The River People in Flood Time: The Civil Wars in Tabasco, Spoiler of Empires 9780804793124

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The River People in Flood Time

The River People in Flood Time t h e c i v i l wa r s i n ta b a s c o, spoiler of empires

Terry Rugeley

stanford university press stanford, california

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rugeley, Terry, 1956– author.   The river people in flood time : the civil wars in Tabasco, spoiler of empires / Terry Rugeley.   pages cm   Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-0-8047-9152-6 (cloth : alk. paper)  1. Tabasco (Mexico : State)—History—19th century. 2. Mexico—History—19th century. I. Title. F1351.R874 2014 972’.04—dc23 2014004484  ISBN 978-0-8047-9312-4 (electronic)

For outsiders everywhere

Contents

List of Illustrations

viii

Introduction: Imperial Spoilers

1

1. Origin Time

6

2. The Last Empire

38

3. Unruly Behavior at the Water’s Edge

75

4. The Outsider

109

5. The Invaders

149

6. The Unreformed

183

7. The Resistance

217

8. The Ax

256

Conclusion: The Death of a Fakir and the Agony of Old Tabasco

289

List of Abbreviations

299

Notes

301

Bibliography

333

Index

347

Illustrations

1. Map of Tabasco

8

2. Pomoná

19

3. Street scene, San Juan Bautista

43

4. Fishermen in canoe

46

5. Cacao tree

65

6. José María Alpuche e Infante

91

7. Fernando Nicolás Maldonado

98

8. Juan Pablo Anaya

114

9. Francisco de Sentmanat y Zayas

116

10. Sentmanat’s grave in New Orleans

144

11. Pedro de Ampudia y Grimarest

151

12. Miguel Bruno Dazo

154

13. Juan Bautista Traconis

160

14. Manuel María Escobar Rivera

189

15. Victorio Victorino Dueñas

204

16. Eduardo González Arévalo

221

17. Rural Tabascan women

232

18. Gregorio Méndez Magaña

237

19. Floating mahogany downstream

277

20. Manuel Gil y Sáenz

286

21. Flooding, Villahermosa

296

The River People in Flood Time

Introduction: Imperial Spoilers

Why do certain places, so seemingly weak and so hopelessly fragmented, become the quagmires of great empires? Rome whipped the Greeks, the Carthagenians, the Egyptians, and the Gauls, but struggled against more primitive adversaries, peoples such as the Germanics who lived beyond the Rhine and the Picts of northern Scotland.1 After centuries of external pressure, Afghanistan still defies attempts to impose some sort of institutional control above the level of tribal elders.2 Allied forces defeated industrial juggernauts like Germany and Japan in the Second World War, only to stumble in the rice paddies of Vietnam.3 Scanning the list of history’s failed interventions, it sometimes seems like the scrawnier the target, the harder the fall. Tabasco, a Mexican province located on the southern Gulf coast and shot through with a labyrinth of rivers and wetlands, is one such place. For all its poverty and instability, Tabascans resisted the short-lived monarchy of independent Mexico’s first ruler, Agustín de Iturbide (1822–23), fought off Mexican attempts to forge a centralized government, invited and then endured the campaigns of a megalomaniac Cuban adventurer, held the US Navy to a standstill, and most brilliantly of all, defeated and expelled a

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French military intervention in 1863, reestablishing control of their own province before the imported emperor Maximilian ever set foot on Mexican soil. How did this backward place somehow rise to challenges that flummoxed people and provinces far greater than themselves? Tabasco and other, similar places might be called spoilers of empire: not necessarily bringing down powerful transnational political systems, but certainly gumming up their plans. In most instances—say, the United States in Vietnam—spoilers generate unanticipated costs, send troop morale plummeting, and sow political controversy among the aggressors. But in the more extreme cases, what begins as an opportunistic adventure ends up depleting so many men and so much treasure that the imperial order actually does collapse. Heady from its successful wars against surrounding city-states, fifth-century Athens took on an intervention in the faraway island of Sicily, an endeavor that ultimately proved so costly that Athens’s vaunted democracy collapsed, and rival Sparta prevailed in the long and grinding Peloponnesian War.4 Whether for consequences great or small, places like Tabasco can be the dime on which history turns. Imperial spoilers are certainly unique in terms of culture and development, but they do share some common historical threads. First, a forbidding geography helps, be it the rivers and swamps of Tabasco, or, in other cases, mountains, deserts, or extremely dense jungle. Second, the places of the earth that best resist outside control are those that lie somewhere between great powers or at the edge of an inaccessible wasteland. Third, small places that have thwarted foreign meddling often lack valuable resources, causing would-be conquerors to deprioritize them and consequently withhold the necessary manpower and resources from the project. Fourth, the lack of some government of overarching institutions actually helps, since enemies cannot simply strike at the top, like Hernán Cortés seizing the Mexica monarch Moctezuma. Tribes, villages, and even individual families have to be subdued one by one. Fifth and last, the poverty and inaccessibility of spoilers means a dearth of imperial knowledge about them, their people, and their conditions; would-be invaders must thus operate in an ignorance as impenetrable as the geography. All these factors have unexpectedly made the weak strong, and the strong weak. They make for terrific reading, these underdogs who put mighty aggressors in their place. Still, any history that looks at imperial spoilers also must confront the other side of the coin, namely, the fact that life under

introduction

3

the conditions of an ornery independence was in some ways as bad as the interventions themselves. Tabasco poses no exception. It was and remains nature’s cornucopia: hot, florid, intensely scenic, and richly endowed with natural gifts. But its impressive record against outsiders went hand-in-hand with widespread illiteracy, poor sanitation, endemic disease, profound political instability, chronic high levels of public violence unregulated by laws or state institutions, and a marked inequality that informed class, gender, and ethnic relations. In fact, provincial factions went after each other at least as much as they fought with outsiders, and much of the worst destruction of the state came at their own hands. And like so much of Latin America, the terms under which Tabascan wars were conducted contributed little to molding an efficient state, improving revenues, or forging the institutions that would allow for the orderly management of society.5 The story of nineteenth-century Tabasco involves triumph, but necessarily includes these darker aspects and pyrrhic victories as well. Rivers are supposed to end at the coast, but that is not the case here. Rather, Tabascan waterways take us to places far, far away, past shores lined by the evolving faces of human greed and aggression. They came for many reasons, these interlopers and imperialists, each with his own justification. Those acquainted with US corporate expansion at the end of the nineteenth century will be surprised to find none of the talk about bringing technology, efficiency, opportunity, and the fruits of the marketplace to lesser developed nations.6 Instead, the victors of Mexican independence, seated in their parlors high in the mountains, equated religion with the natural unity of what had been New Spain, and that meant a God-given duty to clobber lowland provincials into submission. Shortly thereafter, foreign filibusters preached abstract liberty achieved through their own radical persona. When Commodore Matthew Perry invaded Tabasco in 1847, he never even pretended to be improving the state in any way. If anything, Perry and his officers hated the place and instead spoke repeatedly of the need to demonstrate the “gallantry” of their own men. Only by the time of the French Intervention of the 1860s do we see any hint of rational reordering and wiser governance: usually as an afterthought and seldom convincing. Whatever the pitch, Tabascans had to confront the business end of these dubious visions, and the history of the nineteenth century is the story of how the river people surprised both themselves and their antagonists . . . by succeeding.

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introduction

Finally, the Mexican past looks different when seen through the Tabascan prism. Much recent interpretation of the period has focused on popular versions of well-known ideologies like liberalism, a faith in progress, individual initiative, judicial equality, and secular governance.7 Skeptics, conversely, stress the stubbornly conservative, backward-looking nature of the society’s broad band.8 The Tabascan case had elements of both of these, but perhaps more important than either, highlights the importance of defense against outsiders as a defining dynamic. Cultural legacies (indigenous, Spanish, Catholic) coupled with environmental factors like the maze of rivers and swamps, first made the Tabascans who they were. Trade ties and questions of who owned what predetermined many of their interests. Factors of the moment, currents such as the broad fascination with liberty that swept the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century western world, set the terms of coming provincial actions. But it was the need to expel some unwanted intruder that ultimately drove provincial history and helped mold a people’s character. Here as much as anywhere, Tabasco’s environmental factors influenced the course of events. Mexican environmental studies typically fall into one of several familiar categories. The first sees the country through the prism of the arid north: the land of a thousand deserts, the place where only a rattlesnake finds true contentment. Such histories speak of sparse settlements huddled around water sources; of seminomadic Indians and their predictably troubled relationships with Spanish settlers; of ascetic missionaries; of railroads and grim mining enclaves; and of hard-bitten cowboy revolutionaries who saw violent death as an inevitability.9 A second common approach emphasizes the annual wet/dry agricultural cycle that informs southern Mesoamerica and which forged a peasant culture of religion, land tenure, and folk knowledge so strong that it has resisted centuries of outside pressure.10 Still a third looks at the way export booms enter and transform a region, only to perish when demand for the resource runs its ordained course; examples include works dealing with cotton, henequen, precious woods, rubber, and the colonial cultigen par excellence, sugar.11 The story of Tabasco and its terrible civil wars departs from all of these. Occupying only slightly more than 1 percent of national territory, it contains one-third of Mexico’s hydraulic resources.12 Water, and too much of it, informs every moment of the Tabascan story.

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Back of all this lies something larger, a timeless story of how a people who were outgunned, outfunded, and outorganized somehow managed to come away winners. That story is all the more timeless for the fact that the Tabascans were simply ordinary people thrust into circumstances that would have challenged the most skilled generals and statesmen. Sadly, we may never be able to do them full justice. Virtually any paper that did not find its way out of Tabasco before the 1880s has been destroyed. The petitions of peasant outrage, the patriarch’s last will and testament, the newspaper, the hacienda’s primitive ledger books, the by-laws of pious ladies of the church club, the lofty debates of the village council: gone, all gone. A handful of exceptions aside, the only papers of Tabascan history accessible today are those that somehow came to rest in Mexico City or Mérida, or even in foreign countries, or were printed in a compilation by some long-dead antiquarian, then lost forever in their original form. Consequently, this book tells what may well be the only narrative that can be told. Perhaps it’s better that way; Tabasco’s unusual characters still merit retelling after more than a hundred years of oblivion, and with a fuller palate of sources, we might well have overlooked them. But regardless of who or what impelled events, nineteenth-century Tabascan history remains the tale of how a terrible flood time rose up and engulfed a river people who might have lived on the banks in peace—had those people, and those banks, and the human race itself, been otherwise.

one

Origin Time

Perhaps more than any other geographical element, rivers have a way of provoking the imagination. Their constant motion suggests a living being; their distant origins spark the romantic itch for discovery; and their dual roles as benefactors and destroyers provide a metaphor for the gods’ fickle friendship with humanity. Just as the ancient Egyptians looked on the Nile as the source of both life and suffering, so too, the rough-hewn people of Tabasco could read in their rivers a lesson regarding the enigmas of their worldly existence.1 Those same meandering bodies also offer something more mundane, some fiber common to the social world that emerges along their banks. Riverscapes provide national metaphors, with the august Hudson Valley symbolizing a providential role for the United States, the winding Volga summoning up the peasant essence of Russia, or the bustling Thames reflecting London’s imperial economic status.2 But the myth power of riverscapes holds doubly true for Tabasco. Unlike all other parts of Mexico, the province is shot through with a bewildering network of streams and swampland that makes water excess, not aridity, the principal geographical challenge to human settlement. The southern Gulf coastal

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waterways define their surroundings, and those who choose to live and die by their caprice have always been, and will always be, river people. Most Tabascan waters originate along the northern and western ridges of the Chiapan-Guatemalan highlands. Even today, the headlands of these rivers constitute a unique area for Mesoamerica: mountainous, well watered, lushly vegetated, and thinly populated next to the dense concentrations of Mexico City or the coastal capitals of the Yucatán peninsula. Few people not born in this region ever visit it in any serious way, save to see the magnificent archaeological sites . . . most of them discovered by peasants in search of land for the slash-and-burn agriculture that has been the basis of life here from time beyond memory. They were higher once, these mountains pushed up from the sea by the collision of tectonic plates deep within the earth. In fact, Tabasco itself only exists because eons of erosion have carried down uncountable millions of tons of soil and mineral from the uplands and deposited them on an alluvial plain. Lands to the south of present-day Tuxtla Gutiérrez empty into streams leading to the Pacific coast. But drainage north of that point feeds into Tabasco’s westernmost waterway, the Tonalá (“place of heat”), which marks the current-day boundary with the state of Veracruz. From these same points, but moving northeastward, issues the Mezcalapa (“river of magueys”).3 It originates in a remote southern point to which few people ever travel. There stands Malpasito, an Early Postclassical Period (roughly 900–1200) site of the Zoque peoples, built high on a mountainside and noted for its exemplary prehistoric ball court and sweat bath. From their highland vantage point, the pre-Columbian Zoques mediated overland trade passing between the Caribbean and Pacific coasts. The Mezcalapa has an unusual history that joins natural caprice with human interest and initiative. Prior to the late seventeenth century, the river ran due north, passing successively through a string of towns from Huimanguillo to Comalcalco, past fields of herons, cranes, and egrets, before emptying into the swerving shores and bending bays of the Gulf of Mexico, near the current-day town of Paraíso, at the Tupilco bar. However, the natural levees of the river were low formations of soft mud and easily given to meanderings, breaks, deluges, and redirections.4 One of the most important of these happened in 1675, when the east banks gave way just south of Huimanguillo (“place of the great cacique”), causing the entire river to shift eastward into

Figure 1.  Map of Tabasco, with principal cities, towns, and rivers. By Terry Rugeley.

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the Grijalva. Far from being alarmed, Spanish settlers dug canals in order to accelerate the process: by turning the Mezcalapa into a Grijalva tributary, they robbed pirates of an easy entry into central Tabasco, forcing both merchants and raiders alike to traverse the more easily fortified Grijalva. The former course of the Mezcalapa still exists, mainly in the form of a low area with occasional wetland pockets, and is known, appropriately enough, as Río Seco, or “dry river.”5 Such abrupt changes in major waterways may well have played a role in the abandonment of some of the earliest preColumbian settlements, which depended on rivers for both drinking water and transportation. Due south of the capital city of San Juan Bautista de Villahermosa a series of rivers descend from the Chiapas border: originating from a broad catchment in the Guatemalan highlands, the Teapa (originally, “Teapan,” or “river of rocks”), the Tacotalpa (“place of uneven surface”), and the Puyacatengo (“on salt water banks”), all flow northward, where they combine into the Grijalva, named for the first European to explore these parts.6 This great waterway originates in Guatemala’s Huehuetenango district, flows northward through Chiapas, at which point multiple tributaries combine to form the Grijalva proper. It passes to the right of Villahermosa and continues north, eventually joins with the east-lying Usumacinta, and empties into the Gulf just north of modern-day Frontera. Collectively, the GrijalvaUsumacinta waterway constitutes the fifth-largest river system in Latin America.7 About sixty kilometers westward along the coast, at the mouth of the González River lies at the sandbar of Chiltepec (“place of the chiles”).8 Well into the nineteenth century, vast inundations often covered lands of the center north and allowed travelers to paddle from the González directly eastward into the Grijalva without having to go overland, but modern flood control (far from perfect, it turns out) has since heightened the separation of the two. From Late Postclassical times (1200–1519) onward, most human settlement has clustered in this middle Tabascan region, along the Grijalva’s banks. The area bounded by the Grijalva to the east, Río Seco to the west, and the rerouted Mezcalapa to the south form a region known as the Chontalpa: literally, “region of foreigners,” in all probability a reference to precontact settlement by Nahuatl-speakers from central Mexico.9 Hot, low, flat, and eternally watered, it has long been Mexico’s premiere greenhouse for cacao, the tree whose seed forms the basis of chocolate.

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There were rivers . . . and then there was the Usumacinta. The brave people of Tabasco feared only God and this waterway, in some mysterious way manifestations of the same being. Few men traversed its lengths, or learned its secrets. Juan Galindo (originally John Gallagher, an Irishman who came to Guatemala seeking his fortune in 1827) explored much of the territory between Tabasco and Belize, and he understood well the air of impenetrable mystery that lingered around it: The Usumacinta is peculiarly remarkable among the rivers of this part of America, not only for the length of its course, advantages of its navigation, fertility of its banks, and superiority of the climate of its district, but also for the almost total ignorance in which even the inhabitants of the surrounding country remain with respect to its relative position, its course and branches.10

This mighty force originates in the relentless precipitation of the highland rainforests. The river’s principal tributaries are the San Pedro Martirio of the Guatemalan Petén, the Salinas-Chixoy (pronounced “Chi SHOY”) river of Guatemala’s Alta Verapaz of Guatemala’s north-central zone, and the Lacantún of southeastern Chiapas, all in turn fed by lesser tributaries such as the San Pablo, the Pasión, and the Ocosingo. Of the region’s many waterways, it was this river—the broadest, the deepest, the most volatile, the road into jungle territories little known and never to be fully understood—which dominated both commerce and the imagination. Gentleman-archaeologist John Lloyd Stephens came this way in 1840 and reported, “Amid the wildness and stillness of the majestic river, and floating in a little canoe, the effect was very extraordinary . . .”11 “I must say,” wrote the French naturalist Arthur Morelet years later, “that the scenes on the Usumacinta, by their melancholy grandeur, and primitive poetry, have left the most profound and lasting impressions on my mind.”12 The modern-day explorer will readily agree. The majestic, pale-green waterway coils through the state’s eastern lowlands like the sleepy and overfed serpent-monster of some forgotten mythology. Huge trees like the macuilí and the guayacán line its banks. Further beyond stretch fertile alluvial plains. Human beings first came here to plant corn, and their numbers paled beside the wealth of deer, alligator, turtles, and innumerable tropical birds that gathered to take advantage of the river’s bounty.13 In the late afternoon, howler monkeys awaken from their siestas and stake out their territory through a series of frightful cries that resound for miles . . . all from a timid tree-dweller

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slightly smaller than a chimpanzee. British explorer John Herbert Caddy took this same journey in 1840 and reported, “The noise of the large black baboon at night is awful, you would fancy a herd of wild cattle were in full combat so loud is the roaring they make.”14 Apparently it has always been thus, for the name Usumacinta is a Nahuatl derivation meaning, “place of the sacred monkeys.”15 The Grijalva and Usumacinta merge some twenty-five kilometers south of the Gulf of Mexico. The closer they come to the coast, the more they jump their low-lying banks and break into numerous smaller flows, almost as if the water were reluctant to leave Tabasco altogether. In the process, these many bifurcations create a huge marsh stretching from the Chontalpa to Lagúna de Términos, to the east. This area, known as Centla (“in the cornfield”), comprises Mexico’s most extensive wetland, and is home to fish, turtles, and innumerable species of birds.16 Spaniards steered clear of the mosquito-ridden expanse, leaving it as a region of refuge for Chontal Mayas, who understood how to make their living amid the prodigally generous marshes. Doubtless the inhabitants of Tabasco’s many ranchos and fishing huts had their own sense of awe concerning the natural world around them, even if they never had the chance or wherewithal to write down their impressions. For these people the waters also amounted to practical matters, inescapable facts to be considered for both good and ill. The Usumacinta in particular is the quintessential big two-hearted river. For most of the year, this slow and drowsy waterway treats its inhabitants with an almost grandfatherly indulgence. Canoes skirt with ease over its surface, their occupants intent on errands of commerce and farming, or of romance, or of simple itch to be somewhere else. Its normal flow of three miles per hour makes for a gentle descent if a somewhat more taxing return.17 But in the course of their lives Tabascans became accustomed to periodic floodings that scourged the land. As if enraged by the hubris of its human offspring, the Usumacinta suddenly rises to sweep away houses and roads and bridges. These events, known as crecientes or inundaciones, concentrated in June through November, when torrential rains here and deeper inland, toward the Grijalva’s and Usumacinta’s sources, sent cascades of water racing toward the Gulf of Mexico. Normally no more than twelve to fifteen feet deep, the Usumacinta could abruptly surge by as much as twenty-five yards (one of the reasons that the ancient Mayas astutely built cities such as Yaxchilán so high atop the bluffs). The surges subsided as the waters dispersed over the vast alluvial plains from

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Tenosique onward. In such moments there was no hope of resisting or stopping the deluge; there was only the question of survival. But less predictable flooding at other times of the year always remained a threat, and when those floods did come, they brought death and disaster. One of the worst inundations in Tabascan memory came in 1852, hard on the heels of another terrible flood the year before. Beginning on October 17, heavy rains had begun to swell the tributaries, transforming the Usumacinta into an irresistible force. Soon the river had washed away the towns of Cerro (four hundred people) and Ríos de Usumacinta (seven hundred), and killed one-third of the some fourteen hundred inhabitants of Tenosique (“the weaver’s house”).18 Waters reached three to four meters in height, well over the tops of the smaller homes.19 When padre Tiburcio Talango lived through one such event in Teapa in 1874, he described how all human activity had to come to a stop until the fury had spent itself.20 For the inhabitants of such villages, these were disasters far more terrible than the 1847 Caste War of Yucatán, whose tremors they felt only peripherally, while the days of particularly dire catastrophes would remain in human memory decades after the event. The unanswerable power of the river is a lesson that Tabascans continue to relearn, even into the twenty-first century. Tabasco’s byzantine network of waterways carried implications for the traveler as well as for the healer of souls. The 1892 memoir of Porfirian archaeologist Pedro Romero gives some idea of how difficult it really was to move from one town to another.21 Despite the arrival of steam engines, most of Romero’s vessels depended on wind power, particularly for coastal navigation. The relative shallowness of even the larger rivers, including the Usumacinta, permitted only vessels of relatively light tonnage. Principal river traffic consisted either of canoas, shallow flatboats capable of carrying some thirty to forty tons and perhaps equipped with primitive lateen sails; or cayucos, simply mahogany dugouts that were pulled or paddled. Travelers might go for days without encountering anything other than these two basic crafts. This capricious river remained the dominant feature of life in eastern Tabasco, just as its twin, the Grijalva, dominated the southwest.22 Karl Heller, the tireless Austrian botanist who roamed through these parts in 1848, described how boatmen on the Teapa River patiently propelled their vessel, known as a pongo, by hooking long poles to branches along the coast, then pulling themselves by walking backward along a gangplank that ran the length of the ship.23

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Once beyond the coast, most of the state is a flat, low-lying plain intersected by a web of rivers. The huge Centla marshland covers much of the northeast, but from the Grijalva westward the elevation is sufficient for agriculture. This area, known as the Chontalpa, became one the most critical pockets of human settlement in the colonial and early national eras, and its landscapes are among the region’s most evocative. Cattle graze on low, broad savannas, occasionally wading deep into the marshes in search of the succulent grasses that grow in such abundance there. White egrets, or cattle-birds, follow them everywhere in search of insects. In the days before extensive habitat reduction, flocks of parrots, parakeets, and scarlet macaws, flamelike in their brilliant plumage, filled the daytime skies.24 Punctuating the scene stand stately ceiba trees, along with the shorter fan palms known as xiat (SHEE aht), prized then as now for thatching roofs. High above them, tall and slender royal palms sway in the breeze. Until quite recently, humans made no more lasting construction here than the occasional hut that was assembled from natural materials and quickly subsumed back into the same. In the popular imagination, the limitless fecundity of this land, the slashed vegetation’s startling reassertions, blurred the lines between our world and the next. When padre and man of letters Manuel Gil y Sáenz contemplated how the Tabascan flowers retained their bloom long after being cut, he concluded that, so too, human life persisted some time after the body had seemed to perish. “Life is as mysterious as death,” he wrote; “Who can show me the point where the spirit takes leave of the material world?” For this reason he had always performed the sacrament of extreme unction even after the corpse had grown cold and stiff.25 Gil y Sáenz’s mysticism derived from Catholic theology, but like the elaborate and dimly understood ceremonial world of the Olmecs, it found its inspiration in Tabasco’s intense fertility. As one moves further south, the land rises upward into the mountains of Chiapas and Guatemala. Much of the humidity declines, the temperature falls ever so slightly, and the vegetation loses some of its tropical flavor. In the early dawn, mists crowd into the valleys and lowland pockets. By midmorning these low clouds burn off to reveal small expanses of grazing land surrounded by copses of oaks and ceibas, along with the mimosalike flamboyán trees, a Madagascar import whose gnarled roots and fiery orange-red flowers have made it one of the southeast’s botanical emblems.

