rally his patria chica, at least six men from Yucuiti joined his forces and fought in the battle of La Carbonera.69 As Monaghan observes, “the legal battles between the two sides ebbed and Xowed with the political fortunes of the borlados [the moderate faction of liberals in Oaxaca, headed by José Esperón]. When the borlados were in ascendancy, the dispute in the 68. Tlaxiaco did have rights to the bottom lands in the cañada and sold those legally. The details of the story are far more complicated than this short synthesis. See Monaghan, “Disentailment,” 9–18; Martínez Gracida, Colección de cuadros sinópticos (Tlaxiaco); Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, chaps. 10 and 11, 453ff.; Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes, 129–31, and various Wles from the AGEPEO cited in note 74 and the following notes. 69. “Distentailment,” 20–41. The conXict between the moderate and radical liberals will be addressed in Chapter 8.

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cañada heated up, and litigation proliferated. When the borlados were out of power, the Esperóns took no new initiatives and the people of Yucuiti were content to maintain the status quo.”70 In 1867, with the defeat of Maximilian, the conXict between the hacienda and the village intensiWed again, as the administrator of the hacienda accused Yucuiti of “invading the hacienda’s lands.” This period was marked by the support of Yucuiti for Díaz in the failed Rebellion of La Noria (1871) and the ascendance of José Esperón as secretary of government to Governor Miguel Castro in 1872 and to the governorship itself in 1874. Esperón used his authority to issue a favorable decree for coffee and sugar planters, which directly beneWted his family. Direct control of the state government also permitted the Esperóns to use extremely “heavy-handed” tactics, such as the levy, sacking, burning, and pillaging of Yucuiti. This period came to an end with the triumph of Díaz and the Plan of Tuxtepec in 1876. The death of Esteban Esperón and the exile of José signiWed a period of relative relief for the village.71 The third period of litigation began in the late 1880s when Esteban Cházari Esperón, a chemist and Borlado state legislator, nephew of José and Esteban, inherited La Concepción. Given PorWrian prosperity in Oaxaca in the early to mid-1890s, Cházari increased production on the hacienda and tried again to coerce the village into giving up its lands. PorWrian ofWcials in Oaxaca encouraged the expansion of commercial agriculture and bowed to the power of a family now reputed to be the wealthiest in the state.72 But by then Mateo Máximo López, who had been one of those youngsters forced into the leva at age fourteen when soldiers raided Yucuiti, had returned to the pueblo. He had served in the army in Puebla, Veracruz, Tabasco, and the Yucatán, and become literate in Spanish. This skill not only helped him secure the job of municipal secretary when he returned to the village in his mid-twenties, but also eventually to function as cultural negotiator and political broker. According to Monaghan, he would eventually emerge as Yucuiti’s cacique. It was López’s knowledge of the outside world and his growing inXuence in the village that brought about a change in strategy for the defense of Yucuiti’s lands. Cognizant of liberal principles and the Hacienda’s strong argument that corporations could 70. Ibid., 19. 71. Ibid., 26–34. 72. Ibid., 34–41.

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not legally hold lands, he and others now drew a distinction between the rights of villagers as individuals and the rights of the “corporation of Yucuiti.” In a series of letters to the governor, López explained that the dispute was not between the “hacienda” and the “pueblo,” but between nineteen “individual property owners,” and the hacendado, Esteban Cházari Esperón. López and fellow villagers rapidly divided some of the lands into individual plots among the ofWcials of Yucuiti by April 1892. With his knowledge of the dominant culture of Mexico, López realized that individual property owners would be better protected by the law. But even this strategy did not halt the hacienda’s continued harassment of the village.73 By 1889 the signature of the ubiquitous German merchant-landowner Gustavo Stein was appearing on documents as administrator of La Concepción and representative of Esteban Cházari, who had now moved to Mexico City. Backed up by the jefe político of the district, Stein demanded that the state government act vigorously against Yucuiti. On September 15, 1895, the jefe político evicted the villagers from the lands claimed by the hacienda and imposed a $200 Wne. Although invited to witness this eviction, the municipal president of Yucuiti failed to appear (allegedly he was away collecting the capitación), refusing to participate or be associated with such government actions. When the authorities arrived, they found the villagers’ huts in Xames, no men, and only a few women, who refused to tell them the names of the homeowners. The milpas had already been harvested but there were some smaller plantings of coffee and sugarcane. The authorities collected the Wne by embargoing and selling the village’s livestock. Despite this major setback, the villagers reoccupied the lands a few days later.74 Stein denounced Yucuiti to Governor González on January 28, 1896: “they have returned with rancor, with more boldness, with true resistance to authority, and not only have they once again occupied what was taken from them, but they have armed themselves and advanced even further, destroying the cane Welds in their path and threatening my workers on those lands.” He emphasized that these acts signiWed not only “disobedience and insult to the authority of administrative decisions but a challenge to authority . . . that required immediate repression,” which he suggested 73. Ibid. 74. AGEPEO, 1889, Gob., Conf., leg. 84, exp. 7, Tlaxiaco, and 1896, leg. 84, exp. 6.

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be the consignment of village ofWcials and leaders to the leva. A February 1896 report on the situation noted the “invincible tenacity of the villagers” and their “notorious disdain for authority.”75 An indigenous Mixtec village had challenged the power of the state. In February Stein transformed the conXict into an international affair by condemning the indolence of the state authorities to the German legation in Mexico City and asking them to pressure the Mexican government to insure the protection of his property. This complaint involved the Oaxaqueño minister of foreign relations, Ignacio Mariscal, who then requested that Governor González attend to the matter. The governor responded that he had done just that, as had governments before him, but that “orders and dispositions have not always been as effective as we would want, because all measures are smashed by the tenacity and rudeness of the indigenous class, especially in questions of landholding.” González also complained to Mariscal that Stein was double-dealing by protesting to the German legation while at the same time negotiating with Yucuiti.76 The village won its case for title to the disputed lands in the Oaxacan courts in 1896 and new boundary markers were set up. Nevertheless, the villagers still did not occupy the lands, perhaps because they feared continued harassment. An 1896 agreement stipulated an annual rent of $500 from La Concepción to Yucuiti for some of the land, and speciWed that two hundred heads of families of Yucuiti would be able to rent no fewer than three maquilas of land apiece from the hacienda, which would also provide free medicines, when needed, to its tenants.77 During this ongoing saga, decree after government decree demanded immediate privatization, lawsuit after lawsuit threatened Yucuiti’s lands, villagers were continually harassed, arrested, and Wned; some were carted off to serve in the army. Troops of Rurales raided the village, destroying crops, looting (even the town band’s precious musical instruments), burning property, and forcing people from their homes, all with the consent of the jefe político in Tlaxiaco. Rival villages were armed and also encouraged to attack Yucuiti, which they did, burning and sacking it. But the inhabitants of Yucuiti repeatedly insisted that these lands were 75. Ibid. 76. AGEPEO, 1896, Gob., leg. 84, exp. 6, Tlaxiaco. Monaghan essentially ends his story in 1896. I have been able to continue the story to 1912, thanks to AGEPEO Wles classiWed after he did his research. 77. Ibid.; Monaghan, “Disentailment,” 9, 38–41. A maquila is equal to one-quarter of a hectare. The village ofWcials never actually ratiWed this accord, although Cházari signed it.

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their ancestral lands since time immemorial. Monaghan believes that the Yucuitecos’ tenacity—precisely the quality for which the hacienda representatives and government authorities castigated them—was their most successful weapon against the Esperóns. Except for a few years in the 1870s, villagers continued to plant on the mountainsides almost every year between 1856 and 1896, no matter the cost. Their constant presence in the disputed lands served them well.78 Documents in the state archives conWrm that the conXict continued into the Wrst decade of the twentieth century. According to Joaquín Pimentel, the representative of Cházari’s heirs, the villagers were evicted from the lands again in 1903 and new boundaries were set up. Local authorities threatened to impose an enormous $6,000 Wne on any party who disregarded them. This time Yucuiti waited a year before returning to the lands, but then reportedly invaded more territory than ever before, and, in Pimentel’s words, “insolent, barbarous, and armed, attacked the hacienda workers.” A hundred of these armed “indios” burned the cane Welds and Wred on the hacienda’s workers; armed confrontations were becoming more frequent as hacienda workers had to defend themselves. In addition, Pimentel complained that the Yucuitecos had also begun to steal cattle from the hacienda. He protested these ongoing abuses and invasions directly to the state government in 1907 because the Jefatura política had not been effective. This time around, the jefe político did not support the claims of the hacienda as in the past. The middle-class lawyer Salvador Bolaños Cacho even questioned the veracity of the hacienda’s report, since he had found no proof of any crimes committed by the residents of Yucuiti. He also complained about how bothersome these boundary questions had become for the authorities.79 Taking advantage of the revolutionary situation in September 1911, villagers from Yucuiti once again invaded hacienda-controlled lands. But 78. Monaghan, “Disentailment,” 20ff. The jefe político of each district oversaw the process of privatization of corporate lands and creating individual landowners. This could lead to much abuse if he was more inXuenced by the local powers than by the state government. Falcón, “Jefes políticos,” 243ff. On the importance of town bands, see Thomson in “Bulwarks of Patriotic Liberalism,” and on bands in Oaxacan history, see Flores Dorantes and Ruiz Torres, “Bandas de viento.” 79. Monaghan assumed that the situation was relatively peaceful until the Revolution, but these documents prove otherwise. Most probably this Wne was $600, which was already stiff enough; and the last zero is probably a typo. AGEPEO, 1907, Gob., Conf. por tierras, leg. 84, exp. 8, Tlaxiaco.

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when forced to negotiate, they agreed to reinstate the 1896 tenancy agreement mentioned above, with Yucuitecos paying 25 centavos per maquila annually. Nevertheless, in early 1912 managers at the hacienda put in a desperate phone call to the jefe político claiming that they had been surrounded by “indios” who were Wring on them and destroying their corrals and cane Welds. When a police force of twenty-eight went to investigate, the Yucuitecos Wred on them. The police were forced to retreat, as the villagers numbered more than four hundred. A few years later, villagers from Yucuiti fought with the conservative Sovereignty movement of Oaxaca, which had allied itself with the Zapatistas from nearby Morelos. It was then that the Yucuitecos moved into the hacienda’s lands, tore up the sugarcane, and planted maize once again.80 The lands of Yucuiti would once again nurture and feed the family of the “great house,” the community. But like a large family, it was prone to forces, both internal and external, that tugged at its boundaries and caused strife. As in large families, there were always sibling rivalries. As an “hijo del pueblo” moved up the rungs of this social ladder and attained the more responsible cargos, as a young father would, he also matured politically and socially; but this advancement often caused yatuni in others. This system also demonstrates how usos y costumbres evolve over time. Clearly the cargo system blended pre-Columbian and Spanish practices and later added attributes of the liberal institution of the municipio. It exhibited not only hierarchical, patriarchal, and paternalistic characteristics but also what we would term “democratic” features. Comuneros discussed government dispositions or held elections in the presence of the entire común. A merit system determined advancement in the cargo system, especially if an aspiring leader could function as a cultural intermediary with the state or outsiders. The people of Yucuiti struggled for decades against the Hacienda de la Concepción. They learned to employ various strategies and never gave up hope. They mastered the intricacies of litigation, learned how to hire lawyers and even solicit a professional title search in the national archives. They joined PorWrio Díaz and the Liberals in the War of French Intervention, La Noria Rebellion, and the Plan of Tuxtepec in order to gain 80. AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Gob., Putla; Monaghan, “Disentailment,” 3. Once they retrieved their Welds from haciendas, the villagers in Morelos also pulled up the cane Welds to plant maize once again. Zapata was incensed by this action, which left the sugar mills idle. See Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, 240.

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his patronage. Little by little this dispute forced Yucuiti to reckon with regional, state, and national politics, as its people fought to recover their lands.81 SigniWcant changes took place in Yucuiti. The implementation of the disentailment laws not only changed the way the villagers came to terms with the state but also how they confronted each other, since socioeconomic differentiation deepened the gulf between private landowners and comuneros. Originally Yucuiti had confronted the state as a corporation, represented by the ofWcials of its civil-religious hierarchy. Later, with Mateo Máximo López’s guidance, some of them approached the state as individual property owners demanding their rights. The ofWcials who worked out the privatization of village lands in the 1890s and had learned the particulars of the privatization process not surprisingly ended up as Yucuiti’s largest landholders. The introduction of new cash crops, such as coffee, further encouraged the privatization and commercialization of village agriculture. Monaghan insightfully concludes that the Reform also advanced “in a roundabout way” its political goals, the “heightening of an awareness of the nation and an interest in its politics among the Indian peoples of this isolated community.”82 As the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca fought tirelessly to maintain village autonomy and their usos y costumbres, through litigation, village protests, and on the battleWeld, they also fought on ideological fronts. They redeWned the basis of citizenship to suit their needs by turning the individual citizen into the collectivized vecino of the común. Some ethnicities developed competing visions of nation and sovereignty, as is dramatically illustrated by the struggle of the indigenous peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, to which we now turn.

81. Monaghan, “Disentailment,” 20ff. 82. Ibid. 45–48. AGEPEO, 1919, Conf. por tierras, Carp. 2, leg. 305, Tlaxiaco, Yucuhite. According to this 1919 Wle, López’s lands were only valued at $60, which is the average holding. The lands of Manuel García, the wealthiest man on the list, were worth $349.

7 The Indigenous Peoples of Oaxaca: Negotiating Modernity [B]y natural right, we consider ourselves legitimate owners able to use this resource [salt Xats], because the Supreme Being wanted to put it on our soil, on our coast (thanks be to God) and it is not true like people are saying that we are robbing it . . . since he who uses and enjoys what is his is not stealing. We are Mexicans, we are the nation, and we are the owners. —Petition signed by the Común of this pueblo of Juchitán

The Común of Juchitán and the Isthmian Wars The city of Juchitán is situated in the center of the narrow coastal plain of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, about Wve miles from the PaciWc Ocean. Bordering the state of Veracruz on the north and Chiapas on the east, Oaxaca’s isthmian region is bounded by the PaciWc on the south and the Sierra Madre del Sur on the west. In the nineteenth century, much of the Isthmus’s two districts, Tehuantepec and Juchitán, were sparsely inhabited mountains and hills; the majority of the population was concentrated on the coastal plain. In 1854, when G. F. von Tempsky visited, Juchitán was the largest urban community in southern Mexico, with a population of about ten thousand, mainly speakers of Zapotec. This German traveler noted that Juchitecos had “the reputation of being a very unruly set, turbulent politicians and revolutionists.” To this day Juchitecos pride themselves on their reputation as staunch defenders of Zapotec culture and Wercely committed political activists, a force to be reckoned with both in Oaxaca and outside it.1 1. Binford and Campbell, “Introduction,” 4–6, and Von Tempsky, “A German Traveler’s Observations,” 119. In 1981 Juchitán became the Wrst city in Mexico to elect a socialist mayor, from the COCEI, which has fought for regional autonomy since the 1970s. On the COCEI and recent struggles, see Campbell, Zapotec Renaissance, and Rubin, Decentering the Regime.

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In part this reputation stems from a centuries-old struggle to defend communal lands and access to natural resources. It is inseparable from the unique Zapotec ethnic identity, which spans all social classes in Juchitán. Numerous scholars have been fascinated by this ongoing historical memory. As John Tutino asked, “Why have Juchitecos of all classes clung to the Zapotec tongue and to an adamant pride in Zapotec culture? How have Juchitecos built and maintained a historical tradition of local autonomy and resistance to encroaching outsiders?”2 What follows is a brief summary of one of the key historical struggles that has contributed to the construction of Juchitán’s impassioned ethnic identity. While the Isthmus had been a trading center during the pre-Hispanic period, colonial Spanish domination decisively shaped its economic future. The demographic catastrophe reduced the indigenous population by an estimated 75 percent, which facilitated the Spanish takeover of lands. The most notorious case was the “Haciendas Marquesanas,” various large estates given to Cortés by the Spanish Crown in reward for the conquest of New Spain. Much of the land under Spanish control was devoted to pasture for cattle and other livestock, and produced beef, hides, and wool for the markets of the cities of Oaxaca, Mexico, and Spain. The Spanish also introduced the cultivation of sugarcane, cochineal dye, and indigo. The community of Juchitán boasted a considerable cloth industry and its merchants traded these textiles to both highland Oaxaca and Guatemala. As we have seen, the region also had numerous salt Xats around the upper and lower lagoons on the PaciWc coast. The salt stimulated the production of salted Wsh and beef, which not only Spanish and Zapotecs but also Chontales, Huaves, and Zoques traded to surrounding regions, including Chiapas and Guatemala. By the late colonial period, Juchitán had overshadowed Tehuantepec and become the major center of Zapotec commerce and culture.3 2. Tutino, “Ethnic Resistance,” 42, “Rebelión indígena,” 89–101, and From Insurrection to Revolution, 253–54; de la Cruz, “Rebeliones indígenas,” 55–71, and Rebelión de Che Gorio; Campbell, Zapotec Renaissance; Rubin, Decentering the Regime. 3. De la Cruz, “Un descendiente de Cosijoeza,” 2; Tutino, “Ethnic Resistance,” 45ff., and “Rebelión indígena en Tehuantepec,” 95; Hamnett, Juárez, 40; Binford and Campbell, “Introduction,” 6; Zeitlin, “Colonialism,” 78, and “Ranchers and Indians,” 23ff. While the Zapotecs were the majority ethnic group on the Isthmus, there were also smaller groups of Chontales, Zoques, Huaves, and Mixes. For a list of the salt mines functioning in 1883, see Martínez Gracida and Vásquez, Cuadro estadístico, and table 20 in Chapter 4 of this volume.

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While the economy prospered, the Juchitecos fought long and hard for the recovery of the communal lands appropriated by the Spanish, and for the traditional rights to pasture their animals in lands of the Haciendas Marquesanas and to exploit the salt Xats. They displayed a marked orientation to commerce, which on the Isthmus included the active participation of both women and men. The Juchitecos controlled much of their own export economy, although the merchants of the city of Oaxaca were always pushing to expand their interests on the Isthmus. With Independence, the export economy of the Isthmus fell on hard times. Cochineal competition from the Central Valleys of Oaxaca and Guatemala contributed to declining prices, while the British, French, and Dutch encouraged indigo production in their own colonies. The introduction of European textiles hurt the cloth industry. Trying to derive some beneWt from these changes, the Juchitecos began to trade large quantities of salt along with cochineal and indigo to Guatemala in exchange for French and British textiles. The federal government battled this illegal trade, which challenged the control of European textiles on the Isthmus that Vallistocrat merchants had cornered.4 This trade in contraband led to growing tensions between the Istmeños and the merchant elites in the state capital. In 1825 the newly created state of Oaxaca, in its search for sources of income, decreed the privatization of the isthmian salt deposits. It reasoned that the leasing of a monopoly over salt production to a private individual would encourage a more efWcient exploitation of this product and thus generate more tax revenue for the state. But this decree represented a direct attack on the traditions and customs with respect to natural resources of the indigenous communities. They depended on salt not only as a vital ingredient of their own diet (in a tropical climate) but also as an integral part of their commercial economy. As it happened, no one stepped forward to set up this monopoly, given the difWcult economic situation in the area. In the early 1830s the Oaxacan government “centralized” the income from the salt deposits, which provided the state of Oaxaca with an annual income of $25,000.5 4. Tutino, “Rebelión indígena en Tehuantepec,” 96, and “Ethnic Resistance,” 52ff. 5. On the early Republic’s salt policies, see González Navarro, Anatomía del poder en México, 186ff.; Tutino, “Rebelión indígena en Tehuantepec,” 97; and Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:285–86. It is not exactly clear what “centralization” signiWed; the context implies that the state government of Oaxaca took over salt production.

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In 1834 this measure provoked the Wrst armed uprising headed by José Gregorio Meléndez, or, as he is known on the Isthmus, Che Gorio Melendre. A Zapotec born in 1793 on a ranch outside Juchitán, Meléndez had fought in the Wars of Independence under General Mariano Matamoros. He was a prosperous rancher who had been active in local commerce and politics. From the Wrst rebellion in 1834 until his death in 1853, Che Gorio was the undisputed leader of the indigenous peoples of the Isthmus, not only the majority Zapotecs but also the local Huaves, Zoques, and Chontales, all Wghting for their communal rights. His inXuence stretched from Guelavici to the west of Salina Cruz to Tonalá, Chiapas. But the 1834–35 movement did not spread as expected, nor did it last very long. Its leaders, including Meléndez, were quickly captured and taken prisoner.6 This did not stop the indigenous peoples from extracting salt from the deposits in question. Forever short of income, the central government in Mexico City decided it was time for it to derive some beneWt from isthmian natural resources. In the Federal Bulletin of March 24, 1843, the people of Oaxaca learned that the salt Xats had been put on the commercial market. The Oaxacan state government composed a well-reasoned protest against this measure, arguing that such a sale would result in an enormous loss of revenue to the state, but its plea was to no avail. In the 1840s the salt monopoly was sold to a merchant, Francisco Javier Echeverría, who was not native to Oaxaca. When Echeverría tried to impose his right of private property over the salt deposits, he found himself in direct conXict with the Istmeño villagers.7 So discouraging had the economic situation on the Isthmus become, particularly after the Wrst armed uprising in 1834, that the Duke of Monteleone, Cortés’s heir, decided to put the Haciendas Marquesanas up for sale through his Mexican agent, the inXuential Conservative politician Lucas Alamán. Despite the limited economic prospects, a few foreign immigrants had arrived in Oaxaca and the Isthmus after Independence, eager to seek their fortune. Among them was a Milanese entrepreneur, 6. Tutino, “Ethnic Resistance,” 56–57; de la Cruz, Rebelión de Che Gorio, 9, 21–22, and “Rebeliones indígenas,” 64. De la Cruz explains that this movement actually began in 1834, not 1835 (as Iturribarría afWrmed in Historia de Oaxaca 1:216). In 1835 the rebellion seconded the federalist Plan of Texca launched by Juan Alvarez in the south and that year is confused with its initiation. 7. Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:285–86; Tutino, “Rebelión indígena en Tehuantepec,” 97; de la Cruz, “Rebeliones indígenas,” 64–65.

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Esteban Maqueo, who in partnership with José Joaquín Guergué purchased the properties in 1836. When Maqueo and Guergué attempted to assert their right of private property over these lands, they also came into conXict with the villagers of Juchitán, who had enjoyed the traditional usufruct of these lands to graze their livestock. To complicate matters further, the drive toward the privatization occurred at a time when the population of Juchitán was growing and pressure on all land had increased.8 To emphasize their right to exclusivity, the haciendas’ administrators proceeded to seize villagers’ animals grazing on what they considered to be their private property. The villagers responded in kind, sequestering livestock belonging to the estates. Although the question of legal ownership might be resolved only by the expensive process of a land survey that would demarcate the boundaries, neither side seemed keen on commissioning a survey. Perhaps both were unsure of the outcome. Thus began a confrontation that lasted for decades. The taxes levied on the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca provided another irritant, particularly the capitación. The Juchitecos were convinced that they continually paid more taxes to the state government than neighboring Tehuantepec, whose population had a stronger Spanish and mestizo contingent. The combination of these conXicts over land, salt extraction, and taxation led to the so-called “isthmian wars,” otherwise known as the “great isthmian rebellion” of the nineteenth century.9 By 1846 the Juchitecos had resumed their use of the disputed lands and continued to extract salt from the Xats. This indigenous deWance of the dictates of the Mexican state arose at the moment when the federal government had been completely distracted and weakened by the invasion of the United States. Furthermore, the wars on the Isthmus paralleled similar indigenous challenges to state control elsewhere in Mexico, such as Yucatán’s Caste War, the rebellion of the Sierra Gorda, and Juan Alvarez’s uprising in central Mexico. No sooner did U.S. forces enter 8. Tutino, “Ethnic Resistance,” 53ff., and “Rebelión indígena,” 96; de la Cruz, Rebelión de Che Gorio, 10, and “Rebeliones indígenas,” 65; Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:285ff. The nationality of Guergué’s descendants is unclear; some believe him to be of French or Spanish origin. 9. Tutino, “Rebelión indígena en Tehuantepec,” 95–96. Alamán, who acted as agent for the duke of Monteleone, admitted that the duke did not actually have the legal titles of ownership or the exact boundaries. Neither, then, did Maqueo and Guergué. see González Navarro, “Venganza del sur,” 678, 684; Meyer, Problemas campesinos, 20; Reina Aoyama, “De las reformas borbónicas,” 261.

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Mexico than indigenous uprisings broke out all over the central and southern regions. During the rebellions of the 1840s and 1850s, popular classes in Oaxaca and elsewhere took advantage of national crises to advance their own causes, and “popular mobilization reached a scale not seen since the insurgency of the 1810s.”10 In February 1847 the Conservative Party in Oaxaca seconded the rebellion of the “Polkos” in central Mexico and overthrew the Oaxacan state government. The Liberal governor, José Simeón Arteaga, Xed, and none other than the Conservative vice governor and co-owner of the Haciendas Marquesanas, José Joaquín Guergué, succeeded him. The proLiberal barrio of San Blas Atempa on the outskirts of Tehuantepec, which resented Guergué’s Conservative politics, rose up against this new state government and was quickly followed by its allies, the Juchitecos. José Gregorio Meléndez, who had led the 1834 rebellion, refused to recognize Guergué and proceeded to exert military control over the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in effect taking over the role of governor. During the next few years, the federal government lost control of the region. Once the Polkos had been defeated in the Centro, Oaxaca’s Liberal Party returned to rule in the state capital, and in October 1847 Benito Juárez, a lawyer who had come up through the ranks of the Liberal Party in Oaxaca, became governor of the state for the Wrst time. Juárez, himself a Zapotec, emerged as the main defender of the rights of private property and the authority of the state against the usos y costumbres of these Istmeño Zapotecs. In contrast to his illustrious reputation throughout Mexico, he is deWnitely not remembered as a great hero on the Isthmus.11 10. González Navarro, “Venganza del sur,” 682; Tutino, “Rebelión indígena en Tehuantepec,” 97. Víctor de la Cruz disputes Tutino’s assertion, pointing to other movements, in particular the uprising of 1834, when the state was not so distracted. De la Cruz, “Rebeliones indígenas,” 65, and Rebelión de Che Gorio, 11ff. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the popular classes knew an opportune moment when they saw one (i.e., in the peasant wars of the 1840s and 1860s). See also Reina Aoyama, Rebeliones campesinas, 231ff. On Juan Alvarez’s rebellion, see Guardino, Peasants, Politics. The last quotation is from Hamnett, who continues, “In contrast to the decade of the Wars of Independence, however, no national leadership was available to coordinate the localized rebellions” ( Juárez, 40–41). See the various articles on the 1840s rebellions in Katz, Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution. 11. Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:341–42; Fortson, Gobernantes de Oaxaca, 56– 67. It should be emphasized that the language and culture of Serrano Zapotecs were quite different from those of Istmeño Zapotecs. Hamnett makes this point in Juárez, 41. The Juchitecos’ ongoing dislike of Juárez is illustrated by the work of isthmian artist, Francisco Toledo, in Lo que el viento a Juárez.

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In order to establish peace and bring order to the region, as well as to respond to Maqueo and Guergué’s protests against Meléndez, Juárez appointed Máximo Ramón Ortiz from Tehuantepec as governor of the Isthmus and made Meléndez military commander of the National Guard in the region. This constituted a thinly veiled attempt to reduce Che Gorio’s power while keeping him within the folds of government. Since the government feared a U.S. invasion at Coatzacoalcos in the northern Isthmus, the moment was critical. Meléndez not only rejected the position offered him but also declared the separation of the Isthmus from the state of Oaxaca. He then attacked Tehuantepec, forcing the state militia to withdraw in the direction of the city of Oaxaca. At this point, Che Gorio gained effective control of the area. The Istmeño villagers could then freely exploit the disputed salt deposits and grazing lands. The crisis on the Isthmus, observed Hamnett, was the “most formidable test of the Juárez administration. It exposed to the full the precarious nature of state authority in an area where central government control had traditionally been weak.” Juárez found that it was not possible to handle Che Gorio, and, as the crisis escalated, the state governor faced embarrassing defeat.12 With the Juchitecos in control of the region, Juárez sent Lt. Col. José María Muñoz to Tehuantepec as governor and military commandant of the Isthmus; he restored peace only brieXy in 1848. The following year the Juchitecos returned en masse to extract salt from the Xats within Echeverría’s lands and also those of Salina Cruz. In two documents directed to the local judge and alcalde and signed by the Juchiteco común, the Juchitecos articulated their claim that the “pueblo was determined to continue extracting salt from the Xats.” Invoking a higher authority, they rejected the accusations of theft, as we see in the passage from their petition that opens this chapter. In their petition, in which they proclaimed themselves “Mexicans, . . . the nation, . . . the owners,” the Juchitecos 12. Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:341–42; Fortson, Gobernantes de Oaxaca, 56–67. The government structure is confusing because there was the state governor and also a governor of the Isthmus, subject to the former. The local Zapotec authorities formed the ayuntamiento, or town council. Tutino, “Ethnic Resistance,” 57; de la Cruz, “Rebeliones indígenas,” 65; Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:342, 356ff. Ever since the National Congress had created the Province of the Isthmus from the Partidos of Acayucan and Tehuantepec in 1823, which lasted a little over a year, the Xames of separatism were occasionally fanned in this region. See López Gurrión, Efemérides istmeñas, 57–58; Hamnett, Juárez, 41–42; Zarauz López, PorWriato, 77ff.

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underscored that they too paid taxes to the nation and fulWlled the duties of local government, in short, that they were good “citizens.” In addition, they protested the ecological misuse of what “God has placed in our lands,” a reference to the damage done by merchant Don Rafael Vaquerizo’s use of mules and sledges to drag the salt for his own commercial beneWt. They later told Muñoz that they would continue to extract salt because “it is public and notorious that all inhabitants are free to enjoy whatever beneWt Divine Providence has placed within the limits of their lands.”13 In response, in April 1849, Muñoz, admittedly unable to stop these “scandalous acts” and “robberies,” prohibited the sale at public market of salt illegally extracted from the Xats. He also warned the Juchitecos to stop their “punishable custom of gathering the entire pueblo together to publicly read government dispositions.” Juárez, by contrast, remained conciliatory at the beginning of 1849. In a letter to Lacunza, the minister of foreign relations, he complained about the “rigidity” of the administrators of the salt beds who refused to permit the villagers to extract any salt as had been their custom. He pointed out that even when the salt Xats were under government control, the indigenous people had been allowed to use them. While his government condemned the “excesses” of the Juchitecos, he said he was eager to avoid “involving the state in a terrible caste war” and committed the state “to some measure of leniency to end the disorders.” He asked Lacunza to intercede with Echeverría “so that he might cede some rights of the villagers, and order his administrator to act with prudence and cease his hostile attitude towards them,” but to no avail.14 Muñoz responded as though he believed that Juárez was appeasing the Juchitecos. He denounced the “popular scandals” and “crimes” that 13. De la Cruz, documents in Anexos, Rebelión de Che Gorio, 29–30, 62–63. It is here that some Juchitecos also protested the appropriation and requested the return of mules (loaded with salt they had legally purchased) belonging to Mixe traders. This plea was actually written to authorities in Tehuantepec because those in Juchitán refused to receive their written protest. In Juchitán the state government was represented by the alcalde, a subprefect, and the judges, while the ayuntamiento was in the hands of the villagers. 14. Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:357; Muñoz’s and Juárez’s letters are in the Anexos to de la Cruz, Rebelión de Che Gorio, 27–29. See Juárez’s explanations of the crisis in various documents in Benito Juárez 1:699ff. De la Cruz dismisses Juárez’s one attempt to get the owners to permit the use of the salt Xats by the Zapotecs (ibid., 13). Guha noted that autonomous peasant assemblies, which he considered “the organs of peasant war,” were also particularly threatening to the Raj in India. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency, 118–22.

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the pueblo frequently committed “on any pretext.” He insisted that in order to “put out the spark of disorder absolutely, and not let it continue to smoke and Xare up at any moment,” these “subversives” should be arrested immediately and brought before the judge. When Muñoz arrested some of the leaders, the furious Juchitecos marched en masse and liberated their comrades from prison. Muñoz’s reports to Juárez turned even more virulent. He portrayed the Juchitecos as “marching tumultuously to devour private property not theirs.” Juárez sent him 150 reinforcements, but the Juchitecos, rather than confront them, welcomed the troops instead. As soon as the forces were withdrawn, the Juchitecos returned to using the salt Xats.15 In March 1850 the indigenous authorities of Juchitán placed an embargo of the property of Manuel Niño López pending the receipt of $800 for the rent of land they declared belonged to the town. They also put him in prison without due process of law. State ofWcials arrived from Tehuantepec to deal with this situation but were ignored. But when the Juchitecos tried to sue for peace in July, Juárez was no longer interested in negotiating and noted that “the decorum of authority will not permit transactions with criminals.” Given their repeated deWance of ofWcial dictates, he believed it imperative that the governor reestablish the authority of the state in Juchitán. In a now famous quote, he stated, “I could condone offenses against my person, but it is not within my power to permit that the dignity of Government be insulted with impunity, that it be Xouted and scoffed at by the wicked.” Juárez sent four hundred soldiers and light artillery under the command of José Marcelino Echavarría to arrest the leaders and restore order. On May 19, 1850, on the outskirts of Juchitán, the state militia defeated the rebels, who suffered heavy losses. During this three-hour battle, some thatch huts caught Wre, which led to the blazing destruction of approximately one-third of the town. The furious Juchitecos accused the government of torching their homes. Meléndez withdrew into the surrounding forests with only about four hundred troops. Pursued by the state troops, he and his forces escaped into the state of Chiapas.16 15. De la Cruz, documents in Anexos, Rebelión de Che Gorio, 32–34; Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:365ff. 16. The Juchitecos were furious with López because he had conspired with Maqueo, illegally “selling” him the disputed lands. He also participated in the transfer of the pueblo’s map of the boundaries to them, an unpardonable betrayal, depriving the Juchitecos of a vital element of their defense. Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:377–79; López Gurrión,

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In mid-1850 cholera swept through Tehuantepec. Meléndez took advantage of the epidemic to return to Juchitán, sacking and pillaging a number of haciendas en route. When cholera decimated the government forces, Meléndez was able to regain control of Juchitán. He had the subprefect executed because he had conspired in the sale of the pueblo’s map (showing the supposed borders of village lands) and lands with Niño López. Once again Che Gorio Melendre dominated the isthmian region.17 Given his experience in the war for Independence, Che Gorio knew that in order to triumph locally he needed to broaden the struggle and win national allies. Such a move would at the very least facilitate the acquisition of arms and munitions. For this reason he had seconded Alvarez’s plan in 1835 and had risen up, supposedly in alliance with the Liberals against the Polko rebellion in 1847. But the Juchitecos (in the struggle to defend their communal lands, natural resources, and Zapotec identity) had also learned that they could not trust the state government in the city of Oaxaca, which was dominated by Vallistocrats. For independent-minded Istmeños, the Vallistocracia was bent on dominating the economics and politics of their region. The Juchitecos were particularly wary of the Liberal faction in the state capital, which aimed to advance the cause of private property throughout Oaxaca at the expense of communal traditions. Not surprisingly, La Cucarda, a Vallistocrat newspaper of the city of Oaxaca, employed the discourse of counterinsurgency against the Juchitecos, those “vicious” thieves and murderers who were not revolutionaries but “atrocious” bandits.18 In order to gain allies, Che Gorio and the Juchitecos launched their Wrst political plan on October 20, 1850, during the time of the cholera. It excoriated the state government of Oaxaca for waging a “war of destruction” against the pueblo of Juchitán and for taking “pleasure in the spilling of so much blood.” Instead of “extending its hand to protect the sons of the state, it [the state government] has sacriWced them to its goals of ambition and barbarism.” Thus the indios juchitecos turned the tables, inverting the terms of confrontation, and accused the Oaxacan government of Efemérides istmeñas, 64–65; Tutino, “Ethnic Resistance,” 57–58; de la Cruz, Rebelión de Che Gorio, 15–16; Juárez, Benito Juárez 1:708–9. 17. Tutino, “Ethnic Resistance,” 58–59; Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:385; de la Cruz, Rebelión de Che Gorio, 17. 18. De la Cruz, Rebelión de Che Gorio, 17ff.; see Guchachi’ Reza, 10 (1982): 11–12, and following articles from various other newspapers, all in the prose of counterinsurgency.

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barbarism and bloodshed. The plan advocated federalism, a central tenet of liberalism, and called for the separation of the Isthmus from the state of Oaxaca and the formation of a new state from the northern and southern parts of the Isthmus. At the same time it advocated the liberal idea of free trade and defended the fueros of the army and the Church, which had been attacked by the Liberals. The plan also refused to recognize the appointment of General Mariano Arista, the secretary of war, as president of Mexico.19 Echavarría fell victim to cholera, so Muñoz again took over the military command of the Isthmus. Not wanting to face the possibility of a defeat, this time Muñoz opened negotiations with the rebels. On January 10, 1851, two days after Congress had declared Arista president, Che Gorio proclaimed his second political plan (nullifying the previous one), which recognized Arista as the country’s top executive. Once again, the plan favored privileges for the army and the Church, free trade, and the separation of Tehuantepec from Oaxaca.20 Although Muñoz had received orders from Juárez either to “obtain the absolute and unconditional surrender of the rebels” or to exterminate them, the commander disobeyed and negotiated with Meléndez, even offering him amnesty. When Juárez learned of these talks, he reiterated his original instructions and ordered Muñoz to arrest the leaders, Meléndez, Haedo, and Orozco. Muñoz complied and captured Haedo and Orozco but permitted Che Gorio to escape. On January 16, 1851, at the Rancho del Mal Paso, Muñoz signed a peace agreement with the rebels, who laid down their arms. He had gone over his state governor’s head and had appealed to the federal government for amnesty for the leaders, whom he now believed should be viewed not as criminals but as leaders of a political movement. Juárez was incensed at this insubordination and sent a protest to the national Congress arguing that this controversy did not fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government. In response, the central government recognized Oaxaca’s jurisdiction and gave Juárez permission to travel to the Isthmus in late 1851.21 19. De la Cruz, Rebelión de Che Gorio, 19–20. Iturribarría, a Vallistocrat historian, included the complete text of the plan with his derisive commentaries (Historia de Oaxaca 1:385–86). See Guha on verbal inversion and the contradictory elements in peasant discourse (Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency, 49ff.). 20. De la Cruz, Rebelión de Che Gorio, 19–20; Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:387–90. 21. Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:389ff.; de la Cruz, “Rebeliones indígenas,” 66.

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On November 6, 1851, in Juchitán, Juárez granted an amnesty to all who accepted the authority of the state government. He installed a new municipal council that he was assured would be loyal to his government and agreeable to working with the Vallistocracia. The Liberal state government had seemingly established its rule on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. But Meléndez was still on the loose, and no sooner had Juárez left than he returned. Che Gorio continued to live freely in Juchitán while Juárez Wnished his gubernatorial term in 1852. Meléndez’s cause was revived when he supported the Conservative Plan of Jalisco of October 20, 1852 (which had sponsored the return of Santa Anna) against the Arista government. Liberal governor Ignacio Mejía of Oaxaca then sent troops under General Ignacio Martínez Pinillos to battle the Juchitecos. But, faced with the possibility of defeat by Che Gorio’s forces, Martínez Pinillos joined them and also declared himself in favor of the Plan of Jalisco.22 In the spring of 1853, when Santa Anna returned to the presidency, Che Gorio was again in control of the Isthmus, but various intrigues were smoldering among the Juchiteco leadership. In his persecution of the Liberals, the president had Juárez arrested on May 27 (and later banished from Mexico). Two days later, Santa Anna signed the decree creating the federal territory of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, separating it from the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz. Ironically, at dawn that very same day, May 29, Che Gorio Melendre was found poisoned to death in the hut of his lover (a crime never solved). He did not live to see the realization of the dream for which he had fought so long and so hard. Nevertheless, isthmian autonomy was short-lived. In 1855, when the Liberal Revolution of Ayutla defeated this last dictatorship of Santa Anna, the Isthmus was reintegrated into the state of Oaxaca.23 The isthmian wars demonstrated how far the Zapotecs of Juchitán were willing to go in defense of their usos y costumbres, particularly access to land and natural resources. The Juchitecos, and their allies in other local ethnic groups, refused to accept defeat, and devised numerous forms of contestation (violence, land invasions, destruction of property, and armed rebellion), which forced the government and military leaders to negotiate with them. Theirs was an energetic response to the process of 22. Tutino, “Ethnic Resistance,” 58–59, and “Rebelión indígena en Tehuantepec,” 99; Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:392ff.; Hamnett, Juárez, 43–44; González Navarro, Anatomía del poder en México, 248. 23. Hamnett, Juárez, 44–45; Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:408ff.

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modernization and privatization advanced by Mexican elites and the state government—but it was not a total rejection of it. While they defended their pueblos’ use of common lands for pasture and salt extraction, they did not oppose capitalist commerce or private property per se and reiterated their stance in favor of free trade in both of their published plans in 1850 and 1851. Although strongly peasant-based, these conXicts also revealed a multiclass alliance of middle-class ranchers like Che Gorio, comuneros, jornaleros, and townspeople. This was not a village uprising (although clearly the Juchitecos formed the heart of the movement) but a regional, multiethnic movement that brought together Zapotecs, Zoques, Chontales, Huaves, and perhaps even Mixes, despite their language differences. An explicit indigenous identity was demonstrated by the defense of communal customs and traditions, which they understood to be distinct from the dominant ideas in the cities of Oaxaca and Mexico, as were their languages and economic situation. Perhaps further research may discover even a pan-ethnic indigenous identity. While there is no doubt that the Juchitecos considered themselves indígenas, they also identiWed themselves as members and citizens of the Mexican nation. In fact, they demanded to be recognized as the nation. For them, indigenous peoples and their pueblos formed the heart of Mexican citizenship. The isthmian wars of the 1840s and early 1850s ended with the death of Che Gorio in 1853, but this was not the end of Juchiteco rebellions and separatist movements. In late 1865, during the War of French Intervention, Esteban Maqueo was assassinated, supposedly by “bandits” somewhere between Jalapa del Marqués and Tequisistlán, but many assumed that his death had to do with the previous conXicts. In 1868 the Juchitecos reiterated their demands for communal access to the salt Xats to President Benito Juárez through Governor Félix Díaz. They also appealed for help to the governor’s brother, General PorWrio Díaz, in whose armies they had fought and who had interceded on their behalf with the president. Juárez Wnally changed his mind and decided in favor of Juchitán with respect to the lands and salt Xats in litigation since 1843. This shift notwithstanding, two years later Albino Jiménez (known as Binu Gada) led the Juchitecos, now seconded by villagers of Ixtaltepec and Santo Domingo Petapa, in an uprising against a corrupt jefe político imposed by Governor Félix Díaz. The governor traveled to the Isthmus to crush the uprising and burned down Juchitán in the effort. He also deWled

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and mutilated the town’s patron saint, San Vicente Ferrer, which would later cost him his life.24 In July 1880 Colonel Miguel Pétriz led an armed uprising in Tehuantepec over the imposition of the jefe político by the state government and excessive taxation. Once again the rebels protested that, since they had fought for the current government in the recent Revolution of Tuxtepec and in favor of the presidency of PorWrio Díaz, they deserved relief from such heavy taxation, and demanded justice.25 A few months later, another uprising arose in neighboring Juchitán. An elite group known as the Rojos (the red party), had begun to amass power in Juchitán and pressured the government to return the salt Xats to private ownership against the will of the people, the latter now represented by the more populist Verdes (the green party). By 1881 the Echeverría family was once again in control of the salt Xats. In response, another uprising of Zapotecs and Zoques broke out that year under the leadership of Ignacio Nicolás (known as Mexu Chele), caused by conXicts over communal lands and the salt Xats in addition to the capitación and other taxes imposed by Rojo municipal authorities. This time the Vallistocracia sent the infamous Colonel Francisco “Pancho” León to suppress the movement. León crushed the rebels and ruthlessly exiled participants to Valle Nacional and Quintana Roo.26 ConXict between the Verdes and the Rojos in both Tehuantepec and Juchitán and between the Istmeños and the Vallistocrats continued to simmer during the late nineteenth century. By the 1890s José “Che” Gómez emerged as a popular cacique, the leader of the Verdes in Juchitán. Avid defender of indigenous customs and traditions, he declared that he would return the salts Xats and pasture lands to the pueblos of the region. An 24. López Gurrión, Efemérides istmeñas, 97–98; Jiménez López, Historia de Juchitán, 87ff.; de la Cruz, “Rebeliones indígenas,” 66–67. The Juchitecos had their revenge on Félix Díaz when he was trying to Xee during his brother’s La Noria Rebellion; they castrated and then murdered him. 25. See documents from CPD reproduced in “Documentos sobre la revuelta en Tehuantepec,” 16–18. For a more complete list of rebellions on the Isthmus in the nineteenth century, see Reina Aoyama, “Juchitán, 1880–85,” 4ff. 26. López Gurrión, Efemérides istmeñas, 104–9; Jiménez López, Historia de Juchitán, 119ff.; de la Cruz, “Rebeliones indígenas,” 67–69. According to Zarauz López, (PorWriato, 55), in 1877 the representative of the Echeverría family was still protesting against the Juchitecos’ extracting salt from their properties. Reina Aoyama states that by 1874 the family had initiated the process of reclaiming its rights and by 1881 it had fulWlled its goal (“Juchitán, 1880–85,” 5).

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acquaintance of PorWrio Díaz, Gómez was appointed by the president to various federal political ofWces that kept him outside the state for many years, although he would return on visits. ConXicts in Juchitán continued until they exploded in late 1911 with the Mexican Revolution. This movement supported the popular Gómez and led to his assassination.27 The struggle of the indigenous peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to defend their lands, natural resources, ethnic cultures, and communities continues to this day.

Campesino Repertoires of Collective Action The Xexibility and versatility of the indigenous pueblos is striking in the face of the numerous assaults on their usos y costumbres. In differing contexts, they employed an impressive array of strategies to retain or recover their lands and resources and otherwise improve conditions for their families and communities. In his study of popular forms of contention in Great Britain, Charles Tilly has analyzed political culture and observed how the ways people made claims upon each other and on the authorities changed dramatically between 1758 and 1834. Exploring the claims of British working classes, he detected what he called “repertoires of collective interaction.” A repertoire was a “limited set of routines that are learned, shared, and acted through a relatively deliberate process of choice . . . which emerge from struggle.” Repertoires have various levels that entail “action, performance, campaign,” or perhaps a combination of all these.28 As will become evident below, Oaxacan campesinos also developed and employed their own repertoires of collective action in the defense of their communities. These included one or a combination of the

27. See various letters from CPD reproduced in “Cartas contra Che Gómez” in Guchachi’ Reza 42 (1993): 7–10; Jiménez López, Historia de Juchitán, 159ff.; de la Cruz, “Rebelión de los juchitecos”; and Cartas y Telegramas. Juchitán became anathema to the Juárez family politicians. It was during the governorship of Benito Juárez Maza that the Chegomista rebellion broke out in 1911. 28. Tilly, Popular Contention in Great Britain, 36–45. I am grateful to Colby Ristow for suggesting this reading. As I do here, Tilly envisioned culture as “the frame within which social action takes place” and recognized its connections with “material conditions.” Van Young also looked to culture, “that murky realm,” as the “wellsprings of social action” (Van Young, “To See Someone Not Seeing,” 159), as did Grandin in Blood of Guatemala (28).

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following: informal negotiations, litigation, political action, patronage, deWance, and Wnally, violence. Informal negotiations, in which an initial claim might be made by approaching a local authority or hacendado, was often the Wrst step, and certainly the easiest and least troublesome tactic. If this failed, peaceful protest to a local ofWcial was often the next strategy. If this also proved unsuccessful, then other, more formal, strategies, such as litigation, were available. Litigation required the hiring of an attorney or at least a tinterillo for legal representation. It also included the writing of petitions, testimony before a judge, perhaps a title search in the national archives, and appeals, and could become quite costly, especially if it resulted in Wnes in addition to legal fees. For example, when in December 1906 Ramón Ruiz (the Miahuateco coffee promoter) attempted to modernize labor relations by introducing written sharecropper contracts on the lands of Xitlapehua and Guixe in Miahuatlán, the sharecroppers protested to the district judge. They strongly objected to this abuse of usos y costumbres, in this case verbal agreements, inherited from their ancestors.29 The terrazgueros of the Hacienda of San Nicolás, also in Miahuatlán, protested to the state government that Juliana Ruiz de Pérez was encroaching on their usos y costumbres. She had attempted to prohibit their livestock from grazing on the hacienda’s pastures, hoping to impose her right of private property, just as Maqueo and Guergué had attempted to do on the Isthmus. After failing to settle differences with the widow Pérez on their own, the terrazgueros petitioned the government for aid. Sra. Pérez failed to attend the meeting set up by local ofWcials and must have been surprised to receive a stiff Wne of $300. This penalty was later, extra-ofWcially, rescinded, and thereafter she refrained from harassing her tenants. On her death, her son Roberto inherited San Nicolás (now eight hundred hectares) and in 1907 attempted to expel the terrazgueros’ livestock from hacienda lands. Aware that the jefe político and the mayor of the town were the hacendado’s close allies, the terrazgueros hired the antigovernment attorney Constantino Chapital. Chapital lodged a complaint against the jefe político for meddling in affairs beyond his jurisdiction in the name of 109 terrazgueros, Wfteen of whom were women. He successfully defended the tenants, getting the government to reafWrm their 29. AGEPEO, Dec. 1906, Gob., Cuestiones Laborales, Miahuatlán. We do not know whether he succeeded. Guha also found that peasants in India tried peaceful petitions also before resorting to violence, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency, 9.

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grazing rights.30 Despite the PorWrian drive to modernize agriculture, the courts of Oaxaca still defended the campesinos’ customs and traditions. The indigenous campesinos and communities of Oaxaca often knew their rights and were extremely litigious, especially with respect to intervillage feuding (see Chapter 9). Numerous lawyers were ready, for a fee, to litigate for these pueblos, as in the cases of Usila and Yucuiti. While much of this type of law was carried on by tinterillos, it was not beneath respected lawyers to represent indigenous communities. In fact, this was the daily bread of the lawyer caudillos of the Sierra Juárez. Thus litigation could be combined with strategies of patronage and political action by appealing to local political Wgures for support, whether legal or political or both. Guillermo Meixueiro provided legal representation for various villages of the Sierra Juárez and Central Valleys, and Fidencio Hernández defended the campesinos of the Hacienda of Yogana in a land dispute against the same Pérez family (as above) in Ejutla in November 1907.31 The survival of indigenous customs and traditions cannot be explained without recognizing their frequent recourse to legal defense and the support that campesinos found in the state courts. That support could no longer be attributed to the elites’ preference for traditional systems of accumulation, given the post-1868 push toward privatization and commercialization of agriculture. Fear of the campesino reaction to any challenge to their survival was often a decisive factor. At the same time, the growing privatization of land, pastures, forests, water sources, and other natural resources put increasing pressure on the campesinos of Oaxaca. The effort to terminate access to traditional pastures and water resources, the appropriation of communal lands, and the attempt to impose written contracts posed serious threats to usos y costumbres. Numerous pueblos, such as Ozumacín in the Papaloapan region and Yucuiti in the Mixteca, frequently resorted to the legal system in their attempt to save their resources. Under the threat of losing their lands to privatization by outsiders, some pueblos chose to divide village lands into individual parcels. A few villages reluctantly adopted new “hijos del pueblo” under pressure from the outside, as in the case of Coatlán and 30. Sra. Pérez also owned the Hacienda of Yogana (more than 3,500 hs.) in Ejutla. AGEPEO, Sept. 1907, Gob., Cuestiones Laborales, Miahuatlán; Holms, Directory, 309; Southworth, OfWcial Directory of Mines and Estates, 220, and AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D. 31. El Imparcial, Nov. 18, 1907.

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the Rojas family. Some comuneros welcomed private property, combining it with communal tenure, as in the case of Yucuiti and Juquila. In contrast, many Chinantecos were pushed further up steep mountainsides, as Tuxtepec’s tobacco Wncas expanded. Political action included letters and petitions to authorities and peaceful public protests and demonstrations. In order to establish strategies, public assemblies, at which courses of action were discussed and decided upon, were common. Also included in political action was the appeal to political Wgures and caciques, the recourse to the patron-client system so widespread in Mexico. Most popular was liberal clientelism: political alliances with the Liberal leaders in war or rebellions in hopes of winning their patronage. Yucuitecos had fought with Díaz at the battle of La Carbonera during the War of French Intervention in the hope of winning his patronage, and they later sided with him in the Rebellion of La Noria in 1871 and the Revolution of Tuxtepec in 1876. Letters and petitions to governors or the president often included claims of service in the armed forces. In 1906, for example, the elderly general Ignacio Mejía interceded with President Díaz on behalf of a pueblo of the Cañada whose lands were in danger of being appropriated by speculators. General Mejía began his letter by saying that “the Indians of San Martín Toxpalan who with great enthusiasm and good will responded to the call to take up arms in service to the nation” now appeal for your protection.32 Service in the army gave working-class Mexicans a clear sense of entitlement to the rights of citizenship. In the case of the Juchitecos, clientelism Xuctuated between those who might best defend their interests in a given context. At one point they supported the Liberals against the Polkos, while at another they seconded the Conservative Plan of Jalisco in 1852. In 1868, given their military service, both Governor Félix Díaz and General PorWrio Díaz interceded with President Juárez for their right to use the salt Xats. Oaxacan campesinos also employed what James Scott has called “weapons of the weak,” the “everyday forms of peasant resistance.” These acts of opposition and protest do not demonstrate collective organization and normally fall short of violence, consisting in “foot dragging, dissimulation, desertion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage and so on.” These were the “ordinary weapons of relatively 32. CPD Letters Leg. 31, caja 32. We do not know whether this appeal was successful.

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powerless groups.”33 Yucuitecos were adamant in their refusal to give up lands, and they continued to plant year after year before Wnally resorting to violence. The Juchitecos also employed various everyday forms of resistance, such as ignoring the prohibitions to use the salt Xats and pasture lands and seizing livestock, before and while they resorted to violence. These acts of deWance, which included land invasion, land occupation, embargo or stealing of livestock, and engaging in contraband, were usually economic and individual or village-based. At the same time that they Wercely defended their usos y costumbres, Oaxacan campesinos did not reject capitalism, trade, cash cropping or even private property per se. They absorbed some or even all of these elements to a greater or lesser degree. There were no “pure” communities locked in unchanging customs and traditions but rather hybrid and elastic webs of varied elements. But there were also acts of political deWance, often with economic implications. For example, villages often refused to pay Wnes or the capitación or to carry out the process of privatization. They could defy ofWcial dictates, as when the municipal president refused to be present when district authorities came to Yucuiti or when the Juchitecos continued to hold their public assemblies. They could refuse to recognize government authorities or even liberate their fellows from unjust imprisonment. In addition, there was often a noticeable rise in crime and banditry when tensions were high. When the relatively peaceful alternatives of negotiation and litigation, political action, patronage, and economic or political deWance failed to yield the desired results, the indigenous campesinos of Oaxaca resorted to violence.

The Resort to Violence For nineteenth-century elites, the dread of caste war, of race war between the indigenous peoples and the whites and mestizos, was a constant concern. Rebellions such as the Caste War in Yucatán, the Yaqui rebellions in Sonora, the isthmian wars, and the 1896 tax revolts in Oaxaca (see Chapter 8) gave credence to these fears. With respect to the tax revolts, Mexico City’s El Universal wrote, “The horrible crimes committed in the shadow of the most reWned savagery in Zimátlan and Juquila are fresh in 33. Scott, Weapons of the Weak, xviff.

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our minds. It is the most recent and distressing spectacle presented to us by Indian race of the South.” From pre-Columbian times, through Spanish colonial rule and Independence, and up to the present, “from time to time bloody spectacles have occurred that the pen resists putting down on paper, because only to think of them brings on hair-raising shivers.” The writer of this passage demanded the “regeneration” of the Indian race through primary education because otherwise that race would be “heading directly and unequivocally into the most frightening of anarchies.” Nevertheless, as Guy Thomson has observed in the case of northern Puebla, claims or violence of comuneros for land or resources would often be “misunderstood” as the threat of caste war. So great was this fear that it could provoke such “hysterical” reactions in non-Indians.34 In his now classic Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Ranajit Guha called on scholars to transcend elite denunciations of peasant chaos and anarchy and to distinguish the “methods” and “forms” of this violence. He differentiated distinct codes of violence: crime was individual and secret while peasant insurgency was collective and public. Within the latter category there existed a potent impulse toward negation, the desire to destroy or possess the symbols of authority of the oppressor. This process of inversion, of turning the world upside down, has accompanied popular rebellions the world over. Guha further divided collective violence into four types of struggle: “wrecking, burning, eating, and looting.” Insurgency represented “a massive and systematic violation of those words, gestures, and symbols which had the relations of power as their signiWcata.” In India, rebels wrecked manor houses and railroads, powerful symbols of British rule. Inversion encompassed the appropriation and eating of the masters’ livestock and food, the looting of their wealth, while execution was rare and highly selective. Wrecking, however, frequently went together with burning, as insurgents exercised what they saw as “a right to arson.”35 In Oaxaca, when violence entered the campesino repertoire, it too encompassed collective action that could escalate from the destruction of 34. El Universal, June 3, 1896, in Ruiz Cervantes and Sánchez Silva, Oaxaca: Escenarios de su historia, 132–34. On the fear of caste war, see Hale, Mexican Liberalism, 243; Thomson and LaFrance, Patriotism, Politics, and Political Liberalism, 69, 140, and Thomson, “Agrarian ConXict,” 209, 257–58; see also Guardino, Peasants, Politics, 186–88. 35. Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency, 28ff. Guha reasoned that it was a “tradition supported by faith which people living close to nature had in the destructive power of Wre that made them adopt arson as a major instrument of rebellion.”

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property to revenge killings and assassinations of authorities or landowners. From India to Brazil to Mexico, one of the Wrst rebel acts has been to burn municipal, judicial, and private archives in order to destroy registered land titles, court proceedings, penal records, hacienda or moneylenders’ accounts. In Oaxaca campesinos rapidly moved to eradicate the power of the written word, the symbol of authority that had oppressed them. This action eliminated the evidence used against them in judicial proceedings, denying local elites the use of the written record in an attempt to equalize their legal situations.36 “Barbarous” peasants knew exactly what they were doing when they destroyed those archives, the very symbol of civilization, the written word. Inversion was not only graphic but also verbal. When the Juchitecos submitted written protests to authorities and launched their political plans to the nation, they appropriated this form of the dominant political culture in order to invert it. In the very terms so often used against them, they decried the bloodshed and destruction visited upon them by the “barbarism” of state authorities. When violence erupted, it could be local and village-based, as in Yucuiti’s conXict with the Hacienda de la Concepción, or more general and include several villages, as on the Isthmus or the Mixteca in the 1840s or the 1896 tax revolts, or as in the case of the 1910 Revolution. The comuneros of Benito Juárez, a colony of residents of San Mateo Piñas in the coastal district of Pochutla, waged an ongoing battle against the expanding interests of German coffee producer Leo von Brandestein. After numerous protests that Brandestein was turning their communal lands into private cafetales (widowed comuneras were on the front lines of many of these demonstrations), they too took up arms and lay siege to the Cafetal San Pablo. Brandestein continued to protest that he had purchased his land legally, while the comuneros of Benito Juárez insisted that he was encroaching on their communal lands. So unrelenting was the harassment and violence of the comuneros that Brandestein Wnally sold out to the English company of Rosing Brothers, which took over various Wncas in the area.37 36. See ibid., 51–52, on burning of written records in India. During the Quebra-Quilo Tax Revolt, 1874–75 in the Brazilian Northeast, peasants protected “their informal title to the land by reducing to ashes the legal records”; thus no one could prove they were not the owners. Burns, Poverty of Progress, 119–20. 37. See Holms, Directory, 309; AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; Gob., Jan. 1912, Pochutla, Quejas Particulares; and Adjud., 1913, leg. 22, exp. 26, Pochutla, Huatulco; Chassen-López, “‘Cheaper than Machines,’” 38; Garner, Regional Development

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What leads campesinos to resort to violence? What makes peaceful comuneros take up arms and risk their lives? Social scientists have grappled with these questions. Some scholars have come to the conclusion that only when peasants face what they consider a severe threat to the survival of their community will they turn to violence. Tutino has emphasized economic causes. Campesinos will endure great hardship as long as they maintain a minimum of security, particularly in the case of estate dependents. Autonomous peasant cultivators rarely rebelled unless they saw their “subsistence autonomy” jeopardized. Van Young has located the threshold of violence or insurrection in a more general “compromise of community.” When Yucuitecos no longer had access to the lands that fed them during the lean months, or when Juchitecos lost access to salt Xats and pasturelands and saw their autonomy and customs threatened, community survival hung in the balance. Peasants were quick to take advantage of opportunities to rebel, when elites might be vulnerable.38 The history of peasant violence and insurrection has been difWcult for historians to trace, in part precisely because of the burning of records. The lack of written sources, particularly those representing the ideas and objectives of indigenous peoples, makes it difWcult to trace the process of insurrection and especially the role that ethnicity plays in violence and rebellion. In his studies of the Isthmus Zapotecs, Campbell has rightly perceived a “culture of ethnic political resistance” that arose over time in conXicts with ethnic others, from the pre-Columbian period to the present. The history of indigenous rebellion against European oppression in New Spain actually began with the very Wrst Yope uprising, which rejected Spanish rule in the Mixteca, on the Costa Chica in 1531. The rebellion of Tehuantepec in 1660 attempted to drive out the Spanish and revive the Zapotec empire. Although the isthmian wars of the 1840s and 1850s exhibited a strong ethnic or even pan-ethnic element, not all rebellions in Oaxaca, 32–33. This confrontation was complicated by a two-hundred-year-old conXict over boundaries between the villages of Huatulco and San Mateo Piñas that had been exacerbated by the founding of the community of Benito Juárez in disputed lands. Foreign interests kept this dispute alive in order to divide and conquer the comuneros. 38. For example, see Skocpol, “What Makes Peasants Revolutionary?”; Migdal, “Capitalist Penetration”; Scott, Moral Economy and Weapons of the Weak; Tutino, From Insurrection to Revolution, 294ff., 365, and “Agrarian Social Change,” 96; Van Young, “Moving Toward Revolt,” 184ff.; Knight, ”Weapons and Arches,” 36. Guardino noted that peasants take advantage of space provided by elite factionalism or lack of control (Peasants, Politics, 151–52).

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demonstrated ethnic resistance. Most uprisings in the later colonial period were local, village-based episodes.39 It is one thing to resort to localized village violence over land conXicts, quite another for indigenous campesinos to push this violence beyond village boundaries and seek allies in neighboring villages to incite regional rebellion. Although Francisco Abardía and Leticia Reina have labeled the 1800s “the century of rebellions” in Oaxaca,40 there were only three true regional rebellions during this period: the isthmian wars of the midnineteenth century, the 1840s rebellions in the Mixteca related to movements in Guerrero and Puebla, and the 1896 tax revolts. Larger regional movements did not appear again until 1911, with the Revolution. Furthermore, the indigenous campesinos of Mexico have not simply resisted but have also innovated and adapted with new forces in society, transforming themselves and those forces in the process. Although they often resisted change, they did not always do so. They were not passive and powerless peasants at the mercy of outside forces simply because they repeatedly insisted on the preservation of usos y costumbres. The customs were never immutable but changed over time. Indeed, the appeal to customs and traditions since time immemorial often became more strident as change accelerated.

Contested Citizenship While Mexican Conservatives believed in the need to maintain Spanish paternalism and ridiculed the possibility of equality among the races, Benito Juárez aimed at the construction of a republic of equal citizens, who owed “their prime allegiance not to village, community, corporation or privileged body, but to the nation.”41 Juárez’s goal notwithstanding, the rights of citizenship did not in fact accompany its proclamation. The indigenous peoples of Mexico were saddled with the obligations of citizenship but reaped few of its beneWts. 39. “Yope” today is slang for Indian. See Campbell, Zapotec Renaissance, 242–46, and “Cocei: Class and Politicized Ethnicity”; Barabas, Utopías Indias; Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion and “Banditry and Insurrection,” 229–31; and Chance, “Dinámica étnica,” 160ff. 40. Abardía M. and Reina Aoyama, “Cien años de rebelión,” 435. 41. Hamnett, Juárez, 49, 37, xiiff.; Hale, Mexican Liberalism, 244.

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The theories of uplift or displacement applied to “backward” people such as African Americans or Appalachians in the United States were also present in Mexico. Many liberals, among them Juárez, believed that indigenous peoples could be transformed into good citizens through education. When confronted with indigenous opposition on all fronts, Juárez once explained that what was really needed was more schools in Juchitán: only “illustration will be able to exile the vice and immorality which dominate them and lead them to commit all kinds of disturbances which the government has been forced to repress with the force of arms.”42 Civilizing uplift through education meant assimilation, de-Indianization, and the emergence of the discourse of the mestizo as constitutive of the nation. In order to make citizens of the Indians, “the ‘Indian’ in them had to be abolished, by educating them and dispossessing them of their cultural traditions” and, of course, privatizing their communal lands.43 An editorial in El Debate, reprinted by editor and Oaxacan intellectual Manuel Brioso y Candiani in Oaxaca’s Periódico OWcial in 1892, observed that “the mixed race nourishes itself, labors, learns, and progresses, in a word, it evolves; the indio regresses, seeks the warmth in alcohol which his deWcient diet cannot provide him, wallows in ignorance, and begins to extinguish himself little by little, in a word, destroys himself.” Is there a remedy for this, the author asked? The only hope was to be found in better nourishment and miscegenation, in “whitening,” as it was known throughout Latin America at the time.44 Even PorWrio Díaz, who favored education, also looked to immigration and mestizaje to transform his paisanos. As governor of Oaxaca in 1882, he stated: “We believe that the day is not far off when extensive immigration will come to our state so that we can trade with the sons of other more civilized nations. This will open vast Welds for the study of diverse industries that those citizens will import. In that manner, we will make the Wrst step in a life of true progress and acquire the hardworking habits and good taste that characterizes Europeans.” At least during the late PorWriato, mestizaje, that “powerful nation-building myth,” was only a

42. See Billings and Blee, “‘Where the Sun Set Crimson,’” and Road to Poverty. Juárez quoted in González Navarro, “Venganza del sur,” 683. 43. Pastor afWrmed that the expansion of capitalism resulted in the mass impoverishment of the Mixtec peasants in Campesinos y reformas, 447–53, quotation at 447. 44. PO, Feb. 8, 1892, 3.

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“euphemism” standing in “for the overwhelming presence of Western inXuences and as an excuse for eliding/dismissing that which is indigenous.”45 PorWrista hardliners were less optimistic about the beneWts of education and harbored a lower opinion of the indio. Many (among them positivist PorWrio Parra) agreed with noted geographer Alfonso Luis Velasco that the “aboriginal races were an obstacle to civilization.” Governor Enrique Creel of Chihuahua thought Wve Indians were equal to one white; Matías Romero and Carlos Díaz Dufoo calculated four to one, and Francisco Bulnes three to one. Judge Esteban Maqueo Castellanos, who considered himself “a liberal at heart but without Jacobin exaggerations,” made clear that he would have preferred 11 million immigrants in Mexico to the same number of indios. This was the discourse of displacement: let capitalism run free and these indios would be thrust aside by immigrants, railroads, mines, and industries.46 According to Maqueo Castellanos, indios were only good for “carrying a riXe in war, paying taxes, and sowing someone else’s land.” Some thought that only the harsh discipline of the army barracks could regenerate them. In the Boletín de la Sociedad Indianista Mexicana, Oaxacan governor Miguel Bolaños Cacho afWrmed: “the truth is, that military recruitment has been an indirect method, although poor in the numbers affected, of improving the intellectual and moral condition of the Indian.”47 Certainly this was a measure employed frequently against the villagers of Yucuiti and throughout Mexico to remove troublemakers and reeducate them. But this action cut both ways. Military training formed cultural brokers and leaders who employed their new knowledge to defend the community, a process exempliWed by the careers of Mateo Máximo López and Che Gorio. Time spent in the military also produced a strong sense of entitlement to the rights of citizenship. One glimpses the campesinos’ vision of the duties of a national government and the concept of citizenship in signed documents. Their views, their identity, were collective, not individual. The 45. Díaz quoted in Medina Gómez, “Modernidad porWriana,” 12–13. The second quotation is from Jorge Klor de Alva, “(Latin) American Experience,” 250ff. This author seems to apply this vision to the whole twentieth century, but after the Revolution, cultural mestizaje, indigenismo, engaged many indigenous elements, and was not as rigid. I appreciate Mary Kay Vaughan’s personal communication on this point. 46. Maqueo Castellanos, “Algunos problemas nacionales,” 79–81, 105. 47. Ibid., 79–81, 101. Bolaños Cacho quoted in BonWl Batalla, Mexico Profundo, 104–5; BonWl Batalla calls him Manuel in error.

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Juchitecos claimed that government existed to ensure the “felicity” of its pueblos, to extend its protective “hand” over the sons of the state and respond to their needs in order to “assure the welfare of agriculture, artisans, and commerce.”48 The continuing inXuence of the Spanish colonial pact was evident in the paternalistic and patriarchal metaphors employed. Yet at the same time, these indigenous pueblos had a duty to analyze political processes, continuing traditional forms of governance such as gathering the whole pueblo to read and discuss documents and events. Along the way, they learned to reckon with state and federal governments and understood the importance of obtaining allies, changing sides when necessary. In this political sense, the isthmian wars parallel the trajectory of Santa María Yucuiti’s defense of its village lands, on a much larger scale. In both cases, the people’s struggle led them to participate in and negotiate political culture in Mexico. Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo, rejecting this view, has declared that the campesinos “were not, and did not want to be, citizens” of a liberal state.49 Along with Mallon, Radding, and Guardino, I emphatically disagree. Indigenous campesinos demanded to be recognized as citizens, desiring to enjoy many of the rights inherent in this status. But theirs was an alternative, collective citizenship, where sovereignty was lodged in the pueblos. Mallon has explored the process by which rural peoples in Mexico and Peru developed “alternative nationalist discourses,” although she believes that none of them “were successfully incorporated into the process of national reconstruction” during the nineteenth century.50 Whether elites integrated alternative concepts of citizenship that accommodated communal and collective traditions into their nation-building projects or not, in Oaxaca at least, they could not eliminate them either. In Guerrero too, the campesinos demanded to be considered citizens and published plans addressed to the nation in the form of circulars during the rebellions of the 1840s. In a proclamation in Tlapa in 1846, they claimed: “The whites, the blacks, and we the Indians, we are all Mexicans.” Juan Alvarez, the major caudillo of southern Mexico for forty years, spoke for his clients: “The Southerners are republicans of good faith. . . . We the inhabitants of the South want a nation represented by 48. See documents in de la Cruz, Rebelión de Che Gorio, 62–63. 49. Escalante Gonzalbo, Ciudadanos imaginarios, 66. 50. See Mallon, Peasant and Nation, 119, 221, 313; Radding, Wandering Peoples, 13ff.; Guardino, Peasants, Politics, 91–92.

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whatever Mexicans are honest and patriotic and refuse the pernicious inXuence of those classes that call themselves privileged to exploit the people, which feed on its blood.” He clariWed that what they desired was “one law for all, guarantees for the citizen that the classes stop sucking the substance of the fatherland.”51 The Juchitecos also declared themselves Mexicans and “the nation.” Che Gorio had protested that the pueblos had always obeyed the government and “its fundamental laws.”52 For them, the nation was el común del pueblo, the commons, the adult male inhabitants, the hijos or vecinos of a pueblo who not only fulWlled their cargos and tequio but also took up arms in defense of the nation. They would meet publicly to discuss important issues in the town square (considering the strong-willed Juchitecas, surely some females participated too). This had become the custom when the Spanish instituted the cabildo, and the “Leyes de Indias recognized the right of vecinos to assemble publicly to decide on the public good” (el bien común) as practiced by many pueblos in Oaxaca.53 In this manner, indigenous campesinos participated in state formation and developed their own hybrid citizenship. Annino characterized an 1877 petition from the Wfty-six pueblos-municipalities of Guanajuato articulating an alternative idea of a “patria-nación” as having “a liberal face and a mythic indigenous body” steeped in the traditions of Spanish Catholic jurisprudence.54 Juchitecos combined defense of their traditions with the right of free trade. Reworking liberal institutions and the idea of citizenship, they defended their usos y costumbres and demonstrated the versatility of indigenous pueblos.