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Thick clusters of pitaya vines cover many of the branches; in summer this climbing succulent yields its distinct white fruit, covered by a thick, candycolored membrane, and while found throughout virtually the entirety of Mexico, it nowhere achieves such profusion as here. The seismic convulsions that forced up the Sierra also shot it through with underground lava flows, creating hot mineral baths such as El Azufre, visited by Karl Heller in 1847 and still accessible today.26 Ancient Mayas knew of the area’s huge cave systems, labyrinthine caverns like the Grutas de Coconá (a Zoque name meaning “deep water”), with their underground pools and huge bat populations. They knew that these passages led to Xibalbá (shee bal BA), the gloomy place to which the mythical hero twins, Hunhunapú and Ixbalanqué, had banished the evil death lords in the formers’ successful campaign to make the surface world safe for human beings.27 Spaniards cared nothing for these tales, or for the caves themselves, which had to await modern speleology for renewed appreciation. Two brothers, Laureano and Rómulo Calzada, rediscovered them in the nineteenth century, and great Tabascan naturalist José Narciso Rovirosa (1849–1901) systematically explored those same caves in 1892.28 For many years this mountainous south, known locally as the Sierra, was the more popular point of human habitation. Its climate and geographical variety, along with its proximity to the Chiapas colony, rendered it attractive for settlers, and throughout most of the eighteenth century it was the mountain community of Tacotalpa, not Villahermosa, that served as the colonial capital. Rivers are not the only waters here. A few miles inland from the coast lie bodies of fresh water known as lagos or lagunas. Although often quite large, most of these are no deeper the four or five meters. Bodies such as the El Carmen, Pajonal, and Machona have never been centers of human settlement, but they harbor innumerable forms of plant and animal life. Snails, turtles, alligators, crabs without number, snakes, and water birds all made their home here, while the wetlands drew populations of deer, jaguars, tapirs, anteaters, and javelinas. But above all, the rivers play home to a multitude of fish, such as the castarrica and the tenguayaca, the ubiquitous yellow-finned mojarra, the blue-bellied catfish known as the bobo.29 One particular species—an aggressive freshwater needlefish reaching some three feet in length and known as the pejelagarto, or catán— thrives in both rivers and lagunas. In fact, grilled pejelagarto has come to be the signature Tabascan dish. Men fished for these delicacies by line,

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by net, or in marshy areas, by wading into the water, reed-woven basket in hand.30 Its low elevations, abundant water, and extreme southern location give Tabasco one of the hottest and stickiest climates in all of Mexico. The average temperature of the Chontalpa region is 80° Fahrenheit, which translated into experience means extremely hot periods stretching from March through November. As with Yucatán, the rainy season begins around June, but rather than ending in October or November stretches on until February. Rainfall in the southern highlands, the source of the rivers, can exceed an astonishing twelve feet per year, among the highest levels on earth.31 Even today these harsh conditions help to discourage visitors, and despite its many astonishing features of both nature and culture, the state receives relatively little in the way of tourism, national or otherwise. But while heat and precipitation remained constants, that other peculiar feature of southeastern and Caribbean meteorology, the hurricane, rarely struck here. The Yucatecan-Central American land mass served as a buffer, while those hurricanes that made their way into the Gulf tended to swing northward, or else slammed directly into the Veracruz coastline. For these reasons, Tabasco experienced only seven cases of hurricanes proper between 1871 and 1963.32 Tabasco’s fertility is the stuff of legend. As with the Nile or TigrisEuphrates, periodic overflows left rich alluvial deposits that restored fertility to the land, and for as long as the rivers rose and brought the overflowing waters, humanity was safe. In places where flooding was less common, preColumbian agriculture depended on the decay of preexisting vegetation; once clear-cut, the soil necessarily lost much of its vitality within a year or so and had to return to fallow for an undetermined period. Modern scientifically derived agriculture solves the problem by massive infusions of chemical nitrates, but at the cost of long-term soil degradation. This was Tabasco. Its remote mountains and rivers, its lazy palm-shaded pastures and shimmering wetlands present some of the most spectacular natural tableaus in all of the continent, while the Usumacinta-Grijalva complex constitutes the fourth-largest drainage system in all of Latin America. Yet this same spectacular geography provides the first and in many ways most important key to the province’s later role as spoiler to empire projects. As a rule, Spaniards tended to shy away from colonizing hot, swampy regions for the precise reason that they were hot and swampy,

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leaving these same places to less finicky settlers. That is why the Caribbean coastal area south of the Río Hondo became British Honduras, and not eastern Guatemala.33 The byzantine network of rivers and creeks, together with mountains to the south, discouraged large-scale Tabascan settlement. Latifundia, or the predominance of large landed estates, remained impossible for the fact that land itself was in such short supply. Just as Spanish conquistadors had a difficult time subjugating fragmented peoples (the mighty Aztec empire succumbed in a mere two years, while the detritus of a long-collapsed Yucatec Maya league took two and a half decades to mop up), early Mexican statesmen and generals found the Tabascan province a disjointed hive of troublemakers that no single blow ever seemed to subdue.

Footsteps upon an Ancient Shor e Mexico—the ur-Mexico, the tap root of all Mesoamerican culture—originated here along the fertile, wet forests and lowlands of western Tabasco and southeastern Veracruz. Beginning sometime around 1500 BC a people now known as the Olmecs rose up out of the nothingness and unpacked a civilization based on the annual double- and triple-cropping of corn, beans, squash, and chiles. Relatively little is known about their ways and attitudes, not even what the Olmec called themselves or whether they saw their different settlements as comprising a single people. These ancient river peoples possibly spoke some early version of Mixe-Zoque, one of the country’s five major indigenous language groups, but the point remains uncertain. In fact, the name “Olmec” only gained currency in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while the first serious excavations took place under Frans Blom and Oliver La Farge (1925–26) and George Valliant (1928–33 and 1939–40).34 Up until the mid-twentieth century, scholars and public alike refused to believe in a culture predating the Mayas; the greatest champion for Olmec antiquity was in fact polymath artist Miguel Covarrubias, best known as an illustrator of toney New York City magazines but in reality a trained ethnographer and one of the most brilliant minds of postrevolutionary Mexico. In large part it was his vision of a preMaya mother culture—what he so charmingly called “the ‘Olmec’ problem”—that won the day. Given the many lacunas of information, though, it might best to refer to the peoples of western Tabasco and southeastern

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Veracruz as a complex of shared cultural attributes, and not an empire or political entity.35 It was they who first taught the Mesoamerican world how to think, and what to think about. Exactly what the Olmec beheld when they gazed up at the night sky, or peered into the teeming fecundity of the tropical forest, will never be known. Doubtless they caught some glimpse of the imponderable forces that governed their tenuous existence, and to better their own chances the Olmecs gave these forces animal or human faces, or most commonly, some blending of the two. Civilization—as defined by systematic modification of the natural environment—recurs time and again in tropical lowlands the world over and can usually be recognized by grandiose construction announcing the divinity of the ruling caste, and the Olmec were no exception.36 Most visibly, the people of this primordial culture worshiped a deity symbolized by a jaguar. Perhaps the fascination owed to the fact that this was the most powerful and mysterious of jungle animals, and surviving Olmec artwork plies a recurrent theme of humans, both adult and babies, partially transformed into were-jaguars with fangs and snarling lips. One derivative of this being—a squat, popeyed waterbringer—evolved into Tlaloc, the standard rain deity throughout Mesoamerica. Ancient artists at times adorned his body with a puffy headdress, or with swirling lines like so many tattooed curlicues, in order to suggest and doubtless invite the clouds that brought showers.37 Beside him ruled a divine crocodile who over the next millennium evolved into the somewhat more benevolent culture god known in central Mexico as Quetzalcóatl (“Feathered Serpent”), and later imported into the Maya northern lowlands in direct translation as Kukulkán, part of a larger post-900 attempt to revive Classic-Period culture.38 To placate these terrible beings, the Olmecs crafted huge stone mosaics and buried them deep in the ground, where only the gods could see them.39 These early Tabascans pioneered much of what came to be Mesoamerican culture, including jade carving, pyramidal ceremonial constructions, cranial deformations, glyph writing, and a calendar that consisted of wheels intermeshed with other wheels. The Olmecs built great ceremonial centers: first San Lorenzo, then La Venta, and in their final centuries, Tres Zapotes. From these points they spread their culture via trade to such regions as Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Guatemala.40 They exported such coastal and lacustrine products as tortoise shells, stingray

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spines, and mother-of-pearl from fresh-water clams; ceramics of all sort; and the all-important cacao bean, used in making the chocolate drink that was life’s indispensable daily pleasure. From the highlands they took away precious minerals like magnetite, serpentine, obsidian, and precious jade.41 In an eerie forecast of Tabasco’s future as petroleum exporter, the Olmec also carried out primitive refining of the area’s crude oil seepage, solidifying the black, gummy liquid it into a product that could later be melted down for a variety of purposes: lighting, water-proofing, and rudimentary pavement, among other things.42 To protect their traders and merchants the Olmecs developed “the first Mesoamerican military power, with the first professional soldiers.”43 But this remained small by standards of the region’s later empires, constrained as it was by problems of transportation and logistics. For this reason Olmec civilization made its presence felt not through the domination of some military fist, but rather through cultural and economic influence that promised to elevate more primitive peoples to their level. After 400 BC previously marginal highland groups developed sophisticated irrigation techniques that brought new prosperity; the Olmecs faded back into their lowland territories.44 Their representative giant heads (possibly a rather brief fad in the larger arch of their culture) lay hidden in the ground, waiting to be discovered by peasants farming corn. By the time of Spanish arrival in Olman, the land of Olmec grandeur, this civilization was less than a memory of a memory, and all that the indigenous wise men could tell was that “in a certain era which no one can reckon, which no one can remember . . . there was a kingdom for a long time.”45 Following the final Olmec collapse, new groups entered the Tabascan region. The majority of them haled from the emerging Maya peoples to the east and south, bringing with them a culture in many ways derived from their predecessor peoples: a cult of nobility, a panoply of demanding gods, and an obsession with public ceremonial construction. In Comalcalco, a site only discovered in the 1830s, the absence of stone forced them to build from bricks, much like the ancient Egyptians. In fact, the very name Comalcalco means “house of comales,” a reference to flat, clay griddles then used to cook tortillas, but in this case almost certainly a nod to architectural technique.46 Similarly, the name of the important nearby settlement of Cunduacán means “place of ceramics,” and in all probability indicated that region’s clay once lent itself to artisan manufacture.47

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Figure 2.  Spanish speakers were hardly the first river people. Long before Juan de Grijalva touched down on coasts of Tabasco, the region was the scene of a dense Maya trading network. Here, the remains of Pomoná (“place of the churning water”), a Classic-period center strategically located on a fourteenmile wide bounded to the east and west, respectively, by the Usumacinta and Chacamax rivers. Photograph by Terry Rugeley.

This new civilization’s height appeared along the banks of the upper Usumacinta, roughly the stretch that now separates southeast Chiapas from the Guatemalan Petén. From 500 AD onward, a series of enormous centers arose on the backs of a burgeoning Usumacinta trade. The convergence of the Pasión, Lacantún, and Salinas-Chixoy marked the beginning of a long string of these centers, beginning with Altar de Sacrificios, then moving northward through Bonampak, Yaxchilán, Piedras Negras, Pomoná, and Moral-Reforma, all post-facto designations for points along one of the most remarkable of all Maya axis (the lattermost builds off the name of indigenous tree, not some ethical condition). Meanwhile, the astonishing center of Palenque arose on the Chacamax (chahk ah MAHSH), a western tributary that empties into the Usumacinta just south of modern-day Tenosique.48 As with other Maya centers, these were less states as we understand the term and more autonomous cities in an unceasing kaleidoscope of alliance, rivalry, warfare, and re-alliance. This steady-state unsteadiness may strike us as anarchic, but it brought the Usumacinta culture to undreamed-of heights. The

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architectural and epigraphic sophistication of centers like Yaxchilán and Palenque still shines undimmed after a thousand years. The Mesoamerican art of murals, already well advanced, reached new heights in Bonampak, with mineral-based pigments drawn from across Mesoamerica: malachite for greens, charcoal for blacks, red of hematite, and a complex blend of clay and vegetable-derived indigo to produce the distinctive “Maya blue” so reminiscent of shallows in the Caribbean Sea. And in the body of a single tortured prisoner of war painted on Structure I’s north mural, there emerged an artistic leap not made anywhere else in the Americas: foreshortening.49 There is no mystery concerning the motor of their wealth and sophistication, for the Usumacinta Mayas lived along one of the great trade highways of ancient America. Indeed, while most precontact inhabitants of the Yucatán peninsula spent their lives without ever seeing a river, most other Maya peoples took waterways as a fact of life. They called them x-okol ’ or yoka’ and depended on them as utterly as peoples of China depended on the Hwang-ho, using them as access routes to wealthy and distant lands.50 To the far northwest, high in the vast altiplano, lay Teotihuacán, seat of a great empire that dealt in all the gods and goods of Mesoamerica. Aided by their powerful army, the Teotihuacanos exported their distinctive talud-tablero architecture and their delicate ceramics; at the same time, they took their hungry and goggle-eyed rain deity Tlaloc and their culture-bearer, Quetzalcóatl, simultaneously feathered serpent, bird, and morning star, to all parts of Mexico.51 (In reality, both gods originated from Olmec prototypes.)52 To the southeast of the Usumacinta cultures stood the two Maya supercenters of Calakmul and Tikal, fabulously rich protostates with a rivalry as bitter and prolonged as that between Athens and Sparta, and just as destructive. As long as trade between the altiplano and the Maya southern lowlands flourished, Usumacinta peoples had an assured place. Yaxchilán, Pomoná, and Piedras Negras all prospered, while the center of San Claudio, close beside what is now the Guatemalan border, specialized in converting its flint deposits into weapons for the Maya region’s endemic warfare.53 But Teotihuacán collapsed between 600 and 650, a victim of its own imperial overextension and the maturation of former client-cities. Tikal finally prevailed over Calakmul in 695, only to burn itself out in a fury of ceremonial construction and enter its own terminal decline between 850 and 950.54 The effects of these many convulsions quickly exerted themselves on Usumacinta peoples. Their centers appear to have collapsed rapidly, with

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most of the final inscription dates falling between 790 (Pomoná) and 808 (Yaxchilán). With the Classic Maya collapse, the vast Tabascan lowland area gradually rose to importance. It stretched along the coast from Champotón River (now part of Campeche state) southwestward to what is now Paraíso, and southward to encompass most of modern Tabasco’s state territory. The settlements of these newcomers resembled ancient Troy on the Dardanelles, leading into the Black Sea: population centers that controlled trade through their strategic position at the mouths of waterways. Among the greatest of the trade towns was Xicalango (or Xicalanco) on the western peninsula bounding Laguna de Términos; its people spoke Nahuatl, evidence of the increasing economic and cultural influence that central Mexico was beginning to exert in the southeastern Gulf. Like their counterparts, Xicalango people lived principally by commerce, but also fished and farmed grains and citrus. However, by 1519 new centers were beginning to supersede it. Potonchán (“place of the bad odor”) lay at the mouth of the Usumacinta; Tixchel (“place of the moon goddess”) down the coast from the Champotón River; and Copilco, immediately to the west, at the coastal bar of the now desiccated Río Seco. Comatán (“savanna”), located along the Grijalva just below its juncture with Río de Dos Bocas, mediated coastal trade with the interior.55 Acalán province lay along the Candelaria River, which fed northward into Lagúna de Términos; at the time of European contact, its most important city was Izancanac, a community of some nine hundred to a thousand homes that lay at the junction of the San Pedro and Arroyo Caribe Rivers.56 The people of these cultures used their access to waterways to construct powerful commercial centers, but with an inland agricultural base of corn, beans, chile, and squash. They also spoke Chontal, proof of the enormous permanence of the Maya language, of its ability to resist challenges from without.57 The most astonishing export of southern Gulf coastal culture took place when a Tabascan people known as the Itzáes embarked on their campaign of expansion. Propelled by dreams of commerce and political power, they exploited the increasingly anarchic conditions of the Late Classic Period (600–900 AD) by navigating their canoes eastward toward the shores of Yucatán and the southern lowlands, first establishing themselves along coastal points and then working their way into the interior. They erected their citadel of power in a place now known as Chichén Itzá

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around 800 AD. This city had existed for centuries, but under Itzá domination assumed new and unmistakably militaristic power. No one could accuse the invaders of overrefinement. They were to the Usumacinta or Yucatecan Puuc cultures as Louisiana fur trappers were to the courtiers of Louis the Sun King: crude, aggressive, acquisitive, disdainful of niceties, and above all else, highly capable. Maya chronicles later spoke of “a lascivious people,” “those who spoke our language brokenly.” Quite possibly the former comment refers to a phallus cult still evidenced by larger-thanlife reproductions in stone and plaster. Once ensconced in Chichén Itzá, the new rulers quickly got down to the business of wiping out rival trade networks. They destroyed Yaxuná, hitherto the interior point that led to the east coast via a huge sak bej, or “white road” of elevated rock and limestone pavement. They converted the area’s greatest natural resource, the coastal salt flats, into one of the most lucrative export business in the entire Postclassic world. Their stronghold, built on not one but two enormous cenotes, still bears their name: “by the mouth of the well of the Itzá peoples.”58 Within two centuries Yucatec Maya culture had largely absorbed and assimilated the Itzá. Yucatec Maya language again prevailed by eventually absorbing or displacing the Itzá tongue. Only a haughty ruling elite still retained an ancestral link to the founders, a kinship identification rather like those who today preen themselves on being descendants of those who came over on the Mayflower. Chichén Itzá dominated the northern lowlands until the early 1000s, when for reasons yet unknown the city’s elite leadership began to disintegrate.59 Peninsular leadership passed to the rival center of Mayapán, itself a kind of architectural miniature of Chichén. Following the collapse of Chichén Itzá, an Itzá rump state is thought to have migrated to an island in Lake Petén, in what is today northern Guatemala, there to remain until finally overtaken by Spanish conquistadors in 1698.60 By 1519 communities that lay in the lower Usumacinta most closely resembled the Yucatec Maya culture, while to their immediate west, the Chontal Maya tongue predominated and today remains the most prevalent indigenous language in largely mestizo Tabasco. Meanwhile, in the south-central border with Chiapas, along the upper Grijalva around the modern-day settlements of Teapa and Tacotalpa, a non-Maya known as the Zoques prospered. After 1300 Nahuatlspeaking communities insinuated themselves along the Pichucalco River in such places as Cunduacán.