Beyond Resistance National elites and scholars alike have consistently “spurned” the peasantry as the “repository of conservatism and tradition,” of all that is not “modern.”55 As demonstrated in this study, the campesinos of Oaxaca 51. Quoted in Guardino, Peasants, Politics, 147–78. 52. Documents in de la Cruz, Rebelión de Che Gorio, 41. 53. Annino, “Ciudadanía versus gobernabilidad,” 81. 54. Ibid., 86–90. 55. Skocpol, “What Makes Peasants Revolutionary?” 157. See Chassen [Chassen-López], “Una lectura insurgente,” 445ff., on this collusion with respect to Oaxacan and Mexican historiography.

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have time and time again been deWned by the controlling images of traditional, backward, and barbarous peasants. Nineteenth-century liberals saw “ignorant” or “absurdly socialist” campesinos as the greatest barrier to progress. They were repeatedly animalized as savages, infantilized as ignorant children, feminized as passive, criminalized in discourses of counterinsurgency, and racialized as inferior indios. Scholars later modernized this controlling image into a more “civilized” version. Now they portrayed Oaxacan campesinos as isolated from modernization and as “passive” and “reactionary” for not rallying to the 1910 Revolution as had the Zapatista peasants in Morelos. The peasants, in this view, were the obstacle to revolutionary development.56 The past thirty-Wve years have seen an impressive scholarly production of literature on peasant resistance. These works have explored rural violence, revolution, labor struggles, slavery, ethnic movements, minority protests, and the “weapons of the weak.” Van Young has likened the new research on peasants to a veritable “cottage industry.”57 This work on resistance and popular contention has represented an enormous advance for “history from below.” These scholars have wrestled with ways to conceptualize peasant resistance and underscore their agency. Farriss has roundly denounced depictions of Mayan peasants as passive and considers the colonial period one of creative adaptation to Spanish rule. Stern has depicted peasants as “continuous initiators” and challenged us to investigate ongoing patterns of “resistant adaptation,” to unmask the complexity and dynamics of “the manifold ways whereby peasants have continuously engaged their political worlds.”58 The present work attempts to do the same. Certainly the work of the subaltern studies scholars has been at the forefront of new 56. Waterbury concluded that “while the peasants of Morelos fought and died for change, albeit a change back to a traditional community-oriented agrarian life, the Oaxaca peasants, for the most part, remained passive or joined the Wght to defend the status quo, a status quo similar in many ways to what the Morelos peasants were striving to regain.” Waterbury, “Non-Revolutionary Peasants,” 411. As mentioned in the introduction to this study, Francisco José Ruiz Cervantes denounced this as the “Black Legend” (“Oaxaca: ¿campesinos no revolucionarios?” 28ff.), and I called it the “myth of the passive peasant” in “¿Capitalismo o comunalismo?” 57. See Wells and Joseph, Summer of Discontent, 8–12; Van Young, “To See Someone Not Seeing,” 133ff. See also Buve, “Paisaje lunar;” Katz, Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution; and Stern, Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness. 58. Farriss, Maya Society Under Colonial Rule, 9; Stern, “New Approaches,” 9; Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 346. See also Tice and Billings, “Appalachian Culture and Resistance,” 3.

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conceptualizations of collective action by popular classes, as seen in its wide inXuence. In Oaxaca, comuneros, rancheros, minifundistas, terrazgueros, peons, and jornaleros made numerous decisions that shaped the way social, economic, and political relationships developed. In effect, the way they innovated, adapted, or resisted was basic to future capitalist relations and state formation. This was not a unilateral process or a tale of victimization, although many suffered dreadfully. While not rejecting liberalism outright, distinct actors refashioned it with both pre-Columbian and Spanish colonial elements and translated it to serve their needs. Kay Warren discovered that “there was no essential Quechua or Mayan, no constant core, but rather a complex, ever changing self-authorship, sometimes reweaving the past, sometimes rejecting it.” BonWl Batalla believed that Amerindian cultures have lived a process of “dynamic continuity,” innovating and appropriating elements of other cultures.59 The Juchitecos became quite adept at picking and choosing the elements of liberal and conservative ideas that suited them. Unfortunately, some of this resistance literature has contributed to the construction of another controlling image, much less publicized, which envisions campesinos as the courageous defenders of community. This long durée perspective points to the frequent peasant uprisings and rebellions of nineteenth-century Oaxaca ignored by studies of the “passive peasant.” Yet wary investigators have warned against romanticizing resistance.60 Such representations tend to freeze peasants in time and picture them valiantly battling modernity as they attempt to return to some idyllic past Controlling images such as these rest on one-sided readings of peasant culture and beg to be deconstructed. They essentialize peasants and envision culture as static, immutable, and ahistorical. They lay the blame on the victims for their poverty, ignorance, and backwardness. Yet, as we have seen, culture as process is Xuid, contested, and negotiated by those very same campesinos. To depict rural people as passive victims within a stultiWed culture, or as heroic defenders of tradition, as simple “reactors” 59. Warren, “Transforming Memories,” 207; BonWl Batalla, Mexico Profundo, 10, 139. 60. See Abardía M. and Reina Aoyama, “Cien años de rebelión,” 435ff.; Barabas, “Rebeliones e insurrecciones”; de la Cruz, “ReXexiones,” 213–56 and 425–45; see also Campbell et al., Zapotec Struggles; Roseberry, “Beyond the Agrarian Question,” 318–61. I called this “the myth of the heroic guardians of tradition” in “¿Capitalismo o comunalismo?”

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to external forces, misrepresents their potential as makers of history. Nineteenth-century Oaxacan authorities clearly recognized their potential. Benito Juárez asked Echeverría to relent and let the Juchitecos use the salt Xats. Governor González openly admitted that the aims of state ofWcials had been “smashed by the tenacity and rudeness of the indigenous class,” while Governor Pimentel halted the takeover of Pochutla’s municipal lands. El Universal attested to the shivers that campesinos could send down elite spines when they defended their communities. In his study of Malaita in the Solomon Islands, Roger Keesing noted that in the Kwaio people’s struggle to safeguard their customs, “the view from the centers of power” tended to obscure “the active, creative, and politically astute side of local engagements with global forces.”61 Keesing suggested that we reevaluate and unpack the analytically imprecise concept of resistance, given that “it smacks of a kind of populist and collectivist motivation: the image, almost irresistibly romanticized, is of comrades standing together at the barricades, ready to give their blood or lives in a common cause.” Reality is less dramatic, as personal motives and ambitions are always intermixed with political ideas and objectives. Resistance literature tends to “reify and oversimplify and essentialize” the “dominant ‘side’ in struggles for power” as much as it can “romanticize and spuriously collectivize the subordinate ‘side.’”62 As vital as resistance studies have been to our understanding of subordinated groups, it is time to think beyond the idea of resistance and resistant adaptation. As has been demonstrated, neither the indigenous campesinos of Oaxaca nor the Vallistocrat elites were monolithic. Although the confrontation between diverse concepts of society and its fundamental units, and landholding, legality, and citizenship, at Wrst appeared to be implacable, in practice there was often room for compromise. Even as Gustavo Stein was sending off blistering denunciations of barbaric indios to the German legation and Mexican authorities, and the Yucuitecos were burning the hacienda’s cane Welds, these parties were still secretly negotiating. In the search for more cogent and inclusive analyses of complex historical processes, historians have shifted from traditional elite political history “from above” to a history of all sectors of the population, history 61. Keesing, Custom and Confrontation, 6ff. I am indebted to Thomas Hakansson for recommending this source. 62. Ibid., 6–7.

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“from below.” What we also need is the analysis of the forces within peasant society itself (as Collier suggests below and as I attempt to do in this study), what might be termed history “from within.” In Oaxaca, the designation of “Indian” did not automatically denote a poor campesino. In addition to poor mestizo campesinos of both sexes, there were also comfortable indigenous artisans and rich indigenous landowners. As we have seen in previous chapters, social differentiation among Oaxaca’s majorities had developed considerably with the proliferation of smallholders, ranchers, minifundistas, comuneros, peones acasillados, tenant farmers, terrazgueros, jornaleros (some with a parcel of land, some without), and the slave “contratas” of Tuxtepec, in addition to peddlers, artisans, factory workers, miners, and transport workers. Historians must now discern the patterns of internal differentiation, class, gender, and ethnic identity in order to distinguish the shifting relationships of power and to understand the mechanisms of change and continuity.63 In his 1994 study of contemporary Chiapas, George Collier offered a realistic portrayal of society in order to explain why some campesinos welcomed the Zapatista EZLN and others condemned it. His words of caution serve as an antidote to the pitfalls of romanticism: The idealization of the peasant is inaccurate, however, because some of the inequalities in the countryside are the result of stratiWcation within peasant communities, not merely the result of injustices heaped upon them from outside. Understanding indigenous politics in this way necessarily complicates the sympathies one might hold toward peasants, but I view this as salutary. I think we misrepresent peasants if we allow ourselves to view them in simplistic terms—as either the passive victims of the state or as the “noble savages” who can reinvigorate modern society with egalitarian and collective values. By acknowledging tensions and differences in peasant communities, we face up to both the virtue and the vice inherent in peasants’ exercise of power over one another, and we integrate individual agency into our understanding of peasant communities.64 63. Roseberry, “Beyond the Agrarian Question,” 259–61. Mallon, in Peasant, Nation, Thomson and LaFrance, in Patriotism, Politics, and Popular Liberalism, and Wells and Joseph, in Summer of Discontent, have made noteworthy attempts at history from within. 64. Collier, with Lowery Quaratiello, Basta! 9.

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Undoubtedly, the search for agency will not always uncover positive actions or spotless motives. Many nineteenth-century liberals were as dedicated and sincere in their objectives as were comuneros in theirs. The repertoires of collective action, the processes of contestation, negotiation, and compromise that we have portrayed so far demonstrate that struggle itself is transformative. It leads to innovation and to creative agency that goes beyond resistance to the emergence of hybridity. For example, the economic and political forces at work in Yucuiti are symbolized in Mateo Máximo López’s trajectory from illiterate campesino, to municipal secretary and defender of Yucuiti’s lands, to village cacique. Although the villagers of Yucuiti spent decades Wghting the expansion of commercial agriculture in the guise of the Hacienda de La Concepción, López’s advocacy of the privatization of village lands and the introduction of coffee encouraged capitalism from within the community. These innovations resulted in deeper social differentiation and economic inequality in Yucuiti. At the same time a re-accommodation of political forces took place as López’s acquisition of national culture enabled him to become a broker of economic and political power. The struggle of the indigenous peoples on the Isthmus provides a riveting portrait of ethnicities resolute in defense of their customs and traditions at the same time that they absorbed new forces and inXuences. Here, too, the shifting relationships of power continually widened to embrace state and even national politics. Che Gorio, schooled in the insurgent armies of the Independence, used his knowledge and experience as cultural broker and defender not only of Zapotecs but also of Huaves, Zoques, Chontales, and Mixe traders. As Juchitán emerged as a center of commodity production and trade in southern Mexico, Istmeños battled Vallistocrat merchant-politicians to defend both communal rights and free trade. They switched from Liberal to Conservative allies and back in pursuit of their goals. As the Juchitecos learned to reckon with regional, state, and national actors, the latter were forced to reckon with the tenacity of the indigenous peoples of the Isthmus. As they became more politically savvy, they launched their own political plans. And even Benito Juárez, the fearless nation builder, never did best the Juchitecos and eventually had to accede to their usos y costumbres. At the same time, while Juchitecos strove to separate from Oaxaca to create their own state, they never considered themselves anything less than

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Mexican citizens.65 Here the thread of continuity in the maintenance of certain usos y costumbres intertwined with change in the form of increasing commodity production, trade, and knowledge of national political culture. The multiethnic alliance (and with it an incipient multiethnic indigenous identity), the ample repertoire of collective action, and the articulated claim to nation of the isthmian struggle were truly extraordinary. While elites debated theories that favored displacement or uplift of indigenous peoples in their national project, the latter developed their own vision of the nation based on collective citizenship. The quotations that introduce both this and the previous chapter address this difference of outlook. On the basis of rights earned by living up to the duties of good citizens, the indigenous pueblos, with their mixture of patriarchal, hierarchical, and democratic internal structures of cargo systems and tequio, advanced their own claims to citizenship. This cannot be characterized as simply a case of resistance but of creation and innovation. But this hybrid situation does not describe the modern Mexican nation for which Benito Juárez and PorWrio Díaz, the two native sons of Oaxaca who towered over nineteenth-century Mexican politics, had fought. While they bequeathed a powerful and enduring dual legacy to their home state (the subject of the next chapter), so did the negotiations and compromises achieved by the indigenous communities in the defense of their traditions and customs. The contestation, negotiation, and compromise among these multilayered forces of society persist to this day, as indigenous ethnicities continue to Wght for regional autonomy in Oaxaca.

65. This struggle is missing some fundamental pieces, most notably the “history from within” mentioned above. We do not yet have a clear sense of the internal stratiWcation and relations within Istmeño communities, nor do we understand the relations among the different ethnic groups—Zoques, Huaves, Chontales, Mixes, and the majority Zapotecs. How did ethnicity intersect with class and gender relations in these communities and how did that affect the struggle? What were the personal interests of Che Gorio, Mexu Chele, and other leaders? This is a task for future historians.

8 Liberal Politics: The Dual Legacy The country’s real desire, manifested everywhere, was peace. . . . President Díaz has been invested by the will of his fellow citizens with the lifelong ofWce of supreme arbiter. This investiture—the submission of the people in all their ofWcial manifestations, the submission of society in all its active elements, to the President’s judgment—could be given the name of social dictatorship. . . . Hence, while our government is eminently authoritarian, it can never, at the risk of perishing, refuse to abide by the Constitution. It has been entrusted to one man, not only for the sake of peace and of economic progress, but also in the hope of neutralizing the despotisms of the other Powers and eradicating the caciques and disarming the local tyrannies. In short, the political evolution of Mexico has been sacriWced to other phases of its social evolution. —Justo Sierra, The Political Evolution of the Mexican People

Introduction: Juárez vs. Díaz The loss of half the nation’s territory in 1848 to the United States, the War of the Reform, the defeat of the French Intervention, and the triumph of the Liberal Party in 1867 formed pivotal experiences in the emergence of a national identity and state formation in Mexico. Presidents Benito Juárez and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada faced not only a devastated economy but also more than forty insurrections during the Restored Republic (1867–76) yet, as Daniel Cosío Villegas noted, the men who now governed Mexico were “without parallel for their intellectual capacity and their moral qualities, a team of men forged in the school of adversity.” They would be “the artisans who would raise from ruin and desolation the bold ediWce of a modern and Western Mexico.”1 They formulated 1. Cosío Villegas, Historia Moderna de México: La República Restaurada; Vida Política, 78–79; Perry, Juárez and Díaz, appendix 1, 353–54.

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ambitious programs of economic and political development, but conditions were far from propitious for their realization. Benito Juárez and PorWrio Díaz emerged as the symbols of modern Mexico, at least until 1910. Their dual legacy, the proud yet cumbersome heritage of these two presidents on state politics, has been a source of pride and devotion for Oaxacans. But once Juárez was gone and Díaz assumed the presidency, this steadfast loyalty not only frustrated criticism of these two Wgures but also impeded the separation of their political legacies. While considerable privileges accrued to Oaxacans during the second half of the nineteenth century, the dual legacy turned into a straitjacket in the early twentieth (and has been a signiWcant factor in Oaxacan politics ever since). Defying the brutal inequities and overwhelming prejudice of his era, Benito Juárez García, a poor Zapotec Indian who spoke no Spanish until age twelve, became Mexico’s Wrst president of indigenous extraction. Born in the village of Guelatao in the district of Ixtlán, he sympathized with the underprivileged classes. As a young, idealistic lawyer, Juárez had represented the indigenous villagers of Loxicha, Oaxaca, in their denunciation of the abuses of a local priest. Not only did he fail to help but also found himself brieXy thrown in prison, along with the protesters, thanks to the collusion between the Church and the state. He later wrote that this and other “blows . . . strengthened in me the goal of working constantly to destroy the pernicious power of the privileged classes.” He believed, as did most liberals, that full citizenship for indigenous campesinos could only be achieved by cultural assimilation, as he had shown by his own example. In a Mexico whose laws and customs accorded enormous privileges to those with economic means, in particular the Church and the military, Juárez dedicated his energies to the writing, enactment, and execution of a legal system that would ensure equality before the law for all citizens.2 To overcome the interlocking networks of ethnic, corporate, kinship, and patron-client ties, Liberals targeted primary education in Spanish and the formation of a national culture, implicit in which was the erasure of Mexico’s numerous indigenous cultures. PorWrio Díaz (1830–1915), a mestizo of Mixtec ancestry, was born in the city of Oaxaca, son of a lower-middle-class innkeeper who died in 2. Juárez, Apuntes, 29 (a short autobiography that dealt with his earlier life); Iturribarría, Generación oaxaqueña, 9–61. The bibliography on Juárez is enormous. Numerous sources are cited below, the most recent study is Hamnett’s Juárez.

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1833 in the cholera epidemic. With the father’s death, the Díaz family fell on hard times. Young PorWrio learned various trades (shoemaker, gunsmith, and carpenter) to support his family as he continued his schooling. Both Juárez and Díaz began their studies at the seminary of the city of Oaxaca and then transferred to the Instituto de Ciencias y Artes. Serrano politician Marcos Pérez, whose son was being tutored by Díaz, introduced them to each other in 1849 during graduation exercises at the ICA. Awed by meeting Governor Juárez and other Liberals, “seduced by their open and frank manner” (he later wrote), Díaz transferred to the ICA. Although a Juárez protégé, Díaz found his métier in a military career rather than law. He gained invaluable administrative experience as jefe político in the mid-1850s in Ixtlán, where he organized a local militia of Zapotec Serranos who soon became renowned throughout Mexico as Werce warriors. Appointed military commander on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in 1858, he distinguished himself as a daring and talented soldier throughout the War of the Reform and the French Intervention.3 But with victory in 1867, the alliance between the two Oaxacans turned into rivalry: when Juárez sought re-election, Díaz challenged him. OfWcial history posits an irrevocable split, both personal and political, between the two men, and generation after generation of Mexican schoolchildren have been taught that after 1867 Díaz betrayed his mentor Juárez and the principles of liberal democracy. Carlton Beals declared dramatically that “the feuds of Oaxaca” became the feuds of Mexico, “Zapotec and Mixtec—facing two ways—an old cleavage cleaving the nation. Two eras split apart; two generations at each other’s throats.”4 In reality, there was much continuity and similarity between the two presidents. Both desired the consolidation and centralization of the power of the state along with the integration of all sectors, especially indigenous ones, into the nation-state and Mexican national identity. Both conceived of the state as the instrument with which to modernize Mexico, their 3. See Díaz, Memorias, 1:29–59. Vol. 1 concentrates on Díaz’s personal life, while vol. 2 deals with military exploits. Matías Romero, his classmate from the ICA, later criticized him for not being more respectful of Juárez in these volumes. Tweedie included Díaz’s military appointments in Maker of Modern Mexico, 75–81. See also Iturribarría, Generación oaxaqueña, 67–123; Beals, PorWrio Díaz, 43–48, 64; Krauze, Místico de la autoridad. The most recent study is Paul Garner’s PorWrio Díaz: ProWles in Power. On Díaz and Juana Catarina Romero, see Chassen [Chassen-López], “Juana Catarina Romero: Cacica de Tehuantepec.” 4. Although Beals emphasized the ethnic background, this did not play a role. PorWrio Díaz, 21, 174.

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major goal. In the end, Juárez’s commitment to individual civil rights and universal education as a means of improvement outstripped that of Díaz. Yet they both agreed that the expansion of capitalism in Mexico required the construction of infrastructure and large amounts of capital and technology, to be procured by encouraging foreign investment. In politics, both were Liberals of humble origins who sought to centralize power. They both used less than democratic means to win elections and defeat rival politicians, while they tolerated loyal caudillos and caciques. Both favored Oaxacan cronies as their political representatives and troubleshooters and took a keen interest in the affairs of their patria chica. Both prolonged their periods in ofWce far beyond what might be considered appropriate in a democracy: Juárez was president for fourteen years while Díaz held the honor for thirty. To a great extent, Díaz put Juárez’s Liberal program into practice.5 Some consider the personal estrangement between these two presidents the great tragedy of the Restored Republic. Iturribarría located the origins of this rift in personal differences, emphasizing that Juárez, the civilian president, had snubbed Díaz, the military hero of the French Intervention, more than once. For example, General Ignacio Mejía, the minister of war, accompanied Juárez during his entry into Mexico City in July 1867. When Díaz approached them, they received him coldly and failed to invite him into their carriage on the ride to the presidential palace.6 Still, no matter how great the personal rift, it does not necessarily indicate a lack of continuity in terms of policy. Despite personalist interpretations, this rupture needs to be seen in the context of the disintegration of the wartime Liberal coalition and the 5. San Juan and Velázquez, “Estado,” 277–79; Perry, Juárez and Díaz, xiii; Florescano, Nuevo pasado mexicano, 64; on Juárez and education, see Hamnett, “Benito Juárez,” 10ff. During the Restored Republic, Juaristas, Lerdistas, and PorWristas disputed the title to Liberalism. Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, the brother of Miguel who wrote the 1856 desamortization law, had faithfully accompanied Juárez on the northern border during the War of French Intervention. Many believed him to be the rightful successor. Díaz’s supporters called themselves Constitutionalists but there were no great ideological differences between these groups during the Restored Republic. Their struggle, carried on in Congress and in the press, continued to be personalist. Scholes, Mexican Politics, 159ff. Frank A. Knapp Jr. wrote that these “three ambitious men” summed up the history of the Restored Republic: “Juárez believed he was indispensable; while Lerdo regarded himself as infallible and Díaz as inevitable.” Life of Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, 120. 6. When Díaz sent in his report on the victorious assault on Puebla of April 2, 1867, Juárez not only failed to congratulate him but ordered general Ignacio Mejía to respond “inquiry received.” Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 4:15–16.

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formation of the opposition to Juárez’s continuation as president. In addition, it must be examined against the background of bitter struggles in Oaxaca that stemmed from the contest between both native sons to expand their political power base in the state. Whatever the personal motivations, this rivalry symbolized the new division of Liberals into moderates and radicals, which paralleled the generational division between the older civilian and younger military leaders during the Restored Republic. Many older Liberals, once radicals, moved into the moderate camp after 1867, while the impetuous Díaz rose to captain the radicals, who now called themselves “Constitutionalists.” Juárez tried to stay above this growing polarization, but his sympathies lay increasingly with the moderates.7

From President Juárez to President Díaz The radical/moderate division in Oaxaca had intensiWed early on with the suspicious death of the radical Liberal leader, José María Díaz Ordaz, on the battleWeld during the War of the Reform (1860). It was suspected that the fatal bullet issued not from a Conservative but from the riXe of a Borlado (the moderate Liberal faction in Oaxaca). Headed by the wealthy José Esperón during the Restored Republic, the Borlados constantly engaged in intrigue to diminish PorWrio Díaz’s enormous popularity, as they feared he might encourage “unbridled democracy.”8 In late 1867, Félix Díaz, PorWrio’s younger brother, was elected governor of Oaxaca (1867–71). Having studied at the Colegio Militar in Mexico City, he sided with the Conservatives in the War of the Reform until 1859, when he switched over to the Liberals in order to work closely with his brother. As governor, “El Chato” Díaz initiated the dissolution of the National Guard in Oaxaca, no longer needed in time of peace, and made 7. Perry, Juárez and Díaz, 44–50; Hamnett, Juárez, 200–201. Falcone pointed out the important interrelation between federal and state politics in 1867, as both Juárez and Díaz “sought to control affairs in Oaxaca, thereby assuring themselves a pliable governor, state legislature, and deputies to the federal legislature.” Falcone, “Benito Juárez,” 630–31. Luis González counted eighteen professionals of the older generation of Liberals and twelve soldiers of the younger generation. See González, “Liberalismo triunfante,” 169–70. 8. Borlado refers to the tassel on the hat of graduating lawyers. In Oaxaca this disparaging label meant domination by urban professionals. Iturribarría, “Partido borlado,” 476, 480–84, Historia de Oaxaca 4:28–38, and Oaxaca en la historia, 221–25. Díaz related how Borlado governors Ramón Cajiga and José Esperón placated the French and worked against his best efforts to defeat the invaders during the Intervention. Memorias 1:119ff.

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sure that veterans and their widows received military pensions. His state legislature awarded PorWrio Díaz the Hacienda de la Noria in gratitude for his military service to the state. He inaugurated the telegraph line between Oaxaca and Tehuacán and founded a state pawnshop to offset usury, decreeing that 6 percent was the maximum interest rate. In addition, with hunger rampant in the state after the war, he ordered the grain from the silos of the major hacendados to be distributed among the most distressed pueblos.9 But El Chato was irascible, ruthless, and quick to violence, as he demonstrated when he burned down Juchitán and mutilated the revered San Vicente de Ferrer (see Chapter 7). The Borlados took advantage of his personal weaknesses to engineer an estrangement between the brothers during this period. Nevertheless, by the time PorWrio Díaz launched the Plan of La Noria against the Juárez government in 1871, the brothers had reconciled, and Félix lost his life as a result of the rebellion. PorWrio Xed to the port of Veracruz, where a young merchant, Teodoro Dehesa, saved his life by obtaining passage to New York for him. Díaz was eventually allowed to return to Mexico and retired to a small Wnca in Tlacotalpan, Veracruz, close to the border with Oaxaca. After this defeat, the Juarista Borlados reasserted control of state politics, with Miguel Castro as governor.10 Now allied with Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, who had succeeded to the presidency on the death of Juárez (1872), the Borlados continued to control the governorship, and they supported his re-election in 1876. As Lerdistas they maintained an uneasy alliance with the powerful caudillos of the Sierra Juárez, Fidencio Hernández and Francisco Meixueiro, who considered themselves Wrst and foremost Juaristas (as Juárez had been a Serrano). Thus Juaristas, Lerdista Borlados, and PorWristas disputed control of state politics in the mid-1870s. As in the conXict with Santa María Yucuiti, Governor Esperón ruled arbitrarily, using his power to further his economic interests and terrorizing the political opposition in the state capital. Those who questioned his re-election might be dragged from their homes, Wned, and arrested. Various opponents were forced to Xee the state, while others went into 9. Fortson, Gobernantes de Oaxaca, 134–47; Cosío Villegas, Historia Moderna de México: La República Restaurada; Vida Política, 206. 10. The La Noria rebellion protested electoral abuses and the continuance of Juárez in the presidency. See de la Torre Villar et al., Historia Documental, 358–62; Falcone, “Benito Juárez,” 632–50; Hamnett, Juárez, 230.

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hiding. By January 21, 1876, Esperón had so alienated the Serrano caudillos that they rose up against his government and proclaimed the Plan of the Sierra. Hernández and Meixueiro also took the opportunity to second the anti-Lerdo Plan of Tuxtepec, proclaimed on January 10 by an ally of Díaz from that neighboring district. Although they had remained loyal to the president in 1871 during Díaz’s Wrst rebellion, with Juárez gone they threw their support to Díaz against Lerdo and Esperón. The latter Xed and Díaz raced to Oaxaca to make it his base. Hernández appointed Meixueiro state governor while he proceeded to defeat the last Lerdista contingents in the Mixteca and on the Isthmus, where the old rivalry between Tehuantepec and Juchitán still festered (now as opposition between Lerdistas and PorWristas, respectively). The Tuxtepecanos Wrst defeated the armies of Lerdo and then those of José María Iglesias (who also claimed the presidency as Supreme Court president). PorWrio Díaz assumed the provisional presidency of Mexico in February 1877.11 In Oaxaca, Díaz conWrmed Fidencio Hernández and Francisco Meixueiro’s commissions as generals in the army and appointed Meixueiro governor and Hernández senator. Meixueiro confronted a bleak economic situation, with only $13.80 in the treasury in the city of Oaxaca. He initiated a reconciliation policy that would soon be practiced by Díaz throughout Mexico. This policy, crucial to integrating the ruling elites at the national level and overcoming Mexico’s endemic regionalism, attempted to establish political stability by surmounting the old Liberal-Conservative division and even the radical-moderate split among Liberals. Mexicans had the choice of “pan o palo” (carrot or the stick), “preferment or persecution.” In Oaxaca this resulted in the liquidation of the Borlado faction, whose elements rushed to jump on Díaz’s bandwagon. In this manner 11. Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 230–35; Fortson, Gobernantes de Oaxaca, 146–51. See Monaghan, “Disentailment,” 30ff.; Perry, Juárez and Díaz, 71. Fidencio Hernández began his career as an aide to miner Miguel Castro and later acquired interests not only in mining but also in coffee (Chapter 3), road construction, commerce, candle making for the mines, ham production for local use, and even a bakery. On frequent trips to Veracruz he conferred with Díaz, updating him on events in Oaxaca. Once a staunch Juarista, Hernández became one of Díaz’s main lieutenants. Berry, Reform in Oaxaca, 132–34; Díaz, Memorias 1:59. Though signed by an unknown, Hermenegildo Sarmiento, in the town of Ojitlán in the district of Tuxtepec, the Plan of Tuxtepec was reformed by PorWrio Díaz himself in Palo Blanco, Tamaulipas, on March 21, 1876 (Juárez’s birthdate). See Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 4:148–56, which also includes the text of the Plan of the Sierra. With no vice president, the president of the Supreme Court is next in line to Wll the presidency and in this capacity Iglesias had proclaimed himself president.

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they gained entrée to political positions in Congress, the judiciary, and the administration of order and progress.12 Manuel Dublán, Juárez’s brother-in-law, who had cooperated with the French imperialists, was appointed to Díaz’s cabinet. Other Oaxacan Juaristas, such as Matías Romero, Ignacio Mariscal, and Félix Romero (no relation to Matías), also received important government posts. Oaxacan general Ignacio Mejía, a rival for the presidency who had treated Díaz with disdain, voluntarily left Mexico. He later returned and became a wealthy entrepreneur in his home state.13 His adopted sons, the Bolaños Cacho brothers, became trusted aides to the president. But Tamayo took a more cynical view of this political conciliation. He noted that Díaz’s overtures to Oaxaca’s social and intellectual elites conveniently removed them from the local political scene. The president shrewdly employed them as his trusted agents in the local politics of other states and on the national level. Ever the astute politician, Díaz “dissolved and destroyed the group of Juaristas which, in Oaxaca, had been the right wing of liberalism.”14

PorWrian Politics Elected by a national vote, PorWrio Díaz assumed the constitutional presidency in May 1877 to confront the same problems Juárez had: establishing peace and stability in a nation plagued by poverty, illiteracy, social inequality, political turmoil, Wnancial woes, and a lack of basic infrastructure. Ironically, Jacobin or radical liberalism, which had guided the Liberals to expel foreign invaders and defeat the Conservative Party, was 12. The quotation is from Beezley, Insurgent Governor, 1; Overmyer-Velázquez, “Visions of the Emerald City,” 27. Díaz cemented elite conciliation by marrying Carmen Romero Rubio, daughter of a prominent Lerdista, soon after the death of this Wrst wife, DelWna Ortega. Iturribarría, “Partido borlado,” 490–91. Waterbury erroneously labeled the young Miguel Bolaños Cacho a Borlado thirty years later, when this faction no longer existed (Waterbury, “Non-revolutionary Peasants,” 430), a mistake Garner repeated in A Provincial Response, 105. Assimilation into the PorWrista clique entailed the demise of opposing factions. The last evidence of Borlados is a letter from General Mariano Jiménez to Díaz (late 1880s) in the CPD advising of an attempt by Borlados to ally themselves with Meixueiro, cited by Zarauz López, PorWriato, 98. 13. Dublán’s collaboration with the French supposedly made him ineligible to hold political ofWce. Iturribarría, “Partido borlado,” 492. With Juárez’s death, Mejía’s prestige posed the greatest threat to Díaz’s ascendance. After 1876 he went into self-imposed exile, to return in the mid-1880s. See Beals, PorWrio Díaz, 224; Hamnett, Juárez, 205. 14. Tamayo, Oaxaca en el siglo XX, 11.

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not to be the ideology of political consolidation during the Díaz years. When Benito Juárez placed the National Preparatory School in the hands of French-educated Gabino Barreda, a new philosophy, Positivism, took root, which postulated that scientiWc principles could be extended to all realms of knowledge and endeavors. New generations at the National Preparatory School learned Auguste Comte’s Positivism and combined it with Herbert Spencer’s racist blend of Positivism and social Darwinism. Those who espoused “scientiWc” politics, later dubbed the CientíWcos (the scientiWc ones), soon questioned the viability of Mexico’s liberal constitution and its democratic institutions and heralded the dictatorship of “the necessary man.” Justo Sierra, whom Arnaldo Córdova called the “conscience of his time,” justiWed this position in the passage that opens this chapter. The “political evolution” of Mexico had to be “sacriWced to other phases of its social evolution.”15 To the Positivist motto “order and progress” Díaz appended another slogan: poca política y mucha administración (short on politics and long on administration). The importance of the struggle for material progress overrode the development of democratic institutions. Formal democratic procedures were observed in order to uphold appearances, while internally PorWrio Díaz reorganized and reWned his political machine. He based his power on the conciliation of the factions of a recently consolidated national ruling elite, a small, wealthy oligarchy in a nation where the majority lived in poverty. Committed to “modernizing” their nations, Latin American oligarchies in the late nineteenth century, the “Régimen” in Argentina, Rafael Núñez’s “Regeneración” in Colombia, and Justo RuWno Barrios’s “Reform,” in Guatemala paralleled the Pax PorWriana, which lasted thirty-four years in Mexico.16 15. González, “Liberalismo triunfante,” 200; Perry, Juárez and Díaz, 14; Scholes, Mexican Politics, 16. Cosío Villegas labeled the dictatorship “the Necesariato” in Historia Moderna de México: El PorWriato; Vida Política Interior 2:313ff.; Bulnes, Verdadero Díaz, 24–27; Molina Enríquez, Grandes problemas nacionales, 357–58; Zea, Positivismo en México; Córdova, Ideología, 45–46, 67; Hale, Transformation of Liberalism, 245. See also Sierra, Political Evolution, 359ff. This book concludes the magnum opus of the PorWrian intelligentsia (compiled by Sierra himself) México, su evolución social. The abridged English version has a different conclusion from Evolución política, 395–97. 16. See the introduction to Villegas, Positivismo, 23. The term “oligarchy” comes from the Greek and literally means government by the few. In political theory it has been associated with a form of government by organized minorities or elites. In Latin America it is associated with the period between 1870 and 1930. See Halperin Donghi, Contemporary History, 115ff.

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For PorWrio Díaz, state formation signiWed political centralization, increasing the domination of the Centro (Mexico City) over the states, and the consolidation of his personal power. Political loyalty meant, above all, loyalty to the president. Thus Díaz confronted the Wefs of the regional caudillos and caciques; those who accepted his tutelage maintained their privileges, exempliWed by the reafWrmation of the caudillos of the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca. Those who did not ended up in prison, exile, or worse. Patronage continued to hold sway, although now Liberal networks of patrons and clients dominated Mexico.17 The construction of infrastructure (roads, railroads, telegraphs, and telephones) expedited a more centralized control by facilitating rapid communication and transportation, of troops if necessary. Díaz restructured the army, establishing new military zones controlled by his cronies. The Rurales were reorganized and reduced the banditry that had plagued Mexico since Independence. At Wrst they were employed to break down regionalism, but as modernization progressed they were used to repress the working classes. The army carried on wars of extermination against rebellious indigenous groups: Apaches, Yaquis, and Mayas. These accomplishments encouraged the rapid capitalist development of northern Mexico and its increasing inXuence in national politics.18 Stubbornly refusing to set up a system of succession that might have permitted him to anoint a (perhaps southern) successor, PorWrio Díaz unknowingly laid the foundations for the growth of the power of the north and the political demise of the south. In order to legalize the ongoing rule of Don PorWrio, the Constitution had to be amended to permit continual re-election (in contradiction to the Plan of Tuxtepec), which was accomplished by 1888. After numerous changes during the Wrst presidential period, Díaz’s cabinet attained an amazing stability. Joaquín Baranda in the Ministry of Justice and Public Instruction and Ignacio Mariscal in Foreign Relations endured for more than twenty years, while José Yves Limantour handled national Wnances for more than eighteen. Effective governors could prolong their regimes indeWnitely, as demonstrated by the careers of Teodoro Dehesa in Veracruz, 17. González, “Liberalismo triunfante”, 202–3. Ian Jacobs narrates the mechanism through which the opposition caciques of Guerrero were destroyed in Ranchero Revolt, 80–81. 18. Vanderwood, Disorder and Progress, 119ff. On the rise of the north, see Aguilar Camín, Frontera nómada; Beals, PorWrio Díaz, 224–26.

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Francisco Cañedo in Sinaloa, Próspero Cahuantzi in Tlaxcala, Mucio Martínez in Puebla, and Bernardo Reyes in Nuevo León.19 While Manuel Romero Rubio, the president’s father-in-law, served as minister of Gobernación (Internal Affairs), he managed Díaz’s system for designating federal deputies and senators. Romero’s private secretary, the Juchiteco Rosendo Pineda, would prepare a list of possible congressional candidates, which the minister checked, revised, and presented to the president, who had the Wnal say. Thus was the popular will carried out. There were no birth or residency requirements for deputies or senators. Francisco Bulnes, who represented a district of Chihuahua in which he had never set foot, asserted that in 1892, of the eighteen deputies from the state of Jalisco, only three were native-born. Benito Juárez Maza, son of the hero of the Liberal Reform, served as deputy for Oaxaca as well as for Nayarit. Cosío Villegas described the Congress as “a barracks for invalids or an ofWcers’ depot,” the Chamber of Deputies as “a museum of natural history, where one could Wnd an example of each species,” and the Senate as “invariably composed of ancient generals and ex-governors.”20

Díaz’s “Jesuits” Within the framework of this personalist political system, Oaxacans played a vital role as Díaz’s most trusted advisers and emissaries. The intimate ties that the president maintained with these paisanos were rooted in and reinforced by membership in Masonic lodges. Freemasonry had served as the conduit that relayed the ideas of the Enlightenment, the liberal critique of monarchical regimes and Catholicism, in the Catholic countries of Europe and Latin America. Secret organizations cloaked in ritual, these lodges were based on the equality and fraternity of all men (no women were allowed). The Scottish rite favored by the English and the Yorkist rite centered in Philadelphia had provided the nuclei of the opposing centralist and federalist parties, respectively, in the 1820s. Antonio de León, later a Liberal governor, had founded Yorkist lodges in Oaxaca in 19. González, “Liberalismo triunfante,” 227–28; see LaFrance, Mexican Revolution; Rendón Garcini, Prosperato, 45; Koth, “Crisis Politician”; de Arellano, Bernardo Reyes. 20. Valadés, PorWrismo 1:34–35; Bulnes, Verdadero Díaz, 181; Klerian, D. Benito Juárez, 42ff. Cosío Villegas, Historia Moderna de México: El PorWriato; Vida Política Interior, 2:317.

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1828. Juárez had been an active Mason, but so had Maximilian. In 1862 James Lohse, a U.S. citizen, founded the Gran Logia del Valle de México, confederating various lodges. The status of Mason emerged as a critical factor for advancement in Liberal ranks during the nineteenth century and continued well into the twentieth.21 PorWrio Díaz himself had founded a lodge in 1870, the Logia Cristo No. 1 of the city of Oaxaca. By 1890 193 lodges and Wfteen greater lodges were afWliated with the Gran Logia del Valle de México. A smaller number belonged to the National Rite, which broke from the Logia del Gran Valle and was led by Benito Juárez Maza. There was also a small number of other rites with afWliated lodges. Oaxacan Ignacio Pombo, a crony of the president and the grand master of the Logia del Gran Valle, and his brother received the supply contract for clothing and equipment for the Mexican army, which made them very wealthy.22 Masonry forged another link in the patron-client networks instead of fomenting democratic practices. Like Juárez before him, Díaz named Oaxacans as governors, district and circuit court judges, treasury chiefs and inspectors, stamp administrators, and secretaries-general of state governments all over Mexico. CientíWco Francisco Bulnes (whose observations need to be taken with more than a grain of salt) complained that Díaz was as Oaxaqueñista (pro-Oaxaca) as Juárez had been. He claimed that in 1886, of 227 deputies in the national Chamber, sixty-two were Oaxacans. Ironically, Bulnes asserted that Oaxacans (often lodge brothers) were for Díaz “what the Jesuits have been for the Pope, charged with sustaining faith in the hero of peace, the doctrine of grace by re-election. . . . The Oaxacan privilege has lasted from 1858 to 1911, Wfty-three years dominating Mexico!”23 21. Hamnett, Juárez, 29, 86; Guerra, México 1:170. 22. Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 4:194; Valadés, PorWrismo 2:292; Bulnes, Verdadero Díaz, 142, 181. In 1893 lodges were distributed as follows: 18 percent in Veracruz, 12 percent in Coahuila, 11 percent in Tamaulipas, a little more than 7 percent in Puebla, a little less than 7 percent in Oaxaca, the State of Mexico, and in Mexico City, and 4 percent in Nuevo León. In contrast, states such as Michoacán, Guanajuato, Sinaloa, and Durango, among others, had only 1.5 percent each. See Guerra, México 1:158–59, 170–72; Bastián, “Jacobinismo,” 33. The other brother, Luis Pombo, served as deputy for Colotlán for Jalisco and according to Valadés wrote cynically that he some day hoped “to make the acquaintance of the Colotlanenses.” PorWrismo 1:35. 23. Bulnes, Verdadero Díaz, 181–82; see Knight, Mexican Revolution 1:20. On Juárez’s tendency to rely on Oaxacans and Cubans, see Hamnett, Juárez, 118, 120, 127. On Díaz’s Jesuits, see Chassen [Chassen-López], “Jesuítas de PorWrio Díaz,” 31–35.

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There are numerous examples of this practice. Miguel Bolaños Cacho, stepson of General Ignacio Mejía, served as state deputy and secretarygeneral for Chihuahua, besides having been senator for Tamaulipas. In 1902 he was interim governor of Oaxaca and later magistrate of the Mexican Supreme Court. Esteban Maqueo Castellanos served as jefe político in his home district of Juchitán and district judge in Sonora. Later, as a judge in Chihuahua in 1906, he condemned the Magonista revolutionaries to prison. General Mariano Jiménez, who had been a classmate of Díaz in the seminary, served as governor, Wrst of Oaxaca and later of Michoacán. Emilio Rabasa, who graduated from the ICA, replaced numerous state ofWcials with Oaxacans when he became governor of Chiapas in 1891. This policy was repeated by the subsequent governors of Chiapas, both Oaxacans, Lt. Colonel Francisco León and Rafael Pimentel, brother of Emilio. According to a list in the PorWrio Díaz collection, in addition to state governors, numerous Oaxacans had secret codes with which they could communicate with the president on sensitive matters.24 Oaxaqueños also played a signiWcant role in the PorWrian drama on the national level, which was exempliWed in the careers of Matías Romero (a classmate of Díaz from the ICA), Ignacio Mariscal, Manuel Dublán, Félix Romero, Félix Díaz Jr., Demetrio Sodi, Benito Juárez Maza, and the Pombo brothers. By 1909, of fourteen members of the Mexican Supreme Court at least Wve were Oaxacans. There were numerous others at the secondary levels of government. Particularly powerful behind the scenes during the later PorWriato was Rosendo Pineda, Juchitán’s proverbial diputado in the Chamber of Deputies.25 24. Díaz, Memorias 1:28; Benjamin, A Rich Land, a Poor People, 39ff.; Turner, Ricardo Flores Magón, 109; CPD, Letters, leg. 27, caja 5. The list of people with personal secret codes is in the loose leaf with introductory information in the CPD. It includes Oaxacans Matías Romero, Joaquín Atristáin, Francisco Belmar, C. C. Chapital, Carlos María Gil, General Julio M. Cervantes, Carlos María Castro, Esteban Maqueo Castellanos, and Juan Fenochio. A great many of the telegrams to Díaz are in numeric code. See Bulnes for a more complete list of Oaxacans in federal government and his claim that Martín González, the president’s chief of staff, and Luis Pombo ran a special executive secret service for the president (Verdadero Juárez, 181, 308). 25. Díaz, Memorias 1:32–24; Cabrera, Obra política, “Segundo capítulo,” 131. In addition to those cited here, Beals provides a list for the 1880s: Pedro Santacilia (Cuban, Mariscal’s private secretary and Juárez’s son-in-law); Manuel Goitia, a government palace employee; Manuel Tello, stamp-tax administrator in the federal district; General Eleazar Loaeza, stamp-tax administrator for the Republic; José Maza, director of Customs, Mexico City; Prisciliano Martínez, stamp-tax administrator, Veracruz; General Martín González, chief of Díaz’s private staff. Beals, PorWrio Díaz, 273.

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Pineda was the illegitimate son of Cornelia Pineda, a Juchitecan Zapotec, and TeóWlo Delarbre, a French engineer who abandoned mother and child. Speaking no Spanish before he entered school, Pineda was included in a group of young men sent to study in the city of Oaxaca by PorWrio Díaz when he served as commandant in Tehuantepec. After obtaining an ICA law degree, Pineda worked as private secretary to Manuel Romero Rubio. This apprenticeship with a master of political intrigue helped him to become the president’s trusted political adviser and troubleshooter in the Chamber of Deputies. An elegantly dressed bachelor, Rosendo Pineda’s poetic and oratorical skills, and his forthrightness, gained him much respect, although he had a reputation as a gambler. The only CientíWco with an indigenous parent, he invested with fellow CientíWcos in land speculation and sat on the boards of various companies. Even Limantour called him “the diamond’s axis,” the pivot of the CientíWco clique.26

The “Jesuits” in Oaxaca PorWrio Díaz selected loyal military cronies as governors in order to keep a tight rein on his patria chica. No governor ruled for more than one term until General Martín González (1894–1902), and none for more than two terms. Clearly, Díaz did not want any one ofWcial to establish too much control. After the regime of Francisco Meixueiro, the president invariably chose governors born or raised in Oaxaca, but men whose careers had removed them from local interests after long periods outside the state. They had few vested interests in the state and owed their Wrst loyalty to Díaz. There would be no jockeying for power with local caudillos in Oaxaca, as with the Terrazas clan in Chihuahua. Generals such as Fidencio Hernández, Francisco Meixueiro, Mariano Jiménez, Luis Mier y Terán, Albino Zertuche, Gregorio Chávez, and Martín González followed each other during the period between 1876 and 1902. Díaz himself was governor of Oaxaca between 1881 and 1883.27 26. Pineda’s role in Congress is revealed in the Valadés citations from his correspondence, e.g., PorWrismo 1:29–30 (see also 5, 38–39, 54); Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 4:204; Brioso y Candiani, Rosendo Pineda, 13ff.; de María y Campos, “PorWrianos prominentes,” 612–17; Chassen [Chassen-López], “Jesuitas de PorWrio Díaz”; Prida, De la dictadura a la anarquía, 97ff. Although Luis Cabrera publicly attacked the CientíWcos, he seemed to respect Pineda. See Cabrera, Obra política, “Segundo capítulo,” esp. his notes on 142–43. 27. See Taracena, Apuntes históricos, 194, and PorWrio Díaz. Díaz was careful to send

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Even when not personally directing the destinies of the state, PorWrio Díaz took a hands-on approach to his patria chica. He attended carefully to the regular correspondence and petitions from his paisanos in all walks of life. State governors kept the president apprised of events and problems with frequent and detailed reports. While in a number of states, such as Chihuahua or the Yucatán, factional politics among clear-cut political patronage groups known as camarillas could become very confrontational and even result in rebellions, this kind of conXict was not evident in Oaxacan political culture during the PorWriato. Loyalty to Díaz was so strong that the Vallistocracia normally accepted the governors chosen by the president, despite the fact that they might not be members of that local oligarchy, and enjoyed his special treatment in return. As narrated below, the one exception (the 1902 crisis) was not motivated by the elite but signaled the entrance of the middle sectors onto the Oaxacan political stage.28 The caudillos of the Sierra Juárez, Generals Fidencio Hernández and Francisco Meixueiro, ruled Oaxaca between 1876 and 1881. Faced with a grim economic situation in 1876, Meixueiro began a reconstruction program in the city of Oaxaca, building the Zócalo, the central plaza, and the major thoroughfare that later became known as the Paseo Juárez. He also extended the state’s telegraph lines. It was during his regime that the efforts to build a railroad link between Oaxaca and the Centro commenced. Both Meixueiro and Hernández participated in the formation of the Wrst unsuccessful railroad project, captained by Matías Romero in the United States, the Mexican Southern Railroad Company (see Chapter 1).29 Meixueiro proved himself a less capable politician when faced with the renewal of conXicts on the Isthmus. These initiated as a protest against the loss of communal lands but later merged with complaints against jefes políticos and the reorganization of the tax system. An uprising in July 1880 began with the removal of his appointed jefes políticos in the districts of Oaxaqueños to rule the state, a courtesy he did not always extend to other states when choosing governors. 28. In the CPD, one can read numerous letters and telegrams sent directly to Díaz by Oaxacans from all ranks of life providing reports and petitions. Members of the Oaxacan oligarchy frequently requested personal favors, which were often granted. On the governors, see Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia; Fortson, Gobernantes de Oaxaca. 29. Meixueiro erred when he supported Díaz’s archrival, Ignacio Mejía, for president in 1880. When Mejía failed to get the candidacy, he turned on Meixueiro and backed a series of journalistic attacks on the governor, which aroused considerable criticism of the latter. Fortson, Gobernantes de Oaxaca, 148–51.

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Tehuantepec and Juchitán. Although Meixueiro ordered severe repression, this did not bring an end to the struggle for autonomy in this region. As we have seen, more than any other region of Oaxaca, the Isthmus frequently challenged the political dominance of the state capital.30 When Manuel González took over the presidency, PorWrio Díaz ran unopposed for governor of his native state. Inaugurated on December 1, 1881, he governed until October 11, 1883, when he returned to Mexico City as minister of development to prepare for his next presidential election. Díaz’s progressive governorship focused on the modernization of the city of Oaxaca and the development of infrastructure in the state. Lighting in the city of Oaxaca had not been renovated since 1824, and he instituted gas lighting in February 1882 by personally buying 144 gaslights for the city, which were placed downtown, while the older oil lamps were moved to the city’s perimeter. He also investigated and paved the way for electric lighting, which didn’t actually arrive until 1884. He created the Wrst organized police force, the Gendarmarie, in the city, calling them Guardianes de Oaxaca in 1882 (previously the lamplighters had functioned as watchmen). The Gendarmarie also began to compile crime statistics. In order to assist the police, the governor saw to it that the city’s street names were clearly marked for the Wrst time. Díaz also sponsored the state’s branch of the national pawnshop, the Nacional Monte de Piedad, which opened its doors in March 1882.31 Díaz also extended telegraph lines, improved roads, and inaugurated the state’s Wrst meteorological institute in 1883. Construction began on the Tehuantepec National Railway in August 1882, and in May of the following year Díaz was able to inaugurate the service between Salina Cruz and Tehuantepec. He reorganized the state government by reducing the number of bureaucrats, which enabled him to pay them full salaries while still eliminating the state’s outstanding debt. He reorganized tax collection in order to increase income and at the same time attempted to stimulate 30. Terrones López, “Istmeños y subversión,” 135ff. Díaz did not have a very high opinion of either the Tehuanos, “fanatics” and “retrogrades” who had sided with the French, or the Juchitecos, whom he regarded as unreliable allies. However, it should be remembered that this opinion may well be inXuenced by the fact that the Juchitecos were responsible for the bloody death of his brother, Félix. See Memorias 1:77–95. 31. Díaz had actually been governor before, from December 1863 to February 1864 and from October to December 1866. There is no study to date of his governorship in Oaxaca in the 1880s. See Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 239–40; Medina Gómez, “Modernidad porWriana,” 12–13; Overmyer-Velázquez, “Visions of the Emerald City,” 124–25; Beals, PorWrio Díaz, 246; Fortson, Gobernantes de Oaxaca, 108–17.

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industry. Expenditures for education increased notably in the districts as well as in the city of Oaxaca, as three hundred schools were set up throughout the state. He reestablished the Escuela de Artes y OWcios (Institute of Arts and Crafts), originally founded in 1866, on the sight of the Mesón of the Soledad, the family inn where he was born. This institution offered education and vocational skills for children of the poor.32 General Mariano Jiménez (a native of the city of Oaxaca) replaced Díaz as interim governor during a four-month leave in 1882 and later stepped in to Wnish the term. Continuing Díaz’s infrastructure policies, Jiménez improved roads and extended telegraph lines further. He introduced electricity and telephone service in the public buildings of the city of Oaxaca. He also established the State Museum, appointing a distinguished historian from Michoacán, Nicolás León, to organize it. Faced with an epidemic of yellow fever in the district of Tuxtepec, Jiménez encouraged the organization of sanitary brigades, staffed by people in the affected districts who were trained and supplied with health pamphlets at state cost. He supported the expansion of elementary education by building schools and supplying free texts. He also put state Wnances in order, handing over a healthy state treasury to his successor.33 General Luis Mier y Terán was elected governor in 1884. Although born in Guanajuato, his mother returned to her native city of Oaxaca upon being widowed and it was there that Luis spent most of his youth. A classmate of Díaz at the ICA, he had supported him in the La Noria rebellion as well as in Tuxtepec. Mier y Terán had served as governor of Veracruz before he assumed the same post in Oaxaca. His was one of the most effective governorships of the PorWriato, as the nation enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity. He promoted infrastructural works, supporting reconnaissance studies for railroad projects and encouraged the founding of a branch of the National Bank of Mexico in Oaxaca. He continued Jiménez’s campaign to better public health, founding the state Committee on Health and Hygiene. This committee labored to eradicate yellow fever and smallpox, and introduced widespread vaccination in the state. The General Hospital was overhauled and received new equipment, an operating room, and medications, while the hospital’s shower rooms were opened to the public to encourage better hygiene. In 1887 Mier y 32. Ibid.; Taracena, PorWrio Díaz, 194; Martínez Vásquez, Historia de la educación, 47ff. 33. Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 240; Fortson, Gobernantes de Oaxaca, 152–54. Jiménez later became governor of Michoacán.

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Terán had to take a sick leave from the governorship, as his mental state had deteriorated. Agustín Canseco covered the interim period.34 In 1888 General Albino Zertuche was elected governor but ruled only for a year and a half. A native of the state of Nuevo León, he also spent part of his youth in Oaxaca and had been a staunch Díaz supporter. In February 1889 he founded the Escuela Normal para Profesores (Normal School). Zertuche established a newspaper, La Gaceta de Oaxaca, for which he occasionally wrote articles. On an inspection tour in Tehuantepec in 1890, he succumbed to an attack of pneumonia.35 The state legislature then elected Oaxacan general Gregorio Chávez his successor. No other governor during the PorWriato dedicated more energy to improving public education. He invited the celebrated Swiss educator, Enrique Rebsamen, resident at the normal school in Jalapa, Veracruz, to visit Oaxaca. Rebsamen brought with him an Italian, Casiano Conzatti, and Oaxacan-born Abraham Castellanos, both of whom remained in the state. Together they undertook a thorough investigation of education in Oaxaca, issuing an inXuential report that spawned widespread educational reform, speciWcally, a new Law of Primary Instruction (1889). They also reorganized the normal-school system, founding a normal school for women, the Escuela Normal para Profesoras (previously the Academia de Niñas), that provided scholarships for poor female students. The construction of schools and the number of students attending them increased considerably during this period.36 It was also during Chávez’s regime that the Mexican Southern Railway was inaugurated. As we have seen, this vital link between Oaxaca and Mexico City activated mining and commercial agriculture. Industry, particularly tobacco, beer, glass, and soap production, also received an impulse from Chávez’s administration. The city of Oaxaca beneWted when a slaughterhouse was built and its activities carefully regulated. Chávez reorganized the Monte de Piedad pawnshop to lower interest rates to a minimum, to the advantage of its poorer customers. He oversaw the 34. As governor of Veracruz, Mier y Terán supposedly received a notorious PorWrian telegram (“Mátalos en caliente”) ordering him to execute a group of rebels in the port city, which was later often cited as proof of Díaz’s ruthlessness. Fortson, Gobernantes de Oaxaca, 155–60; Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 240–41. 35. Ibid. 36. Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 247; Martínez Vásquez, Historia de la educación, 68ff.; Fortson, Gobernantes de Oaxaca, 164. Chávez had fought alongside Díaz since the War of the Reform. Díaz, Memorias 1:125.

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construction of the imposing statue of Benito Juárez on the Paseo Juárez thoroughfare. Chávez initiated construction of the modern PorWrio Díaz Market (today Juárez Maza Market) downtown, arranging a concession for its construction with the same British Wrm, Read Campbell Ltd., that had completed the Mexican Southern Railway. When two prominent journalists accused him of shady Wnancial dealings in conjunction with this project, the governor responded by imprisoning them instead of presenting a public accounting. This repression stirred up considerable opposition in the state capital. Nevertheless, Oaxacans would be even less content with Díaz’s next choice for governor, his compadre General Martín González.37 The close relationship between the president and his paisano politicians emerges as a central factor in analyzing national as well as local politics. Oaxacans supported and participated in Díaz’s increasing authority in the Centro, but outside the city of Oaxaca regionalism and localism were still endemic given the extreme political fragmentation, as well as geographic and ethnic factors. For the majority of the population living in small, isolated pueblos, identity meant Wrst and foremost village identity, just as during the colonial period. Oaxaca, nevertheless, can hardly be described as the bastion of federalism that some, pointing to the state’s repeated reassumption of sovereignty, have depicted. Regionalism, and the localist mentality derived from it, cannot be automatically equated with the defense of states’ rights and state sovereignty against the encroachment of the Centro. Juárez and Díaz were nineteenth-century Mexico’s centralist presidents par excellence. During their tenure in the National Palace, Oaxacan politicians and favor seekers rushed to align themselves and reap the many beneWts to be had. With the exception of the 1823 reassumption of sovereignty at the outset of the Republic, which established Oaxaca’s early stand for a federalist constitution, the defense of federalism and the reassumption of state sovereignty arose, above all, when Díaz or Juárez saw their political control threatened.38 37. Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 247–48; Fortson, Gobernantes de Oaxaca, 164–65. 38. See Perry, Juárez and Díaz, 109ff., 339–53. This is Garner’s main thesis in A Provincial Response, 9, 160–61; also see his “Federalism and Caudillismo,” “Autoritarismo revolucionario,” and “Oaxaca: The Rise and Fall of State Sovereignty.” See Brachetti and Muñoz, Monografía histórica; Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 139.

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In 1858 the state reassumed sovereignty in order to support the 1857 Constitution in opposition to the successful Conservative coup. In 1871 Governor Félix Díaz used this shield to support his brother’s unfortunate La Noria rebellion against Juárez’s re-election. Likewise, the 1915 declaration of state sovereignty can be interpreted in light of the loss of Oaxacan preeminence under Díaz and the rise of the northern politicians, which diminished Oaxaca’s hope to return to the PorWrian status quo ante. In practice, Oaxacan politicians’ defense of regional autonomy and federalist principles was self-serving and opportunistic. Only once did the state reassume its sovereignty with a Oaxacan in the national palace, when Félix Díaz seconded the Plan of the Noria against Juárez. Otherwise, throughout Juárez’s and Díaz’s efforts at political centralization, this “federalist” bulwark was complicit and voiced few complaints. Oaxacan Liberals acted as centralists when they held power and as federalists when they didn’t.39

The 1896 Tax Revolts: “The War of the Pants” In pursuit of economic modernization and the increasing centralization of political power, Liberal governments increased taxes and established efWcient collection not only to augment revenues but also to drive campesinos into the cash economy. Nothing infuriated the latter more than the tax system, which often forced them into debt. The elites and middle classes consistently lied about the extension of their holdings in order to cheat on taxes, and miners were able to negotiate the sum of mining taxes with the government. Yet everyone had to pay the hated capitación, the monthly head tax of about 20 centavos, and a campesino or laborer paid the same amount as a merchant or mine owner. The tax burden was patently unequal and collected in a most arbitrary manner. As a journalist reported in 1905: Each passerby, be he a resident or visitor to the city, is accosted on the street and is required to pay up all his taxes for the months 39. Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 191–92, 224–25, 340ff.; Ruiz Cervantes, Revolución de Oaxaca, 66ff. On the 1823 reassumption of sovereignty, see Sánchez Silva, “El establecimiento del federalismo.” Knight noted this opportune federalism for Mexico in general in “Liberalismo mexicano,” 64.

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of the year to date. If to avoid problems or because he has the money on hand the tax is paid, a form is Wlled out with the citizen’s name and the amount, and is given to him. But if by chance he does not have the money on him, and this is often the case, then he is escorted by a policeman to the Sheriff’s OfWce and jailed until he makes the payment. And, to no avail does he try to explain that he pays his taxes in another town, he must necessarily bring the receipts with him wherever he goes on the risk of being thrown in prison or having to pay the same tax twice. We have also heard that the tax collector with his police escort frequently shows up on holidays in the public places where the working classes like to congregate such as ball Welds or cockWghts. This causes the peaceful citizens to Xee rather than tangle with him. They would rather sacriWce their entertainment than have to face disputes or even end up in the Sheriff’s OfWce, because not everyone remembers to always carry around his receipts.40 Frequently, new taxes or the reorganization of the tax system, in addition to the vicissitudes of the economy, so overwhelmed campesinos that they resorted to violence and revolt.41 As we have seen, recurrent tax revolts were a familiar feature of nineteenth-century Oaxaca. The abolition of the state tax on consumo y portazgo, or internal tariff (the colonial alcabala) in 1896, aimed at stimulating the domestic economy, obliged state governments to seek alternative sources of revenue. They imposed new taxes to make up the lost income, particularly on small property holders. In Tlaxcala, where the new taxes were lower than in Oaxaca, the discontent led to riots. In Oaxaca it resulted in the major indigenous protest movement of the PorWriato, the violent “War of the Pants.”42 40. El Bien Público, Aug. 1, 1905. 41. Migdal, “Capitalist Penetration,” 63–65. Under Spanish rule, the indigenous population paid only one annual tribute to the Crown and was exempt from other taxes. Although the tribute was onerous, it was a known quantity. With Independence and the attainment of “citizenship,” Indians were liable for all taxes and tax increases. 42. See Rendón Garcini, Prosperato, 19ff. The portazgo provided the states with a major source of income, which they hoped to replace with an increase in real estate taxes. To do so, they now included small property holders, who might indeed be paying fewer taxes, with the suppression of the internal tariffs. Nevertheless, to smallholders this looked like a direct assault on their livelihood and homes.

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On February 5, 1896, the local Congress established a new monthly tax of 5 centavos on property worth less than $100, which up until that date had been exempt from taxes. Small property owners believed that the new law placed the onus of state income loss on the poorest sector of the population, while the state claimed that the elimination of internal tariffs actually reduced the amount of taxes on the poor. Owing to the lack of a reliable property register in Oaxaca, the law also established that property owners would have to declare the value of their holdings every Wve years. The authorities could accept the owner’s estimate or name an expert to carry out an evaluation, which the owners could appeal if they disagreed. This new state register of all twenty-six districts would facilitate future tax collection. The prospect horriWed small landowners (many of them illiterate) who had never declared the value of their property before. They found themselves at the mercy of unscrupulous tinterillos who overcharged them and spread alarming rumors of additional taxes to come. Violent protests arose in the Centro, Tlacolula, Juquila, Zimatlán, Choapan, and Villa Alta districts.43 The Wrst problems arose in Tlalixtac, in the Centro district, followed by protest in Tlacolula on March 22. The government sent in one hundred troops the next day, but this calmed the situation only temporarily. Discontent was on the rise again in April in Tlacolula, with people refusing to declare property values and pay taxes. Tinterillos took advantage of the situation to charge campesinos outrageous prices for their property declarations. Rumors swept through the Central Valleys that authorities had intercepted correspondence between two municipal presidents that revealed preparations for a rebellion.44 Attempting to nip this movement in the bud, the jefe político of Zimatlán arrested the supposed leaders on the night of March 31, a move 43. Five accounts, all written by gente de razón, of the period survive (Rojas, Salazar, Pacheco, Bolaños Cacho, and Esteva), but documentation of the rebels’ side has yet to be uncovered. Rojas believed that the tax was a paltry one and that the uprising was instigated by the enemies of Governor Martín González. Rojas, Epístolas, 164ff.; Salazar, “Historia de Oaxaca,” 402; Esteva, Nociones elementales, 228; Pacheco, “Graves disturbios,” 6, and Bolaños Cacho, Memoria Administrativa, 1902, 5ff. Martínez Medina, “Ley de Hacienda,” 22ff. This is the only recent study dealing directly with the subject; however, Martínez relies almost exclusively on the Oaxacan newspaper La Libertad for 1896, and fails to synthesize the information with the other existing sources. 44. Martínez Medina, “Ley de Hacienda,” 22–25. Abardía M. and Reina Aoyama’s brief description of the events of 1896 in their study of Oaxaca’s nineteenth-century rebellions relies entirely on Rojas as its source and makes no connection between movements in Zimatlán and Juquila. “Cien años de rebelión,” 491–92.

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that actually provoked an uprising the next day. When a military force attempted to transfer the prisoners to the state capital, a group of local Indians tried to free them. The soldiers opened Wre and wounded various locals. That night the rebels took control of public buildings by setting Wre to the locked doors, burning the local archives and liberating the prisoners of the municipal jail. The jefe político escaped, but his youngest son was murdered, a daughter suffered grave injuries, and their house was sacked, as were other homes and commercial establishments. When troops arrived from the state capital to put down this uprising, the rebels Xed. In order to restore peace, three hundred troops from the Fourth Infantry Battalion patrolled the districts of Zimatlán and Ocotlán after April 5.45 News of these events spread rapidly throughout the state. On April 6, 1896, indigenous Chatino peasants attacked the district capital of Juquila, protesting the new tax law and shouting, “Death to all who wear pants.”46 Some of the details of this uprising are narrated in the Introduction. The Chatinos burned the town hall and the judicial archives, and beheaded twenty-two townspeople with machetes. They soon numbered about one thousand, and began sacking the stores and houses in the area. Using the Pochutla line, since that of Juquila had been cut by the rebels, the telegraph operator of San Pedro Mixtepec alerted the state capital of the rebellion. Governor González immediately dispatched the army’s Fourth Battalion under the orders of Colonel Lauro F. Cejudo, who executed thirty Chatinos and did not get the situation under control until April 18.47 At this point, the governor sent in Carlos Woolrich as the new jefe político. Woolrich decreed that everyone had to dress European-style, 45. Martínez Medina, “Ley de Hacienda,” 24ff. 46. Esteva accused the Indians from Zimatlán who had taken refuge in Juquila of instigating the rebellion there, but other sources blamed Miguel Maraver Aguilar of Miahuatlán and Cristóbal Cortés of Jamiltepec. Esteva, Nociones elementales, 228, 466–67. Maraver was a radical Liberal oppositionist after 1900 and Cortés emerged as a Wgure in the indigenous Mixtec rebellion on the Costa Chica in 1911. Rojas, Pacheco, and Esteva accuse Miguel Maraver Aguilar of being the instigator in Juquila, together with Cristóbal Cortés and Timoteo Cuevas, and allege that Maraver disappeared from Juquila the moment the movement got under way. Rojas, Epístolas, 168–71; Pacheco, “Graves disturbios,” 5. 47. Pacheco, “Graves disturbios,” 6; Rojas, Epístolas, 168–71; Martínez Medina states that the villages of San Juan Quiahije, Tepenixtlahuaca, Panixtlahuaca, and Yaitepec participated in the rebellion (“Ley de Hacienda,” 26). Anthropologists Miguel A. Bartolomé and Alicia M. Barabas were able to interview local people who remembered the movement; see Tierra de la palabra, 42–43. As mentioned in earlier chapters, the Chatinos had previously rebelled against taxation and a jefe político during the PorWriato.

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which gave this bloody rebellion its name, the “War of the Pants.” But Oaxaca was not the only site where the very clothes people wore became the symbol of struggle. In 1879–81, in an uprising in Tamazunchale, San Luis Potosí, a similar battle cry of “Death to those with pants” arose, while in Tepic and Jalisco European-style pants became required dress. In an 1899 Bolivian revolt, peasants also targeted those who wore trousers as enemies. Their leader advocated that all classes be required to wear rustic homespun as a leveling mechanism. Guha has found issues of dress present in numerous Indian revolts and in most major agrarian movements. He concludes that it should not surprise us that “in societies so sensitive to dress differentials any serious crisis of authority should be expressed in sartorial terms as well.”48 No wonder Esteban Maqueo Castellanos felt proud when he saw Indians on the border with the United States dressed in jeans, eating meat and bread made of wheat! His much desired de-indianization program was making progress. Nonetheless, the jefe político complained in 1897 that the Chatinos not only refused to work on needed road repair but also continued to use their traditional dress. In Juquila the suppression of the ancestral style of clothing was a clumsy attempt to mask ethnic differences. The suppression of native dress humiliated the Chatinos, who refused to comply.49 In the Wrst week of April, far across the state, the Zapotec villages of the Villa Alta district in the Sierra Juárez expressed their disapproval of the new tax law to the jefe político. On the afternoon of April 12, indigenous peoples from the surrounding villages invaded the district capital shouting, “Death to the Government!” “Down with the Tax Law!” “Viva the Constitution!” “Viva the free and sovereign people!” The Serrano Zapotecs appealed to the liberal Juarista Constitution against an arbitrary government and demanded the rights of citizens.50 The jefe político 48. The Bolivian case is cited by Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency, 61– 64. Anthropologist James B. Greenberg found the same situation in the district of Juquila; see Santiago’s Sword, 50, and Blood Ties, 22. See also Pacheco, “Graves disturbios,” 6; Rojas, Epístolas, 171–74; Bartolomé and Barabas, Tierra de la palabra, 43; Meyer, Problemas campesinos, 23; BonWl Batalla, Mexico Profundo, 6. 49. Meyer, Problemas campesinos, 23; BonWl Batalla, Mexico Profundo, 6; Maqueo Castellanos, “Algunos problemas nacionales,” 105–8; Bartolomé and Barabas, Tierra de la palabra, 43. 50. Clearly the Constitution had replaced the Crown of Spain as the symbol of good government, as opposed to bad local government. Martínez Medina, “Ley de Hacienda,” 26–27. According to Esteva, PorWrio Morales, Carlos Zaragoza, and Francisco Castellanos

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and other ofWcials managed to escape, but government ofWces, commercial establishments, and homes were pillaged. Three days later, three thousand Zapotecs held the town of Villa Alta hostage. Although troops were on their way from Juchitán, a telegram arrived Wrst on April 15, communicating that the governor had repealed the disputed tax. The rebels returned to their villages, and peace was restored to the district.51 When indigenous discontent with the tax law mounted in Choapan (contiguous to Villa Alta), a judge tried to reason with the protesters, but they threatened his life. Jefe político Ramón Santaella then went directly to Comaltepec to speak with the local indigenous cacique, hoping to convince him that under the new law the villagers would pay less in taxes than before. This act allayed local fears brieXy, until rumors of the uprisings in Zimatlán and Juquila reached the district that a major rebellion was spreading across the state.52 At 2:00 A.M. on April 13, 1896, Indians attacked the government buildings in the town of Choapan, dynamiting the ofWces of the jefe político, where he lived with his family. Although no one was hurt, the local gente decente immediately Xed the town. When the jefe político was informed that another three hundred Indians (from Comaltepec) allied with rebels from Villa Alta were about to invade Choapan shouting, “Death to bad government!” and “Death to the authorities!” he escaped to the district’s lower regions. At the time, Guillermo Meixueiro (son of Francisco) was living with his family on a Wnca in these lowlands. He organized a resistance of coffee and rubber Wnqueros, who armed their workers in order to put down the rebellion in Choapan. On April 19, with Meixueiro at their head, these forces left for the district capital, meeting up along the way were responsible for agitating the people. Morales was taken prisoner to Oaxaca and later murdered in jail. Esteva, Nociones elementales, 441. It was rumored that the governor ordered this assassination. When apprised of this, PorWrio Díaz asked Fidencio Hernández to take young Rubén (Morales’s son) under his wing. He was sent to the military college at Chapultepec in Mexico City; however, he later supported the Maderista Revolution. Rojas, Epístolas, 171, 174. 51. Martínez Medina states that the villages of Tabaa, Yojovi, San Andrés Yaa, Yatoe, Lachiroag, Betaza, Lachita, Totontepec, and Roayaga participated in the movement. “Ley de Hacienda,” 27. See also Esteva, Nociones elementales, 441. 52. Martínez Medina, “Ley de Hacienda,” 28–30. The indigenous population of Choapan was divided among Zapotecs, Chinantecos, and Mixes; thus it is difWcult to gauge which groups were involved in the protest, although the Chinantecos tended to live in the lower regions, and the participating villages seemed to be Zapotec, although Tontontepec was Mixe.