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In both strengths and weaknesses, the Postclassic jumble of Xicalango– Tixchel-Acalán cultures previewed later Tabascan society: small, fragmented settlements along river banks and with hints of regionality, bound together in matters of trade, especially in the treasured cacao beans. The region was a mosaic of Nahuatl, Maya, and Zoque influences. Above all, water and distance rendered it resistant to imperial control. Most of the southern Gulf coast—those people who lived in the distance, at the mouths of rivers—remained free of Aztec hegemony, but at the cost of a fragmentation that helped retard development into the colonial and national periods. What knowledge of these cities and struggles remained among contact-era peoples? Early sixteenth-century Tabascans lived in a largely oral culture, and for the most part they had lost any clear idea of the history of their predecessors. Well into the twentieth century, it was possible to spot numerous cuyos, or man-made pre-Columbian mounds, along the rivers networks between the Champotón and the Usumacinta, but these appear to have lost all ceremonial function.61 Juan Galindo put the matter thus: With regard to the present inhabitants of these regions, the wild Indians to the south are an uncivilized and timid tribe, who occupy an immense tract of country in the interior of the continent: and the subdued Indians, who inhabit the states of Chiapas and Tabasco, are equally low in a state of improvement. When asked who built these edifices, they reply, “The devil!”62

Galindo wrote in the early 1800s, by which point three centuries of colonial domination had buried so much of the past, but there is little reason to think that potonchaneros somehow withheld secrets. Preliterate societies normally have intense memories of the events of the previous two generations, with increasingly skeletal and fragmentary accounts for earlier times. If master bards of southern Gulf narrative survived the conquest, they have thus far failed to register in the historical documents. The pre-Columbian history of the southern Gulf of Mexico provides a second key to the peculiarly anti-imperial status of later Tabasco province. The area’s unique conditions—a riverine country with natural settlement expansion bounded by ocean to the north and mountains to the south—were the ideal ingredients for the emergence of early civilization, just as they had in the Ganges, Yellow River, and Peruvian coast. Faced with expanding populations, geographical barriers, and fears of invaders,

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settlers of early Olman developed a nobility and all that came with it. But once the techniques and practices of civilization spread to surrounding peoples, cultural momentum shifted to the Mexican altiplano, and eastward to the Maya region. And there it remained. When southern Gulf coastal peoples did recover from the Olmec collapse of 400 BC onward, they did so as traders, not conquistadors, and when trade alone proved insufficient, they raised new empires on the backs of the Early Postclassic Maya cities of Yucatán’s northern lowlands. Since Spanish settlement followed native populations, there was little to build on here. Newcomers would envision coastal settlements like Xicalango and Potonchán as way stations to somewhere else, much as they had been prior to 1519.

Str angers from the Sea By 1518 the southern cusp of Mexico’s Gulf coast had seen the rise and fall of numerous cultures. But the sixteenth century marked a dramatic change in imperial power. Spaniards first entered the Caribbean in 1492; they had little trouble overcoming the Taíno communities that based their lives on fish, corn, and cassava, and had no weapon more powerful than stone axes. The fetish objects that the Taíno called zemís (some of them deified ancestor spirits) failed to work their defensive magic on the newcomers, and within a few generations’ time epidemic disease, tributary demands, and simple shock had killed off most of the natives. Today we know the Taínos from their vocabulary, place names, and agricultural legacies, and from the enigmatic petroglyphs that still beckon across the centuries. Caribbean language and culture also survive in Afro-Indian hybridizations like the Garífuna of Belize.63 With island populations in decline, Europeans began to press outward to the coastal mainland in search of gold and potential slaves. Inevitably, one of these explorers eventually made his way to the Tabascan littoral. The first European to come here was Juan de Grijalva, who skirted the coast in 1518. Still smarting from the three teeth that Maya arrows had knocked out of his mouth at Champotón, the determined Grijalva touched down at both Laguna de Términos and the bar of the river that came to bear his name. Grijalva brought a collection of trinkets to turn the natives’ heads, but instead found a force of some twenty-four hundred Indians confronting

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him, all armed him with bows and arrows. Grijalva managed to defuse the situation, and eventually the cacique, a man known to history as Tabscob, provided the newcomers with tortillas, delicious zapote fruit, and grilled fish, along with enigmatic references to a place called Colúa México. Tabscob’s control of men and resources, symbolized in armed warriors and the innumerable canoes that coursed up and down the river’s mouth, give some idea of the enormous trade importance that the Potonchán held at that time.64 Unapparent to Grijalva, still another populous Chontal center, a placed named Cihuatán, lay further upstream; both communities produced goods for trade to that same México, the yet unsuspected Aztec empire.65 But more serious contact was still to come. The following year, on March 12, 1519, Hernán Cortés retraced much of Grijalva’s route on his way to Tenochtitlán. With a group of officers largely drawn from that earlier first expedition, he knew that multiple Indian groups lived along the coast, even if the powerful Aztec empire remained hidden. Contact was simplified by the presence of Gerónimo de Aguilar, whom Cortés had rescued from captivity among the Yucatec Maya, and who now spoke that language with some proficiency. But Tabscob needed no interpreter to understand that the strangers’ return boded ill, and he again massed a huge body of warriors against them. The Spanish crossbows and primitive guns managed to hold them off; as the skirmish was underway, Cortés himself lost a shoe in the mud as he tried to disembark from his boat. On March 25, Spaniards and Potonchán natives fought a more sustained battle on the plains of Centla, near what is now Frontera; once on solid ground, the horses the Spanish deployed provided such an advantage that Cortés was able to defeat a force that supposedly outnumbered them three hundred to one. After the battle, Tabscob wisely perceiving that the newcomers made better allies than enemies, negotiated peace, and unintentionally lent his name to the province: the land of Tabscob became Tabasco ever after.66 Tabscob also lavished upon Cortés a gift of twenty maidens; in this way Cortés acquired the services of a young woman of minor Indian nobility. Originally hailing from the now-vanished community of Painalá, she was given as a slave to people in Xicalango, and from there to the hands of Tabscob. Owing to her time as a slave there in Potonchán, she happened to speak both Maya and Nahautl, and soon became Cortés’s partner in both intimacy and conquest.67 Finally, Cortés founded the town of Santa María de la Victoria, but the conquistador left no Spaniards here and made no effort to develop it as a bonafide settlement.

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It was only after the fall of the Aztec empire that Cortés turned his attention back to Tabasco, scene of his first conquest. In 1521 he authorized Gonzalo de Sandoval to pacify Tuxtepec; using what is today Coatzacoalcos as a base, Sandoval established control over villages in Veracruz, Oaxaca, and Tabasco, but when he ceased operations in order to escort Cortés’s wife to Mexico City, many of the dominated communities rebelled. The next six years witnessed serious indigenous unrest. Cortés himself passed through in 1525 en route to Honduras, where he hoped to punish his renegade lieutenant and fellow conquistador Cristóbal de Olid. This second incursion in many ways outshone the first as a feat of human endurance. In the initial conquest of Mexico, the Spaniards at least stood on solid ground, whereas now Cortés and his men spent much time trudging through mud, starving, or constructing elaborate wooden bridges, only to have them washed away with the next inundation. After trudging through the heart of river country, Cortés discovered that Olid himself had died some months prior to their arrival in Honduras.68 It was only at this point that one of Cortés’s men, Baltazar de Osorio, enacted the legal protocols to make Santa María de la Victoria a real town. For its first few years, however, this now legitimized community remained little more than a collection of huts. Santa María only received real stimulus with the coming of Francisco de Montejo, the long-struggling conquistador of Yucatán, in 1526. Montejo had what for Europeans at the time counted for long experience in the region, since he had come here with Grijalva in 1518, and then with Cortés one year later. Montejo’s early attempts (1526, 1529–32) to subjugate the Yucatec Maya failed, and the Adelantado withdrew to the Tabascan coast, which he used largely as a base for further Yucatecan operations. Although most famous for terrorizing Maya peoples, Montejo actually spent the last decade of his life in interminable legal battles over control of Tabasco and its tributary rights. In 1551 he went to Spain to press his claims, and there he died two years later, victory eluding him to the end.69 Much of the quarrel was irrelevant anyway, since the dream of vast wealth that tempted Montejo and his rivals never materialized. Santa María de la Victoria fared no better than its benefactor. Briefly prosperous in the sixteenth century, the settlement and its imminently flammable straw huts succumbed to pirate attacks beginning in 1597; a half century later, in 1641, Spaniards relocated their “city” to a more defensible point further upriver, thus founding San Juan Bautista de Villahermosa. Today,

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the exact location of the original Santa María, like those of Potonchán and Xicalango, remains a mystery. The perishable nature of these communities’ construction, together with the damage from pirates and later petroleum development, helped to conceal their exact locations. Moreover, the river delta has continued to expand, particularly after the Mezalapa jumped course to join with the Grijalva, greatly increasing the latter’s flow and its deposit of alluvial soil. What was once the coastal contact point of two civilizations therefore now lies somewhere further inland, awaiting an archaeologist’s patient touch.70 Growing pains aside, the Spanish were here to stay, and encomienda, or Indian tribute, formed a cornerstone of the new colonial order. As with other peripheral areas of the empire, encomienda persisted here long after it had disappeared in economically vibrant areas, where tributary relations more readily gave way to private, contractual relationships: it was the only way that settlers could wring some form of profit from the native peoples. As the Indian population plummeted in the mid-sixteenth century, the crown imposed the same policies in Tabasco as elsewhere in New Spain. Abolishing personal service (though not tribute in kind) for encomenderos (tribute holders), it also instituted something known as repartimiento, or in its Nahuatl name, coatequitl (from which comes the later term tequio, or community labor obligation, like the Yucatecan fagina). Under repartimiento, crown officials acted as a kind of labor clearing-house; those seeking Indian labor had to petition for it, and the officials in turn provided the workers and were to see to it that they were paid according to preestablished wages. If anything, this system was even more unpopular than encomienda, and on both sides of the equation: encomenderos considered repartimiento a corrupt, bureaucratic bother, while Indians found it more impersonal and often more arbitrary than encomienda labor itself. Hacienda peon labor took its place, and the crown formally abolished the repartimiento in 1631.71 Meanwhile, encomienda limped on, declining from thirty-six encomenderos in 1570, the number dwindled to a mere seven by the time the institution’s Tabascan branch was finally abolished in 1796.72 The ethnic composition, together with patterns of conflict and cooperation, lack the fine-grained resolution available for places like Yucatán. One reason is that Tabascan Indians, like virtually all other counterparts in Mexico outside of the Yucatec Maya and the Yaquis of Sonora, took Spanish surnames, and that practice makes them harder to track in the scant

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surviving documentation. Spanish served as the official language and was spoken in the handful of cities and presumably among Hispanics living on rural estates, but Tabasco was home to multiple other languages as well. Indigenous culture remained most strongly rooted in redoubts far separated from Hispanic society. Franciscan friars relocated the survivors of Acalán to Tixchel, but many of these same people pined for their old haunts along the Candelaria River and returned to create a remote settlement known as Zapotitlán (“the place of the zapotes”), where they soon faded from the historical record.73 Chontal-speakers withdrew to a swampy eastern area known as Centla, whose only significant pueblo was remote Jonuta. Some sixty-five thousand of them survived into 1980, although the radical inroads of transportation, media, and internal investment thereafter have severely eroded their earlier culture and lifestyle. More than anything, the Chontales were fishing people. They worked in teams headed by an elected patrón, a man of greater experience and strong communication skills (good storytellers being prized). They fished from early morning to midday with homemade nets, working in dugouts called canoas, the preferred tree being a type of mahogany known as caracolillo, and propelling themselves through the shallow waters by means of long poles instead of oars. Patrones distributed the catch at the end of the day.74 Another feature that set the Chontales apart from Yucatec Mayas was their mode of construction. Since Tabasco lacks the vast limestone subsoil of the peninsula, pre-Columbian peoples at centers such as Comalcalco were forced to work with handmade bricks instead of cut stone. In modern times, Chontales obtained construction lime by burning oyster shells in bonfires stoked by coconut husks. For charcoal production, they relied on the wood of the plentiful mangrove tree, and in older times, dozens of fires lit the evening shores.75 Life was basic here. In 1847 Austrian botanist Karl Heller came upon a presumably Chontal family, living with their domestic animals in a large communal hut beside a tributary of the Grijalva and subsiding on a diet of tortillas and roasted turtles, “intestines and all”; the mud floor and straw matting invited an infestation of ants, but the inhabitants managed to keep the mosquitos at bay by burning chunks of termite nests. Heller later rejoiced and “thanked the Creator with all my heart when morning dawned, and I had put that most terrible night behind me for good.” 76 The hardscrabble nature of Chontal existence owed both

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to poverty and to a radically different set of expectations inherited from the past, but that same existence also served to keep non-Chontales at a distance. The unsung Tabascan ethnographer Carlos Incháustegui, who studied Centla-area communities extensively in the 1970s and 1980s, witnessed the flickering remnants of colonialized Chontal culture, particularly in matters of sickness and health. Illness came in two forms: divine punishments such as plagues, or else evil winds (mal viento), the same incorporeal threat that so feared in rural Yucatecan villages. As a frontline of defense the river people tried to stay on the good sign of these powerful unseen forces. Minor maladies they bore stoically. When denial proved impossible, the Chontales took recourse in prayers and herbal infusions.77 Whatever they said, they said in a language and vocabulary strongly related to the far more prevalent Yucatec Maya; in far eastern villages, places adjacent to what is now Campeche state—in the town of Balancán, for example, whose name originally meant “burned and abandoned place”—one commonly finds such patronymics as Chan.78 Still another ethnic group survived further to the south. Nestled in small rancherías outside of communities like Teapa and Huimanguillo, the Zoques maintained their language and many of their original customs. No admirer of indigenous peoples but still a curious and tireless observer, the same Karl Heller characterized them as a disheveled, underdressed barbarians who “distinguish themselves through their singular hairstyle, whereby only a narrow lock remains diagonally over their head.” Heller’s Zoques were hard-drinking freight carriers who moved goods from the Pacific to Gulf coasts, much as their ancestors in such pre-Columbian centers as Malpasito had done.79 Later ethnographers found Zoque language in patent decline, the victim of state-promoted mestizaje. The people themselves were limited to north-central Chiapas and the Tabascan sierra, mostly supporting themselves by milpa farming, residing in wattle-and-pole huts, and catching fish that they had stunned by means of juices extracted from barbasco, a wild yam that later became the basis for modern oral contraceptives.80 While Zoque predominated in the Tabascan serranía, priests working in this seldom visited maze of hills and dales also found it necessary to learn not only Chontalpaneco, apparently a subregional dialect of Chontal Maya, but also Nahuatl, the language of the late, great Mexica empire.81 Less geographically concentrated that either the Chontal or the Zoque, tiny

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communities of Nahuatl-speakers turned up in irregular patterns throughout the region. Known variously as mexicanos, naguatlatos, or ahualulcos, they represented the detritus of the huge expansion of political and economic clout that Uto-Aztecan speakers achieved from the Early Postclassic period on through the last years of Xicalango.82 The dispersed nature and small population of these hamlets ultimately contributed to the complete disappearance of Nahuatl from modern-day Tabasco. Another indigenous group of the region, the shadowy Lacandones of the interior rivers of Chiapas, Tabasco, and the Petén, were largely if not quite entirely removed from the events that were to unfold from 1840 onward. Consensus now holds that these people are not the historical Lacandones, one of the various inhabitants of the Petén region at the time of Spanish conquest. Rather, they appear to be an amalgam of Yucatec Mayas and the Caribs of South American and the Caribbean. They had virtually no contact with either the Maya or Hispanic populations of southeast Mesoamerica, and their territory marks the region’s southwest boundary. Their history is as impenetrable as the jungles they inhabited. Apparently remnants of the postconquest Maya diaspora, the Lacandones also received infusions from the fall of the Petén in 1699. The center of their world lay along the Lacantún River, some four to five leagues up from its junction with the Usumacinta; some families had settled throughout the Petén. The Lacandones lived by hunting and fishing, along with planting gardens of corn, bananas, and other fruits. Over the centuries sugarcane had made its way into their lives, and they now grew it to be eaten raw. Their weapons were bows and arrows, and both sexes wore the simple white tunic that is still their trademark. Indifferent to nation-states, the Lacandones endured as a people apart. Guatemalans considered them wild and ferocious, a stigma human beings commonly apply to any alien culture. But the occasional rare visitor among them found otherwise. If anything, the Lacandones were selfless in giving to strangers, and that fact made them more baffling still to their acquisitive western guests. They built no homes, but rather lived in simple arbors called champas, which they abandoned following the death of a family member.83 The Lacandón Mayas were living in their final century of peace before the cataclysm of contact. When the last attempt at armed conquest failed in 1790, the Guatemalan Spanish put aside their ambitions for over a generation.84 Thereafter, the Lacandones of the upper Usumacinta and Grijalva

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Rivers occasionally forayed into places such as Tenosique for reasons of trade, mere curiosity, or the cajolings of Catholic priests. Contact was rare; only the occasional missionary came here, as did the intrepid Dominican friar Manuel del la Chica in 1814.85 In 1832, purportedly as a result of Lacandón threats to western Petén settlements, the comandante general of the Petén, Julián Segura, sent Captain Lucas Pinelo to negotiate with them. After considerable wooing Pinelo persuaded a chief named Bool Menché to visit Flores. The event was epochal, at least by Petén standards. Menché reached the coastal village of San Benito with his retinue, all wearing elaborate plumed headdresses and carrying the arrows for which the Lacandones are still famous. Their boats crossed the lagoon to the music of marimbas, and when Menché reached the island city, the floreseños greeted him with a huge ¡viva!, skyrockets, church bells, and cannonades. The pageantry had its effect. On April 21, 1832, three years after Pinelo’s death, Bool Menché “signed” a treaty with Guatemala, thus allowing for trade and subsequent missionary efforts.86 In reality, neither endeavor bore much fruit. At that time the Lacandón population stood somewhere around three thousand. In fact, however, this treaty brought little change in and of itself, aside from quieting the minds of those Guatemalans who feared cannibal attacks. For the Lacandón, the real change came in successive waves: first through the coming of mahogany cutters in the late nineteenth century, later and more significantly through the incursions of chicle tappers after World War II. Both groups brought the seeds of cultural decimation in the form of metal tools, cheap liquor, Christianity, and the whole arsenal of European diseases. At their nadir in the mid-twentieth century, only some two to five thousand Lacandones remained, but numbers have recently rebounded.87 Other small groups located between Palenque and the Petén, peoples variously described as Carib, Chacampates, or simply “the naturales of such-and-such a village,” also retained an autonomy born of isolation, but probably disintegrated during the great logging boom of the late nineteenth century.88 Perhaps the most critical event for colonial-era native peoples was their demographic collapse. Between 135,000 and 200,000 people are believed to have resided in the Tabascan region in 1500; a century later that figure had fallen by more than 90 percent; fifty years later, at the absolute nadir, only 5,000 remained.89 Those who did survive were given out as encomienda, forced to provide labor or tribute to the colonizers. Indeed, for the four

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centuries following contact, most of the indigenous peasantry lived in a state of servitude. The advanced state of Tabascan peonage owed largely to the fact that the area had experienced a commercial cacao boom early in the colonial period (at topic discussed at some length in Chapter 2). While the vibrant market for Tabascan cacao declined from the mid-seventeenth century onward, the institution of hacienda was now firmly established throughout rural areas. Wages ran from one to three reales daily, but this seldom covered the many needs of taxes and subsistence.90 The Tabascan peons therefore adopted the same patron-client relations encountered elsewhere in the Mexican hacienda system; estate owners and prosperous locals often served as godparents for their dependents’ children, assuming among other things the cost of baptism.91 These gestures of genteel magnanimity were all part of the colonial way of life, but as with Yucatecan obventions, their Hispanic payers increasingly came to resent them over the course of the nineteenth century. The mental and social lives of these same people are less clear. As often happens in colonial situations, European overlords perceived the natives as strange, inscrutable, and perhaps dangerous. Who knew what they were really up to, or what secret animosities smoldered behind their impassive gaze? Tireless in labor, guarded in counsel, their only known weakness was liquor, and for that reason Tabascan Spaniards heeded the old Roman maxim that in wine there is truth. The year 1810, for example, brought rumors that a massive Indian uprising was in the works among the Nahuatl-speakers of San Antonio and Huimanguillo. A drunken Indian was purported to have remarked, “How careless the Spanish are getting. Pretty soon we’re going to rise up; the three Indian principales are meeting . . .” The story was probably nonsense to begin with, part of the tide of hysteria and bizarre rumors that attended the independence struggles, but it rapidly swelled to include a clandestine Indian militia with two hundred rifles distributed for an uprising on Good Thursday.92 Reports of secret meetings, redolent of 1791 Haiti and the African slave conclaves of the Bois Caiman, began to filter in from the outlying cacao haciendas. There was nothing whatsoever behind these accounts, which merely reflected Hispanic anxieties associated with the political upheavals in Spain. The real basis lay in the village’s participation in so-called loyalty juntas, wherein vecinos (Spanish residents) and Indian principales (head men) of isolated Tabascan hamlets

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pledged to somehow defend Spain against an evil force named Napoleon Bonaparte. Old World political unrest disquieted the Americanborn Spaniards (creoles, or criollos), for Indians found participation in the juntas de lealtad an emboldening experience, one that awakened a consciousness of themselves as political actors.93 Most of the ethnographic descriptions not tainted by planter paranoia came from a handful of postindependence European visitors. They, in turn, liked to portray the natives as a race of indolent and dreamy lotus-eaters who liked nothing more than pass the day languishing in a hammock. “To sow here is to reap; yet one looks in vain over the whole plantation for a single fruit tree or useful vegetable!”94 “You ask him concerning a Supreme Being, or question him on the immortality of the soul, or his hopes of a future life, but he will answer you nothing.”95 “The rural Indian is Adam before the fall . . . with an infinite relish for doing nothing.”96 “The drowsiness of their intelligence brings with it one benefit—they are not afflicted with ennui.”97 At the same time, most of these same sources reveal that indigenous people of the rivers had varied, active, and highly practical lives. Chontales and others cultivated the familiar crops of corn, beans, chiles, squash, along with bananas, yucca, and the all-important cacao tree. At the age of ten to twelve, boys were given machetes and began to accompany their fathers into the fields, forests, and rivers; there, in addition to farming, they hunted deer, boa, and wild birds. They learned of the vine juices that could be used to poison fish, or where to find the healing balm known as leche maría, and how to locate wild honey.98 Like Morelet, we might wish to know what was said in those “protracted dialogues” that the Indians held, always in hushed tones of their native tongue and always safely removed from the intrusions of skeptical strangers. Their culture paired an extensive command over matters practical with faith in deities like the four rain gods, beings so ancient and so powerful that they defied human comprehension. Even more than the wild monte of Yucatán, the Tabascan mahogany forests held both valuable resources and terrible dangers. A mysterious stranger dressed in red was known to lead isolated wanderers to their doom. Archaeological ruins concealed powerful magic and were best avoided. Forest animals were apt to be transformed sorcerers. Black magic was a real danger wherever human beings lived, and more than one village had men who were capable of throwing out invisible poisons to blind or kill their enemies.99 Indians knew the woods as did no

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other, for they lived and traveled in it as part of their daily existence. Only they could hear the mysterious bell that rang at certain times of the year; their legends told that it lay deep in the water and was rung by the spirits of those murdered long ago by pirates. Others held that the phantom bellringer was in fact a ghostly priest. In the days of Spain the padre’s parishioners had murdered him, hidden his stolen valuables inside the buried bell, then fled from the justice of vice-regal authorities. Those who could track down the source of its chimes were certain to unearth the dead padre’s fortune.100 These tales, which still shoot a tingle up the spine, give some hint of the imaginative depth and layers of meaning that the native people retrofitted upon their world. Some evidence points to the indigenous peasantry as more devout (albeit in their own syncretic lights) than their creole counterparts. When priests in such places as San Isidro de Comalcalco needed support, they turned not to the petit bourgeois intelligentsia, but rather to “the most notable of the Chontal residents.”101 The piety of Chontales and others reflected the centrality of ceremonial cycles in the indigenous life, coupled with the same ambivalent attitudes that their Yucatecan counterparts held toward the exclusively Hispanic priesthood. Chontalpa Indians reverenced above all the Virgin of Cupilco. Like Marian phenomena elsewhere, she embodied infinite compassion in a world where compassion was hard to come by. Legend has it that in 1634 a group of peasants from nearby Ayapa found an abandoned boat on the nearby sandbar and within that boat a statue of the Virgen de la Asunción, complete with gold decorations. They carried her home and occasionally lent her out for processions and festivals in neighboring communities. Eventually, however, they discovered that wherever they placed her, her face continued to move in the direction of Cupilco, a lone Nahuatl-speaking hamlet in an otherwise Chontal region. Ayapa elders got the message and relocated her to her chosen spot, even today known for its wooden church painted in bright primary colors and adorned with spectacular carved images. Here the Virgin worked miracles without number. In 1913 Mexico’s deepening anarchy began to worry her, and she caused frightening images to appear on the building’s plaster: shadowy blotches revealing serpents, mutilated bodies, and shattered musical instruments. To appease her the Cupilcans settled on two dates for massive offerings and adoration: May 18 and August 25. But the prophesies could not be stayed, and

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the Tabascan faithful endured a persecution more terrible than any in this nation’s history.102 Much of Indian culture related to the need to maintain some degree of group cohesion in the face of conquest. Manuel Gil y Sáenz scorned the “fantasmagoric” nature of Indian belief, but put his finger on the essence that separated those beliefs from his own Christian traditions: indigenous ceremonies and prayers had little to do with the individual soul, but had everything to do with the continuity of the world, its fertility, and its people as a whole. None of this is to suggest that the naturales were somehow cut from a fundamentally kinder essence than Europeans. For two millennia, the peoples of Mesoamerica had gone after each other hammer and tong in a struggle to dominate trade, tribute, and territory. The conquest ended intra-Indian warfare, instead channeling energy into the business of survival and above all compacting ethnic consciousness at the level of community. Rather like office parties, autochthonous ceremonies strove to ensure that potentially upsetting conflict remained at a minimum, and that village hatreds remained concealed beneath a patina of conviviality. The symbol of village cohesion remained the Hispanic santo patrón, often a modified version of some earlier deity. Among the more important was the day of gathering of wax and honey, when in addition to the abovementioned activities, indigenous men dedicated themselves to the making candles that gratified the spirit and warded off darkness. They selected a sponsor or mayordomo, hired a priest to say mass, sacrificed a bull or an alligator, and put the meat on to cook. Bare-breasted women spent hours patting out tortillas or making a corn beverage known as chorote for this event. At noon, when the meal was cooked, they carried the food to the altar. Certain elderly men known as noxchíes acted as prayer-sayers, or as they would be known in many other parts of Mexico, rezadores or cantores, and offered up their petitions that the spiritual forces protect clients from such ills as snake bites or human animus.103 Pre-Columbian society was shot through with powerful spiritual forces, with gods and magical rites of association that, if stroked and propitiated and correctly managed, promised to soften the pains of human existence. All of this translated effortlessly into the popular religiosity of the colonial era, and beyond. As in the far better documented case of Yucatán, popular religiosity in Tabasco often clashed with the prescriptions of mother church. One relatively late (1878) account, penned by an exasperated parish

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priest in Nacajuca, lamented that local customs “reek of paganism.” The parishioners perceived collections as a type of community fund, to be tapped by contributors at their convenience . . . not as a source of revenues for the priest himself. Popular religiosity was boisterous, egalitarian, even ecstatic, not at all the solemn reverence that priests encouraged. Within the church itself locals were known to dance the chin-chin and the máscara, both accompanied by drinking and lusty shouts.104 Perhaps he was thinking of the Chontal dance of Giant and the Little Horse, in which the red-faced, black-bearded Goliath perished before a mounted David of Spanish features.105 But more likely these accounts referred to the pochó, a fertility celebration still held in certain parts of the state, particularly in Tenosique, during carnival time. In this ceremony, a circle of cojó—masked men dressed in tobacco leaves and other pieces of vegetation, and carrying phallic symbols—try to contain a group of menacing subjects clad in tiger skins. The tigers eventually break free and seize their wardens, placing them in the middle of the circle; the dance concludes with the cojoes and tigres assuming their original positions. All the while, a ring of women known as pochoveras look on, passive and expectant recipients of male potency. The pochó celebrates the continual restoration of fertility and apparently harkens back to pre-Columbian legends of a world destroyed by tigers but later recreated.106 Whatever its ethnic provenance, this colorful ceremony resonated in a world where the vegetation reasserted itself with startling force. Music too offered a bastion for the old ways, and above all a distinctly Tabascan style of music called tamborilera: literally, “drum music.” In this unique musical genre, a band of some eight or nine men, all energetically beating on turtle shells and deerskin drums of different size, provide complex polyrhythms that ebb and surge beneath a simple melody played on a single wooden flute. Favorite selections include “El tigre,” “La feria,” and “Zapateo.” Even today, tamborilera is little known outside of Tabasco state, and only a limited set of recordings exist to attest to its extraordinary vitality.107 Despite the hard lives they followed, Tabasco’s native peoples have survived into the twenty-first century. At the moment that liberal northern hacendado Francisco Madero denounced the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, a quarter of river country’s approximately 140,000 inhabitants were still Indian.108 But their percentages, and their accompanying social roles, differed sharply from patterns seen elsewhere in the southeast. They held their

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own in large part by steering clear of elite political spats, and for that reason virtually all of the century’s great conflicts here grew out of Hispanic infighting, as opposed to the marked ethnic polarization that characterized neighboring Yucatán. In that latter province, the overwhelming majority of Maya peasants made them the default labor supply, whereas Tabasco’s Indians tended to avoid the estates in favor of the lifestyle that so repulsed Karl Heller, forcing hacendados to supplement them with poor mestizos as the peons who tilled corn, tended cattle, and picked and processed the valuable cacao beans.109 On a closely related point, the processes of mestizaje and Hispanicization were more advanced here than in Chiapas or Yucatán. In 1794 discernibly indigenous peoples accounted for only 55 percent of the total Tabascan population, as opposed to more than 80 percent in the peninsula. Thirty-seven percent were mestizos, 8 percent “European.” Moreover, the majority of the mestizos had a degree of African blood, something far less common among the Mayas to the east.110 The unique history of Tabasco’s native peoples provides still a third key as to why violence and instability in early national Tabasco assumed the peculiar form that they did. Impoverishment and marginalization were hardly unique experiences among Latin America’s colonized peoples, but other factors militated against a Yucatecan-style Caste War. The jumble of so many ethnicities discouraged large-scale cooperation across municipios and subregions. Simultaneously, the early expansion of cacao haciendas and its accompanying mestizaje reduced the overall percentage of indigenous peoples. Indians needed overwhelming numbers even to contemplate an attack on colonial society, and here those numbers were lacking. Time and again throughout the 1800s, Tabasco’s indigenous peasants found it wiser to duck the quarrels. This fact, in turn, kept militaries and militias to the size of an hacienda workforce, and rather than reducing overall violence, the easy availability of manpower kept rebellion an ever-enticing option: any landowner or militia captain could do a credible job of it, even with only a handful of men. And when violence came, time and again it turned out to be a quarrel among some combination of creoles and mestizos, and not the second coming of Tabscob. Whatever their problems, then, Tabascan elites could not attribute them, Yucatecan-style, to the jacqueries of surly, atavistic Indians. Rather, they had only themselves to blame.

two

The Last Empire

Francisco de Montejo’s campaigns landed Tabasco squarely within the jurisdiction of imperial Spain. But what was an empire? What exactly separates this arrangement from the nation-states of today? The very word “empire” has acquired such negative connotations over the last two centuries that we often fail to think about what it meant, and how it differed from the way we live now. Europe’s great American empires began their rise in the late fifteenth century. The militaristic and self-aggrandizing rhetoric of imperialism seasoned to the taste of a post-1875 European bourgeoisie had yet to emerge, but the practices themselves, together with their perils and most certainly their benefits, were there from the beginning.1 Campaigns of exploration and conquest grew from motives of greed, population pressure, missionary fervor, monarchical competition, and simple lust for adventure and discovery. Early empires either absorbed whole peoples in a corporate political order, as in the Spanish system; or, as with England and Portugal, they began as pitiful beachheads but gradually displaced the native inhabitants. Unlike the nation-state that emerged in the wake of the French Revolution, transatlantic empires in their

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great heyday (roughly the sixteenth through late eighteenth centuries) made no pretense of ruling over a kingdom unified by ethnicity, legal rights, or anything else. Although the Irish might argue otherwise, distance mattered: the further overseas the better because ignorance of metropolitan technological developments and intellectual currents usually made distant peoples easier marks. And the further away, the more convenient it became to ignore rights and their violations. For this same reason, empires typically lacked territorial continuity. They might include a valley here, an island there, a subcontinent somewhere else. Hapsburg Spain’s crazy quilt of languages and local custom constitute a prime example. But even in the Spanish colonies, where imperial policy absorbed conquered peoples as citizens, albeit of a lower status, subject peoples like Mayas and Purépechas typically lived under different systems of rights and obligations.2 Imperial trade remained strictly mercantile, requiring that the colony conduct all its business with the mother country. Spain operated through its Casa de Contratación, a monopolistic shipping system; France called their arrangement the Exclusive, an allusion to the maritime bourgeoisie’s jealously guarded rights to deal with Haiti and other sugar islands; England formalized its own version thereof in the Navigation Acts. Men knew mercantilism by many names, but the underlying practice remained consistent. It enriched the imperial center (or at least sectors of it), depressed opportunities and incentives for colonized peoples, and both favored and frustrated the creoles: those Europeans born in the New World could lord over the Indians and slaves and grow rich, but they could never aspire to the offices and honors reserved for those from the mother country.3 The final and most important difference concerned sweat inequity, the question of who toiled and who did not. The separation of human beings into hierarchies of race and place of origin went hand-in-hand with some form of coerced labor: African slavery in many cases, but Indian tributary labor in much of Spanish America, or else its grandchild, the system of debt peonage that kept workers resident on the great estates. In their classic sense, then, empires were systems of colonial labor and tribute, and the passage of the last two centuries has failed to fully undo their complicated linking of race and class. Dark-skinned people toiled; white-skinned people administered and reaped; mixed-race people got by as they could. However far-flung and diverse, these vast political orders did have their unifying elements, even if the exact formula for those elements varied

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considerably. In some cases, like New Spain prior to 1750, military presence actually remained quite limited. Empires required some sort of managerial oversight, usually in the form of a metropolitan bureaucracy: the British Parliament and Foreign Office, or in the case of Spain, the Consejo de Indias.4 But the handful of chambered wise men seldom sufficed for the task of managing millions of diverse subjects. Personnel changed; special interests intervened; goods and information trickled; second thoughts and unexpected difficulties crept in even as policies were being implemented. For that reason, imperial business usually proceeded along slow, contradictory, and inefficient paths. Moreover, their heterogeneous compositions forced empires to rely on symbolic and cultural unifiers: religion, ritual enactments, a certain strata of universal legislation, and above all, the sacred person of the king, that traditional sovereign who staked his authority on “the eternal yesterday.” Almost invariably, these symbolic dimensions lived in the people’s hearts and minds, not in the palacio del gobierno or state house, and for that reason survived the political orders that cultivated them. Those same dimensions were also the most susceptible to subversions. Never to be seen by colonial eyes, the king could be as benevolent as one wanted paint him, as favorably inclined toward the beggar as toward the nobleman. Malleability of symbols and values held even truer for religion. Colonized peoples almost immediately subverted the faith of their new overlords, for, as millions soon realized, Jesus and the Virgin Mary favored the peasant over the capital city merchant. French Catholicism became voodoo in the hands of the slaves of San Domingue; the many saints whom Spaniards venerated lent themselves as cover to the old polytheism of the Aztecs and Mayas. In a strange way, then, unity and diversity remained an inseparable pair. European overseas empires tended to meet calamitous ends, for in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the colonies grew up and claimed their freedom. In some cases this was a politically conservative (if violent) parting led by the mother country’s biological offspring: descendants of Englishmen in North America, and their counterparts, the European-blooded and Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking criollos, or creoles, of Mexico and Latin America. Only in rare instances, most dramatically in the slave colony of San Domingue, did an exploited underclass actually throw over its masters and assume power.5 Where the calamitous end failed to materialize, imperial death resulted from prolonged senility. Certainly this was

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the case with the British Caribbean, where the sugar islands outlived their economic heyday by more than a century.6 Modern usage of the terms “empire” and its adjectival derivation “imperial” seldom finds a subject that measures up to Hapsburg standards. The old order really is dead, except to those who see Queen Elizabeth’s portrait on the Belizean dollar as some sort of outrageous conspiracy. We now use the word “empire” rather loosely; in most instances, it refers to any situation in which one nation fiddles in the affairs of a weaker counterpart. The international power of today typically exerts itself through a series of almost invisible mechanisms, including foreign debt, international wage differences, developmental loans, technology transfers, media penetration, cultural norms, and the training and equipping of security forces. But the old terminology lives on, in part because we have become hypersensitized to the old injustices. Love it or loathe it, yesteryear’s creaky colonial empire boasted a longevity hard to come by in modern political orders. Indeed, measured by today’s tempos and standards, the Spanish system’s three-century run surpassed expectation. Its lethargy and astonishing inefficiency worked in its favor, since colonial modification of preexisting cultures often operated at a trickle so slow as to be scarcely perceptible. And its vast confines concealed innumerable small corners, backwaters of no great importance that could doze on in old accustomed ways so long as the great mines and plantations elsewhere kept the system alive. Quite simply, the years of 1519 through 1821 turned out to be Tabasco’s last empire. What, then, were the inner intricacies of this arrangement, and how did they condition expectations in a future Tabascan political order?

M e r c h a n t s , M i l i t i a s , M e r r i m e n t, and Money Tabasco was Spanish, and in the imperial Spanish mind civilization meant towns, places where people could learn, produce, trade, worship, and be called upon for service and taxes. So too in Tabasco, even though its urban settlements were slow to root. Most nineteenth-century communities had pre-Columbian origins: Jalpa (“on the sand”), Macuspana (“five clearings”), Tenosique, and Cunducacán (“place of the pots”), to name but a few.7 But

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others enjoyed a more recent vintage. The aforementioned Santa María de la Victoria, fitfully inhabited after 1526, is believed to have stood on the shores of the Grijalva opposite from modern-day Frontera. But the scourge of piracy erupted in the late sixteenth century, forcing colonials to abandon Santa María and move progressively southward; first to the villa of San Juan de Villahermosa, then on to Tacotalpa (“place of scrubbing”) in the deep interior, where the seat of the alcalde mayor remained from 1677 to 1797.8 As pirates followed their conquistador predecessors into extinction, Villahermosa assumed the starring role that it has occupied to the present day. In 1794, with the quickening of trade, Tabascans established the town of San Antonio de los Naranjos (later San Antonio Cárdenas) at the convergence of the Mezcalapa and the now inactive Río Seco. In 1817 a priest led several dozen families to found the new community of San Fernando de la Victoria; later renamed Frontera, it assumed considerable nineteenth-century importance owing to its strategic location along the river and came to serve as Tabasco’s principal port and aduana, or customs house.9 These were hardly the architectural citadels of colonial solidity seen in places like Querétaro and Morelia. Few communities boasted anything beyond wood constructions vulnerable to fire, termites, enemy attacks, and tropical decay. Provincial subregions have remained fairly consistent over the centuries. Tabascans divided river country into the San Juan Bautista-dominated Centro; the Chontalpa, the broad alluvial plain at the state’s center; the southern Sierra, based on Teapa; the vast northeastern swamp known as Centla; and Los Ríos, which was traced by meanderings of the lower Usumacinta. A sixth part centered around Huimanguillo, far to the west. National redistrictings had shifted it several times—first to a Veracruzan border district known as Agualulucos, then to a now-forgotten Tehuantepec Territory, and finally, per the 1857 Constitution, to Tabasco itself—but Tabascans, contemptuous of cartographic interlopers, had always treated it as their own, and the people of Huimanguillo reciprocated.10 Things looked primitive indeed beyond the confines of San Juan Bautista. Eastern Tabasco represented the most remote and least developed part of the state, and “in terms of its climate, and the languages, food, customs, and physiognomy of its Indians, another Yucatán or Campeche.”11 The British explorers Patrick Walker and John Herbert Caddy came through this region in January 1840, while passing from Belize to the seldom-visited ruins of Palenque. They described Tenosique—or, as Walker like to spell

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Figure 3.  However backward by the standards of the Mexican silver-mining region, the city of San Juan Bautista de la Villahermosa, with its beautiful homes and numerous commercial houses, represented the acme of Tabascan wealth. Time after time, would-be conquistadors bombed the city into submission. This photograph depicts the street of Esquipulas (now 27 de Febrero), looking eastward from the cathedral’s high promontory to the lowlying Grijalva River. By permission of the Archivo Histórico y Fotográfico del Estado de Tabasco.

it, “Tinnosique”—as a place of the utmost abandon. Mongrel dog packs roamed the streets, while the unhelpful alcalde ran a business of cheap cloth and even cheaper liquor among the local Indians; Walker and Caddy later learned that the “alcaldi” was best approached when lounging in his hammock, not at his business hours. Surveying their temporary accommodations after a particularly strong rain, Caddy described the place thus: The village contains about 70 houses and a church, the latter a barnlike thatched building—the best of the houses about the same as those of the Peten. There are about 500 inhabitants. I startled a bevy of females, little indebted to manufactures for their costume. If “nature when unadorned is adorned the most,” these nymphs were perfection. They gave a shout of “El Strangero” and turned their backs on me, as they could not get up the bank except by the path at the head of which I brought up for a moment, but relieved them from their dilemma by proceeding in a different direction.12

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As in the northern Guatemalan community of Flores, the village cura had his support woman and delighted in nothing more than serenading companions and visitors with his violin, accompanied by the strains of the alcalde’s guitar. Pushing on, the two explorers found Balancán somewhat larger, but offset by a swamp that projected a sense of ill health that the Englishmen believed was etched into the faces of locals. They also noted that the people coated much of their shoes and clothes with the “oolee” or “Toutou” (that is, rubber latex) that afforded them some degree of waterproofing.13 The gateway city to the region—Monte Cristo, later renamed Emiliano Zapata as a statement of anticlerical revolutionary fervor—was “a struggling dirty place, with scarcely a decent cottage in it & the natives appeared to be all drunk.”14 Transportation was slow and laborious. A glance at the maps of the present day, or even a drive through the roads of Tabasco itself, fails to communicate the barriers that once isolated town from town. As in the Louisiana of those days, roads were few, and they mostly led from plantations to rivers, not from town to town.15 Well into the 1850s, heavy rains at times completely isolated the capital city from a place such as Jalpa, a mere eight leagues away.16 Rivers were certainly the easiest form of travel. Larger vessels meant more freight, but their size confined them to the deeper channels. These vessels entering Tabasco presented a challenge, for the simple reason that rivers pouring into the Gulf tended to build up sandbars, the greatest example lying at the mouth of the Grijalva itself. “That bar is our eternal nightmare,” wrote banana dealer Ramón López in 1934. “Its shallowness is the principal cause for the underdevelopment of Tabascan agriculture.”17 The bar’s deepest parts permitted no more than ten to twelve feet of draft, and when inundations struck, both the Usumacinta and the Grijalva disgorged huge quantities of alluvial deposit that reduced the depth to no more than two or three feet. In calm tides ocean vessels could pass, slowly and judiciously, over the sandbar; but when squalls made it imperative to get to harbor as quickly as possible, crossing the bar became a desperate gamble, in which the ship might just as easily run aground, like some helpless beached whale, or, in moments of rough seas, could be dashed to pieces against the accumulated silt and sand.18 These were no idle or ignorant fears. Well into the 1870s, the age in which steam and rail supposedly gave man dominion over nature, wrecks off the Tabascan coast continued to claim the lives of hapless