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with the jefe político, who named Meixueiro chief of military operations. They took Choapan on April 20 and set out to regain control of Comaltepec, the rebel headquarters, which they accomplished the next day without Wring a shot. This brought an end to a month of bloody tax revolts in Oaxaca.53 The state government’s attempt to modernize its tax structure, interpreted by the indigenous peoples as a direct threat to their livelihood, resulted in protest and considerable violence, not only in Juquila but also in Wve different districts in four out of seven regions of the state. It raised the specter of dreaded caste warfare, which had bled the Yucatán for decades and which Juárez had so feared on the Isthmus, and the governor quickly revoked the controversial articles in the tax law. This fear lived on in the memory of the elites and middle class throughout rural Mexico in the nineteenth century.54 Yet despite military repression, the Chatinos continued to wear their traditional dress. No decree could force the indigenous peoples to relinquish their culture, nor could a change of clothing cloak centuries of mistreatment. The rage and violence unleashed in these movements revealed deepseated resentment, stemming from centuries of ethnic discrimination and political abuses, dispossession of village lands and natural resources, labor exploitation, and excessive taxation. When convinced of a real threat to their livelihood, Oaxacan campesinos were anything but passive. These tax revolts combined class confrontation and ethnic conXict, which in this case mutually reinforced each other. This made for an explosive but not uncommon combination in Oaxaca. Ethnic conXict could unite entire villages, clouding internal social differences and inter-village conXicts and moving protest beyond the local theater. Despite the powerful combination of class and ethnic factors and evidence of contact between rebels in different districts, the 1896 uprisings did not evolve into a statewide rebellion that challenged the state, much less the federal government. Village protests were common in Oaxaca, but objectives tended to be limited and concrete. When, as in Villa Alta, goals were achieved, protesters picked up and went home. In addition, two separate ethnic groups speaking two different languages were involved, the Chatinos and Zapotecs, and Valley 53. Ibid. 28–31. 54. Joseph refers to the planter class’s “social memory” of the caste war in the Yucatán, in “Rethinking Mexican Revolutionary Mobilization,” 159; see Reed, Caste War in Yucatán.

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Zapotecs in Zimatlán and Serrano Zapotecs in Villa Alta spoke two distinct dialects of Zapotec. Localism still reigned, imposing itself over class or ethnic unity. Taylor’s characterization of eighteenth-century Oaxaca serves here as well; “local political unity and militant myopia made villagers good rebels but poor revolutionaries.”55 Confrontations such as these, of two seemingly antagonistic worlds, actually reveal how much they had come to engage with each other. The coastal district of Juquila had been a signiWcant center of the commercialization and privatization of agriculture, particularly cash cropping in coffee and rubber. The town of Juquila had privatized its land among 240 small landowners one year before the violence. The 1896 law must have been perceived as a direct attack on these new small holdings. Rather than reactionary or traditional peasants violently rejecting modernization, many of them were property owners defending their land. In addition, on private and communal lands, they were already planting coffee and even tithing with it. In this light, the 1896 tax revolts reveal that the economic and social “modernization” of Mexico was the ever-changing product of contestation, negotiation, and compromise, sometimes arrived at through violent means. The rental of European clothing on market days was truly a negotiation of modernity.

The Political Crisis of 1902 The study of local politics holds up a mirror to state formation in PorWrian Mexico. The interplay between local and national politics and the ways in which political culture changed to accommodate new players can be seen clearly in the 1902 electoral crisis in Oaxaca. The possibility that General Martín González would be elected governor for a third term in 1902 galvanized local opposition forces in Oaxaca and in Mexico City. Initiated as a local political contest, this confrontation took on crisis proportions and plunged the state into the mainstream of PorWrian intraelite factional politics. In fact, the conXict in Oaxaca foreshadowed what would soon transpire at the national level in the clash between CientíWcos and Anti-CientíWcos.56 The protagonists in this drama were a new 55. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 145. 56. Beezley suggested that the analysis of the dynamics of local elections would reveal the limits and possibilities of PorWrian politics, a subject on which there is more speculation

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generation of middle-class professionals. Having beneWted from economic growth, they now mobilized in hopes of broadening their political participation. They employed a new, more public style of politics that included mobilization and agitation of middle- and working-class sectors, a practice that brought Oaxaca into open conXict. Martín González, born to a poor indigenous family in the town of Ocotlán in the Central Valleys, scaled the military ladder as a soldier in the Liberal army. Staunchly loyal to Díaz, he lacked both education and reWnement. Described by his contemporaries as irascible and intemperate, González mistreated those around him in word and in deed and could often be found drinking in cantinas or houses of ill repute. He once so ardently pursued the beautiful wife of the German vice-consul in Oaxaca that it nearly caused an international scandal.57 Oaxacan elites despised González for his vulgarity, his arbitrary politics, and his lack of vision for Oaxaca’s economic future. They nevertheless took a back seat in this crisis (at least until late May) and observed the middle sectors on the frontline of a battle with which many of them sympathized (although elite money probably bankrolled the anti-González press). While urban working class sectors, especially artisans, labored actively in the opposition, the great majority of the rural population remained on the margins despite the fact that González had little support in the countryside after his repression of the 1896 tax revolts. Although by 1902 the governor had succeeded in alienating a large portion of the state’s population, he and the members of his inner circle still kept a tight rein on the PorWrian political machine in Oaxaca. Throughout his regime, PorWrio Díaz had proved to be extremely sensitive about succumbing to outside pressure when making political decisions. In the early 1890s a group of Oaxacan politicians who opposed the governorship of Gregorio Chávez had approached the president with the suggestion that he select Senator Apolinar Castillo as governor. Díaz instead chose his old aide-de-camp (and compadre) Martín González, who had been army chief of staff. The president later explained that Castillo (also an intimate friend) had really been his Wrst choice and lamented that than research (“Conclusion,” 278, 290). For a detailed analysis of this crisis, see Martínez Medina and Chassen [Chassen-López], “Elecciones,” 523–54. 57. Rojas, Epístolas, 175–77; Brioso y Candiani, Evolución del pueblo oaxaqueño, 4:73; Bulnes, Verdadero Díaz, 308. I have not been able to ascertain the exact ethnic origins of González.

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the intervention on his behalf had forced him to reject Castillo’s candidacy because “he couldn’t let anyone believe that he was susceptible to impositions.”58 Indeed, getting Díaz to withdraw his support from González would be a tricky enterprise. Oaxacan elites and middle sectors disparagingly referred to General González as “Martín Caclito” (the diminutive of cacle, a type of sandal). A newspaper appeared in the city of Oaxaca entitled El Huarache (another connection between indigenous footwear and the governor’s modest origins), which violently criticized the state government and ridiculed González. The governor ordered the local jefe político to collect all copies of the paper and jail its editors and contributors. Those young men who did not escape this roundup were drafted into the army, despite protests from inXuential persons.59 This incident only increased the resentment against the governor. Over the years, Oaxacans had often complained to Díaz about the despotic González. When discontent mounted, Díaz would call Don Martín to Mexico City for a few months. These frequent absences totaled twenty-seven months out of eight years and Díaz himself oversaw the selection of interim governors. The president’s personal lawyer, Eutimio Cervantes, the able bureaucrat Nicolás Garrido, and the brilliant young lawyer-poet Miguel Bolaños Cacho Wlled this governor’s seat from time to time. On March 4, 1902, the Club Democrático Electoral ofWcially launched Martín González’s campaign in the city of Oaxaca. In Ocotlán the local club proclaimed the candidacy of its native son, while the Peace and 58. Apolinar Castillo had previously been governor of Veracruz. Beals, PorWrio Díaz, 265; Prida, De la dictadura a la anarquía, 110–11. According to Bulnes, Doña Carmelita maneuvered to get González out of Mexico City because when he and the president would go out carousing, PorWrio would return inebriated (Verdadero Díaz, 308). Langston narrates a similar situation in Coahuila, where an alliance of various cliques united to convince Díaz to oust Governor Garza Galán. When they sent a commission to Mexico City to speak with the president, he made them wait for months. In Coahuila this led to open rebellion that was resolved only with the intervention of Bernardo Reyes (Langston, “Coahuila,” 60ff.). Given the characteristics of Oaxacan politics, an open demand for local autonomy such as those posed by northerners was out of the question. Oaxacans thought that the way to replace an unpopular governor was to suggest someone who might be closer to Díaz: his nephew. 59. Carlos Bravo was able to escape to Tuxtepec but the other writers, José María Vidaña and Darío Pérez, were imprisoned and later drafted into the army. Vásquez et al., Descripción de tipos, 17; Filio, Estampas oaxaqueñas, 25–26; Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 248. See CPD, for example, Letters, leg. 27, caja 4, for various letters from Martín González on diverse affairs of Oaxaca.

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Progress Club of Tuxtepec declared itself Gonzalista. In mid-March more than six hundred people met in the state capital to form another Gonzalista club and later emptied into the street shouting vivas.60 The state political machine geared up for a second re-election. Early in 1902, however, a group of middle-class Oaxacans had begun to seek a replacement for the arbitrary González. They thought they had a sureWre candidate, the dashing young major Félix Díaz. Díaz, born in Oaxaca in 1868, had become the president’s ward upon the death of his father in 1871. He graduated from Mexico’s military college in 1888 with a diploma in military engineering. He served as deputy to Congress for Oaxaca and Veracruz on numerous occasions, and by 1901 formed part of the president’s military staff. Félix Díaz represented a new breed of cultured and professionally trained military men, a sharp contrast to rustic Tuxtepecanos like González. The middle-class opposition assumed that this choice would not only rid them of the coarse González but also curry favor with the president.61 Although Félix Díaz’s campaign was not formally proclaimed until March 25 (in a Xier signed by a group of “independents”), manifestations of support surfaced as early as February. The Wrst week of March saw the founding of Felicista clubs in the Mixteca and in the Cañada. Other clubs soon appeared in Tuxtepec, Tehuantepec, and the Central Valleys. Félix Díaz himself never deigned to make a public statement or speech during the whole confrontation, preferring to let others test the waters for him. Young middle-class professionals and teachers, seconded by artisans, published El Estandarte in the city of Oaxaca and enthusiastically championed this Wrst burst of Felicismo. “Agitation spread like wildWre and Félix Díaz won general acclaim,” reported one journalist.62 60. CPD, Telegrams, leg. 61, caja 2; El Imparcial, April 1, 1902; Diario del Hogar, March 16, 1902. 61. Fortson, Gobernantes de Oaxaca, 134–37, 174–75; Liceaga, Félix Díaz, 13–15. Félix Díaz attained the rank of cavalry major in January 1901, lieutenant colonel in July 1902, and brigadier general in March 1909. Manuel Márquez Toro, relative of the Sierra Juárez caudillos, reported in a letter to Basilio Rojas that Fidencio Hernández had invited Félix Díaz to participate in a business deal and that Félix had neglected to submit an accounting for the monies forwarded after its completion. Hernández then complained to the president. PorWrio Díaz scolded him for not consulting him Wrst about going into business with Félix. Had he done so, the president would have warned him not to proceed; now he was sorry about his loss, but glad that Hernández could learn from his lesson. Archivo Basilio Rojas, Los Gobernadores de Oaxaca, Félix Díaz. 62. The military virtues of the deceased father seemed to get more attention than those of the candidate. See CPD, Telegramas, March–May 1902; El Estandarte, March 16, April

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Juchitán’s jefe político expressed bureaucratic bewilderment when he wrote the president that the people in his district strongly favored Félix Díaz and asked for instructions. The Díaz surname might work magic in Oaxaca, but the jefes políticos still took orders from the González administration. Since the president had yet to designate his choice, both campaigns gathered momentum. Gonzalista newspapers appeared in the city of Oaxaca to ridicule the opposition. As Gonzalista clubs and Felicista clubs multiplied, confrontations became more frequent. Demonstrators in favor of Félix Díaz in Tlaxiaco and in the Sierra Juárez were harassed by local ofWcials.63 In late February González had left the state to attend the inauguration of public works in the port of Veracruz and then traveled to Mexico City to confer with the president, advising ofWcials in Oaxaca that he would not be back until June. He soon telegraphed Francisco Belmar, oWcial mayor, that he would return by the end of March because of the “vacillation” shown by certain people with respect to his candidacy. He assured Belmar, “if I once again accepted this candidacy it is because it was agreed upon and it is not true that the president supports Féliz [sic].” On his return, numerous celebrations awaited. On April 7 in the city of Oaxaca an impressive reception was held in the government palace, followed by a serenade and Wreworks. As Gonzalistas paraded through the streets of the city proclaiming their candidate, the governor seemed to be back in control.64 These events failed to deter the Felicista contingent, which took to the streets of the state capital the same day in favor of their candidate. 19, May 5, 23, 1902; Taracena, Apuntes históricos, 198; Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 249–50; “Primera agitación política,” 16–17. González was supported by judges, politicians, and government employees, while Félix Díaz was supported by “merchants, doctors and lawyers of the city of Oaxaca, the majority of students of the ICA, by artisans, by social organizations and the people in general” (reported in La Patria, of Mexico City, April 2, 1902); see also Filio, Estampas oaxaqueñas, 129. Among these supporters were Luis Flores Guerra, Ramón Pardo, Manuel Pereyra Mejía, Heliodoro Díaz Quintas, and Adolfo C. Gurrión. El Estandarte communicated with newspapers throughout Mexico to publicize Félix Díaz’s candidacy, e.g., in Aguascalientes, Morelos, and Veracruz. Martínez Medina and Chassen [Chassen-López], “Elecciones,” 536–37. 63. The president received a letter from Dr. Mauro Butrón of Juchitán soliciting permission to work in favor of the nephew whose candidacy “is daily becoming more popular.” Of course, the doctor clariWed, if the president were to decide against the new candidate, he would accept that decision with “the submission of all good citizens.” CPD, Letters, leg. 27, caja 4, Feb. 1902, and leg. 27, caja 6. See also CPD, Telegrams, leg. 61, caja 2; El Imparcial, April 1, 1902; Diario del Hogar, March 16, 1902, 2. 64. CPD, Telegrams, leg. 61, caja 2; El Imparcial, April 8, 1902.

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Although they lacked serenades or Wreworks they still attracted a crowd, and the police carted more than sixty Felicistas off to prison. The president received numerous protests demanding the liberation of those arrested. Díaz then sent a telegram to interim governor Bolaños Cacho: “I know that there are some prisoners for a small scandal which occurred on González’s arrival when they cheered Félix Díaz. Tell Martín that I do not write to him because I wish that the offer of generosity that is indicated in this instance come spontaneously from him. Answer me. PorWrio Díaz.”65 But even after this telegram the repression did not stop, and more Felicistas were arrested on May 18. Police arrested Salvador Vargas, a tailor in the city of Oaxaca, and threatened to send him into exile in Quintana Roo for the crime of having a picture of Félix Díaz in his shop. Protests to the president against harassment and repression were not conWned to the city of Oaxaca but came from the Sierra Juárez, the Mixteca, the Costa, and the Central Valleys. Ironically, Felicismo in 1902, as distinct from its later conservative incarnation during the Revolution, struck a deep chord of local grievances against abuses of the political system in the state and represented progressive change.66 Political agitation and the consequent wave of Gonzalista repression, compounded by the confusion caused by the president’s failure to decide publicly for one candidate, brought the confrontation to crisis proportions. By late May González had succeeded in alienating his last elite supporters. The crisis had taken on the appearance of a family quarrel, given Don PorWrio’s close relationship to both candidates. Although he could no longer sustain the governor in power, the president was reluctant to replace him with his nephew, resisting impositions as always.67 Finally PorWrio Díaz demanded that both candidates publicly renounce their campaigns. Félix Díaz did so on June 4 and Martín González (who was devastated by this request) followed suit the next day. Against the president’s wishes, González solicited a leave of absence for the remainder of this period and went to live in Mexico City. Miguel Bolaños Cacho 65. CPD, Telegrams, leg. 61, caja 2 and caja 3, April 6, 8, 1902; FMBC, Miscelánea, Colocación III. 66. FMBC, Miscelánea, Colocacion III; El Estandarte, May 23, 1902; CPD, Telegramas, leg. 61, caja 2, 3, 4, March to May 1902. 67. Henderson, Félix Díaz, 7–8. On the mockery of the aristocratic ladies of Oaxaca by the Gonzalista paper La Linterna de Diógenes, see Martínez Medina and Chassen [ChassenLópez], “Elecciones,” 545.

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continued to serve as interim governor for the next six months. As punishment for meddling in politics without permission from his uncle, Félix Díaz was sent to Chile as consul general for a year and a half. Although middle- and working-class sectors had, in tacit alliance with the Vallistocracia, succeeded in ousting Martín González, they had not been able to replace him with their chosen candidate. Emilio Pimentel, a prominent lawyer from Tlaxiaco, became the new “ofWcial” candidate, and exGonzalistas and Felicistas alike scrambled onto his bandwagon. On June 29, 1902, Emilio Pimentel, a founding member of the CientíWcos, was elected the Wrst civilian governor of Oaxaca during the PorWriato.68

Liberalism Triumphant and Transformed Reform Liberals and 1910 revolutionaries alike regarded the example of the French Revolution as a source of inspiration. Radical Mexican liberals have often been called Jacobins by both their contemporaries and later scholars. Recently Mexican historiography has been inXuenced by revisionist studies in France, which have recast the French Revolution as a political and cultural event rather than the social and economic epic envisioned by the Marxists and Annalistes who dominated French historiography for decades. By rehabilitating the writings of Auguste Cochin (a staunch Catholic who detested the Jacobins), François Furet and his disciples unlocked the “central mystery” of the Revolution of 1789, the rise of the Jacobins and the origins of democracy.69 Cochin was interested in revolutionary rupture and how power vacuums could be Wlled by democratic expression and the emergence of “philosophical societies” (societés de pensée). These were the elements of a new “political sociability,” a “speciWc mode of organizing relations between citizens (or subjects) and power, as well as among citizens (or subjects) themselves in relation to power.” This was the new, exciting world of literary salons, Masonic lodges, cafés, patriotic and cultural clubs, in 68. See El Imparcial, June 7–9, Aug. 15, 1902; Félix Díaz Archives, Condumex, Doc. 0042-43, Nov. 19 and 21, 1902; El Imparcial, July 3, 5, 1902. Actually, elections took place on two successive dates, but for all intents and purposes Pimentel’s election was assured on this date. 69. Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, 27–28, 46, 204. Jeremy Popkin analyzes Furet’s debt to Cochin in his discussion of the development of the public opinion paradigm in “Concept of Public Opinion,” 85–90.

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sum, societies and clubs where people congregated, exchanged ideas, and acted as individuals. Located outside the hierarchies of traditional society, these groups were the seeds of democratic society that proclaimed the equality of all citizens, since citizenship endowed each with a share of popular sovereignty. Cochin, Furet, and others have demonstrated how the French Revolution invented the “political discourse and practice by which we have been living ever since.”70 Masonic lodges, liberal clubs, artisans’ societies, spiritist groups, literary circles, mutualist societies, and Protestant congregations increasingly reXected the development of this new sociability in nineteenth-century Mexican political culture. The 1857 Constitution and the Reform Laws were written for a society composed of individuals and guaranteed their rights, including the right to free association. The societés de pensées, more than political parties, were veritable “laboratories where democratic ideas were elaborated and inculcated.”71 Thus political culture reXected not only the conXicting claims of Liberals and Conservatives as they fought each other for control of the nation but also those of the middle and working classes, of peasants and indigenous ethnicities as they contested and negotiated state formation. During the Wars of the Reform (1858–60) and French Intervention (1862–67), the Constitution of 1857 emerged as the symbol of the regime of democratic law that promised to root out the evils of privilege, personalism, and patronage. With the Wnal defeat of the Conservatives and the Archduke Maximilian in 1867, liberalism had Wnally triumphed after more than forty years of conXict, and the new democratic sociability was free to develop in Mexico.72 But liberalism had never been monolithic. It encompassed various interpretations or strands as they evolved, such as differences between 70. Elborg Foster translated “societés de pensée” into “philosophical societies” in English. The Spanish translation, “sociedades de ideas,” is still better. According to Furet, the absolute monarchy presented “a type of political sociability in which all of society is arranged concentrically and hierarchically around the monarchy, which is the central organizing force of social life. It occupies the summit of a hierarchical arrangement of corps and communities whose rights it guarantees and through which authority Xows downward, while obedience (tempered by grievances, remonstrances, and negotiations) Xows upward” (Interpreting the French Revolution, 28, 37–46, 173–81); see also Guerra, México 2:331. 71. The quote is from Bastián, “Jacobinismo,” 29–35 and “Paradigma de 1789,” 79ff. See Guerra, México 1:157–81. Furet’s inXuence on Guerra and Bastián is evident. The radicals at the Constitutional Congress in 1916 were also called the Jacobins. 72. Sinkin, Mexican Reform, 77–79, 169.

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moderates and radicals. By 1867, however, it was no longer an ideology of conXict. Now ofWcial, its symbols were marshaled to legitimate those in power and justify the status quo. With the death of Juárez in 1872 and Díaz’s election to the presidency in 1877, the gloriWcation of Benito Juárez and the Liberal Reform gained greater momentum. The Reform, represented by the Wgure of Benito Juárez and the 1857 Constitution, became, in the words of Richard Sinkin, “the crucible of modern Mexico,” affecting the hearts and minds of all Mexicans thereafter. Eager to achieve a social consensus through reconciliation, Díaz and the PorWrian intelligentsia consciously encouraged the cult of Juárez and forged, in Charles Hale’s apt phrase, a “unifying liberal myth.” This legitimized President Díaz as the “indispensable perpetuator” of national unity and the grand Juarista liberal tradition.73 Public celebrations effectively implanted this myth in the national psyche. Beginning in 1887, yearly celebrations on the anniversary of Juárez’s death (July 18) commenced with Díaz in attendance. Reinforcing the Oaxacan connection on the Wrst such celebration, in Mexico City, Ignacio Mariscal, minister of foreign relations and Oaxacan godfather of one of Juárez’s daughters, was the designated orator and emphasized the theme of liberal unity. In 1891, on Juárez’s birthday (March 21), the government dedicated a bronze statue to the great reformer in the National Palace, forged from Conservative cannons from the War of the Reform and fragments of French artillery from the Intervention.74 Throughout Mexico, streets, parks, plazas, towns, and cities took on the names of the symbols and heroes of the Independence and Liberal Reform. Inhabitants of cities and villages were to consider themselves part of the same “Mexican” and “democratic people” who had defeated the foreign invaders. The conscious elaboration of this new political culture forged national identity and loyalty to existing power structures while 73. Charles A. Hale brilliantly analyzes the confrontation between Liberalism and scientiWc politics in Transformation of Liberalism, 9, 59, 256 and “Political and Social Ideas,” 227. Brian Hamnett reminds us that Juárez himself encouraged this cult, which has become “a central part of Mexican political mythology” (Juárez, xii, 236). See also Weeks, Mito de Juárez, 34ff.; Sinkin, Mexican Reform, 77–79, 169. See Saez’s article on the role of the newspaper La Libertad in creating the Juárez myth (“Libertad,” 217ff.). 74. Hale erroneously dates Juárez’s death as July 28 in Transformation of Liberalism, 9, 101, 121, 256. In 1891 the speaker was Manuel Dublán, Juárez’s brother-in-law; see Weeks, Mito de Juárez, 34ff. In Oaxaca, July 18 is still honored to this day. On monuments and celebrations during the PorWriato, see Tenenbaum, “Streetwise History”; Beezley, “PorWrian Smart Set”; and Vaughan, “Construction of the Patriotic Festival.”

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accustoming a largely illiterate population to its political symbols and vocabulary. In 1883 the city of Oaxaca changed many older religious street names (e.g., La Perpetua, Dolores, San Francisco) to reXect the historical trend. Now streets were named after pre-Columbian Wgures (Cosijopi, Moctezuma), colonial personages (Burgoa, Fiallo), the heroes of the Independence (Morelos, Hidalgo, Arteaga) and the Reform (Juárez, Félix Díaz, PorWrio Díaz).75 MagniWcent celebrations throughout Mexico took place on the centennial of Juárez’s birth in 1906. Organized in 1903, a coordinating commission sponsored a literary competition of books on Juárez and his epoch. The Ministry of Education also ran competitions for a “Hymn to Juárez” and a biography to be read in primary schools each year on March 21. Congress suspended tariffs for the importation of statues and busts of Juárez by state and municipal governments. The commission attempted to bring to fruition the congressional accord of 1873 for the erection of a monument to Juárez in the nation’s capital, but the Hemiciclo Juárez was not inaugurated until the 1910 centennial celebrations. In Oaxaca, the 1906 celebrations lasted for four days, crowned by the inauguration of the statue of Juárez on Fortín hill overlooking the city. Attendance was so great that not only the skirts of Fortin but also eight streets leading to the steps were bustling with people.76 The unifying liberal myth also transformed Mexican education and the history taught in the schools. Since Independence, Liberals and Conservatives had produced highly charged and competing versions of Mexico’s history (based on the anti-Spanish Black Legend or pro-Spanish White Legend, respectively), turning historical interpretation into a weapon of political conXict. In their effort to uproot their past and achieve mental emancipation from the Spanish heritage, Latin American Liberals denied their own history, and “became a people without a history,” noted philosopher Leopoldo Zea.77 75. Sinkin, Mexican Reform, 177; Portillo et al., Oaxaca, 7–9. The “patriotic festival in the late nineteenth-century liberal state gave those experiences a speciWc meaning designed to create loyalties and identities” (Vaughan, “Construction of the Patriotic Festival,” 217– 19). Political communities seeking to create multiclass alliances are generated by “social and cultural oppositions that create a group or community feeling among heterogeneous folk. They involve movements for our people, our culture, our region, the true faith, progress, or democracy; against the intruders, the English, the inWdels, the agro-exporting bourgeoisie, the dictators” (Roseberry, Anthropologies and Histories, 226–27). 76. Weeks, Mito de Juárez, 77ff.; Portillo et al., Oaxaca, 104–6. 77. The Argentine Liberal Esteban Echeverría developed the idea of mental and social emancipation: “The American social emancipation can only be attained by repudiating the

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New multivolume versions of the past began to unite Mexico’s diverse legacies into a coherent narrative of one nation’s drive to progress and maturity. Riva Palacio’s Wve-volume México a través de los siglos (1884– 89) began in pre-Columbian antiquity, went on through the Viceroyalty straight up to the Reform. Nationalism was also cultivated through paintings, lithographs, engravings, stamp collections, travel accounts, and geographies. The old adversaries, the Spanish and indigenous pasts, now appeared as “two roots of the same tree trunk,” in the words of Enrique Florescano. Elites now discovered their ancient roots in the glories of the pre-Columbian empires. Justifying Maximilian’s execution because he had attempted to destroy the “Anahuac” nation, Juárez legitimized Mexico’s struggle: “We inherit the indigenous nationality of the Aztecs, and in full enjoyment of it, we recognize no foreign sovereigns, no judges, and no arbiters.” The enjoining of antiquity with the present has been a common legitimizing practice of nationalist historiography in Europe as well as in the Americas. Certainly Francisco Clavigero in the eighteenth century, and Fray Servando Teresa de Mier and the Oaxacan Carlos María de Bustamante in the early nineteenth, employed this trope. José María Murguía y Galardi declared that the federalist regime was not a novelty in Oaxaca but a continuation of Zapotec and Mixtec systems from before the conquest, in his speech at the public presentation of the 1824 Constitution. Oaxaca’s Wrst state coat of arms of 1825 had the head of Zapotec Princess Donaji at its center.78 In 1825 President Guadalupe Victoria decreed that a national museum be founded in the University and divided into two sections, one dealing with antiquities and another with natural history. But it was not until the PorWriato that three institutions vital to the national identity, the National Museum, the National Library, and the National Archives, received enough state funding to develop fully. In 1877 the National Museum undertook

heritage that Spain left us.” Quoted in Zea, Latin American Mind, 10ff., 40–41. Zea’s use of this phrase predates Eric Wolf’s book Europe and the People Without History by more than two decades. 78. Riva Palacio, México a través de los siglos; Florescano, “El poder y la lucha por el poder,” 53–59, and Etnia estadio y nación, 452; also O’Gorman, “Revolución Mexicana,” 213ff. Sinkin, Mexican Reform, 175–77; Juárez quoted in Hamnett, Juárez, 194. Although Juárez was Zapotec, the Aztec empire provided the better-known ancestor. During its struggle for power, the socialist COCEI movement in Juchitán trumpeted itself as the inheritor of Cosijopi, the last Zapotec king (Campbell, Zapotec Renaissance). Thurner, From Two Republics, 11; Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 1:38, 94–95; see Florescano, “Creación del Museo,” 148ff.

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its Wrst archaeological investigation, not surprisingly in Oaxaca, the president’s patria chica. The same year saw the Wrst edition of the museum’s new journal, the Anales del Museo de Antropología, which published studies of archaeology, ethnography, history, and linguistics. Soon after, the museum acquired its own printing press in order to publish scientiWc studies. Under director Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, the museum became the center of social science research and teaching in Mexico.79 In 1880 a debate took place in Congress over Mexico’s archaeological patrimony. When Justo Sierra supported archaeologist Desiré de Charnay’s request to take back to France some archaeological pieces that he had found, the Chamber of Deputies absolutely refused. A law enacted on May 11, 1897, declared all archaeological monuments to be property of the nation and off limits to any commerce. The law called for the production of an archaeological map of Mexico so as to facilitate their protection by the federal and state authorities. Mexican history, particularly its ancient glories, had become a question of state, and few states had more pre-Columbian sites to explore than Oaxaca, home to the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Not surprisingly, PorWrian Mexico chose to represent itself at the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, that grand festival of modernity and progress, with an Aztec Palace.80 Latin Americanists are fond of citing Benedict Anderson’s concept of the “imagined community” in newly emerging states where traditional identity had been based on village or religious afWliation. Anderson deWned the nation as an “imagined political community—imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” Considering nationalism a “radically changed form of consciousness” that invents nations where none existed before, he analyzed the conscious establishment of linkages between readers of novels and newspapers, strongly emphasizing the role of print media. The construction and deWnition of population, territory, and history through census, maps, and museums afforded visual proof of the existence of this community. As seen above, new states “imagined themselves antique” in order to create a shared national memory and establish 79. Florescano, “Creación del Museo,” 155–64. This process would be considered the creation of “foundational histories” by subaltern studies scholars. See Prakash, “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories,” and “Subaltern Studies.” See Chassen [Chassen-López], “Una lectura insurgente.” 80. Five years later the General Inspection of Archaeological Monuments was created to study, rescue, and conserve the nation’s patrimony. Florescano, Etnia, estado y nación, 447–49, and Tenorio-Trujillo, Mexico at the World’s Fairs, 64ff.

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their legitimacy. Triumphant Liberals legitimized the ongoing construction of the nation-state and contributed to the elaboration of this new political culture by the “invention of tradition” in a Mexico that now recognized its origins in both the Aztec empire and the Spanish Viceroyalty.81 But equally important for Latin American nations with only a literate minority in the nineteenth century were the creation of public symbols and participation in patriotic celebrations. These symbols of the nation-state have historically been highly gendered, as patriotism has been associated with masculinity and militarism. Discussing gender in the context of Anderson’s “imagined community,” Mary Louise Pratt has remarked that “Women inhabitants of nations were neither imagined as nor invited to imagine themselves as part of the horizontal brotherhood.” Women had played an important role in the struggle for Independence, from elite participants like Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez and Leona Vicario to nurses, cooks, and spies. A petition to the state government of Zacatecas in 1824 that declared that “Women also wish to have the title of citizen . . . to see themselves counted in the census as ‘La ciudadana H . . . La ciudadana N’” was evidently disregarded. Women were valued for their capacity to give birth to citizens, as mothers and wives, but as legal minors not themselves worthy of the rights inherent in citizenship. Women’s education increased throughout the nineteenth century because it was recognized that ignorant women could not manage a household or properly nurture future citizens. As bourgeois democracy hailed domestication and “republican motherhood” and military dictatorships exaggerated their loyalty to family integrity and self-sacriWcing motherhood, both excluded women from politics in order to strengthen patriarchy.82

81. Anderson, Imagined Communities, xiv, 6, 33–36, see esp. chap. 10, “Census, Map, Museum,” 163ff.; Escalante Gonzalbo, Ciudadanos imaginarios; Guerra and Quijada, Imaginar la nación; Escobar Ohmstede, Indio, nación y comunidad.” This subject has become a favorite of the cultural historians of Latin America. See French’s analysis in “Imagining,” 249ff. The inventing of traditions involves a “process of formalization and ritualization,” which establishes itself with repeated references to the past (Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” 2–14). 82. Pratt, “Women, Literature, and National Brotherhood,” 50–51. The statue of Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez in Mexico City later became an “icon” in the struggle for suffrage in Mexico. Miller, Latin American Women, 31–34; Macías, Against All Odds, 6ff. Francine Masiello has also noted the position of chauvinist journalists who equated patriotic virtue with masculinity and treason with femininity (“Women, State, and Family,” 32).

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Workers and campesinos (and their families) who had fought the wars for Independence, against the United States, against the Conservatives, and against the French Intervention participated directly in this process of state formation and the creation of a national identity with its unifying patriarchal myths. They were central to the emergence of a popular liberalism in Mexico. The oral tradition of these struggles, repeated to Mexican children over the years, served to reinforce popular identiWcation with historical Wgures, particularly Juárez, and with the ideals of the Constitution of 1857. Extremely nationalist and more individualist than peasants, factory workers identiWed their struggle for social justice with liberalism’s defeat of the French and with their rights as enshrined in the Constitution. Numerous scholars agree that liberalism had become the dominant ideology of the Mexican working class. Even when they turned against the Díaz dictatorship, the Reform served as workers’ compass. In 1905 Rosalío Dávila, a working-class orator in Mérida, lamented Juárez’s absence: “Oh, Indian of Guelatao! What do you make of our problem? If you would rise from the grave today and see how the ’57 Constitution is being trampled, you would drop dead again.”83 The collective action of villages to defend their lands against outsiders could combine with liberal clientelism to reinforce popular liberalism. The campesino families of the state of Morelos venerated the Constitution, associating it not with its opposition to communal landholding but with “the declaration of nationhood,” the cause for which many had fought against the French. The Zapatista Plan of Ayala of 1911 demonstrated this when it referred to the “immortal Code of ’57” and “immortal Juárez.”84 In the Sierra Norte of Puebla, Liberal leaders won the support of rural groups by respecting the system of reciprocity between patron and client. In 1864 the Liberal cacique, Juan Francisco Lucas, created the municipality of Xochiapulco by dividing up the land of an expropriated hacienda among landless soldiers. Later, the people of Xochiapulco burned their village rather than let it fall into French hands. Thus Liberals were 83. Knight, “Liberalismo mexicano,” 83, and Mexican Revolution 1:138; Wells and Joseph, Summer of Discontent, 82; see Anderson, Outcasts in Their Own Land, 321ff. Gabriel Gavira, later a revolutionary general, printed and sold thousands of copies of the constitution to his fellow workers in the textile factories in the Orizaba region of Veracruz (García Díaz, Un pueblo fabril, 109–10). 84. See Knight, “Liberalismo mexicano,” 66ff.; Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, 71, 399–400; Brunk, Emiliano Zapata! 66–69.

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capable of favoring campesinos not only by accelerating or slowing down the land privatization process but also by distributing land in exchange for military support. Nevertheless, these indigenous campesinos had to wage a constant battle on two fronts, against the Conservatives and the French on one hand, and against outsiders encroaching on their lands on the other.85 Oaxaca was one of the major theaters of war in the nineteenth-century struggles between Liberals and Conservatives, against the French, and later among the Liberals themselves. In 1854 PorWrio Díaz escaped from the city of Oaxaca to join José María Herrera, who had seconded the Ayutla Revolution from the town of Huajuapan. Herrera’s men were a few poor Mixtecs on horseback, armed only with machetes, but these fervent Liberals were soon joined by others. The ardent liberalism of the Serrano campesinos of the Sierra Norte stemmed not only from their Werce loyalty to their paisano, Juárez, but also from their training as National Guards by jefe político PorWrio Díaz in the mid-1850s.86 The Isthmus saw continuous Wghting during the War of the Reform, when Díaz was the Liberal commandant, and during the French Intervention. After the demise of Che Gorio, Liberals gained the upper hand in Juchitán and San Blas, and confronted the Conservative Patricios of neighboring Tehuantepec, who later allied themselves with the French, exacerbating the longstanding competition between the two towns. When PorWrio Díaz escaped from a French prison in 1865 and took refuge in the Mixteca, campesinos from various isolated mountain villages of the Tlaxiaco district rallied to join his Liberal guerrilla army. The heavily indigenous Sierra Norte and Mixteca Alta and Baja continued to be Liberal strongholds throughout the War of the French Intervention.87

85. Thomson, “Agrarian ConXict,” 205–58; “Bulwarks of Patriotic Liberalism,” 31–67; LaFrance and Thomson, “Juan Francisco Lucas,” 1–13; Mallon, Peasant and Nation, 23. Díaz refers to the military support of the “indios” of Tetela and Zacapoaxtla in Memorias 1:154. 86. Originally Díaz carried out this training on the sly, against the orders of department’s governor, Fernández y Muedra, who considered the Serranos to have “little capability” for the military. Díaz proved him wrong and Juárez later authorized his organization of the district’s National Guard, named him a major, and provided the necessary arms, uniforms, and band instruments. Díaz not only got his troops a steady salary but also established a night school for them in the rooms of the local primary school; thus earning their respect, Memorias, 1:50–51, 55–60. 87. See Monaghan, “Disentailment,” 26.

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In the home state of Juárez and Díaz, liberal clientelism was simply a fact of life. Both political leaders labored to cement a loyal base in their state from which to branch out to the nation. After 1867 they rivaled each other for support not only in the state capital but also in the rural districts. The “relative autonomy” of peasant villages gave them considerable leverage when Liberal leaders faced off in political conXicts. Referring speciWcally to Puebla and Oaxaca, Raymond Buve has emphasized that “peasant politics Wrmly articulated with elite politics since they had become integrated in increasingly competitive networks which linked the grass-roots level to the district and higher levels.”88 Thus the villagers of Santa María Yucuiti joined PorWrio Díaz’s La Noria Rebellion in 1871 in the hope of winning his patronage in the defense of their lands. Although land privatization in Oaxaca advanced much further than previously believed, the still comparatively slow adjudication process and the widespread preservation of communal lands must be understood in the context of Liberal clientelism. In 1896 the Zapotec campesinos of Villa Alta occupied that town shouting, “Viva la Constitución!” The Mixtec campesino Hilario Salas, who immigrated to Veracruz and later led the 1906 agrarian rebellion in Acayucan, carried with him an earnest faith in Juarista Liberalism, “the only true party of the people.” But can this phenomenon truly be considered popular liberalism?89 Scholars continue to grapple with the problems of characterizing the different forms of liberalism. Hale divides PorWrian liberals into two groups of constitutionalists: the “conservative-liberals (or advocates of scientiWc politics) and the doctrinaire or classic liberals,” whom he also calls Jacobins. According to Knight, different groups adopted liberalism at distinct moments and for varying reasons: “the changing relations between 88. Buve, “Political Patronage,” 2ff. 89. Azaola Garrido, Rebelión y derrota, 170ff. Earlier studies (e.g., Perry and Sinkin) depicted Mexican liberalism as a minority movement mainly of the urban middle class. Recent studies by Thomson, LaFrance, Mallon, Knight, Hamnett, Buve, and Guardino, and others have demonstrated liberalism’s wide base of support in the countryside and attempted to explain this joining of seemingly contradictory forces. Mallon juggled various terms, popular nationalism, popular liberalism, and communitarian liberalism, in her work. While lauding her research, Florescano emphasized the obvious and unacceptable contradiction in terms inherent in the use of “communitarian liberalism.” French wrote of folk liberalism, while Hamnett and Thomson, among others, have favored the term “popular liberalism.” Mallon, Peasant and Nation, 61ff.; Florescano, Etnia, estado y nación, 382; French, A Peaceful and Working People, 110; Hamnett, “Liberalism Divided,” 662ff.; Guardino, Peasants, Politics, 217ff.; Thomson, “Popular Aspects of Liberalism,” 265ff., Thomson and LaFrance, Patriotism, Politics and Popular Liberalism; and Buve, “Political Patronage.”

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ideology and practice determined the course of Mexican liberalism.” Knight envisioned the rise of various liberal groupings: a constitutional group represented the middle class, a centralizing or “developmentalist” strain was favored by the PorWrian elites, and, Wnally, a popular form of liberalism was supported by campesinos.90 Liberalism needs to be envisioned on a continuum, moving dynamically between a conservative, undemocratic version and a radical, Jacobin one. Guy Thomson has posed the question, “How popular was Liberalism in mid-nineteenth century Mexico?” On his list of liberal reforms that might have appealed to popular classes are the “abolition of compulsory personal services, the reorganization of the army with the abolition of the leva, freedom of commerce, popular elections and, in areas where the Catholic clergy had lost its legitimacy, religious freedom . . . and the expectation in rural areas, encouraged by promises of local caudillos, that the land question would be addressed beyond the desamortisation of corporately held property, to include the restitution of land lost by villages to haciendas.” In her account of the rise of popular liberalism, Mallon has underscored the importance of issues surrounding local autonomy, control of land and natural resources, education, and compensation for war sacriWces, including the entitlement offered by military service in Liberal ranks.91 As we have seen in previous chapters, many of these aspects were vitally important for Oaxacan campesinos also. But besides land, the most signiWcant issue in making Oaxaca a bastion of popular liberalism was Liberal support for municipal autonomy. Self-government was considered sacred by indigenous villages. But did the popularity of liberalism, as political philosophy or political practice, signify that the campesinos of Oaxaca had abandoned their unswerving defense of the Catholic Church? Opposition to the temporal power of the Church, a central tenet of liberalism, certainly Xew in the face of sacrosanct village beliefs. Did indigenous peasants truly forsake their communalism for liberal individualism? The concept of nation and the tenets of liberalism were contested terrain. The isthmian Zapotecs, led by Che Gorio, asserted that they were the Mexican nation and the 90. Hale, Transformation of Liberalism, 246; Knight, “Liberalismo mexicano,” 66ff. 91. Thomson, “Popular Aspects of Liberalism,” 268ff. Thomson acknowledges his debt to the earlier studies of Brading, Orígenes del nacionalismo mexicano, and Knight, “Liberalismo mexicano.” See also Knight, “Peasants into Patriots,” 146ff; Mallon, Peasant and Nation, 104ff.

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Serrano Zapotecs of Villa Alta considered themselves a “free and sovereign people,” according to the Constitution, as good democrats would. The Mixtec villagers of Yucuiti, through their long battle to keep their communal lands, ended up integrated into the Mexican nation. The villagers of Anenecuilco and the rest of Morelos also “understood themselves to be part of the Mexican nation.”92 Since the 1812 Constitution of Cádiz, local cultures had continually redeWned liberal citizenship as a hybrid political form. Annino’s theory of “slippage” asserted “the pueblos’ unexpected conquest of new liberal citizenship” and directly challenged Carmagnani’s theory of the second conquest of indigenous peoples.93 The pueblos understood theirs to be a collectively based citizenship, a position that, at least in Oaxaca, endured well into the twentieth century. Was it, then, a coincidence that both Juárez and Díaz, Mexico’s nation builders par excellence, both hailed from the state of Oaxaca, the land of “Indians”? Was it a twist of fate that these staunch liberals, one mestizo by birth, the other by assimilation, both extremely knowledgeable of their patria chica, emerged to guide the construction of the nation-state? Or was it logical because their backgrounds especially equipped them to negotiate with indigenous villages? Whatever the case, Mexican Liberals were never able to suppress the collective identities of the pueblos. Their failure stands as a cogent demonstration of the central role of campesinos in state formation and the shaping of Mexican political culture.94 The campesinos continued to conceive of an alternative hybrid citizenship based on a collective, communal village identity and a popular liberalism. Therefore, they contested individualist liberalism at the same time that they articulated their right to inclusion in the nation. They often forced Liberals, speciWcally Juárez and Díaz, who usually knew when to compromise, to accommodate their needs and innovations. Partha Chatterjee emphatically rejects Anderson’s concept of the imagined community, so widely accepted among scholars, as a trope for nation building in the non-West. Must we in the postcolonial world always be 92. Brunk, Emiliano Zapata! 9. 93. Annino, “Ciudadanía versus gobernabilidad,” 68ff.; see also Piel, “Naciones indoamericanas,” 28, on the growing awareness of the indigenous peoples of the challenges posed to them by elite concepts of the nation. 94. Annino, “Ciudadanía versus gobernabilidad,” 68ff.; French, “Imagining,” 250ff.; Guardino, Peasants, Politics, 213. In 1980 Leticia Reina Aoyama argued that “The Mexican peasantry was the principal force in the processes of change and consolidation of the nation-state.” Rebeliones campesinas, 15.

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condemned to be “perpetual consumers of modernity” as dictated by the West? he asks. Is it inevitable that “even our own imaginations must remain forever colonized”? What if we inverted Anderson’s terms, as Mark Thurner proposes, “to historically imagine unimagined communities” and ask how the indigenous peoples read “Peruvian”? Like Mexican campesinos, Andean peasants too declared themselves to be “true citizens of the nation” as they defended the prerogatives of their communities and assumed nationalist positions in times of war.95 Admittedly not as elaborate as the literature, historiography, archaeology, and maps of dominant elite modernizing and nation-building projects, campesino efforts to articulate their claim to nation went beyond resistance or resistant adaptation. The indigenous pueblos of Oaxaca developed alternative, communal but still nationalist and patriotic discourses as they translated modernity to suit their needs. While elites imagined their nation arising from the past glories of pre-Columbian civilizations and constructed Aztec palaces at World Fairs to fascinate their own and the Orientalist gaze of Westerners, the indigenous peoples exercised their freedom of imagination and fashioned their own popular and hybrid versions of citizenship, liberalism, and the nation, rooted in what they believed to be their customs and traditions since time immemorial.

The Uses of Juarismo: The Creation of an Imagined Tradition The Díaz regime’s efforts to embody the heritage of liberalism and perpetuate its myth also served to inhibit ideological debate. The theoretical conXict between doctrinaire or Jacobin liberalism, based on the sanctity of individualism as enshrined in the 1857 Constitution, and PorWrista conservative or modernizing liberalism, strongly inXuenced by Positivism and its emphasis on organic society, was never resolved. Since triumphant liberalism had generated a dictatorship, the Jacobin ideal of democracy was still to be realized. Doctrinaire or radical liberals, therefore, continued to Wnd their raison d’etre in the defense of the 1857 Constitution and opposition to Díaz’s conciliation with the Catholic Church.96 95. Chatterjee calls on us to free our “once-colonized imaginations” (Nation and Its Fragments, 5). See also Thurner, From Two Republics, 14–19. 96. The ideological contest was seemingly “submerged in an era of consensus” (Hale, “Political and Social Ideas,” 227); see also Hale, Transformation of Liberalism, 121ff.; Knight, “Liberalismo mexicano,” 60–61. Jean-Pierre Bastián saw a progressive split between

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As Díaz concentrated on economic modernization, true to his slogan “poca política y mucha administración,” he shunned standing political parties. Each succeeding election featured parties formed at the eleventh hour; political conventions were staged only to be dissolved immediately after the election was over. Although Díaz moved to repeat this scenario for his third re-election in 1892, that year’s convention of the Liberal Union, organized by the Oaxacan duo of Rosendo Pineda and General Martín González, proved to be a critical moment in PorWrian politics. A group of young Positivist bureaucrats who aspired to establish “scientiWc politics” in Mexico made their debut as a political force. The Liberal Union marked the beginning of the CientíWcos’ unsuccessful attempt to form a permanent and active political party that would reorient Mexican politics. When Díaz appointed a member of this clique, José Yves Limantour, minister of the Treasury in May 1893, a CientíWco contingent (Rosendo Pineda, Emilio Pimentel, Justo Sierra, and Pablo Macedo) formally presented the new minister with the program for government they had unsuccessfully proposed at the Liberal Convention. Lifetime tenure for Supreme Court judges, a free press, and the creation of the vice presidency were three of its main goals.97 The debate on constitutional reform, which began at this convention and continued into 1893, formed a turning point of the conXict between Liberal factions. Although the president refused to support CientíWco reformism, the losers in the debate were the Jacobin liberals. The latter saw their choice issues, the defense of democracy (i.e., a free press) and secure judicial appointments appropriated by none other than the CiéntiWcos, apologists for the dictatorship. Within the next few years, the Jacobins lost much of their thunder with the demise of the traditional liberal newspapers, El Siglo XIX and El Monitor Republicano. The joining of PorWrismo and Positivism seduced the most brilliant minds of the period, and, as Hale argued, provoked the transformation of Reform liberalism.98 “conservative” Liberalism in power, deWned by the CientíWco clique, and “radical” Liberalism, deWned by its civic activities and revolutionary language (“Paradigma de 1789,” 94). 97. See Cosío Villegas, Historia Moderna de México: El PorWriato; Vida Política Interior, 2:655; Prida, De la dictadura a la anarquía, 96–111; Limantour, Apuntes, 16; Hale, Transformation of Liberalism, 121. 98. Hale, Transformation of Liberalism, 121–22, 246. The semiofWcial El Imparcial, edited by the Oaxacan-born Positivist Rafael Reyes Spíndola, symbolized this as it brought modern investigative journalism to Mexico. Government subsidies to semiofWcial papers such as El Imparcial enabled them to sell editions cheaply and thus many independent papers

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Under increasing pressure, Jacobin Liberalism attempted to rally its forces in July 1895, galvanized in part by the fanfare surrounding the impending coronation of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Leaders of the besieged independent liberal press such as Filomeno Mata, Daniel Cabrera, and Vicente García Torres organized the Grupo Reformista y Constitucional. They sought to revive the “true liberal party” as opposed to the “traitors” in power, and warned the nation that the conciliation with the Church represented a dire threat to the legacy of the Reform.99 Whereas the Grupo Reformista made little impact, its goals would be revived Wve years later by Liberals in San Luis Potosí. Although PorWrians repeatedly emphasized the continuity between Benito Juárez and PorWrio Díaz, by the turn of the century the unifying liberal myth had begun to disintegrate under attacks from above and below. This transformation of political culture reXected the rapid economic and social changes in Mexico, particularly the growth of the middle and working classes. Opposing liberal groups (borrowing from both Hobsbawm and Anderson) each constructed their own “imagined tradition” of Juarismo, in which they claimed to Wnd their source. As the French Revolution had contributed the ideology of the Liberal Reform, so would the Reform provide the initial ideology of the Mexican Revolution.100 Although the Constitution represented Mexican democracy, Reform liberals had failed to provide for an executive strong enough to carry out their program. Their sacred symbol, the Constitution, had proved to be highly Xawed, and Juárez had fought constantly to strengthen the powers of the executive. He governed, therefore, in spite of the Constitution that later became inseparable from his legend (as Furet had noted, democracy’s weakness was its “inability to follow its own theory in practice”). In life, Juárez’s democratic politics had not kept him from suppressing constitutional guarantees, manipulating elections, repressing peasant rebellions, could not compete. Luis Cabrera charged that Reyes Spíndola received a yearly subsidy of $50,000 from the government to publish El Imparcial. CientíWcos such as Francisco Bulnes, Carlos Díaz Dufoo, and Constancio Peña Idiáquez were frequent contributors. Cabrera, Obra política, “Primer capítulo,” 87–100. 99. Bastián has described this attempt to organize a Liberal Party (which preceded the 1900 manifesto from San Luis Potosí) in his studies of Protestantism and opposition. Of eighty-Wve letters of support received, one came from Cuicatlán’s Methodist group, some of whose members would soon become activists in the precursor movement. “Sociedades protestantes,” 490–92. 100. Knight also points this out in “Liberalismo mexicano,” 66.

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and organizing his own political machine.101 In death, he attained mythic proportions as the main representative of Mexico’s liberal, democratic “imagined tradition.” For some PorWrians, however, especially the CientíWco inner circle, Díaz was the greater statesman of the two Oaxacan presidents. For them, Don PorWrio had established peace and prosperity and attained respect for Mexico in the international arena. Late PorWrian historiography reXected this shift. Written under the inXuence of Positivism, the three-volume México: Su evolución social (1900–1902), edited by Justo Sierra, envisioned the organic evolution of the nation as it proceeded from infancy (pre-Hispanic epoch), to adolescence (colonial period), to youth (the independent Republic) to maturity (PorWriato). It also included the Wrst economic history of Mexico, which gloriWed not only the political stability but also the economic growth brought about by Mexico’s new heroes, Díaz and the national bourgeoisie. This work initiated “ofWcial” government-sponsored history in Mexico, which manipulated the interpretation of history in order to legitimize Liberal rule.102 The conservative or modernizing liberalism of Díaz had stressed peace and stability. It had sacriWced political for economic liberalism, facilitating the growth of capitalism. Juarista Jacobin or doctrinaire liberalism, emphasizing individual civil rights and democracy, had yet to be achieved and would soon become a revolutionary ideology. On June 21, 1903, Francisco Bulnes delivered a historic speech to the National Convention of the Unión Liberal. He Wrst praised the regime of PorWrio Díaz for its accomplishments and called for the re-election of 101. In 1861 this frustrated president declared, “Under these conditions it is impossible to govern: no one obeys me and I am not able to oblige anyone to obey.” Quoted in Brading, “Liberal Patriotism,” 27. Furet wrote this in his discussion of Rousseau and the French Revolution (Interpreting the French Revolution, 32). Perry pointed out it was “not Juárez’s fault that he has been applauded as the great republican but rather the fault of later politicians who have wanted to bathe in the same reputation.” See discussions of Juárez and his undemocratic practices in Perry, Juárez and Díaz, 19–21, 54–57, 343; Sinkin, chap. 5, “The Constitutional Dictatorship,” in Mexican Reform, 75ff.; Falcone, “Benito Juárez,” 638–41; Scholes, Mexican Politics, 177. Hamnett, in Juárez, attempts to make a stronger case for Juárez’s democracy. See Justo Sierra on nineteenth-century Mexico in Political Evolution, and Juárez. 102. Florescano, “El poder y la lucha por el poder,” 55–59; O’Gorman, “Revolución Mexicana,” 216ff. Luis González dubbed it “bronze history,” playing not only on the metal used for statues and busts but also on the identiWcation by Mexicans of themselves as the raza de bronce (bronze race) in Invitación a la microhistoria. Furet referred to this type of history as “commemorative history” (Interpreting the French Revolution, 83).

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the president. But, with eerie premonition, he hoped that our “kilometers of railroad track would not be uprooted by the claws of civil war; . . . that from the peace we now enjoy, blood would never spring.” He dared to suggest that General Díaz should be re-elected to complete his goals but that in the future, and forever, Mexico “should depend on its laws and not on its men.” He then openly attacked Juárez and Jacobin liberalism. Bulnes intensiWed this critique in print with the publication of two books, one in 1904 and another in 1905. Always outspoken, Bulnes said what other PorWrians thought, that Juárez was more a precursor to Díaz than the great leader. Liberal newspapers denounced Bulnes’s book as blasphemy and it spawned a major debate in the national press, which even resulted in popular violence.103 But the brilliant but mercurial Bulnes had his Wnger on the political pulse of Mexico, recognizing the winds of change in the revival of liberal clubs and newspapers, the new democratic sociability, throughout Mexico. His attack on the Liberal Reform hero was not fortuitous: Juárez had already been transformed into the banner of this burgeoning opposition. The cult of Juárez, which Juárez himself had begun in order to incarnate national sovereignty in the struggle against the French and which was later propagated with pomp and circumstance by the PorWrian dictatorship, would now have its third reincarnation in the opposition to Díaz in the liberal clubs and rebirth of the Mexican Liberal Party. Yet in Oaxaca the dual legacy of Juarismo and PorWrismo was a source of enormous pride, not to mention the privileges the state had enjoyed during both presidencies. But this dual legacy now also posed a profound quandary: how to reconcile two imagined traditions whose interpretations of the national scene had emerged as diametrically opposed. Was Díaz the heir to Juárez or his betrayer? This would be the major dilemma of the Liberal revival in Oaxaca in the Wrst decade of the twentieth century.

103. Bulnes quoted by Guerra, México 2:94–96; see Filomeno Mata, editor of Diario del Hogar; Bulnes, Verdadero Juárez and Juárez y la Revolución de Ayutla. Numerous tomes were penned to refute Bulnes. One of the most celebrated responses was Fernando Iglesias Calderón’s Supuestas traiciones de Juárez. Even Hamnett’s Juárez spends a great deal of ink refuting Bulnes. Oaxacans resident in Mexico City organized a protest, as did student groups and a group of “patriotic ladies.” Protests in defense of Juárez took place all over the nation. Bulnes then complained that Juarismo had been transformed into “budismo” (Buddhism); see Weeks, Mito de Juárez, chap. 4, “La polémica de Bulnes,” 53ff.

9 PorWrian Politics: A CientíWco Governor The majority of them [CientíWcos] were lawyers; they ran an open law Wrm, spoke English and French. They were highly educated and had at their disposal numerous assistants and all kinds of facilities to arrange their affairs in the National Palace, in the courts, in the municipal government, and in general in all the public ofWces. Any lawyers or enterprising men who wanted to compete with them found themselves at a great disadvantage in this respect. They could not match the able maneuverings that the CientíWcos could easily weave and unweave, nor could they organize the huge ventures, that due to their enormous political clout, ended up in the hands of the friends and favorites of the minister of the Treasury. They were the representatives of foreign companies, principally British, American and French; they arranged concessions at local banks, rich mines, oil exploitations, and all classes of opulent enterprises. —José López Portillo y Rojas, Elevación y caída de PorWrio Díaz

The Ascent of the CientíWcos In 1881 Manuel Romero Rubio (PorWrio Díaz’s new father-in-law) returned from the United States and opened a law ofWce in Mexico City. José Yves Limantour later wrote: “It was in that star-studded law Wrm, that a group of young men, who were just then entering into the realm of law, were received with great sympathy and benevolence: Rosendo Pineda, Justo Sierra, Joaquín Casasús, Roberto Núñez, Emilio Pimentel, José M. Gamboa, Fernando Duret, and myself.” They amassed sizable fortunes and went on to hold important positions in the administration as the marshals of Don PorWrio’s technocratic revolution. In 1895, on the death of his mentor, Limantour assumed the leadership of the CientíWco group. Yet both Ramón Prida and Francisco Bulnes afWrmed that there were actually two factions of CientíWcos: Limantour’s and those who gravitated

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toward the highly respected Rosendo Pineda.1 Pineda’s presence in the clique encouraged the participation of various Oaxacans, including Emilio Pimentel. Intra-elite factionalism at the national level resonated more and more in the states as the CientíWcos increased their inXuence beyond Mexico City to the state governments. At least three pivotal states were run by CientíWco governors in the last decade of the PorWriato: Enrique Creel in Chihuahua, Olegario Molina in Yucatán, and Emilio Pimentel in Oaxaca. The number rose to four in 1909 when Pablo Escandón took over in Morelos. That year Luis Cabrera listed the following governors as CientíWcos or their allies: Jesús del Valle in Coahuila, Enrique O. de Lamadrid in Colima, Ramón Rabasa in Chiapas, Joaquín Obregón González in Guanajuato, Damián Flores in Guerrero, Mucio Martínez in Puebla, J. M. Espinosa y Cuevas in San Luis Potosí, Diego Redo in Sinaloa, and Luis E. Torres in Sonora.2 That Pimentel took over in 1902 (as did Molina and Creel) proved signiWcant in the context not only of local but also of national politics, since this was also the year that Limantour forced General Bernardo Reyes out of the cabinet. PorWrio Díaz customarily employed divide-and-conquer tactics with his cabinet members to keep them in line. Limantour’s appointment to the cabinet symbolized the inXuence of a younger generation, which replaced the older Tuxtepecanos, most of whom had risen by the sword. Limantour encountered his Wrst rival in the minister of Justice and Public Instruction, 1. Díaz’s alliance with Romero Rubio represented a coup since Romero, an ex-Lerdista, enjoyed wide social and political inXuence. Romero actually accompanied his daughter and her new husband on their honeymoon to the United States in 1881. Limantour denied that the CientíWcos had ever been a political “party” and characterized the group as simply a circle of political allies (Apuntes, 15–16) See also Valadés, PorWrismo 1:33, 37; Cosío Villegas, Vida Política Interior, 2:655; Prida, De la dictadura a la anarquía, 96–111; Cabrera, Obra política, “Segundo capítulo,” 38–39. 2. Cabrera, Obra política, “Partido CientíWco,” 38–39, and “Segundo capítulo,” 129ff. Emilio Rabasa had been governor of Chiapas in the 1890s. Thomas Benjamin considered the regime of his brother, Ramón Rabasa, a more CientíWco-type government (A Rich Land, a Poor People, 811). Luis Cabrera, the Anti-CientíWco lawyer-journalist from Puebla, assembled a series of lists demonstrating how the CientíWcos had extended their authority by situating their allies and fellow travelers not only in the cabinet and the governorships, but also in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. He did exaggerate when he speculated that by 1909 they controlled 75 percent of public employees (Cabrera, Obra política, “Partido CientíWco,” 38–39, and “Segundo capítulo,” 129ff.). Alan Knight’s appraisal of the CientíWcos’ lack of power on the national and state level serves only for 1910 on the eve of Revolution, when they had lost much of their inXuence and had become the lightning rod of opposition (Knight, Mexican Revolution 1:24).

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Joaquín Baranda, with whom he quarreled frequently. The minister of the Treasury emerged as a Wnancial wizard, not only balancing budgets historically in the red but also achieving a surplus. As Limantour gained Díaz’s respect and conWdence, the president relied on him as his closest adviser. Although Díaz never did leave the presidency to a subordinate in order to take a much-desired trip to Europe, when the rumor began to circulate that Limantour was under consideration for the 1900–1904 presidential period, his archenemy undertook a study (supposedly commissioned by Díaz in 1899) to investigate any judicial impediments to his assumption of the presidency. Baranda concluded that Limantour failed to qualify given that his parents were of French birth and the law required that the president have Mexican-born parents. Quashing Limantour’s political ambitions cost him his job when Limantour used his inXuence with Díaz to force Baranda out of the cabinet in April 1901.3 With the growing CientíWco muscle, a disparate “Anti-CientíWco” faction organized to combat the inXuence of their rivals with the president and throughout the nation. Teodoro Dehesa, the governor of Veracruz and an intimate of Díaz, was central to the loose political network, which Baranda (who became a senator) encouraged to offset Limantour. Another vehement Anti-CientíWco, Félix Díaz, the president’s nephew, joined the group. Military opposition to Limantour was strong since he had slashed their budget more than once. In 1902 General Bernardo Reyes emerged as the pivotal Wgure of the Anti-CientíWco opposition.4 3. Limantour is credited with being the Wrst minister of the Treasury to balance the national budget and generate a surplus. However, this laurel belongs to Oaxacan Matías Romero for his 1867–68 budget, which originated the Wrst surplus since Independence (Hamnett, Juárez, 198). See López Portillo y Rojas’s Elevación y caída de PorWrio Díaz, 267–68, Limantour, Apuntes, 106ff.; and Mexican Year Book, 1912, which lists the board members of the major corporations in Mexico, for CientíWcos sitting on boards of foreign concerns. Soto, “Precisiones,” 112–16; Prida, De la dictadura a la anarquía, 151–52; Valadés, PorWrismo 1:53–60. 4. The rivalry between Dehesa and Limantour stemmed from Díaz’s decision to name the latter minister of the Treasury in 1893, instead of Dehesa. Although Limantour Wnally maneuvered both Baranda and Reyes out of the cabinet, he never was able to damage the relationship between Dehesa and the president. See Pasquel, Revolución en el Estado de Veracruz, 33. Félix Díaz married a daughter of the elite Alcolea family of Veracruz and became a deputy from that state, linking him to Dehesa (Prida, De la dictadura a la anarquía, 108–10; Henderson, Félix Díaz, 4–5, 18–21). Ignacio Mariscal, Justino Fernández, and General Manuel González Cosío were also hostile to the CientíWcos. Limantour had pushed through a law, the Law of the Regime of National Wealth, which permitted him, as Treasury minister, “to have a say in the expenditures and projects of all the other ministries” (López Portillo y Rojas, Elevación y caída de PorWrio Díaz, 267–68).

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The standoff between CientíWcos and Reyistas came to a head that year. Reyes, a key supporter of Díaz in the north, had left the governorship of Nuevo León in January 1900 when Díaz appointed him minister of War. He exhibited great energy in his new post and worked hard to modernize and professionalize the army. Reyes created the popular “Second Reserve,” which called on all able-bodied Mexican males to join an army reserve corps. This measure struck a patriotic chord, earning him widespread admiration and national recognition.5 The Reyistas initiated a rabid Anti-CientíWco campaign. Rodolfo Reyes, the general’s son, founded a newspaper, La Protesta, that launched brutal attacks on Limantour and his allies. The minister of the Treasury protested directly to the president and Díaz questioned Reyes Sr., who disavowed participation in the attack and refused to be held accountable for his son’s actions. But when Rosendo Pineda showed the president originals of the newspaper’s articles, with editing in Reyes Sr.’s handwriting, Díaz sent him back to Monterrey to the governorship.6 Having lost conWdence in Reyes, whom he now saw as a possible rival given the popularity of the Second Reserve, the president leaned even more heavily on Limantour. The newspaper incident stoked the coals of factionalism in Mexico, deepening the rift between CientíWcos and Anti-CientíWcos. The triumphant CientíWcos renewed pressure on the president to create the vice presidency, concerned because the recent confrontation had been provoked by the question of who would govern if the president vacationed in Europe. Díaz hated the idea of a vice president breathing down his neck, but he Wnally relented in 1904, at age seventy-four. The extension of the presidential term from four to six years accompanied the institutionalization of the vice presidency in time for the 1904 elections. Intra-elite rivalry now focused on the position of vice president. Limantour asserted that Díaz Wrst offered him the job but that when he refused, 5. The previous minister of War, General Felipe Berriozábal, had died (Soto, “Precisiones,” 114ff.). Limantour stated that he got along Wne with Reyes until the possibility of the interim presidency arose. He speculated that Reyes could easily have staged a coup d’état while Díaz was in Europe. “From the second year as minister of War, no one could doubt the political ambitions of General Reyes, . . . the Reyista faction formed and rapidly Xourished, in the beginning with a certain caution, but soon it functioned openly and almost with arrogance, although always careful in its propaganda to be submissive to the president” (Limantour, Apuntes, 130–32). On Reyes see de Arellano, Bernardo Reyes. Bulnes dubbed Reyes the “proconsul” and Limantour the “vicar” (Verdadero Díaz, 315). 6. Cabrera, Obra política, “Segundo capítulo,” 132ff.; Soto, “Precisiones,” 118ff.; Prida, De la dictadura a la anarquía, 152–53.

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two other CientíWco candidates were discussed: Ramón Corral of Sonora and Olegario Molina of Yucatán. Díaz chose Corral, had him elected, and then ignored him.7 Corral was intelligent but stiff, and brusque in his treatment of others. The Anti-CientíWcos had backed the candidacies of either Félix Díaz or Teodoro Dehesa, but were routed once again by their antagonists. Furious, they organized an effective hate campaign, which served to further damage Corral’s already unpopular image. The controversy over the vice presidency draws attention to another development in PorWrian politics in the Wrst decade of the twentieth century: the rise of the north. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Juárez and Díaz had drawn heavily on their southern “Jesuits” to rule, yet the northern and central states, more than the south, had Xourished with Díaz’s modernizing policies. The expansion of the railroad network throughout the northern states linked them not only to the Centro but also to U.S. markets. Reyes, although born in Jalisco of a Nicaraguan father and Mexican mother, had won Díaz’s and Manuel González’s respect by bringing the northern caudillos under control. As governor of Nuevo León, he represented the growing sway of the north. The Mexican Revolution has been interpreted as the victory of the north over central and southern Mexico, the replacement of Díaz by Coahuilans Madero and Carranza and the Sonoran triangle of Obregón, de la Huerta, and Calles. Héctor Aguilar Camín has argued that the Revolution initiated the colonization of central and southern Mexico by the north, likening it to a barbarian invasion.8 But the 1902 confrontation between Reyes and Limantour, which the north lost, and the 1904 conXict over the vice presidency, which it won (Corral had been governor of Sonora and by 1903 was minister of Gobernación), demonstrate an earlier, prerevolutionary northern advance. Whether CientíWco or AntiCientíWco, economically powerful northern elites now sought corresponding political inXuence and made considerable headway in the Centro. During the Wrst decade of the twentieth century, the view from the south 7. Díaz acted as though the vice president did not exist. Limantour and Pineda quietly kept Corral informed on affairs of state. Limantour, Apuntes, 136–52; Henderson, Félix Díaz, 19. 8. “Barbarian” refers to the north as the land of nomadic indigenous tribes such as the Apaches and Comanches, but also to the alien habits and wide open spaces so distinct from southern and central Mexico. See Aguilar Camín, Frontera nómada, 9ff. MacLachlan and Beezley point out the political rise of the north during the PorWriato in Gran Pueblo, chap. 5 “The PorWriato,” 131ff.

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witnessed these shifting relations of power, wrought by the north’s increasing challenge to four decades of southern privileges.

Oaxaca and the CientíWcos In mid-January 1902, La Patria of Mexico City reported that a group of prominent Oaxacan politicians identiWed with the CientíWcos had met in the capital to discuss a suitable candidate to oppose Martín González for the governorship. While these Oaxacans probably met to discuss the political future of their patria chica, they could hardly be held responsible for the 1902 crisis, in which two people they equally disliked, González and Félix Díaz, had confronted each other. The dialectic of local and national politics had positioned the state in the mainstream of elite factionalism. It intersected with the emergence of the middle sectors as a new political actor using new political methods of mass participation to provoke the crisis. The CientíWcos found themselves at the right place at the right time and were able to take advantage of the standoff, snatching victory from their vociferous opponent Félix Díaz and lodging control of the key political state of Oaxaca in the hands of one of their own.9 Born into a comfortable family in Tlaxiaco during the mid-nineteenth century, Emilio Pimentel and his brother, Rafael (a PorWrista governor of Chiapas), studied law together at the ICA. They belonged to that college’s brilliant second generation, which also included Rosendo Pineda, Emilio Rabasa, and Rafael Reyes Spíndola. Pimentel received the title of lawyer on December 7, 1876. As secretary-general to Governor Luis Mier y Terán between 1884 and 1887, he attracted attention as an able administrator. In 1892 he served as one of Oaxaca’s delegates to the Liberal Union Convention, and the following year, at the age of thirty-six, he represented 9. Rosendo Pineda, Emilio Pimentel, Eutimio Cervantes, Constancio Peña Idiáquez, Apolinar Castillo, and Emilio Rabasa attended this meeting. Ireneo Paz, the publisher and a rabid Anti-CientíWco Tuxtepecano, afWrmed that Pineda had claimed the candidacy for himself or Pimentel (La Patria, Jan. 15, 1902). Either Pineda or Limantour suggested Pimentel to Díaz. Henderson believes it was the latter. Henderson, Félix Díaz, 8; Cosío Villegas, Vida Política Interior 2:849. When Pineda, who was short on funds, Wrst moved to Mexico City as a federal deputy, he found in Emilio Pimentel a friend and a protector (Brioso y Candiani, Rosendo Pineda, 18). Iturribarría also cited the close relationship between them (Oaxaca en la historia, 250 and Historia 4:250). Clearly, Díaz had kept a tight military hold on Oaxaca until 1902, while Carlos Peón had become the Wrst civilian governor of the Yucatán in 1897. Wells and Joseph, Summer of Discontent, 330, n. 59).