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sailors, dreaming in their final moments of homes somewhere beyond the storm-tormented sea.19 Fortunately, not all travel was so hazardous. For daily and personal errands, the average Tabascan made use of a variety of smaller crafts. The canoa was a form of dugout ranging anywhere from six to thirty feet in length. A somewhat larger vessel, the pongo, usually had a thatched roof and a walkway on either side for the use of the men who paddled or poled, or in some cases pulled it along the densely overgrown banks by means of hooks.20 For heavier transport, Tabascans relied on bungos, flat-bottomed and double-masted vessels supplemented oars and capable of loading as much as thirty tons.21 Finally, individuals traveled on small vessels known as cayucos, which closely resemble the North American canoe. Terminologies for these vessels tended toward the imprecise; names changed places with unpredictability. But whatever the craft, these leisurely forms of travel became part and parcel of Tabascan life, as much an exercise in philosophical contemplation or natural communion as a way of getting from one place to another. Nothing happened rapidly, and there was always plenty of rest and relaxation along the way. Geography and political alignment did not always coincide. Tabasco’s rivers mostly led northward to the Gulf of Mexico, while a great deal of the Americas’ trade beckoned southward, down the Pacific coast to the mines of Peru and farming and ranching of Central and South America. To link Tabasco with the Pacific side of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec meant traversing some of the most impenetrable stretches of all Mexico, even today poorly connected by either road or rail. One uncelebrated explorer who tried to blaze this route was Domingo Antonio Valcárcel, a teniente de justicia from western Tabasco. At the end of the eighteenth century Valcárcel personally mapped out a possible road to lead from Ocuapan (ten kilometers west of Huimanguillo) to the Oaxacan village of San Juan Guichicovi, not far from the Pacific port of Juchitán. We know little of his exploits except that he was menaced by snakes and personal enemies in approximately equal measure. The intrepid Valcárcel advanced his road-building plan to Spanish higher-ups, but unfortunately it came at the very moment when the empire was about to collapse, and Tabasco remained bound to the Gulf of Mexico ever after.22 Overland roads did exist, but they required the patience of a twelfthcentury silk trader. Working either with mule teams or human porters,

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Figure 4.  Most transportation took place along nature’s highways, the rivers. While steamships of low draft had entered the state by the 1840s, the canoe continued served for daily travel well into the twentieth century. Here, Tabascan fishermen ply their trade. Note that travelers propelled their vessels standing up, by use of poles. Photo (image ©82966) courtesy of CONACULTA.INAH.SINAFO.FN.MÉXICO.

Tabascans shipped their wares southward via Jalapa and Teapa into Chiapas, to hub points such as Pichucalco and Ixcomitán. From there, roads diverged, with one branch running westward into Oaxaca and on to Mexico City. Another doubled back toward Isla del Carmen, in the process passing through small towns that had grown up in the shadow of the logging industry. A third road headed southeastward to Santiago de Guatemala, then northward through the Petén and on to the port of Campeche. Finally, a diverse collection of routes, more trails than roads, led from the Ríos de Usumacinta region eastward to the Yucatán peninsula, and southeastward into the Petén.23 The problem was that these routes were glacially slow; men often had to switch to canoes, or else accustomed themselves to places where their animals waded a baño-lomo, as the phrase put it: up to their bellies in water.24 One can only imagine the mental hibernation of the mule-driving arrieros as they trudged for weeks through swamps, mountains, and tropical forests, where even the most miserable collection of huts shimmered like some oasis of civilization. The roads themselves, unpaved and of extremely poor quality, became invisible and impassible during the

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rainy season. Finally, the roadside woods of Tabasco teemed with bandits, just like so many other lonely stretches of road in the early republic; so long as people traveled with valuable commodities through remote areas of a weak state, armed men were likely to appear just around a bend in the road.25 Caddy’s account gives some idea of what traumas the overland traveler had to confront: dense forest, mud, contaminated water, dysentery, and nothing to eat but whatever game birds a rifleman could bring down.26 These deficiencies of transportation persisted for a very long time, and with no real alternatives. The first airplane did not touch down on Tabascan soil until 1928, while a real national highway system in and out required another forty years beyond that.27 For most common usage, then, Tabascans relied on waterways to get where they needed to go. Significantly, Yucatán and Tabasco coalesced as two separate entities, despite the fact that sufficient similarities and common roots justify clustering them together in southeastern culture. Their separate evolution owed partly to the vast wetlands that characterized eastern Campeche: between strength and weakness, a swamp. A little-known part of human civilization, but one destined to play a role in the events of the nineteenth century, was the stretch of coastal fishing villages that extended from Carmen to Campeche. By midcentury Carmen itself was still a region of logging; its light population raised labor costs, and a good foreman could expect to receive $250 per year, far in excess of anything available in the peninsular heartland. Carmen was considered the acme of health, since in those days illness was attributed to the miasmas emanating from rotting vegetation, not to the anopheles mosquitoes that reigned in the state’s interior.28 By the 1780s it was a region of limited Indian population; even if the presidio’s military commander exaggerated when he reported a total absence of Indians, it clearly lacked a dense indigenous core.29 We have already seen something of the indigenous peoples, but who else populated Tabascan lands and plied its commerce? To begin, Africans came here as well. Slavery had played an important role in the region’s colonial work force; cacao had been a dynamic but labor-intensive industry in the sixteenth century and beyond, and the natives’ demographic collapse left the Spanish little option except to borrow upon the techniques of the Dutch and Portuguese. The institution was actually quite extensive in colonial Tabasco, even though the topic has yet to generate much study. Transatlantic human chattel compensated for the demographic collapse, and

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following the overall pattern of Mexico, their importation slacked off as native peoples began to recover after 1650. By the late colonial years, 11,184, or 33 percent of the Tabascan population, had some African blood.30 Most of them had intermarried with Indians, however, consigning their offspring to such nebulous classifications as pardos, mulatos, chinos, or lobos. But the Bourbon campaign of raising American militias to defend its empire created a new space for Afro-Mexicans, and pardos became the backbone of coastal defense in Tabasco as in Veracruz and Campeche. Recruiting on the Gulf lands was always tricky. Spanish officers valued coastal residents for their resistance to yellow fever, but soldiers could only be bought by granting the fuero, a military privilege that largely freed them from civil justice. Withholding of the fuero and related perks (tax exemptions, time off for fishing) meant empty rosters; overuse meant an autonomous ethnic underclass.31 Still, by the time of padre Hidalgo’s revolt, pardos made up most of Tabasco’s some thousand-man militia, “under the command of Spanish officials with proven purity of blood, and with royal confirmation of their titles,” one Tabascan author proudly noted.32 With the coming of the Mexican nation, both slavery and race-based censuses ceased to exist, causing the pardos to fade as an identifiable group. Once subtracted the indigenous and African presence, there remained a rough-cut class of Hispanics of varying degrees of biological purity who held land but carried on their sentimental pursuits and political furies primarily in San Juan Bautista de Villahermosa and a few lesser towns. Fortunately, this creole class is better documented, and it was these same Hispanics who are the main actors of this story. Some definite points about their character emerge from the obscurity. Like Yucatán, it had a wellestablished hacendado class, which in this case lived through the export of cacao, horses, and precious woods. Moreover, familial and economic ties between Tabasco and Yucatán remained strong throughout the late colonial and early national period. But there were also differences. Like the lackadaisical creole class of the Petén, the tabasqueños found themselves far removed from Mexico’s educational institutions, from Catholic ecclesiastical seats, and from centers of national and even regional power. Tabascan polity was crude, poorly educated, often prone to violence. The difference between this region and the relatively more dynamic Yucatán was evident to contemporaries; hence, a Yucatecan who arrived in Cunduacán in 1853 reported, “The Tabasco of today is the Tabasco of fifty years ago.”33

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Riverine societies come in many shapes and sizes, determined in large part by the caprice of geography. One variation concerns “the wide river in an empty land,” the Nile scenario in which a single, vast, and slow-moving waterway brings life to an otherwise arid and dead world. Such worlds are apt to give birth to pharonic states that govern the population densely clustered, by necessity, along its banks. A second variation—the western river that melting snow or sudden rains turn from dry gulch to dangerous surge—often begets seminomads who learn the annual cycle, and who relocate to other parts during the dry months: say, the Yaquis who built their lives around the seasonal streams emptying into the Gulf of Cortés, but others spent time gathering seeds and fruits, and hunting animals in the mountains.34 Tabasco’s river people fit neither of these molds. If anything, they more closely resembled the Cajuns of southern Louisiana, men and women who inhabited a year-round wetlands shot through with connecting arteries and capillaries that encouraged the growth of small, relatively independent farms and communities.35 Amazonian peoples offer a similar comparison, except that colonial Tabascans held cultural expectations that had matured in a far different world. The Spanish language, the disdain for indigenous life, the shared Catholic religion, the dependence on certain imported goods and technology, and the whole concept of the state: all separated them from fragmented tribesmen. They settled permanently, but without the nilotic densities. As with the Cajuns, these circumstances produced an oddly hybrid mentality. The Tabascan settlers were defiantly non-Indian, yet they had internalized vast amounts of indigenous language, technique, and cultural knowledge. Spaniards, and later Mexicans, they placed their deepest loyalty in the patria chica and bitterly resented intrusions. As traveler Karl Heller immediately grasped in 1847, “Everything here pointed to a highly patriarchal way of life,” and with reason, because in the remoteness of the river bends, tata (“father”) subbed for king and, later, for president and constitution alike. Diet was simultaneously Spanish and Tabascan. As in so many other parts of the Americas, the colonizers insisted on recreating the lives of their ancestors, however alien the ecology of their new home. To that end, ships brought delicacies unavailable through local producers. Thirsty Tabascans might sip wines from France, while those hungry for a Spanish omelet could sizzle up their eggs and garlic and potatoes in extra-virgin

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Mediterranean olive oil. Cargo from the mother country also included olives, salted capers, oregano, vinegar, salmon, sardines, hams, beer, butter, wheat, cloves, noodles, garbanzo beans, lentils, cumin—all distinctly recognizable ingredients of the Iberian table.36 But before the days when national marketing made its inroads here, strong regional tendencies persisted. Scrambled eggs, black beans, and tortillas made up life’s daily fare. The Tabascan was apt to hunker down with a hearty plate of roasted armadillo, or perhaps turtle cooked in its own blood. Tepesquintle meat always drew a crowd, as did fish tamales steamed in aromatic leaves. Two dishes in particular characterized Tabasco. Uliche was marinated meat served in a seasoned white sauce, while a spongy leaf called momo bestowed its particular flavor to almost any dish. Tabascans also enjoyed a special bread known as zizote, from the French ciseaux, meaning “scissors.” And as in Yucatán, there was the ubiquitous wild spinach known as chaya, especially popular when chopped and incorporated in a large tamale known as brazo de chaya.37 What to drink? When possible, they chased down their suppers with hot or cold chocolate, or with imported merlos and cabernets, or with generous glasses of that cheap southeastern rum known as aguardiente. Laborers throughout the countryside gathered under shade trees to share buckets of homemade brews like chicha and guarapo.38 In terms of water, Tabascans shared the irony of the Ancient Mariner: it surrounded them everywhere, but little of it was potable. That nicety stopped no one. Throughout rural areas in the late twentieth century, they scooped water directly from the rivers and creeks and boiled it into coffee, or simply drank it as was. True, there were options. Many homes trapped rainwater in barrels, as in Yucatán and Belize even today. The more affluent, urban families operated an imported, two-tank filtering system: they poured their water into an upper receptacle, from whence it trickled through stone or ceramic membrane into a second tank below, there passing via a spigot into cups and pitchers of the household.39 Books too made the man, and in this regard Tabascans stood out for their shortcomings. The state of public education was nothing less than catastrophic, except for a handful in place like the capital, where schoolboys boned up on geography (including lessons on “the use of the globe”), Latin, English, and French. With the exception of personal letters and dry official bulletins, whatever Tabascans did read came from somewhere else.

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The state did not obtain its first printing press until 1826; it was purchased from an individual in Yucatán, a province that had only made the same advance fourteen years earlier.40 Those who could read poured over whatever books and newspapers came their way, but Tabasco would not achieve general literacy until after the forced marches of the Mexican Revolution. Writing, and particularly writing for posterity (say, history) or as a form of poetic or philosophical expression, remained the privilege of priests, military officers, and a handful of affluent gentlemen. In the first decades of Mexican independence, Tabascans had good reason to dream of better things, and one of those dreams concerned improved health. When Spain departed in 1821, the province had no doctors beyond the folk-healers popularly known as romancistas. Nineteen years later, five or six doctors tended the people, and two pharmacists pounded out something resembling medicine with their mortars and pestles. Sanitation, either urban or rural, remained abysmal, particularly since no one understood the causes of diseases such as typhus, dysentery, and yellow fever, and the afflicted took recourse in the ancient belief in miasmas, fetid airs that somehow permeated and sickened the body: those “exaltaciones pútridas” that a governor warned of in his congressional address of 1831.41 When no such airs were present, the only viable explanation remained witchcraft. If there were few doctors, there were also few jurists, few educators, and almost no public institutions worth mentioning. Machetes subbed as country lawyers. As with other Mexican provinces, the handful of individuals blessed with education and affluence resided in the capital, just to the left bank of the Grijalva’s confluence with the Mezcalapa. San Juan Bautista de Villahermosa was usually shortened to San Juan Bautista throughout the nineteenth century and later secularized to Villahermosa in 1920. The cream of society made their home here. A short distance uphill from the Grijalva’s west banks, merchant houses tallied their accounts and guarded metal coins in old strong boxes; a handful of professors taught law; and people in the towns strolled in the evenings beneath the yellowish glow of oil street lights. The Tabascan well-to-do perfumed their homes with white-blossomed azucemas, “the flower with the odor of tuberose, gardenia, and jasmine combined.”42 They organized balls where the gentlemen donned linen shirts and the women put on cinnamon petticoats, and together they danced the cuadrille, the contradanza, the waltz, and the more energetic jarabe. The center of

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this rustic elegance consisted of a series of streets and buildings that ran parallel to the river. Further off at an elevation, a semicircular avenue known as El Calvario girded the city, while another avenue known as Esquipulas (today 27 de Febrero) stretched westward to nearby pueblos of Atasta and Tamulté. Urban growth long ago absorbed both, but in those times they were key suppliers of urban needs. Even so, most products came in by canoe, and on any given day hundreds of these could be seen clustered at the water’s edge, accommodating the city-dwellers who came to buy. Although religion had less of a hold on life than in Yucatán, the elite paid to have their remains buried in San Juan Bautista’s church, and evenings like December 12—the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe—saw massive displays of candles lining the streets.43 Beginning in late January the carnival season transformed downtown San Juan Bautista into seven weeks of flamboyant pageantry, raucous improvised musical ensembles, and prominent citizens dressed as beggars. Liquor flowed in abundance.44 It was a tidy if fairly mindless existence, and its practitioners took it as prima facie evidence of their superiority over the indigenous peasantry. The province’s Hispanics naturally held themselves as superior to their Indian counterparts. In places such as Palizada, for example, 80 percent of the Indians were reduced to a state of peonage, while deeper in the interior, in miserable places such as Balancán, the creoles maintained their superiority by retailing trinkets they purchased further down river.45 Nevertheless, prevailing notions held that Tabascans of any sort somehow differed from other peoples of New Spain to the west, and from the Yucatecans and Central Americans to the east and south. The region’s exotic abundance has long inspired theories of geographical determinism. To take only one example, Manuel R. Mora’s 1947 Ensayo sociológico de Tabasco stands as a classic in the dubious science of psycho-geography, but Mora’s aphoristic pronouncements (“Men of the tropics live in a state of feverish nightmare”) simply articulated what many people had thought for a long time. The quotable Mora believed that in his home state, “As in Hindu literature, men and trees form a single family.” But he reserved his sternest pronouncement for the peasantry: “The mental process of the Tabascan peasant has been slow, to the point that he still maintains practices appropriate to the communities that sociology would consider

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‘natural peoples,’ that is, peoples in a state of mythical consciousness.” This, from a future governor!46 Though scornful of Indian superstition, Tabascan creoles and mestizos had their own landscapes of legend: strange beings that roamed the night, spirits tortured by the unfinished business of their unhappy lives. Among the most famous was the macareno andaluz, the ghost of a slave trader who brought human chattel from Cuba in colonial times. He became the mayordomo of a wealthy hacendado and took advantage of his patrón’s senility to steal hundreds of cattle. But the patrón’s son killed the macareno during a rodeo, and the latter’s spirit wandered the land ever after. Throughout the length and breadth of Tabasco men saw him in broad daylight, passing through walls and trees as if through mist, or at night when the rain poured and the wind howled. Women crossed themselves at the mention of his name. He drove before him a phantom head of cattle, and where his spirit passed, cows were likely to disappear as part of the macareno’s eternal fruitless quest to restore his patrón’s stolen herd.47 Even those brave enough to face the macareno quailed before the demon who inhabited the banks of the Torno del Diablo, one of the Grijalva’s many bends. The demon was black and enormous, and had hooves and horns. Boatmen who passed in the dark saw sparks of fire issuing from his eyes and mouth; if they panicked and fled to the opposite shore, they were apt to find their boats burned to ashes the next morning. But when the citizens of San Juan Bautista raised a posse to chase him down, the demon simply disappeared.48 Such were the terrors that haunted even the most urban of imaginations—amplified, no doubt, by city folks’ distance from things that rustled at night in the monte. Many Tabascans took as scientific fact the existence of duendes, small, mischievous people with backward hooves instead of feet. Similar to the alux of Yucatán, the Tabascan duende always wore a hat and was capable of dematerializing at a moment’s notice. Once a duende got into the home, trouble was certain to follow, and for that reason housewives endorsed a clever strategy for settling accounts. Folk prescription held that the best method was to leave out a gigantic meal with generous servings of aguardiente. Once the supernatural creature had eaten and drunk himself into a stupor, the duende could no longer assume incorporeal form, and the housewife could beat him with a broomstick.49

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Monsters and evil spirits notwithstanding, the real problems traced back to poverty and human fractiousness. One of the key dynamics, here as in so many parts of early Mexico, was the internecine struggle for dominance and freedom among the many villages. Macuspana, for example, had always tried to control the outlying village of Tepetitán (“between the hills”), even while the latter had successfully struggled to maintain its independence.50 This resulted in quarrels of juez versus juez, cura versus cura, of the two towns.51 A far better-documented case comes from the parish Ríos de Usumacinta, a remote, poor, and underdeveloped collection of villages dotted along a snaking turn of the river in the far eastern part of the state. As nearly as anyone could determine or remember, Usumacinta had served as the parish cabecera since 1726, since a little-understood event they described as “the destruction of the village of Petén Acté.” However, when new cura Andrés Rubio arrived in 1846 from Yucatán’s San Felipe de Bacalar, mere months before the great Maya uprising that was about to convulse southeastern Mexico, the vecinos of Balancán persuaded him of their plan to relocate the cabecera; they won him over with promises to fill the church with pomp and imágenes, together with a brand new rectory in which he would make his home. Outlying villages such as Tenosique, Estampilla, Multé (“place of workers”), and Santa Ana, however, had good reason to worry about the power of the growing Balancán bourgeoisie; the town was not centrally located, and even laying aside the threat to ancient precedent, there was good reason to believe that service to outlying villages would decline.52 Would any official—priest or secular—be willing to make the eighteen-league journey upriver to visit these poor, squalid settlements once he had settled down to the opulent delights of Balancán?53 Ultimately, the transfer did take place, although virtually the entire parish was swept away in the terrible floods of 1852, rendering the controversy moot.54 But the creole peoples who ruled in the great cities also had their differences, and it was among these quarrels, more than anywhere else, that Tabasco’s problems were born. Imperial Spain suffered a profound contradiction in that its monarchs claimed absolute sovereignty, but were in fact weak in practical terms, invariably hamstrung by debt, distance, a jealous nobility, an inadequate technical capacity, and above all a sluggish bureaucracy that congealed all initiatives into something resembling molasses in winter. Bourbon reformers of the eighteenth century tried to eliminate the bottlenecks, but if anything were more committed to efficient monarchy

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as never before. They envisioned a world much like the one they already knew, only functional.