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the state as a federal deputy in Congress. Pimentel was then appointed Mexican consul in Rio de Janeiro and entered the diplomatic service. He dabbled in poetry, and his perfect sense of pitch made him an excellent pianist, talents that gained him admiration in Brazil. On his return to Mexico, Pimentel was again elected a deputy for Oaxaca and mayor of Mexico City. He thus brought ample political experience to the governorship of Oaxaca.10 Given the participation of Oaxaqueños in the CientíWco faction—not only Pineda and both Pimentels but also Esteban Maqueo Castellanos, Eutimio Cervantes, Rafael Reyes Spíndola (editor of the pro-CientíWco El Imparcial), Constancio Peña Idiáquez, and others—one would expect to Wnd a strong CientíWco faction in the state. Yet both Angel Taracena and Basilio Rojas, historians who lived in Oaxaca during this period, denied the existence of any such local clique. Apparently no prior organization existed to spearhead Pimentel’s 1902 gubernatorial campaign. In contrast to other states, such as Yucatán or Chihuahua, where gubernatorial elections could become quite contentious before 1910, Díaz’s word was law in his patria chica. The 1902 crisis had arisen in part because Díaz failed to announce his support for either candidate. But now the PorWrian political machine, so recently Gonzalista, turned Pimentelista overnight. José Zorrilla and Guillermo Meixueiro founded the Club Central Paz y Unión in the city of Oaxaca in early June 1902 to promote Pimentel’s candidacy.11 Pimentelista clubs materialized in all the district capitals: on June 4 the Club Sierra Juárez, on June 6 Tlacolula’s Club Libertad, on June 7 Zimatlán’s Club Orden y Trabajo, on June 8 the Club Unión of Pochutla, and on June 12, in remote Choapan, the Club Democrático Unión. A second Pimentelista newspaper, La Democracia, began publishing in the 10. Pimentel is an old and established surname from the Mixteca region. Taracena, “Lic. Emilio Pimentel 1902–1911” (from his unpublished manuscript Gobernantes de Oaxaca), appeared in Magazin de El Imparcial, Oaxaca, July 5, 1953, 6; Taracena, interview; see Hale, Transformation of Liberalism, 125–27; for biographical information on Reyes Spíndola, also from Tlaxiaco, see Méndez Aquino, Historia de Tlaxiaco (Mixteca), 235–38; El Imparcial, June 7, 1902. 11. Rojas, interview; Taracena, interview. The roster of this club included inXuential professionals and businessmen (Jacobo Grandison, Federico Zorrilla, León Esperón, José Mimiaga Jr., Guillermo Trinker Jr., and Joaquín Bonavides, among others) who began to edit a new newspaper, La Unión, to further the campaign (La Unión, June 14, 1902). This newspaper should not be confused with that of the same name, cited previously, which appeared between 1907 and 1910. See Wells and Joseph, Summer of Discontent; Wasserman, Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution.

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city of Oaxaca. It reported the creation of even more Pimentelista clubs throughout the state. Calm returned to Oaxaca with Pimentel’s election, and Bolaños Cacho continued to govern in the interim.12 Inaugurated as constitutional governor on December 1, 1902, Emilio Pimentel declared that “our democratic system is a government of the people, instituted for their beneWt,” and proclaimed, “I will call to my side citizens from all the social classes who unite in themselves the qualities of honesty, intelligence and activity.” The lavish festivities continued in the city of Oaxaca for a week: toast followed toast for the new and outgoing governors, and Pimentel showed himself adept at the Xorid oratory of order and progress. The local elites now had a reWned and modernizing leader at the helm who proclaimed: “The tree of peace extends its prodigious fame in all corners of the nation. In its shade our industry begins to Xourish, agriculture increases its products, commerce multiplies and extends its operations, and the pick and the hammer, steam and electricity, in continuous action, spread their solemn hum all over.”13 Pimentel’s inauguration marked the changing of the guard in Oaxaca from Díaz’s loyal military comrades to civilian technocrats. The new governor designated the conservative trio of Joaquín Sandoval (secretarygeneral), José Inés Dávila (oWcial mayor), and José Núñez (treasurer). With the exception of Dávila, these men remained in their posts throughout the regime. In September 1906 Joaquín Atristáin, a lawyer from an inXuential family of the Costa Chica, replaced Dávila as oWcial mayor, and Dávila became a deputy to the local Congress. Pimentel designated his brother-in-law, Rafael Hernández, regent of the State Supreme Court, an appointment that met with accusations of nepotism.14 12. La Unión, June 14, 17, 25, 1902; La Democracia, June 22, 1902. During this period, Bolaños Cacho organized and carried out the elections (for governor, senators, and deputies) and published the Memoria Administrativa, 1902, one of the most complete up to this date. 13. El Imparcial, Dec. 2, 1902. On Nov. 21, 1902, Pimentel and his party left Mexico City on a special train rented by Bolaños Cacho. The governor-elect traveled with members of his family, Joaquín Sandoval, an intimate friend since law school, and his private secretary, Luis Mario Saavedra. When the party arrived at the Tomellín station, a banquet awaited, and on arrival in the city of Oaxaca, Pimentel was received by the local notables. “Oaxaca dressed in its Wnest to receive its governor with dignity.” See also El Imparcial, Nov. 22, 24, and Dec. 1, 7, 1902. 14. Hernández stayed on in this post until 1909 (La Unión, June 27, 1909). This would be the constant criticism voiced by the opposition; see Proceso de la administración, 62. In 1889 there were eight civilian and twenty-one military governors; by 1903 these numbers were reversed. Cosío Villegas, Vida Política Interior, 2:425–26; Vanderwood, Disorder and Progress, 81. PO, Dec. 6, 1902, Sept. 1, 5, and Dec. 1, 1906.

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Throughout 1903 Pimentel worked with the last Gonzalista Congress. With the 1903 elections, the state legislature, composed of sixteen local deputies, acquired a Pimentelista stamp, as more members of the Oaxacan oligarchy directly participated in politics. Empresarios such as José and Federico Zorrilla, hacendados such as Luis and Carlos Bonavides, and merchants such as Tereso Villasante became deputies. Professionals also continued to play a role in Congress between 1903 and 1911; lawyers Guillermo Meixueiro, Francisco Canseco, Rafael Pimentel (the governor’s nephew), and doctors Manuel de Esesarte, Manuel Pereyra Mejía, and Gildardo Gómez. Luis Mario Saavedra (the governor’s private secretary), and in 1905 even Major PorWrio Díaz (the president’s son) held seats.15 The local legislature’s distinct shift to a more elitist proWle can be discerned between the González and Pimentel administrations. In the 1901 Congress, wealthy regulars like Mariano Bonavides and the Zorrilla brothers sat with younger members of lower-middle-class origins like Ismael Puga y Colmenares and Ricardo Romero.16 Political mobility was still possible during the Gonzalista government, but Pimentelista elitism brought political closure at precisely the moment when growing middle sectors more actively sought political space. This situation led to growing political opposition.

Pimentelista Policies: Economic Intervention CientíWco policies aimed at the economic and political modernization of Mexico, with major emphasis on foreign participation. As capitalist entrepreneurs sitting on the boards of directors, the CientíWcos associated with foreign interests to develop infrastructure, industry, agriculture,

15. Memoria Administrativa, 1902; El Imparcial, July 12, 1905; Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 264. The elections of 1902 also chose new federal deputies and one senator, Dr. Ignacio Pombo, a Díaz crony. After 1904 Dr. Aurelio Valdivieso became a federal senator. Among the federal deputies elected, both propietary and substitute, were men such as Lic. Francisco Belmar, Manuel María Mimiaga y Camacho, Lic. Constantino Chapital, Coronel Juan Dublán, Rafael Bolaños Cacho, Benito Juárez Maza, Luis Pombo, and Rosendo Pineda. Oaxacans also continued to serve as federal deputies representing other states, among them Rafael Reyes Spíndola (Michoacán), Félix Díaz (Veracruz), Benjamín de Gyves (Zacatecas), Fidencio Hernández (Guerrero), Juan Chapital (Guanajuato) and Miguel Bolaños Cacho (Chihuahua). El Imparcial, July 14, 1902, 1; PO, July 13, 1904. 16. Belmar, Breve reseña histórica, 102.

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commerce, and Wnance in order to bring Mexico into consonance with the “modern, civilized” nations of the world. One state ofWcial afWrmed that Pimentel “completely dedicated himself to his work, to such an extent that he would remain in his ofWce in the government palace day after day, arriving at nine in the morning and staying until very late at night, to the great displeasure of the employees of his private secretary, who were bound to remain at his side until he left.” He kept the president informed of all that happened in his home state and often sought instructions of how to proceed in speciWc instances.17 The governor was a strong proponent of modernization based on government intervention to stimulate the state economy. His favorable policies toward industry, especially mining, are discussed in Chapter 4. He also exhibited amazing energy in the promotion of Oaxaca’s major economic activity, agriculture, which he wanted to transform into an efWcient commercial enterprise employing the latest technologies. The growing Liberal opposition loudly condemned the situation of agriculture in Oaxaca, however, complaining that “So many are the deWciencies of our agriculture, that to reXect on them, confuses the imagination.” The government was to be held responsible for not promoting more “agricultural knowledge” in the nation. “[We] have had twenty-Wve years of peace and we only have the National School of Agriculture in Mexico City and a regional school in the state of Mexico.”18 But this critique is unjust, for there were various initiatives to improve agriculture in the state, although they often concentrated on beneWting Wnqueros, rancheros, and hacendados. To this end, the governor established a meteorological network, which he hoped to extend throughout the state. By 1905 stations outWtted with European equipment had been set up in Tuxtepec, Pochutla, and Silacayoapan. Ideally, the climatological observations of these stations would aid landowners in making agricultural decisions. This regime also modestly promoted irrigation, projecting the construction of half a dozen reservoirs in the Valley of Tlacolula, the driest of the three Central Valleys. Unfortunately, it only completed one 17. Salazar, “Historia de Oaxaca,” 411. Writing with clarity and grace, Pimentel employed the Usted form of address, showing respect but not servility. This contrasted with other Oaxacan correspondents, who used the familiar “tu” form of address with the president while manifesting a Xorid servility. CPD, 1902–11, Letters from Pimentel to Díaz. 18. El Bien Público, July 18, 1905. Francisco Bulnes exhibited his usual disdain for Oaxaca when he declared that in Oaxaca “they have Wnally begun to use the plow.” Quoted in Valadés, PorWrismo 1:296.

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reservoir in Teotitlán de Valle (1904) and another in Santa Ana del Valle (1906).19 Under Pimentel, the state government also encouraged the diversiWcation of production, working to introduce or improve the strain of commercial crops. It freely distributed giant maize seeds brought from Jalisco and promoted various types of cotton seed. Pimentel visited Los Obos, a Wnca in Cuicatlán, to observe the results of experimentation with cotton production sponsored by his government, hoping that it might offset the growing crisis in sugarcane, the district’s mainstay. Unfortunately, these seedlings were destroyed by the picudo plague and a tax exemption had to be decreed for those planting cotton.20 Pimentel’s regime also fostered the introduction of henequen (sisal hemp), aware of its stunning success in the Yucatán. Despite Yucatecan opposition, the Ministry of Development provided Oaxaca with three thousand shoots for distribution in the districts of Teotitlán and Tehuantepec. Hamburg investor Martin Steken associated with Rafael Lorenzo y Barreto in order to “exploit the Wber to the tune of 30,000 plants” in Apango, Pochutla. Henequen production rose to four hundred kilos in 1900 and hit 7,900 kilos in 1906.21 But this project failed because the strategic location, transportation facilities, and special agreements with the International Harvester Co. insured Yucatán’s monopoly on this Wber. The cultivation of silk worms, an important Oaxacan export during the colonial period, was also targeted for revival. At the petition of the Ministry of Development, the state government created a Central Committee of Sericulture to direct the project, which focused on the Mixteca districts and Ejutla and Miahuatlán in the Central Valleys, where there were already numerous mulberry trees. Believing that the quality of Oaxaca’s silk could rival China’s, Pimentel hoped this product might capture a portion of the Asian market, but it too failed to achieve the desired results.22 The regime’s effort to introduce cash crops in order to diversify Oaxacan production reXected its philosophy of intervention. But given problems of transportation, competition from more propitious areas (with 19. Mensaje 1904, 27–29; Mensaje 1905, 53, 57–58; El Imparcial, May 23, 1905; Mensaje 1906, 38–39. 20. Mensaje 1904, 29–31; Mensaje 1905, 54–57. 21. El Correo del Sur, Nov. 17, 1909; Mensaje 1905, 56–57. See Chassen-López, “Slavery in the South”; Anuario estadístico, 1900, 1906. 22. Mensaje 1909, 29; La Unión, June 20, 1909.

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better transportation systems), price Xuctuations on the international market, and unfortunate accidents of climate and plagues, numerous projects proved unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the federal government designated Oaxaca as a site for a regional agricultural station. In August 1908 Félix Foex, a French agronomist, arrived to investigate the situation in Oaxaca and meet with hacendados. Expectations rose for the improvement of agriculture, especially when the government purchased the Hacienda of San Miguel in the Centro district in 1909. That same year the Oaxacan Agricultural Society was founded by leading hacendados in the state; Carlos Castro was elected president and Alfredo del Valle secretary. Archbishop Gillow strongly supported the society, lending it one of the salons of the archbishop’s palace for its meetings. Inaugurated on September 25, 1910, Oaxaca’s experimental agricultural station consisted of a chemical laboratory and a meteorological and seismological observatory. A project to create a school of agriculture was also under way. Foex, the Wrst director, exhibited interest in the maintenance of soil humidity (to impede vaporization) and the selection and improvement of maize seeds, two projects particularly dear to Oaxaca.23 But not all the agricultural concerns of government dealt with future improvements. When the state faced emergencies caused by weather, such as frosts or torrential rains that damaged regional harvests, maize had to be imported from other states and distributed. In 1910, for example, frosts in the Mixteca (in Nochixtlán, Teposcolula, and Coixtlahuaca) led to “a disturbing situation,” and the government appealed to the Junta de Provisión de Cereales (grain supply committee) in the nation’s capital to shore up the grain supply. Oaxaca created welfare committees in the affected villages and towns, while the federal government footed 50 percent of the bill in this emergency.24 While not everyone may have been 23. Unfortunately there is little information on the activities of this society and the results of its efforts. Gillow, owner of the Hacienda of Chiautla in Puebla (his own experimental agricultural station) was fascinated by the use of technology in agriculture and strove to introduce it more into Oaxaca. Joaquín Camacho, representative of the Mexico City–based Mexican Agricultural Society in Oaxaca, also provided information, such as how to combat certain insects. PO, Jan. 23, 1904; El Correo del Sur, Sept. 21, 22, Nov. 28, 1909, and Sept. 19, 1910. The outlay was sizable, as the Hacienda cost $35,537. Mensaje 1908, 44; La Unión, Aug. 16, 1908; Mensaje 1909, 25–29; Mensaje 1910, 51; see Arellanes Meixueiro, Oaxaca, 54–55. 24. Mensaje 1910, 9–11.

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served, the government recognized its responsibility for the distribution of food in times of crisis. In keeping with his CientíWco origins, Pimentel was punctilious about treasury management. He succeeded in improving the state Wnances until the effects of the 1907 crisis hurt the economy. Ironically, in his 1910 message to the local Congress on the eve of revolution, the governor advised his constituents that the situation was Wnally improving. Oaxaca’s Wscal policies favored investors in the state’s industry and natural resources. To that end, the local Congress had approved a decree in 1901, during the regime of Martín González, authorizing the governor “to grant to private persons or companies that so solicit, whatever concessions that it considers convenient to further the development and exploitation of all class of industries in the state.” The state executive was empowered “to concede in the respective contracts all types of exemptions from local taxes that exist or may be decreed . . . as long as they do not exceed twenty-Wve years.” Investors might also be granted, for a particular time period or in perpetuity, for a fee or gratuitously, “the use or property in the event, of waters under its jurisdiction, and also lands, buildings, forests, etcetera, on which it may intervene in accordance with the law.” When the 1907 crisis dealt a severe blow to the textile industry, Pimentel obtained a threeyear tax reduction from the local legislature to attenuate the damage in this sector.25 The governor had the power to cancel any of these agreements at his discretion or for lack of compliance with stipulations. Foreign investors and the resident foreign community in the city of Oaxaca were strong Pimentel supporters. The British saw him as a man of “energy and foresight” and called him “undoubtedly one of the most efWcient public servants in the Republic.” Oaxaca’s English-speaking newspaper, the Oaxaca Herald, labeled him energetic, afWrming that foreign investors in Oaxaca were always “encouraged” by the governor, who “in all affairs demonstrates his efforts toward the progress of the state.” Although he maintained felicitous relations with the foreign community, he did not always accede to their wishes.26 In his efforts to modernize the state’s economy, Pimentel had both successes and failures. In any 25. Mensaje 1906, 27–30; Mensaje 1908, 27; Mensaje 1909, 19ff.; Mensaje 1910, 24. AGEPEO, Nov. 1901, Gob., Fom., Peticiones y Concesiones, Centro. 26. British Foreign OfWce cited by Garner, A Provincial Response, 91; Oaxaca Herald, April 22, 1907. See AGEPEO, May 1905, Gob., Quejas Particulares, Etla, and Nov. 1907, Gob., Quejas Particulares, Etla.

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case, the economic crisis of 1907 caused lasting damage. Oaxaca’s boom was over.

Cultural Politics Jorge Vera Estañol, Díaz’s last minister of Justice and Public Instruction, argued in hindsight that a progressive administration, which had Wnally balanced the budget, should have shown more concern for education. He rebuked the regime for not having undertaken a national effort “Wrst and foremost, to raise the Indian race from its miserable state of ignorance, and in general, all the illiterate population, and secondly and within the limited sphere of possibilities, to attend to the exigencies of higher education.” This criticism ignores the nature of PorWrian policies, which were formulated to stimulate economic growth based on the introduction of foreign investment and the exploitation of a cheap labor force. Such policies would hardly give precedence to social welfare programs or result in the growth of democratic institutions. The budget set aside for primary education increased during the PorWriato, but slowly. Vera Estañol observed that PorWrian Mexico was more concerned about “the development of the higher intellectuality of the few than to educate the rough and backward mentality of the multitudes; to form an aristocracy of talent, more than an alphabetocracy.”27 In Oaxaca this policy translated into the improvement of the ICA. With a signiWcant investment of $215,000, its building was repaired, and physics and chemistry laboratories were set up with modern equipment imported from Europe. Still, the ICA’s major product continued to be lawyers. Yet so few of them were inclined to venture out of the conWnes of the state capital that the government established scholarships for law students with the express condition that upon graduation they would serve in a district court for Wve years.28 The state government also encouraged the development of Wne arts and sports. In 1907 a voice teacher, Señorita Ascensión Hermosa, was hired 27. Vera Estañol, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, 39, 138. 28. This same scarcity also convinced the regime to issue a decree in January 1908 reducing the minimum age requirement for certain government ofWcials from twenty-Wve to twenty-one years. The remodeled institute was inaugurated on Jan. 1, 1908. El Imparcial, Dec. 19, 1907, and Jan. 8, 1908; Mensaje 1908, 17–21.

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to teach chorus in the ICA and in the normal school for young women. In 1909 the state government bought a large piece of land in the Colonia Díaz Ordaz on which it constructed a gymnasium and various sports facilities, including a fencing salon, a shooting range, and a velodrome.29 These were undoubtedly admirable improvements for the capital’s population, but they mainly beneWted elites. Improvements in higher education, laboratory science as well as the Wne arts, were hallmarks of a modern society. As federal deputy, Pimentel had made his position on indigenous education clear in the late 1880s in the spirited congressional debates on the possibility of federal law endorsing obligatory universal education. Although he generally supported this measure, he questioned Justo Sierra’s energetic defense of the proposal and his belief in indigenous people’s capacity to learn. Pimentel opposed the inclusion of subjects that taught the “elements of the fundamental sciences of observation and experimentation,” as he was “skeptical” of the intellectual ability of the majority of Oaxaca’s population. Sierra responded: “This is a law of social redemption that was actually decreed by Juárez, one that the Ocampos and Ramírezes would have signed in blood.” Rosendo Pineda sided with Sierra against his friend. Pineda, whose Wrst language was Zapotec, declared that “Juárez would have come here to vote with us for the positive and complete vindication of the Indian race, that race which is the foundation of our nationality.” In 1888 a law establishing the principle of obligatory primary education was passed.30 But the federal government oversaw only schools in the Federal District and the territories; education in Mexico at this time remained in the hands of state and municipal governments, which allowed governors to support or ignore Congress’s good intentions.

29. Received with “enthusiastic applause” by the Oaxacan elites, Srta. Hermosa could not teach all the students who lined up to register for her classes. The athletic Welds, it was said, would not be limited to students of the ICA but would be open to those of other schools also, with the establishment of different shifts. El Imparcial, Aug. 6, 1907; Mensaje 1909, 12–13. 30. Pimentel and Sierra quoted in Hale, Transformation of Liberalism, 230–34. The liberal myth had solidiWed to the point that in 1887 Juárez was still “speaking” in Congress, sixteen years after his funeral. In a letter to the governor of Chiapas, Pineda afWrmed that the problem of education of the “indigenous race” was so vital that a convention should be held on the subject in Mexico City (Guchachi’ Reza 44 [1994], 18). Given his background, Pineda’s stance is understandable, but few other CientíWcos besides Sierra would have agreed with him.

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With the elitism characteristic of the Oaxacan oligarchy, Pimentel repeatedly employed the language of the colonial caste system to refer to indigenous peoples, the majority population in his state. In 1906, faced with violent campesino protest against abuse by government ofWcials in the district capital of Juxtlahuaca (including the murder of a judge), he vowed to “punish” a people “that for so many years has shown itself in complete rebellion against civilization” and to make of them a “healthy example for the rest of the towns in the state.” He suggested to Díaz that the leaders of the town be rounded up and sent off to Yucatán as slave labor. He also proposed that the district of Juxtlahuaca be dismembered and divided up among the surrounding districts, and that part of its territory be used to create a new district.31 In effect, Juxtlahuaca was eliminated in 1907 and the district of Putla was created. Although he had no offspring himself, Pimentel infantilized the indigenous peoples, assuming the attitude of a brutal father who would rather castigate his “uncivilized” children than educate them. His response to any challenge to his authority was swift and ruthless. Thus the passage of the 1888 federal law and the ensuing 1889 state reform law failed to persuade Emilio Pimentel to take a vigorous stance on education when he assumed the governorship. By 1904, 522 ofWcial primary schools functioned in the state, with an enrollment of 21,153 boys and 4,459 girls, which, according to Pimentel, was a sixth of the school-age population of Oaxaca. However, available space and attendance was poor. By 1907 enrollment had improved slightly, to 23,562 boys and 5,770 girls in ofWcial schools and 1,684 boys and 1,630 girls in private schools, mainly those run by the Church. Nonetheless, in the Wfteen years between 1895 and 1910, Oaxaca had raised its literacy rate from 7 percent to only 9 percent, which put it in last place in the nation, alongside its neighbor, Chiapas. In the same time period, Aguascalientes increased its literate population from 15 to 26 percent, Coahuila from 17 to 31 percent, and the Federal District, from 38 to 50 percent. Despite the state government’s claim that it attended to elementary instruction with “positive zeal,” the statistics speak for themselves. If the school were truly the “embryo of the entire nation, . . . the laboratory of patriotism and civic virtue,” as Liberal Guillermo Prieto wrote in 1891, Oaxaca, 31. Hale underscored Pimentel’s superior attitude, noting that “his argument was more traditional, perpetuating colonial attitudes toward la gente sin razón.” Hale, Transformation of Liberalism, 234; CPD, Letters, Leg. 31, caja 33.

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whose sons and daughters had been founders of the nation-state, was being left behind, thanks to the racism and shortsightedness of its ruling oligarchy.32 In January 1904 the state named a Higher Commission on Primary Instruction, which convened for two years. This commission pronounced primary instruction in the state to be “defective in the extreme and lacking any rational basis.” When it proposed an urgent and immediate increase in teachers’ salaries, the authorities countered that such a raise was impossible in the near future. A statistical study of national education also revealed the lamentable situation of Oaxaca. While the state had placed nineteenth in the nation in 1874, with an average of one school per 1,505 inhabitants, in 1907 Oaxaca fell to last (twenty-sixth) place, with one school for every 1,718 inhabitants. Oaxaca was actually regressing, especially given Juárez’s, Díaz’s, and Chávez’s emphasis on education during their governorships. Pimentel charged that the study had employed unreliable statistics and at the same time complained that he could not create schools with “immoderation.”33 Schools for what Pimentel termed the “indigenous class” were grossly insufWcient, as was the supply of teachers. Newly graduated teachers of the normal schools in the city of Oaxaca scoffed at the dismal salaries and miserable conditions prevalent in the countryside. The governor proposed a solution: the formation of regional schools that would prepare a corps of indigenous teachers, supported by state pensions, to combat illiteracy. Construction began on only one school, the Benito Juárez Regional School in Teposcolula, in the Mixteca, but unfortunately it was never completed.34 Although PorWrian politicians frequently singled out the indigenous population as the major obstacle to Mexican development, they consistently failed to carry out even minimal measures to ameliorate 32. In June 1903 there had been 20,493 boys and 4,962 girls in the ofWcial schools, a total of 25,455. Memoria Administrativa, 1904; Mensaje 1904, 21; Memoria Administrativa, 1907; González Navarro, Historia moderna de México: El PorWriato; Vida Social, 532; Mensaje 1905, 33–34. The Prieto quotation is from Guerra, México 1:429. See Vaughan, State, Education, and Social Class, chap. 2, “The Limits of PorWrian Schooling,” 39–77. The tables on pp. 42 and 44 illustrate Oaxaca’s slow progress in comparison to other states. 33. Any reforms would have to be implemented in the Centro district Wrst, then in the surrounding districts, and Wnally in those most removed from the state capital. Actual conditions would have dictated that this order be reversed. Mensaje 1904, 18–21; Mensaje 1905, 33–34; Mensaje 1906, 34. Boletín de Instrucción Pública cited by Pimentel in Mensaje 1910, 20–22. 34. Mensaje 1906, 32–34; Mensaje 1908, 24.

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the situation in Oaxaca. In opposition to progressive educational policies like those of previous governors Chávez and Díaz, Pimentel’s cultural politics were dismally elitist. From the tobacco vegas of Valle Nacional to the mines of the Central Valleys, to the coffee Wncas of Pochutla to the villages of the Mixteca and the Sierra Juárez, mass education conXicted with an economy based on the cheap labor and subsistence of the majority of the state’s population. While elite intellectuals like Esteban Maqueo Castellanos continued to complain about the “colossal enterprise” that it would take to “regenerate” Mexico’s 11 million Indians, they rarely did anything constructive about it. In late 1910, however, Mexican Supreme Court Judge Francisco Belmar made a special trip to Oaxaca. This linguist had come home to promote the founding of a branch of the Sociedad Indigenista Mexicana (Mexican indigenous society) in Oaxaca. This unofWcial society had been established to study the situation of the “indigenous races” and propose means to better their moral and material conditions. It had already held one congress dealing with the archaeology and languages of the indigenous ethnicities and how to achieve their acculturation and assimilation into a mestizo Mexico. When Belmar held a meeting for this reason at the ICA, the elite intellectuals of the capital failed to attend, and only the lower-middle-class normal school teachers and students showed up.35 Yet Oaxaca’s poor showing in literacy and school construction cannot be attributed simply to the personal preferences of governors. In various regions of Mexico, uneven educational development corresponded to the pattern of uneven economic development. According to Mary Kay Vaughan, the wealthier states, which beneWted the most from economic modernization and improving revenues, “could afford to expand their public school systems more readily than those with lower rates of revenue increase and economic growth.” Given the correlation between revenue per capita and funds directed to primary schools, Oaxaca did not fare well; nonetheless, future studies may Wnd a correlation between better educational opportunities and the regions of PorWrian development.36 35. The ubiquitous Juan Sánchez did attend this meeting. Maqueo Castellanos, “Algunos problemas nacionales,” 126; Ruiz Cervantes, “Situaciones culturales en Oaxaca,” 95; González Navarro, Historia moderna de México: El PorWriato; Vida Social, 276; Belmar, Breve reseña histórica; and García, “Razas del Estado de Oaxaca.” Francisco Salazar, Francisco Pascual García, and Abraham Castellanos were also interested in these issues. 36. States with the highest revenues—Yucatán, Campeche, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Sonora— also had the highest expenditure on primary schooling. The poorest states—Guerrero,

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Public health initiatives received somewhat more serious attention during this period. In his 1902 Memoria, Governor Bolaños Cacho declared that health conditions in the state were improving “daily with the progress of the people’s education, with the government’s efforts, and with the increase in the resources of the municipalities.” The growing economy of Mexico required a relatively healthy if not a literate labor force. Given the state’s restricted Wnances, resources targeted for health improvements remained limited. Tuberculosis, typhus, typhoid, yellow fever, and smallpox were endemic throughout the countryside. General ignorance with respect to questions of health and hygiene urgently needed to be addressed.37 The smallpox vaccination is one of the success stories of this period. In July 1899 Governor Martín González declared vaccination obligatory in Oaxaca and regulated procedures. Between 1895 and 1902, 145,579 people had supposedly been vaccinated. On assuming the governorship, Pimentel charged that the vaccinations had been carried out by poorly paid people ignorant of the need for asepsis and that many of them had actually fabricated the statistics rather than vaccinate a reluctant population. In November 1903 the governor increased the capitación by 3 centavos (up to 25 centavos) in order to augment the government’s resources for statistics, vaccinations, and police. This enabled Pimentel to constitute a vaccine corps the following month, dividing up the state into various sectors, each under the vigilance of a trained vaccinator. Between July 1905 and September 1906, 28,533 people were safely vaccinated.38 As smallpox vaccinations proceeded, measures were taken to reduce and extirpate other diseases. Both state and national government agencies focused interest on the isthmian region, traversed by the strategic Tehuantepec National Railway, where yellow fever was a constant threat. Although a sanitary brigade from Mexico City arrived in Tehuantepec to eradicate tropical diseases and had some limited success, yellow fever continued to spread. In 1905 the danger of a statewide epidemic loomed if it reached the Tlacolula district in the Central Valleys, where so many Michoacán, Oaxaca, and Guanajuato—had the lowest expenditures. See Vaughan, State, Education, and Social Class, 41–43. 37. Memoria Administrativa, 1902, 14. 38. Having begun with 2,569 persons in 1895, the number vaccinated grew to 43,243 persons in 1900 as a consequence of the decree, although the number fell to 21,661 in 1902. Ibid., 16; Mensaje 1904, 11–12; Mensaje 1906, 12.

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people congregated for its October fair. The jefe político of Tuxtepec reported that malaria, intermittent fevers, dysentery, diarrhea, enterocolitis, and anemia were frequent in his district. Typhus, smallpox, measles, and dysentery were also reported to be common dangers in the Central Valleys, the Mixteca, the Sierra Juárez, and the Costa.39 Only two hospitals operated in the city of Oaxaca during the PorWriato. In 1879 the Hospital de San Vicente de Paul, later known as the Hospital de Caridad (charity), was founded. Its medical and surgical equipment had been donated by Dr. Juan Fenelón, a French doctor living in Oaxaca. In private hands by 1902, the Hospital General remained the only institution that served the public. In 1903 the state instituted “La Protectora” lottery to obtain funds for the construction of a modern general hospital. This lottery ended up losing more money than it made and the new hospital was never built.40 The Hospicio de la Vega orphanage functioned throughout most of the nineteenth century but closed in 1876. Pimentel’s administration oversaw the reconstruction of the original building, often interrupted for lack of funds, in the ex-convent of La Soledad. Dedicated to assisting destitute youth, this project Wnally did get Wnished. The Industrial Military School, another welfare institution originally founded by Governor PorWrio Díaz as the School of Arts and Crafts, later became the Correctional School. It taught crafts to orphans and delinquent youth, while the government paid for clothing and lodging. Another source of relief for middle- and working-class residents of the city of Oaxaca was the Monte de Piedad, a branch of the national pawnshop, opened in 1889. It offered loans at low interest rates to counter the usurious rates of local merchants. In 1905 a branch of the Monte de Piedad opened in Tlaxiaco, but it soon failed.41 While funds often seemed to be lacking for improvements to beneWt poorer Mexicans, the beautiWcation of the nation’s capital held a high priority for PorWrians. Desiring to transform their Federal District into a beacon of modernity, they built exquisite new buildings such as the Palace 39. Mensaje 1904, 9; Mensaje 1905, 14–15; AGEPEO, 1905, Gob., Memoria Administrativa, Tuxtepec; Mensaje 1910, 8; El Imparcial, Nov. 21, 1907, April 6, 1908; El Avance, Jan. 25, 28, 1911, March 1, 1911; Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 20, 21, 28. 40. Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 4:39; Memoria Administrativa, 1902, 16–17; Mensaje 1904, 12; Mensaje 1906, 16–17. 41. Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 4:122; Mensaje 1908, 42; Memoria Administrativa, 1902, 17–18; Mensaje 1905, 18ff.; Mensaje 1906, 17. Today the municipal archives of the city of Oaxaca are housed in the Hospicio de la Vega.

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of Fine Arts and the post ofWce, renovated others, and undertook major public works projects such as the city’s drainage canals (built by Weetman Pearson) and the federal penitentiary of Lecumberri. Provincial capitals followed suit, hoping to reproduce reforms in health, prison, public works, and also in the Wne arts, particularly architecture. Mexico’s clean “white city,” Mérida, “underwent a glistening facelift” that reXected the henequen trade wealth of its elite Casta Divina.42 The beautiWcation of the state capital was high on the list of projects for the Pimentel administration, too, but as a much poorer state, Oaxaca could not compete with the grandeur of Mérida or Mexico City. Just the same, the governor ordered the construction of three new markets in the city: the Carmen Alto, the Merced, and the PorWrio Díaz. He oversaw the construction of a road and stairs up to the rotunda on “El Fortín” hill overlooking the state capital, where a statue of Juárez was erected to celebrate the centennial of his birth. Pimentel built another commemorative monument on the site of the Díaz victory against the French at “La Carbonera.” Given his fondness for music, he founded the State Band with eighty-six musicians. Thus Pimentel enthusiastically supported the development of the city of Oaxaca and the rationalization of its space by various municipal regimes. By 1905 the outlay for “decoration and gardens” of the city of Oaxaca had risen to almost 10 percent of the municipal government’s budget. By 1910 public gardens and plazas adorned various sections of the city and the band of the local National Guard regiment played three nights a week, on Sundays, and on feast days in the Zócalo. His greatest cultural and architectural coup was undoubtedly the Luis Mier y Terán Theater.43 In addition, a few district seats underwent modernizing reforms and beautiWcation. Tlaxiaco became Oaxaca’s “little Paris,” and Juana Cata Romero used her wealth to give Tehuantepec a facelift. Both Salina Cruz and San Jerónimo Ixtepec were rebuilt from scratch by the Pearson Company as part of the Tehuantepec National Railway project, but instead of restoring colonial architecture, as in the city of Oaxaca, they were laid out as British towns with British-style bungalows.

42. Wells and Joseph, Summer of Discontent, 120–23. 43. Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 256; Overmyer-Velázquez, “Leyendo la ciudad,” 22–33. In Mérida too, new hospitals, asylums, and a luxurious theater were built. Wells and Joseph, Summer of Discontent, 131.

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Carlos Solomon originally began the installation of electric lighting in the state capital in the 1890s. In January 1903 the government contracted with Federico Zorrilla for the installation of an electric plant in the Etla district to provide lighting and electrical energy to the capital city and outlying villages. Two years later the company improved the city’s service by installing arched electric lighting, considered safer and more effective in cutting down on crime. By November 1907 Zorrilla’s company was about to begin using new waterfalls to generate electric power for the mining camps of Taviche. Although this company later came under attack for defective service, no punitive measures were taken, since Zorrilla was an intimate of the governor and a member of the local legislature.44 During the PorWriato, Oaxaca was still commonly referred to as Antequera, its colonial designation, or even the “emerald city,” for the pale green stone of its buildings.45 In 1904 the Diario del Hogar’s traveling reporter saw a very different city: The streets, although traced in straight lines are, in general, wretchedly paved with stones. There are barrios in the most complete ruin, supposedly due to the past revolutions . . . the rents are very high and few houses are truly habitable. . . . The city does not even have a mediocre carriage transportation service since the carriages (not even a dozen) belonging to a Dr. Gómez are pathetic. Only recently (a few months ago) an urban trolley car service was established, something badly needed for years now and which would have contributed many thousands of pesos to the person or company who would have run it. Another notable aspect is that there is perhaps no city with more shoe stores and shoe repair shops where the majority of the people walk around barefoot.46 44. Colección de leyes, decretos 24:14; La Unión, Nov. 17, 1907. The project for a modern drainage system for the state capital had repeatedly failed to materialize for lack of funds. Eventually the government arranged a loan of $1,800,000 with the House of Schondube and Neugelauer of Mexico City for this purpose. Mexican engineer Roberto Gayol accepted the position of inspector and initiated the drainage project. El Correo del Sur, Jan. 18, 1910; Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 19. 45. Mark Overmyer-Velázquez entitled his recent dissertation on the city of Oaxaca during the PorWriato “Visions of the Emerald City.” 46. Diario del Hogar, Nov. 30, 1904.

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Clearly, there was one city for the elites and another for the poor. The elites’ favorite Sunday pastime was to drive their carriages up and down the spacious Calzada PorWrio Díaz, either before or after attending Mass. Despite the fact that Oaxaca was the cradle of many illustrious Liberals, the Catholic Church continued to wield enormous inXuence. In 1900 there were 2,398 Protestants in the state, but a decade later this Wgure had fallen to 1,764, divided among nine Protestant churches. As early as 1871 attempts to introduce Protestantism were begun, when two pastors established an Evangelist Temple in the city of Oaxaca. Victoriano D. Báez extended his missionary enterprise among the indigenous peoples. In Santo Domingo Nuxáa, the local authorities and the village priest constantly harassed the Evangelist congregation. Believers were often imprisoned and Dr. Báez protested frequently to the state government. When Guillermo Luna tried to distribute Protestant literature in the village of San Jacinto Amilpas, he was violently run out of town. The Methodists established themselves in the state capital and in zones where commercial agriculture prospered, such as Tuxtepec and Zaachila, and also along the railway lines in Huitzo and Cuicatlán.47 The Catholic Church’s revival can be traced to the arrival of a brilliant and energetic new bishop, Monseñor Eulogio Gillow, in 1887. Very much the PorWrian modernizer, he founded the Asilo del Divino Pastor (an orphanage), a school for working-class children, which also provided hot meals, the Colegio of San José for female higher education, and various primary schools in the parishes. He reorganized the seminary, reforming the curriculum and placing it under Jesuit supervision. Gillow also had an observatory built with the most modern equipment. In a move that was symbolic of the urban beautiWcation of the PorWriato, he spearheaded a program of improvement for the city of Oaxaca’s churches, reconstructing many buildings and refurbishing both interiors and exteriors.48 47. González Navarro, Estadísticas, 13; Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 4:144; Brioso y Candiani, Evolución del pueblo oaxaqueño 4:52; AGEPEO, Oct. 1907, Gob., Libertad de Cultos, Centro; El Imparcial, Nov. 15, 1907, Aug. 7, 8, 1907. This hostility continued into the twentieth century. When Hilario López and friends returned to Tlacolula in the 1940s after a stint in the United States as braceros, they attempted to observe their newly acquired Seventh Day Adventism. The pueblo constantly harassed them, throwing chile peppers into their religious services and shunning them and their children. Many could not stand the hostility and returned to Catholicism. López Antonio, interview. 48. Gillow had been schooled at a Jesuit institution in England. Gillow, Reminiscencias; Salazar, “Historia de Oaxaca,” 396–97.

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The close relations between the prelate and the president provide the key to understanding the revival of Church inXuence. Gillow obtained permission from Díaz to reopen the Church of Santo Domingo, which has one of the most exquisite gold inlaid interiors in all Latin America. He spared no cost in restoring its original grandeur. The prelate also oversaw the restoration of San Juan de Dios, the oldest church in the city. In 1891 Oaxaca was raised to an archbishopric. The year after the coronation in Mexico City in 1895, Gillow instituted the annual celebration of December 12 as the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe in all his parishes, involving Oaxaca’s inhabitants in national Catholic celebrations.49 Archbishop Gillow’s work did not stop at the cosmetic. A capitalist entrepreneur himself, he recognized the signiWcance of the new working class. As we have seen, in the spirit of Rerum Novarum, he strove to imbue the workers with Catholic ideas of social justice. Undoubtedly the high point of his regime came when he obtained permission from Rome for the coronation of the dark-skinned Virgin of la Soledad, the patron saint of the city of Oaxaca. He organized a dazzling celebration attended by thousands that lasted for four days, replicating in miniature the crowning of Guadalupe, which gained him enormous popularity among all social classes.50 Amazed by the number of Catholic schools and high church attendance (not only by women but also by men, including magistrates of the state Supreme Court and local deputies), the traveling reporter mocked the preeminence of Catholicism in the state. The Pimentel government maintained cordial relations with the archbishop, given his inXuence not only at all levels of Oaxacan society but also with the president and his wife. In fact, Gillow had arranged for the archbishop of Mexico to marry them. He later afWrmed that “Carmelita Romero Rubio was the surprising soul of General Díaz’s evolution to a more reWned existence and the policy of conciliation that had profound consequences for the nation.”51 The 49. Salazar, “Historia de Oaxaca,” 397; Overmyer-Velázquez, “Visions of the Emerald City,” 147. For a lively narrative of the pastoral visits, see Manuel Esparza, Gillow durante el porWriato. In 1907 the bishopric of Tehuantepec was created. El Imparcial, July 8, 1907. 50. El Imparcial, March 16, 1908; Overmyer-Velázquez, “Visions of the Emerald City,” 145–48. Widespread and lavish celebrations had accompanied the crowning of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City in 1895. This was the culmination of a 147-year campaign to obtain permission from the Vatican, which was Wnally granted in 1887. 51. Diario del Hogar, Nov. 30, 1904; Gillow, Reminiscencias, 230ff. On the engagement and marriage of PorWrio and Carmelita Romero Rubio, see also Tello Díaz, Exilio, 271ff., and Sara Sefchovich’s lively history of the Wrst ladies of Mexico, Suerte del consorte, 166ff.

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Church took advantage of these relations to reestablish much of its former eminence, which had been damaged during the Liberal Reform. Cultural politics in Oaxaca during the Pimentel regime signiWed limited education for the masses and support for the Catholic Church’s moral and modernizing inXuence. The beneWts and luxuries of high culture were available to the oligarchy and a handful of middle-class citizens, according to Pimentel. Time was when statesmen were also expected to be men of letters; the governor himself was a celebrated pianist and poet. Many Oaxacan professionals and politicians, including Miguel Bolaños Cacho and his brother Rafael, Dr. Adalberto Carriedo, Dr. Herminio Acevedo, Manuel H. San Juan, Abraham Castellanos, Andrés Portillo, Félix Martínez Dolz, and Manuel Brioso y Candiani, were also poets.52 Numerous literary magazines appeared in the city of Oaxaca during the PorWriato, and newspapers invariably had a cultural section in which local literati presented their latest works. Journalism had gained in popularity during the Restored Republic. In the 1870s Lorenzo San Germán set up a lithography shop. Soon the San Germán Brothers became prominent publishers in the city, although the family later split along political lines, Arnulfo pursuing a radical path. In 1904 Arnulfo began publishing El Ideal, a literary magazine for women, which by 1909 he had transformed into an opposition paper directed to the working classes.53 Between 1905 and 1908 the liberal opposition published, erratically, El Bien Público, La Semecracia, and La Voz de la Justicia. With the growth of industry and commerce, the local press in Oaxaca began to have a more popular, working-class readership. By 1907 journalism was at its height in the state, with thirteen weekly, bimonthly, and monthly newspapers in circulation. Dr. Manuel Pereyra Mejía published La Unión, an informative newspaper of higher quality than its precursors. The late nineteenth century witnessed the rise of “modernizing” or economic newspapers such as El Avisador de Puerto Angel (Pochutla, 1890), El Eco Mercantil (Oaxaca, 1891), Oaxaca Progresista (Oaxaca, 1910), Oaxaca Moderno (Oaxaca, 1911) and the Oaxaca Herald, (Oaxaca, 1906–10), run by former journalists from the Mexican 52. Salazar, “Historia de Oaxaca,” 422. 53. Brioso y Candiani, Evolución del pueblo oaxaqueño 4:60. See El Ideal. Doña Francisca Flores established and ran Oaxaca’s Wrst printing press around 1720. Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 120.

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Herald of Mexico City. Puebla native Marcelino Muciño, often called the father of modern journalism in Oaxaca, was originally hired to edit a sports magazine, Score, given the popularity of baseball. He went on to publish El Correo del Sur (1909–11) and then improved his skills with El Avance (1911–13). The economic boom in Oaxaca corresponded to a boom in journalism. Between 1832 and 1875 there were thirty-four newspapers in Oaxaca; between 1876 and 1910 that number rose to 171. While many of these publications were ephemeral, the number of newspapers is remarkable in a state with such high illiteracy rates and monolingualism.54

Governing Oaxaca: The Politics of Culture Although electoral procedures for president, senators, deputies, and judges were strictly observed, the search for peace and stability, which had eluded Mexico for half a century, took precedence over honest elections. In their quest to create a modern, “civilized” nation, Mexican elites traded laissez-faire liberalism for direct state intervention in order to transform society and exchanged democracy for dictatorship in order to centralize dispersed political power and achieve peace.55 Ironically, Díaz’s home state afforded the most extreme example of political fragmentation in Mexico. By the mid-nineteenth century, Oaxaca had been organized into twenty-Wve districts, increasing to twenty-six during the PorWriato. In comparison, the state of Yucatán, also with a majority indigenous population, consisted of sixteen districts. Chihuahua, the largest state in territory, had only twelve districts. Oaxaca’s districts were further divided into municipios and agencias municipales, which 54. The decade of 1891–1900 saw seventy-four newspapers published in Oaxaca, although this number fell to forty-two in the following decade. The traveling reporter complained that the press consisted of only government publications and La Voz de la Verdad, which emanated “from the Archbishop with the objective of maintaining the fanaticism among the people.” Diario del Hogar, Nov. 30, 1904. But this was not the case. Muciño continued to publish various papers throughout the state until 1920, when he moved to Mexico City where, in the 1930s, he published the magazine Oaxaca en México, extremely rich in historical information. Sánchez Silva divides these into government publications, economic modernizing newspapers, and opposition or ideological organs, in “La prensa en Oaxaca,” 8ff. 55. Florescano points out that this type of interpretation is essential to the revisionist analysis of PorWrian society (Nuevo pasado mexicano, 64).

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together reached the staggering number of 1,146 by 1910 (up from 1,123 in 1900). While Oaxaca had 516 municipalities in 1910, Yucatán had seventy-eight and Chihuahua had Wfty-six. Neighboring Puebla and Veracruz contained the highest number of municipalities after Oaxaca, but those totals were only 183 and 181, respectively. More than 25 percent of all Mexican municipalities were located in the state of Oaxaca, a glaring case of the dispersion of political power.56 The political fragmentation of Oaxaca severely impeded the consolidation and centralization of power. One might have expected Díaz to have been highly concerned about this situation. As we have seen, the dispersion of political power among the villages of Oaxaca forced PorWrian ofWcials into constant negotiation with them. Since Oaxaca formed the bedrock of PorWrian political support, the dictator recognized the limits of the state’s power. The exercise and circulation of local, capillary power among villages made the continuing fragmentation of power (“islands of dispersed power”) highly advisable. Liberal clientelism functioned in tandem with divide-and-conquer tactics to beneWt the state. Acceptance of the status quo suited many indigenous groups if it fostered the relative autonomy of their villages. Although Liberals might seek the transformation of political culture through universal education, political realities demanded stability and a loyal clientele. Thus, not all was order and progress during the PorWriato, but neither was it all “disorder and progress.”57 The process of state formation demanded constant negotiations on the local, regional, state, and national levels, each in their own particular context but also interconnected. All of the modernizing projects discussed above required the organization of a system that would effectively keep the peace. Thus, alongside the formal structure of democracy, personalism continued to be a driving force in Mexico. In addition to his cabinet, the president chose members of Congress, governors, and frequently jefes políticos. At the state level, the governor and his immediate staff, the local Congress, and the jefes políticos in their districts administered the Pax PorWriana. Given Oaxaca’s excessive fragmentation, these ofWcials relied in turn on the support of 56. Wasserman, Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution, 2; Joseph, Revolution from Without, 28; Guerra, México 1:278; División territorial, 1900 and 1910. González Navarro, or his source, lumped municipios and agencias municipales together to get a total of 1,131 municipios for 1910, but the actual total of both was 1,146 (Estadísticas, 16). 57. Vanderwood, Disorder and Progress; Hamnett, “Benito Juárez,” 10.

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local ofWcials and armed forces stationed in the vicinity of the state to maintain order. Introduced into the Spanish colonial system by the Cortes of Cádiz and inserted into the Constitution of 1857, the system of jefaturas políticas (prefectures) was overhauled during the Díaz years. Authority was lodged in the trinity of the president, the state governors, and the jefes políticos, the local agents of the federal and state executives. Professional bureaucrats, often lawyers or military men, managed political and Wscal matters, supervised municipal seats, commanded security forces, oversaw state and municipal services, prisons, and public welfare, supervised tax collection, executed public works, supervised judicial ofWcials, executed electoral frauds, prepared public festivities, suppressed bandits, and collected statistical data. By controlling elections and monitoring the selection of local ofWcials, they perfected the operations of the Juárez and Díaz political machines in Oaxaca.58 The jefaturas políticas were the central cog of the administration and hold the key to understanding PorWrian politics, Romana Falcón noted.59 In Oaxaca these ofWcials frequently held the same post for long periods, as did Díaz’s military comrade Colonel Feliciano García Ramos in Miahuatlán or the notorious Rodolfo Pardo in Tuxtepec. Oaxacan jefes políticos, many of whom had former ties with the president, frequently solicited his advice on speciWc problems, going over the head of the governor. Juan Puerto in Juchitán, an old comrade of Díaz, sought advice on how to respond to the 1902 political crisis: . . . moreover, as the oWcial mayor of the state government advises that there is still nothing deWnitive with respect to who will be the new governor, it seems to me correct to proceed with some prudence. . . . Of course my principles and policies cannot be anything but complete obedience to your desires, dissolving the parties, making public opinion uniform, avoiding discord and any disagreements through the use of prudence and prevision. Thus, twenty years’ experience in this district has shown that this is the correct path to conservation of peace in this phosphoric pueblo.60 58. Mecham, “Jefe Político,” 333ff., 347–48; see Guerra, México 1:122–25; Falcone, “Benito Juárez,” 638–45. 59. Falcón, “Jefes políticos,” 245; Beezley, “Conclusion,” 279. 60. CPD, Letters, leg. 27, caja 4.

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In order to keep this peace, jefes políticos could call on armed forces to guarantee the state’s order and security. By 1902 the Gendarmarie (the police force) of the city of Oaxaca had 477 men on active duty. With permission from the local congress, Pimentel created a new corps of mounted police. By 1905 two companies had been organized and operated in the principal districts at the disposal of the jefes políticos, who also had the Rurales, a federal force, at their service. But the new mounted police were unable to function on the rugged terrain of Ixtlán, Villa Alta, and Choapan, and so, in 1906, an infantry of rural police was formed to insure the security in these mountainous districts.61 Two different military zones, both dependent on the Ministry of War, spanned the territory of the state of Oaxaca: the Eighth Military Zone, with its seat in the city of Oaxaca, and another zone encompassing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, with headquarters in Salina Cruz. The chiefs of the Eighth Military Zone maintained excellent relations with the Pimentel government and the Oaxacan oligarchy in general. The contingents of the federal Rurales in Oaxaca increased over time. Before 1900 there was only one detachment of Rurales, which also operated in the states of Puebla, Tlaxcala, and Querétaro. By 1904 there were Wve, four of which belonged to the Sixth Corps also operating in the states of Veracruz, Puebla, and México, and another attached to the Ninth Corps stationed in Veracruz and Puebla. By 1908 there were thirteen detachments.62 With this impressive expansion of security forces, no increase in serious military confrontations or indigenous rebellions occurred between the 1896 uprisings and the Revolution. Protests against the abuses and corruption of jefes políticos were common throughout Mexico. Responsibility for the adjudication of land 61. Although all three institutions predate the PorWriato, the Rurales, the Acordada, and the jefes políticos have generally become synonymous with the Díaz dictatorship (Mecham, “Jefe Político,” 333ff.). Since Pimentel was also concerned with efWciency of the police force in the state capital, in 1904 the daily salary of 50 centavos paid these gendarmes was raised to 75 centavos; see Mensaje 1904, 8. By 1907 the Gendarmarie had risen to 495 men. Memorias Administrativas of 1904, 1907; see section on Mayorías de Plaza; Mensaje 1903, 6; Mensaje 1905, 9–10; Mensaje 1906, 7–8. 62. This new force received extensive training in horsemanship and the use of carbines and sables. PO, June 4, 1902, Dec. 13, 1905, Jan. 3, 1906; Memoria Administrativa, 1902; CPD, Telegrams, leg. 61, caja 2; Belmar, Breve reseña histórica, 104. Of thirteen detachments of Rurales, nine were attached to the Sixth Corps, two to the Ninth Corps, and one to the First Corps, which remained the same for 1910. See the maps in Vanderwood, Disorder and Progress, 121–23.

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through the Lerdo Law and the surveying of vacant state lands or tax collection provided the jefes with considerable opportunity to abuse their powers. For example, when Governor Pimentel decided to visit his native district of Tlaxiaco in 1909, he was received with great fanfare and celebrations. The jefe político, however, had squeezed the population with higher taxes to hurriedly Wnish up public works to impress him.63 The state governor, with the agreement of the president, appointed the jefes políticos. In order to govern effectively, the jefes counted on the support of local authorities. The municipal president ran the local government from the municipal seat, which might also include various smaller municipal agencies dependent upon it. It was vital for the jefe político to have the municipal president under his thumb. The exaggerated number of municipalities per district complicated the task of jefes políticos of Oaxaca, as opposed to other states. Having to monitor internal struggles in each seat over posts of municipal president, secretary, and síndicos (municipal ofWcials) alone was a full-time job. In addition, in a state as ethnically diverse as Oaxaca, the caciques played a fundamental role. They were often the real holders of the “strings of local power” through their network of patron-client relations.64

Caciques and Cacicas During the Conquest, the Spanish Crown adapted pre-existing political structures in order to institutionalize and consolidate its rule. As the indigenous principal submitted to the new regime, he or she (there were female principales) would receive recognition as the cacique (or cacica, female), “the one who rules” over a particular region. The colonial caciques continued to receive their tribute and functioned as the major collaborators in the process of tribute collection for the Crown. As ethnic authorities, the caciques became the axis of legitimacy of Spanish domination as long as the common people respected their rule. By the eve of Independence, the colonial cacicazgo had lost its raison d’être. 63. Falcón, “Jefes políticos,” 252; Méndez Aquino, Historia de Tlaxiaco (Mixteca), 238–39. 64. Alan Knight asserted that the jefes políticos held the “real strings” of local power, and they often did, yet in Oaxaca that was not always the case (Knight, Mexican Revolution 1:25). The number of síndicos depends on the population of the municipality.

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Many communities under the purview of a particular cacicazgo “lost their political-ethnic nexus” as surviving pre-Columbian structures further disintegrated. Although the colonial cacicazgo disappeared as a formal institution, caciquismo did not. In effect, a new institution evolved under the same name but now related to the rise of military caudillos during the struggle for Independence.65 Unfortunately, while these regional caudillos captured the attention of scholars, few studies of nineteenth-century caciques exist. Joseph has aptly characterized the caudillo as a cacique “writ large,” a leader who mobilized his people for the object of extending a local power base to encompass a larger region. Caciques were often the sine qua non of the rise of regional or national caudillos, be they Liberal or Conservative.66 Caciques of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries might occupy a formal political ofWce, such as municipal president or head of a village’s council of elders, or they might simply control those in ofWce from behind the scenes. Research has focused on caciques and caudillos in the postrevolutionary period, analyzing the effect of the Mexican Revolution on this institution. In his study of the town of Díaz Ordaz in the Tlacolula district, Antonio Ugalde posited three major characteristics of the cacique. As a leader the cacique (1) has total or almost total control of political, economic, and social affairs in a deWned geographic area; (2) as part of this power can wield a potential use of political violence to ensure that his or her desires become the law in that territory; and (3) is recognized, and implicitly legitimized, as the only leader within this territory by the major political leaders outside this deWned geographic area.67 65. Cacique derives from the Caribbean Arawak word kassequa, signifying a local Indian chief. It was applied by the Spanish to the strongest noble who ruled in a particular area. The cacicazgo referred to the territory under control. See Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 77ff. and 175ff. On women caciques, see Stern, Secret History of Gender, 237. In some cases descendents of the old caciques used their privileges to occupy these positions, permitting continuity among powerful families (Pastor, interview). On the rise and fall of colonial caciques, see also Romero Frizzi, “Epoca Colonial,” 109ff. 66. Joseph, “Caciquismo and the Revolution,” 196–97, 201. For a concise study of the career of a Mexican cacique in Puebla, see LaFrance and Thomson, “Juan Francisco Lucas,” 1–13. On the relationship between local-level caciques and regional caudillos, see Thomson, “Agrarian ConXict,” 208ff., and Thomson and LaFrance, Patriotism, Politics, and Popular Liberalism. 67. Ugalde, “Contemporary Mexico,” 124; See Roniger for a more recent deWnition, “Caciquismo and Coronelismo,” 71ff.

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While this deWnition can serve for the nineteenth century also, we need to include the indispensable function of the cacique as cultural intermediary, so vital throughout Mexico, especially in Oaxaca with its numerous ethno-linguistic groups. Both the Juchiteco Che Gorio and Yucuiteco Mateo Máximo López became literate in Spanish and gained invaluable political knowledge in the harsh school of military service. This later enabled them to defend their pueblos against district and state governments and the Hacienda de la Concepción, respectively. Che Gorio was a regional caudillo and López became cacique of Yucuiti. Thus the cacique was not only a political and judicial intermediary but also a cultural broker.68 Politicians and scholars alike have stressed the negative connotations of caciques and cacicazgos. In January 1911 El Avance declared “war” on “retrograde” caciquismo and denounced “the absence of liberty in the towns,” which was “felt as a lack of oxygen in the atmosphere.” It inveighed against the “desperation” and pain caused by enthroned caciques who tolerated “all the vices in order to make themselves powerful and wealthy.” Caciques were “assassins who apply the ley fuga to unarmed citizens. The ‘Ley Fuga’—what sarcasm! Murder has never been a law.” Judge Esteban Maqueo Castellanos proposed a “war on caciquismo” as a means of “accelerating as far as can be expected the civilization of the Indian.”69 In his travels through Mexico in the late 1890s, Frederick Starr met Don Guillermo Murcio, cacique of Chicahuaxtla, a Triqui town in the montaña of the Mixteca Alta. Starr described the inhabitants as “people of small stature, dark-brown color, black eyes,” who spoke only Triqui, wore native dress, and were “conservative, suspicious, and superstitious.” Don Guillermo and his family were the only mestizos in the town: He is a hale and hearty blacksmith, and has lived for Wfteen years in this purely indian town, where he has gained unbounded inXuence among the simple natives. His word is law, and the 68. Joseph, “Caciquismo and the Revolution,” 196–98. Roniger does not contemplate the cultural role of these intermediaries (“Caciquismo and Coronelismo,” 76). 69. El Avance, Jan. 6, 1911; Joseph, “Caciquismo and the Revolution,” 43. Maqueo Castellanos, “Algunos problemas nacionales,” 94–99. Maqueo blamed the victims for this evil, which he claimed arose from the “theocratic and autocratic governments that existed under the indigenous kings” of pre-Columbian times. See also Roniger, “Caciquismo and Coronelismo,” 75ff.

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town-government trembles before his gaze. He is impetuous in manner, quick-tempered, and on the slightest suggestion of disregard of his commands, freely threatens jail or other punishment. He received us cordially, and we lived at his house, where we were treated to the best that was available.70 Murcio exhibited the typical cacique traits. His power was informal but “unbounded,” he held no ofWce but his word was law, and he Wlled the role of cultural intermediary. This mestizo cacique demanded a patriarchal obedience from the villagers but treated foreign visitors with great hospitality.71 Starr was horriWed by the drunkenness of the Triquis, but it never occurred to him that the gracious Don Guillermo probably provided the alcohol. Tolerance of caciquismo, which thrived on unequal patron-client relationships and a localist mentality, raises the question whether or not the PorWrians truly intended to modernize politics and prepare the country for a democratic system. Were they serious about providing free access to education, a free press, a decent standard of living for the majority, and respect for civil rights—not to mention the eradication of caciquismo? In a state as ethnically and politically fragmented as Oaxaca, jefes políticos were often dependent on caciques as cultural intermediaries in order to govern and keep the peace. Poor transportation, lack of schools, and indigenous monolingualism propped up this institution. Yet without the human dimension, the discussion of caciques degenerates into a sterile condemnation of stereotypes: the counterpart of the despotic cacique is the “simple” passive peasant as portrayed by Starr. In the Sierra Norte de Puebla, caciques Pala Agustín Dieguillo and Juan Francisco Lucas (the “Patriarch of the Sierra”) enjoyed widespread popularity and loyalty. They combined their role as cultural intermediaries for indigenous villages in the defense of local and regional interests with liberal clientelism, as did their counterparts in southern states.72 70. Starr, In Indian Mexico, 131–34. 71. One suspects Murcio may have Wt Paul Vanderwood’s assessment of local strongmen as “a pretentious lot, blustery and boastful,” who “too often acted like petty despots” (Power of God, 125). 72. Thomson, “Agrarian ConXict,” 205ff.; LaFrance and Thomson, “Juan Francisco Lucas,” 1ff. As Carlos Martínez Assad noted, the indigenous followers had to be convinced of the legitimacy of their cacique (Sentimientos, 21, and also Estadistas, caciques y caudillos). Half a century later, sociologist Pablo González Casanova afWrmed that rural caciquismo

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José Che Gómez came from a comfortable ranching family that owned coffee Wncas in the Chimalapas and urban real estate in the city of Juchitán. He studied law at the ICA and entered a career in government. Staunchly defending the pueblos’ rights to the salt Xats, communal lands, and pastures in various legal cases, he emerged as cacique of Juchitán and the surrounding areas. Elected municipal president of Juchitán in 1893, Che Gómez’s popularity emanated from his role as intermediary between the indigenous pueblos and the state.73 On two occasions the Isthmus of Tehuantepec existed brieXy as a distinct province (1823–24 and 1852–55). During the PorWriato, the isthmian region prospered with the construction of the Tehuantepec National Railway and the spread of commercial agriculture. Separatist sentiments Xourished anew, and were reXected in the growing discontent of the Istmeño elites with the predominance of the Vallistocracia in state politics, particularly against jefes políticos imposed by the state capital. Local conXicts, however, impeded unity on the Isthmus, because of the rivalry not only between Juchitán and Tehuantepec but also within Juchitán itself. Political confrontation between the elitest Rojos and the more populist Verdes (led by Che Gómez) had resulted in violence in the early 1880s. Although they were on a Wrst-name basis, President Díaz moved to keep Gómez out of Juchitán and working in various political positions throughout Mexico, for instance as a congressman for the district of Jaltipan, Veracruz, or as judge in Acapulco. When he insisted on returning to his patria chica to reclaim the jefatura política in 1910, political tension rose to the boiling point, Wnally culminating in his assassination in 1911 and the subsequent Chegomista rebellion. Thus Gómez emerged as a martyr for the struggle for indigenous usos y costumbres. Recast as a forerunner of democratic socialism by the progressive COCEI political movement, today Che Gómez is revered as a popular hero on the Isthmus.74 Not surprisingly, the most inXuential female cacica in Oaxaca during the PorWriato also hailed from the Isthmus. The women of the isthmian

weakened with the effects of modernization; the arrival of roads, a market economy, and industry eventually destroyed the caciques’ stranglehold. See González Casanova, Democracia en México, 48–49, and Laviada, Caciques de la sierra. 73. See Zarauz López, PorWriato, 153–55. 74. Ibid., 156ff.; Bustillos Bernal, Revolución en el Istmo; Ruiz Cervantes, “Promesas y saldos,” 27ff.; Campbell, Zapotec Renaissance, 32ff. On Che Gómez, see also de la Cruz, “Rebelión de los juchitecos,” 57–71; Cartas y telegramas del archivo José F. Gómez.

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districts of Juchitán and Tehuantepec were famous for their industriousness and independence. In control of local commerce in the markets, they were fond of wearing heavy gold jewelry to advertise their wealth. But Juana Catarina Romero (known popularly as Juana Cata), the venerated cacica and benefactress of the district capital of Tehuantepec, was in a class by herself, as we have seen in the growth of her economic empire. Her life has been the subject of myth and legend for more than a century (see Chapter 5).75 Juana Cata did not become cacica or gain respect solely because of her friendship with PorWrio Díaz, which endured until 1915, the year in which they both died. She emerged as the major merchant, hacendada, and Wnancial power in Tehuantepec because of her own hard work. Although she did not become literate until age thirty, she shrewdly managed all her own business interests and allegedly carried a concealed pistol (understandable in dangerous times). She became the richest person on the Isthmus on the eve of the Revolution, and dedicated her fortune to improvements for the city and inhabitants of her beloved Tehuantepec. She was responsible for the reconstruction of Tehuantepec’s cathedral, convent, municipal ofWce building, and cemetery. She founded and funded two Catholic schools, one for boys and another for girls, and supplied additional funds that enabled the best students to continue their education in the state capital.76 The careers of both Che Gómez and Juana Cata demonstrate that there were some notable exceptions to the negatives of caciquismo. Cacique rule, however, is never agreeable to all, although it is usually in the interest of the jefe político to establish good relations with the cacique. But when Pimentel appointed Demetrio Santibáñez jefe político of Tehuantepec, he and Juana Cata did not see eye to eye. European naturalist Hans Gadow, who traveled through the Isthmus in the early twentieth century, was quite impressed with Santibañez’s efWciency: 75. See, for instance, Covarrubias, Mexico South; Newbold de Chiñas, Mujeres de San Juan; Royce, Prestigio y aWliación. Rojas Pétriz, “Una tehuana de historia y leyenda,” 7ff. Everyone in Tehuantepec, especially the taxi drivers, tells stories about Juana Cata. See my biography of Juana Cata in three installments: “Juana Catarina Romero,” “Juana Cata: Empresaria,” and “Juana Catarina Romero: Cacica de Tehuantepec.” 76. Chassen [Chassen-López], “Juana Catarina Romero,” “Juana Cata: Empresaria,” and “Juana Catarina Romero: Cacica de Tehuantepec.” They won awards at the Crystal Palace in London and the World’s Fair in Saint Louis, Missouri. See Krauze, Místico de la autoridad, 109–10; AGEPEO, Feb. 1912, Gob., Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; Villalobos, “Doña Juana C. Romero,” 2.

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Don Demetrio, having cleared the district of not a few dangerous characters, and being honest, had many enemies, and slept in a well-barricaded room, guarded by some devoted henchmen. The greatest power in the town was a certain old woman, who ruled the place by means of her shrewdness and wealth, and through money lending had got many of the people into her hands. Every important transaction required her sanction, lest it should go awry. Illustrious strangers were supposed to call on her. It was no secret that she and the Prefect did not pull together, and that she used her best inXuence to prevent his approaching reappointment.77 We do not know what caused this rivalry. Possibly Santibañez did not like to share power with a woman, even a Tehuana as imposing as Juana Cata. When called upon to settle a domestic quarrel, Santibañez condescended to both spouses, calling them “my little ones” and promising to send the husband off to the army if they didn’t follow his counsel. While he infantilized and feminized the indigenous people, Gadow emphasized the jefe político’s virility: “exceptionally vigorous. . . . Tall, strongly built, fearless as a lion, he ruled the district with Wrmness and tact.”78 Both powerbrokers, formal or informal, male or female, exhibited a patriarchal style of rule, characteristic of PorWrian Mexico’s treatment of the workingclass and indigenous population. In order to rule effectively, Juana Cata too had to display masculine traits, and she succeeded in this brilliantly. But while male politicians often equated their wealth and power with virility and set up one or more mistresses in style, in a casa chica (small house) to demonstrate it, Doña Juana C. Romero, it must be remembered, never married. Had she married, her activities might well have been curtailed by the constraints imposed by a husband. As a single wealthy woman with no children of her own (although she adopted a nephew as her heir), she directed her energies to the care of her city, to education, music, public health, the reconstruction of public buildings and spaces, and the general beautiWcation of Tehuantepec. Her priorities were strikingly different 77. Gadow, Through Southern Mexico, 156–57. Juana Catarina Romero died in 1915 while en route to Mexico City to get medical attention. PorWrio Díaz died the same year in European exile. 78. Ibid., 155. Juana Cata had another long-term confrontation with a previous jefe político, Apolinar Márquez, whom she Wnally bested when he was transferred to jefatura política of Pochutla. See Chassen [Chassen-López], “Juana Catarina Romero, Cacica de Tehuantepec,” 37.

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from those we usually associate with caciques, and were closer to what some might characterize as “female gender interests.”79 Very much a “modernizing” cacique representative of “order and progress,” she constantly strove to introduce modernity to Oaxaca. Her interest in technology and the latest machinery, as well as in the newest methods of education, medicine, and public health, and her stake in beautifying her city, reveal this. After her Wrst trip to the United States, she exchanged her Tehuana dress for European clothing, just as she switched her tenates (baskets) of silver pesos for international bank drafts and her Mexican beer for that of St. Louis. She was even responsible for “modernizing” the native dress of the Tehuana (which she herself now only used for festivities) with European textiles and details such as the introduction of velvet and gold fringe. Caciquismo, then, is deWned by its informality. “Cacical power is transferred by noninstitutional means,” asserts Knight. “Hapsburg style, it translates informal socioeconomic power into political clout.” It was precisely the informal aspect that made this noninstitutional form of power accessible to a woman. Thus, as Díaz consolidated his control over national politics, he accommodated the “modern” ediWce of central government to the clientelist structures of regional power, leaving many caciques in place.80 This led Guerra, in his study of PorWrian politics and culture à la Furet, to characterize caciquismo as the vital link between two conXicting worlds: in principle, a modern, liberal regime, founded on individuals acting autonomously; in reality, a traditional system, built upon collective, corporate-based activity. The former relies on the free association of individuals, while the latter is held together by a network of personal ties and loyalties according to kinship or patronage. This “double Wction” of a people-nation provided Mexico’s “elites their double mission: to construct a nation and create a modern people” to populate it.81 Thus caciquismo reinvented itself once again to serve the interests of a new political regime. The cacique was simultaneously “the authority of traditional society, by political culture, a member of a political people, and a cog in the machinery of the modern state.” Within this scenario, 79. See Maxine Molyneux’s deWnition of practical and strategic gender interests in “Mobilization Without Emancipation?” 232–33. 80. Knight, “Historical Continuities,” 96–97; Guerra, México 2:13, 201, 376. 81. Guerra, México 1:127, 156–58, 165, 194.