The Church Beyond the divisions that cut through the settlers’ world, there existed yet another colonial import: the Catholic Church. Indeed, the Spanish brought their religious faith along with all their other institutions. The church strove to be all things to all men, a single and all-encompassing medium for the lives, joys, and heartaches of mortal existence. The institution had emerged from the chaos surrounding the collapse of the Roman empire, and it offered some semblence of stability in a highly unstable world. Church norms intertwined with local values to form the bedrock of community morality; the ceremonies of the liturgical year kept people together; the parish priest was the one literate man amid vast ignorance; monasteries served as oases of knowledge and attainment while the rest of the world struggled to survive; and the values of corporatism offered an ideological foundation for the feudal reciprocity between lord and peasant. Like any human system, the best the church could hope for was to minimize the worst abuses, while at times it generated problems of its own. Yet it functioned. As patchwork peoples like Spain gradually united, Catholicism glued them together and provided the basis of early national identity. Transferral to the Spanish Americas subsequently intensified rather than weakened these values. Here, ethnic and cultural differences were far vaster, while the secular power, invariably in the hands of tribute holders or revenue-hungry crown appointees, was more predatory. But in almost every regard, the promulgation of Spanish Catholicism in Tabasco proved difficult. Caught among the larger entities of Yucatán, Chiapas, and Veracruz, the province oscillated among the different religious orders and authorities. Franciscans came here with Cortés and attempted their first systematic evangelization in 1534, but found that their efforts to win popular support collided against a band of rogue Spaniards intent on abducting women for reasons easily imagined. Owing to a shortage of stone, the friars failed to create those imposing physical monuments visible in the churches elsewhere in the southeast. The one exception is the enormous structure at Oxolotán, located in the southern sierra, along a

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river of the same name.55 But the Franciscans abandoned Tabasco in 1544, when the Montejo completed its conquest of the far more populous Yucatán peninsula. The province became part of Dominican-dominated bishopric operated out of San Cristóbal. In 1545 no less a person than Bartolomé de las Casas, the famous Defender of Indians, arrived to serve as its new bishop and to oversee part of the spiritual mission in the riverine lowlands. But his radicalism guaranteed a brief one-year tenure, and in 1562, with his pro-Indian crusades receding into memory, Yucatán established a separate bishopric that absorbed Tabasco and gradually secularized the regular order’s parishes. The arrangement turned out to be permanent, at least until San Juan Bautista received its own bishopric in 1880.56 The Inquisition came here as well. But its efforts were focused overwhelmingly on disciplining the morals of peninsular and creole elements, with racially mixed populations receiving far less attention. The Spanish discovered early on that applying inquisitorial process on the native peoples was to plow the sea, and an edict of 1570 set the original Americans outside of the institution’s purview. Tabascan inquisitions normally operated out of Chiapas, not Yucatán, for reasons of proximity, and spent most of their energies on cases of blasphemy and sexual misconduct. The Holy Institution thus functioned more as an internal discipline upon the colonizers themselves, and its powers declined radically in the late Bourbon period. In 1788, for example, the Inquisition courts ceased to hear cases of bigamy. The Inquisition limped on for another twenty years, reprimanding priests too indiscreet in their sentimental lives, but the juggernaut was now a shade of its former strength, and the great policeman of Hispanic morals disappeared altogether with the coming of independence.57 Being a priest during the rough-and-tumble of the 1800s was no easy pull. In this setting of a weak state with few jails, no prisons, and no concepts of rehabilitation, firing squads offered the shortest way with criminals and malcontents, and clergy were expected to accompany the condemned man in his final hours, even holding his hand as soldiers tied him to a chair and carried out the execution. A half century after the fact, retired padre Manuel Gil y Sáenz could still remember feeling the transferred impact of the bullets as they shattered the chest of one Juan Pérez, alias “El Tabasqueño,” shot as a lesson to other would-be pirates.58 But these dramatic episodes paled beside the daily grind of ministering to poor and ignorant people fragmented by ethnic differences and byzantine geography, and

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given to such practices as cohabitation, heavy drinking, and what was essentially trial by combat. Here as elsewhere, native populations melted before the friars, victims of microorganisms the supposed benefactors unwittingly carried. In addition, Tabasco was poorer, less developed, and more prone to natural disasters such as floods. Even more than in the case of its southeast sister Yucatán, the Tabascan church suffered from the objective difficulties of fulfilling its promised mission. Rivers, swamps, innovations, forests, and mountains made it difficult for curas in the relatively populous cabeceras to service outlying communities known as sujetos. The situation also presented frightening linguistic challenges. A Tabascan priest might be expected to speak Spanish, Yucatec Maya, Zoque, Nahuatl, Chontal, and an obscure subdialect of the latter known as Chontalpaneco.59 Friars of the so-called regular orders were willing to endure such rigor, but as elsewhere in Latin America, they gradually lost ground to the less motivated secular orders, and with the change evangelical fervor waned and moral laxity set in. In part the difficulties of the situation owed to the perpetually decrepit conditions of church personnel and infrastructure here. Under these conditions, the laity made vast allowances for the personal morality of its clergy. To take only one example, a certain padre Gómez of Frontera, even by the admissions of his superiors in San Juan Bautista, was a heavy drinker, but in other regards fulfilled his duties and won the love of his parish.60 Complaints of understaffing became common from the 1570s onward, while Tabascans perceived the Yucatecan church, like Yucatán in general, as an extractive force, demanding taxes and contribution of goods but giving relatively little in return. Tabascans complained about Yucatecans receiving all the choicest ecclesiastical privileges—appointments, endowments, and so forth—but even more, they resented the way that young Yucatecan priests used the province as a trampoline to a larger career elsewhere, while “the worst priests” stayed on. These ambitious young outsiders arrived not only with attitude, but often with a family in tow, one that Tabascan parishioners were expected to support. Small wonder, then, that demands for an independent bishopric began as far back as the Spanish Cortes of 1811. Resentful creoles calculated the Yucatecan dependency to be a liability that drained their province of $30,000 annually.61 As in Yucatán, the clergy played an essential role in finance. Banks as we know them did not exist until the late nineteenth century; rather, the

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church financed rural and urban properties through the antiquated system of capellanías, whereby entrepreneurs borrowed against their own property from inalienable loan funds held by individual churchman. The priest so endowed collected his returns, but paid for his privilege by singing a certain number of masses to the departed donor’s soul. Cacao haciendas such as San Juan and Carmen, both located in Teapa, often owed money loaned to them out from capellanía funds.62 Holdover medieval antiusury laws prohibited any money-lending beyond what the church considered morally permissible: usually around 4 percent over five years. And as with their southeastern counterparts, holders of Tabascan capellanías usually rolled over the debt rather than foreclose on properties they had little chance of either selling or developing into something more substantial. Serious attempts to collect, or simply to put the situation on a more realistic footing, were likely to embroil the well-intentioned priest in a bureaucratic dogfight. A perfect example of the dangers of the straight-and-narrow path emerges in the case of a Teapa cacao hacienda. At some undetermined time in the past, padre Irineo Ruiz had loaned out $1,000 to a certain Dr. Builoni on his hacienda. Builoni died, and the property passed to his daughter Luisa. In 1816, when the cura of Teapa, José Eugenio Quiroga, went to put accounts in order, he discovered that no one had collected any money on the property in eleven years, and that the hacienda’s infrastructure was falling apart. To top things off, Ruiz himself had moved to Spain and could not be located. Wealth thus existed on paper, but in practical terms had often simply disappeared.63 Beyond doubling as petty financiers, the Tabascan clergy made do by dabbling in business interests on the side: a sugar hacienda there, a few cattle there, and above all, the cacao business that everyone knew so well, which prospered in relatively small and scantily improved spaces.64 Such investments helped maintain the divine institution, but also left it vulnerable to the changing social and political climate of the independence era. In 1833, during newly independent Mexico’s first reform, under the leadership of Vice President Valentín Gómez de Farías, the secretary of justice freely expropriated the Tabascan church’s tithe funds, to the pitiful tune of $1,325, in order to build a hospital and public jail; five years later Mexico was convulsed in the Texas crisis, and the debt remained unpaid, with no reimbursement in sight.65 The lesson of this and similar episodes was clear: the state took from the church when necessary, and there was nothing to be done about it.

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On a happier note, the church was instrumental in letters. Tabasco’s principal author and historian during the nineteenth century was the aforementioned padre Manuel Gil y Sáenz. Born in San Juan Bautista in the year 1829, the son of a Campeche merchant, Gil showed a precocious talent for learning and at an early age served in one of the state courts. In 1852 Gil went to Campeche for advanced studies and was ordained six years later (a difficult time to become a priest, given the national tide of liberalism that was then stripping away many of the vocation’s privileges). Like Yucatán’s ecclesiastical and financial leader Raymundo Pérez, Gil began as cura of Macuspana, but he eventually rose to become the vicario of Tabasco, all the while maintaining his passionate interest in provincial history. It was no accident that this most committed and intellectually curious of Tabascan priests had also been born there. Not surprisingly, and despite signal contributions to culture and society, religious influence remained weak here forever after. Lending tended to stay within elite circles, while achievements in print found an even more limited audience. As in Yucatán, country people often lived as they chose and only accommodated their lifestyles to church doctrine after the fact. In 1839, for example, José María Estrada of Cunduacán made plans to marry one María Sóstenes Pérez, some years younger than himself. The problem was that some time earlier, Estrada had slept with María’s mother, while the bride-to-be had slept with her intended husband’s son! Revealingly enough, the church did come across with a dispensation, perhaps because the union was virtually a fait accompli, perhaps because it was the only way to square what seemed a hopelessly immoral circle.66 Oblique references to village atheists were common enough, even when details are lacking.67 Beyond that, a general tone of despair permeated clerical correspondence, borne mainly from disgust with “the crudeness of the Tabascan temperament.”68 Finally, the deepening secularization of society made it all the harder to maintain the old role of spiritual and intellectual guide to some less than obedient flock. Given its omnipresence, the Catholic Church was a seismograph for coming shock, and initially it would set its face against so many of the changes of the nineteenth century: the science that questioned biblical truth, the industry that broke up ancient guilds, the urbanization that eroded peasant folkways, the growing literacy and individualism that made each man the architect of his own life. These changes touched Tabasco far more lightly than in metropolitan centers, but touch they did,

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and the coming flood time was to involve questions of religious redefinition at every step. Indeed, not every act of heterodoxy or skepticism could be written off as the misbehavior of lusty bumpkins, for Tabasco had its share of reasoned and informed opposition to the Catholic vision of life. The roots of that opposition are familiar enough to students of Latin American history. In the 1700s the Spanish state, now invigorated by the new Bourbon administration brought from France, selectively adopted parts of the Enlightenment program: reason, order, optimism, but now overseen by an increasingly powerful and centralized monarchy.69 In this way of thinking, the church looked not only like a peddler of obscurantist humbug but also a rival to power and an obstacle to good government. The state thus turned on its old partner in colonialism and began a systematic reduction of clerical privilege. Francisco de Amusquibar, governor from 1784 to 1791, was an avid reader of Voltaire and went out of his way to pick quarrels with what was an already weakened institution.70 In general, then, religious development in Tabasco was not robust. Owing to its overall poverty, its often antagonistic relationship with the Yucatecan bishopric, and its share in Tabasco’s geographical fragmentation, the Catholic Church failed to develop into an institutional force comparable to counterparts in Jalisco or Puebla. Devotion failed to deepen with Mexican independence, and the institution remained a secondary actor in the dramas of the nineteenth century, in a state where cacao trees and bayonets dominated the landscape.

A Fertilit y th at Fr ightened As it turned out, Tabascans and Mexicans had something more visceral than doctrinal points to fight about: Who was to control the wealth of this riverine greenhouse? The province had its drawbacks, but nature counterbalanced them with a fertility that constantly threatened to overwhelm the people who claimed this land. Who was to decide its usages? Who would perform the work the land required? And to whom would the profits accrue? These were and are the questions that have so often defined provincial Mexican history. Much of the Tabascan economy consisted of diverse subsistence activities. Cattle, for example, flourished in the low-lying savannas. The zebus

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who graze through much of the state today, sauntering across the landscape with their air of stately serenity, in fact only arrived in the 1920s as gifts to a revolutionary governor. In earlier days, Spanish-brought ganado criollo predominated.71 They pastured on broad swatches of flood-plains grass known as grama de agua, often wading deep into the swamps in search of this succulent morsel, and in the best of times lived in herds numbering into the hundreds. Tending these creatures (when they were tended) were ignorant cowboys who entertained themselves by such pastimes as capturing, castrating, and releasing deer.72 But as in most parts of Mesoamerica, the vast majority of agriculture was dedicated to corn. It was consumed in large quantities and in any number of recipes; it constituted more than half of all Indian tribute, and its cultivation remained the dominant enterprise. But people grew it everywhere, and its bulkiness and relatively low price made freighting and export not worth the bother. Tabascan corn was thus entirely for local consumption, and its strains and secrets formed the bedrock of folk knowledge. Corn is not corn is not corn, exactly. Tabascans worked some seven different varieties of the plant, all descended from a long-lost wild ancestor known as teocintle.73 Tabascans would have recognized, and savored, the differences between the bellwether tuxpeño found throughout the Gulf coast; the fat, stubby ears of nal-tal, a strain limited to the Yucatán peninsula and adjoining regions, and known in Tabasco as mejen (a Maya word meaning “tiny”); the twelve-rowed kernels of the elongated comiteco that prospered in the uplands around Teapa; the otolillo, with its eight rows of white, yellow, and even red kernels, that prospers throughout the south.74 Each carried its own flavor and its own advantages. Whatever the subvariety, farmers inserted seeds into the ground using holes poked by precontact technology of digging sticks known as macanas and sowed three crops all together: corn to grow high, beans to fill the midlevel, and leafy squash vines to cover the ground and retain moisture.75 There was a primary cycle of planting in May and harvesting in August through September, the so-called cosecha del año (“yearly harvest”), while Tabasco’s heat and humidity permitted a secondary, NovemberMarch cycle known as the tornamil.76 These techniques worked so well that even into the early twentieth century, the use of the plow remained quite limited.77 Again like ancient Egyptians along the Nile, Tabascans seldom added fertilizer or bothered with new techniques such as crop rotation;

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rather, the rivers flooded at least once every twenty years, and their waters brought invigorating nutrients. The months of February through May posed challenges for the tiller, for the clearing, burning, and planting had to be coordinated with seasonal rains. These months were also the time when chapulines, or grasshoppers, descended upon the fields, devouring everything in sight. Tabascans attempted to control these pests by digging up eggs before they could hatch, or by driving the young and still flightless insects into water-filled ditches, where they drowned. But voracious locusts remained a problem even in the twentieth century.78 Once the corn crop had matured, men of the hot country stored their grain in canoes, covering each layer with sand to keep it safe from insects. For all its intricacies, though, corn cultivation remained a fairly secure enterprise. It provides the majority of calories consumed in Mexico, and even today occupies approximately half of all cultivated acreage.79 And despite all the bloodshed that was to follow the birth of civilization, corn by whatever name has always grown in abundance sufficient to allow the human race in Mesoamerica to continue. Locals supplemented corn with rice and beans; with root crops like yucca and camote; and with seed crops like sesame and sunflower.80 Prior to the mid-1850s, Tabascans also cultivated several varieties of cotton, which prospered in the hot, fertile lands of the Chontalpa. They used it to spin their own clothing, for the candlewicks that lit their huts in the evening, and more ominously in terms of the Tabascan future, for fuses. But cotton fiber was destined to remain a product of domestic consumption, and never an export staple.81 Many of the crops associated with Tabasco today had no place in colonial or nineteenth-century times. As of the late 1800s, for example, few here even cultivated bananas, let alone ate them; later Tabasco’s oro verde, the “green gold” that fueled revolutionary-era prosperity, for the moment they grew only in Central America, or on faraway islands like Jamaica. Pineapples and mangos too were later arrivals. Coffee came from the Middle East and Mediterranean, and thus played no role whatsoever in pre-Columbian society. It remained largely unknown in the colonial period, in part because chocolate dominated so overwhelmingly as the morning drink; Spanishspeaking America developed no significant taste for coffee until the middle of the nineteenth century. But in part the absence of Tabascan coffee owed to a climate too torrid for this delicate tree. By the end of the nineteenth

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century, when world coffee markets were exploding, Tabasco produced a only 300,000 kilograms per year, a mere 1 percent of Costa Rican production.82 Even today, locally produced Tabascan coffee remains something of an artisanal rarity, rather like homegrown tomatoes. Tabasco was also the ideal greenhouse for pimienta gorda, the tree whose tiny black seeds, once dried and ground, stand beside the salt shakers of the world’s breakfast tables. Like so many plants, the pepper tree luxuriates in Tabasco’s hot, well-watered soil; after reaching full productive capacity a decade after planting, it can produce for nearly another eighty years. This spice may have lured Christopher Columbus to cross the Atlantic, but curiously enough, it did not become a regional export until many centuries later. Shortly after Mexico broke from Spain, a provincial governor tried to foment production by fining anyone who felled a pepper tree, but the anarchy of the following decades rendered the law unenforceable, and the dream died.83 In 1960–64 the national secretary of agriculture launched a program of giving out saplings and providing technical advice; a fullscale boom came in 1976–79, only to tumble when the Chiapan volcano Chichonal unexpectedly erupted in 1982, and its smoke and ashes wrecked havoc on the pimienta gorda’s flowering process.84 One early national product was wood, and the chief forest export of the time was something variously known as palo de tinte, palo negro, ek’, laguna wood, Campeche or “Campeachy” wood, or simply dyewood or logwood, or, for the scientifically inclined, Haematoxylum campechanium. It prospered in the low-lying wetland areas that separated Tabasco from the Yucatán peninsula, growing to a height of nearly fifty feet. Once stripped of its bark and chipped apart, the inner wood rapidly oxidized to produce a substance known as hematoxeína, which in turn interacted with certain metallic lacquers to produced the dyes much in demand in the days before chemically derived versions. Different strains of trees in combination with specific lacquers produced an assortment of tints clustering around the basic colors of blue, red, green, and yellow.85 Palo de tinte excelled in the struggle for survival, for nature endowed it with the ability to emit defoliants that prevented other plants from crowding it out, and which were even known to kill plants that had been stored with it in ships’ holds. Dyewood’s natural defenses were so strong that the forests seemed to exhale an acidic air, as though issuing from within some immense tanning factory.86

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Logging this exotic timber was tough, wet-footed work, often carried out on iron rations and far from the comforts of even the humblest of Spanish towns. It lured English pirates (or better said, contraband loggers) in seventeenth century, and these irregular forces virtually owned Laguna de Términos for more than a hundred years, with the strongest presence coming after Oliver Cromwell’s push for empire resulted in the conquest of Jamaica in 1655. Vast numbers of English pirate-woodcutters lined the banks and rivers of Laguna de Términos, and their pursuits, profitable if utterly informal, continued until Spain finally expelled the interlopers in 1717. The battle took place on July 16, the day of Our Lady of Carmen, and the grateful victors applied her name to the only place resembling a town, humble Isla del Carmen, at the Laguna’s mouth.87 By 1840 the original eye-patch pirates were long gone, but a new international presence—the commercial house—had taken their place; European and US interests purchased the totality of the lumber and found loans and credit far more efficient in controlling human behavior than were the cannons and cutlasses that preceded them. In San Juan Bautista one could find houses from the Britain (Watson, Cabot, & Co.), France (Pierre Paillet), Germany (Lobach & Co.), and Spain (Pablo Sastré y Masas). They functioned not just as exporters, but as the only banking institutions of the day, writing out promises of payment and honoring IOUs from foreign countries. By the late 1850s the United States purchased about half of Tabasco’s dyewood exports, and in exchange sold textiles, foodstuffs (mostly flour, but also cheese, onions, and potatoes), medicines, firearms, tools, and assorted manufactured goods. It is likely that many of the state’s stone constructions make use of the ballast rock that Yankee vessels left in place of the logs they carried out.88 But the dyewood industry went the way of all agricultural export booms as chemically produced substitutes began to take its place after 1850. Tabasco lacked precious metals, but it did possess one unique commodity, a tree whose seeds conquered the globe. Tarrish, almond-sized grains of cacao form the key ingredient in what gradually became known as chocolate. Emissary of countless love affairs, consoling hot mug in January, the flavor of ice cream on an afternoon in summer, the soldier’s indispensable C-ration: the cacao bean has penetrated so deeply into human taste buds— and consciousness—that modern life is unimaginable without it. The itch for cacao has an ancient pedigree. The plant botanists know as Theobroma cacao L. originated in the riverine lowlands to the east of the

Figure 5.  The object of so much passion, the pods of the tropical Theobroma cacao, whose seeds form the basis of chocolate. Created by the gods, propagated by sacred monkeys, worshiped by mortal man, cacao became the single most traded commodity in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and the struggle to control its production and export formed a constant during the flood time of Tabasco’s civil wars. Photograph by Terry Rugeley, taken at the Hacienda Cholula, near Comalcalco.