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the person of PorWrio Díaz played the role of “true sovereign,” who uniWed all personal ties, represented the “will of the people,” and connected these two disparate universes. While Guerra’s analysis of the internal mechanisms of PorWrian politics is rich in detail and insight, it still rests on the dichotomy between the modern and the traditional. Although he protested that his use of this opposition did not necessarily imply a relation of superiority, such a value judgment is implicit in the internal hierarchy of the terms.82 The uncritical use of this dualist model compromises Guerra’s valuable study and permits it to be read as complicit with the supremacy of Western modernity and as an apology for PorWrian elites. It also fails to acknowledge the active role of Mexican campesinos in state formation. In the consolidation of his regime, PorWrio Díaz defeated the regional military caudillos who rebelled against him, while he made peace with those who submitted to his regime. As the Spanish Crown had imposed its domination through the use of traditional power structures, slowly changing their content, so Díaz captured control of national politics, using for his own ends the structures of regional caciquismo and caudillismo. Patronage was, after all, “the mortar and bricks that held together Díaz’ mansion of power.” Thus it was that the political and cultural institution of caciquismo in Oaxaca survived and prospered during the PorWriato. But the president clearly preferred modernizing caciques such as Juana Cata Romero and Juan Francisco Lucas in Puebla, because they balanced the liberal goals of economic progress with respect for the usos y costumbres of the indigenous peoples.83 As observed previously, the Sierra Juárez functioned as an important axis of political power in Oaxaca. Establishing Ixtlán as their headquarters, Fidencio Hernández and Francisco Meixueiro had expanded their power base as local caciques to encompass the entire Sierra Juárez and establish themselves as regional caudillos. They fought for Juárez against Díaz, but after Juárez’s death they allied themselves with PorWrio Díaz, who in turn recognized their hegemony in the Sierra Juárez. On the death of these two caudillos, their sons, who were also cousins and had been raised together, inherited their mantle. But now, instead of military heroes, 82. Ibid., 376, 13, 201 and 2:340. Informal conversation with the author, Mexico City, June, 2000. 83. Wells and Joseph, Summer of Discontent, 24; Thomson and LaFrance, Patriotism, Politics, and Popular Liberalism, 5.

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the new caudillos were civilian lawyers. The versatile modernizer, Guillermo Meixueiro, acted as cultural intermediary for the Serrano pueblos with local, state, and national governments. In times of peace, he functioned as a civil intermediary but could also assume a military role, as in Villa Alta in 1896 and again later, during the Sovereignty movement in 1915.84 By the early twentieth century, these caudillos controlled the majority of the pueblos of the Sierra Juárez, which included the districts of Ixtlán and Villa Alta, part of Choapan, and even parts of Cuicatlán and Tuxtepec. They imposed mayors, judges, and other authorities on the Sierra villages, and occasionally occupied key posts themselves. In 1911 Fidencio Hernández became jefe político of Ixtlán when the Revolution broke out in Tuxtepec. But the Serrano caudillos had to demonstrate the ability to defend the interests of the indigenous pueblos in order to maintain their position, as when Guillermo Meixueiro defended the communal lands of Lachatao.85 Although they represented the modernizing PorWrian state, they accommodated the demands of the pueblos to safeguard their tradition and customs. Their fathers had earned the title of caudillos in the traditional way, as military leaders in wartime, but the sons inherited and shared this role and seemed to work very well together. They present the unusual case of a shared or dual caudillismo that requires further study. As a young student, Genaro V. Vázquez (later state governor) remembered watching Meixueiro leave his house for the government ofWces followed by a train of Indians. Trying to impress his clients with his inXuence on the governor (and aware that an immediate resolution was not at hand), he would go in to speak with Pimentel while his clientele waited outside on the benches in the Zócalo. Courteously inquiring as to the governor’s delicate health, he would continue making small talk, “little by little moving Don Emilio out onto the balcony, pointing out the clouds, while below the amazed Indians watched their patron easily converse with that personage whom it was so difWcult to approach.”86 84. Pérez García, Sierra Juárez 2:131–36; Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca 4:53, and Oaxaca en la historia, 231; Berry, Reform in Oaxaca, 130–35. On Guillermo Meixueiro, see Ruiz Cervantes, “Oaxaca a la hora,” 163ff. and Meixueiro Hernández, Guillermo Meixueiro Delgado. 85. See Garner, “Federalism and Caudillismo,” 118–26; Pérez García, Sierra Juárez 1:241. Fidencio Hernández the younger had less personal presence in the region, as he had lived various years in Mexico City. 86. Vásquez was governor of Oaxaca between 1925 and 1928. Vásquez et al., Descripción de tipos, 13–14.

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The second generation of Sierra Juárez caudillos, Guillermo Meixueiro and Fidencio Hernández were well educated and quite distinct from their rustic fathers. Yet neither generation escaped the long list of campesino complaints against boss rule heard in the following protest from the municipal president of San Miguel Abejones to the minister of Gobernación: We and the particular elders of this pueblo are very often trying to communicate with you and with the president of Mexico asking for guarantees so that thieveries continue no more nor should our money, maize, nor bulls or cattle be stolen nor people forced into military service nor pay Wnes that Fidencio Hernández is yanking from us who says that Madero says it should be this way and our complaints are thrown out by him in Ixtlán—for that reason this communication goes by other means through the city of Oaxaca to see if it arrives because we ask for legal guarantees that the prejudices against us, the poor, rustic Indians are suffering the same as when old PorWrio Díaz was president, the same is doing Fidencio Hernández together with Guillermo Meixueiro, Onofre Jiménez, Federico Toro, Teodoro Ramírez, Manuel Pérez who is the teacher and other rogues who have banded together because they can speak both Castilla and the serrana language well, they are frightening all the unlettered people of all the pueblos, this Federico Toro was secretary of the Jefatura Política became rich for so much robbery and now ran from Ixtlán . . . it is nothing less than purely pitiful the harm they have done us those who are poor peaceful farmers . . . aside from those of Ixtepeji and the other pueblos that are Wlled with anger because of the motives of Fidencio and his rogue companions.87 The municipal president referred directly to the crucial role of caciques as cultural intermediaries, (they speak “both Castilla and the serrana 87. AGN, Gobernación, Período Revolucionario, caja 98, exp. 34, 1912, Communication addressed to the minister of Gobernación. These Serranos were attempting to get redress from the Maderista minister of Gobernación. They noted that since they had voted for Francisco Madero, they should be given guarantees against the caciques and caudillos of the Sierra. The serrana language is the dialect of Zapotec spoken there and Castilla refers to Spanish. I have tried to capture the tone of the original in my translation. Earlier, citizens of Ixtepeji complained that Francisco Meixueiro had imposed an unjust set of regulations on them. AGEPEO, June 1907, Gob., Disturbios Populares, Ixtlán.

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language well”), but this capacity was a double-edged sword, affording them privileges that they often abused. In addition to detailing local grievances against the abuse of power by caudillos and caciques (which were soon to Wnd an outlet in the Revolution), the letter quoted above refers to the ongoing conXict between the pueblos of Ixtlán and Santa Catarina Ixtepeji. Even more than political protest, inter-village feuding, related to extreme political fragmentation and the survival of communal landholding, was historically a signiWcant and ongoing source of violence in Oaxaca.

From Time Immemorial: Inter-village Feuding One of the longest and most bitter inter-village conXicts in the state festered precisely between Ixtlán and Ixtepeji. A sixteenth-century ofWcial, Juan Ximénez Ortiz, possibly the Wrst to initiate the colonialist discourse on Oaxaca’s “barbarous” and “cannibalistic” feuding peasants, denounced the pueblo of Ixtepeji for Wghting “with those of Chinantla, Chicomezuchitl, Zoquiapan, and other neighboring towns without any reason whatsoever but only for exercise, and they ate human Xesh of those they captured in battle.”88 Ixtepeji had been a prosperous economic and administrative center during the colonial period, but as the nineteenth century progressed, Ixtlán emerged as its major rival. The support that Ixtlán and its caudillos contributed to the Liberal cause during the Wars of the Reform and the French Intervention inspired President Juárez to transfer the district capital there. Such were the spoils of war and Liberal clientelism. Although Ixtepeji continued to enjoy economic power owing to its larger population, mining operations, and the Xía textile factory, the loss of its political hegemony fueled the enmity between the two towns.89 88. Quoted in Dennis, Inter-village ConXict in Oaxaca, 96–97. In the 1960s San Juan Teitipac in the Tlacolula district was accused of cannibalism by its neighbors when population pressures led it to attempt to appropriate land of neighboring villages. Sale, Conquest of Paradise, discusses the role of European images of savagery and cannibalism in the New World as justiWcation for the conquest and subjugation of the indigenous peoples of America. 89. The tragic denouement of this feud took place during the Ixtepejana Rebellion in 1912, when Ixtepeji was burned and its surviving inhabitants exiled. When the town was reconstructed after the Revolution, animosity resumed. Dennis, Inter-village ConXict in Oaxaca, 97–100. See Pérez García, Sierra Juárez, vols. 1-2, and “Primeros doce años del siglo XX” on the Ixtepejana rebellion. Also see Michael Kearney, Winds of Ixtepeji, 24–26.

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Oaxacan villages fought over parcels of land, boundaries and boundary markers, water rights, and damage caused by neighboring livestock, although disputes arose most frequently over parcels of land.90 The local authorities possessed neither the judicial nor the military resources to bring about a resolution of inter-village feuding. These conXicts were like smoldering embers that Xared up from time to time but were never completely extinguished. In other regions of Mexico, the struggle between peons and hacendados or between villages and neighboring haciendas often revolved around class conXicts. In Oaxaca, given the widespread retention of communal lands, the most violent and frequent confrontations took place between neighboring villages. Since quantitative and qualitative studies are in very short supply, interpretations of the causes of intervillage feuding vary wildly. Unfortunately, scholars have often brought their own prejudices to bear when dealing with this frustrating analytical problem. The people of Santiago Nuyoo attributed their longstanding conXict with Santa María Yucuiti in part to yatuni, that “burning pain of envy.” Like descriptions of family feuds in Appalachia, inter-village conXicts in Oaxaca have been characterized as the consequence of ignorance, poverty, and the anarchic, uncivilized behavior of violent or deviant people. In their study of Appalachian feuding, Kathleen Blee and Dwight Billings have criticized scholars use of “primal and animalistic terms common to colonialist genres.” Similar terms appear in discussions of Oaxaca, from Ximénez’s early denunciation of the “cannibalistic” Ixtepejanos to Paul Garner’s more recent reference to “atavistic territorial disputes” and Rodolfo Pastor’s coinage of the belittling term pleitismo (which carries disparaging connotations not captured by the English translation “disputism”).91 Anthropologists have often focused on violent behavior. Ronald Spores has identiWed an extensive “conXict ethos” in the Mixteca during the colonial period. In a study of “violent” and “anti-violent” villages in the Central Valleys, John Paddock concluded that violent village communities were the norm. He attributed the difference between villages to their child-rearing practices. Véronique Flanet entitled her study of violence on 90. Spores includes a longer list of sources of conXict in Mixtecs, 220. 91. Billings and Blee, “‘Where the Sun Set Crimson,’” 338. Garner, “Constitutionalist Reconstruction in Oaxaca,” 80; Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 189. Michael Kearney also sees the serranos’ disputes as irrational, in Winds of Ixtepeji. On Appalachia, also see Eller, Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers, xviff. and Waller, Feud.

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the Costa Chica of Oaxaca Viviré si Dios quiere (“I will survive if it is God’s will”).92 In their rebuttal of the “subculture of violence” thesis with respect to Appalachia, Blee and Billings underscored the “circular reasoning and dubious historical evidence” upon which it rests. Appalachians were alleged to engage in violent feuds because their Scotch-Irish ancestors had brought over these traditions from the Old World. By demonstrating a great diversity among the settlers of the region, the authors discredited this theory, which essentialized an entire population.93 The same can be said for the indigenous villages of Oaxaca, whose violent disputes cannot be explained away by essentialist and ahistorical interpretations. The need for historical context in the analysis of local disputes is evident. In his research on the Mixteca, Pastor discerned a correlation between growing political fragmentation, a consequence of the deterioration of the power of the colonial caciques in the middle of the eighteenth century, and the increase in the absolute number of conXicts between villages for the same period. Both he and Romero Frizzi, in separate studies, concluded that the combination of demographic growth and the expansion of commercial agriculture led to greater pressure by comuneros on the limited resource of land in the colonial Mixteca. This scenario was further complicated by the growing privatization of this land and political fragmentation, a conjuncture that resulted in the increase of intervillage feuding.94 If conXicts increased at moments of commercialization in agriculture and demographic growth, then we should be able to observe more confrontation during the late nineteenth century, a time of growth in both commercial agriculture and population. But in fact the data seem to suggest that while inter-village feuding intensiWed during the PorWriato, it was most visible not in the regions of PorWrian development but in the more traditional regions, where population growth was slower, or stable, and where commercial agriculture penetrated to a lesser degree. Given the 92. Spores, Mixtecs, 224; Paddock, “Studies,” 217–33, and “A New Look,” 1–22; Flanet, Viviré si Dios quiere. I have also made use of Margaret Brown’s 1990 term paper, “Historical Parallels: Appalachian Feuds and Inter-village ConXict in Mexico.” 93. Blee and Billings, “Violence and Local State Formation,” 671ff. and Billings and Blee, Road to Poverty. I am grateful to to Dwight Billings, Karen Tice, and Kathie Blee for animated conversations on feuds and conXicts in Appalachia. 94. Pastor, interview; Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 189–90; Romero Frizzi, “Epoca Colonial,” 173–78.

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dearth of statistical studies, no pattern can yet be discerned with respect to economic growth.95 Cultural anthropologist Philip Dennis examined the conXict between Zautla and Mazaltepec in the Etla district of the Central Valleys. The Wrst documents relating to this conXict date from 1694; in 1965 people were still being murdered over the same two pieces of land. Dennis concluded that the villages of Oaxaca, whether in the colonial period or the present, engage in this type of conXict not primarily for economic reasons but in order to preserve their internal cohesion. He proposed that the defense of community requires an external enemy, which tends to reinforce internal cohesion. This type of cultural argument exasperates historians like Pastor because it ignores vital historical factors.96 Still, Dennis’s theories cannot be dismissed lightly. In later works, he Wne-tuned his argument to underscore the signiWcant role of the state in the development of these conXicts. Spores had observed that during the colonial period, “the political system not only managed but traditionalized and institutionalized conXict. It became the way of life of the region, affecting every community in one way or another at one time or another.” A system had been created that permitted and even “legitimized” conXicts. Dennis took this argument a step further and proposed that authorities actually encouraged inter-village feuding as a type of social control, for villagers channeled energy into these confrontations that might otherwise have been turned against the state. As with the profusion of tiny municipalities, a divide-and-conquer strategy averted the danger of campesino coalitions and kept communities isolated and opposed. As long as villagers depended on the state for the settlement of disputes, the state’s role as social arbiter held Wrm and patronage politics were reinforced, as each village sought patrons to protect them. None other than Serrano caudillo Guillermo Meixueiro defended the interests of Mazaltepec against Zautla.97 95. Various sources are available for research on inter-village disputes: there is a wealth of Wles in the state archives, the newspapers of the period, and even the PorWrio Díaz Collection, because pueblos constantly took their complaints directly to the president. See, for example, the various communications and documents dealing with the conXict between Magdalena Yodocono and San Vicente Nuñú in CPD, Letters, leg. 27, caja 5. On the long conXict between San Miguel Cuevas and Santa Catarina Noltepec in the district of Juxtlahuaca, see AGEPEO, April, 1907, Gob., Disputas entre pueblos, Juxtlahuaca. 96. Dennis, “Uses of Inter-village Feuding,” 174–84; “Inter-village ConXict,” 43–66; and Inter-village ConXict in Oaxaca; Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 190. 97. Dennis, “Inter-village ConXict,” 53, and Inter-village ConXict in Oaxaca, 11, 67, 141, 179ff.; Spores, Mixtecs, 223–24.

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In his study of blood feuds in Juquila on the Costa, anthropologist James Greenberg dropped any pretense of objectivity, as his relative by marriage, Don Fortino, played a major role in conXicts there. Greenberg was careful to examine both internal and external factors in historical context, directly connecting the introduction of coffee with the district’s extremely high homicide rates and blood feuds. Intimately related to local issues, violence was also the “consequence of conXicts and social processes that went far beyond the village.” Like billiard balls bouncing off the banks and crashing into one another, these outside forces propel blood feuds. In this game, factionalism and blood feuds serve as mechanisms of social control to undermine the effectiveness of consensual politics. To extend the metaphor, the game of factional and consensual politics is not played on a level table but on a table whose institutional contours are the historical production of the game itself, a game in which some of the balls have greater political and economic weight than others.98 While both Dennis and Greenberg add crucial political and social elements to the discussion and recognize unequal access to political and economic power, their interpretations tend to reduce campesinos to objects (billiard balls) or victims manipulated by the state devoid of agency. When we revisit the question of why Díaz permitted his native state to remain so politically fragmented, it becomes evident that it simply wasn’t always his or the governor’s decision. Power continually shifted among various competing groups. The Centro lacked the capability to centralize all power given the relational and capillary aspects of power and the relative autonomy of indigenous villages, which villagers resolutely defended. Interestingly, ethnicity did not usually factor into these conXicts. Political fragmentation began with the breakup of colonial cacicazgos and the institution of repúblicas de indios (which had lasted longer in Oaxaca than in other states) and continued after Independence as the number of municipios in Oaxaca grew. In 1861 Borlado governor Ramón Cajiga 98. Greenberg differentiated between the politics of patronage [clientelism] and that of consensus exhibited in mass demonstrations or land invasions. While local “elites try to mold a consensus through patronage, the underground currents of consensus are not easily controlled and often run counter to the elite’s wishes” (Blood Ties, 9, 16–17).

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complained that the indigenous authorities of the pueblos “put themselves above the law, they get mixed up in what should be judicial proceedings, they promote complicated and very unjust conXicts . . . they want to deal with the government as if they were independent and sovereign foreign powers . . . so that amplifying the orbit in which the municipalities should operate, they have taken over powers that have never been granted by the law.” A hundred years later, in 1965, anthropologist Julio de la Fuente still likened Oaxaca’s villages to those “small, sovereign states,” each “like a small republic, the enemy of the others because of various disputes—among which predominate disputes related to questions of the land, which is very scarce.”99 From the ofWcial perspective, better to have these pueblos Wghting among themselves than against the government. Besides, in this way PorWrio Díaz could still appear to support municipal autonomy, which he had championed in both the Plan of La Noria and the Plan of Tuxtepec. In addition, inter-village disputes posed no immediate threat to the PorWrian political machine. They kept considerable sectors of the rural population atomized and Wxed on local conXicts in very much the way Dennis and Greenberg imagined. This distracted campesinos from more classbased or ethnic sources of discontent that might have been capable of generating regional or national movements. The historical fear of caste war persisted throughout nineteenth-century Mexico, especially in Oaxaca.100 Of course, the extreme political fragmentation of so many municipios and agencias municipales, and the numerous inter-village conXicts, were a time-consuming administrative nightmare for local PorWrian ofWcials, as jefe político Salvador Bolaños Cacho had complained. Although, on the one hand, Díaz’s national government sought to centralize power, on the other, paradoxically, political fragmentation and centripetal forces could also serve its needs. No doubt state formation was a highly complicated and contradictory process. The question of inter-village feuding urgently requires more sophisticated methods of analysis. In particular, there is a need for longitudinal 99. Cajiga quoted in Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, 450; de la Fuente quoted in Dennis, Inter-village ConXict in Oaxaca, 4–5. 100. Arturo Warman argued that the manipulation and “network of control” that keep Mexico’s peasants “atomized in thousands of small units that live in mutual antagonism” assure their weak organization despite their large numbers. Quoted in Dennis, “Inter-village ConXict,” 55, and Inter-village ConXict in Oaxaca, 153.

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and latitudinal studies, the former to analyze a particular feud in historical context over time, detecting phases of conXict and their internal and external variables, and the latter to compare and contrast various conXicts in a speciWc historical period in order to distinguish the dynamic interplay of factors. In any case, discontent and grievances were on the rise in late PorWrian Oaxaca, as they were in other states of Mexico. Political consciousness reXected the uneven patterns of economic development and access to political space. Areas of PorWrian capitalist development, which experienced the growth of working- and middle-class sectors, became more aware of the disparities and protested against injustice: a burgeoning Liberal opposition appeared in precisely those areas. Santa María Yucuiti’s longstanding defense of communal lands brought with it engagement in state and national politics. Neighboring Santiago Nuyoo’s retention of its lands was typical of more marginal areas where national political consciousness had yet to emerge. Yet these two villages maintained an ongoing inter-village conXict. The 1902 crisis signaled the emergence of the middle class as a permanent factor in Oaxacan politics. But its political baptism, even while it thwarted González’s bid to stay in power, turned into a pyrrhic victory. If the middle sectors had chafed under González’s corrupt and arbitrary administration, they found Pimentel’s regime far worse. It exacerbated political closure and did nothing to remedy the political abuses rampant throughout the state. Juarista liberalism would now undergo a third reincarnation. Reformulated by a middle- and working-class alliance, it became an ideology of opposition and Wnally of revolution. The great perpetuator of the unifying liberal myth would be branded as its greatest betrayer.

10 Precursor Politics I solemnly swear, with no reservations, upon my word of honor and faith as a gentleman, my unconditional adhesion to liberal principles and to the Laws of the Reform. I also swear to sustain, defend, and propagate, as my own, the political creed of the Reformer Juárez and to make democracy in government a reality by all the means at my disposal. —Protest, Article 4, Statutes of the Juárez Association, Oaxaca, Oaxaca 1905

“Mexico Has a Middle Class Now” In 1908 PorWrio Díaz boasted that “Mexico has a middle class now; but she had none before. The middle class is the active element in society, here as elsewhere.” Middle sectors had expanded in states as diverse as Sonora, Guerrero, and Hidalgo as a result of the increase in rancheros and small landholders and the need for professionals and service sectors in the towns and cities. Although its population remained largely rural, Oaxaca too experienced this expansion, particularly in the Central Valleys and the regions of PorWrian development.1 By the Wrst decade of the twentieth century, middle sectors from all over Mexico, including Oaxaca, clamored for a voice and for the democratization of the political system. Thus, despite regional differences, those who suffered the despotism of Mucio Martínez in Puebla or Emilio Pimentel in Oaxaca could sympathize with the complaints against Enrique Creel in Chihuahua. Grievances against the abuse of political power were sufWciently analogous that local oppositions began to recognize the advantages of allying themselves with 1. Entrevista Díaz-Creelman, 240; see Aguilar Camín, Frontera nómada, Jacobs, Ranchero Revolt; Schryer, Rancheros of PisaXores, and Chassen [Chassen-López], “Oaxaca,” (Ph.D. diss.), chaps. 3 and 5. On the rancher economy of the Costa Chica, see ChassenLópez, “Maderismo or Mixtec Empire?”

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an expanding national movement. The economic crisis of 1907 hit these middle-class Mexicans hard and gave new impetus to this opposition.2 Much has been written on the history of the precursor movement to the Mexican Revolution, but rarely has the native state of PorWrio Díaz been included in these accounts. Oaxaca supposedly remained quiescent during the 1910 Revolution that engulfed most of Mexico. The state has been labeled PorWrista, Juarista, conservative, traditional, and reactionary, but rarely revolutionary.3 The present chapter challenges this passive image and reveals how in Oaxaca urban professionals and artisans, along with rural ranchers and townspeople, formed a middle-class opposition. It uncovers the extensive inXuence of the moderate opposition as well as the radical liberalism of Ricardo Flores Magón’s Mexican Liberal Party, and suggests a relationship between the radical opposition and the regions of PorWrian development. The weaknesses and limits of this opposition also become apparent. Since political culture in early twentieth-century Oaxaca developed within the “imagined traditions” of its native sons, Juarismo became a football whose possession was contested on the political playing Weld. The dual legacy of Juarismo and PorWrismo emerged as the major obstacle for the organization of an effective opposition movement. Only a small fraction of the most radical opposition transcended this constricting legacy and was able to disengage their loyalty from Díaz. They turned to Juárez’s legacy to envision a more mass-based, populist political system.4 Emphasizing the closure of the political system, after 1968 revisionist historians challenged the agrarian populist interpretation of the Mexican Revolution. They emphasized the lack of social mobility, of the “career open to talents,”5 among middle-class professionals as a cause of 2. See Ruiz, Great Rebellion, 45ff.; Aguilar Camín, Frontera nómada; Wasserman, Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution; Cockcroft, Intellectual Precursors, part 1; and Falcón, Revolución y caciquismo. 3. Ruiz, Great Rebellion, 23; Jacobs, Ranchero Revolt, ix, xx; Brading “Introduction,” 15; Garner, Revolución en la provincia. 4. Chapter 8 demonstrated that the break in continuity between Juárez and Díaz was more imagined than real. On the precursors, see Chassen [Chassen-López], “Precursores,” and “Orígenes.” 5. This question is seen by some as the kind of discontent that leads to revolution. For example, Brinton, Anatomy of Revolution, 60; Hobsbawm, Age of Revolution, chap. 10; and Theda Skocpol’s discussion in States and Social Revolutions, 9–11. Personal frustration with political closure, the lack of the career open to talents, is not an explanation of revolution in itself but a single element within the overall picture. Only when individual resentments

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increasing frustration and resentment. CientíWco domination of politics and a growing generation gap aggravated this closure. The regime had begun to resemble a gerontocracy: PorWrio Díaz celebrated his seventyWfth birthday in 1905, while the average age for ministers, governors, and senators was seventy. Díaz’s failure to construct a system that allowed for peaceful presidential succession aroused general apprehension throughout the nation. Despite the growth of the middle class, the oligarchic political system could not or would not open its doors to what would become its “ungrateful scion,” and one historian warned that “a society that shunts aside its progeny carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction.”6

Local Grievances: “Pain, Tears, and Misery” In Oaxaca, loyalty to the president ran deep and cut across all social sectors, from campesinos to elites.7 The growing split between CientíWcos and Anti-CientíWcos on the national level continued to reverberate in state politics; after the election of Pimentel, opposition to local abuses and the Anti-CientíWco stance became the chief bond among oppositionists throughout the state. Jefes políticos, municipal presidents, and district judges employed their power to accumulate personal wealth and to shield exploitation by local oligarchies. But undoubtedly the abuses of tax collection generated the most discontent, and the memory of the 1896 revolt lived on in the minds of Oaxacan elites and the middle class. Regardless of judicial complaints pending against him in the districts of Miahuatlán and Teotitlán del Camino for misappropriation of government lead to participation in organizations can this frustration be channeled, along with other important factors (e.g., ideological and economic), into political action. On Mexico, see Falcón, “Orígenes populares.” 6. Ruiz, Great Rebellion, 44; González, “Liberalismo triunfante,” 246. Despite Díaz’s recognition of the middle class in the quotation above, cabinet minister Jorge Vera Estañol later noted that the old regime failed to fathom this “shift of the center of social gravity” and, “Succumbing to a rapid process of petriWcation, the PorWrians failed to seek a formula to reestablish the state’s political equilibrium and instead hung on to its old stereotyped methods and a bureaucracy that was by now as rigid as a corpse” (Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, 92). 7. Numerous letters in the CPD demonstrate how not only the Oaxacan elites but also working-class people, rural and urban, addressed the president on a myriad of subjects, both personal and political. There are also letters seeking favors from soldiers who fought with Díaz during his campaigns. Invariably the letters manifest a great deference toward the president and a pride in a shared patria chica.

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funds, the governor appointed Manuel Esperón y de la Flor jefe político in the prosperous coffee-producing district of Pochutla. He continued to exploit political ofWce, rapidly amassing capital of $18,000. The Liberal newspaper of the city of Oaxaca dubbed him the “horse of Attila, sowing destruction wherever it went” and called his legacy one of “Pain, tears and misery.” Esperón followed the custom of corrupt jefes políticos, consigning his enemies to military duty either to silence them or to deprive them of their property, or both. Accounts of his despotic rule reached the Oaxacan-born Flores Magón brothers, who had been forced into exile for their opposition to Díaz. They denounced Esperón in their radical newspaper, Regeneración, now published in Saint Louis, Missouri. Given its cordial relations with the U.S. government, the Díaz administration encouraged Esperón y de la Flor to charge the Flores Magón brothers with defamation and libel. U.S. authorities proceeded to close down Regeneración, cancel its mailing rights, and imprison the brothers.8 Esperón y de la Flor traveled to St. Louis for the hearings. When the outcome looked bleak, his wife, an attractive forty-Wve-year-old woman, entered the courtroom “dressed in black as if in mourning, dramatizing her demand that she too had been defamed in the article.” Her sudden appearance impressed the court, which ordered the detention of the accused and set bail at 10,000 dollars. Despite the joint effort of U.S., German, and Russian liberals and socialists to pay their bail, the Flores Magón brothers remained in jail until January 1906 for daring to criticize this jefe político.9 The multitude of functions delegated to the jefes políticos afforded them ample opportunity to abuse ordinary citizens and to procure handsome proWts, a situation denounced regularly by Oaxaca’s dissident press. Incensed by the governor’s yearly message to the local Congress in September 1905, the editors of El Bien Público formulated a lengthy list of irregularities known to the people of Oaxaca, who had long “suffered the oppression of these executioners known as the jefes políticos.” They ridiculed the governor’s message line by line: 8. Proceso de la administración; Barrera Fuentes, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, 160. The abuses of Esperón were denounced in Regeneración and in El Bien Público, Oct. 15, 1905. On jefes políticos in San Luis Potosí, see Falcón, “Orígenes populares,” 201–2; on Chihuahua, see Wasserman, “Social Origins,” 16. Esperón was probably a relative of the sugar-producing family. 9. Turner, Ricardo Flores Magón, 76.

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“Executing with precision and fervor the orders of their superiors.” Before we thought that all the abuses attributed to the jefes políticos were committed on their own, shielded by the impunity with which their ofWce is endowed, but now the people know that they function so, precisely and fervently with the knowledge of their superiors. That means that the government has authorized them to exact forced labor for works that are not always for public beneWt; to impose excessive Wnes for small offenses, being widely known that the monetary punishment is not measured in relation to the misdemeanor but in direct relation to the wealth of the victim; to sell unfortunate wretches to the slave-selling contractors of labor when they cannot pay the Wnes; and even to kill innocents. . . . From this day forward and while Sr. Pimentel still decides the destiny of this state, the jefes políticos will have carte blanche to commit all their abuses.10 Endemic political abuses by local authorities would provoke Oaxaca’s Wrst revolutionary uprising in 1911, in the prosperous town of Ojitlán, district of Tuxtepec. Yet as early as January 1905 a group of middle-class citizens of Ojitlán (including the merchant-rancher Sebastián Ortiz) Wled a complaint with the governor accusing the town council, and especially the municipal president and the council secretary, of “daily committing all kinds of abuses and insults and constantly breaking the law [and] ignoring the civil guarantees of honest citizens.” This document cited members of the town council as accomplices of the notorious jefe político, Rodolfo Pardo, the watchdog of the local oligarchy (owners of large tobacco and coffee slave plantations). The jefe político and members of the town council played a vital role in this dreadful system. Rather than assess the large hacendados, these ofWcials imposed illegal taxes on the smaller tobacco planters. They failed to carry out the necessary public works required of the municipal government, nor did they maintain and repair public services such as roads and bridges. They also neglected to hold the obligatory 10. El Bien Público, Oct. 1, 1905. Political prefects also used the resources of the state to serve their personal needs. The jefe político of Cuicatlán forced the town council to acquiesce in the building of a canal that drained his personal properties to avoid Xooding. When one of the council members protested, he ended up in jail for two months. This same jefe político later carried on a vicious campaign of persecution against the liberal club of Cuicatlán. See Regeneración, April 23, Aug. 7, Sept. 15, and Oct. 7, 1901, in Flores Magón, Regeneración.

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municipal elections, denying the citizens their right to vote. If a member of the town council dared to question these procedures, he was replaced.11 When the citizens of Ojitlán requested the removal of the mayor and jefe político, the governor replied that such crimes were not within his jurisdiction and directed them to communicate with the judicial authorities.12 In this manner Pimentel disassociated himself from the problem; as long as the regional oligarchies remained loyal to the state capital, they received carte blanche in their own districts. The governor, steadfastly defending the interests of the local elites, ignored the mounting resentment.

“To Contain the Advance of Clericalism” Although the Díaz regime’s effort to encourage nationalism by perpetuating a myth of the linear unity of Mexican liberalism, from Hidalgo to Juárez to Díaz, had been quite successful (especially at the popular level, with the growth in national holiday celebrations and the rewriting of history in textbooks at all levels of education), radical liberalism had never disappeared completely. Opposition to Díaz’s rule continued to surface in national and provincial newspapers, and in “sporadic but noisy public demonstrations” throughout the PorWriato.13 Speaking in Paris in June 1900, Ignacio Montes de Oca, the Bishop of San Luis Potosí, hailed the renewed inXuence of the Church. Incensed by this boast, a group of anticlerical liberals, led by Camilo Arriaga, called for the revival of liberalism and set February 5, 1901 (the anniversary of the 1857 Constitution), as the date for a national convention. Arriaga’s appeal led to the founding of Wfty liberal clubs throughout the nation. These clubs sought to revitalize the Liberal Party, which had lain dormant since Díaz’s rise to power. They raised the banner of Benito Juárez 11. AGEPEO, Jan. 1905, Gob., Abuso de Autoridad, Tuxtepec. See Chapter 3 on the slave trade and Turner, Barbarous Mexico, chaps. 4–5. The authorities of Tuxtepec arbitrarily Wned individuals, and those who could not pay were seized and sent to the plantations. As we have seen, the authorities received kickbacks from the planters for each laborer. 12. AGEPEO, Jan. 1905, Gob., Abuso de Autoridad, Tuxtepec. 13. The “old complaint of the independent liberals” as to “the lack of any political participation” united the new opposition in the Wrst decade of the twentieth century. See Cosío Villegas, Vida Política Interior 2:629, 623, 633. Despite the constant sojourns of its editor, Filomeno Mata, in the Belén prison, the Diario del Hogar kept the Liberal and anticlerical spirit alive.

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and the nineteenth-century Liberal Reform: to “contain the advance of clericalism.”14 On December 12, 1900, in the town of Cuicatlán in the Cañada region, Oaxaca’s Wrst liberal club of the twentieth century, the Club Liberal Regenerador Benito Juárez, was organized. Its founder, Rafael Odriozola, came from an old Liberal family of Tlacolula. In 1890 he had been secretary to the jefe político of Jamiltepec and had manifested an early interest in social justice. Married in 1892, he moved to the prosperous town of Cuicatlán in the Cañada. Odriozola maintained a lively correspondence with radical liberals throughout Mexico, including Filomeno Mata, Roque Estrada, and the Flores Magón brothers.15 The Club Liberal Regenerador Benito Juárez proposed to struggle through “the press and through public denunciations so that in the twentieth century our constitution reigns in all its vigor, in exaltation of the fatherland.” Its goal was to “propagate among the popular masses democratic principles in order to regenerate them from the barbarian state which—in the shadow of our political indifference—the nefarious, retrograde party has tried to submerge them.” In a document signed by Benjamin L. de Guevara, president, Rafael Odriozola, vice president, and José Escalante, secretary, they seconded the proclamation made in San Luis. The members of Cuicatlan’s liberal club were of middle-class origins, mainly small merchants (Odriozola) and small landowners. Benjamín L. de Guevara, however, was a wealthy merchant, descendant of Cuicatlán’s pre-Columbian caciques.16 The following month, a group of women of Cuicatlán, many of them wives of club members, organized to publicly embrace the liberal credo, following in the footsteps of women across Mexico. The women of Cuicatlán responded in particular to a declaration made by the “Daughters 14. Camilo Arriaga was a mining engineer and nephew of the radical Liberal of the 1857 Constitutional Convention, Ponciano Arriaga. The son of an elite family that had suffered losses in recent years, he resented the growing inXuence of foreign capital in his state. Having studied in Europe, Arriaga acquired a respectable library of radical literature, which he generously lent out to friends and acquaintances. His club also invited survivors of the 1856 Constitutional Convention to the 1901 Liberal Congress, among them Ignacio Mariscal, secretary of Foreign Relations, and Supreme Court Judge Félix Romero, although they did not attend. Cockcroft, Intellectual Precursors, 64–68, 92–93; Falcón, Revolución y caciquismo, chap. 1; Cosío Villegas, Vida Política Interior 2:628, 690. 15. Quintero Figueroa, “Trayectoria política,” 456–68. 16. Ibid., 464. Hernández, “Delegaciones al Congreso Liberal,” 3; Adán, “Cuicatecos actuales,” 138.

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of Zitácuaro” in the state of Michoacán. In a daring manifesto, the Cuicatecas joined the anticlerical crusade, challenging the inXuence of the Catholic Church. “The women of Mexico have been until today, the instrument of lewd passions and an insurmountable barrier to the rapid development of progress by reason of the cancerous virus, religious fanaticism, which has hypocritically inWltrated them. Like the Boer heroines who in order to evict the invader had to rise and unite, so must the women of Mexico resolve to combat clericalism, as the most fearful and cunning enemy of our honor, our conscience and our fatherland.”17 Interestingly, Cuicatlán was one of the towns in Oaxaca where Protestantism had taken hold. Along with Masons, Spiritists, and mutual societies, Protestant groups have been seen as part of a new, modernizing sociability that emphasized individualism, particularly individual civil rights, and democratization within historically traditional, corporatist societies. Protestant schools established in Mexico, such as the Methodist school in Puebla, educated their students to function in an individualist political culture rather than a collectivist, corporatist one. Protestants therefore had a natural afWnity with Juarismo and the Reform, which worked to ensure the secular society in which they could function freely. According to the Mixtecan Methodist revolutionary Hilario Salas, “true liberalism” considered the 1857 Constitution and the Reform Laws the Bible, Hidalgo and Juárez akin to Moses, Ocampo Christlike, and the people of Mexico the spiritual descendants of the Israelites.18 Thus this imagined tradition of Juarismo served to bind opposition groups in the early years of the twentieth century. Protestantism found fertile ground in areas that were in the process of the transition to capitalism but whose situation was still precarious. Areas being built up around railroads, such as Zitácuaro in Michoacán, one of the largest Protestant areas or the Oaxacan Cañada region, were possibilities, and Protestants acquired converts not only in Cuicatlán but also in Cuyamecalco and Teutila. Methodists made inroads by building good schools. Benjamín L. de Guevara, president of the Cuicatlán club, strongly sympathized with the Methodists and later converted. Leopoldo A. García served as the pastor 17. Quintero Figueroa, “Trayectoria política,” 466–67. 18. A few important Oaxacan revolutionaries attended the Instituto Metodista Mexicano in Puebla, among them Leopoldo A. García, Herón N. Ríos, and Hilario Salas, or were Protestants. See Bastián, Disidentes sociedades protestantes, 15ff., 143, 168. 220ff., and “Sociedades protestantes.”

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of the Methodist congregation in Cuicatlán between 1905 and 1908, and later was active in the Revolution. It should thus not surprise us that the Cuicatecos were in contact with the Liberals of Zitácuaro, or that they were represented at the Wrst Liberal Congress.19 But despite this female activism in the public sphere, women still made a separate statement from that of the men. The Wrst Liberal Congress convened on February 5, 1901, with more than Wfty delegates in attendance. The absence of the working class was striking, as journalists, lawyers, doctors, engineers, students, and teachers met in the city of San Luis Potosí. Rafael Odriozola attended as the representative of Oaxaca. Not until Ricardo Flores Magón stood up and shouted, “Sirs, the administration of PorWrio Díaz is a den of thieves!” did the Congress turn from anticlericalism to face the question of political discontent. Many delegates cheered this shift in focus, while others felt decidedly uncomfortable. Arriaga asked, “Where will this man lead us?”20 The romantic life and “libertarian passion” of Ricardo Flores Magón has attracted numerous biographers. This most famous of the precursors of the Mexican Revolution was born in the highlands of Oaxaca, in the town of San Antonio Eloxochitlán in the district of Teotitlán. His father had been a Liberal soldier in the War of French Intervention, during which he met a mestiza from Puebla on the battleWeld and later married her. The family eventually left Oaxaca and moved to Mexico City to assure the sons access to a better education. All the same, their early childhood in the highlands of Oaxaca, where communal land tenure dominated, clearly inXuenced their agrarian radicalism. Although the Flores Magón brothers never returned to their native state, they maintained an intense interest in their patria chica, staying in close communication with liberals there. Their Oaxacan connection played a signiWcant role in bringing the radicals in the state into direct contact with the national Magonista movement. The three brothers initiated their opposition to the Díaz regime as student activists in Mexico City in the 1890s. In 1900 they began to publish Regeneración, later the most inXuential organ of protest. Founded to critique the PorWrian judicial system, it soon became an “independent journal of combat.” By the time Ricardo attended the Wrst Liberal Congress, 19. Adán, “Cuicatecos actuales,” 148; Bastián, Disidentes sociedades protestantes, 15, 218ff. 20. Cockcroft, Intellectual Precursors, 95–96; Barrera Fuentes, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, 43–62.

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he was already a radical among liberals, and he later forged his own brand of agrarian anarchism.21 Although the conclusions of the Wrst Liberal Congress remained within the conWnes of anticlericalism, many Liberals began to criticize the Díaz regime openly. From the defense of Juarism and the Liberal Reform, this new opposition took the offensive against PorWrismo. The liberal club of San Luis attacked the dictatorship, its semiofWcial press, and “the personalist, antidemocratic and incorrectly designated CientíWco party,” proclaiming the need to form an authentic national party. The Díaz government quickly responded to the burgeoning liberal movement by forcing the liberal clubs to disband or go underground. Between 1901 and 1902 it imprisoned Wfty journalists and closed down forty-two newspapers. Cuicatlán’s liberal club was now forced to hold clandestine meetings in Odriozola’s home.22 Their exposé of the abuses of an ex-jefe político of Huajuapan de León, Luis G. Córdoba, got the Flores Magón brothers jailed on charges of defamation and libel. While they languished in prison, the government closed the ofWces of the liberal newspaper Diario del Hogar for printing Regeneración with their machinery. Their continual denunciation of political abuses in their native state landed the Flores Magón brothers in jail more than once, but the spread of liberal ideas and the founding of clubs could not be arrested. Regeneración had published a call by Manuel Loaeza to form a liberal club in the district of Jamiltepec on the Costa Chica of Oaxaca in May 1901. The July 15 edition of Regeneración reported the formation of the Club Liberal Reformista Ignacio Ramírez in the city of Oaxaca. In Tehuantepec local authorities persecuted the editor of El Eco del Istmo, Rafael Márquez, for his liberal activities.23 21. See Hernández Padilla, Magonismo; Flores Magón et al., Regeneración 1900–1918; Albro, Always a Rebel; Kaplan, Combatimos la tiranía, 9, 55. After 1908 Ricardo announced his adhesion to anarchism, which thereafter reduced the inXuence of Magonistas on the Revolution. 22. Cockcroft, Intellectual Precursors, 92–102; Quintero Figueroa, “Trayectoria política,” 458ff. Ricardo Flores Magón penned a series of biographical sketches of the delegates to the First Liberal Congress. Describing Oaxaca’s representative, he wrote, “Odriozola has all the nervous energy, initiative and spirit of self-denial of the sons of the tropics. He is valiant like all good Oaxacans, and thus hates all tyrants, because the liberty one breathes in those highlands develops the spirit and lets liberal sentiments penetrate to the soul. The south has always hated tyrants.” Quoted in Barrera Fuentes, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, 11. 23. Barrera Fuentes, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, 77; Turner, Ricardo Flores Magón, 36–38; Regeneración, June 7, and July 15, 1901, in Flores Magón, Regeneración; Regeneración, Jan. 15, 1901 quoted in Maldonado, “Instintos salvajes,” 107–8.

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Despite nationwide repression, the liberals planned a second Liberal Congress for February 1902. They continued to appeal to prominent liberals in the Díaz administration for support, but most ignored them. On June 28, 1901, the Ponciano Arriaga Liberal Club of San Luis published a plea to congressional representatives Rosendo Pineda, Francisco Bulnes, PorWrio Parra, Benito Juárez Maza, and Juan A. Mateos, advising them of the new program against the insurgency of the Church. To Benito Juárez Maza they wrote, “You, Sr. Juárez, carry the illustrious name, the name of the most illustrious genius of América, who put the clergy in their place.” They implored him to support the liberal movement and its resolutions, but Juárez Maza, a federal deputy at the time, did not get involved in opposition politics until much later.24 The second Liberal Congress, still declaring anticlericalism its main theme, included new items on its agenda: the need for democratic elections, freedom of the press, the defense of municipal autonomy, the suppression of the jefes políticos, and the agrarian question. While planning for this Congress proceeded during 1901, the number of liberal clubs of Mexico grew to 150 in deWance of ofWcial repression. Nonetheless, government intervention prevented the second Liberal Congress from convening.25 The opposition movement soon split. On one side were members of the elites such as Arriaga, and later Madero, who envisioned Mexico’s problems in terms of political questions. On the other, middle- and workingclass representatives, such as Flores Magón and Odriozola, sought changes of a more radical nature, not only political but also economic and social. Under the leadership of Ricardo Flores Magón, the latter group became more involved with the working classes. By 1904, after various sojourns in prison and constant harassment by the Díaz bureaucracy, Flores Magón and his closest followers sought refuge Wrst in Texas and then in St. Louis, Missouri. They revived Regeneración, which continued to denounce the abuses of the dictatorship. Secretly slipped over the border by sympathetic railroad workers, this illegal newspaper circulated widely, copies passing from hand to hand.26 24. I saw this printed sheet in the private archive of Benito Juárez Maza in the library of the Universidad Autonoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca, but no researcher has yet been able to work in this archive. Juárez Maza did not become active in the opposition until 1909 in the wake of the Díaz Creelman interview. 25. Cosío Villegas, Vida Política Interior 2:693. 26. In St. Louis the Magonistas developed close relations with U.S. and resident European radicals such as John Kenneth Turner and Emma Goldman, distancing themselves even more from Arriaga and Madero. Turner, Ricardo Flores Magón, 75.

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On September 28, 1905, Ricardo Flores Magón and followers organized the Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party (PLM). On July 1, 1906, they published its “Program and National Manifesto of the Mexican Liberal Party,” which stated the principles of the new party. This program, a blueprint for a progressive liberal revolution, would have considerable inXuence over the various “plans” of the diverse revolutionary groups from 1910 on and above all on the 1917 Constitution. Now armed with its program, the PLM organized revolutionary movements to topple the Díaz government in 1906.27

“To Sustain, Defend, and Propagate . . . the Political Creed of the Illustrious Juárez” In response to the revival of Juarista liberalism throughout Mexico, Oaxacans founded the Juárez Association on May 17, 1901, in the state capital. This association was formed for the purpose of organizing an annual demonstration of mourning to honor the day of Juárez’s death, July 18, 1872. It also pledged to maintain the Juárez monument in the Glorieta Netzahualcoyotl. The general meeting of the association would be held once a year on the same day, after the ceremony of commemoration. Representatives of the Oaxacan elites and middle classes sat together on the Wrst and second executive boards of the association (1901 and 1902); only the most recalcitrant Catholics refused to ally themselves with the defense of Juarismo.28 On July 23, 1902, a second board was elected, Guillermo Meixueiro as president and José Inés Dávila as treasurer. Powerful PorWrian politicians (Meixueiro, Joaquín Atristáin, and José Joaquín Sandoval) and wealthy entrepreneurs (Carlos Castro) joined with middle-class lawyers 27. Barrera Fuentes, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, 159. See the PLM Program in Cockcroft’s appendix to Intellectual Precursors, 239–45, which clariWes how much of the Liberals’ program was later adopted by the Constitution of 1917. 28. In the works that mention a precursor movement in Oaxaca, only that of Taracena (Apuntes históricos, 203) cites the role of the Juárez Association as an important Liberal organization. Other writers seem unaware of its existence. See AGEPEO, May–June 1901, Gob., Organizaciones Políticas y Sociales, Centro. In 1901 Joaquín Atristáin was elected president, Adolfo Arias secretary, Constantino Chapital treasurer. Octaviano Díaz, Alberto Montiel, Casiano Conzatti, Manuel Brioso y Candiani, and Ismael Puga y Colmenares sat on the executive board. Among others, G. Gómez, Abraham Castellanos, and Manuel Martínez Gracida signed the document. The majority of them were middle-class lawyers.

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(Constantino Chapital, Manuel Brioso y Candiani, Ismael Puga y Colmenares, and Heliodoro Díaz Quintas) to honor the memory of Juárez. The Juárez Association speciWcally invited the Cuicatlán liberal club to attend the Juárez Association’s July 18 demonstration of mourning in 1902.29 Plainly, liberals in the different regions of Oaxaca were in communication with each other. In late 1904 internal divisions in the Juárez Association resulted in a walkout by the elite and upper-middle-class participants. Two basic problems caused this division—Wrst, the position the association assumed with respect to the publication in 1904 of Bulnes’s controversial book, El verdadero Juárez y la verdad sobre la Intervención y el Imperio, and second, the 1904 municipal elections of the city of Oaxaca. While it is possible to trace the splits and radicalization of the liberal movement at the national level, the same is not true for Oaxaca. Unfortunately, only one source— the president’s report of 1905—discusses the political division within the association.30 Bulnes’s book caused a tremendous sensation throughout Mexico, since no one had dared to be so outspoken in criticizing Juárez. The publication sparked angry polemics, but this enfant terrible of the CientíWcos wrote publicly what many of the elites thought in private, that Díaz was the more suitable hero for “modern” Mexico. The Juárez Association rallied to the defense of its namesake, “believing that its duty was to protest the calumnious concepts contained in the referred work . . . calling attention to the fact that some members, failing in their duty to uphold the association’s decision, refused to align themselves with the protest, indignant conduct, which motivated that they be justly punished.”31 Some elite members preferred to stay in favor with the CientíWco governor and refused to endorse the anti-Bulnes protest. A controversy over the municipal elections of 1904 added to the dissension. On this point Díaz Quintas’s presidential report is vague. It appears that the association had 29. AGEPEO, July 1902, Gob., Organizaciones Políticas y Sociales, Centro; AGEPEO, July 1902, Gob., Correspondencia, Cuicatlán. I could not verify that any Cuicatecos attended. 30. I found no documentation on the activities of the Juárez Association between 1902 and 1905, precisely the years in which it changed its political course. “Informe pronunciado por el Presidente de la ‘Asociación Juárez’, Lic. Heliodoro Díaz Quintas, en la sesión solemne del día 18 de julio de 1905,” in El Bien Público, Aug. 15, 1905. For the polemic over Francisco Bulnes’s Verdadero Juárez, see Chapter 8. 31. “Informe pronunciado,” El Bien Público, Aug. 15, 1905.

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agreed to support a popular candidate for mayor and that when this candidate proved unacceptable to the elite members, they presented their resignations en masse.32 It is possible to speculate on this scenario. In 1903 the municipal president of Oaxaca was Dr. Manuel de Esesarte, a respected but openly anticlerical member of the upper middle class. The following year the oligarchy elected one of its own, the industrialist José Zorrilla. The question of whom to support for 1905 was most probably the bone of contention (although it is not clear who the other candidate was), but the president of the association refused to call an emergency meeting to resolve the dispute. In his capacity as a member of the executive board, Heliodoro Díaz Quintas took on the responsibility of convoking an emergency meeting and then assumed the presidency himself on December 1, 1904. This action prevented the breakup of the association while it also directly provoked an exodus of the elite.33 As the middle-class members took over its leadership, they radicalized the Juárez Association. The oligarchy’s walkout, instead of weakening the organization, resulted in its consolidation and heightened effectiveness. Díaz Quintas and Puga y Colmenares reorganized it and revised the statutes in 1905. Members would now meet on the Wrst of every month in addition to the solemn ceremony of mourning each July 18. The organization would not only “sustain, defend and propagate the principles of liberty and Reform that constituted the political creed of the immortal benefactor of the Americas, Benito Juárez,” but would also assure that all citizens practice their civil rights “so that the government of the people be a reality in the state.” The new statutes strongly reinforced the relationship between Juarismo and democratic practice, as their protest (which begins this chapter) demonstrated.34 The elections of January 16, 1905, conWrmed Díaz Quintas as president. But with the walkout of various government ofWcials, the state no longer accorded the Juárez Association the privileges it had previously enjoyed. Prohibited from meeting in the town hall, the members moved 32. Ibid. 33. PO, Jan. 1 and 2, 1904; “Informe pronunciado,” El Bien Público, Aug. 15, 1905. 34. The organization now distinguished between founding members and active members. Elections for the executive board would take place every December 1. The statutes also go into detail about the care of the association’s archive; unfortunately this has not yet been found. Estatutos de la Asociación Juárez. I am grateful to the Center for Southwest Research of the University of New Mexico General Library for providing me with a copy of these statutes.

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to the hall of the Sociedad de Dependientes “Unión y Protección Mutua,” the largest mutualist society in the city, reXecting the shift in class orientation to a lower-middle-class membership. Lawyers, doctors, shopkeepers, teachers, engineers, pharmacists, typographers, and artisans joined the Juárez Association. In July 1905 its president was Ismael Puga y Colmenares (lawyer), its secretary was Adolfo C. Gurrión (teacher), its treasurer was José Honorato Márquez (printer), and the members of the executive board were Heliodoro Díaz Quintas (lawyer), Constantino Chapital (lawyer), José Pachiano (shopkeeper), Alberto Vargas (doctor), Felipe Carreño (artisan), and Gildardo Gómez (doctor).35 Both Puga and Chapital (jefe político of the Central district in 1902) had been active in politics during the government of General Martín González. Supporters of Félix Díaz in 1902, they were pushed out with the advent of Pimentel. Alberto Vargas, a native of Tecomavaca in the Cañada region, studied in the ICA and later established his medical practice and opened his own pharmacy in the city of Oaxaca. He was quite popular as a poet and orator. José Honorato Márquez, an important member of the local society of artisans, owned the printing shop where El Bien Público was later published. Gurrión was a respected and popular teacher from the isthmian city of Juchitán. All were self-made men, with the exception of Dr. Gómez, who came from an old Oaxacan family; his father had been director of the General Hospital.36 Even given these similar class backgrounds, there was no ideological homogeneity in the association and serious differences soon surfaced. The association formed a commission to study the regulations so that it could be restructured in accordance with its new character. In order to boost membership, another commission was organized to study the possibility of establishing regional committees that would form similar associations in other parts of the state, with an eye toward celebrating a statewide Liberal convention in the near future. In addition, it was decided that the association would sponsor a pilgrimage to Guelatao (Juárez’s birthplace), inviting citizens from all over Mexico to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Juárez’s birth in 1906.37 35. Ibid. See Bastián on “societies of ideas” in “Jacobinismo”; El Bien Público, Feb. 4, 1906; Aug. 1, 1905. 36. Oaxaca Progresista, No. 3, Oct. 1910; ABR, Datos sobre José Honorato Márquez; Camacho, Ensayo de monografía sobre los hospitales, 57. 37. “Informe pronunciado,” El Bien Público, Aug. 15, 1905. See the full-page advertisement in El Bien Público, July 18, 1905.

464

Political Culture and Revolution

Defending the Public Good The radicalization of the Juárez Association in early 1905 paralleled the development of the opposition on the national level and the founding of the Mexican Liberal Party (PLM), with which the association soon established close communication. Taking over the reins in a time of turmoil, Díaz Quintas provided vigorous and decisive leadership. Annual elections were held as usual, on July 18, 1905, and another lawyer, Ismael Puga y Colmenares, assumed the presidency, while Díaz Quintas became a member of the executive board.38 The founding of the newspaper El Bien Público (the public good), was one of the major results of the restructuring. Given growing government hostility and the scarcity of facilities, the editors were forced to use a printer in Mexico City until they could start their own press in Oaxaca. The Wrst issue of this paper appeared on July 18, 1905, the thirty-third anniversary of the death of Juárez. Espousing a militant liberalism based on the ideals of the 1857 Constitution, it defended individual freedoms and the right to free elections: “In accord with our principles, we call on all those who judge our tasks sane and open the columns of this humble publication to all those who disinterestedly aspire to the public good, to those who desire equality, fraternity, and the exaltation of our people.” In order to achieve their lofty objectives, it would be necessary “to undertake a tireless crusade . . . against the debasement and abject conditions of the ignorant masses, whose energies are consumed in the rude conditions of unproductive labor.” In addition to propagating the ideas of the Reform, they also had to encourage people to Wght for effective suffrage. The association had come to life “to counteract the growing inXuence of the Church ofWcials in public affairs and in the education of youth which should be completely secular.” Its motto would be: “For our fatherland and for the law.”39 El Bien Público repeatedly denounced corruption, abuse of political authority, exploitation of the working classes, the sorry state of education and the lamentable situation of teachers, the growing power of the 38. Ibid., Aug. 1, 1905. 39. Ibid. “For the fatherland, which merits all our labors, all our efforts, all our aspirations, and all our love; for the law that turns a people into a free nation, each state into an entity, each family into a sacred home and each man into an independent citizen.” Ibid., July 18, 1905.

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465

Church, and the frequent trampling of individual rights and freedoms. Its editors tirelessly demanded the overhaul of the corrupt judicial system. If its ideology was expressed in Xorid liberal rhetoric, framed in Manichean terms, its denunciations of injustice were concrete, detailed, and courageous: “The Juárez Association has come forth into the public forum to combat, to defend the truth, to show the cancer that sickens our society and to impugn all evil.” El Bien Público immediately established communication with other liberal journals throughout the country, including Filomeno Mata’s Diario del Hogar, which occasionally published its articles. Other liberal newspapers that reproduced its articles were El Colega of Ciudad Camargo, El Granuja of León, El Altruista of Austin, Texas, and the Magonista Regeneración.40 The rebirth of the liberal press, and especially its unrelenting criticism of his regime, infuriated Governor Pimentel. His immediate response was the summary dismissal of El Bien Público’s editors, Heliodoro Díaz Quintas and Ismael Puga y Colmenares, from their posts as professors at the ICA. News of this act of repression was picked up by the press throughout Mexico and was reported in Diario del Hogar and Regeneración. This act failed in its desired effect, however; instead of being cowed, the journalists intensiWed their attacks on the Pimentel government. El Bien Público responded with a front page article under the headline “A Gubernatorial Decision which Highly Improved the Circulation of this Newspaper and Proves its Point.”41 Now that the Juárez Association had an eminently middle-class composition, membership expanded. By February 1906 it had seventy men (but no women), the great majority of whom resided in the city of Oaxaca, although some members lived in the isthmian region, La Cañada, and the Mixteca. Its president in 1905, Heliodoro Díaz Quintas, was the son of the well-known lawyer and coffee planter Octaviano Díaz. Graduating as a lawyer from the ICA in 1902, Díaz Quintas was named district judge of Etla. By 1904 he held a post on the town council of the city of Oaxaca and was also a professor at the ICA. It has been suggested that Díaz Quintas’s opposition was actually caused by his frustration at receiving the appointment to Etla upon graduation, which he considered an insult to his high qualiWcations as an attorney. By 1905 he was a respected 40. Ibid., Aug. 1, Oct. 1, 1905. 41. Ibid., and Aug. 15, 1905. Díaz Quintas taught civil law and Puga y Colmenares commercial law.

466

Political Culture and Revolution

leader of the moderate opposition in Oaxaca. Yet, while vehemently opposing Pimentel and the corruption of state government, he maintained unwavering loyalty to Mexico’s Oaxacan-born president. The biographical information on Ismael Puga y Colmenares is sketchy. Also a graduate of the ICA and later a professor there, during the last years of the González governorship he had been a deputy to the local Congress, a post he lost when Pimentel came to power.42 These are examples of the kind of middle-class political frustration and the generation gap that contributed to Oaxacans’ decision to join the local opposition. Díaz Quintas was relegated to a district judicial post, while Puga lost his seat in the local legislature when the Pimentelista elites took over. This political closure contradicted the tenets of Juarista liberalism as these men understood it, but these dissidents were also hampered by their weak structural position in society. They were not the prosperous elite and middle-class entrepreneurs to be found in the northern opposition movements but professionals mainly resident in the city of Oaxaca, dependent on the patronage of the oligarchy, and without a strong constituency in the popular sectors. Although they did have support among the urban artisans, there is no evidence of contacts with miners or textile workers.43 The widespread inXuence of the Catholic Church and the popularity of the Catholic Workers Circles diminished the liberals’ opportunities to connect with the urban masses. Nor were the liberals able to establish working relationships with campesinos and bring them over to the liberal cause. Their ideology of individual rights and their objectives did not speak to the needs of comuneros, even though they often found them defending the villages in court. Only on the issue of municipal autonomy might there have been some common ground, yet this did not seem to be enough.

42. The list of members of the Juárez Association is in El Bien Público, Feb. 4, 1906; see also Aug. 1, 1905; Archivo Basilio Rojas, Valle de Santiago, Guanajuato. Datos sobre Lic. Heliodoro Díaz Quintas; La Democracia, Dec. 21, 1902; PO, Jan. 20, 1904; Castañeda Guzmán, interview; El Avance, June 8, 1911; Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 78–79. The town of Santa María Yucuiti Wled a complaint against Puga y Colmenares in February 1903 for extortion for pay of legal services not rendered, but no further information is available. Sometimes this type of allegation was used to destroy the credibility of a member of the opposition. AGEPEO, Feb. 1903, Gob., Abuso de Autoridad, Tlaxiaco. 43. See Ruiz, Great Rebellion, 46–48, on this subject. See Aguilar Camín’s discussion of the careers of Benjamín Hill, Alvaro Obregón and Manuel Diéguez in Frontera nómada (27ff.), which stand in stark contrast to that of Díaz Quintas or Puga y Colmenares.

Precursor Politics

467

The 1906 Gubernatorial Election: Personalism ConXicts with Principles The watershed for the opposition forces in Oaxaca was the Wrst re-election of Governor Emilio Pimentel in 1906. Pimentel went on the offensive in 1905 to eliminate any possible rival candidates, evidently having learned a lesson from General González’s complacency in 1902. Félix Díaz promptly declined since his popular candidacy for the governorship in 1902 had resulted in his political exile to Chile, a punishment for meddling in Oaxacan politics without the approval of his uncle.44 By 1905 general discontent against Pimentel was on the rise. President Díaz received a complaint in April 1906 asking him not to support Pimentel’s re-election. Another letter to Díaz made a catalogue of Pimentel’s errors, declaring that in a free election he wouldn’t get a hundred votes. It also accused Pimentel of having made reprisals against those who had supported Félix Díaz in 1902. For example, the town of Analco, which had voted for the president’s nephew, suddenly lost a longstanding territorial dispute with its neighboring rival town. Another old friend of Díaz advised him that Pimentel had embarked on a personal vendetta against Professor Adolfo G. Gurrión, who had also actively advocated the Félix Díaz candidacy in 1902.45 With Félix Díaz out of the running, the governor confronted the possibility of a bid by the youthful but respected lawyer and poet Miguel Bolaños Cacho. In an appallingly clumsy move that quickly backWred, Pimentel accused Bolaños Cacho of misappropriation of funds of the state treasury during his six-month tenure as interim governor in 1902. In his message to the local Congress on September 16, 1905, Pimentel declared that when he took over the executive ofWce in December 1902 the Treasury contained only $46,672.36, instead of the $49,133.39 indicated by deposit receipts. The discrepancy of $2,461.03 could not be accounted for.46 The timing of this political bombshell, three years after the fact, was of course highly suspect. While it forced Bolaños Cacho to resign his post 44. Henderson, Félix Díaz, 20. 45. Cosío Villegas, Vida Política Interior 2:432; Citation from Henderson, Félix Díaz, 20. 46. Mensaje 1905, 46. There is no evidence to substantiate the claim that Bolaños Cacho was actually preparing to run; if indeed that was the case it was no longer a consideration under the shadow of the governor’s allegations.

468

Political Culture and Revolution

as a magistrate of the Supreme Court in Mexico City, the press and the public demanded an explanation for the governor’s three-year delay in releasing this information. Pimentel explained, “I did not want to denounce this compromising situation at the time, reserving that right until after my efforts to change the situation had produced the desired results.” Bolaños Cacho defended himself in a pamphlet entitled To the Oaxacan People, blaming the expensive receptions arranged for the incoming governor for the depletion of the Treasury funds. He stated that Pimentel had been informed of these expenditures and personally participated in the preparations and he denied any mishandling of funds. In December 1902, when he handed over the Treasury, it had neither a deWcit nor a surplus, and Oaxaca’s Wnancial conditions were “solid and Xourishing.”47 Although this Wnancial question was never clearly resolved, the confrontation only served to deepen the political divisions in Oaxaca between the governor’s supporters and the liberals and Anti-CientíWcos who rallied to Bolaños Cacho’s defense. Among the latter, the Juárez Association reproduced the pamphlet in its paper and used this confrontation to intensify its attack on the CientíWcos and Pimentel. Despite the violent denunciation of the local regime, the editors still stopped short of criticizing PorWrio Díaz personally, demonstrating how deeply rooted “PorWrismo” was in the president’s home state. In short, the position of the Juárez Association was anti-Pimentel and anti-CientíWco, but not antiPorWrista. It concentrated on local problems rather than national ones. These local confrontations, the Wrst battles fought by the opposition, turned out to be the breeding grounds of revolutionaries. In May 1906, on the eve of the state elections, El Bien Público repeated its warning of the dangers posed by the growing power of the CientíWcos in national politics. According to the editors, the opportunistic CientíWco elite anxiously awaited the death of Díaz (now age seventy-Wve) in order to seize control of the national government. It cannot be a love for the people that these men show because they have not included in their program an interest in the popular welfare. . . . Their program has been uniquely and exclusively designed to insure the constant increase of their fabulous riches, 47. Bolaños Cacho, Al pueblo oaxaqueño, 15–16; Mensaje 1905, 46; Sánchez Silva, “Crisis política,” 170.

Precursor Politics

469

and by means of contracts, concessions, public works and huge enterprises, many of them more geared to beneWt foreigners than Mexicans, they have accumulated great riches. . . . The Oaxacan Liberal Party should feel that the struggle, in whose defense the suffering and heroic people had to spill so much blood, is now mortally threatened by this despised and nefarious party. . . . On the alert, Liberals! The continued presence of Pimentel in the governorship of Oaxaca . . . tomorrow will cost us much blood if today we do not avoid it with a show of a little energy and civil valor.48 For the Juárez Association and its interpretation of the imagined tradition of Juarismo, the CientíWcos represented the greatest threat to Mexican liberalism. Whereas nationalism and antiforeign sentiment formed a powerful component of opposition ideology in states where foreign capital was inXuential, it was not a signiWcant element in Oaxaca. Considerable foreign capital was invested in the state, but mostly by individual entrepreneurs with limited capital who often allied themselves with local capitalists in joint ventures. Serious confrontations were rare and the passage quoted above is one of the few indications of antiforeign sentiment in the state.49 The radicalization of the Juárez Association took place a few months before the preparations for the re-election of Pimentel went into high gear. Accordingly, El Bien Público stepped up its campaign to inform the general public of the abuses of the political system and the lamentable social conditions prevalent in various regions of the state. Most salient were 48. The article was entitled “The CientíWcos: Liberal Party on the Alert.” El Bien Público, May 20, 1906. 49. By contrast, antiforeign sentiment was fundamental to the opposition in Chihuahua. See Wasserman, “Social Origins,” 18–19. Hart argues in Revolutionary Mexico that nationalism was the major cause of the Revolution. One example was the confrontation over mining rights in the Taviche region between the miner Juan Baigts and the American engineer Charles Hamilton (see Chapter 4). A different type of confrontation took place between the villagers of San Mateo Piñas and Benito Juárez in the Pochutla district against loss of lands to the coffee plantation of Leo von Brandestein (see Chapter 3). Oaxaca and Chihuahua were two of the six states that received the highest amount of foreign investment between 1902 and 1910. The arrival of the huge monopolies such as the American Smelting and ReWning Company stimulated widespread antiforeign sentiment in the northern state, while in Oaxaca investments tended to be on a much smaller scale, and anti-American or antiforeign feeling was not widespread. See Wasserman, Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution, 72ff.

470

Political Culture and Revolution

the denunciations of political corruption, especially of the jefes políticos, and the shameful situation of the state’s elementary schools. While liberals deplored the exploitation of the indigenous masses and denounced the existence of the slave system of labor in Valle Nacional,50 this did not lead to a political connection with the campesinos. Ismael Puga y Colmenares wrote a series of articles that supplied a long list of grievances explaining why Pimentel should not be reelected. Summarizing his reasons in twelve points, he even charged that on various occasions the governor had mistreated and insulted citizens when they came to him on affairs of state. Puga declared that “his heart has not been touched nor will it be touched at the sight of the sad state in which the Indian communities are kept, tearing themselves to pieces with the eternal question of the communal lands and at the mercy of the caciques of each region of the state.” The governor had also failed to order a general revision of the civil penal code, to institute efWcient judicial procedures, or to establish a Public Defender’s ofWce. Public works did not serve the public good but favored cronies of the governor, who got rich off these concessions. Roads were in “lamentable conditions, and industry and artisans receive no stimulus to their development and progress, the jefes políticos undertake luxurious public works in their districts and use them as a pretext to extort their cost ten times exaggerated from the people.” The governor’s failure to reform the “still colonial system of tax collection which governs us or the means of collection which converts the authorities into exactors and the people into victims of these mandarins” was inexcusable. To make matters worse, “the police, instructed and paid to protect the people, have been converted into the scourge of the towns and executioner of honest men.”51 As political tension increased in 1906, the Juárez Association decided to back an opposition candidate for the governorship. It chose the eminent liberal doctor, Aurelio Valdivieso, one of Oaxaca’s senators. This decision intensiWed a new division in the ranks of the association, between a moderate faction and a radical one that sympathized with Ricardo Flores Magón and his followers. Urban artisans read not only Regeneración but also other radical newspapers, such as Diario del Hogar and El Hijo del Ahuizote, both of Mexico City, discussing them in small circles that congregated in the carpentry shop of the Cuevas Paz brothers or at 50. See El Bien Público, Aug. 15, 1905 on Valle Nacional. 51. Ibid., March 4, 1905.

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the Juárez Association meetings. Opposition newspapers were also read discreetly in Demetrio García’s paint shop and in the barbershop of José Inés López in the state capital.52 When they raided the Magonistas in St. Louis (on behalf of the Díaz government), U.S. authorities handed over their papers to the Mexican regime. In this way Pimentel learned the names of some Oaxacan subscribers to Regeneración, among them Leopoldo Salazar, jefe político of Yautepec, Gil Montero, tax collector of Juchitán, and Mauro Ortega, judicial employee in Tehuantepec. The Wrst two were immediately Wred while the third was handed over to the federal authorities. Professor Manuel Zárate Ramírez of Yanhuitlán in the Mixteca was in direct contact with both Ricardo Flores Magón and Antonio Villarreal. On December 8, 1905, he received a letter of thanks for a contribution of $4 to their legal defense. It read in part, “Those of us who are the victims of this misfortune, have now been set free on bail in the last few days, thanks to the assistance of our good co-religionists. We are once again at your service, and we are, as always, ready to continue the struggle against tyranny.”53 In 1905 Fernando de Gyves had reported to PorWrio Díaz on dissident activity on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, targeting not only the Gurrión brothers, Adolfo and Evaristo, but also Dr. Mauro Butrón in Salina Cruz and Lic. Severo Castillejos in Tehuantepec. Adolfo C. Gurrión, a Juchiteco schoolteacher, was the Oaxacan correspondent for Regeneración, which was widely read and carried frequent reports on conditions in Oaxaca. His support for Félix Díaz in 1902 had earned him the antipathy of Pimentel, who made sure Gurrión could not get a job anywhere in the state. Plutarco Gallegos, born in Tehuantepec of campesino parents, had excelled in primary school and his parents struggled Wnancially in order to send him to the city of Oaxaca to continue his studies. His activity in Magonista politics resulted in his expulsion from the ICA. In Santa María Petapa, in the district of Juchitán, a “Club Regeneración” had been founded by Paulino V. Fuentes, Pedro Reyes, and Tiburcio Maldonado. When the Magonistas staged their uprising in Acayucan, on the Veracruz side of the Isthmus, in 1906, the authorities in the Petapas reported on rumors that it would spread to their region. According to table 29, which 52. Cockcroft, Intellectual Precursors, 123–24; Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana en Oaxaca, 17. 53. PO, July 13, 1904; See Flores Magón, Regeneración. Cosío Villegas, Vida Política Interior 2:699. Letter from Antonio Villarreal to Profesor Zárate Ramírez, Archivo Manuel Zárate Aquino; Zárate Aquino, interview. I am grateful to ex-governor Zárate Aquino for permitting me access to his father’s papers.

472

Table 29.

Political Culture and Revolution

Magonistas in Oaxaca

Region (no. of members) District

Town (no. of members)

Papaloapan (21) Tuxtepec

Ojitlán (12)

Ismael Aguirre,* Genaro Bravo,* Priciliano Cruz,+ Agapito Levin, * Rafael Murillo,* Macario Ortiz,* Sebastián Ortiz,* José Ortiz,* Joaquín N. Prado,* Nicolás Valero,* Rodrigo Bravo,* Pedro Bravo*

Valle Nacional (4)

J. Puerto del Pino,* Nicanor Terán Ortiz,* Cayetano Toledo,* Albino Vega

Tuxtepec

Isthmus (24)

Costa (7)

Cañada (8)

Members

Tuxtepec

San Fernando (1)

Mauro Rojo*

Tuxtepec

Ixcatlán (1)

Esteban Hernández*

Tuxtepec

Chiltepec (1)

Manuel Speares*

Tuxtepec

Soyaltepec (1)

Amado R. y Lezama*

Choapan

Choapan (1) Cafetal Estela

Otilio F. Cañas+

Juchitán

Rincón Antonio (4)

Rómulo Cartas,+ Cayetano Chiñas,* Angel P. Primo,* Ybrim Ruiz*

Juchitán

Ubero (2)

Maurilio Jiménez,* Francisco Sánchez*

Juchitán

San Jerónimo (3)

Bibiano Deheza, Mauro García* (in Tehuantepec at present), Antonio Z. Ruiz+

Juchitán

Espinal (1)

Nabor Dehesa

Juchitán

Juchitán (4)

Aurelio M. Castaño, Ruperto J. López, Gil Montero, Carlos Pino*

Tehuantepec

Tehuantepec (10)

Andrés Arias, José Fuentecilla, Juan Gordon, Juan Lemus Iturbide,* Enrique N. Jiménez, Mauro Ortega, Francisco N. Pérez, Victoriano Rueda, José G. Salinas,* Esteban Valencia+

Pochutla

Pluma Hidalgo (3)

Manuel G. Moreno, Refugio R. Verauzco, Mariano Esparza

Jamiltepec

Jamiltepec (1)

Francisco Boijseeureau [sic]

Jamiltepec

Pinotepa de Don Luis (1)

Rodrigo Guzmán*

Putla

Putla (2)

Aurelio González,* Isidro Montesinos

Teotitlán

Tecomavaca (2)

Francisco Cid Mérida,* Welebaldo M Durán*

Cuicatlán

Cuicatlán (6)

Gaspar Allende,+ Luis Brena, Rafael Odriozola,+ Francisco Oropeza, A. Pérez,* Rafael Pérez *

Precursor Politics

Table 29.

473

(continued )

Region (no. of members) District

Town (no. of members)

Central Valleys (30)

Centro

City of Oaxaca (16)

Francisco Barranco,* Angel Barrios (alias Abelarde Beabe),+ Ismael Caballero,+ José Calvo, Emerenciano Fernández,** J. Fernández Ortiz,* Plutarco Gallegos,** Celerino Gómez,* Carlos J. Leyva, Mauro Martínez, Manuel Oseguera,+ Carlos Pérez Guerrero,** Ignacio de la Torre,* Eduardo Torres,* Mauro Valladares, Francisco E. Vázquez

Tlacolula

Tlacolula (1)

Agustín R. Zurita

Etla

Etla (3)

Manuel Cervantes,* Lorenzo Carrasco,* Faustino G. Olivera

Mixteca (11)

Total: 101

Members

Etla

Huitzo (1)

Alberto Aguas*

Ocotlán

Ocotlán (1)

Esteban Márquez

Ejutla

Ejutla (2)

Carlos Carballeda, César Ruiz

Miahuatlán

Miahuatlán (5)

Nabor Alderete, Miguel Maraver Aguilar,+ Gregorio Ruiz, Jesús S. Sánchez, Luciano R. Sánchez*

Yautepec

Yautepec (1)

Leopoldo Salazar

Tlaxiaco

Tlaxiaco (3)

Catarino M. Cruz, David Guzmán, León Alejo Pal del Cacho

Huajuapan

Huajuapan (2)

Eutiquio González,* Manuel de León+

Huajuapan

Tezoatlán (3)

Lauro Montesinos,+ José G. Márquez, José Ignacio Sánchez

Silacayoapan

Silacayoapan (1)

Julián León

Nochixtlán

Yanhuitlán (2)

Manuel Loreto Ramírez., Manuel Zárate Ramírez

Sources: AGN, Gobernación, Sección Primera, 1907, Tranquilidad Pública, Revoltosos Magonistas, C. 3, exp. 1; Silvestre Terrazas Correspondence and Papers, M-B 18 Pt. 1, Flores Magón Correspondence, boxes 26 and 27, Bancroft Library; Eugenio Martínez Nuñez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana: los mártires de San Juan de Ulúa (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, 1968), 199; Archivo Manuel Zárate Aquino, Oaxaca, Oaxaca. Magonistas listed only in the Terrazas Correspondence have no sign after their names. Names cited in both AGN and Terrazas Correspondence lists are followed by +. Names taken from Martínez Nuñez are followed by **. Names I have corrected are followed by *.

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Political Culture and Revolution

presents this information on Magonistas in Oaxaca by location and region, there were twenty-four PLM members and sympathizers on the Isthmus by 1907.54 Both Rafael Odriozola and Sebastián Ortiz, early liberal dissidents, were known to be afWliated with the PLM. Gaspar Allende, who was born in Ocotlán in 1880 and labored as an administrator on coffee Wncas in the coastal district of Pochutla and later at the cafetal “Unión Ibérica” in Cuicatlán, joined the opposition with Odriozola. Miguel Maraver Aguilar, a veteran of the 1896 tax revolt in Juquila, was an early PLM member in direct contact with its leaders. Esperón y de la Flor accused him of attempted assassination but, ironically, did not have the same luck in his home state that he had in St. Louis against the Flores Magón. Even with the support of the Pochutla district judge, José Vicente Fagoaga, the state courts refused to proceed with the case. Maraver Aguilar in turn accused Esperón of defamation before the district judge of Miahuatlán with support from another Flores Magón brother, Jesús, an attorney in Mexico City, but with no luck. In a March 13, 1906, letter to Ricardo Flores Magón, he complained about the travesty of legal justice in Oaxaca, where Esperón was “protected” by the governor and where “justice is sold for any price and judges share the proWts of their plunder with Pimentel.” Understandably, he was reputed to be the dissident most feared by the governor, as he wrote in the same letter, “It has never bothered me that the government of Díaz knows that I am in contact with the President of the Organizing Junta of the Liberal Party; my principles and my name will never be a mystery to anyone.”55 54. See Zarauz López, PorWriato, 126–28; Gurrión, Biografía, 4–7; Chassen [ChassenLópez], “Oaxaca” (Ph.D. diss.), 342ff.; Abardía M. and Reina Aoyama, “Cien años de rebelión,” 486; Gurrión, Biografía, 4–7. Gallegos did not actually get his law degree until 1913. Miguel Ríos also mistakes the name of the Magonista newspaper for La Democracia, although he mentions the Asociación Juárez (Tehuantepec, 75–79); CPD, Letters, leg. 31, caja 32, Oct. 1907. The list of Oaxacans afWliated with the Mexican Liberal Party is found in AGN, Gobernación, Sección 1a, 1907, Tranquilidad Pública, Revoltosos Magonistas, caja 3, exp. 1. See Cockcroft, “Maestro de primaria,” who cites Bulnes’s list of maestros, which included “Federico Gurrión, great agitator of Tehuantepec who attempted to dismember the state of Oaxaca” (567). Gurrión’s Wrst name was Adolfo and he was a Juchiteco; he was not implicated in isthmian separatism. 55. See Chassen [Chassen-López], “Oaxaca” (Ph.D. diss.), 342ff.; Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana en Oaxaca, 17; Hernández, “Gaspar Allende,” 8; PO, April 6, 1904; Martínez Nuñez, Historia, 199; El Bien Público, Oct. 15, Nov. 3, 5, 1905; AGEPEO, 1905, Gob., Quejas Particulares, Miahuatlán; Silvestre Terrazas Correspondence and Papers, Bancroft Library [hereafter ST-BL] M-B 18, Pt. 1, Flores Magón Correspondence, box 26.

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Hired by the Mexican government to monitor Magonista activities in the United States, the Furlong Detective Agency intercepted a 1907 list of Wfty-nine PLM members in Oaxaca. Table 29 lists all the PLM members and sympathizers, including subscribers to Regeneración and contributors to Ricardo Flores Magón’s legal fund that I have located in Oaxaca for 1905–7. In PorWrian Mexico, a subscription to Regeneración or a contribution to the PLM was tantamount to being a member and could easily get one thrown in jail. Given the widespread loyalty to PorWrio Díaz in his patria chica, support for Magonismo and the PLM in Oaxaca was truly impressive: there were 101 Magonistas and sympathizers. The Central Valleys led with twenty-Wve, followed by the Isthmus with twentyfour and the Papaloapan region with twenty-one. Ojitlán in Tuxtepec had twelve Magonistas, as compared to ten in Tehuantepec and sixteen in the city of Oaxaca. Railroad stations, as centers of communication, had strong Magonista contingents: Tecomavaca and Cuicatlán in the Cañada, and San Jerónimo, Juchitán, Ubero, Rincon Antonio, Espinal, and Tehuantepec on the Isthmus. In effect, twenty-one of Oaxaca’s twenty-six districts had Magonista contingents. Pluma Hidalgo, Jamiltepec, Putla, and Pinotepa de Don Luis all had members in the Costa region. Although Julián León of Silacayoapan was the only representative identiWed from that isolated district, in November 1905 he sent in $18.97 for subscriptions for Regeneración, indicating that there were other sympathizers there also. In fact, on July 5, 1905, Lauro Montesinos of Tezoatlán answered a letter from Flores Magón saying he was working to end the political silence of co-religionists and requested that the Junta send him at least one hundred copies of the PLM Program! Most of those who donated money to the Flores Magón brothers’ legal fund sent $2 to $5, but Priciliano Cruz of Ojitlán sent $36 and Aurelio Castaño of Juchitán sent $9.60.56 It is no coincidence that the strength of radicalism in Oaxaca came from the regions of PorWrian development where a growing middle class, both rural and urban, demanded the reform of a system that restricted both their economic and political freedoms. The conspicuous absence of PLM inXuence in the heavily indigenous Sierra Juárez region symbolized its unXagging loyalty to Díaz and the absence of a prosperous rancher sector. 56. AGN, Gobernación, Sección Primera, 1907, Tranquilidad Pública, Revoltosos Magonistas, C. 3, exp. 1; ST-BL, M-B 18, Pt. 1, boxes 26 and 27.

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The internal division of the Juárez Association became manifest in early 1906 in a confrontation over whether to push the Valdivieso candidacy for governor. The radicals, headed by Gurrión and Gallegos, energetically advocated the idea of an independent candidate, while the moderate group, led by Puga y Colmenares and Díaz Quintas, had serious misgivings about such a course. When the radicals attempted to pressure President Puga y Colmenares on the Valdivieso candidacy, he refused to receive them. Vowing never to leave the association, they abandoned the editorial board of El Bien Público, protesting that their freedom of expression had been curtailed. They then founded their own short-lived newspaper, La Semecracia. In contrast to El Bien Público, La Semecracia, with Gurrión as editor-inchief and Gallegos as assistant editor, had no qualms about virulently criticizing the PorWrian dictatorship as well as the Pimentel government. The editors considered themselves proponents of pure democracy, or “semecracy,” which they deWned as “government by the people themselves.” The Wrst issue of the paper, which outlined the type of utopian society and “pure” democratic system to which they aspired, carried their ideological manifesto to the Oaxacan public. All Mexicans would enjoy “all the political liberties which the Constitution grants.”57 While they represented the most radical anti-PorWrista and anti-Pimentelista sector in Oaxaca, La Semecracia was still well within the conWnes of liberal democracy. The radicals publicized their version of the split in an article entitled “The Juárez Association, Personalism ConXicts with Principles” which appeared in two parts in the only two issues of the La Semecracia that saw the light of day. The radicals blamed the personalism of the president Puga y Colmenares for the organization’s problems and accused him of ignoring the general agreement to support the Valdivieso candidacy.58 The moderate wing had hedged on its support for the Valdivieso candidacy (Puga’s personal position on this conXict is not available), reluctant to force a direct confrontation with Pimentel. The radicals also excoriated Puga in Diario del Hogar, unearthing his past as an ofWcial of the González government. Puga, in turn, denounced 57. La Semecracia, March 11, 18, 1906. This paper is so little known that even Gurrión’s brother calls it La Democracia (Gurrión, Biografía, 8). José Victorino Lastarria introduced Positivism into Chile at about the same time that Gabino Barreda did in México. Yet Lastarria kept his faith in individual liberty and developed a theory of “semecracy,” or selfgovernment, especially for municipalities. See Hale, “Political and Social Ideas,” 248–49. 58. La Semecracia, March 11, 1906.

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the radicals and resigned as president of the Juárez Association. A majority of the members then rejected his resignation, much to the dismay of the radical minority.59 Thus Puga and his group consolidated their power in the Juárez Association and marginalized the Magonistas even further. If they were to be the minority in the association, at least they would not be a silent one, thanks to La Semecracia. Their break with the Oaxacan PorWrista political tradition permitted them to link up with the national opposition, leaving behind the myopic localism of the moderates.

“The Thirsty Passions of Tyranny” The Pimentel government responded to the opposition with blanket repression of both radicals and moderates. The police laid siege to the printing shop of El Bien Público and put its editors under surveillance. In December 1905 Adolfo Gurrión was arrested by the jefe político of Tehuantepec, Manuel Bejarano, only to be released by order of Judge Adelaido G. Ortiz when no charges were pressed. But when Ortiz absented himself from the district on business, the jefe político of Juchitán, Fernando de Gyves, destroyed the release and threw Gurrión back in jail. The authorities marched him off to Tehuantepec in handcuffs, “on foot and under a blazing sun, being victimized by constant abuse and insults.” Along the way, more and more Juchitecos surrounded Gurrión and his police escort, loudly denouncing the “tyranny and despotism” of the Pimentel government. Halfway there, at Amotepec, a band of outlaws (probably sent by de Gyves) attempted to provoke the escort so “that in the ensuing confusion they could commit the horrendous crime that would leave the thirsty passions of tyranny satisWed. But the perverse intentions of the executioners were smashed by the energy and valor, worthy of praise, of those citizens who had fraternally and spontaneously accompanied this martyr.” The provocateurs ended up marching along with this strange procession. The Tehuanos received Gurrión warmly when he arrived and he was able to escape the Pimentelista repression, this time thanks to the support of his friends, but his days as a free man were numbered.60 59. Ibid. 60. El Bien Público, Jan. 1, 1906.

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The radicals’ newspaper published a ferocious denunciation of the incumbent administration. The second issue of the paper ruthlessly mocked Judge Francisco Canseco, who would become the scourge of the opposition in Oaxaca. Since Canseco had ridiculed La Semecracia to his law students at the ICA, the editors responded to this “despicable man of no account.” Playing on the magistrate’s surname, Canseco, they published an article “Un famélico can seco” (“can,” meaning dog and “seco” dry), which translates as “A Ravenous Dry Dog.” They chided him for having tried to pass for a liberal, only to resign from the Juárez Association “as told, fearing the loss of his job” (a reference, probably, to the elite exodus in 1904). Then the editors threatened all such servile bureaucrats, who only thrived under the protection of a corrupt administration: “This rectiWer of ideas will soon see what we also have in store for him. . . . [W]e still have the horsewhip in hand for all those such as he, who subordinate everything to the need of their stomachs.” Manuel Bejarano, the hated jefe político of Tehuantepec (who had persecuted Gurrión), was another target of the radicals’ vitriol. Governor Pimentel then got Canseco and Bejarano to join forces in order to charge editors Gurrión and Gallegos with libel. By April 1906 this lawsuit had silenced La Semecracia forever and the editors were locked up in Santa Catarina prison in the city of Oaxaca.61 On July 20, 1906, after four months in prison, Gurrión and Gallegos appeared before the state’s Superior Court. Afterward, as they walked across the interior patio of the government palace into the street, they began to shout, one after the other, “Down with re-election,” “Long live the martyrs of liberty,” “Death to tyranny,” “Death to despotic governments.” A soldier later testiWed that this “fuss caused a great crowd [of townspeople] to form” who followed them and their police escort “all the way to the jail [Santa Catarina, a few blocks away] answering the prisoners shouts with ‘vivas’ and ‘mueras.’” The authorities believed that the presence of the crowd had been prearranged so as to create a public scandal. They pointed out that the people who followed the escort were all welldressed, middle-class citizens. The police escort ignored the Wery chorus of antigovernment slogans lest the crowd attempt to free the prisoners.62 The 61. La Semecracia, March 18, 1906; Gurrión, Biografía, 7–9. 62. AGEPEO, July 1906, Gob., Expediente suelto. According to Rosalino Martínez, a soldier in the escort, “we began to think it would be necessary to push back the disturbance by force, in order not to let the prisoners escape or the crowd pull them away from us,

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incident went no further, but it attested to popular support and sympathy for the radical opposition. Gurrión and Gallegos were still in prison at the end of October, when they would be brought up on new charges. In response, El Bien Público initiated a new column, “Cuenta Corriente” (running account). In each edition, the same list of the administration’s abuses appeared, only the list kept getting longer and longer with each new act of repression, imprinting on the minds of the readers the arbitrary acts of the “Pimentelista tyranny.” The dismissals of Puga and Díaz Quintas from the ICA and the persecution of Gurrión and Gallegos headed the list. From all over the state, new entries appeared: the dismissal of José de Gyves, deputy mayor of Juchitán, for membership in the Juárez Association; the imprisonment of students Díaz Chávez, Leo Mendoza, and Rafael Navarrete for student activism in opposition to Pimentel; the removal of Agustín Hernández, director of a school in Tlaxiaco; the dismissals of José Guzmán Pombo and José D. Santamaría, both teachers from Tlaxiaco; the closing of the printing shop of Francisco Márquez and the removal of Miguel de la Llave, secretary of the Committee of Prison Vigilance of the city of Oaxaca.63 El Bien Público also kept the public informed of the series of obstacles created by the government to inhibit its publication. Apparently the last issue of the liberal paper appeared on July 1, 1906, two weeks shy of what would have been its Wrst anniversary. On March 21, 1906, the Mexican nation celebrated with great pomp and circumstance the centennial of the birth of its liberal hero. Arches of electric lights illuminated the new road that led from the city to the statue of Juárez on Fortín Hill, which still today looks out over the state capital. The local branches of the National Bank of Mexico, the Bank of Oaxaca, and the United States Banking Co. paid for the construction of a monumental arch at the entrance to Juárez Park. The state government also acquired the Wrst house in which Juárez had lived in the city and transformed it into a museum for the occasion. A plaque was placed outside the house where Juárez lived when, as governor, he promulgated the 1857 Constitution.64 because the closer we got to the jail, the more frequent and the louder the shouts became of both the prisoners and the people.” Many thanks to Brian Hamnett and Manuel Esparza for Wnding this Wle for me. 63. El Bien Público, July 1, 1906. 64. El Imparcial, Jan. 6, 1906; Mensaje 1906, 19–21. Planning for this great event had begun in 1903 when Félix Romero, Justino Fernández, and Benito Gómez Farías, all veterans of the 1856 Congressional Congress, participated in the organizing commission.

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But despite the festivities and the national pilgrimage to Guelatao (Juárez’s birthplace) organized by the Juárez Association, the imagined tradition of Juarismo was in violent dispute in 1906. The centennial saw Juarismo in Oaxaca contested by the oligarchy, which paid lip service to his memory by footing the bill for the public homage, and the Jacobin liberals, quarreling moderate and radical dissidents, who perceived themselves as struggling to put his ideals into practice. The unifying liberal myth was fast disintegrating.

“Making the Despots Tremble:” The Magonista Conspiracy of 1906 With Gurrión and Gallegos in prison, La Semecracia silenced, and El Bien Público on the verge of disappearing, Pimentel felt reassured that order had returned to Oaxaca. The June 1906 elections for governor and federal deputies went smoothly and Pimentel was reelected. In his September message to the local Congress, the governor reported that “Public order has been upheld and has not been altered by any event which might evidence grave discontent or a violent situation. Peace, Wrmly cemented throughout the nation, is also with us.”65 Ironically, on September 2, 1906, Ricardo Flores Magón and Juan Sarabia issued the Magonista call to arms from El Paso, Texas. They urged Mexican Liberals to rise up and overthrow the dictatorship in order to implement the program of the Mexican Liberal Party. They divided the country into Wve zones and named a military chief for each one. The northern zone had priority because of its proximity to the U.S. border, where the PLM’s agents functioned more freely. Northern Mexico emerged as the center of Magonista operations because during the PorWriato it had been transformed into a prosperous capitalist economy with middle and working classes who deeply resented their lack of political and social mobility. In the southern zone, PLM leaders had designated Angel Barrios (using the alias of Abelardo Beabe) as Magonista military chief. A native of Texcoco in the state of Mexico, he had graduated as a lieutenant from the Chapultepec Military Academy in 1897 and later from the National School of Engineering. An ardent liberal, Barrios worked for years as a 65. Mensaje, 1906, 6–7. The fact that the governor felt compelled to include this passage implies that public order was subject to question.

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survey engineer in Oaxaca and later became a major revolutionary Wgure in the state. Antonio de Pío Araujo, a Magonista agent designated to meet with PLM members in various states to coordinate the coming revolution, described a trip to Oaxaca in a report to Ricardo Flores Magón. He spoke very highly of PLM agent Beabe (Barrios), whose military knowledge impressed him. The latter had been distributing revolutionary propaganda among the Indians in his frequent trips through the mountains. When, the previous January, Governor Pimentel had spread the rumor that Flores Magón had died, “disheartening many of our supporters. . . . Engineer Beabe took it upon himself to correct that false story, typing himself close to 300 circulars which proclaimed you alive and well and that the struggle would go on.” Barrios vigorously accepted the “commission of Special Delegate in Oaxaca, Veracruz, and Guerrero.” He was expected to continue instructing “co-religionists.” Pío Araujo observed: “Would be to God that all our comrades were of the stature of this engineer, Mexico would already be free.”66 As Magonista chief in Oaxaca, Barrios assumed responsibility for the planning and organization of the rebellion of 1906. The uprising, originally set for Independence Day, September 16, had to be postponed until September 30. Organization moved slowly because almost all Magonista communications went by mail, with only the occasional use of couriers. Flores Magón also supposedly met with Barrios in El Paso, exactly a week before the Wrst uprisings were scheduled. Handing Barrios his military instructions, Flores Magón warned that they be “handled as if dynamite.” Were Barrios to be caught with these documents on his person, he would face the death penalty. Barrios, wrote Kaplan, “was brimming with fervent hate of the Díaz regime. His insatiable desire to bring justice to the masses made him an ideal delegate. His sunken eyes shone as he answered: ‘Give me the documents, Ricardo.’”67 66. The report is in Barrera Bassols, Correspondencia, 150–56, and is also cited by Hernández Padilla, Magonismo, 109. This letter is dated May 18, 1907. For information on Barrios, see Barrera Bassols, Correspondencia de Ricardo Flores Magón, 250–56, and Martínez Nuñez, Historia, 204. Barrios later became a general in the Zapatista Army. See Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, 271, and especially Brunk (for his later career), Emiliano Zapata! 93, 114. According to all other sources, Barrios was imprisoned in the city of Oaxaca as a Magonista conspirator in the Wrst days of November 1906, and then sent to the penitentiary in Mexico City. However, Araujo has Barrios free in spring 1907 and able to act as his guide in Oaxaca. Either Araujo is referring to an interview before November 1906, in April or May of that year, or the other sources are incorrect. 67. Kaplan, Combatimos la tiranía, 167.

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Political Culture and Revolution

The PLM had plotted the capture of Agua Prieta, Sonora, Ciudad Jiménez, Coahuila, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, but it was thwarted in each case. Thanks to its effective espionage system, the Díaz government was able to stop most of the insurrections before they got off the ground. On September 30, 1906, a campesino uprising took place in Acayucan in the state of Veracruz on the Isthmus, close to the border with Oaxaca. The leader, Hilario Salas, was a Mixtecan and Protestant campesino from Oaxaca who had migrated to Veracruz in search of employment. This insurrection was quelled in a matter of days.68 The northern region of San Luis Potosí had also been targeted by the Magonistas for a rebellion. Once again the Díaz government received the alert beforehand and imprisoned the leaders in the Wrst week of September. Among the documents that the police conWscated from the Potosino dissidents were two letters from Oaxacan Magonistas. The local authorities sent these on to Oaxacan authorities. One letter had been written by Plutarco Gallegos from the city jail of Oaxaca to Mateo Almanza; the other was from Gaspar Allende to Antonio Torres. On receipt of these letters, Judge Francisco Canseco ordered the arrest of those implicated. He moved his editorial nemesis, Gallegos, from the city jail to the headquarters of the army’s Eighth Battalion and held him “rigorously incommunicado.” The jefe político of Cuicatlán sent out an escort of Rurales to bring in Allende (manager of a coffee plantation), who was then transported by train to army headquarters in the state capital. Other PLM members were soon implicated. The authorities arrested Miguel Maraver Aguilar in Miahuatlán, Rafael Odriozola in Cuicatlán, and Ismael Caballero, Angel Barrios, and Carlos Pérez Guerrero in the city of Oaxaca in the Wrst days of November.69 As far as can be ascertained, the state’s case rested solely on the evidence of the two letters conWscated in San Luis Potosí. Written in passionate and 68. Turner, Ricardo Flores Magón, 101; Hernández Padilla, Magonismo, 91–95; Cockcroft, Intellectual Precursors, 144–50; Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana en Oaxaca, 16. See Azaola Garrido, Rebelión y derrota, on the Acayucan rebellion. 69. Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana en Oaxaca, 17; “Oaxaqueño objeto de amplio homenaje,” 20; Hernández, “Gaspar Allende,” 8; Martínez Nuñez, Historia, 200; Rojas, Cinco décadas, chap. 5, 9; “Editorial” in El Legionario, March 30, 1955, 1–3. When the police searched Gallegos’s house, they found three or four letters from Ernesto E. Guerra of Puebla, which led to his arrest in Puebla. Barrera Bassols, Correspondencia, 253; AGEPEO, Oct. 1906, Gob., Expediente Suelto; Hernández, “Gaspar Allende,” 8, 20; Martínez Núñez, Historia, 200.

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provocative language, they were completely lacking in concrete details about the alleged rebellion; no locations, dates, hours, participants, arms, or munitions were mentioned. Gallegos had written, “The honorable society of Oaxaca Wnds itself profoundly scandalized by the infamy committed against us and in these moments is about to take an energetic and praiseworthy attitude, to remedy our horrible situation. This virile attitude will make the despots tremble.” Allende was somewhat more speciWc: I have reliable information that very soon the Revolution will break out, it’s now only a matter of days. For that reason, my esteemed co-religionist, we should enlist with everyone so that when the electric spark ignites the Wre, the Party united as one, armed man will arise and throw off the yoke which oppresses us, because we must not leave the people alone in this struggle. We must prove in practice what we have maintained with words. On to the struggle, duty calls! Fatherland, Liberty and Justice.70 Yet even in this impassioned plea for action, there were no speciWc details. After being held incommunicado by the army, Gallegos and Allende were transferred to the Santa Catarina jail in the city of Oaxaca, while Odriozola was kept in an army cell. The district judge then formally charged all of them with the crime of “conspiracy and rebellion.” The trial lasted eight months and the sentencing took place on June 15, 1907. The judge ruled that the prisoners had conspired with Ricardo Flores Magón, Juan Sarabia, Antonio Villarreal, and other members of the Mexican Liberal Party to rebel against the constitutional government of Mexico.71 70. Dated Sept. 28, 1906, Plutarco Gallegos’s letter to Almanza continued, “Today we are the vanquished, the martyrs, the victims. . . . Tomorrow, when the people, that sleeping lion tormented by so much injustice, lays claim to its dead liberties, then my brother, ah! Then who knows what will become of those who today oppress, scorn, murder, rape, steal, and exterminate. Thus meanwhile we suffer with patience, until the new and brilliant dawning of liberty and justice arrives.” AGEPEO, Oct. 1906, Gob., Expediente Suelto. 71. Martínez Núñez, Historia, 201; Hernández, “Gaspar Allende,” 8; case of Maraver Aguilar in La Voz de la Justicia, April 5, 1908. Gaspar Allende played a dramatic role during the trial. He presented a “Manifesto to the Oaxacan People” that violently condemned the PorWrista government. He openly professed his faith in the PLM and the nation’s future, an attitude that clearly disconcerted the judge. In April 1907 the warden informed the judge that he had put Plutarco Gallegos in solitary conWnement because he had been advising prisoners not to obey the warden’s orders but only those of higher authorities. When the

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The judge sentenced Gallegos, Allende, and Maraver to Wve-year terms in the fortress of San Juan de Ulúa in the harbor of Veracruz, the most terrible of Mexico’s prisons, and sent Barrios to the penitentiary in Mexico City. Pérez Guerrero, Caballero, and Gurrión remained in Santa Catarina. At army headquarters, the authorities continued to pressure Odriozola to retract his radical ideas and sign a prepared statement or he too would face imprisonment in San Juan de Ulúa. He refused to sign and, perhaps because the evidence against him was weaker or because of his family connections, they Wnally released him. Undeterred by this repression, Odriozola continued to hold clandestine opposition meetings in his house in Cuicatlán.72 The young Oaxacan Magonistas (most of them in their twenties) did not let the depressing prison conditions dampen their spirits. They even found time to wax poetic. One poem, perhaps better qualiWed as doggerel, written on December 28, 1906, and slipped out of prison, became quite popular as it characterized the Oaxacan PLM contingent: In the jail of Antequera For reasons of politics There are some young men Innocent victims Of the ire of the times Gaspar Allende, the Iberian

Odriozola, the diplomat Don Adolfo, the dauntless And Gallegos, the democrat Caballero, the aristocrat Pérez Guerrero, the intrepid And Maraver, the indomitable.73

But were the radicals really planning and organizing an insurrection? Given that the trial documents have not been located in Oaxacan archives, the particulars of both the PLM plans and the government’s evidence are unknown. Pío de Araujo’s report reveals some discussion of a PLM insurrection in Oaxaca in 1906. This report noted that Angel Barrios had been warden moved Gallegos to another cell, the prisoner was so “obstinate” that the only alternative was to put him in solitary conWnement. Rojas, Cinco décadas, 9; AGEPEO, Oct. 1906, Gob., Expediente Suelto. 72. Barrios was released in 1909. Allende, Gallegos, and Maraver did not leave San Juan de Ulúa until Sept. 24, 1910, and then only because of legal intervention by lawyer Jesús Flores Magón. Transferred back to the Santa Catarina jail in Oaxaca, they did not gain their freedom until 1911 (Martínez Núñez, Historia, 201–2). Odriozola’s family buried all his papers to keep them from the police and they ended up being destroyed by the humid soil of Cuicatlán (Quintero, “Trayectoria política,” 458–59). 73. Tamayo, Oaxaca en el siglo XX, 16–17; the complete poem is in Gonzalo de Jesús Rosado, “Precursores eminentes.”

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ready to rise up in arms against the dictatorship, but that “last year when the time came for the uprising and he [Barrios] demanded that the others declare themselves, they gave the pretext of a lack of funds.” He requested that some of them mortgage their Wncas to get resources, but no one would do so and Barrios himself only lived off his salary. He calculated he needed $4,000, half for arms and munitions, the other half to send to Flores Magón. Maraver Aguilar, who might have come through by mortgaging his coffee Wncas, had been taken prisoner when Barrios was trying to get the money together. According to this report, Maraver Aguilar was the oppositionist most feared by Pimentel.74 The only person to whom Barrios introduced Pío was Díaz Quintas. Pío described him as an intelligent lawyer with considerable inXuence among the indigenous communities of the Sierra Juárez and the Central Valleys. Both Díaz Quintas and Puga y Colmenares had agreed to rise up in arms, but Díaz Quintas had not offered to mortgage any of his properties to get funds for the Revolution. As far as Pío was concerned, Barrios and Maraver Aguilar were the real revolutionaries in the state. Barrios had accepted the responsibility for acting as the PLM’s special delegate to communicate with co-religionists in Veracruz, Puebla, and Guerrero to coordinate the insurrection. Pío left him three copies of revolutionary instructions and Barrios asked that a hundred copies of the PLM program be sent to him express, but Pío could not comply. Barrios also requested that the PLM send him two men trained in explosives to destroy bridges between Puebla and Oaxaca, but it is doubtful that request was fulWlled.75 That Barrios was ready to rise up is clear; how much of this information Oaxacan authorities had obtained is not. In any case, their membership in the PLM and their Wery language provided sufWcient reason to incarcerate the men, although the lack of concrete evidence is striking. Vicente E. Matus (member of the Juárez Association) and Rodolfo Reyes (son of General Bernardo Reyes) handled Maraver’s appeal in the Third Circuit Court. In effect, Maraver’s lawyers stated that the sentence lacked foundation since the case had no corpus delictus: their client’s complicity had not been proved given the lack of corroborating evidence. Adolfo Gurrión (already in prison for libeling Judge Canseco) was also implicated in the conspiracy of 1906. Gurrión’s family used its inXuence to obtain his 74. Barrera Bassols, Correspondencia, 254–56. 75. Ibid. Pío reported that Barrios would try to get a mortgage on Maraver’s Wncas from the United States Banking Co. branch in Oaxaca to proceed with the rebellion.

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release in early 1907, on the condition that he leave the state of Oaxaca. He Wrst went to Tepic but eventually ended up in Baja California, where he became a school inspector.76 With the majority of the Magonistas in prison, Faustino G. Olivera, a teacher from Etla, valiantly carried on the struggle. Surmounting great difWculties, he managed to publish a few editions of a radical newspaper, La Voz de la Justicia. He not only informed the public of government abuses but denounced the imprisonment of his radical comrades and the conditions to which they were subjected.77 The authorities then accused Olivera of having insulted high ofWcials and his newspaper was conWscated at the printer’s. This radical had been a thorn in Pimentel’s side for a number of years, since the governor had tried to deprive Olivera of his scholarship to the normal school in 1906. But the Liberal had fought back successfully and had had his subsidy restored. In September 1907, however, the governor signed a decree that terminated the scholarship on the following grounds: 1. Said student edits and directs a newspaper entitled “La Voz de la Justicia” which involves itself in political affairs, which are beyond the scope of that student, and distract him from his natural occupation as a pupil of the state; 2. That he endeavors to attack the Government from which he receives a pension for living expenses which constitutes a grave lack of gratitude, of decency and decorum which this Government cannot tolerate, under the penalty of prostituting the noble sentiments of youth and contributing to the contamination of other students. 3. The Law of Public Instruction which went into effect on April 1, 1893, prohibits in its Article 90, Fraction VI, the employees 76. La Voz de la Justicia, April 5, 1908. Gurrión was married to the daughter of Francisco Carranza, who had been municipal president of the city of Oaxaca; this family more than once used its inXuence to help their son-in-law (Gurrión, Biografía, 8–10). Gurrión only returned to his native state with the triumph of the Revolution. Elected federal deputy, he was assassinated by the counterrevolution in 1913. On October 16, 1906, postal inspector Juan A. Muñoz reported to PorWrio Díaz that he had just Wnished a tour of all the post ofWces and could assure the president that Regeneración and any other similar publications were no longer circulating in the Central Valleys. He was about to move on to the Mixteca, hoping to get the same Wndings (CPD, Letters, leg. 31, caja 32, Oct. 1906). 77. Cruz Salmerón, “Precursores,” 27–28.

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of this department from taking active part in political affairs, so that it could not be permitted for normal students to do so, because that would be tantamount to preparing them to violate this law when they enter the teaching profession later on.78 Incensed that he would not be allowed to complete his education, Olivera denounced his expulsion in an open letter to the governor in his newspaper. He rejected the claim that upon entering normal school students “lost their sacred right of free expression of their ideas enshrined in the federal Constitution of 1857.” In April 1908 Pimentel had Olivera thrown in prison.79 The suppression of free speech and incarceration effectively repressed the radical liberals. The moderate opposition learned the lesson and kept a low proWle. A retraction of radical liberal ideas could have its advantages. Dr. Gildardo Gómez, a member of the Juárez Association, made his peace with Pimentel and by 1907 was mayor of the city of Oaxaca and deputy to the local Congress. In 1910 he was one of the secretaries of the governor’s Reelectionist Club of Oaxaca.80 The radicals were incensed by this betrayal. This incident brings to mind Rosendo Pineda’s advice to the poet José Juan Tablada, who was frustrated by the way in which people of inferior capabilities were landing posts in federal government while he stagnated. One day when Tablada went to meet with Don Rosendo, the latter received him with a copy of El Universal in his hand. He scolded the poet for the “dangerous” article he had just published: “With poetic lyricism you defend the Indians of Chalco, and perhaps without knowing it, you damage important interests, meaning the Government’s policies. Don Iñigo 78. PO, Sept. 4, 1907. 79. La Voz de la Justicia, April 25, 1908; Tamayo, Oaxaca en el siglo XX, 36; El Imparcial, April 10, 1908: PO, Sept. 4, 1907. Olivera later became a military leader in the Maderista Revolution of 1911 but, with Gurrión, fell victim to the counterrevolution in 1913. 80. Iturribarría, Oaxaca, 264; PO, Jan. 2, July 17, 1907; El Correo del Sur, March 1, 1910. Alejandro Gómez Arias wrote a romantic version of his father’s opposition (“Infancia y adolescencia,” 50). In October 1907 Gómez was dining at the Hotel Edén in Oaxaca when Adolfo Gurrión, home on a visit, walked in with his friend Enrique Martz. Violent insults Xew back and forth as Gurrión denounced Gómez as a traitor to the Liberals, while Gómez declared that he had never been a friend of radicals. The police were called in to avoid physical violence, and Gurrión and Martz landed in jail, where they were held incommunicado, accused of defamation and calumny. Gurrión remained in prison until his family got him released. Martz was quickly freed but lost his job. El Imparcial, Oct. 11, 16, 1907.

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Noriega is a signiWcant factor in the development of the nation’s resources: aren’t you aware of that fact?” “Let’s not beat around the bush,” Pineda continued, “a young writer with a future has two paths before him, one leads to Congress and the other to the Penitentiary. . . . Where would you like to go?”81 This interview took place in the 1890s, when, at least in Oaxaca during the governorship of General González, political mobility was still a possibility for young men like Tablada. Puga had served as deputy to the local Congress and Constantino Chapital became jefe político of the Centro District; perhaps that is why Díaz Quintas expected something better than the judgeship of Etla upon graduation from the ICA. But with the arrival of Pimentel, young professionals were more and more marginalized. After 1902 the local Congress became a social center for wealthy oligarchs, not for aspiring middle-class lawyers. There could be no compromises for revolutionaries, who seemed entranced by the role of martyrs. But for the more circumspect moderates, who were equally frustrated by the injustices and corruption of the Pimentel regime, the strategy became the avoidance of direct confrontation with the government. They waited for a more opportune moment, which Wnally came in 1910, with the gubernatorial and presidential elections. By 1907 the economic crisis was seriously affecting Oaxaca’s prosperity. It is not clear what effect the crisis had on the opposition in Oaxaca, but in conjunction with the wave of repression in 1906 it probably helped to keep the moderate liberals quiescent. With the major radical activists in prison, there was no chance for them to link up with the miners or textile workers thrown out of work.82 If they had never gone beyond linkage with urban artisans before, they could hardly organize the working classes from their prison cells.

Juarismo, Moderate and Revolutionary Mexican political culture changed rapidly in the opening years of the twentieth century with the revival of liberalism spurred by the emergence 81. Quoted in Valadés, PorWrismo 2:244–45. 82. On the crisis, see Chassen [Chassen-López], “Boom minero porWrista,” 102–6. The case of Oaxaca supports Knight’s contention that the crisis could just as easily engender docility as political activity (Mexican Revolution 1:64–65).

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of middle- and working-class organizations and their reaction to the revival of the power of the Catholic Church. The very meaning of liberalism became contested terrain on which interest groups competed to deWne the “true” ideology of Benito Juárez. Each group invented its own imagined tradition of Juarismo to suit its own needs. Thus, born as a revolutionary ideology in the 1850s, Juarismo was refashioned into a justiWcation of the status quo in the Wrst two decades of the PorWriato, only to emerge once again as the opposition ideology of Jacobin liberals and a revolutionary creed for the radicals after 1900. In the ranks of radical dissidents, the participation of schoolteachers stood out. Oaxaca had always had its share of these militant schoolteachers (as it still does today). While theoretically part of the lower middle class, despite their working-class wages, teachers enjoyed the villagers’ trust, and their inXuence was far greater than their numbers suggest. This was certainly true in the case of three of the most inXuential precursors of revolution in Oaxaca, Sebastián Ortiz, Adolfo C. Gurrión, and Faustino G. Olivera, who later joined the Revolution. Even so, the Oaxacan opposition movement appears isolated and local when compared with Puebla, Chihuahua, or San Luis Potosí. In Mexico, as Knight has observed, it was “the local roots which gave the Revolution its sustenance.”83 But just how many dissidents are we talking about? The statistics available for Oaxaca are incomplete and unreliable, which makes a head counting of popular radicals very difWcult. Seeming numerical insigniWcance might belie real inXuence.84 The list of activities and cases cited in this study attests to the diffusion of the opposition throughout the state, as demonstrated by map 5. Considering the creation of liberal clubs and newspapers in districts as diverse as Cuicatlán, Jamiltepec, Centro, and Juchitán, the 1907 list of Magonistas establishing PLM activity in fourteen of twenty-six districts, the correspondence of Professor Zárate of Yanhuitlán with the PLM in St. Louis, and the clandestine reading groups of Regeneración, which were probably more common than has been documented here, it is clear that statistics cannot tell the whole story. The ferocity of the government’s response, seen in the geographically widespread repression narrated in the “Cuenta Corriente” column of El Bien Público, the suppression of La Semecracia and later El Bien Público, 83. Knight, Mexican Revolution i:2; Cockcroft, “Maestro de primaria,” 568, 571. 84. Knight, Mexican Revolution 1:ix.

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and the 1906–7 trial of the radicals, attests to a perceived threat taken seriously. The trajectory of the opposition in Oaxaca followed the national norm in its division into moderate and radical wings. After 1906 the moderates were mainly doctors and lawyers, graduates of the prestigious ICA. Their vulnerability was partially determined by their structural position in society as urban professionals, dependent on the patronage of the oligarchy, who failed to garner signiWcant support among working-class or campesino sectors. They could put up a strong resistance if it meant confronting an abusive local regime headed by a member of the hated CientíWco elite, but their unwillingness to oppose PorWrio Díaz inhibited their ability to build alliances with the burgeoning national opposition. The radical opposition, composed mainly of lower-middle-class activists, moved more easily from the anticlericalism of 1900 to denounce the injustices of the arbitrary Díaz administration. Free from the chronic myopia of the moderates, the radicals eagerly linked up with the nationwide radical opposition and its call for revolution. The radicals had Wnally severed the bond that united the Juarista to the PorWrista legacy and had moved into the realities of twentieth-century mass society. More often than not the radicals lived in the regions of PorWrian development, which conWrms the relationship between militant opposition and the areas of capitalist growth. Nevertheless, given the feeble industrialization of the state, they lacked the working-class support so signiWcant in other states, such as Puebla or Chihuahua.85 They secured the support of urban artisan sectors, above all in the city of Oaxaca, but they did not successfully proselytize in the surrounding factories or mines, nor did their cause resonate in rural Oaxaca. Although the liberal press often denounced injustices in the countryside, they failed to connect with villagers and ranchers, the majority of the state’s population. Consequently, the absence of support from the working classes, both urban and rural, weakened their movement. Despite the fact that various liberal lawyers defended the indigenous villages in land litigations, there were structural impediments to a possible alliance between the liberal opposition and the campesino population of Oaxaca; these included the geographic realities of isolation caused by 85. See LaFrance, Mexican Revolution; for Chihuahua, see Wasserman, Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution.

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mountainous terrain, indigenous languages, and the dispersion in so many small municipios. As Joseph has noted for Yucatán, reminding us of James Scott’s same appraisal of Malaysian society, “over the long haul it was extraordinarily difWcult to mobilize a diverse peasantry balkanized by different social and productive relations.”86 In Oaxaca there were many more indigenous ethnicities than in the Yucatán. Certainly some tried to reach out. Angel Barrios attempted to make just such contacts by distributing propaganda in the villages in his surveying trips throughout the Oaxacan countryside. But this did not produce any considerable alliances. While some liberal demands, such as the call for municipal autonomy, did speak to campesino interests, cultural differences were greater still. Early on, the Magonista PLM established itself as the most openly revolutionary organization of the opposition. James Cockcroft’s classic study of the precursors takes a linear perspective of the movement in Mexico from precursor to revolutionary, envisioning this movement as essential to the Revolution. Knight, by contrast, in order to strengthen his neo-populist interpretation of the Mexican Revolution, downplays the signiWcance of the precursors and questions the validity of the linear connection between the precursors of 1906 and the revolutionaries of 1911, noting that by the outbreak of the Revolution in 1911, the PLM had failed and been marginalized. While Knight’s criticism is well taken in some respects, the Oaxacan case supports Cockcroft’s interpretation. It demonstrates how militancy in the early opposition prepared and seasoned those who would Wll the future ranks of the Revolution, although it was not quite the revolution the PLM envisaged. In Oaxaca, the liberal opposition of 1905–7 would captain the Maderista Revolution of 1911.87 The weaknesses of the Oaxacan opposition—a shaky economic base, lack of support among the working classes, and endemic localism—were not unique to dissident liberals in Mexico. What differentiated the struggle of the Oaxacan opposition in PorWrian Mexico was the dual legacy of Juárez and Díaz. The adverse conditions under which it labored seemed to loom larger, certainly in political and ideological terms, than in other regions of Mexico. After Juárez’s death in 1872, not only Oaxacans but 86. Joseph, “Rethinking Mexican Revolutionary Mobilization,” 159. 87. The Zapatistas appropriated the PLM slogan “Land and Liberty,” as did the Carrera Torres brothers in the Huasteca. Cockcroft, Intellectual Precursors, Knight, Mexican Revolution, 46–47; Chassen [Chassen-López], “Precursores,” and Martínez Medina, “Génesis,” 35–158.

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also most Mexicans conciliated the traditions of their two political giants into a unifying liberal myth. While rallying to the anticlerical call of liberalism after 1900, Oaxacans contrived to reconcile both legacies, defending the liberal revival without breaking with Díaz. This became more and more difWcult with the increasing politicization of Juarismo. While for the radicals it was now clear that Díaz had betrayed Juárez, the moderates were still reluctant to turn against their benefactor. The privileges that moderate Oaxacans had enjoyed during the latter half of the nineteenth century now became their shackles.

11 Revolution in the South Meanwhile, the elite of the bureaucracy could be seen sumptuously celebrating the centenary of the proclamation of Mexico’s independence. All the stupendous material progress of the last thirty-four years would be pinned to this broach of light, the amazed looks of the people, the no less amazed and curious eyes of the foreign ambassadors especially sent by the civilized world; so they could all contemplate the gigantic and portentous works of the dictator. . . . And deafened by the noise, blinded by the splendorous brilliance of the jubilee, the dictatorship and its potent plutocracy could not see thunder and lightning on the horizon. —Jorge Vera Estañol, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana

Mucha Política, Poca Administración After the tumultuous strikes and rebellion of 1906 and the painful effects of the 1907 crisis, calm returned to Mexico, but it was the calm before the storm. In early 1908 General Díaz informed journalist James Creelman that he would not only “welcome” the formation of an opposition party but also “support it, advise it, and sacriWce [himself] in the successful inauguration of complete democratic government in the country.” He also stated that he had “no desire to continue in the presidency.”1 These words fell like seeds onto exceptionally fertile soil, tilled by hatred of political bosses and corruption, by nationalism bred of open favoritism toward foreign interests, and by the dislocations of the economic crisis. 1. El Imparcial, March 3, 1908; Creelman, “President Díaz, Hero of the Americas,” in Entrevista Díaz-Creelman, 242. For years authors have attempted to explain Díaz’s statements to Creelman. Was he trying to impress the American audience? Were they a signal of change, or were they, as Limantour later wrote, attributable to the “mental fatigue” of an aging president? (Apuntes, 157). According to Limantour, the cabinet only learned of the contents of the Creelman interview when they sat down to read the newspaper on the morning of March 3.

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All social groups harbored grievances—disgruntled elite factions, resentful middle classes, exploited factory workers, and landed and landless campesinos alike. Even though the president reneged by May, “convinced” by numerous petitions imploring him to stand for a seventh re-election, the Creelman interview served to revive political activity throughout the nation.2 The PorWrian adage of “poca política y mucha administración,” was inverted to read “mucha política y poca administración” (long on politics and short on administration) as the national palace feebly responded to Mexico’s political awakening. Political activity then focused on the vice presidency. The AntiCientíWcos had the perfect candidate to replace the lackluster Corral; the popular General Reyes had been waiting in the wings for seven years. Reyista clubs materialized in the capital and in provincial cities as quickly as red carnations, their symbol, appeared on the general’s supporters. Reyismo never took hold in Oaxaca. Perhaps he was too much of a northerner for the Anti-CientíWco opposition in the state. Only in the city of Oaxaca did Manuel García Vigil and Alfredo V. Herrera edit a newspaper, ironically entitled El Oaxaqueño, to support his candidacy. It began publication in July 1909 but disappeared after Wve or six editions because of lack of funds. The new Oaxaqueño generation of military men, such as García Vigil, admired Reyes for modernizing the army. Oaxaca-born Rubén Morales, a graduate of the military college in Mexico City, served as vice president of a Reyista club in the capital. But when Reyes withdrew from the race, the army “exiled” Morales to serve in Quintana Roo, a punishment that only served to push him further into the opposition.3 2. Filomeno Mata asked to meet with the president to discuss the Creelman interview. Díaz responded to Mata in a letter in which he announced his decision to run for a seventh re-election, which Mata published in his newspaper, Diario del Hogar. Limantour asserts that he was already suggesting the implementation of a reform program (Apuntes, 163–65); see Bulnes, Verdadero Díaz, 385; Cockcroft, Intellectual Precursors, 152. Memoirs, often written decades after the events described, must be read critically. See Jorge Ibarguengoitia’s droll satire parodying revolutionary generals’ memoirs, Lightning of August. According to Manuel Brioso y Candiani, at this juncture Rosendo Pineda was one of the very few who advised Díaz not to run again (Rosendo Pineda, 16). 3. López Portillo y Rojas, Elevación y caída de PorWrio Díaz, 407–8, 422. No edition of this newspaper has been found; see Rojas, Un gran rebelde, 44–47. Since his father, PorWrio, had been involved in the 1896 tax revolts in Villa Alta, Rubén Morales actually spent very little time in his native state of Oaxaca. Rojas, Epístolas, 171, 174; Cosío Villegas, Vida Política Interior 2:817; Beezley, Insurgent Governor, 52. Manuel García Vigil fought with Madero, with the Constitutionalists, and participated in the Convention of Aguascalientes in 1914. In 1920 he became the Wrst native revolutionary governor of the state, but his

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The seventy-nine-year-old Díaz refused to remove Corral and accede to the popular Reyista candidacy (once again resisting outside pressure). Although Reyes threw his support to Corral, the president removed him from the political scene and ordered him on a military mission to Europe in late 1909. This departure still failed to quell political agitation. The pressing need for political, economic, and social reform emerged as the subject of numerous books, pamphlets, and vigorous public debate.4 On January 22, 1909, almost a year after the Creelman interview, the Partido Democrático became the Wrst political party organized to test the political waters. It aspired to assure “compliance with the Laws of the Reform, respect for liberty and life, the moralization of the judicial system.” To prove this, it elected Benito Juárez Maza, son of the hero of the Liberal Reform, its Wrst president. Guided by a number of Mexico’s middle-class intelligentsia, the Partido Democrático’s political platform demanded a “free and popular government,” universal education, direct vote, and universal suffrage.5 CientíWco sympathizers immediately attacked this party as an instrument of Bernardo Reyes’s presidential (later vice presidential) ambitions. Although the party campaigned for Reyes for the vice presidency, this was not necessarily its sole raison d’être. Juárez Maza’s assumption of the presidency reinforced the relationship between the Juarista tradition and the democratization of Mexico for moderate liberals. The man who beneWted most from the Reyista episode was Francisco I. Madero, scion of one of the wealthiest families of northern Mexico. After witnessing a massacre of unarmed liberal demonstrators in Monterrey in 1903, he became more involved in opposition politics. He corresponded with Camilo Arriaga and the Flores Magón brothers and provided them with Wnancial aid. Madero published La sucesión presidencial en 1910 in early 1909, a “mediocre” analysis of Mexico’s political problems that stopped short of attacking Díaz directly. He called for the organization of support for the De la Huertista Rebellion ended with his wartime execution for treason. See Rojas, Un gran rebelde; Martínez Vásquez, “Régimen de García Vigil,” 382ff. 4. Cosío Villegas, Vida Política Interior 2:825–37. Among these books were Emilio Vázquez Gómez’s Reelección indeWnida, Francisco I. Madero’s Sucesión presidencial en 1910, Molina Enríquez’ Grandes problemas nacionales, Querido Moheno’s ¿Hacia dónde vamos? and Manuel Calero’s Cuestiones electorales. See González, “Liberalismo triunfante,” 258. 5. The organization of the party began in the last months of 1908. Juárez Maza and Abraham Castellanos, a noted educator, formed the Oaxacan contingent (López Portillo y Rojas, Elevación y caída de PorWrio Díaz, 387–92).

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an all-encompassing political party, the Antirreeleccionista Party, whose slogan became “Effective suffrage, no re-election,” ironically echoing Díaz’s “No re-election” from the Plan of Tuxtepec. John Womack aptly translated Madero’s motto as “A real vote. No boss rule.”6 The Club Central Antirreeleccionista was formed on May 19, 1909; the provisional executive committee included Emilio Vázquez Gómez as president and Madero and Filomeno Mata as secretaries. Former Reyistas such as Venustiano Carranza in Coahuila and José Vasconcelos, the young Oaxacan-born intellectual who now published the Maderista newspaper El Antirreeleccionista, rallied to this movement. Antirreeleccionista clubs appeared in various states as Madero campaigned throughout Mexico, particularly in nearby Veracruz and Puebla.7 In late September Díaz responded by stepping up the persecution of activists in an attempt to silence the Maderistas.

Madero in Oaxaca: “Some Good Patriots” Exhausted from the strain of the campaign in the late autumn of 1909, Madero went to take the cure at the thermal baths in Tehuacán, close to the border between Oaxaca and Puebla. He decided then to venture into the heartland of PorWrismo, a courageous though discouraging experience.8 From Tehuacán, Madero launched a “Manifesto to the Oaxacan 6. Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, 55. Born in San Pedro, Coahuila, Madero studied in France and at the University of California at Berkeley. Ideological differences between Madero and the more radical liberals quickly became apparent, but he still supported them. Cumberland opined that despite its mediocrity, the inXuence of Madero’s book “was inWnitely more startling and powerful than that of most great literary productions” (Mexican Revolution, 55ff. and 37ff.); see Cockcroft, Intellectual Precursors, 61ff.; Madero, Sucesión presidencial, 303–10, 318–21. 7. Cumberland, Mexican Revolution, 62ff. José Vasconcelos came from an old, established Oaxacan family, but his father moved the family to the border when José was very young. Vasconcelos was one of the few Mexican intellectuals to take an active role in the Revolution. He later ran unsuccessfully for governor of Oaxaca in 1924, after his period as Mexico’s Wrst secretary of Education; see the Wrst volume of his memoirs, Ulises criollo. La France narrates the growth of a strongly working-class Maderismo in Puebla in Mexican Revolution. 8. Madero also had disappointing receptions in Mérida and Tampico. See Cumberland, Mexican Revolution, 72–74, 86–89; Cosío Villegas, Vida Política Interior 2:888; Tamayo, Oaxaca en el siglo XX, 18–20; Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 262–63; Rosas Solaegui, Oaxaca en las tres etapas, 3–4; Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana en Oaxaca, 18–19; Nuñez Mata, “Una página” (March 9, 1961), 3; Taracena, Apuntes históricos, 203–4.

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People” and proposed an open meeting for Sunday in the city of Oaxaca. He promised to expound the goals of the Antirreeleccionista Party at greater length in the public meeting which some good patriots have called in this capital city for Sunday, the 5th. There I will wait for you to constitute a group which will strengthen the Antirreeleccionista ranks in order to prepare us for the decisive struggle that will take place next year, the presidential elections, and on which depends whether our fatherland will succumb to the claws of absolutism, or will be elevated on the wings of the majestic heights which are hers in the concert of civilized nations.9 Madero arrived in the city of Oaxaca on December 4 and the same night attended a meeting in the Salón París movie theater. He outlined his ideas on the future of democracy in Mexico and called for an Antirreeleccionista meeting to be held the following day in front of the Juárez statue on Fortín hill. But when people showed up for the meeting, they found that the police had cordoned off the zone to impede access to the monument. The authorities claimed that the demonstrators had failed to obtain the correct permission. The Maderistas argued that permission had been granted but then suddenly withdrawn. Madero desisted and invited those present to meet that night at the house of Juarista lawyer Juan Sánchez (see map 5 in Chapter 10 for areas of Maderista agitation).10 On the night of December 5 the Oaxacan Antirreeleccionistas met at the home of this steadfast oppositionist. Having adorned his home with Xags and a large portrait of Juárez, Sánchez consciously reinforced the Maderista-Juarista connection. The meeting gave birth to the Club Central Antirreeleccionista of Oaxaca, with Sánchez as president and Heliodoro Pérez as vice president. Miguel Cuevas Paz, Demetrio F. García, and 9. Nuñez Mata, “Una página” (March 9, 1961), 3, 5. The theater’s owner, Dr. Gómez, only supported the Revolution in June 1911. 10. Ibid., 3ff.; El Correo del Sur, Dec. 7, 1909; Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 263; Martínez Medina, “Génesis y desarrollo,” 95. Sánchez was dedicated to social and economic causes. He taught Spanish in high school, and served as president of the Teachers’ Mutualist Society of Oaxaca and as secretary of the ICA. He edited a pamphlet of littleknown works of Benito Juárez García, Vida literaria de Juárez, published by the Masonic Lodges of the city of Oaxaca and distributed gratis to the working class. Belmar, Breve reseña histórica, 106; El Bien Público, Aug. 1, 1905; La Unión, June 26, 1909.

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Leopoldo Payán also sat on the executive board. Madero returned to Mexico City on December 6 via the Mexican Southern Railway. Sánchez and Pérez soon resigned, and the Cuevas Paz brothers directed the club thereafter, providing a strongly artisan leadership.11 However, no visible links to the working class in the textile factories or mines, much less to nearby rural communities, can be established. The Catholic Church’s tight rein on laborers through Catholic Workers Circles and village priests in the countryside continued to be effective agents of social control. It is unclear who actually represented Oaxaca at the Antirreeleccionista Convention on April 15, 1910, in Mexico City. One source cited the photographer Francisco León and a postal inspector by the name of Rocha, while the Maderista newspaper México Nuevo identiWed Hilario Sánchez and Miguel Cuevas Paz as Oaxaca’s representatives. While in neighboring Puebla Maderismo exhibited a strong working-class following, in Oaxaca mainly lower-middle-class teachers and artisans dared to oppose Díaz. Conspicuously absent, the doctors and lawyers of the Juárez Association would become Maderistas only at the eleventh hour.12 Striking so strong a chord in northern and central Mexico, by late 1910 and early 1911 Maderismo resonated in Oaxaca in complaints against corruption, abusive authorities, and pressure for more political participation and social mobility. The demands for regional autonomy by what Knight has called serrano movements—“peripheral” peasantries 11. With the exception of Payán, the leaders of the Antirreeleccionistas in the city of Oaxaca had learned their political activism in the Juárez Association. El Correo del Sur, Dec. 7, 1909; Martínez Medina, “Génesis y desarrollo,” 95; Tamayo, Oaxaca en el siglo XX, 19–20. 12. Tamayo, Oaxaca en el siglo XX, 19; Martínez Medina, “Génesis y desarrollo,” 97. Maderismo in Puebla not only enjoyed substantial support among artisans but also was strongly rooted in the factory working class, a reality that did not please Madero, who sought a more middle-class base (LaFrance, Mexican Revolution, 7ff.). Over the years Oaxacans have tried to defend their revolutionary participation. According to Ramírez, citing an edition of El Bien Público, leading members of the Juárez Association—Díaz Quintas, Puga y Colmenares, Constantino Chapital, Faustino G. Olivera, Gerardo Toledo, even Rubén Morales (who spent hardly any time in Oaxaca)—were present that night in Juan Sánchez’s home. If that were the case, it is unlikely they would have elected the more humble Sánchez president, when Díaz Quintas and Puga were the perennial leaders. Ramírez also maintained that Maderista afWliates were installed in Ejutla, Ocotlán, Etla, Cuicatlán, Tlaxiaco, and Tuxtepec. Substantiating evidence for these claims may appear in the future, but none exists now (except for the Maderista nucleus in Tuxtepec). Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana en Oaxaca, 19. Iturribarría also places the moderates Díaz Quintas, Puga, and Chapital in the Centro Antireeleccionista, based on an unavailable edition of El Bien Público (Oaxaca en la historia, 263).

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resisting the “incursions” of state or federal government—resounded on the Costa Chica, in the Papaloapan region, and on the Isthmus. Some Oaxacans were ready to tie their fate to the national opposition movement when it responded to their local grievances. Yet, as in 1906, the moderate opposition in the Central Valleys manifested its localist mentality and still shied away from overt criticism of Díaz. Only the prospect of Pimentel’s second re-election in 1910 could reactivate the Liberals, Juaristas, and Anti-CientíWcos.13

Juárez Maza for Governor, 1910 In mid-1909 the Oaxacan dissidents published an open letter to the president that severely criticized the Pimentel governorship. The Oaxacan oligarchy countered with the publication of “Vote of Gratitude and ConWdence from Oaxacan Society to the Governor of the State, Lic. Emilio Pimentel” on July 14, 1909. They declared “that never in the long history of the existence of this federal entity has there been such security and conWdence to mobilize capital or undertake whatever enterprise as today nor has the spirit of association, initiative and commercial entrepreneurial activity, in arts and industry, been ever so stirred.” In fact, the “enterprising spirit based on the profound and unconditional respect of the governor for law, for the respect for individuals and property” had stimulated this prosperity. The Vallistocracia Wnally had a governor resolved to further the goals of modernity. The opposition counterattacked in an extensive critique entitled Trial of the Administration of Lic. D. Emilio Pimentel, published in late January 1910. Popularly known as the libro amarillo (yellow book) for the color of its jacket, its allegations were devastating, highly reminiscent of the Xorid style and stinging condemnations of El Bien Público. Although the book was signed by a long list of Wctitious names, Heliodoro Díaz Quintas was most probably the author.14 13. Knight, “Peasant and Caudillo,” 27–29, and Mexican Revolution 1:115–24; Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana en Oaxaca, 19. Knight’s concept of serrano rebellions is useful when juxtaposed to agrarian struggles. 14. “Carta abierta dirigida al señor General D. PorWrio Díaz, Presidente de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos” June 1909 in Bibliografía política y civismo Colocación III, FMBC. Voto de gratitud, July 11, 1909, 1. I am grateful to Lic. Luis Castañeda Guzmán for permitting me to consult this pamphlet. See Proceso de la administración; Rojas, interview. For a discussion of these documents and Juárez Maza’s 1910 campaign, see Martínez Medina, “Campaña electoral,” 172ff.

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At the same time, a group of the Oaxacan elites approached Emilio Pimentel to obtain his permission to prepare his second re-election campaign. The governor responded that it would give him “much pleasure to continue at the helm of the government” but that the demands of the job had so affected his health that he would need time to consider the proposal. Pimentel knew PorWrian protocol too well to answer before consulting with the president. The Oaxacan oligarchy harbored no such doubts. They pressed their champion on to a second re-election while they supported the Díaz-Corral ticket nationally. Although Pimentel didn’t announce his decision to seek re-election until late March 1910 (to the Mexican Herald of Mexico City), the Pimentelista political machine had already cranked up. In February the elite organized the Central Reelectionist Club of Oaxaca, and by April 5 political clubs had appeared in the districts of Tehuantepec, Juchitán, Ixtlán, and Choapan.15 The oppositionists sought a candidate to run against Pimentel. Félix Díaz was out since he had refused to run for governor in 1906 after the debacle of 1902. El Ideal, now the main voice of the opposition, began to praise General Juan A. Hernández, a veteran of the War of the Reform and now chief of the Eighth Military Zone headquartered in the city of Oaxaca. El Correo del Sur moved quickly to discourage this proposal, pointing out that Hernández was not a native Oaxacan. A group of oppositionists traveled to the capital city to speak with Benito Juárez Maza. Staunch defender of his father’s legacy and Anti-CientíWco, he seemed the perfect candidate to defy Pimentel, for the name of Juárez still worked magic in Oaxaca. “Don Beno,” as he was affectionately called, accepted the challenge.16 15. Jacobo Grandison represented Oaxaca at the Díaz Reelectionist Convention in Mexico City in 1910 and Wgured as a member of the new national Reeleccionist executive committee. El Correo del Sur, Jan. 14, 1910; Prida, De la dictadura a la anarquía, 264–65. José Zorrilla served as president, Nicolás Tejada and Dr. Gildardo Gómez functioned as secretaries. Dr. Ramón Pardo, Amado Hampshire Santibáñez, Tereso Villasante, and Fausto Moguel sat on the executive committee in the city of Oaxaca. El Correo del Sur, March 1, 23, April 5, 1910. 16. Once Reyes was out of the picture, there was talk in Mexico City of the president’s nephew as a viable vice presidential candidate. A personal enemy of Ramón Corral, the younger Díaz would have relished replacing the unpopular CientíWco, but Don PorWrio disagreed, not wanting his government to appear a “Oaxacan family dynasty.” Foiled again, the Anti-CientíWcos turned to Governor Teodoro Dehesa to unseat Corral but the candidacy quickly faded. Henderson, Félix Díaz, 26–27; Pasquel, Revolución en el Estado de Veracruz; Martínez Medina, “Campaña electoral,” 178; Tamayo, Oaxaca en el siglo XX, 20.

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Benito Juárez Maza was born in the city of Oaxaca on October 29, 1852. Given the vicissitudes of his father’s political career, the family frequently changed its residence, moving from Veracruz to Mexico City to New York, where he Wnally Wnished his elementary education. In 1867 Juárez Maza entered the newly inaugurated National Preparatory School under the Positivist sway of Gabino Barreda. Although he never Wnished law school, he later worked as an apprentice in a law Wrm in Mexico City. As president, PorWrio Díaz assumed a protective attitude toward Juárez Maza (despite his personal rift with Juárez Sr.). Named private secretary to the minister of Foreign Relations in 1877, Don Beno was appointed secretary of the legation in Washington the following year. He later held diplomatic posts in France and Germany and married Belgian María Klerian in Paris in 1888. On returning to Mexico he became a federal deputy, Wrst representing the territory of Tepic and later districts in the states of Mexico and Oaxaca. His colleagues in Congress considered him a dedicated Juarista liberal who frowned on Díaz’s conciliation with the Church. He did not possess an impressive intellect or the authority and bearing of his illustrious progenitor.17 By April 1910 rumors were Xying, in both Oaxaca and Mexico City, that Juárez Maza had decided to run for governor of his native state. He promptly received the enthusiastic backing of the moderate oppositionists of the Juárez Association, although they had not offered to support Madero. Moderate lawyers Heliodoro Díaz Quintas, Constantino Chapital, and Miguel de la Llave worked tirelessly alongside the radical Juan Sánchez. Arnulfo San Germán’s El Ideal emerged as the Juarista newspaper. Juarismo in Oaxaca now had a real Juárez to campaign for.18 Immediately on the attack, El Correo del Sur alleged that Juárez would not “possibly be any competition for Sr. Pimentel” since his “meager political signiWcance to be able to Wgure in the upcoming elections” was “public and notorious.” The Pimentelista El Voto Público reprinted a scathing article from Mexico City’s El Debate, a CientíWco organ, which made short shrift of Don Beno, condemning his ingratitude to Díaz. It also 17. Klerian, D. Benito Juárez, 37–42; Diario del Hogar, Nov. 30, 1909. Juárez Maza only began to play a visible role as Wrst president of the Partido Democrático. 18. It is unclear whether the association still functioned, and although both Iturribarría and Ramírez afWrm that El Bien Público was being published in this period, no copy after July 1906 has appeared. Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 263; Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana en Oaxaca, 19; “Siete meses de gobierno de Benito Juárez Maza,” 9–10; Rojas, interview.

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repeated a major insult to his manhood made by Mexico City’s El Tiempo on the formation of the Partido Democrático in 1909: “Sr. Juárez, who is an honorable man, . . . has done nothing, nor performed any act that would make him stand out in national politics. . . . there is only the name, that of Juárez; but if there is a name, there is no man behind it.”19 Such demeaning attacks intensiWed precisely because his surname posed the strongest threat imaginable to the status quo in Oaxaca. Juarismo was sufWciently powerful to galvanize Oaxaca’s moderate and radical oppositionists and reunite them. But with the Magonistas still in jail, only the small radical group led by Juan Sánchez was ready to link local Juarismo with the nationwide campaign of the Antirreeleccionistas. The Juarista campaign activated the pro-Maderista artisans in the city of Oaxaca, whose Club Central Antirreeleccionista de Oaxaca had proposed Juárez Maza for governor on April 10. In a manifesto, the National Antirreeleccionista Convention in Mexico City congratulated them on their choice of a “democrat of the highest standing.” Juárez Maza responded with a letter thanking the convention and defending himself against recent political attacks. When the Cuevas Paz brothers began distributing Juarista propaganda, they incurred the wrath of the jefe político of the Central District. The latter granted only seven of the 550 licenses solicited to put up printed materials in public and then accused the Juaristas of public drunkenness and of disobeying his limit.20 The Pimentelista regime was out to discredit the opposition by any means possible. The students of the normal school of the city of Oaxaca also combined their political work in favor of Madero and Don Beno. They formed the Club Estudiantil “Lic. Verdad,” disseminated Maderista propaganda, and often visited the house of Juan Sánchez. Victoriano D. Báez joined them, and Leopoldo García’s paper, La Sombra de Juárez, became the organ of the pro-Maderista students. Their radical activity reinforced the JuárezMadero connection, and Báez’s and García’s participation points to the relationship between dissidence and Protestantism in prerevolutionary Mexico as well. García studied at the Melchor Ocampo School, run by the Methodist Institute in Puebla, and joined the Club Liberal Melchor 19. El Correo del Sur, April 15, 1910; Martínez Medina, “Genesis y desarrollo,” 104; Prida, De la dictadura a la anarquía, 159, 201–5; El Voto Publico, May 22, 1910. In Mexico, “Pero si hay un nombre, no hay ningún hombre” is a brutal insult to Juárez’s manhood. 20. By means of the distribution of a printed proclamation, later reproduced in El Ideal. Martínez Medina, “Campaña electoral,” 179–85; El Correo del Sur, May 13, 1910.