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northern Andes, somewhere in the wilderness of southeastern Colombia. But the actual processes of domestication and transmission remain a mystery.89 Cacao prospers in shady pockets of hot, steamy climates. The plant propagates itself by generating a series of four- to five-inch pods (mazorcas); within each pod lie dozens of seeds, or granos, each the size and color of an almond. The mazorcas sprout not from the tips of branches, but directly from the trunk at unpredictable points, bestowing upon the tree an image of almost magical abundance. Once mature, it was picked and cut open to reveal a bounty of almond-shaped beans wrapped in a white pulp—the same pulp, in fact, that Mother Nature provided as a means of reproduction, for it attracted monkeys, who tore open the pods to get at their sweet pith, inadvertently scattering the cacao seeds over the ground.90 Mesoamericans had cultivated it since the Formative Period (1500–150 BC), and possibly earlier.91 By the Late Postclassic Period (1200–1520 AD), cacao was cultivated in many of the hot lowland areas south of Veracruz. A broad Pacific coastal stretch extending from the southern Chiapan province of Soconusco on through modern-day Guatemala and El Salvador became the principal producer for the residents of Tenochtitlán, who consumed vast quantities that flowed in as tribute.92 The Mayas knew it as chok wa, the Aztecs as xocoatl, and both peoples took it in a mixture of corn gruel and chilies. Apparently a fermented chicha-like drink existed alongside of the more familiar nonalcoholic version.93 Above all, they treasured the foamy head generated by patiently pouring the drink from one vessel to another. As coffee-lovers prize the espumi that tops their espresso, so too the ancient Maya celebrated cacao foam in art and poetry. In fact, the Maya glyph for cacao is a left-turned human profile facing an arc of bubbles, much like a graphic representation of champagne.94 The conquistadors initially turned up their noses at this strange beverage, but Juan Cacao proved the strongest man at last. Spaniards discovered that a cup of hot chocolate, unlike peyote buttons or psilocybin mushrooms, carried no psychotropic effects that might lend themselves to the Devil’s hand, and above all, it tasted delicious. Cacao thus handily survived the conquest and adapted itself to new tastes. The staggering corpus that is Mexican cuisine includes such refinements as chocolate crepes and soufflés; chocolate sauces for squid, for snails, and for quail; cakes without number; and the elaborate sauce known as mole.95 Spanish clergy debated whether chocolate constituted a foodstuff, and hence fell under the ban of

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fasting each Friday, or whether it was fundamentally a beverage, and hence exempt. The latter view ultimately prevailed.96 But pre-Columbian reverence lived on; in the sixteenth century, a “Christ of the Cacao” statue made its way into Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral, where it remains today. Murals of Indian-drawn cacao trees, together with their biological allies, the monkeys, adorn the walls of the Augustinian monastery of Malinalco, in Mexico state.97 Usage in the colonial period approached the level of passion. The uppercrust women of early seventeenth-century Chiapas adored chocolate so much that they had servants bring them steaming hot cups during mass. They fell into a virtual war with the bishop who tried to prevent the disruption, a war that only ended when he died at the hands of an unknown poisoner, and the demitasses resumed.98 But it was not pious women alone who kept up the trade. Everyone drank chocolate, from the viceroy on down to the Indian porters. All had their favorite recipes—variations on cinnamon, achiote, cloves, aniseed, almonds, corn gruel, chilies, and even black pepper—together with exotic techniques for mixing the base with water.99 Hot chocolate also prospered from the addition of one other ingredient unobtainable in either Europe or the Orient: vanilla, the seed of an orchid that became a high-priced export from central Veracruz.100 Cacao cultivation followed a logic set entirely by the genetic caprices of the tree itself. Cacao feeds on alluvial soils below elevations of three hundred feet, soils rich in organic matter and bathed in a humid climate that hovers above 77° Fahrenheit. This diva of the forest requires shade for its sparse and delicate branches, and is usually planted under the shadow of some larger tree known as madre de cacao (“cacao’s mother”). Cultivators began the process with cacao seedlings, carefully guarded from direct sunlight and animal predators. Meanwhile, in the intended location of the cacao grove, the grower would plant two different types of madres: the so-called cocohite for quick if sparse foliage, and a madre chontal for slower but more extensive protection. These shade providers typically received a year’s head start on the cacao itself. In December, with heavy seasonal rains now safely behind, the cacao saplings were relocated to their final destination in the grove, roughly four yards apart from one another. The grower then pruned the young trees at a height of one and a half meters in order to encourage branching and, by extension, greater production of mazorcas. Once the madre chontal had achieved its full density, the cocohite would

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be sacrificed. Thereafter, an average cacao field requires three to four weedings (chapeos) per year.101 But once these nonnegotiable terms are met, the tree repays its pampering in spades. The cacao’s trunk produces eight-inch oblong pods known as mazorcas; within them are nestled a series of granos—white and bitter in their original form—that comprise the desired article. Each pod contains some fifty beans. Trees begin to pod after two or three years, and a good tree can produce for twenty-five years, while an estate with a thousand trees might be expected to yield nearly three hundred kilos of marketable product each year. Tabascans reaped three harvests: the principal (“main crop”) in April and June, the alegrón (“happy crop”) in November and December, and the invernada (“winter crop”) in January through March, with a potential fourth—the picturesquely named cacao loco or aventurero (“crazy or risky crop”) in July through September. In terms of early nineteenthcentury cacao production, the leading municipios were Teapa, Cunduacán, Cárdenas, Comalcalco, and Huimanguillo, but some degree of cultivation could be found almost everywhere except the Usumacinta region. Cacao processing formed a cornerstone of local knowledge. Discarded pod shells or bagazo provided food for pigs and goats, or served as compost or kindling. Meanwhile, Tabascan cultivators devoted their greatest care to preparing the beans. These latter items could be dried immediately by spreading them on large patios and toasting them slowly under the gaze of the tropical sun; far more commonly, processors first heat the beans to 120° Fahrenheit, thus causing them to ferment and resulting in a richer, fuller taste. The crop lends itself to both large- and small-scale cultivation, and even today, it is not uncommon to see Tabascans drying their granos in a variety of places—on basketball courts, on patios, on rooftops, and even on the sidewalk in front of their own homes. Once the beans have been washed, fermented, and dried, they are ready to be ground and mixed with water and sugar, and possibly laced with almonds and cinnamon. In many parts of southern Mexico, this style of hot chocolate remained the wake-up drink well in the mid-twentieth century and has only slipped in popularity over the past generation. A cacao harvest might fall victim to any number of ravages. Gophers, leaf ants, squirrels, deer, birds, and monkeys all went after one part or another of the tree, and hence required careful vigilance. Far more insidious threats came from microorganisms. These included the feared escoba de

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bruja that deformed the branches, leaving them looking like the scraggly “witch’s broom” that gave the disease its name. La mancha was a blight that hit all parts of the plant, but mainly the trunks and roots; even when not fatal, it reduced yields and quality.102 The appearance of any of these pests could doom an entire year’s harvest and had to be watched for with great care. The vast pre-Columbian demand for cacao beans, both as commerce and as tribute (32 percent in colonial times), led to a specialized regional vocabulary. To count the seeds, the Indians used the Spanish word mano to indicate “five,” the Indian word zontle for 80 manos (that is, 400), and jiquimil or xiquimil for 1,000 zontles (8,000). Apparently originating with cacao, this curious numbering system functioned in almost all calculations of agricultural produce, from corn to bananas.103 And while Tabascans eventually imported hybrid cacaos that are more productive and less susceptible to disease, they nevertheless reserve a special place of cacao criollo, the original and indigenous strain instantly recognizable by its narrow pods with tapered ends. Call them primitive, call them prescientific, but these techniques followed a logic of practical usage, and for that reason they have enjoyed a phenomenal longevity. Isolation fosters continuity, and well into the years when airplanes and wireless radio were stitching together the farflung Mexican republic, when sleek deco architecture was transforming urban landscapes, and when celluloid images danced before an astonished public, the people of this wetland continued to count out their existence in the ancient measures of zontles and xiquimiles.104 Given the cacao tree’s preference for hot, steamy terrains, Tabasco had the potential to be one of the world’s great cultivators. Spanish colonials hoped that this crop, so much in demand from the sixteenth century onward, would bring them wealth. But the best-laid plans of would-be cacao barons soon went awry. The first problem concerned labor shortage. The indigenous population of Tabasco at the moment of contact is believed to have stood somewhere around 135–160,000, but by the end of the sixteenth century had fallen by as much as 90 percent.105 Cultural dislocation, forced labor, and above all, European diseases decimated the native peoples, taking with them the hands necessary for the laborious preparation of beans. During the 1600s Guatemala challenged Tabascan cacao, but industry dominance eventually passed to elites of Ecuador and Venezuela (including families such as the illustrious Bolívar clan), and later to Brazil’s

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coastal Bahia region. In the twentieth century, Africa’s Ivory Coast became the world’s largest producer. But despite the changes, cacao cultivation remained the most lucrative activity in pre-Porfirian Tabasco and underlay most family fortunes. The expansion of Tabascan cacao after 1750 took some unusual turns. This growth opened possibilities for native peoples, since it could be done on a relatively small scale (as much of it is today), and was a form of agriculture that natives had perfected centuries earlier. According to the 1795 tax records, nearly two-thirds of the 379 cacao haciendas and four-fifths of the sugar trapiches were in the hands of “Indians, pardos, or mulatos.” Significantly, however, peninsular creole Spaniards controlled two-thirds of the cattle estates and produced all but 8 of the state’s 124 small merchants.106 In all likelihood an ethnic lower class found space to prosper in rural Tabasco, usually by cultivating key exports. (The claim requires calibration because the vast majority of native peoples did not own commercial properties large enough even to pass under the modest name of ranchos.) But it was people of Spanish background who held the larger and more diversified estates, and who found ways to dominate the economy by controlling commerce. As one final point, widespread participation in the export economy via private estates doubtless appealed to the lucky owner, but also undercut the communal solidarity that was the basis of indigenous culture throughout New Spain, and further submerged Tabascan Indian presence into a mestizo way of life. Regardless of the ethnic formula involved, labor shortages obstructed development. And as with transportation, much of the problem traced back to climate and geography. Owing to the near-constant erosion from water, at any given moment some half of the estate workers were off rebuilding embankments and the primitive kiosks known as palapas, shoring up foundations, dredging out creeks, and clearing raft and bramble from the rivers.107 Unfortunately for would-be cacao magnates, all parts of the southeast had the same problem. Human expectations for manufactured products and purchased goods was so low that people had little incentive for wage labor; so long as land and water were available, the peasant household could produce much of its needs. Property owners and urban gentry—neither of whom did a great deal of digging, hacking, or chopping—called it laziness, and eventually they realized that they could only corral labor by alienating land. During the Spanish Cortes in 1811, a moment when talk of

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increased personal liberties dominated the debates, padre José Eduardo de Cárdenas called for the forced internment of isolated rural Tabascans onto the estates, all in the name of their own good: May our miserable brothers be divided up and placed on the haciendas, with special instructions to their owners to treat them with due humanity; this will be a boon to agriculture, and will bring those individuals into the nation.108

His plan harkened back to the sixteenth-century reducciones, in which friars burned the huts of dispersed settlers and herded the dispossessed into more easily managed towns. But the time for colonial-style reconcentrations had passed. Instead, southeasterners of the 1850s and 1860s continued to experiment with a variety of techniques, many of them based on the coerced labor quotas of Spanish colonial times, and none of them particularly effective. One source of such labor was the Guatemalan Petén, a rainforest settlement poorly developed even by the standards of southeast Mesoamerica. Only conquered in 1695, the region was colonized by families from Mérida and Campeche, bringing with them their favorite pursuit, ranching . . . if that name applies, at least, since the cattle and hogs here received so little care that one might plausibly call them feral. Cattle were driven north to the Yucatecan sugar districts during the dry winter months, while the hogs were sold to Belizeans. By the 1840s Tabascan entrepreneurs were beginning to entice relatively poor peteneros out of their forests with advance wage payments. The ambiguities of the situation helped workers, however, and inconvenienced property owners on both sides of the border. The Petén had developed serious migration problems with Tabasco. Petén laborers began crossing into the Mexican state, accepting cash advances, then absconded with their money and retreated back into the near-impenetrable recesses of their native land. This abuse brought in revenues to the Petén, but from the property owners’ point of view, that money was entering the “wrong hands.” Once flush with Tabascan pesos, petenero peasants had little incentive for wage labor in their home country. Seeing the Tabascan wages—often three times the pittances that hardscrabble locals paid— still more workers were beginning to leave as braceros, while maintaining their families back home. A vigorous policy of enforcing Tabascan debts in 1849 helped curb the practice, but it immediately reduplicated itself in

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the Belizean mahogany camps. It was simply impossible for the Petén to compete with its commercially more powerful neighbors.109 The matter was becoming a serious diplomatic problem when Yucatán’s 1847 Caste War severely altered trade and migratory labor patterns. But the war failed to send sufficient hands to the cacao estates and lumber camps. Well into Porfirian times, Tabascans continued to import substantial amounts of foreign workers, including impoverished Puerto Ricans, as well as the Lebanese Christians driven from their homeland by the sectarian religious strife of the late Ottoman empire.110 Regardless of who did the work, the means and techniques of labor remained primitive. Indeed, it was less human husbandry and more the astonishing heat and fertility that made this land produce as robustly as it did. Tabascans had no machinery beyond a few iron trapiches, or sugar mills. Out in the countryside, humans often carried produce on their backs for distances as great as five leagues. Factories per se did not exist, and even the processing basic foodstuffs remained distinctly rustic: patio-dried cacao beans, stored in canoas, carried overland in sacks by porters. And despite the widespread growth of the cacao haciendas, or more likely because of it, Tabasco suffered from periodic food shortages. One source of basic foodstuffs, as well as higher-priced manufactured goods, was the US territory of Louisiana. Ceded to Spain after the Seven Years War, this vast territory remained a Spanish possession until it was returned to France in 1800, and then to the United States in 1803, when it became a US territory, until statehood in 1812. Spanish merchants were only too happy to supply what the colony could not, and as in so many other parts of Mexico, they remained a powerful interest long after royal authority had departed. Tabasco spent all of its colonial life under someone else’s thumb. The largest of those digits belonged, of course, to Mother Nature. On the eve of independence a plague of locusts and series of forest fires devastated the province; both ills suggest below-average rainfall over the space of years. But more vexing was control by human machination. The question was always how to get the province’s products out to a wider world. Sadly, though, during most of its first two centuries, trade was largely controlled by one of two forces: either the Casa de Contratación in Spain, or the Consulado de Comercio, a monopoly trade organization that gave Mexico City merchants exclusive rights to retail Tabascan products (mostly cacao) within New Spain itself. This rigid arrangement only began to unbend in

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the empire’s later years. In the eighteenth century, prompted by theories of free trade, Bourbon Spain began to relax its restrictions. In 1776, following the recommendations of inspector José de Gálvez, the crown granted Tabascans free trade rights with the ports of Campeche, New Orleans, and Havana; the change was momentous, since all three would factor in the province’s future. Unfortunately, in other regards the eighteenth century was not kind to Tabascan cacao growers. Eager to develop other parts of the empire, the crown enacted elaborate tariff policies in order to foster new plantations in Ecuador and Venezuela. Despite the expansion of Tabascan cacao from the mid-eighteenth century onward, growers simply could not get their product out at prices equal to or below those of Guayaquil competition. Tabascans stagnated and fumed, while elite families such as the Bolívar, grew fabulously wealthy. Why worry? thought the Bourbon reformers. Tabasco is an insignificant subprovince, while Mexico itself mostly produces silver; let natural advantage prevail. But royal indifference came back to sting later state-builders, for Tabascan cacaoteros of early national Mexico, understandably enough, were hypersensitive about any tariff system that appeared to disfavor them.111 In grand part, then, later statesmen and conquerors would founder on resentments accumulated during the three centuries of this, Tabasco’s last empire. Government meddling too slowed regional growth. Like the predecessor Spanish empire, early Mexico tried to regulate what could and could not be done in each province. However, as with other laws imposed by the political center, these met with only selective compliance in remote provinces such as Tabasco. One illustrative case was a prohibition on cotton farming, apparently done in the interests of protecting growers in other parts of the republic. An 1849 commission was charged with ferreting out illicit cotton fields, and to provide names, locations, and quantities produced. Their failure to yield substantive answers on these points suggests that they were probably suborned by the same local cotton interests they were supposedly investigating. For men who could not name even a single grower or field, the commissioners knew a great deal about cotton prices and demand in their state. Significantly, the commission concluded its work by recommending not only the lifting of prohibitions but also the protection of Tabascan cotton. In essence, local demand for cotton textile was such that if not produced by the Tabascans themselves, they would simply smuggle it in through Yucatán or Chiapas.112

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In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Bourbon reforms began a policy of expanded trade within the empire. The idea was simple: take commerce out of the hands of archaic monopolies, let imperial citizens trade among themselves to their hearts’ content, but tax the process through a transport tariff known by its old Arabic name of alcabala. For Tabasco, the process got rolling in 1770, when Spain radically simplified its taxes to a simple 6 percent on all goods going to the mother country. Six years later, Veracruz and Tabasco were granted rights to trade with the port of New Orleans. By 1789 all Spanish American ports could trade directly with the mother country. San Juan Bautista was declared a minor port in 1793, thereby permitting it an expanded range of commercial imports and exports.113 In terms of the provinces it was in the aduanas that one encountered the few educated, trained officials. The first such royal administrator in Tabasco, one José de Llergo, arrived there in 1777, and immediately instituted a system as rigorous as geography and human nature permitted.114 He slapped alcabalas on such key commodities as cacao, tobacco, soap, sugar, aguardiente, gunpowder, and the ever popular decks of playing cards. Llergo’s career illustrates all too clearly that Spain’s principal concern was the collection of rents, mainly from the lucrative cacao trade, and it was for this end that they reserved their few qualified civil servants. The arrangement exceeded all royal expectations, and between its 1777 inception and the beginning of the great crisis of 1811, trade tariffs on Tabasco yielded nearly half a million pesos for the Spanish crown.115 Rains came, foliage proliferated, the rivers rolled on as inexorably as the passage of days, customs monies went into padlocked coffers and were shipped to remote places like Spain or Mexico City, never to be seen again. Meanwhile, the province remained as backward and lowly as ever. Discounting certain technologies and those strange placid beasts known as cattle, an Olmec transported from the distant past might have felt entirely at home here. It was no longer monkeys who tore apart the cacao mazorcas, but human beings organized into primitive farms. Corn, cacao, and precious woods prospered here as ever, but were now joined by a new crop—a robust resentment of imperial control—cultivated by a people who now saw themselves as Tabascans, and who knew everyone else as strangers who had no business fishing in the blessed bayous of river country.

three

Unruly Behavior at the Water’s Edge

The Tabasco of 1821 existed within the Gulf-Caribbean, one of the most complex clusters of nations and peoples in the history of the Americas, and throughout that region there echoed a cry of liberty. Everyone heard it; everyone felt its swell of passion. But the cry of liberty was as ambiguous as it was heartfelt and meant something different to every group of people who heard it. To the far north lay the United States, a revolutionary republic that had broken with Great Britain and that prided itself on abolishing tyranny, nobility, and kings, but which nevertheless internalized many colonial attitudes and practices. Despite strides of industry and commerce in the areas of New York, most people still farmed, and the South, particularly since Eli Whitney’s 1793 invention of the cotton gin, depended on slaves for difficult labor.1 While President Thomas Jefferson had acquired the Louisiana Territory in 1803, the old French settlers, comfortable in their homes of (Spanish) wrought-iron balconies within the Vieux Carré, still dictated the affairs of Louisiana proper and in fact choked down on the social advances made by African peoples during the Revolutionary War. Here, too, liberty was the liberation of the slave owner and not of the slave, the old plantation

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order now unfettered by mercantile restrictions.2 Considerations of human rights mattered little to a rapidly expanding people flush with the promises of peace, commerce, and cheap land. It was not surprising, then, that white citizens dreamed of taking their free-and-easy expansionism, and often their slaves, into realms like Mexico. Meanwhile, the real revolutionary republic, the indelibly glorious pariah state that all slaves dreamed of and all white colonials feared, lay further south, in the sun-kissed waters of the Caribbean. Destabilized by the French Revolution, the African slaves of San Domingue rose up in 1791, established a precarious autonomy within the new Jacobin republic, fought off attempts at imperial reconquest and reenslavement, then proclaimed their own black republic on the first day of 1804. The former colony now reverted to its preColumbian name of Haiti. For sixteen years it remained a military dictatorship. But with the death of revolutionary leader Henri Christophe in 1820, soldiers threw down their weapons and quietly reverted to peasantry, while a tiny handful of wealthy mulattos ruled over matters of state and commerce in Port-au-Prince. To the republic’s reconstituted African peasants, liberty meant never returning to the whips and tortures of a sugar industry based on human bondage. The new mulatto elite found their liberté in roles relinquished by French gentlemen: it was a conservative attitude, and though Haiti continued to shine a light on oppressed peoples of the hemisphere, gone were the days when titan generals like Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines wrestled powerful foreign armies to the ground.3 Other parts of the non-Spanish Caribbean—islands that the British, French, Dutch, and others had converted into sugar factories in the seventeenth century—were entering a prolonged and irreversible decline. The plantation complex rested on the triad of slavery, monoculture export, and metropolitan political control; that complex briefly outlived the San Domingue uprising, but the handwriting on the wall had assumed greater, and gloomier, legibility. For many of the growing and increasingly educated British middle class, liberty meant an end to the nefarious transatlantic commerce in human beings. Humanitarians had raised their protests before, but now things were different: the mother country no longer needed its pampered planters, for nations like Britain could open themselves to free trade from around the globe. Finally, there loomed the possibility of a lose-all Haitian scenario. The British ended their role in the slave trade in 1807 and, faced with an increasingly restive Afro-Caribbean population,