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Ocampo in 1901. Between 1905 and 1908 he participated with Odriozola in Cuicatlán’s liberal club while he worked there as a teacher and pastor. He gained fame as a stirring orator in the Antirreeleccionista ranks while studying at the normal school in the city of Oaxaca during 1909–10. Normal school students also published the anticlerical La Guillotina (edited by Juan G. Vasconcelos), which violently attacked the dictatorship. Traditionally more conservative, even ICA students Manuel Herrera and Celestino Pérez collaborated with the Maderistas of the Normal. Women Normal students such as Juana Ruiz also joined the Antirreeleccionista ranks. The Maderista students were mentored by the affable radical engineer Angel Barrios, who played his guitar for them.21 The Juárez Maza candidacy excited considerable enthusiasm in the Sierra, the family’s patria chica. Serranos failed to see a contradiction between supporting PorWrio Díaz for president and Benito Juárez Maza for governor. In the highlands, Juarismo and PorWrismo could still go hand in hand. But caudillos Guillermo Meixueiro and Fidencio Hernández thought otherwise, seriously alarmed by the Juarista fervor spreading across their territory. Evidence of pervasive support for Don Beno can be detected in their open letter to Serranos.22 Oaxaca de Juárez, Oaxaca. June 4, 1910. To municipal presidents, agents, and principals of the Sierra Juárez. My dear friends and countrymen: We are aware that motivated by the upcoming gubernatorial election some people have tried to provoke disturbances in the district, availing themselves of the respectable name of our dear friend, don Benito Juárez, junior. They who do this are not sincere friends of the serrano towns, because without a doubt they would like us to appear to the Republic and go down in History as disloyal ingrates. You and the rest of our brothers 21. Efrén Núñez Mata was named vice president, while Herón N. Ríos of Juchitán, Adolfo Velasco, and Manuel Ramírez also participated in the Club Estudiantil. Núñez Mata characterized Juana Ruiz as “cordial but severe” (“Una página” [March 9, 1961], 3, and [March 14, 1961], 3). Báez later became payroll master of the “Liberating Army of the South” in Cuicatlán. The case of Oaxaca serves to substantiate the connection Jean-Pierre Bastián has posited between Protestantism and political opposition in Mexico. He also cites Benito Juárez Maza as a “frank sympathizer and particular friend” of Protestantism. See Bastián, Disidentes sociedades protestantes, 134 and 224ff. Pérez later represented Oaxaca at the 1916 Constitutional Convention. 22. Pérez García, “Primeros doce años del siglo XX,” 19.

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know that since the revolution of 1876, the Sierra Juárez, by the unanimous vote of its citizens, proclaimed as Supreme Military chief our present president, General don PorWrio Díaz, to whom we protested solemn Wdelity and adhesion. At the same time the Sierra solemnly offered that as long as he lived the serranos would never oppose General Díaz’ instructions or programs and at all moments second him with effectiveness and good will. . . . As we are always consistent with our commitments, we must vote in favor of Lic. Pimentel.23 The Pimentelistas in the state capital as well as the Serrano caudillos saw their clientele slipping through their grasp. The dual legacy weighed heavily on Oaxaqueños now that the imagined traditions were once again in conXict. Still, General Díaz did not take Juárez Maza’s campaign in his home state any more seriously than he was taking Madero’s challenge nationwide. While the president did not see the gubernatorial contest as destabilizing, he was annoyed by the personal ingratitude of Juárez Maza. When Juárez Maza arrived to campaign in Oaxaca, Pimentel informed Díaz by telegram that Don Beno was abusing the name of Díaz “to the ignorant. . . . making them believe that you had sent Benito. I don’t think he will Wnd any echo.” The president responded in code: “it’s over a year since Benito has shown his face around here, since he joined his Wrst [political] club. Therefore whatever he says about me is not true. I believe he is a man who is so lacking in seriousness that he is really not dangerous.”24 Don Beno arrived in Etla on June 11, 1910. The enthusiastic welcome he received contrasted vividly with the lackluster reception for Madero six months before. Arnulfo San Germán, Juan Sánchez, Heliodoro Díaz Quintas, and other leaders of the moderate opposition traveled with him constantly. Miguel de la Llave offered a banquet in his honor at the Gran Hotel. They announced a meeting for the afternoon of June 12, appropriately, at the Juárez Theater.25 But when the Juaristas tried to meet 23. Quoted in ibid. 30–34. The call to principals refers to the elders and respected senior members of the villages. 24. Gillow, Reminiscencias, 379; CPD, Telegrams, leg. 69, caja 4. The archbishop related how on a visit to Díaz he found the president highly irritated by Juárez Maza’s attitude. The code transcription in this telegram is difWcult to read and a few words may be incorrect. 25. Juárez Maza was accompanied from Mexico City by the able orator José Peón del Valle. El Correo del Sur, June 15, 1910; “Siete meses de gobierno de Benito Juárez Maza,” 10.

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on Fortín hill, under the statue of the candidate’s father overlooking the city of Oaxaca, the authorities foiled their plans, just as they had done to Madero’s the previous December. Those present were only allowed to place a Xoral offering at the base of the statue. The Pimentel regime was not about to enable Juárez Maza’s followers to lay claim to the great Reformer or help them to splinter the unifying liberal myth. Attendance was impressive and the disappointed multitude walked down the hill in a procession to the hotel where Don Beno was lodged. Another banquet was held the following day, and on June 14 Juárez Maza left for Mexico City. When he arrived in Tehuacán, he issued a manifesto “To the Democratic Sons of Oaxaca” afWrming his “profound gratitude” for their enthusiastic hospitality. He promised Oaxaca’s “patriotic and democratic people” that if elected he “would follow to the best of my abilities the example of my VENERABLE FATHER when he was governor of Oaxaca.”26 Never shy about using his father’s name to arouse the people, his whole campaign tour of Oaxaca lasted only three days. Díaz had, perhaps, assessed Juárez Maza’s reliability correctly. A paltry three-day campaign denoted a lack of will or the enthusiasm to seriously challenge the PorWrista political machine. The moderate opposition supported the native-son slate for the 1910 elections: PorWrio Díaz for president, Félix Díaz for vice president, and Benito Juárez Maza for governor, revealing the intrinsic contradictions of Oaxaca’s dual legacy.27 Support for Juárez Maza and the Juarista tradition at the state level came easily, but confronting General Díaz nationally was quite another story. Oaxacans’ Wrst loyalties were to Juárez and Díaz, a formula that had insured southern ascendancy for more than Wfty years. Throughout Mexico, as a consequence of PorWrista modernization and the rise of new social classes, the opposition was reinventing Juarismo. Yet only in Oaxaca could Juarismo and PorWrismo still be reconciled in such a paradoxical manner. Félix Díaz was not even a candidate, but he was a Díaz! Don Beno’s brief campaign reXected his own ambivalence. As heir apparent, he was particularly well placed to knock Oaxaca off the fence, but unfortunately he lacked the political acumen and charisma to captain the opposition. His campaign symbolized the split in the ranks of Oaxacan oppositionists in 1910 between moderates 26. El Correo del Sur, June 15, 1910; Manifesto in Ruiz Cervantes, ManiWestos, Planes, 13–14. 27. Reported to the president by Juarista Ricardo Luna, CPD, Telegrams, leg. 69, caja 4.

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who, galvanized by local politics, were pro-Juárez and anti-Pimentel, and radicals who now connected their local struggle to the national revolutionary opposition. Two days before the election, a Juarista manifesto addressed “To the Artisans and to the People” appeared, signed by the Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez Feminist Group. It stated, “We are the wives and daughters of artisans and of humble wage laborers, those who earn their bread with the sweat of their brow, and we have met with the objective of raising our voice to alert all citizens to vote and elect C. Benito Juárez father of the people who knows how to treat us with tenderness and affection.” The manifesto went on, “Women should encourage men to struggle in an orderly and peaceful manner for the people’s causes and if there are still men who are cowardly and effeminate who for fear or for convenience are not resolved to take active part in the campaign of the people’s only candidate Benito Juárez, then we will encourage and inspire them with the civil valor that they lack.” This manifesto, signed by more than 260 women, an impressive turnout of female support, turned the tables on the affronts to Don Beno’s virility by insisting that the only manly thing to do was to support him. And if the men hesitated, feminine Juarista courage would rouse them to action.28 OfWcial returns from the June 26 elections indicated an easy Pimentel victory, who won 149,808 votes to 11,468 for Juárez Maza (353 votes for various other candidates). Juárez Maza did, however, carry the district of Ixtlán of the Sierra Juárez, despite the caudillos’ warnings to the Serranos. Don Beno’s showing was also strong in the Centro and Zimatlán districts.29 Given the workings of the PorWrista political machine, the true vote count will probably never be known. The radical El Ideal denounced Pimentel’s victory as a “shameful triumph” imposed “by brute force.” The Juaristas challenged the election results and carried their protests to the local legislature, the national Congress, and the Supreme Court. In a protest dated September 10, 1910, and published in Mexico City’s Diario del Hogar, they demanded nulliWcation. The Supreme Court proceeded to dismiss the case. Veracruz governor 28. ”Manifesto of the Agrupación feminista Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez,” in Ruiz Cervantes, ManiWestos, Planes, 15. Although these women made this statement in the public sphere, they still accepted a supportive role vis-à-vis men. 29. Statistics on this election are thought to be unreliable since they were submitted to the Congress by the jefes políticos, who manipulated votes. AGEPEO, 1910, Congreso.

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Teodoro Dehesa advised Díaz to accede to a Juárez Maza victory in order to calm tensions, while a commission of Serranos from Ixtlán brought him a similar petition. As usual, he rejected any perceived imposition. But dissident political activity had ignited Mexico. In addition to Juárez Maza in Oaxaca, opposition gubernatorial candidates from north to south— including Venustiano Carranza in Coahuila, José Ferrel in Sinaloa, Patricio Leyva in Morelos—challenged the PorWrista political machine. No sooner did the celebrations of the centennial of Mexican Independence end, the Chamber of Deputies declared PorWrio Díaz president for the eighth time and rejected the Maderista demand that the election results be nulliWed. Although the opposition failed to unseat the PorWrista anointed this time, continued political repression spelled doom for a regime incapable of accommodating new social sectors clamoring for political space.30

Revolution in the South The reaction to the lynching of Mexican national Antonio Rodríguez in Texas in November 1910 revealed the extent of discontent and tension throughout the nation. Mexicans responded with furious indignation and violent demonstrations. In Oaxaca, El Ideal reminded its readers of the intimate relationship between the CientíWcos and the United States and circulated its own protest for Oaxacans to sign. The students of the normal school invited the “Sociedad de Obreros Independientes” and other clubs to join a public demonstration. Some four thousand people attended and marched through the streets of Oaxaca in protest. The U.S. consular agent in Oaxaca, E. M. Lawton, reported “quite a demonstration” with the police, Rurales, and soldiers out in force (Wve people were arrested). Lawton advised the embassy that Maderista propaganda calling for a November 20 rebellion was circulating in Oaxaca and noted, “There is still a very strong under-current of feeling here, on the part of the masses, against the Government and they are very willing to seize on any pretext 30. Martínez Medina, “Génesis,” 97, 107, and “Campaña electoral,” 192–93; “Siete meses de gobierno de Benito Juárez Maza,” 10; Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, 10–36; Vera Estañol, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, 95; Ruiz, Great Rebellion, 44. The Antirreeleccionistas, together with the Partido Nacional Democrático, opposed the announced re-election of Díaz and Corral. Among the protests presented to Congress, one came from Tuxtepec, signed by Sebastián Ortiz, and the other from the city of Oaxaca.

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such as the late demonstration, to make trouble for the local authorities.”31 Agitation was on the rise, even in Díaz’s patria chica. Under house arrest in the city of San Luis Potosí during the elections of June and July, Madero boarded a train on the night of October 5 and escaped to San Antonio, Texas. Although his Plan of San Luis Potosí naively stated that the Revolution would begin on November 20, 1910, at 6:00 P.M., on November 18 the police massacred the Serdán family, leaders of the Revolution in Puebla (who had been in contact with Oaxacan revolutionaries). Madero and his followers crossed the border on the night of November 19, only to return the next day for lack of arms and munitions.32 But agitation in Oaxaca had begun a few days before November 20. Miguel Hernández and Pedro Castillo were distributing Maderista propaganda and rallying the towns of the Chinantla, which controlled the entrance to the Sierra Juárez from the lowlands of the Papaloapan. Hernández, a native of Ixtlán and son of a local ironsmith, had left the region and worked on the railroads in the northeast. A fervent Antirreeleccionista, he met with Madero in San Luis and promised to return to Oaxaca to garner support for the Revolution. Hernández and Castillo went from village to village demanding that each municipal president hand over the funds collected from the capitación for the Revolution. From San Juan Quiotepec, they arrived in Tectitlán and neighboring Temextitlán. The locals arrested them when they couldn’t produce any authorization for their actions. Castillo escaped but Hernández was caught and transferred on November 20 to Quiotepec, where the municipal president conWscated various copies of Madero’s “Manifesto to the Nation” from him. Moved to Ixtlán on November 24, he was remitted to the city of Oaxaca for trial. Condemned to prison, he was sent to the penitentiary in Mexico City and did not gain his freedom until the triumph of the Revolution.33 31. El Ideal, Nov. 13, 1910. Pimentel assured Lawton that U.S. property would be protected. Lawton did not perceive any particular anti-American feeling in the discontent, although he did note that the governor attempted to diminish the threat. E. M. Lawton, American consular agent in Oaxaca, to Arnold Shankin, American consul general, Mexico City, Nov. 12 and 17, 1910, U.S. State Dept., Consular Reports, Documents 812.450 and 812.516, respectively. 32. Although Madero wrote the plan in Texas in early November, he dated it October 5 in San Luis so as not to offend nationalist sensibilities. Cumberland, Mexican Revolution, 116ff.; LaFrance, Mexican Revolution, 45ff. 33. Pérez García, “Primeros doce años del siglo XX,” 21–22. AGEPEO, 1911, Gob., Memoria Administrativa, V.D. Pedro León was arrested and imprisioned with Hernández

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Although this incident in the Sierra amounted to only a few “Mueras” and “Vivas,” it did cause alarm in the state capital. On November 22 the jefe político of Tuxtepec had reported that some Serranos had arrived in his district, inducing workers on the Wncas to join the Maderista Revolution. He solicited reinforcements of local armed forces from the governor. Díaz responded by sending Fidencio Hernández and Guillermo Meixueiro, who toured the Sierra region to quell any simmering discontent. Although they received various commissions from different villages reiterating their adherence to the government, Díaz appointed Fidencio Hernández as jefe político to ensure Serrano loyalty as tension escalated.34 For a state branded as reactionary, whose capital city had responded feebly to Madero’s visit, support for Maderismo was on the rise. But more than in the Sierra or Central Valleys, this support Xourished in the regions of PorWrian development: the Papaloapan basin, the Cañada, the Costa Chica, and also in the Mixteca. Although Oaxaca was not the scene of any notable Maderista battles, areas seeking more regional autonomy from the domination of the Vallistocracia now looked to the Revolution as a means to this end. Regionalism threatened to tear Oaxaca asunder, as the Revolution also revived isthmian separatism. Some Oaxacans enthusiastically supported the Revolution, while others were, as Luis González put it, revolucionados (“revolutionized”), those, mostly campesinos, who were swept up or pressed into the ranks of one or another faction by the force of events. Middle-class opponents of the tobacco oligarchy in Tuxtepec and the rancheros of the Costa Chica rallied to Maderismo. In the Mixteca and the Cañada separate Maderista armies coming into Oaxaca from Puebla and Guerrero united with local “revolutionary” uprisings, while they “revolutionized” the local population, by force if necessary. In the city of Oaxaca, the moderate opposition waited until the last minute to get on the revolutionary bandwagon.35 but there is no further information on him. Macario Espejel Hernández narrated this incident (which he places in 1909) differently, but his story has many factual errors; e.g., Madero was received in Oaxaca by an “immense celebration” (Espejel Hernández, “Ixtlán de Juárez,” 30ff.). 34. Pérez García, “Primeros doce años del siglo XX,” 23. Pimentel later commended the jefe político for the rapid apprehension of Hernández and rewarded the soldiers involved in the capture; CPD, Telegrams, leg. 69, cajas 10 and 11; AHDN, caja 108, exp. XI/481.5/205; PO, Dec. 28, 1910. 35. Martínez Medina divided the Maderista movement in Oaxaca into three categories: “attempts at rebellion,” local “uprisings,” and “invasion of forces from neighboring states”

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By early 1911 armed rebellion had ignited Mexico. In the north, Pascual Orozco, Pancho Villa, Jesús Agustín Castro, and José María Maytorena led troops, as did Zapata, the Figueroa brothers, and others in the Centro and south. With the success of these movements, Madero was able to cross the border on February 14, 1911, accompanied by members of the Maderista Revolutionary Junta, which included several Oaxaqueños: Lieutenant Rubén Morales, Lieutenant Octavio Morales, Lieutenant Manuel García Vigil, and Federico Antuñez.36

Liberation in Death Valley: The “Benito Juárez Army of Liberation” Sebastián Ortiz and company rebelled against the government of PorWrio Díaz on January 21, 1911, in Ojitlán. Attaching their revolutionary cause to the Reform hero, they called themselves the “Benito Juárez Army of Liberation.” Ortiz, an early PLM member, had been active for years in protests against municipal authorities in Ojitlán in the rich tobaccoproducing valley of Santa Rosa in the Papaloapan river basin. This merchant-rancher maintained important contacts in the city of Oaxaca as well as in other states through his commercial dealings. Representative of small entrepreneurs who prospered in the areas of PorWrian development, among Ortiz’s Wrst band of twenty-two revolutionaries were Joaquín Prado (merchant), the Aguirre Perea brothers (farmers), Adolfo Palma (farmer), José Ortega (cigar maker), Manuel Alfaro (employee of Ortega), Ranulfo González (farmer), Francisco Llanes (wage laborer), Victoriano Onofre, and Prisciliano Cruz (tailors). Catarino Baranda was the only person listed as an “Indian.” Demanding more political space and economic opportunity in an area asphyxiated by a despotic, slave-owning oligarchy allied with the Vallistocracia and state government, Ortiz and followers united ranchers, farmers, and small merchants, with both agrarian and

that united with Oaxacan forces (“Génesis y desarrollo,” 115). González, “Revolución Mexicana,” 9; Joseph, “Rethinking Mexican Revolutionary Mobilization,” 154; Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 265–69; Tamayo, Oaxaca en el siglo XX, 21–23; Rosas Solaegui, Oaxaca en las tres etapas, 4; Taracena, Apuntes históricos, 205; Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana en Oaxaca, 22. 36. Tamayo, Oaxaca en el siglo XX, 20.

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Serrano demands, and aligned them with the national opposition (see map 5 for revolutionary uprisings in Oaxaca).37 The “Benito Juárez Army of Liberation” detained the local municipal authorities, forced them to sign a document supporting the Revolution, and demanded they hand over any municipal funds. The revolutionaries conWscated all arms and munitions, which turned out to be a few old Remingtons and Wfty rounds of ammunition. Finally they obtained reinforcements, some “voluntarily, others by the force of arms.”38 The same day, Ortiz launched his own short “Manifesto to the Nation,” the only Maderista movement in Oaxaca to address all Mexicans: We, who sign at the foot of this document, rise up in arms to end the arbitrary acts that have been committed all over the country by the authorities who have usurped public ofWce. These are: the sale of Indians to the agricultural enterprises and the levying of onerous taxes with no accounting whatsoever. In this district, all types of taxes are collected without any other authorization than that of the ofWcial who decides to collect them, a fact that we will later prove. We will arrest all these arbitrary authorities and will hand them over to an Authority that the people name when order is reestablished in the Republic. Mexicans: Viva México! We declare free all those citizens who have been sold to the agricultural enterprises by the inquisitors of the oppressed Mexican Race of this continent. We adhere to the Antirreeleccionista program of México, because it is the program, which the Mexican people have approved and for whose cause we now Wght. Hurrah for all patriotic citizens, and we respect the lives of all foreign citizens and nationals. Ojitlán, January 21, 1911.39 37. In June 1911 the minister of Justice in Mexico City solicited a report from the provisional governor on the conditions of public archives in the state given the recent hostilities. The latter sent out a query to all the jefaturas políticas. The response from Tuxtepec narrates the history of the Revolution in that district since Sebastián Ortiz was the new jefe político. It provides a gripping account of one man’s struggle to remain loyal to the cause of his people. AGEPEO, 1911, Gob., Correspondencia, V.D., and 1911, Gob., Memoria Administrativa, V.D., and a short mimeographed biography, Breve reseña de la vida de Sebastián Ortiz. To refer to his cohorts, Ortiz used the word “agricultor” (commercial small landholder) as opposed to campesino, so I believe that the use of the word “farmer” is warranted here given the state of agriculture in this region. 38. AGEPEO, 1911, Gob., Memoria Administrativa, V.D. 39. The manifesto was signed by commander-in-chief Sebastián Ortiz, José Aguirre Perea, Adolfo Palma, Arnulfo González, Juan Ortega, Manuel Alfaro, Sabino Villalobos, Antonio

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In the minds of these insurgents, local grievances (e.g., the sale of “contratas” to the plantations and the arbitrary collection of taxes) united them with other Maderistas throughout Mexico. The Maderistas from Ojitlán carried the Revolution to nearby towns— to Jalapa de Díaz and Soyaltepec on January 22, Ixcatlán on the twentythird, Usila on the twenty-fourth, Mayoltianguis on the twenty-Wfth (where most inhabitants had Xed before them), and Tlacoazintepec, whose population welcomed them, on the twenty-sixth. They agitated throughout the Chinantla region for the violent overthrow of the PorWrista regime, as Miguel Hernández had done, unsuccessfully, two months earlier. They issued revolutionary decrees for the capture of hated PorWrian ofWcials such as Federico Ocampo in Usila for “arbitrary acts and the sale of indigenous citizens” and named new ofWce holders. On January 26, Sebastían Ortiz ordered the apprehension of the notorious jefe político Rodolfo Pardo, “for the sale of peaceful citizens for 30 or 40 or even 50 pesos to the agricultural enterprises.”40 Nevertheless, this rebellion was not initially successful. Pardo immediately sought government reinforcements for local forces, which numbered only Wfty Rurales. Based on information on the uprising from the commandant of Veracruz, the secretary of Defense sent in federal soldiers under General Emiliano Pousel. They reached the El Hule station by train from their station in the city of Córdoba. Later more reinforcements arrived under Major Ramón Toffé. The rebels fought Rurales and federal soldiers in various skirmishes between January 22 and 26. By January 25, the Maderistas, now numbering 237, battled six hundred Rurales and soldiers at “Monte Bello” for nine hours before they were forced to retreat. Ortiz’s forces had burgeoned to eight hundred troops, but many carried only sticks and machetes. Although the occupied towns offered, he refused any more volunteers: machetes could not defeat the federals’ heavy Wrearms.41

Peña, Catarino Baranda, José Montalvo, Antonio Montor, and Roberto Ortiz, AGEPEO, June 1911, Gob., Correspondencia, V.D. 40. AGEPEO, June 1911, Gob., Memoria Administrativa, V.D. The Revolutionary forces from Usila brought Federico Ocampo before General Ortiz in Cuicatlán on June 10 for military justice, but he preferred to hand Ocampo over to civil authorities. We do not know his sentence. AGEPEO, June 1911, Gob., Correspondencia, V.D. On Ocampo’s abuses, see Chassen-López, “‘Cheaper than Machines,’” 34–35. 41. AHDN, Exp. XI/481.5/206; see various documents in caja 108.

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By January 27 federal forces composed of Wve hundred infantry, one hundred cavalry soldiers, and a section of machine gunners had entered Ojitlán, where the rebellion had begun. While the revolutionaries Wercely defended the town (causing sixty federal casualties while sustaining only six), Ortiz Wnally had to disperse his soldiers. Given the lack of arms and ammunition, he could maintain only a small force of twenty men, which continued to suffer further desertions. The remnants of Ortiz’s army, now reduced to only four men, barely escaped capture and hid on the ranch of Camilo Perea near Ixcatlán for forty days. On March 23 they traveled by land and canoe to the ranchería of Corral de Piedra near Amapa, where they spent a week, and then to Paso Cocoyo and Río Sapo, where they were protected by Leopoldo Espinosa and José Guadalupe García. Fortunes improved in a few weeks and by April 12 Ortiz’s forces numbered Wfty. On April 19 they once again took up arms.42 Sebastián Ortiz and his troops were once again traveling from town to town, inciting the people to join the Maderista cause. They rapidly incorporated more Oaxacans into their “Benito Juárez Army of Liberation,” Wghting against “the despotic, Neronian administration of the BatroPardistas,” which referred to the control of the region by the hated Pardo. On May 11, Ortiz occupied the infamous Hacienda of Málzaga after overcoming the resistance of the Spanish overseer, Angel Sustaeta. Ortiz’s soldiers executed Sustaeta, notorious for his cruelty and torture of the contratas throughout the region. Revolutionary justice for Sustaeta entailed being “sealed into a wooden barrel, with various air holes, and then thrown into the Tonto River, a tributary of the Papaloapan. The soldiers then used the Xoating barrel for target practice with their 30-30 riXes. The barrel disappeared in the current of the river” pierced by hundreds of bullet holes.43

42. AGEPEO, June 1911, Gob., Memoria Administrativa, V.D. Pimentel was receiving information on the uprising from the district ofWcials, whose telegraph lines had not yet been cut, which he immediately forwarded to Díaz. CPD, Telegrams, leg. 70, caja 3. Ortiz’s description of the battles is in AGEPEO, June 1911, Gob., Correspondencia; see García, Sierra de Huautla, 49–52. 43. AGEPEO, June 1911, Gob., Correspondencia. They also found a man who had been cruelly tied up by the overseers: “Because on that particular Wnca there existed the custom of ill treating the workers and this particular peon was badly hurt, I ordered that the competent authority carry out the necessary investigation.” This was done with great detail in the town of Huautla de Jiménez in the nearby district of Teotitlán. Alberto Ortiz, interview; Chávez, “Episodio de la Revolución.”

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At Málzaga the revolutionaries found indigenous Yaqui families working as “semi-slaves,” literally starving to death. They liberated the Yaquis and gave them the food found in the hacienda company store plus $350 per family, so they could return to their homeland in Sonora.44 Immediately after the incident at Málzaga, Ortiz and his forces moved into the neighboring district of Cuicatlán. Ortiz’s Maderista movement had spread across the Chinantla region to unite with the revolutionary chiefs of the Cañada.

Conspiracy in the City of Oaxaca Tensions rose in the state capital as the Maderista opposition there also reactivated its struggle. In early January Rafael Cuevas Paz printed and distributed anonymous Xiers daring to criticize the Serrano caudillos, Guillermo Meixueiro and Fidencio Hernández. The authorities immediately threw him in jail for two months (until the beginning of March). Then, on the afternoon of February 1, 1911, the Rural Miguel Topete rushed into the ofWce of the jefe político with alarming news. He had learned that in the vicinity of the Hacienda of Zorita (Centro District) and in Zaachila (in Zimatlán) close to two hundred rebels had met the previous night to plan an uprising against the federal government. Roberto Olguín “had made the round of various villages, haciendas, and ranchos near the capital city inviting the citizens to join the rebellion, offering to pay them one peso gold a day,” while Valentín López was busy “collecting funds among his co-religionists and friends to defray the expenses” of the revolutionaries. On the basis of Topete’s allegations, authorities arrested and imprisoned both Olguín and López.45 Spies working for the Gendarmarie also reported on nocturnal meetings of groups of twenty to twenty-Wve persons on La Noria Street in the city of Oaxaca. Luis Jiménez Figueroa, a Maderista student, had supposedly had cartridge belts and pouches made by a local saddler (Felícitas Avendaño). As a result, new arrests were made: Jiménez Figueroa and his father, José Ruiz Jiménez, both longtime dissidents, were picked up 44. AGEPEO, June 1911, Gob., Correspondencia, V.D. See Chapter 3 on the Hacienda de Málzaga. 45. Rojas, Efemerides oaxaqueñas 1911, 17, 30. Topete’s sources are not identiWed, AGEPEO, Feb. 1911, Gob., Centro, Relativo al movimiento sedicioso en esta capital.

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on February 2. Among their effects the police found printed propaganda of the Partido Democrático and numerous letters from Juárez Maza and Díaz Quintas. Also accusing Olguín and Angel Barrios of spreading Maderista propaganda in Zaachila, the police arrested Barrios the same day, seizing more compromising material from his home—printed matter from the PLM, Juárez Maza, the Partido Democrático, three copies of the Libro Amarillo, and the Antirreeleccionista program. They also conWscated letters from a group of men who would soon lead the Revolution in the state: Manuel Oseguera of San Juan de los Cúes, Waldo Figueroa of Putla, and Sebastián Ortiz of Ojitlán, proving that Maderista leaders from the Cañada, the Mixteca, and the Papaloapan region, respectively, were in communication with revolutionaries in the state capital. Urban oppositionists—artisans, shopkeepers, and middle-class lawyers—had learned from the errors of 1906 and they now made common cause with ranchero and campesino sectors of rural Oaxaca to fortify their struggle.46 When Central District authorities apprehended Arnulfo San Germán on February 2, they also found compromising materials and letters from the Oaxacan lawyer Manuel Brioso y Candiani, then living in Mexico City. Along with Valentín López, José Olguín, Roberto Olguín, and Pedro Nibra (who had a copy of the Libro Amarillo and Maderista propaganda) were imprisoned. This roundup, ordered by the infamous judge Francisco Canseco, decapitated the Maderista conspiracy in the state capital. The same day, one hundred infantry troops and three hundred state artillery dragoons were sent to safeguard the threatened town of Zaachila. They found the area calm and made no arrests, despite the rumors of rebellion. Most of the prisoners in the city of Oaxaca were quickly released, with the exception of Angel Barrios and Roberto Olguín, who were tried for the crime of rebellion and sent to the penitentiary in Mexico City.47 With rumors Xying and tension growing, Archbishop Gillow hastened to exhort all good Christian Oaxaqueños to maintain peace and respect for the legal government, warning his parishioners against revolution. 46. AGEPEO, Feb. 1911, Gob., Centro, Relativo al movimiento sedicioso en esta capital. This Wle in the state archives provides the Wrst indication of any coordination among Maderista forces in Oaxaca, although the actual letters conWscated by the police have not been found. The Avendaño brothers of Nochixtlán in the Mixteca would soon rise up in support of the Maderista Revolution, but it is not clear whether F. Avendaño formed part of that numerous clan. If he did, this would establish a further connection between revolutionaries in the state capital and the Mixteca. 47. Ibid.; Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 22–35.

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Given the general alarm, on February 4 Colonel Aureliano Blanquet arrived from Mexico City with the Twenty-ninth Battalion in two military trains to ensure peace in the Centro District. Four days later the battalion withdrew, taking with it 103 Oaxacan “recruits” from the state’s jails. Even the tranquil Antequera had become susceptible to the revolutionary “fever” raging in Mexico.48

Return to the Mixtec Empire In April 1911 Enrique and Pantaleón Gómez Añorve occupied the town of Ometepec, Guerrero, near the Oaxacan border and transformed it into Maderista headquarters on the Costa Chica. On April 30 they sent in troops that crossed the border at Lo de Soto and then passed through the villages of Maguey, Llano Grande, Buena Vista, Cacahuatepec, San Antonio Ocotlán, Sayultepec, Camotinchan, Ixcapa, and Cortijos, igniting the revolutionary Xame on the Oaxacan Costa Chica. No violent confrontations erupted but the revolutionaries burned municipal and judicial archives in each town they occupied. On May 2 these troops, headed by Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Centurión, occupied the plaza of Pinotepa Nacional. The same day the Rurales stationed in the nearby district capital of Jamiltepec, guided by Comandante Ramón Cruz, rose up in support of the Maderista Revolution. They dismissed the PorWristas and named new authorities.49 The story of the Maderista movement on the Costa Chica is complex and tragic. It was an agrarian revivalist uprising of indigenous Mixtecs seeking land distribution as promised by the Plan of San Luis Potosí that was nevertheless put down by the “revolutionary” rancheros in conjunction with the Maderista troops from Guerrero.50 Dubbed the “new Mixtec 48. Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 22–35. In the positivist terms in 1911, journalist Luis Cabrera (nephew of Daniel Cabrera, oft-imprisoned publisher of El Hijo del Ahuizote), characterized the nation as a diseased organism, running a political fever whose symptoms were the rebellions escalating throughout the countryside (Cabrera, Obra política, “Solución del conXicto,” 211–17). Forty years later Crane Brinton used the same “fever” analogy (Anatomy, 16). 49. Ibid., 38–39; AGEPEO, June 1911, Gob., Correspondencia, V.D. 50. On this subject, see AGEPEO, May 1911–12, Gob., Abuso de Autoridad, Jamiltepec; Pérez, “Apuntes,” 6; Tibón, Pinotepa Nacional, 26ff.; Atristáin, Notas de un ranchero, 17ff.; AGN, FARD, vol. 6, exp. 27. For a detailed description and analysis of this movement, see Chassen–López, “Maderismo or Mixtec Empire?” 91–127.

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kingdom” or the “Empire of the Eleven Days,” this episode formed one of the most extraordinary moments of the Revolution in Mexico. The Costa Chica had beneWted from PorWrista economic policies and enjoyed considerable prosperity based on livestock, cotton, and tobacco production. Although two inXuential oligarchic families, the Del Valle and Gómez families, dominated the region, economic growth had led to the rise of a signiWcant ranchero class. The Maderista Revolution triggered a direct confrontation between ranchers and local Mixtecs, who disputed the ownership of lands in and around Pinotepa Nacional, worked by these indigenous tenant farmers. The campesinos insisted that they had possessed this land since time immemorial and that it had been willed to them by the former cacica of the region, Margarita Rodríguez. Nevertheless, various ranchers had adjudicated the land by means of the Lerdo Law of 1856. The campesinos protested that in addition to depriving them of these lands, the new owners charged them excessive rent and forced them to sell their produce at well below the market price.51 At the same time, the ranchers harbored grievances against the PorWrista/ Pimentelista regime: they sought more regional autonomy and political participation and decried heavy tax demands. They realized the advantages of seconding the Maderista Revolution, as did other ranchers throughout Mexico, especially their relatives and business associates in neighboring Guerrero. In this case, however, the Maderista afWliation of the local ranchers arose as an expedient to defeat an indigenous agrarian rebellion. When Centurión and his troops arrived in Pinotepa, the local Mixtecs appealed to them for support to reclaim their land. Centurión replied that he would attend to their case on his return from Acapulco. In the meantime, the municipal president of Pinotepa, ranchero José Santiago Baños, and the local cacique, Pedro Rodríguez, arrested Domingo Ortiz, the indigenous leader, for “disturbing” the peace, and threatened to execute him. This galvanized the locals and a group of Mixtecs hastened to Ometepec to speak with Enrique Añorve, the revolutionary chief. Añorve ordered Captain Cristóbal Cortés and his troops to Pinotepa to Wnd a solution to the problem. In Pinotepa, the Mixtecs took Cortés and his men directly to the municipal building to speak to the local authorities, all rancheros. This meeting quickly turned into a bloody confrontation 51. See the discussion of their protests in Chapter 3.

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in which Rodríguez, Baños, police chief Jesús Carmona, Cortés, and an Indian from Igualapa were killed.52 For the surviving authorities of the Costa, the ex-PorWrista Manuel Iglesias and the Baños clan, the Mixtecs had been stirred up by “bad” leaders to threaten the peace and the system of private property. Immediately after the shootout, the Baños brothers rushed to Ometepec to seek help from Añorve and inform him of Mixtec “atrocities.” They convinced Añorve and he anointed them as the ofWcial Maderista representatives on the Oaxacan Costa Chica. The Pinotepan ranchers had become instant Maderistas in order to win over Añorve and defeat the indigenous land petitions. Now led by Juan José Baños,53 the “revolutionary” ranchers aimed to gain political ascendancy over the Costa while they railroaded the Mixtecs into the untenable position of reactionaries. Meanwhile, in Pinotepa, the Mixtecs had sprung Domingo Ortiz from jail and taken over the town. Próspero Melo, from the village of Cacahuatepec and veteran of the 1896 tax revolt in Juquila, also arrived on the scene. Having a captain’s commission from Añorve, he guided the indigenous protest for several days, overseeing the collection of the titles to the disputed lands from the landowners at gunpoint. Domingo Ortiz and the indigenous people of Pinotepa mobilized their culture and ethnic memory to formulate an extraordinary alternative strategy: the revival of a remembered pre-Columbian Mixtec empire. They designated a “Queen” for this empire, one María Benita Mejía, a woman of little means who nevertheless commanded respect, as it was believed that she descended from the Mixtec nobility (among whom female rulers were not uncommon). They found a suitable palace, ironically the comfortable home of María Aguirre, a local merchant who emerged as the opposing female protagonist in the ranchero group. They organized a council of elders to discuss problems of policy. Appointed Wrst consul of the imperial forces, Domingo Ortiz formed a register of tributaries according to Mixtec custom. He sent messengers to indigenous villages of the region (as far away as Yanhuitlán and 52. Cortés had been accused of instigating the War of the Pants Wfteen years before this. AGEPEO, May 1911–12, Gob., Abuso de Autoridad, Jamiltepec; Pérez, “Apuntes,” 6; Tibón, Pinotepa Nacional, 26ff.; Atristáin, Notas de un ranchero, 17ff.; AGN, FARD, vol. 6, exp. 27. Understandably, versions of this incident differ sharply according to the social position of the narrator. 53. Juan José Baños emerged as the new cacique, Maderista chieftain, and later Constitutionalist general on the Oaxacan Costa. See Ruiz Cervantes, Revolución de Oaxaca, and Garner, Revolución en la provincia.

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Coixtlahuaca in the Mixteca Alta), calling on them to unite with the new Mixtec government as tribute-paying vassals. The council wrapped the land titles in a Mexican Xag to keep them safe. So it was that in the last days of May, when the eyes of the rest of the country were riveted on the demise of the Díaz dictatorship, the Costa Chica of Oaxaca lived through the only revivalist movement associated with the Mexican Revolution (1910–20), the ephemeral rebirth of the Mixtec empire.54 Maderista rancheros of Pinotepa allied with revolutionary troops from Guerrero brutally repressed the movement after eleven days. One descendant of Pinotepa’s Mixtecs later narrated the denouement as it had been told to her as a child: Suddenly Juan José Baños appeared at the head of numerous veteran troops. I don’t know what happened to us . . . it must have been the terror, the panic. We Xed in fright without even trying to put up a resistance. Próspero Melo surrendered with the banner of Igualapa. That disgrace occurred on May 29th. —What happened to the property titles? —Juan José Baños found them wrapped in the Xag and he returned them to their presumed owners who still have them. —And the queen? —She lived another sixteen years in her miserable hut. She rests in the cemetery at Pinotepa Nacional. Would you like to see where?55 As with other ethnic confrontations in Oaxaca, this was not only political or economic but also a cultural conXict. A few months later the Pinotepa Mixtecs protested in a series of petitions to the new Maderista state government that they were being “maimed and treated as slaves” by local authorities. One of the petitions carried Wve hundred signatures demonstrating considerable popular support for their cause. In response, 54. See AGN, Gobernación, Período Revolucionario, caja 36, exp. 73. Ralph Linton deWned nativism as a “conscious, organized attempt on the part of a society’s member to revive or perpetuate selected aspects of its culture,” of which the revivalist strand tried to “revive extinct or at least moribund” cultural characteristics (Linton, “Nativist Movements,” 230ff.). See Pérez, “Apuntes,” 6; Tibon, Pinotepa Nacional, 28–31. 55. Tibón, Pinotepa Nacional, 31. It is a signiWcant comment on the local ethnic memory that although there was “no cross or stone,” this descendant knew exactly where María Benita was buried.

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the jefe político of Jamiltepec complained in the familiar discourse of counterinsurgency that the Mixtecs were no longer “passive,” as their ancestors had been: “These individuals are constantly carrying out criminal acts against those of the white race or the ‘gente de razón’ . . . the Indian has always been at variance with men of reason.” In their subsequent denunciations to the federal government, the ranchers accused the Mixtecs not only of murdering but also of castrating the Pinotepa authorities. They branded the indigenous peoples “carnivorous savages” anxious to devour their property and to massacre all the whites.56 While the middle-class rancheros framed their clash with an indigenous agrarian movement in terms of the struggle between civilization and barbarism, the indigenous peoples sought meaning in their own ethnic memory. In this case of “ethnic political resistance,” the indigenous Mixtecs rejected the dominant mestizo culture and reafWrmed their own culture as embodied in their customs and traditions since time immemorial. Yet the new Mixtec Empire of 1911 had been invented from bits and pieces of different cultures and distinct historical moments. Creating an alternative symbolic order, they appropriated and inverted diverse cultural symbols: Spanish colonial land titles wrapped in the Xag of the Mexican nation and entrusted to a Mixtec council of elders and queen from an imagined and idealized pre-Columbian age. Certainly this is an example of the dynamic creation of ethnicity in confrontation with an “other.” But despite this extraordinary cultural agency, the “gente decente” prevailed once again, seizing the title of authentic Maderistas at a particularly convenient juncture in order to repress the Mixtecs’ demands and alternative cultural order, appropriating the banner of a Revolution from which the indigenous peoples had originally sought redress.

The Liberating Army of the South Maderista rebellions erupted throughout the Mixteca Alta and Mixteca Baja and joined with revolutionary forces entering Oaxaca from neighboring states. One version has Maderistas from Guerrero and Puebla 56. One of the most frequent signatures on these petitions was that of Marcelino Ortiz, who was later imprisoned (in Feb. 1912) for “instigating his Indian followers to join up with the Zapatista, Sixto Guzmán.” Clearly Ortiz had found those who were more supportive of the agrarista cause. AGEPEO, May 1911–12, Gob., Abuso de Autoridad, Jamiltepec; AGN, FARD, vol. 6, exp. 27.

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invading Silacayoapan and assaulting the villages of Santa Ana Rayón and Cieneguilla on March 25, 1911. Soon two hundred troops under the command of Magdaleno Herrera marched into the Mixteca Alta demanding horses and money (the capitación). The government of Oaxaca, in concert with those of Puebla and Guerrero, put together a makeshift group of soldiers and volunteers that dispersed this force after ten days.57 In his autobiography, Mi madre y yo, Saúl tells a very different story of the origins of the Maderista Revolution in his home district of Silacayoapan. His father, a rancher and lawyer in Tamazola, and his father’s friend Gabriel Solís (soon to be a Maderista general in Guerrero) had met with the revolutionary Aquiles Serdán in Puebla in September 1910. Solís and Saúl’s father and others continued to meet secretly in Zapotitlán Lagunas, on the border with Guerrero, to plan the Revolution in this region. As a youngster Saúl remembered numerous strangers visiting his ranch and his father spending hours with them behind closed doors and giving them large sums of money for the Revolution. In early 1911 the revolutionary activity increased as he watched three hundred Maderista troops, led by Antonio Michaca, a rich rancher from Los Ciruelos, Oaxaca, arrive in Tamazola on February 2. This was his Wrst sight of the “Liberating Army,” although many of them were poorly armed. Soon thereafter his father and Valentín Andrade and troops rode in from Santa Cruz, and on February 6 the Maderistas left for the district capital of Silacayoapan, where they encountered no resistance.58 What is clear is that by April 16 General Gabriel Solís had initiated his incursions into the district of Silacayoapan. With more than a thousand troops at his command, Solís linked up with local revolutionaries from that district who had also seconded the Revolution: Antonio Michaca with three hundred men from San Nicolás Hidalgo and Antonio Ruiz with three hundred from Santa Cruz. When their Wrst attempt to capture Silacayoapan in late April failed, they brieXy took the district seat on May 2, only to lose it again. Maderista forces, seven hundred strong, Wnally occupied the district seat on May 13. They read the Plan of San Luis Potosí in the town square, deposed the local PorWrista authorities, named new ofWcials, and imposed a forced loan on the townspeople. Solís, at the

57. Esteva, Nociones elementales, 320–22. 58. Saúl, Mi madre y yo, 32–43. This source does not provide Saúl’s surname or his father’s full name.

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head of these combined forces, then rode on to Tlaxiaco, where he arrived on May 21.59 In Putla rebellion broke out on May 8 under the leadership of Waldo Figueroa, who had been in contact with Angel Barrios since 1910. Calling for troops and arms, he used the capitación money to purchase supplies and imposed a forced loan of $5,000 on local merchants. Figueroa took Juxtlahuaca on May 15 and entered Tlaxiaco three days later. After rising up for the Maderista cause in Jamiltepec and operating on the Costa Chica for two weeks, Ramón Cruz moved on to Putla, where he arrived on May 17. Eufracio Peña had rebelled in the town of Cacahuatepec, on the border with Guerrero, on April 29, inXuenced by the Maderista success in that state. He continued to gather revolutionary forces among the villages of the Costa and then moved into the Mixteca Alta. He linked up with Ramón Cruz, and together they arrived on May 21 in Tlaxiaco, where numerous Maderista contingents were concentrating.60 Febronio Gómez, a local merchant popularly known as “El Político,” seconded the Revolution on May 16 in the montaña region of the district of Tlaxiaco. He collected arms and money and offered to reduce the capitación to 12 centavos. He integrated his forces into those of General Solís, Waldo Figueroa, Ramón Cruz, and Eufracio Peña when they took the district seat. Elías Bolaños Ibáñez, a mine owner who also rebelled in the city of Tlaxiaco, later declared: “I began to serve the revolution on May 16, 1911, date in which I took this plaza [Tlaxiaco] in the name of Don Francisco I. Madero, naming myself district military chief and operating as such until the 21st day of the same month in which General don Gabriel Solís, commanding the ‘Liberating Army of the South’ passed through here.” Solís named Bolaños Ibáñez captain and provisional jefe político of Tlaxiaco, a post that he held until July 16, 1911. On May 27 all the Maderista troops in Tlaxiaco under the command of Solís moved out to occupy the other major towns of the Mixteca: Teposcolula, 59. Esteva, Nociones elementales, 320–22. In May 1911 another uprising took place on the border between the district of Silacayoapan and Putla, led by Rafael Mendoza and Crispín Galeana, demanding arms and money and promising an end to the head tax. It is not clear whether these forces linked up with Solís or not. AGEPEO, Aug. 1911, Gob., Putla, Gastos Erogados. 60. AGEPEO, 1911, Gob., Disturbios Populares, Putla; Aug. 1911, Gob., Putla, Gastos Erogados; May 1911, Gob., Memoria Administrativa, V.D. For short biographies of the Maderista leaders see Arellanes Meixueiro, Chassen [Chassen-López], et al., Diccionario histórico.

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Huajuapan, Yanhuitlán, and then Nochixtlán on May 31. Along the way they gathered funds, liberated prisoners, and burned local archives. A week later they reached the Central Valleys and were stationed at Huitzo in the Etla district.61 In May Colonel Francisco J. Ruiz invaded the Mixteca district of Huajuapan with his revolutionaries from the state of Puebla. Linking up with local insurgents, including Antonio Feria Velasco and Manuel M. Ojeda, Ruiz occupied Tamazulapan on May 22. Reinforced with fresh Oaxacan recruits, the Puebla troops operated in the districts of Huajuapan, Teposcolula, and Nochixtlán. Well received by the authorities, they established their headquarters in the town of Nochixtlán on May 30, issuing a revolutionary proclamation signed by leaders from both Puebla and Oaxaca. After liberating the district of Coixtlahuaca in early June, they joined forces with the Maderistas headquartered in Cuicatlán.62 In the meantime, Manuel Oseguera and Baldomero L. de Guevara, both veterans of the PLM struggles, had taken up arms in the Cañada region. Headed by Calixto Barbosa, Maderistas from Puebla invaded the Cañada. Their contingent, two hundred strong, occupied Teotitlán del Camino on May 9. In San Juan de los Cúes, they were warmly received with celebrations and probably met Oseguera and his troops there. Then these combined forces occupied the district seat of Cuicatlán on May 13. They conWscated all the arms and ammunition belonging to local Rurales from the ofWce of the jefe político and freed prisoners from the local jail, incorporating them into their troops as “volunteers.” The next day they held a meeting in the zócalo, or town square. Barbosa asked the people if they were content with their ofWcials and the Cuicatecos responded twice that they were; thus the local authorities remained in power. The Maderistas assured the people that they would not be harmed and that they would defend “the rights of citizens, and it was for those principles that they had enlisted in the Revolution.” They took up a collection, which provided the sum of $439, in addition to a few horses, riXes, ammunition, and a few hundred pesos from the coffers of local government. Leaving 61. Gómez had been a member of the town government on numerous occasions, which earned him this nickname. AGEPEO, 1911, Gob., Disturbios Populares, Putla. Iturribarría, Oaxaca, 265–66; AGN, Gobernación, Período Revolucionario, caja 54, exp. 58. Esteva is extremely hostile to the Maderistas in Nociones elementales, 320–22. 62. AGEPEO, June, 1911, Gob., Correspondencia, V.D.; Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 52–53.

526

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some of his troops in the Cañada under Oseguera’s command, Barbosa returned to Puebla to get fresh recruits.63 By this time Sebastián Ortiz had come out of hiding and was collecting arms and money, welcomed by numerous villages and coffee Wncas in the Cañada. In Huautla, a major commercial center in the coffee-producing highlands of Teotitlán, Wve thousand people received Ortiz and his troops with music and Wrecrackers on May 12. Amid cheers, Ortiz gave a public reading of the Plan of San Luis Potosí in the main square. He met with ofWcials from numerous towns and villages in the region and explained the Maderista cause. He mistakenly declared that the Mexican people had accepted Madero as the provisional president of the nation, since “they could no longer support the oppression of the dictatorship of General Díaz . . . who had not been elected by the Mexican people in the elections of July 1910.” All the ofWcials signed a document to that effect. Ortiz and his troops, now numbering more than 150, continued to occupy various towns and villages. They collected money, supplies, horses, and soldiers, and rallied Oaxaqueños to the Maderista cause, signing similar documents with local ofWcials in each town.64 Having been released from jail, Faustino G. Olivera rebelled in Etla on May 2. The state government received reports that a group of six young “Juaristas” from Zautla were traversing the district soliciting troops and arms. By May 12, when Olivera’s “Juaristas” passed through Tlaltinango, they numbered about one hundred infantry with a few men on horseback. Those on horseback wore suits and had pistols, while those on foot wore the campesino manta. These troops had only sixteen riXes and shotguns between them, and most carried machetes. Olivera and his troops battled a small contingent of federals and Rurales in Jayacatlán on May 13. The local population had abandoned the town previously, which led the government forces to assume that they supported the rebels. When the 63. AGEPEO, May, 1911, Gob., Sobre movimientos de fuerzas revolucionarias; June, 1911, Gob., Correspondencia; Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 50–51. Manuel Oseguera chronicled his participation in the Revolution in his “ManiWesto a los valientes hijos del estado libre y soberano de Oaxaca,” March 10, 1912, when he rose up to second the movement in favor of Vázquez Gómez against Madero (full text in Arellanes Meixueiro, Chassen [Chassen-López], et al., Diccionario histórico, 465–66). 64. AGEPEO, June 1911, Gob., Correspondencia, V.D. Since Ortiz wrote this report after the fact in the Xush of revolutionary triumph, in response to a query from revolutionary authorities, some exaggeration may have crept into the account. See also García, Sierra de Huautla, 51–52.

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Etla Juaristas retreated from Jayacatlán, they headed to Maderista headquarters in the Cañada.65 By May 14 Faustino G. Olivera had arrived in Cuicatlán with Wfty men and joined forces with Oseguera and Barbosa. Two days later Baldomero L. de Guevara reached that town with another Wfty men on horseback. Arriving in Tecomavaca on May 17, Ortiz and his men met up with the troops of Calixto Barbosa, which had already occupied the town. The next day in Teotitlán they joined forces with Manuel Oseguera and Faustino G. Olivera and their men. Separately these forces continued occupying the towns of the Cañada, meeting up again on May 23 in Tecomavaca, now joined by the Maderista troops led by Baldomero L. de Guevara.66 With six hundred troops, Ortiz, Oseguera, Olivera, and Ladrón de Guevara moved into Coixtlahuaca on May 25. As they approached the district seat from the east, Colonel Francisco J. Ruiz, with his troops from Puebla and the Mixteca Oaxaqueña, moved in from the west. The combined revolutionaries occupied Coixtlahuaca and town ofWcials drew up a document of support for Madero. Other ofWcials from surrounding towns signed similar documents during the next two days. On May 29 Ortiz and his Maderistas watched as the locals burned an efWgy of native son PorWrio Díaz in San Pedro Nondón, and town ofWcials signed a document of adherence to the Maderista Revolution. The Maderistas returned immediately to Cuicatlán on learning of an imminent attack by a force of three hundred federals armed with cannon and machine guns.67 By May 30 Angel Barrios had arrived in the Cañada. This dedicated revolutionary had forged previous linkages with many of these Oaxacan Maderistas. Freed from prison by the Revolution and having met with Maderista ofWcials in Mexico City, he “declared himself chief of the forces led by Guevara, Olivera, and Oseguera.” Together, in late May, they transformed Cuicatlán, home to Oaxaca’s Wrst liberal club in 1900, 65. “Juaristas” probably refers to the insurgents’ previous support for the 1910 candidacy of Juárez Maza for governor. The government agent in Jayacatlán estimated eighty rebeldes without counting new recruits made in the pueblo. AGEPEO, May 1911, Gob., Disturbios Populares, Etla-Mixteca. 66. Since Barbosa had been assassinated by one of his soldiers while in Puebla, the Oaxacan revolutionaries now commanded his forces also. AGEPEO, June 1911, Gob., Correspondencia, V.D.; Esteva, Nociones elementales. 67. AGEPEO, June 1911, Gob., Correspondencia, V.D.; May 1911, Gob., Tranquilidad Pública, Cuicatlán; June 1911, Gob. Correspondencia, V.D.; Esteva, Nociones elementales, 102.

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into the headquarters of the “Liberating Army of the South” commanded by General Angel Barrios.68 These early Magonista Liberals, Oaxaca’s true revolutionary precursors, now captained the Maderista Revolution in the state. Reports Wltered into the state government of an uprising in the Xía textile factory in the Sierra Juárez on May 21, 1911. Instigated by the arrival of a textile worker from Veracruz who had come to rally them to the Revolution, the workers responded by declaring a strike and pillaging the company store. The state government ordered the jefe político of Etla to proceed against the assailants with “all the energy and activity necessary.” But no evidence of contacts between these workers and the revolutionary uprisings in the Cañada has appeared.69 Reports of an agrarian uprising led by a certain Castrejón in the Zimatlán district also reached the state capital. Demanding the distribution of land, campesinos occupied the haciendas of Santa Gertrudis, El Vergel, La Aragonesa, Poblete, and La Compañia, and then moved into Ejutla and Miahuatlán. There was also agitation on the Isthmus by May, as Tehuantepec had polarized into three factions. Wealthy merchants Juana Cata Romero and Camilo Romero, along with landowners and lawyers, guided the conservative “Rojos” (Red Party). A younger group of “revolutionaries” headed by the Santibáñez brothers directed the “Verdes” (Green Party), which supported the Maderistas, while a middle group tried to maintain neutrality. In Juchitán the pro-CientíWco Rojos had held power for many years, since PorWrio Díaz had kept the Verde leader, Che

68. Martínez points out that although various sources afWrm that Barrios rose up in arms on May 9 in Cuicatlán after being released from the penitentiary in Mexico City (Taracena, Apuntes históricos, 205; Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 265, 268; Tamayo, Oaxaca en el siglo XX, 21), there is no mention of this in the archival material cited here. On the contrary, El Avance reported that Angel Barrios, Roberto Olguín, and Valentín López, imprisoned for participation in the February conspiracy, were only released on May 21 in Mexico City, as a result of the general amnesty for political prisoners (“Génesis y desarrollo,” 124). Three Protestant radicals, Leopoldo A. García, Herón N. Ríos, and Victoriano Báez were also present with Barrios in the Cañada. Pastor Báez functioned as paymaster of the Liberating Army of the South. Bastián, Disidentes sociedades protestantes, 259. 69. Pérez García afWrmed that the workers had declared a strike in support of the Revolution (“Primeros doce años del siglo XX,” 8). See Taracena, Efemérides oaxaqueños, 51; Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 270; AGEPEO, Jan. 1912, Fom., Estadísticas, V.D.; May 1911, Gob., Disturbios Populares, Etla, Xía. On March 27, 1911, the stevedores of the port of Salina Cruz declared a strike for higher salaries that lasted only a few days, but this does not seem to have been related to the Revolution. See AHDN, caja 108, doc. 273–75.

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Gómez, out of the region. But when the latter returned to stay in early 1910, tension increased. This cacique wrote a number of letters to the president in the Wrst months of 1911, which assured him of his loyalty to the regime yet complained about the Pimentel governorship and the abuse of power by local authorities. On March 7 Che Gómez warned Díaz, “Tehuantepec and Juchitán . . . are vehemently against their respective jefes políticos,” and the pueblos of these districts, “so injured by these bad local authorities,” will ultimately “side with whomever dares to sound the cry of rebellion.”70 But this cry did not come until November 1911, when Gómez was assassinated and all Juchitán rose in rebellion. By late May 1911 the city of Oaxaca was in an uproar over the news of the Revolution in the Mixteca and the Cañada. General Solís’s forces from the Mixteca and Guerrero were stationed at Huitzo, while the “Liberating Army of the South” under General Barrios combined numerous Oaxacan forces with those of Colonel Ruiz and Calixto Barbosa, both from Puebla, to hold Cuicatlán. Rumor had it these revolutionary forces were converging at Etla (where they arrived on June 14) in order to take the city of Oaxaca. TerriWed that these “barbarians” were about to sack their emerald city, on May 13 PorWrista elites organized volunteer defense corps, which trained in the former Convent of Santo Domingo. The state capital overXowed with refugees from neighboring districts, “the majority arriving on horseback, others in carts, and not a few on foot.” By this time revolutionary movements in the Cañada had cut railroad and telegraph lines, leaving the city practically incommunicado. The hotels and inns of the capital were “insufWcient to house all the ofWcials, public employees, and families that had come in from other areas.” Although rebels assured citizens that new authorities designated by the Revolution would respect life, private property, and the Constitution, panicked Oaxacans continued to pour into the city.71 With the Costa, Papaloapan, Cañada, and Mixteca regions under revolutionary control, and agitation on the Isthmus growing, the state capital emerged as the last stronghold of PorWrismo in Oaxaca.

70. Very little information is available on Castrejón. See Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 266; Santibáñez Gómez, “Revolución Maderista,” 32–38. On Juchitán, see Zarauz López, PorWriato, 141–42, and Gutiérrez Montes, who quotes various Gómez letters to Díaz (Revolución Mexicana, 66–69). 71. “Revolución de 1910 en Oaxaca,” 7.

530

Political Culture and Revolution

The Dance of the Governors The Revolution triumphed throughout March, April, and early May with victories in the northern and central states as well as in the neighboring states of Puebla and Guerrero. On March 17 PorWrio Díaz suspended constitutional guarantees. In New York, Maderista representatives held secret peace talks with Treasury minister Limantour, but the revolutionaries’ demand for Díaz’s resignation was unacceptable to the ofWcial negotiators.72 The PorWrian regime, which only a few months earlier had celebrated its centennial as the “apotheosis” of “order and progress,” no longer could maintain order, much less progress. Díaz responded slowly to the crisis, perhaps because of his advanced age or because his trusted minister of the Treasury was out of the country. In an attempt to save his government, Díaz instituted a reform program and sacriWced the CientíWcos. On March 24, 1911, he accepted the resignation of his cabinet. Despite feelings of betrayal, the CientíWcos were relieved to be able to leave the sinking ship. Thoroughly discouraged on his return, Limantour also sought to resign, but the president balked and insisted that he stay on. Díaz had wanted Governor Dehesa of Veracruz and his supporters to be the replacements, but Limantour retorted that the CientíWcos had not withdrawn so that the rival Dehesistas could come in through the back door. The new cabinet was to be neutral: for example, Francisco León de la Barra exchanged his post as ambassador in Washington for Foreign Affairs, respected lawyer Jorge Vera Estañol for Public Instruction, and Oaxacan jurist Demetrio Sodi left the Supreme Court for Justice. The crucial post of Gobernación remained vacant. On April 1, 1911, the president read a manifesto to Congress outlining his reform project, which included the renovation of highly placed political personnel, division of large rural properties, reorganization of the nation’s judicial system, modiWcation of the electoral laws to assure effective suffrage, and acceptance of the principle of no re-election of the executive. Reyista José López Portillo called the reform the “last candle of the tenebrous CientíWco,” a reference to Rosendo Pineda, who supposedly formulated the program. It was too little and came far too late.73 72. Cumberland, Mexican Revolution, 134ff.; Ulloa, “Lucha armada,” 12; Limantour, Apuntes, 207–27. 73. Limantour, Apuntes, 232ff. According to Prida, Limantour had already betrayed his associates because he had met with archrival General Bernardo Reyes in Paris to discuss

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The government continued to respond to the military situation but the federal army was in a lamentable state, disorganized and inefWcient. On paper it consisted of thirty-one thousand troops in 1911, but in reality it had only fourteen thousand soldiers thinly spread across the nation. Most of these poorly equipped troops had been conscripted into military service by the odious levy and had received minimal training.74 The army was painfully unprepared to battle a revolution on multiple fronts in numerous states of the union. On May 8, 1911, Pascual Orozco, Francisco Villa, and José de la Luz Blanco attacked Ciudad Juárez. In this historically symbolic border town, where Juárez had held the last remnants of the Republic together during the French Intervention, Madero established his Wrst provisional government, once again reinforcing the relationship of the Revolution to Juárez. By May 24 the insurgents had taken important cities and towns in the states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Sonora, Colima, Hidalgo, Guerrero, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Morelos, and Sinaloa. In Oaxaca, too, by this date, the Maderistas occupied a good part of the state: the Costa, Mixteca, the Papaloapan, and the Cañada. Peace negotiations were imperative.75 The Accords of Ciudad Juárez, signed on May 21, 1911, terminated the hostilities. Díaz resigned on May 25 and Francisco León de la Barra assumed the provisional presidency and was charged with overseeing free elections. To many these accords constituted a grave tranza, a questionable and corrupt transaction, nothing less than a betrayal of the ideals of the Revolution. In effect, they recognized the legitimacy of the same government to which the Maderista Plan of San Luis Potosí had denied validity. The PorWrian administrative and judicial machinery remained intact both on the national and state levels (with some removal of governors and state ofWcials), and, far worse, they left the federal army standing. Madero, wrote Berta Ulloa, would Wnd himself “trapped in the claws of the defeated regime.”76 Mexico’s future (Prida, De la dictadura a la anarquía, 229–31, 293–99). The program was to be put into effect immediately (López Portillo y Rojas, Elevación y caída de PorWrio Díaz, 472–74). 74. Limantour voiced this complaint also but he was partially responsible for this situation since as minister of the Treasury he had been particularly stingy with army appropriations. He was always wary of fortifying his rivals, especially after Reyes’s success in professionalizing the army (Apuntes, 254–55). See López Portillo y Rojas, Elevación y caída de PorWrio Díaz, 474–75; Ulloa, “Lucha armada,” 6. 75. Cumberland, Mexican Revolution, 141ff. 76. Ibid., 150–51; Ulloa, “Lucha armada,” 13.

532

Political Culture and Revolution

The Wnal agony of the PorWriato and the withdrawal of the CientíWcos from government plunged Oaxacan politics into crisis. In a span of approximately six weeks, six different governors passed through the government palace, a process that Ruiz Cervantes dubbed the “dance of the governors.” On March 31 Joaquín Sandoval, the secretary of the state government, had been designated interim governor of Oaxaca, when Pimentel was summoned to Mexico City. On his return on May 1 Pimentel convened a meeting with representatives of the Oaxacan oligarchy to inform them of the general situation and his imminent resignation. He proposed that Brigadier General Félix Díaz succeed him. This choice reXected a directive straight from PorWrio Díaz and was an especially bitter pill for Pimentel to swallow, since the younger Díaz was a sworn enemy of the CientíWcos. The local legislature granted Pimentel an indeWnite leave of absence and obediently elected Félix Díaz as interim governor. Joaquín Sandoval agreed to continue until Díaz’s arrival.77 Félix Díaz had Wrst to take the Ferrocarril Mexicano to the Veracruz and Isthmian Railway, connect with Tehuantepec National Railway, and then travel by land from Tehuantepec to the state capital, since the Maderistas controlled the Mexican Southern Railway. These political maneuvers provoked a furious popular reaction. The Revolution had not triumphed in the Oaxacan countryside so that the dictator’s nephew could be imposed on the state. Even in the PorWrian stronghold of the city of Oaxaca, people gathered spontaneously in the streets in demonstrations. They loudly rejected Félix Díaz while they proclaimed Benito Juárez Maza the people’s candidate for governor. ICA students called a meeting at the Juárez Theater and found themselves split: one group wanted to stage a demonstration in favor of Félix Díaz, while others vehemently condemned his “election.”78 While revolutionary armies converged on the state capital, the election of Félix Díaz by the elite-controlled local legislature had polarized and destabilized the situation further.

77. Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 35ff. This term was coined by Francisco José Ruiz Cervantes in an unpublished manuscript and later was included in La revolución en Oaxaca, 23. As a result of the Díaz reform, Pimentel eventually resigned his governorship as part of the CientíWco exodus from government. Other unpopular politicians, such as General Mucio Martínez, governor of Puebla, also got the boot. See LaFrance, Mexican Revolution, 66–67. 78. Revolutionaries in the Cañada stopped railroad service to the city on May 9 and cut the telegraph lines two days later. Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 45ff.; “Revolución en Oaxaca,” 7; Iturribarría, Oaxaca, 269.

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The moderate Juaristas in the state capital now saw an ideal opportunity for Juárez Maza to come to power. During the Ciudad Juárez negotiations, the Maderistas had suggested the appointment of friendly governors and cabinet members to ensure the return to order; among them were José María Maytorena for Sonora, Abraham González for Chihuahua, and Benito Juárez Maza for Oaxaca. On May 18 El Avance jumped the gun, rushing out a special one-page bulletin announcing “Benito Juárez, Governor of the State of Oaxaca.” Madero had allegedly demanded that Díaz accept this candidate for Oaxaca.79 Nevertheless, PorWristas still made the decisions in the state capital, and Félix Díaz, en route to city of Oaxaca, was still the legal governor of the state. On May 21 Félix Díaz arrived in the city and was welcomed by a public reception organized by a group of Vallistocrats. The opposition turned the celebration into a free-for-all as they shouted Díaz down and threw stones at him. Dispersed by the police, the marchers managed to reorganize and head toward the telegraph ofWce in the center of the city, protesting noisily all the way. The city police dispersed the protesters again by Wring shots into the air and beating the crowd with their riXe butts, causing great alarm among the populace.80 The people of Oaxaca were Wnally turning against the Díaz family. Don PorWrio, suffering from a painful tooth infection, resigned only at the last minute, on May 25, 1911. He wrote: I do not know of any act imputable to me, that would have motivated this social phenomenon, but permitting without conceding, that I could unconsciously be to blame . . . in conformity with Article 83 of the Federal Constitution, I come before the Supreme Representative of the Nation to renounce my charge as Constitutional President with which the vote of the nation honored me. I do this with that much more reason, because to stay in this position it might be necessary to continue spilling more Mexican blood.81 79. Boletín, El Avance, May 18, 1911; Vázquez Gómez, Memorias políticas, 191. 80. Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 52. According to one author, the situation in the Central Valleys was extremely tense. One very dark night as the local police in the town of Ocotlán were making their rounds, they were suddenly confronted with a suspiciouslooking group. When no one responded to their demand for identiWcation, they immediately opened Wre, only to Wnd that they had decimated a herd of pigs. The police refused to pay the owner for the loss of his animals. “Revolución de 1910 en Oaxaca,” 7. 81. Prida, De la dictadura a la anarquía, 305–6.

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Political Culture and Revolution

In the Chamber of Deputies, only two deputies voted against this resignation, one of whom was Benito Juárez Maza. It was a last gesture of loyalty to the dual legacy but an empty one, for the vote was a foregone conclusion. The oligarchy of Oaxaca, then, sent its last salute to the native son who had favored it for so many years. On May 27 the PorWrista state legislature dispatched a telegram to General Díaz as he was about to embark from Veracruz, which read, “The Congress of Oaxaca sends you its most affectionate regards on your departure, protesting to you its gratitude, loyalty and adhesion. History in its Wnal justice will remember your name as one of the greatest benefactors of the fatherland.”82 Díaz resigned in order to restore the peace that he had once brought to the nation. The PorWrista political system broke down rapidly in Oaxaca. On the night of May 25, 1911, in Tehuantepec, more than three hundred Tehuanos armed with riXes and machetes responded to clanging church bells and military trumpets and gathered in the Zócalo. They Xagged down the incoming train directly in front of Juana Cata’s house. Aware of the impending resignation of PorWrio Díaz, the multitude demanded the ouster of Manuel Jiménez, the PorWrista jefe político. He stepped aside to let Alfonso J. Santibáñez take his place in accord with the wishes of the people. Still, the crowd sacked and pillaged the business establishments of the rich PorWrista “reactionaries,” among them the store of Juana Cata Romero.83 In Oaxaca the ruling elites consoled themselves with a younger Díaz as head of state. The new governor received warm support from Wnanciers, industrialists, the foreign community, and even some artisans of the city of Oaxaca. Nevertheless, numerous elements among the middle sectors, artisans, and working classes, and above all the revolutionary forces (now with strong campesino contingents) were determined to make short shrift of this imposition. On June 2, 1911, Emilio Pimentel formally resigned as governor of the state of Oaxaca. The law required that the interim governor immediately call for new elections. General brigadier Félix Díaz complied on June 3, and then promptly tendered his own resignation to the local Congress. Discounting the popular rejection of his candidacy,

82. Henderson, In the Absence of Don PorWrio, 47–48; telegram quoted in Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana en Oaxaca, 23. 83. Santibáñez Gómez, “Revolución Maderista,” 32–38.

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this Díaz wanted to be eligible to run for governor in the upcoming elections that he had just convoked.84 The state legislature now had to choose another interim governor to oversee the July elections. Still blind to the drama taking place throughout the nation and ignoring the popular will in the streets of the state capital, not to mention the revolutionary armies at their door, these legislators attempted to impose another PorWrista and aggravated the situation further. On June 4 they offered the governorship to the conservative attorney Jesús Acevedo. The newly Maderista deputy, Dr. Gildardo Gómez, immediately denounced him as a conservative on the Xoor of the Congress, and a group of young revolutionary sympathizers of the city, led by Luis Jiménez Figueroa, staged a demonstration outside his home, insisting that Acevedo not accept the governorship because it was not his “ideological moment.” Acevedo wisely rejected the offer in a Manifesto published on June 5, noting the impossibility of trying to govern a state with so much of its territory under revolutionary control. Ignoring Acevedo’s caution, the local Congress swore in none other than Serrano caudillo Fidencio Hernández, ex-personal secretary of Félix Díaz, later that same day. The Vallistocrat legislature doggedly resisted defeat as it tried to impose PorWrista after PorWrista as governor. Tension mounted as the crisis polarized Oaxaca in the Wrst week of June. Facing furious popular repudiation, Hernández lasted scarcely four days, and on June 8 tendered his resignation.85 While this parade of governors Wled through the government palace, the revolutionary forces converged on the city of Oaxaca. By June 5 the Liberating Army of the South was camped at Huitzo, less than a day’s march from the state capital. Fearful of the potential violence of a revolutionary occupation, Governor Félix Díaz had earlier commissioned Guillermo Meixueiro to negotiate with these forces in order to forestall their capture of the provincial capital. Ever the resourceful negotiator, Meixueiro succeeded and the revolutionary assault was averted.86

84. By law, the sitting provisional governor was barred from becoming a candidate. Rojas, Efemérides oaxaqueñas 1911, 55; Tamayo, Oaxaca en el siglo XX, 23–24; AGEPEO, June 1911, Gob., Decretos y Circulares, Centro. 85. Martínez Medina, “Génesis y desarrollo,” 128; Iturribarría, Oaxaca en la historia, 269–70. Acevedo’s manifesto is located in Arellanes Meixueiro, Chassen [Chassen-López], et al., Diccionario histórico, 32; Pérez García, “Primeros doce años del siglo XX,” 37. 86. Esteva, Nociones elementales, 322; Tamayo, Oaxaca en el siglo XX, 24.

536

Political Culture and Revolution

On June 8 the Oaxacan legislature again deliberated on the choice of an interim governor. Crowds of Maderistas positioned themselves outside the doors of Congress. One group of deputies threatened to resign if the Congress failed to denounce the frequent gubernatorial changeovers, a strange complaint from the very deputies whose obstinacy had deepened the crisis. In this stormy session, the unusually large number of spectators in the galleries was repeatedly admonished to maintain their composure and be silent. Popular pressure, from within the city and without, Wnally forced the deputies to admit defeat and select a governor who would represent the Revolution. Thunderous applause welcomed the election of the youthful Heliodoro Díaz Quintas as interim governor of the state of Oaxaca.87 At Wve in the afternoon, the session reconvened to swear in the new governor, a fervent Juarista. The press reported the triumph of the Revolution: The people saluted him with prolonged applause, applause that did not cease until after Lic. Quintas had abandoned the legislative hall in company of the aforementioned commission. One could hear among the interminable applause and the unusual popular jubilation, the martial notes of our national anthem and the warlike sound of the clarinet saluting the democratic and extremely popular Juarista, Lic. Heliodoro Díaz Quintas. . . . The populace would not be calmed down, because in each successive government they had seen their cause endangered. Now that the situation was clearly deWned, the people have obtained their desired end. No more disorders or subversive demonstrations will darken our good name: let us all be democrats! . . . The people are satisWed because Sr. Quintas has suffered with them in their struggles of yesteryear and he has always lived without an ofWcial position because he has been a democrat.88 Díaz Quintas—the founder of the Juárez Association, its president and guide through its internal crisis in 1905, editor of El Bien Público, probable author of the Libro Amarillo, longtime supporter of Benito Juárez 87. El Avance, June 9, 1911. He did not qualify as governor, however, because the governorship required its occupant to be at least thirty-Wve years of age, and Díaz Quintas was only thirty-three in 1911. See Pérez García, “Primeros doce años del siglo XX,” 35–37. 88. El Avance, June 9, 1911.

Revolution in the South

537

Maza, and recent Maderista convert—represented the symbolic victory of the Revolution in Oaxaca. Juarismo had Wnally triumphed over Vallistocratic PorWrismo. But the manner in which the Revolution had triumphed in Oaxaca foreshadowed its future. The radicals, Magonista precursors-cumrevolutionary commanders Angel Barrios, Sebastián Ortiz, Manuel Oseguera, and Faustino G. Olivera were encamped in Cuicatlán, and Gabriel Solís and his forces had been persuaded to remain encamped at Huitzo, removed from the seat of power in the state capital. The moderate Juarista liberals, always loath to break openly with PorWrio Díaz, turned Maderistas at the eleventh hour, found themselves in the right place at the right time. Thus Díaz Quintas, not Angel Barrios or Sebastián Ortiz, assumed power in the capital. The radicals had won the battles, but the moderates took the spoils. The moderate opposition now held the reins of revolutionary power, but would they be able to keep them? If Juarismo had now triumphed over PorWrismo, it would also emerge as the new limitation to revolutionary politics in Oaxaca, still weighed down by the dual legacy.

Conclusions

What does the view from the south contribute to the history of southern Mexico in the second half of the nineteenth century? How does it change or modify our interpretation of the Liberal era? First and foremost, it challenges the interpretations that have dominated previous understandings of southern Mexico and provides alternative frameworks of analysis. The reintroduction of the indigenous face in the mirror of Mexico as an active and creative participant in state formation and political culture disrupts the historiographic centralism that has portrayed the nation as an imagined community of elites and middle classes of El Centro. The focus on the interplay of class, ethnicity, race, and gender permits us to comprehend the dynamic and shifting relationships of power and identity in local and global contexts, the changing ways social groups engaged with distinct levels of politics, local, state, national, and international. This view reveals the vital importance of local conditions in determining outcomes and the uneven and unequal distribution of wealth and power in society, as well as the gendered subtext of oppression and capitalist transformation. The trajectory of the Revolution in Oaxaca presented here affords a very different picture from those circulated by stereotypical portraits. We discover that the encounter of Mexican Liberals’ modernizing projects with the indigenous communal villages resulted not only in contention but also in increasing linkages, negotiations, and compromises. This negotiated, hybrid modernity replaces earlier representations of modern Mexico and provides a new, more realistic interpretive framework. In his brilliant study Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees, Peter Sahlins also emphasized the crucial role of local societies and afWrmed “that both state formation and nation building were two-way processes.” Bringing the nation into the pueblos did not necessarily displace the local identities of villagers. Both parties were transformed, as “a nationalizing of the local, and a localizing of the national”

540

Conclusions

occurred. The Yucuitecos’ and Istmeños’ interests led them to negotiate with the representatives of the national government in Mexico City. Citizens of Chicahuaxtla clamored to have their town connected to the nation by postal service, while other villagers prefaced their demands with reference to their military service to the nation. Far from being solely an imagined community created by elites, national identity and citizenship in Mexico were contested and constructed from below by popular social classes and ethnicities in villages and towns all over the nation. When Istmeños launched two plans directed to the nation, they too “brought the nation into the village, just as they placed themselves within the nation.”1 The narrative of the century-long confrontation of the Mixtec village of Yucuiti with the Hacienda de la Concepción illustrates a repertoire of collective actions available to campesinos. It also reveals how villages were transformed by the very struggle to maintain their customs and traditions. So too did the Mixtec campesinos of the Costa Chica bring the nation into their village when they wrapped the recently retrieved land titles in the Mexican Xag, even as they created an ephemeral parallel government. These struggles demonstrate graphically how the idea of the nation and its symbols had penetrated into the most remote areas by 1911. At the same time, villagers’ concept of nation embraced the pueblo and its común, the civil religious hierarchy, communal landholding and access to natural resources, as well as private property and free trade. As Sahlins explained, “national identity, like ethnic or communal identity, is contingent and relational: it is deWned by the social or territorial boundaries drawn to distinguish the collective self and its implicit negation, the other.”2 Thus we see how culture formed the context in which social, economic, and political relations were translated and enacted. Reinserting ethnicity as an individual factor of analysis permits us to understand how different the south was from the central and northern regions of Mexico. While no one would dispute the signiWcance of ethnic 1. Sahlins, Boundaries, 8–24, 165. This author argues that “national identity—as Frenchman or Spaniards—appeared on the periphery before it was built there by the center.” I am grateful to Ellen Furlough for recommending this book. 2. Ibid., 271. Greg Grandin noted that in Guatemala “the survival of community identity and institutions did not signal resistance to capitalism but rather formed the cultural and social matrices through which communal relations articulated with market forces. . . . The accumulation of capital, the accrual of debt, the mobilization of labor, and the commodiWcation of land all took place within the context of communal and family relations.” Grandin, Blood of Guatemala, 128.

Conclusions

541

groups in Chihuahua or Puebla or Querétaro, the participation of mestizo campesinos in these regions often took center stage. In the south, by contrast, ethnic memory and communal usos y costumbres, which were the product of at least hundreds of years of history of pre-Columbian civilizations, emerged as a source of mobilization. If ethnicity is constructed in conXict with an “other,” then indigenous ethnicities deWned themselves by what they understood to be their pre-Hispanic culture, the traditions and customs salvaged vis-à-vis Spanish colonialism.3 The communal villagers of Oaxaca justiWed and legitimized their cultural traditions by anchoring them in time immemorial, as opposed to the appropriation of the present and the future by modernizing liberals. The appeal to continuity, whether imagined or real, infused indigenous Oaxacans with a purpose, a raison d’être, very much at odds with the Liberal rejection of their own Spanish colonial past. Adding insult to injury, at the same time that they attempted to expropriate villagers’ land, labor, and natural resources, forward-looking Liberals also appropriated the glories of pre-Hispanic empires, as symbolized by their use of Princess Donaji on Oaxaca’s Wrst coat of arms. The preservation of communal lands in the later twentieth century stands as the greatest testimonial to the belief in the validity of usos y costumbres and the exercise and circulation of capillary power in Oaxaca. Confronting continual opposition to its land reform (in the form of ejidos),4 the postrevolutionary state gradually acquiesced in the recognition of the communal land tenure claimed by the pueblos of Oaxaca. Between 1940 and 1964 authorities distributed 2,326,000 hectares of land in the state, 80 percent of which consisted of federal recognition of communal lands already in the possession of villages. This pattern continued until the conclusion of land reform during the presidency of López Portillo. It is likely that many pueblos that had undergone the privatization process in the nineteenth century, and then returned to communal custom on their own, Wnally achieved recognition of that system by the federal government in the twentieth century. Despite the expansion of private property and 3. The majority of the population always considered time and space uniWed in what Giddens calls “pre-modern cultures.” The separation of these factors and a focus on the future is characteristic of modernity. Consequences of Modernity, 17, 37ff. 4. There is much confusion as to the difference between the ejido, as a collective land system instituted by the agrarian reform that emanated from the 1910 Revolution, and the system of communal land tenure that, with much change, as we have seen, predated the arrival of the Spanish. Under Spanish rule, the ejido referred to pastures.

542

Conclusions

commercial agriculture, as late as 1980 more than 55 percent of Oaxaca’s land was still held communally by villages. In addition, the cargo system and tequio continue to be an integral part of village life, although they have changed considerably over the years.5 But, as Campbell observed, localism could be both “the greatest strength and Achilles heel” of the Juchitecos.6 It facilitated the fragmentation of indigenous populations, which impeded organization, mobilization and connection to national movements. Geography, failure to extend the infrastructure, and the many distinct ethnic groups conspired against overcoming these limitations. Thus, instead of a “thousand whistles” of locomotives in their “hymn to industry” echoing through the countryside and displacing the vestiges of “traditional” Mexico, we see a modernization project negotiated at almost every turn of the track, always contingent on local conditions. The interactions between the construction of infrastructure, the privatization of land, the expansion of commercial agriculture and mining, the introduction of foreign capital and technology, and the complex web of labor relations that resulted paint a very different picture of Oaxaca. They also reveal the contested nature of these interactions and the construction of successive compromises. For example, still today the state’s number one cash crop, coffee prompted the greatest transformations, increasing pressure for privatization and connecting various regions of Oaxaca to the world market. By the turn of the century, in Wve out of seven regions of the state, coffee had facilitated the rise of large modern Wncas as well as small to middling farms owned by foreign and national capital. It emerged as a vital crop for indigenous villages, bringing in desperately needed cash or food items. On the coast, the experience of the Chatinos of Juquila dramatizes these changes. Under pressure from the state government, the villages of Juquila privatized communal lands, making each peasant a property holder with a title. The Chatinos were also forced to work as jornaleros on the nearby 5. However, only 0.5 percent of the lands distributed were irrigated; the rest were dependent on seasonal rainfall. See Segura, “Indígenas y los problemas,” 232–47; Piñon, “Crisis agraria,” 299–311. Although today more than 70 percent of Mexicans live in towns and cities, the state of Oaxaca remains highly rural (54 percent), with the majority of its population, 51 percent, engaged in agriculture. Gob. del Estado, www.oaxaca.gob.mx/tecnica/ estado-index.html. See Cohen, Cooperation and Community, on how these customs have changed. 6. Campbell, Zapotec Renaissance, 8.

Conclusions

543

coffee and rubber plantations, some owned by foreign capitalists as debt peons, a rare labor relation in Oaxaca. As coffee cultivation expanded, they too planted coffee on their lands and thus were integrated into commercial agriculture and markets. They even paid their tithe to the Church with part of the harvest. The strong ethnic identity for which the Chatinos were known surfaced violently in the “War of the Pants,” when their traditions of dress and lands were threatened. Their experience is one in which, through external pressure or their own self-interest, change and continuity combined to safeguard indigenous identity. A great diversity of land tenure and labor arrangements in tobacco, sugar, cotton, rubber, and other crops also developed. Local conditions, geographic isolation, and the extreme scarcity of labor—not imperial designs—led the elites of Tuxtepec to reinstitute slavery, Wfty years after it had been abolished. The rapid growth of cash crops and the constant falta de brazos also required the increasing inclusion of women and children in the labor force at a much earlier date than previously recognized. But the spread of commercial agriculture did not produce a linear transition from forced to free wage labor; rather, a complex web of labor relations emerged on a continuum that ranged from slavery to free wage labor. As a result of the spread of commercial agriculture, a new type of landholding, the PorWrian Wnca, proliferated during the late nineteenth century, precisely in the regions of PorWrian development. These regions witnessed not only the greatest expansion of infrastructure, private property, commercial agriculture, ranching, and wage-labor relations but also the expansion of foreign investment, linkages with other markets, stratiWcation among and within social classes and ethnicities, and changing gender and family relations. They later became fertile ground for political protests against the dictatorship and for the Revolution. The more mountainous core regions, located in the heart of the state, weathered the mining boom. There, and in the villages and haciendas of the Central Valleys, economies concentrated on the staple production of maize, beans, and chile, and experienced slower change. The Central Valleys and the geographically peripheral regions changed more rapidly and accumulated more wealth than the more indigenous central regions. The 1895 and 1907 crises sent many smaller businesses into bankruptcy, which facilitated takeovers by larger concerns, often foreign investors. The gap between the richer regions of PorWrian development and the Central Valleys, and the

544

Conclusions

poorer Sierra Juárez and Mixteca core regions, widened throughout the Liberal era. Economic transformations resulted in deepening social differentiation along class, ethnic, and gender lines. From the widow Maqueo, owner of the largest haciendas in the state, to rancheras and land speculators, to comuneras, terrazgueras, minifundistas, and rural jornaleras, women became more active economically in rural Mexico with the spread of capitalist agriculture. The lower the economic level, the more likely the woman was to be involved directly in the daily tasks of agriculture and the more subject she was to exploitation. The mayor of Valle Nacional put it most succinctly: “women were cheaper than machines” and earned only half or less of what men earned. Capitalist agriculture required a much greater integration of women’s (and children’s) labor than did other forms of working the land. Juana Catarina Romero, the wealthiest woman on the Isthmus, became the largest importer of textiles and reWner of sugar there. María Aguirre de Pérez of Pinotepa Nacional was a prominent merchant and landowner. Women entered the industrial workforce in cigarette and textile factories, and in the service sector as teachers, shopkeepers, salespersons, and domestic servants. Even the number of sex workers in the state capital paralleled the boom-and-bust cycles of the economy. Women became vocal as journalists and as participants in the dissident liberal opposition, particularly in the regions of PorWrian development—for example, in Cuicatlán. These changes did not, however, affect the still very masculine concept of political power. Modernization was still considered to be a man’s business and society strove to maintain the appearance of separate spheres. Women comuneras were awarded land in separate women’s ghettos. Women did not receive citizenship rights, nor were they allowed to participate formally in politics. Even female liberals supported their male counterparts in separate proclamations. Although strict separate spheres based on gender had never been a reality, least of all for working-class women, on almost all fronts during the Liberal era women were making inroads as landowners, merchants, professionals, comuneras, teachers, and factory workers. The one exceptional woman who broke the political barriers to become a cacique, Juana Cata Romero, remained single and had to take on masculine and patriarchal characteristics in order to rule.

Conclusions

545

This relationship between gender and power was nowhere clearer than in the brief agrarian rebellion on the Costa Chica in 1911, in the feared rapes of rancheras and the castration of PorWrian ofWcials by the Mixtecs. Emasculation, both physical and political, was the rural middle class’s worst fear; retaliation for their appropriation of the land would be the rape of their own women and wealth. This sexual appropriation and inversion of the symbols of power could hardly have been more gendered.7 The ranchers rushed to Ometepec to be recognized as the legitimate revolutionaries in the region, to restore their political power, property, reason, and rule of law, in short, to save civilization. How ironic that the Mixtecs chose a woman as their ruler. Successive waves of immigrants “modernized” the oligarchy centered in the city of Oaxaca. Together, Vallistocrats and the middle classes, known as “decent” society, exempliWed the widespread racism in Mexico. A small but vocal urban working class was in the making, in textile and shoe factories, in transport, and among poorer artisans. Undeniably many of those who worked in the mines were, as one jefe político noted, only one step away from their milpas. Perhaps this explains why we Wnd very little worker organization, although further research is needed. The amazing managerial skills that Archbishop Gillow dedicated to the organization and Catholic education of the laboring classes attests to the growing importance of this sector and the danger he sensed in their exposure to socialist ideas. The growth of the middle sectors, both urban and rural, meant that new actors jockeyed for political and social mobility. As we have seen, no sooner had Benito Juárez died than Liberals built a unifying liberal myth to legitimize the rule of PorWrio Díaz as perpetuator of the Juárez legacy. Although this idea took hold at Wrst, Conservative, moderate, and radical groups increasingly disputed the interpretation of liberalism, each vying to represent its own “imagined tradition” as authentic Juarismo. Different groups presented distinct versions of liberal projects. Some emphasized economic development (displacement), others pushed education (uplift), while still others called for more democracy. In Oaxaca, liberalism labored under the inXuence of the dual legacy of Juárez and Díaz. The liberal inability to be critical of these two native sons and to separate their political legacies hampered the political vision of state politicians and even opposition groups. 7. Unfortunately, Guha did not explore the gendered aspects of peasant insurgency in Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency.

546

Conclusions

Liberalism in Mexico was riddled with contradictions, as this study demonstrates. Both Juárez and Díaz were ambivalent toward indigenous campesinos. They showed sincere concern, at times interceding for them in defense of their usos y costumbres yet at other times legislating and acting against them. The internal mechanisms of local and state politics help explain the limits of Liberal centralization policies and the many compromises Liberal politicians negotiated with their clienteles in order to maintain power. Both President Díaz and Governor Pimentel encouraged the dispersion of power among Oaxaca’s numerous municipalities and did little to impede inter-village feuding. While divide-and-conquer tactics had been employed against indigenous pueblos since the colonial period, modernizing caciques like Juana Cata kept a lid on this situation. Ingrained patron-client systems, however, clashed with liberal discourse as embodied in the Constitution of 1857. Liberals, as Brian Hamnett has noted, were “creatures and the manipulators of patronage.” They were unable or unwilling to dismantle the system that had permitted them to take and maintain power. Emilia Viotti da Costa noted this same “permanent tension” between liberal discourse and practice in Brazil. As Liberals avidly adopted European ideas, they also adapted them to their needs, rapidly learning how to manipulate these new institutions in order to protect their interests. Modernizing intellectual and political elites bent on transforming their “traditional” populations had to cope not only with the deep-rooted privileges of corporate groups but also with their own internal contradictions.8 Ironically, Benito Juárez García, often cited as Mexico’s Wrst “fullblooded Indian” president, laid the groundwork for the transition to a more mestizo nation. The regime of PorWrio Díaz, the mestizo, witnessed the emergence of the mestizo as symbol of Mexico and the transition of power from the Indian south to the more mestizo Centro and north. But for the Istmeño pueblos of the south, Juárez was a major opponent and his presidency actually conWrmed that “blood” alone did not deWne “indios.” With his ubiquitous black suit, starched white shirt, and serious demeanor, who better than this Serrano Zapotec represented mestizaje as 8. Hamnett, Juárez, 6–7. Emilia Viotti da Costa noted that in Brazil “liberals imported liberal principles and political formulas but tailored them to their own needs” (Brazilian Empire, 54ff.); see Scholes, Mexican Politics, 17. In France the national assembly actually declared the “abolition” of feudalism on August 4, 1789, but it was not quite so simple. See Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, 27–28, 46. See Hale, Mexican Liberalism, 52–53.

Conclusions

547

an acculturation process that would help to modernize Mexico? Yet the year after he ordered the execution of Maximilian, Juárez acceded in the recognition of Istmeños’ rights to communal access to salt Xats and pasturelands. It is ironic that having Wnally defeated Conservative and French armies, he failed to best the Istmeños, the majority of whom were Zapotecs like himself, (although he did frustrate the creation of a separate state). His son, who became governor in 1911, was no more successful in this. The middle class, which appeared on the political scene with the 1902 gubernatorial crisis, denounced these contradictions of Mexican liberalism. They demanded a more democratic system and employed a new style of mass mobilization politics to achieve it. The interpretation of liberalism was increasingly contested in the Wrst decade of the twentieth century. The parallel between the areas of PorWrian development (and the state capital) and the growth of political agitation is unmistakable. The regions that experienced the most economic and social change also saw the organization of dissident organizations—liberal clubs, newspapers, workers’ and women’s groups. Parallel to Díaz’s close monitoring of his home state stood the scrutiny of native son Ricardo Flores Magón and the PLM, as illustrated in the exposés in Regeneración. Through their connection to Flores Magón, Oaxacan radicals transcended the dual legacy and recast liberalism as a revolutionary credo. The normal school students of the city of Oaxaca chose well when they named their pro-Maderista newspaper La Sombra de Juárez (the shadow of Juárez) in 1910. Sebastián Ortiz led the Wrst revolutionary army of Oaxaca, called the “Benito Juárez Army of Liberation,” and the revolutionary forces of the ex-Magonista Faustino G. Olivera were called “Juaristas” in 1911. Undoubtedly, the promise of democracy inherent in liberalism, popular representation, and political participation could still function as the guiding spirit of precursors and revolutionaries, because that promise had yet to be fulWlled. Tilly observed remarkable differences between the repertoires of collective action in the eighteenth century and those in the Wrst half of the nineteenth century in Britain. He characterized the former as “parochial” because they were limited to the actions and interests of one community and employed direct action in local problems, while they looked to a “local patron or authority” to assist them when there were national implications. So speciWc were their methods that their actions were rarely transferable. Eighteenth-century conXict also involved “a good deal of

548

Conclusions

ceremonial, street theater, deployment of strong visual symbols, and destruction of symbolically charged objects.” While many of these characteristics persisted into the nineteenth century, the organization of clubs, public meetings, campaigns, strikes, and street demonstrations typiWed popular contention in nineteenth-century Britain. These forms of protest and opposition are what can be described as a new sociability brought on by the development of democratic ideas and mass society, in Mexico and Latin America no less than in England. Rituals and destruction were replaced by slogans, programs, and the use of the Xag as a major symbol.9 While in the previous century popular contention tended to be “discontinuous,” in the nineteenth collective action was “continuous” and was embedded in ongoing democratic practices. At Wrst glance, the eighteenth-century model would seem to describe repertoires of campesino contention as narrated in this study, and the nineteenth-century model to characterize working- and middle-class contention. But there was far more linkage and overlap in Oaxaca. While there were more acts of symbolic inversion among indigenous protesters, they, like middle- and working-class oppositionists, formulated petitions and political plans, resorted to litigation, and held public meetings, consultations, and demonstrations.10 The relevant point here is the hybrid nature of political practice in Oaxaca, the ways in which elementary aspects of peasant insurgency blended with the democratic practices of mass society. The Mixtecs’ wrapping of communal land titles in the Mexican Xag, like the rental of Western clothing on market days, represents symbolic negotiations with modernity. But if there was substantial “change” in Oaxaca, why wasn’t there more revolution? Was Oaxaca revolutionary or reactionary? Did the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca form an obstacle to modernization? Evocative of the nineteenth-century obsession with race and progress and the twentieth-century Wxation on growth and development, these questions are a product of binary thinking. In the course of my research I discovered that the questions I had originally formulated, as stated in the Introduction, proved to be Xawed in their very conception. I had been taught 9. While he rejects categorizing these repertoires as prepolitical or premodern vs. political or modern, it is hard to escape such labels. Tilly, Popular Contention in Great Britain, 44–51, 212ff. 10. Ibid., 344ff. One needs to take into account also whether the environment was urban or rural and the constraints of working under a dictatorship.

Conclusions

549

to overlook not only the history of southern Mexico but also the epistemology underlying research queries. False dichotomies paint false pictures and suppress alternative histories.11 When Liberal measures struck at the very heart of the indigenous común, they provoked energetic responses, not passivity, from campesinos. Far from clinging to an unchanging assemblage of customs and traditions since time immemorial, indigenous peoples made innovations, introducing some new forces into their lives while resisting (or resigning themselves to) others. How does the view from the south change the history of the Liberal era in Mexico? The shift in perspective cannot take place unless we acknowledge the problematic nature of the dualist models that populate Mexican history. I have attempted to do this by dividing the regions of Oaxaca into those of PorWrian development and those of the core. Both categories are taken from common binaries (development/underdevelopment, core/ periphery), but both are located in the superior position in these hierarchies. Designating Oaxaca as traditional (the whole state reduced to its “backward” indigenous population and “reactionary” oligarchy) has located it not only in the inferior position in these hierarchies but also in another time frame. Twenty years ago, anthropologist Johannes Fabian called for coevalness, “a common, active ‘occupation,’ or sharing, of time.” He argued that “the expansive, aggressive, and oppressive societies which we collectively and inaccurately call the West” reconceptualized time as an “instrument of power” in order to impose “a one-way history: progress, development, modernity (and their negative mirror images: stagnation, underdevelopment, tradition).”12 But Mohandas Gandhi undertook a rereading of Hindu archival sources and rescued “the premodern from its assigned space as history . . . by inserting it in the same time as the modern.” This discovery permitted him to recast the premodern, the “traditional,” as the “non-modern,” 11. Prakash, “Introduction,” 5. Leon Zamosc has criticized the tendency of academics to search for a “magic key” that would reveal the “conservative” or “revolutionary” essence of the peasantry. In his study of the mobilization of Colombian peasantry, he discovered a very complex trajectory, which in less than a decade oscillated between revolutionary, reformist, and conservative positions. He wisely rejected the search for essences in favor of the comprehension of social events within “broader structural processes in historical context,” Zamosc, Agrarian Question, 211–12. 12. The “denial of coevalness,” has placed “the referent(s) of anthropology in a Time other than the present of the producer of anthropological discourse,” according to Fabian. “In short, geopolitics has its ideological foundation in chronopolitics.” Fabian, Time and the Other, 31, 144ff.

550

Conclusions

“realigning categories aligned by colonialism” and thereby attaining coevalness. This was truly an insurgent act, one that liberated histories previously hidden.13 Situating all the peoples of Oaxaca and Mexico in the same time frame as “modern” Mexico radically transforms our understanding of modernity. Modern Mexico no longer looks quite so modern when viewed from the south. This shift allows us to see many faces in the mirror: different ethnicities, nationalities, social classes, and genders. Mexico is then seen as composed of multiple and intersecting groups interacting in complex relationships. Elements of capitalism combine with communal characteristics. Caciquismo and civil religious hierarchies intersect with “democratic” and dictatorial features. I have described this as a negotiated or hybrid modernity, although I am uneasy with characterizations that continue to place the modern at the center of analysis (or the colonial at the center of the postcolonial). Neither traditional nor modern, villagers translated new ideas and factors into their lives by negotiating modernity rather than articulating or defending alternative “modernities.” The emergence of this creative hybridity—cultural, economic, and political— enables us to go beyond resistance. When we do move beyond the conventional wisdom, foils and villains disintegrate to reveal the longstanding collusion of elite modernizing narratives with colonial and imperial domination. In the process of rethinking history, we should not forget Audre Lorde’s caution that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”14 The view from the south presents a contested, contradictory reality that shatters spurious dichotomies and disrupts linear histories. Only when we have transcended these will the south, in all its complexity, be integrated into the past and present of the nation and compel a new writing of Mexican history.

13. In his indictment of Western colonialism, Gandhi noted that “Civilization is not an incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English people are at present afXicted by it” (quoted in Prakash, “Introduction,” 6–7). The indigenous peoples of Oaxaca may well have agreed that their elites suffered from the same ailment. 14. Dipesh Chakrabarty cautions us that complicity is so ingrained that “it is not possible to simply walk out of the deep collusion between ‘history’ and the modernizing narrative(s)” (quoted in Prakash, “Subaltern Studies,” 1489). Mallon is acutely aware of the power relationship between historian and her subject in Peasant and Nation, 20ff. See French’s comments on Mallon and the agency of historians in “Imagining,” 255ff.; Lorde, “Master’s Tools.”

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

a rc h i v e s ABR AFD

Basilio Rojas Archive, Valle de Santiago, Guanajuato Félix Díaz Archives, Centro de Estudios de Historia de México, Condumex, Mexico City AGEPEO Archivo General del Poder Ejecutivo del Estado de Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Oaxaca AGN Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City AHDN Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional, Mexico City ALCG Luis Castañeda Guzmán Archives, San Martín Mexicapan, Oaxaca AMZA Archivo Manuel Zárate Aquino, Oaxaca, Oaxaca CEDT Ethel Duffy Turner Collection, Library, Museo de Antropología e Historia, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City CPD PorWrio Díaz Collection, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City FMBC Fondo Manuel Brioso y Candiani, Francisco de Burgoa Library, Centro Cultural Santo Domingo, Universidad Autónoma “Benito Juárez” de Oaxaca MN Mapoteca Nacional, Colección General, Mexico City NA National Archives, Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Mexico, 1910–1929. MicroWlm, University of Kentucky, Lexington ST-BC Silvestre Terrazas Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

p r i m a ry s o u rc e s Al pueblo oaxaqueño: Contestación documentada que el Licenciado Miguel Bolaños Cacho da al Informe que el Sr. Gobernador de Oaxaca, Lic. D. Emilio Pimentel, presentó a la Legislatura de dicho Estado, el 16 de septiembre pasado y refutación a la rectiWcación que el mismo funcionario hizo publicar en el “Periódico OWcial” de su Gobierno, con fecha 14 de octubre último. Mexico City: Tipografía de la Compañía E. Católica, 1905. Anuario estadístico de la República Mexicana, 1896. Dirección General de Estadística a cargo del Dr. Antonio PeñaWel. Mexico City: Tipografía de la Secretaría de Fomento, 1897.

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I N D E X

Abardía, Francisco, 337 Acapulco, 72, 74 acculturation, 39 Adán, Elfego, 287 Afro-Mexicans, 19, 38, 294–95 Aguascalientes, state of, 416 Aguilar Camín, Héctor, 405 alcohol, 159, 174, 222, 256, 433 Allende, Gaspar, 474, 482–84 Alonso, Ana María, 19 Alvarez, Juan, 340 Amin, Shahid, 21 Anderson, Benedict, 388 Annino, Antonio, 299, 394 Anti-CientíWcos, 403–5, 451, 458, 468–69, 496 antimony, mining of, 198 anti-PorWristas, 20 Antireelectionist Party, 265–66, 498–99, 504, 509 n. 30 Antón Lizardo, 51, 53 Appalachia, 442–43 Arista, General Mariano, 325 army, 43, 360, 391, 404, 429, 531 participation of indigenous people in, 332, 339–40 Arellanes Meixueiro, Anselmo, 118 Arriaga, Camilo, 454, 455 n. 14, 457, 459, 497 Arteaga, José Simeón, 320 Avance, El, 432, 533 Aztecs, 225, 281, 387 Baigts, Juan, 109, 196–97, 212, 214, 250 Baker, Keith, 12 Balsa, Ramón, 150 bananas, production of, 102, 160, 165–66 Banco de Oaxaca, 231 Banco Nacional de México, 230–31

Banco Oriental de México, 231 banditry, 273–76. See also Santanón; violence Baños, Juan José, 520–21 Baranda, Joaquín, 360, 402–3 Barrios, General Angel (Abelardo Beabe), 480–82, 484–85, 492, 505, 517, 528–29, 537 Barrios, President (of Guatemala) Justo RuWno, 53 n. 30 Beals, Carlton, 100, 353 beans, production of, 35, 36, 95, 151, 173–74 Belmar, Judge Francisco, 418 Benito Juárez Army of Liberation, 512–13, 515, 547 Bernstein, Marvin, 194, 204 Berry, Charles, 90 Bhabha, Homi, 10 Bien Público, El, 425, 452, 464–65, 468–70, 476–77, 479–80, 489, 501 Billings, Dwight, 442–43 “Black Legend” of Oaxaca, 5, 342 n. 56 Blee, Kathleen, 442–43 Bolaños Cacho, Governor Miguel, 39, 105, 192, 222, 260–61, 339, 363, 379, 382–83, 408, 467–68 Memoria Administrativa of, 39, 408 n. 12 BonWl Batalla, Guillermo, 7, 92–93, 284, 343 Borlados, 355–58 Bourbon Reforms, 106, 188, 298 British immigration to Oaxaca, 250 Bulnes, Francisco, 361–62, 398–99, 401–2, 461 Buve, Raymond, 22 n. 51, 81, 392 Cajiga, Governor Ramón, 79, 445–46 Campbell, Howard, 14, 292, 336, 542

598

canal, Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 60–62, 65 Canary Islanders, immigration to Oaxaca, 150–51 Canseco, Judge Francisco, 478, 517 Cañada, region of, 34, 51, 74, 81, 94, 120, 243, 525–27 agriculture of, 167 elites of, 257 land speculation in, 102 capitalism agriculture and, 134–37 foreign elites and, 253, 354 labor relations and, 135–36, 178, 181, 183, 246, 264 n. 48 land tenure and, 80, 82, 88, 92, 121 as contested terrain, 11, 17 effects on indigenous people, 284, 291, 306, 333, 343, 346 spread of, in Latin America, 18, 45 n. 16, 47 Cardoso, Ciro, 45 n. 16 cargo system, 286–89, 313 Carmagnani, Marcello, 293, 305, 394 Carrancistas, 20, 130, 295 Cassidy, John Thomas, 106 Castro, Governor Miguel, 139, 198, 251, 356 Memoria Administrativa of, 249 n. 16 Catholic Church Banco de México and, 43 education and, 261, 545 ideals of gender and morality and, 246 indigenous population and, 393 control of laborers, 466, 500 privatization of land held by, 88, 90 revival of, under Díaz, 395, 423–25, 454 Catholic Workers Circle of Oaxaca, 269–70, 466, 500 Catlin, Henry, 58 Central Reelectionist Club of Oaxaca, 502 Central Valleys, region of agriculture of, 106, 119, 174–75, 236 development of, 74, 449, 543 dissident activity in, 501 elites of. See Vallistocracia indigenous people of, 87–88, 442 urban centers of, 225–26, 243 natural resources and mining of, 188, 193 population decline of, 85, 219 n. 58 Centro, district of Oaxaca, 34, 75, 445. See also Oaxaca, city of

Index

Centro, of Mexico. See also Mexico City Cerutti, Mario, 16 Chance, John, 293, 303 Charles V of Spain, 60, 187 Chatino Indians, 1–2, 20, 95 n. 44, 144, 146, 281, 293, 373–74, 376–77, 542–43 Chatterjee, Partha, 394–95 Chávez, Governor Gregorio, 91, 368 Chevalier, François, 16 Chiapas, state of, 53 n. 30, 68, 143–44, 148, 154 n. 48, 345, 416 Chihuahua, state of, 426 child labor, 147, 154, 183, 207 Chinanteco Indians, 36, 94, 95, 152–53 Chinantla, 510, 514 Chinese immigrants to Oaxaca, 265–66 Choapan, district of, 36, 74, 126–27, 163, 165, 171, 274, 375–76 Chocho Indians, 39, Chontal Indians, 199 CientíWcos, 79, 359, 364, 396, 398, 401–7, 409–10, 451, 461, 497, 530 class, 18–20, 243–78, 291–92 Cleveland, President Grover, 54 closed corporate peasant community (CCPC), 290, 291 n. 28 Club Central Antireeleccionista (national). See Antireelectionist Party Club Central Antireeleccionista de Oaxaca, 499–500, 504 Club Liberal Regenerador Benito Juárez (Cuicatlán), 455, 458, 505 Coahuila, state of, 104, 379 n. 58, 416 coal, mining of, 38, 123, 192, 198 coastal region (Oaxaca). See Costa Coatsworth, John, 39, 80 Coatzacoalcos river of, 64 town of, 62, 64, 65 n. 57, 67, 76, 101 COCEI (Coalition of Workers, Peasants and Students of the Isthmus), 14, 387 n. 78, 434 Cochin, Auguste, 383–84 cochineal dye, 112, 138, 304 cocoa beans, production of, 133, 173 Cockcroft, James, 492 coffee land privatization and (Wncas), 92, 95, 98–99, 101, 112, 542–43 exportation of, 229

Index

production of, 10–11, 34, 36, 37, 53, 56, 66, 76, 101, 136–49 study of, 21, 143 n. 22 Coixtlahuaca, district of, 37, 38 Collins, Patricia Hill, 8 colonialism, 280 colonization attempts, 124–26 communal land, 77, 82–88 division and privatization of, 2, 80, 81, 88–105, 107, 542–43 indigenous resistance to, 81, 87–88, 153 expansion of commercial agriculture and, 92, 152 railroads and, 92 in Iberian tradition, 84 laws and circulars regarding, 89–91, 93 preservation of, 541–42 communal landholders, 11, 82 communalism, 79, 284–91. See also cargo system Comonfort, President Ignacio, 89–90, 124 Congress of Mexico, 51 n. 26, 52, 53, 62–63 Congress of Oaxaca. See State Congress of Oaxaca Conservatives, 4, 20 n. 47, 44, 298, 320, 337, 355, 357–58, 386 Constitution of 1824, federal, 280, 298 Constitution of 1824, state, 299–301 Constitution of 1857, 88–90, 303, 370, 384–85, 390, 395, 428, 464, 479 Constitution of 1917, 460 Constitution of Cádiz, 288, 298–99, 428 Constitutionalists (Revolution of 1910), 20, 354 n. 5, 355 contratas, 153–59 controlling images, 8–9, 280, 342–43 Cook, Scott, 225, 290 copper, mining of, 76, 196, 233 Corral, Vice-President Ramón, 405, 496–97, 502 n. 16 Correo del Sur, El, 218, 426, 502, 503 Cortés, Hernán, 60, 187 Cosío Villegas, Daniel, 361 Costa, region of, 29, 37, 48–49, 71–76, 81, 120, 243 agriculture of, 175–76 elites of, 258 Costa Chica agriculture of, 175, 230

599

dissident activity in, 183–84, 518–21, 545 economy of, 120–21, 222, 228 people of, 38, 294–95 cotton manufacturing of, 220–21 production of, 36, 170–72, 236, 411 counter-insurgency, 22 Craske, Nikki, 10 Creelman, James, interview with PorWrio Díaz, 495–96 crime. See Santanón, violence crisis of 1890s, 143–44, 148, 151, 252 crisis of 1902, 377–83, 406, 407 crisis of 1907, 45 n. 16, 151, 193, 202, 211, 219, 228–29, 232–36, 413–14, 450, 488 Cuban immigration to Oaxaca, 150–51 Cuevas Paz brothers, 498–99, 504, 516 Cuicateco Indians, 287 Cuicatlán agriculture of, 141–43 city of, 455–57, 484 district of, 10, 34, 60 n. 46, 75, 453 n. 10 cyanide plants, 196, 198, 207–10, 218, 219 de la Cruz, Víctor, 22–23 de la Fuente, Julio, 446 de Pío Araujo, Antonio, 481, 484–85 Death Valley. See Valle Nacional debt peonage, 106–7, 135, 146, 183, 185–86, 543 decentering of history, 7, 14–17, 539 decree on coffee and sugar cultivation (1875), 140, 170 decree on Fundos Legales (1824), 88–89, 280, 301 Dehesa, Teodoro, 403, 405, 502 n. 16, 509, 530 Democracia, La, 256 Dennis, Philip, 444–46 dependency theory (Dependentistas), 8, 14 depression of 1870s, 44 Diario del Hogar, 422, 458, 465, 470, 476, 508 Díaz, General Félix, 220, 260–61, 327–28, 332, 355–56, 370 Díaz, Brig. General Félix, Jr., 380–83, 403, 405, 406, 467, 502, 507–8, 532–35

600

Díaz, General PorWrio (Pres.) as landowner, 137, 251 as native of Oaxaca, 4, 260 as promoter of middle class, 449 banking and, 230–33 before 1867, 308–9, 332, 357–58, 391. See also Rebellion of La Noria; War of French Intervention crisis of 1902 and, 377–83 criticism of, 450–52, 457–58, 476, 495–98, 500, 509 handling of power, 438, 446, 502 n. 16, 506, 509 land tenure and, 91, 100, 105 mining and, 198–99, 201, 251 Mexican Revolution and, 528–34 modernizing policies of, 358–61, 394 political favors and, 125, 156–57, 197, 259, 332, 361–64, 402–7, 503 railroads and, 46–48, 55, 63–75 relationship with Benito Juárez, 352–55, 396–99, 493, 545. See also dual legacy relationship with Monseñor Gillow, 424 relationship with Oaxaca, 6, 12–13, 104–5, 338, 364–70, 394, 427–28, 434, 546 support of, 461. See also PorWrismo; PorWristas Díaz, PorWrio, Jr., 123 Díaz Quintas, Heliodoro, 462–66, 476, 485, 488, 500 n. 12, 501, 503, 536–37 diseases, effect of on indigenous people, 85, 87 Diskin, Martin, 225 dual legacy, 385, 395–99, 492, 545 Echeverría, Francisco Javier, 318, 321-22, 328, 344 education, 261–63, 338, 354, 367–68, 386, 414–18, 420, 423. See also women, education of Ejutla city of, 57 district of, 166 railroad of, 56–59 electric lighting, 75, 366, 422, 479 elites capitalist development and, 44–45, 48–51, 76, 133–34, 187, 300, 304–5

Index

attitudes of, toward indigenous people, 25, 395, 418 foreign, 244, 248–50, 251–56, 258, 545 Mexican, 3, 13, 56, 229, 247–64 political attitudes of, 405, 408, 426, 437, 451, 459–62, 502, 534 Enlightenment, 2, 9, 361 Escobar, Arturo, 11 Esperón family, 166–67, 197, 258, 307–10 Esperón, Governor José, 49, 140, 309, 355–57 Esperón y de la Flor, Manuel, 452, 474 Esparza, Manuel, 92 Esteva, Cayetano, 108, 111, 120, 133 ethnicity, 18, 19–20, 292–95, 305, 327, 347, 540–41 Etla, district of, 35, 197, 444, 465 Fabian, Johannes, 549 Falcón, Romana, 428 Farriss, Nancy, 305, 342 feminism, 7, 9–10 Fenelón, José, 54 Ferrocarril Agrícola, 49, 56, 57, 58 Ferrocarril Carbonífera, 71–72 Ferrocarril de Oriente, 57 Ferrocarril Interoceánico, 46 Ferrocarril Mexicano, 70 Ferrocarril Nacionales, 52, 57, 59 Ferrocarril of San Felipe, 59 Ferrocarril Urbano Oaxaca y Oriente, 59 Flanet, Véronique, 442–43 Flores Magón, brothers, 14, 452, 455, 457–58, 475, 497 Flores Magón, Ricardo, 14, 450, 457–60, 470–71, 474–75, 480–81, 547 Florescano, Enrique, 297, 387 foreign investment in Oaxaca, 44–45, 76, 117, 134, 144, 151, 190, 202, 218, 409–10, 413. See also speciWc countries foundries and beneWciation plants, 207–9, 215 Fowler-Salamini, Heather, 181 France, investment in Oaxaca, 44, 190 Fraser, Nancy, 22 free press, 396 Freemasonry, 361–62 Frelinghuysen, U.S. Secretary of State, 53 French immigration to Oaxaca, 250, 252 French Revolution, 9, 383–84

Index

fruit production, 53, 102 Furet, François, 12, 383–84, 397 Gallegos, Plutarco, 471, 476, 478–80, 482–84 Gandhi, Mohandas, 549–50 García Canclini, Néstor, 10 García de León, Antonio, 288 García, Leopoldo, 504–5 García Vigil, General Manuel, 21, 496, 512 García, Wenceslao, 57, 59 Garner, Paul, 442 gays and lesbians, 19 Gendarmarie, 366, 429, 516 gender, 18–19, 20, 245–47, 389, 544–45. See also women gente decente, 1, 375, 522 German immigration to Oaxaca, 144, 250, 252 Germany, investment in Oaxaca, 144 Gillow, Monseñor Eulogio G., 51, 230–31, 269–70, 412, 423–25, 517, 545 gold, mining of, 36, 76, 192, 195–98, 207, 213, 215 Gómez Añorve, Enrique, 518–20 Gómez, José “Che,” 434 Gonzalbo Escalante, Fernando, 340 González, Governor Martín, 1, 75, 91 n. 34, 310–11, 344, 364, 369, 377–83, 396, 406, 419 González, Luis, 16, 511 González Navarro, Moisés, 243, 271–72 González, President Manuel, 53, 366, 405 Gorsuch, Robert, 53 Gould, Jay, 52, 53 n. 30 Grant, Ulysses S., 51–54 Great Britain, investment in Oaxaca, 44, 162–63, 188, 190, 219 Greenberg, James, 445–46 Guardino, Peter, 295, 340 Guatemala border with Mexico, 49, 53, 68, 103 coffee production in, 144 indigenous people of (Mayas), 17 railroad into, 53 n. 30 Guergué, José Joaquín, 319, 320 Guerra, François-Xavier, 104, 299, 437–38 Guerrero, state of, 38, 340 Guha, Ranajit, 22, 334, 374 Gurrión, Adolfo C., 463, 476–80, 484–86, 489

601

Hacienda de la Concepción, 20, 97, 166–67, 307–13, 539 Hale, Charles, 385, 392, 396 Hamilton, Charles, 58, 59, 197, 203, 212 Hamnett, Brian, 303, 546 Hart, John, 102, 123–25 henequen, 53, 110, 186, 411 Hernández, General Fidencio, 145, 220, 251, 260–61, 331, 356–57, 365, 380 n. 61, 438 Hernández, General Juan, 502 Hernández, Fidencio, Jr., 439–40, 505–6, 511, 516, 535 Hernández, Miguel, 510, historiographic centralism, 16 Huajuapan de León, town of, 38 49, 71, 72, 75, 227, 458 Huajuapan, district of, 37, 525 Huave Indians, 36, 42, 199, 283 Hubp, Gustavo P., 58 Huntington, Collis P., 52 hurricanes, 64–66 hybrid modernity, 11, 539, 550 hybridization, 10, 299 ICA (Instituto de Ciencias y Artes), 261–64, 353, 414, 465–66, 490 Ideal, El, 502, 503, 508, 509 iguala mining tax, 212–13, 217–18 immigration. See also elites, foreign; speciWc countries agriculture and, 134–35, 152 capitalist industries and, 202 encouragement of, 121, 338 as laborers, 146 n. 28, 265 Imparcial, El, 102, 147, 234, 396 n. 98 indigo, production of, 173 INEHRM (Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolucíon Mexicana), 16 n. 40 Interoceanic Railway, 56, 59 iron, mining of, 38, 192, 198 isthmian wars. See Tehuantepec, Isthmus of, wars of Italian immigration to Oaxaca, 250 Iturribarría, Jorge Fernando, 21, 354 Ixcateco Indians, 39 Ixtlán city of, 74, 438, 441 district of, 35, 74, 353, 439–41

602

Jacobin liberalism, 358–59, 383, 392, 395–99, 480, 489 Jamiltepec, district of, 34, 37, 75, 76, 90 n. 32, 130, 161, 294–95, 518 Jiménez, General Mariano, 363, 367 Joseph, Gilbert, 110, 431, 492 journalism, 425–26 Juárez Association, 460–66, 468–71, 476–80, 500, 503 Juárez Maza, Benito, 13, 260–61, 361, 459, 497, 502–9, 532–33 Juárez García, President Benito as native of Oaxaca, 4 break with Díaz, 353–56, 370. See also Rebellion of La Noria education and, 359 education of, 351–53 encouragement of foreign investment, 44, 47 land tenure and, 88–91, 302 legacy of: anticlericalism and, 454–56; celebrations of, 385–86, 479–80; in Sierra Juárez, 391; Mexican Revolution and, 13; used against Díaz, 390, 447, 489–93, 504, 507; used in debate about education of indigenous people, 415. See also “Benito Juárez Army of Liberation”; dual legacy Meléndez, Che Gorio and, 320–23, 325–27 mining and, 188 political favors and, 362, 369, 441 relationship to Catholic Church, 43 relationship to indigenous people, 88, 337, 344, 346, 387, 394, 546–47 relationship to Oaxaca, 6, 12–13, 362, 405 relationship with Serrano caudillos, 438 repression of liberties, 397–98 Juarismo. See Juárez, legacy of Juaristas, 13, 21, 356–58 Juchitán city of, 36, 76, 315, 356, 434 district of. See also Gómez, José “Che” indigenous activity of, 315–29, 341, 346, 528–29 Liberals of, 259 labor, 179 land tenure of, 101–2, 129–30 railroads, 68–69

Index

Juquila city of, 76, 377 district of: agriculture of, 37, 145, 163, 165, 170, 181–83, 377; indigenous activity of (See “War of the Pants”); land tenure in, 93–95; fair of, 229; mining zone of, 198 Juxtlahuaca, district of, 34, 38, 119 n. 89, 416 Kaplan, Samuel, 481 Kaerger, Karl, 101 Kearney, Michael, 291–92, 294 Kee, Dick, 55–56 Keesing, Roger, 344 Knight, Alan, 285, 392–93, 437, 489, 492, 500–501 labor relations, 135–36, 144–48, 152–53, 178–86, 204–7, 244, 542–43. See also contratas; debt peonage; slavery; terrazgo; unions accounts of, 126, 128 in pre-Columbian society, 83 Ladrón de Guevara, Baldomero, 455, 525, 527 Las Sedas, 55 Lawton, Ezra M., 219 lead, mining of, 192, 196, 198 León de la Barra, Francisco, 531 Lerdo de Tejada, Sebastián, 351, 354 n. 5, 356–57 Lerdo Law (1856), 88–90, 97, 101, 107, 184, 303, 307–8, 430 Liberal Army, 13 liberal clientelism, 104–5, 332, 390, 392–93, 427, 433, 441 Liberal Congress, Wrst, 458 Liberal Congress, second, 459 liberal modernizing projects, 2, 43–45, 80, 305, 427, 539 Liberal Party, 43, 351, 454 Liberal Reform (1857–67) indigenous people and, 300, 314 land tenure and, 43, 88–105, 107, 250 legacy of Juárez and, 384–85, 390, 397 mining and, 188–89 secular society and, 456 study of, 3 n. 5 Liberal Revolution of 1855, 326

Index

liberalism, 3–4, 43–44, 78, 105, 384–85, 390–99. See also Jacobin liberalism economic, 48 justiWcation of, 3 disputed interpretation of, 24, 454, 489 libro amarillo (Trial of the Administration of Lic. D. Emilio Pimentel), 501, 517 Limantour, José Yves, Treasury Minister, 57, 63, 69, 163, 360, 396, 401–5, 495 n. 1, 496 n. 2, 530, 531 n. 74 limestone, mining of, 192 Lira, Andrés, 298 literacy, 97–98, 416, 418 livestock, production of, 38, 151, 171 n. 87, 175–77, 184, 319 López de Santa Anna, President Antonio, 60, 326 López, Mateo Máximo, 309–10, 346, 432 Lorde, Audre, 550 Maderismo. See Maderista movement Maderista movement, 130, 184, 295, 492, 498–501, 509–37 Madero, Francisco I., 459, 497–500, 510–12, 526, 531 Magonismo. See Magonista movement Magonista movement, 13, 14, 457, 471–75, 477, 480–92, 504, 528 maize, production of, 35–37, 95, 151, 169, 173–74, 236, 308, 313 Mallon, Florencia, 15, 340, 393 Maqueo Castellanos, Judge Esteban, 79, 339, 363, 418, 432 Maqueo, Esteban, 319, 327 Maraver Aguilar, Miguel, 474, 484–85 Mariscal, Ignacio, 360, 385 Marx, Karl, 244 Marxists, 14, 244, 383 Maximilian, Archduke, 43, 362 Mayas, 282, 342 Mazatec Indians, 34 McBride, George, 80, 104 McKinley Tariff of 1890, 207 Meixueiro, Governor Francisco, 47, 51, 90, 251, 356–57, 365–66, 438 Meixueiro, Guillermo, 407, 439–40, 444, 461, 505–6, 511, 516, 535 Mejía, General Ignacio, 51, 108, 197 n. 20, 251, 326, 332, 354, 358 Mejía, María Benita (Queen of Mixtec Revivalist Empire), 520–21

603

Meléndez, José Gregorio (Melendre, Che Gorio), 318, 320, 321, 324–26, 346, 432, 528–29 mestizaje, 10, 39, 338–39 Mexican Central Railroad, 52 Mexican Eagle Oil Company, 56, 64 n. 55, 66, 201 Mexican Herald, 255, 425–26 Mexican independence from Spain (1821), 43 Mexican Liberal Party (PLM), 450, 460, 464, 474–75, 480–85, 489, 492, 547 Mexican National Railroad. See Ferrocarriles Nacionales Mexican Oriental, Interoceanic, and International Railroad Company, 53 n. 30 Mexican Revolution, 6, 13, 16, 20, 38, 57, 158, 195, 219, 272, 300. See also Oaxaca, Revolution in study of, 4, 19, 21, 405, 450–51 Mexican Southern Railway, 46–60, 72, 95 n. 44, 192–93, 211, 227 inauguration of, 47, 71, 202, 368 spurs of, 57–60 Mexican Southern Railroad Company, 52, 133, 365 Mexico City. See also decentering of history elites of, 45, 420–21 increased power of, 360 literacy in, 416 Oaxacans in, 260 railroads and, 46, 51, 53, 56, 59, 63, 69, 71 Miahuatlán, district of, 90 n. 32, 99, 138–42, 144, 166 middle classes, 261–67, 447, 449–51, 462, 475, 545, 547 Mier y Terán, Governor Luis, 54, 406 Migdal, Joel, 91 Mijangos, Juan María and Juan Francisco, 138 Mijangos, Rito, 99 mining code of 1885, 189–90 Ministry of Communication and Public Works, 63, 73 Ministry of Development, 91, 211, 239 Miranda, José, 78, 80 Mixe Indians, 36, 84, 87 n. 25, 281

604

Mixtec Indians. See also Santa María Yucuiti attitudes toward land and self, 77, 281–83 markets and, 227 n. 77 Mexican Revolution and, 183–84, 518–22, 545, 548 population of, 38–39 pre-Columbian, 35, 187, 225 self-concept, 77 Mixteca, region of agriculture of, 37–38, 167, 171, 176–77, 226 conXicts in, 391, 442–43, 524–25 elites of, 258 industrial development of, 71–74, 222, 303 land tenure in, 97, 107, 127, 130, 247 natural resources and mining of, 198–99 population of, 85, 86 n. 22 political divisions of, 243, 301 modernity, 2, 3, 4, 11, 18, 47, 79, 245, 437–38, 501, 548 Modernizationists, 14 Molina Enríquez, Andrés, 80 n. 9, 107, 110 Monaghan, John, 97, 283–84, 308–14 Monetary Reform of 1905, 234 Morelos, state of, 5 n. 11, 72, 105, 152, 170 Muñoz, Lt. Col. José María, 321–23, 325 Murguía y Galardi, José María, 137–38, 387 Nacional Monte de Piedad, 366, 368, 420 Nagengast, Carole, 294 Nahua Indians, 83 Nahuatl (language), 83, 281 National Museum, 387–88 National Preparatory School, 359, 503 Natividad, La (mine), 195–96, 205–7, 210, 214–17, 236, 253, 272 Nochixtlán, district of, 37, 74, 90 n. 32, 128, 197 Oaxaca, state of agriculture of. See speciWc products climate of, 34, 37 demographics of, 32–33, 38, 239–43 expansion of, 30 n. 1 geography of, 29–42, 426–27

Index

natural resources of. See mining; speciWc resources radical press of, 156 Revolution of 1911 in, 161, 509–37 stereotype of, as backwards, 4–7, 47, 76, 549 Oaxaca-Acapulco Railroad, 73 n. 76 Oaxaca & Ejutla Railway. See Ejutla, railroad of Oaxaca City development of, 73–76, 220–23, 231, 421–23 dissident activity in, 462, 509–10, 516–18 elites of, 247–48, 263 Mexican Revolution and, 529, 532, 535 population of, 242 public services of, 235, 366, 421, 429 railroads and, 47–49, 51–59, 70–73 Oaxaca Herald, 223, 255, 413, 425 Oaxacan Agricultural Society, 412 Oaxacan Fraternal Society, 260 Oaxacan Smelting and ReWning Co., 59, 210–11, 235 Ocotlán, district of, 57–60, 74, 90, 181–82, 373 Odriozola, Rafael, 455, 457–59, 474 oil. See petroleum Ojitlán, 512–15 Olguín, Roberto, 516–17 Olivera, Faustino G., 486–87, 489, 526–27, 537, 547 onyx, mining of, 201 Ortiz, Ramón Máximo, 321 Ortiz, Sebastián, 265, 512–16, 526–27, 537, 547 Ortner, Sherry, 14 Oseguera, Manuel, 525, 527, 537 Otero, Mariano, 15 Pacheco, Minister of Development Carlos, 51 n. 26, 72, 189 Paddock, John, 442 País, El, 133 Pan American Railroad, 49, 59, 68–70, 103 Pan American Railway Company, 69 Panama Canal, inauguration of, 68 Papaloapan, region of, 36, 81, 95, 120, 149–50, 160, 185, 243 agriculture of, 112

Index

elites of, 258–59 land speculation in, 102 Papaloapan River, 29, 70, 71 Pardo, Rodolfo, 155, 514–15 Paris, France, 227 n. 78 Parsons, Consul General James R., 103, 164–65 Partido Democrático, 497 Pastor, Rodolfo, 107, 284, 442–44 Patterson, Orlando, 17 Pearson and Son, 56, 63–64, 66 Pearson, Weetman, Lord Cowdray, 123, 201 Pérez García, Rosendo, 103–4, 145, 289 petroleum, 56, 66, 123, 201 Piel, Jean, 295 Pimentel, Governor Emilio arrest of bandits and, 273–74 as CientíWco, 383, 402 as member of Vallistocracia, 256–68, 262–63 attitude toward indigenous people, 79, 415–17 before 1902, 406–8 criticism of, 451, 453, 465–6, 468–70, 476, 501, 508 education and, 415–18 election of 1906 and, 467–68 election of 1910 and, 502, 506, 508 handling of power, 546 means of communication and, 46–47, 74 Mexican Revolution and, 532, 534 mining and, 210, 212–13, 218, 230 modernizing projects of, 408–14, 429 policy toward land tenure, 99–100, 125–26, 344 political favors and, 156, 439 public health projects of, 419–20 relationship with Catholic Church, 424–25 repression of liberties, 465, 471, 478, 480–81, 486–88 Pineda, Rosendo, 361, 364–65, 396, 402, 404, 415, 487–88, 496 n. 2, 531 Pinotepa Nacional, 100, 130, 176–77, 222, 228–30, 518–22 Plan of San Luis Potosí, 510, 518, 523, 526, 531 Pochutla, district of, 37, 74–75, 130, 139–42, 169–70, 228, 452

605

Popoloca Indians, 39 PorWrismo, 4 n. 10, 13, 450, 468, 505, 507 PorWristas, 20, 356 Positivist philosophy, 79, 262, 359, 395, 396, 398 postal system, 75 Prakash, Gyan, 7, 9 Pratt, Mary Louise, 389 private property. See also communal land classiWcation of, 105–121, 127–31 expansion of, 11, 24, 85, 88–105 prostitution. See sex workers Protestants, 423, 456–57 public health projects, 367, 419–20 Puebla city of, 49, 53, 55, 56, 59, 71, 72, 73 state of, 29, 38, 47, 71, 220, 427, 500 Puerto Angel, 37, 49, 51, 95 n. 44, 137, 228–30 Puerto México. See Coatzacoalcos Puga y Colmenares, Ismael, 463, 465–66, 470, 476–77, 485, 488, 500 n. 12 Putla, district of, 119 n. 89, 161, 275–76, 416, 524 Quiotepec, 55 Rabasa, Emilio, 88 n. 28, 363 race, 18, 20, 292, 415, 418 Radding, Cynthia, 299 railroads, 45–73, 80 n. 9, 405 relations with agriculture, 47, 71, 141 n. 19, 151, 160, 186, 228 relations with mining, 54, 57–58, 60, 72, 76, 192–93, 198–99, 218 ranching, 36, 38, 92, 129, 228 Read and Campbell, Ltd., 54 Read, Sir Rudston, 54 Read, V. N., 70 Rebellion of La Noria (1871), 259, 309, 356, 370, 392 Regeneración, 452, 458–89, 465, 470–71, 475, 489, 547 regionalism, 15, 30 Reina Aoyama, Leticia, 80, 337 religious beliefs, indigenous, 77, 289 n. 24. See also cargo system Rendón Garcini, Ricardo, 81, 111, 152–53 Restored Republic (1867–76), 4, 13, 351, 354–55

606

Reyes, General Bernardo, 402–5, 496–97 rice, production of, 173 Riva Palacio, Vicente, Minister of Development, 51 n. 26 Rojas, Basilio, Jr., 21, 137 n. 10, 261 n. 41, 272 n. 43, 273 n. 46, 380 n. 61, 407 Rojas, Basilio, Sr., 139–41, 146, 148, 285, 332 Romero Frizzi, Angeles, 303, 443 Romero, Juana Catarina, 251, 421, 435–38, 528, 534, 544 Romero, Matías, 51–54, 133, 137, 138, 146, 148, 169–70, 227, 339, 353 n. 3 Romero Rubio, Manuel, 72, 361, 401, 402 n. 1 Roosevelt, Theodore, 103 Roseberry, William, 18 rubber, production of, 36, 76, 161–65 Rubin, Jeffrey, 14–15 Ruiz Cervantes, Francisco José, 108, 174, 532 Ruiz, Ramón, 138–39, 330 Sahlins, Peter, 539–40 Salas, Hilario, 456 Salina Cruz, port city, 36, 49, 59, 62, 64–68, 73, 76, 101, 181, 229–30, 243, 421 salt, mining of, 123, 184, 192, 199–200, 316–19, 321–23 San Jerónimo, 36, 49, 58, 68, 69, 421 San Marcos Tlacotepec, city of, 49, 71, 72 San Marcos Tlacotepec Railroad, 71, 72 Sánchez, DelWn, 62, 162–63 Sánchez, Juan, 96, 266, 499, 504 Sánchez Silva, Carlos, 120, 304–5 Sandoval, Joaquín, 532 Santa Catarina Ixtepeji, 441 Santa María Yucuiti, 11, 20, 292–93, 306–14, 392, 394, 447, 539 Santanón (Santana Rodríguez), 163, 274 Santiago Nuyoo, 283–84, 288, 290–91, 442, 447 Santibáñez, Demetrio, 435–36, 528 Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, 79 Schell, William, Jr., 102 Schmieder, Oscar, 83–84 Schryer, Franz, 264 Scott, Catherine, 18–19 Scott, James, 285, 332–33, 492

Index

Scott, Joan, 9 Semecracia, La, 425, 476, 478, 480, 489 Serrano Alvarez, Pablo, 16 sex workers, 276–77, 544 sharecropping. See terrazgo Sherzer, Joel, 292 Shufeldt, Captain R. W., 61 Sierra Juárez, region of, 35 commerce of, 220, 226, 303 elites of, 257 land tenure in, 103–4, 127 loyalty to Benito Juárez, 391 Mexican Revolution and, 528 politics of, 438–41, 475, 505–6 natural resources and mining of, 188, 195 Sierra, Justo, 3 n. 5, 43, 359, 388, 398, 415 Sierra Madre del Sur, 29 Sierra Madre Oriental, 29 Sierra Norte. See Sierra Juárez, region of Silacayoapan, district of, 38, 128, 523 silk, production of, 411 Silva Herzog, Jesús, 121 silver, mining of, 36, 76, 189, 192, 195–96, 198, 207, 213, 215, 218, 234 Sinkin, Richard, 385 slavery, 83, 135, 171, 178, 186, 543. See also contratas resistance to, 159 smelters, 210 Smith, Carol, 17 Soberanistas. See Sovereignty Movement social Darwinism, 79, 359 socialism, 270 Sociedad Indigenista Mexicana, 418 Society of Catholic Workers, 269 Solís, General Gabriel, 523–24, 529, 537 Sonoran Railroad, 56 Southern PaciWc Railroad, 52 Southworth, John, 55–56, 120, 175, 191, 196, 205 Sovereignty Movement 5 n. 13, 20, 21, 130 Spanish Crown, 35, 297, 430–31, 438 policy toward land tenure, 85–86 Spanish immigration to Oaxaca, 150–51, 248–50, 252–53, 265 Spores, Ronald, 442, 444 State Congress of Oaxaca, 88–89 Stein, Gustavo, 193, 310–11, 344

Index

stereotypes of indigenous people as barbaric, 297, 441–43, 522 as close to nature, 78–79 as conservative, 93, 291–92, 341–44, 432–33 as ignorant, 280, 338–39, 414–16, 418 romanticized, 289 Stevens, Donald, 81 Stern, Steve, 135–36, 342 strikes. See unions sugar, production of, 34–36, 56, 102, 166–70, 307 syncretism, 10 Tamayo, Jorge, 30, 34, 358 Tannenbaum, Frank, criticism of, 87–88 Taracena, Angel, 21, 407 Taussig, Michael, 22 Taviche, mining zone of, 49, 191–92, 196–97, 203, 234 rail line, 56, 58–59 Tax Law of 1896, 1–2, 20, 371–73 tax revolts, 1–2, 302–3, 319, 328, 333–34, 370–77, 451. See also Tehuantepec, Isthmus of, wars of; “War of the Pants” Taylor, William B., 14, 16, 78, 87–88, 104, 106, 293, 303, 377 Tecomavaca, 55 Tehuacán, 54, 55, 74, 498 Tehuantepec city of, 36, 54, 70, 76, 421, 436 district of, 36, 74, 76, 101, 178 Isthmus of (region of): agriculture of, 36, 101–2, 133, 164, 166, 175; commerce of, 226–28, 243; Conservatives of, 259; dissident activity of, 302–3, 434, 471–74, 477, 528–29, 534; elites of, 259, 434; exploration of, 60, 124; industry of, 222; land tenure in, 87, 102; natural resources and mining of, 123, 187, 199; public health in, 419; railroads and, 48, 71; telegraph line in, 74; wars of, 315–29, 340, 365–66, 391; women of, 434–5 National Railway, 49, 56, 59–70, 101–3, 124, 157, 272, 366, 421, 434 telegraph, 73–74 telephone, 74–75

607

Teposcolula, district of, 37, 90, 417 Teotitlán, district of, 34, 141–43, 171, 525–26 terrazgo (sharecropping), 107, 146, 152–53, 182–83 Thompson, David E., 66, 68, 69, 70, 103 Thompson, E. P., 285 Thomson, Guy, 334, 393 Thurner, Mark, 395 Tilly, Charles, 329, 547–48 Tlacolula district of, 23, 35, 49, 56–58, 74, 226, 372, 410–11 mining zone of, 196, 214–15, 234 rail line, 56–57 Tlaxiaco, district of, 37, 38, 71–73, 76, 119 n. 89, 198–99, 308, 421, 430, 524 tobacco, production of, 36, 76, 92, 95, 133, 149–61, 247 in Cuba, 149–50 manufacturing of, 222 Tomellín canyon, 55–56 Topik, Steven C., 137 trade, expansion of, 11 Trápaga family, 109–10, 221, 249 Triqui Indians, 432–33 Turcos, 265 Turner, John Kenneth, 153, 159 Tutino, John, 285, 295, 316, 336 Tuxtepec city of, 259 district of: agriculture of, 36, 149–61, 165, 165, 171, 186; land tenure in, 94–95, 112, 116–17, 126, 130; Mexican Revolution in, 511; railroads and, 71; slavery in, 149–61, 543; telephones and, 75 Plan of, 49, 446 Ubero Plantation Company, 164–65 Ugalde, Antonio, 431 Ulloa, Berta, 531 Unión Liberal, 396, 398–99, 406 unions, 141, 166 n. 75, 268–73 United States War with Mexico (1846–48), 8, 15, 319–20, 351 investment in Mexico, 44, 51–58, 101–3, 164–66, 190, 202–3, 219, 232–34

608

United States Banking Company, 68, 219, 232 Urban, Greg, 292 Valdivieso, Aurelio, 470, 476 Valle Nacional (Valley of Death), 10, 71, 150, 153–61, 247, 470 Vallistocracia, 248–49, 254–60, 324, 365, 434, 501, 545 van Young, Eric, 30, 336, 342 Vaughan, Mary Kay, 418 Vázquez, Genaro V., 439 Vega, Luis, 73 Vera Estañol, Jorge, 414 Veracruz port city of, 63, 70, 76, 159 state of, 36, 38, 143, 148, 152, 160, 171,181, 220, 427 Veracruz & Isthmian Railway, 49, 59, 66, 69, 70–71, 153 Veracruz Mexico Railways, 71 Veracruz-PaciWc Railway, 70 Villa Alta, district of, 35, 126, 145, 170–71, 178, 374–75 Villegas, Abelardo, 4 violence, 1–2, 99, 273–76, 303, 311, 323, 333–37, 373–76, 399, 442–43, 509, 515 Viotti da Costa, Emilia, 546 von Brandestein, Leo, 99, 198, 335 von Humboldt, Baron Alexander, 48, 66 wagon roads, 76 War of French Intervention (1862–67), 43, 51, 90, 189, 327, 351, 354 n. 5, 384 War of the Reform (1858–60), 90, 251, 351, 355, 384 “War of the Pants” (1896), 1–2, 370–77, 543 Warren, Kay, 343 Waterbury, Ronald, 105, 243 Wells, Allen, 110, 186 wheat, production of, 35, 37, 174, 227 widows, 93–95, 99 n. 52, 180, 245, 247 Wolf, Eric, 290 women. See also gender as landholders, 93–95, 99–101, 128–29, 246

Index

as laborers, 147, 154, 157–58, 171, 178–81, 183, 207, 221–22, 246–47, 273, 544 as political activists, 455–57, 508, 544 education of, 263, 368, 389, 416, 423 Juchitecas, 341 legal rights of, 245, 298, 389, 544 questioning of statistics on, 239 stereotypes of, 78–79, 280, 545 Woolrich, Carlos, 1, 252, 374–75 working classes, 221–22, 267–73, 378, 390, 424, 447, 459, 500, 545 Yaqui Indians, 516 Yautepec, district of, 74, 100 Yucatán, 426 henequen cultivation in, 186, 229 indigenous people of (Mayas), 15 n. 38, 229 Revolution in 1911 in, 60 n. 46 Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), 19 n. 44, 345 Zapatistas (Revolution of 1910), 5 n. 11, 275, 390 Zapotec Indians agriculture of, 283 concept of self and nature, 77, 281 customs, 289 defense of land and resources, 80, 138, 315–29, 336 education of, 273 and Benito Juárez, 547 organization of villages, 78, 83–84, 284 population of, 36, 38–39 pre-Columbian, 35, 187, 199, 225 resistance and, 374–77, 393–94 Zautla, 444 Zertuche, General Albino, 368 Zimatlán, district of, 35, 57–58, 197, 372–73, 528 Zoque Indians, 36, 42 Zorrilla, Federico, 75-76, 250 n. 18. 409, 422 Zorrilla, José, 221, 231-32, 249, 271, 407, 462