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abolished slavery itself twenty-four years later. The French and Dutch islands followed a decade or so later. Bereft of imperial support and unfree labor, island colonies like Jamaica, Martinique, and Curaçao drifted into a century-long doldrum.4 Not so with the Spanish Caribbean, especially that prize of the Antilles, Cuba. The Haitian Revolution had knocked out the world’s leading sugar producer, thereby accelerating the Cuban conversion to plantation agriculture. Spanish Bourbonism had meant many things, include increasing rationality and uniformity, but definitely not liberty for colonialized peoples. Despite Britain’s proclaimed end to the trade, huge quantities of Africans continued to enter the island (and its smaller sister, lovely Puerto Rico) well into the 1860s. In 1821 the stakes for Cuba were high, whether measured in terms of plantation wealth, or in the potential for racial unrest. During Latin America’s decades-long independence wars, then, Cubans, led by a hard core of wealthy western planters, mostly remained content to abide with Spain and to bask in the umbrage of its huge military presence. White liberty meant loyalty to Spanish regalism. Though no one could know it at the time, this matter of independence deferred was to have a huge impact on Tabascan history in the 1840s.5 But of all the many pieces of Gulf coast and Caribbean mosaic, none exceeded the natural gifts, geographical extremes, or baroque splendor of Mexico itself. The independence struggle originated in 1810 in the rolling Bajío region north of the capital. It was a society and landscape as different from Tabasco as can be imagined. The area’s eighteenth-century silver bonanza had attracted young men from across New Spain, drawn by the promise of lucrative mining wages, or by the prospect of markets for their crops and livestock. The greatest impresario of those mines, penniless Spanish immigrant turned Conde de Regla, became the richest man in the world, the fabled silver king.6 But the boom went bust in the late 1700s as drought and European political upheavals reduced mining revenues and depressed the ancillary markets that it supported. When Napoleon deposed the Spanish Bourbon monarchy in 1808, the ensuing power vacuum tempted some creoles, at long last, to proclaim Mexican independence: a liberty for American-born creoles to assume those prerogatives that peninsular Spaniards had so long monopolized. The war for Mexico, which erupted on September 16, 1810, ground on for eleven bloody years. Independentistas at last prevailed in 1821, but the

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conflict left a deeply divided society. A nation on paper but not in practice, not one people but many, a place were almost as many inhabitants spoke an Indian language as Castilian: such was the Mexico of 1821. Prodigious natural barriers like the Sierra Madres, or the vast desolation of the north, slowed travel to a snail’s pace. Communications still depended on Aztecstyle human runners, though now supplemented with horse and sailing ships. A letter might arrive, or might not.7 The war wrecked havoc on many of the nation’s most prosperous industries, notably the silver mining of the Bajío, where the destruction of expensive hydraulic equipment caused valuable mines to flood and collapse. So too, insurgent campaigns destroyed sugar plantations of the southern Pacific coast. Looked at in almost any way, the country faced near-insurmountable material challenges. More formidable than any destruction was the heavy imprint of the colonial past. Transatlantic slavery had all but disappeared from Mexico by this time, but not so the division between Indian and creole. The Spanish order had simultaneously protected and exploited native peoples, guaranteeing the legal rights, land, and community in exchange for an institutionalized inferiority. Native conditions varied tremendously among provinces. Huicholes and Coras hid from mestizo society high in the mountains of Jalisco and Nayarit.8 Nahuatl-speaking peasants in the rich agricultural land around Mexico City, with their yields of corn, maguey, wheat, and vegetables, were backbones of the metropolitan economy.9 Yucatec Mayas engaged regularly with the dsulo’ob (roughly, “foreign lords”) who owned the great homes and estates, but who ate Maya dishes and used the Maya language as matter of practicality, and even when speaking Spanish choked off their k’s and t’s and p’s exactly as their Indian servants did; yet those same Mayas still retained a sense of answering to a different god.10 Ancient Mesoamerica had developed to such an astonishing degree—in language, in arts, in technical matters, in religious views—that the colonial order could not really transform native peoples as it envisioned. At the same time, over three centuries the caste system grew so deeply entrenched that it lives on even today in the hearts and minds of the people. Liberty touched Tabasco as well. True, the province’s peculiar circumstances of isolation, poverty, subsistence economy, and eternal wetness kept it away from most of the independence struggles. But almost immediately Tabascans began to feel the effects of an ideological divide that cut through late colonial Mexico. The capital city’s bureaucracy and upper crust,

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together with their provincial allies, believed in the old faith of Carlos III: progressive but highly centralized monarchy, for the enlightened few had a better chance of whipping things into shape than did the ignorant many. Out in the provinces, however, many regional actors took Napoleon’s 1808 abduction of Carlos IV and Fernando VII as the opportunity to expand their own liberties and recognized the diputación provincial, or Mexican delegation to Spain’s newly formed Cortes in Cádiz, as the way to do it. As in so many places in late New Spain, Tabasco’s diputación became a kind of political template for future actions. The Mexico City crowd did advance certain populist causes, since Bourbon reformers had long championed rights for pardos and other Afro-Mexicans as the tonic for defense needs. Provincials, to the contrary, talked up liberty, but underneath the verbiage they were hypersensitized to the matter of racial difference and in no way prepared to countenance measures that put Indians and mixedblood castas on par with creoles. In this sense, rule by the Cortes of Cádiz, or gaditano liberalism, showed itself to be every bit as elitist as its Bourbon predecessor. The 1812 Spanish Constitution freed Indians in some ways (by abolishing tribute, for example), but also reduced their political representation. It derecognized the repúblicas de indios, indigenous juntas that had governed town life for centuries, and instead granted municipal legal power only to places of more than one thousand inhabitants. Rural power now concentrated into the hands of Spanish-speaking settlers, who quickly dominated the new ayuntamientos, or city councils.11 In reality, nowhere in Tabascan territory did the question of how to treat Indians divide creoles and peninsular Spaniards, since, after all, this was fundamentally a quarrel among city folk and their country gentlemen cousins. Bourbons and gaditanos, however, did not always agree about that most complicated of institutions, the Catholic Church. Both were the Enlightenment’s children, but the royalist track record on matters of the spirit—the revival of the patronato real, the downgrading of rural cura powers, and above all the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767—had generated bad blood among many conservative Mexicans. Among other things, Bourbons halted the construction of public cemeteries. One Tabascan casualty was María Gertrudis Giorgana, wife of retired treasury administrator José Llergo. The governor halted cold the construction of her private vault in San Juan Bautista’s church, leaving her only the option of a vulgar public cemetery surrounded by fencing of sticks and poles; there were no altars or oratories

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here, but that did not matter, since the main visitors were dogs and pigs that broke in to root about for what morsels might be found.12 These and similar downgradings of religious power abided, in part because a dawning sense of public health took precedent over religious tradition.13 Bourbon secularism had sufficiently antagonized enough clergy to guarantee that at least some small-town priests embraced the constitutional experiment. In fact, a priest led Tabasco’s presence in the diputación. Padre José Eduardo de Cárdenas (1765–1821) of the western town of San Antonio was sent as the state’s representative to Spain, and in the course of his work, he authored a long, rhetorically overblown assessment of the province and its condition, the often-cited Memoria. Cárdenas took this historical opportunity to excoriate mercantile trade restrictions and Yucatecan ecclesiastical control. He also called for legislation to bind workers to the estates. It was in his honor that his hometown became San Antonio Cárdenas, with the saint’s name largely fallen into disuse today. If anything, his Memoria mapped out the elitist utopia that lay hidden in Cádiz liberalism: a planterrun state blessed by a Tabascan bishopric, with no imperial restrictions on commerce.14 What Cárdenas did not see, apparently, was the gradual secularization taking place all around him. The issue had simmered for years, but erupted with virulence during the independence wars, when Spain’s experiment with constitutionalism opened a Pandora’s box of long-festering conflict throughout Mexico. Late colonial governor Andrés Girón (1811–13), for example, had regular run-ins with the clergy. Among other things, Girón had to deal with priests such as Juan José Godoy, who publicly insulted him during a hearing on one of Godoy’s hacienda purchases.15 What frustrated the governor most was his own lack of control over the ecclesiastical courts that investigated such infractions. “Experience,” he lamented, “has taught me that no matter how many cases pass through the ecclesiastical court, the individuals in question all come out canonized.” This rivalry to state power frustrated Bourbon officials, but it was all the more galling given the fact that an independence war was now underway, led in no small part by rural priests. Insurgents allied with José María Morelos had already invaded the Acayucan area adjacent to Tabasco’s western border, and although pro-Morelos forces never brought Tabasco into the war, they nonetheless posed a threat.16 Girón decided to deal with the two problems in a single blow, in a way that attacked the church indirectly, through a

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partial liberation of its vassals, the Indians. He created a hundred-man indigenous militia; the incentive was freedom from church-imposed head taxes known as obventions, something that Indians craved and which the church adamantly refused to grant.17 Governor Francisco de Heredia y Vergara (1814–17) continued and intensified Girón’s approach. He responded to the insurgency by stationing troops throughout the province, and since soldiers had to be paid, he levied $1,200 from each partido. Even so, the mixed-blood militias of Villahermosa felt abused by the increased service demands and complained bitterly; Heredia responded by importing counterparts from Carmen, thinking them uncontaminated by local dissent.18 When Fernando VII returned to the throne in 1814, Heredia held a ceremony in the San Juan Bautista plaza, in which the 1812 Constitution received a formal burial (it was disinterred with equal pomp six years later, when Spanish liberals regained power).19 The governor also took steps to guard against possible attacks from Francisco Javier Mina, a liberal Spanish officer who had rebelled against the absolutism of the restored Fernando. Heredia fortified the Grijalva’s bar with two hundred men and twenty cannons, and some rudimentary fortifications courtesy of unpaid Indian labor, all in preparation for the attack that never came.20 However insignificant Mina now seems in terms of Latin American independence, southeasterners of the day followed his exploits with great attention—some hopeful, some panicked or indignant—until news of Mina’s 1817 capture and execution near Guanajuato made it to San Juan Bautista.21 In one other regard, too, Heredia played his Bourbon role to the hilt: he forgave the church nothing. Heredia assumed that any coin going to venerate a saint or refurbish an altar was a coin not advancing the Spanish counterinsurgency. To keep church collections as sluggish and inefficient as possible, he prohibited civil authority from assisting the overworked parish priests in this thankless task, perfectly aware that Indians, religious sensibilities aside, would give little when not coerced.22 But his antagonism exceeded mere expediency. Even in cases where curas were obviously justified—such as arresting men who made advances on their own stepdaughters—Heredia was apt to turn up in person, mounted on horseback and armed with pistols and a dagger, to reverse whatever decision the local priest had made.23 It is no stretch to see the swashbuckling Heredia as a forerunner of anticlerical revolutionary Tomás Garrido Canabal.

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In most respects, then, Tabascan independence therefore resembled its Yucatecan cousin: a royalist right, a liberal provincial middle, and no real radical left. Some glimmerings of popular mobilization emerged in the form of restive pardo militiamen, doubtless unhappy over the diputación’s reactionary racial orientation. However, the massive counterinsurgency campaign, a campaign that extended even to areas where no rebels existed, did begin to antagonize the irascible Tabascans. The closest the province came to producing a bonafide independence hero was one José María Jiménez Garrido, son of a Spaniard colonel and a woman from Jalpa. Enlightenment ideas turned him so anticlerical and antimonarchical that a priest once remarked, “If you had studied theology, you would have outdone Calvin and Luther.” In August 1821 Jiménez’s support for Agustín de Iturbide’s proindependence Plan de Iguala landed the Tabascan and his son José Victor in chains in Frontera, there awaiting transport to the dreaded San Juan de Ulúa. But they somehow managed to escape and were soon vindicated when troops from Mexico City arrived, announcing that Iturbide had triumphed. The family’s reputation was forever secure; José Victor, in fact, went on to occupy the state governorship on four occasions.24 These conflicts came and went, and in the end the river people emerged little changed by the events of 1810 onward. Tabasco’s independence thus came from elsewhere, at someone else’s hands. The creoles and mestizos who now governed this new nation called Mexico had spent fifty years excoriating peninsular rule and what they perceived to be its highly negative legacies. But whatever the shortcomings, New Spain turned out to be the last empire ever to govern the province with any degree of success. It did so in part by interfering as little as possible with daily life—in essence, by letting the Tabascans be Tabascans.

Feder alist Dr ea ms Following independence from Spain in 1821, Tabasco took up its role as a state, or, in the parlance of the times, a province. Its degeneration into political mayhem—more than thirty governments in thirty years—began in the scramble to create new and more democratic institutions. Like all other provinces in the new republic, Tabasco established the formalities of governance, with executive, congressional, and judicial powers and

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well-defined processes of limited popular suffrage. All of these looked convincing enough on paper, but none had strong roots or traditions, while constitutional checks and balances heightened division within an already fragmented people. Above all, quarrels erupted almost immediately over the power struggle between the federal government and the states. Centralists believed that national development required some sort of unifying hand and advocated the old Spanish tradition of concentrating authority in Mexico City. Without strong institutions to regulate trade, foster industry, issue currency, and protect against foreign designs, Mexico risked dissolving into warring pieces, à la Central America. Key blocs in the nation’s capital, the merchant guilds and upper clergy and key military officers, certainly thought so, and some wealthy provincials shared their point of view. Federalists, to the contrary, wanted “power to the provinces.” They based their claims on an equally long tradition of resentment against faraway authority; on the elusive concept of municipal autonomy; on late Bourbon tax and militia organization (which took place by state); and on the simple fact of poor transportation and a lack of shared identity among New Spain’s constituent parts. What sense did it make to break from Madrid, only to recreate that same stifling subservience with Mexico City? Seen thus, liberty meant the freedom to make decisions quickly on the ground, without the fetters of bureaucracy and countervailing interests. Federalists naturally found their strongest support among provincial elites who stood to gain regional office, or planters and merchants who hoped to evade Mexico City’s trade restrictions. And though not initially apparent, this way of thinking also drew men disinclined to the supervision of mother-church, men who liked their skies broad, blue, and empty. Centralism or federalism: Who was to decide? Within a few years of independence three groups defined the Tabascan political landscape. None of these wielded uncontested power, and while each bloc had its interests and its strengths, each suffered from profound weaknesses that guaranteed turbulence in public life. To begin with, it was San Juan Bautista’s tiny patrician class that dominated state-level politics. The deepest of pockets here belonged to foreigners, mostly Spanish merchants whose involvement went back to colonial times; their influence survived the tempests of the nineteenth century and continued up to the time of the revolution. But they could not occupy political office or even vote and instead ceded

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front-man political roles to prominent creoles, many of them close relatives. Those same creole patricians were the only Tabascans who received a decent education, understood the mechanisms of state bureaucracy and budgeting, and knew something of the greater world beyond the sandbar. The patricians lived on trade and on public office. Despite their advantages, though, they suffered terrible weaknesses, the most important being a lack of muscle. The patricians had no armed force or organized support; rather, they found themselves pressured by job seekers from the urban middle sectors, meaning that there was no retreat from the quest for political monopoly. We find them curiously divided, or neutral, or prudently silent, on many of the great issues of the day, precisely because control of home affairs often outweighed national controversies, or arcane matters like the hereafter or sacred trinity. Peace and commerce mattered above all things. Some idea of the privileges and tempests that attached themselves to prominent creoles comes from the squabbles surrounding Santiago Duque de Estrada, Tabascan gentleman par excellence. Duque de Estrada was a pure-blooded creole who had a home and family in San Juan Bautista, but often preferred to live on his hacienda, where he maintained a lover, one Remedios Pérez, along with a separate family. (Not one for solitude, don Santiago also kept a woman and three sons in Campeche.) Like prominent creole counterparts throughout late New Spain, he had risen to be local militia captain, an appointment facilitated by his simultaneous title as alcalde of San Juan Bautista. In addition to an eye for the ladies, Duque de Estrada also had weakness for creole infighting and fell into several severe rows, including with an artillery lieutenant José Gómez Marcelino Margalli, a man later to become Tabasco’s governor. Disappointed by Iturbide’s ersatz regalism, Duque de Estrada went to Yucatán to talk up interest in separation from Mexico: a wise selection, since nothing delighted the Yucatecans like abuse of Mexico. Tabascan governor José Antonio Rincón, a loyal Iturbide appointee, had the presumptuous Duque stripped of command and thrown in jail, but the latter’s fortunes took an unexpected uptick with Iturbide’s overthrow.25 Duque’s death in the late 1850s provoked a dogfight among the rival heirs (anticipating a post-mortem tussle, the old man had named independence hero José Víctor Jiménez as executor, apparently to negotiate between offspring legitimate and otherwise).26 The results of the conflict remain unknown, but these sorts of complications all came as part of a wealthy creole’s life, from the need to somehow balance

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patriarchal authority, landed wealth, and regional autonomy. Even if other merchants failed to match Duque de Estrada’s stamina, they nonetheless shared his taste for urban culture and warmed-over Spanish gentility. Rural cacao planters played foils to the merchants. While urban patricians like Duque often owned estates, the planters alone made country life the essence of their person and the measure of their horizon. They embraced federalism with all the passion in their souls. Above all, they railed against any attempt to fund either the state or the nation through taxes on cacao exports. Additional motives to dabble in politics included the desire to escape from the authority of rivals and enemies, or to install one’s own operatives in positions of power. If merchants controlled the bureaucracy and the customs house, the planters’ secret weapon lay in their ability to dominate the borders. One man who understood this was Pedro López, who held properties along the border between Veracruz and Tabasco, near a long-vanished village known as Río Seco. Here, far from the authorities of either state, López ruled like the marcher barons of old England, resisting all decrees to open roads through his estates. Although the bulk of his hacienda lay in Veracruz, López shrewdly kept his home on the Tabascan side of the line in order to better resist decrees and investigations issuing from that former province. Outlying Tabasco was a frontier far removed from both development and the law; planters, particularly the extensive Maldonado family, roiled Tabascan politics for over thirty years by their ability to raise militias, disrupt the state, and then retreat to the hills south of the Chiapan border.27 Still a third source of social power lay in the comandancia militar or comandancia general. When Mexicans overthrew their emperor Agustín de Iturbide, a Bourbon holdover in mentality and trappings, they opted for a federalist system in which most powers devolved to state levels. But the Mexico City crowd kept one card in their back pocket. The comandancia, a nationally based military officer sent to oversee defense and order, constituted virtually the only fulcrum the president exercised over remote provinces. (It is worth pointing out that the appointment of the comandancia militar, incidentally, served as template for the presidential selection of governors, a practice common from the 1870s until the late twentieth century.) The comandancia militar actually bridged colony and nation, since the militias and their commanders had been accumulating power since the days of Carlos III. Beyond the obvious advantages of organization, armed

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might, and coherent chains of command, the militias also had officers who inherited the late Bourbon mentality of being—at least as they saw it—the only enlightened minds in a wilderness of ignorance, religious superstition, and civilian incompetence. They tended to hew the centralist line. The comandancia militar often functioned as a key arbiter of provincial affairs, and at various places and moments the comandante himself simultaneously served as governor. Perhaps it was a case of too much power, too soon. As has been said of the early Central American republics, Tabasco and other provinces fielded “armies without nations,” military institutions that had solidified in advance of the venal civilian counterparts that they came to disdain.28 Pity the poor comandante. Unlike the merchants, he may have enjoyed large-scale administrative experience and real coercive muscle, and in times of emergency often wrested power from weak civil authorities. What he lacked was a financial base. In order to carry out any sort of project, comandancias had to squeeze provinces like Tabasco for whatever happened to be available: men, money, food, arms, and beasts of burden figured prominently in their wish lists. Their covetousness and aggressive political style often made them odious to Tabascans, even when those same Tabascans needed the comandancia’s military might for purposes of defense and security. Military projects necessarily tapped the province’s only sources of money, hacendados and urban merchants. Unsurprisingly, then, estate owners became a backbone of federalist resistance: any attempt to build infrastructure, muster a defense, or work on something approaching statecraft meant a raid on their pocketbooks and their labor force. Given the lay of power in an oligarchic society, they had little problem imposing their opinions wholesale upon the mass of rural poor folk. Seen thus, Tabascan federalism was less the child of popular groundswell, and more the cacaotero’s resentful scowl. Under these circumstances, Tabascan armed forces remained deeply heterogeneous over the next half century. Militias had radically different orientations depending on how they were organized and who commanded them. Regular army units almost always had commanders sent from faraway Mexico City and functioned as a bulwark of socially conservative centralism. Militias organized at the provincial level and commanded by local bigmen almost invariably partook of the federalist water; they responded time and again to the interests of their improvised leaders, who jealously

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obsessed over anything that threatened their control of the export economy. It also meant that at any given time, Tabasco might have several different militias, typically composed of anywhere from twenty to eighty men drawn from political clients and hacienda workers, who reflected rival oligarchic interests within Tabasco itself. All of this guaranteed a rocky time for the province in the age of liberty. The first two decades of statehood will always remain sketchy, owing to the paucity of surviving documents. But a few points emerge clearly enough. The state took the luxury of outlawing slavery, for the simple fact that slavery no longer existed and was no longer needed. Despite the rhetoric of equality enshrined in its 1825 State Constitution, however, there was nothing egalitarian about the new order. Literacy and property restrictions on public office effortlessly wrote off 95 percent of the population. In fact, the only equality that existed was the equal right to pay the state’s incredibly regressive head tax. These articles left only the enclaves of political participation already encountered: the comandancia militar, the capital city intelligentsia, and the estate owners, who, when pressed, could hack out a few lines on paper. The many families and factions within these groups warred and allied interminably among themselves, but seldom saw eye to eye.29 The real attitude of Tabasco’s new masters emerged in a series of detailed laws codifying the practice of peonage. The 1826 state agrarian code kept faith with padre Eduardo Cárdenas and his diputación by denying most basic rights to estate workers in the interests of keeping the cacao beans and corn in production. Lords of the land saw the approach as both desirable and inevitable. Unlike the urban merchant class, the planters’ strength lay in their ability mobilize workers and clients: important, because in this small, isolated province an armed band of fifty men constituted a formidable threat. The hard-nosed “Reglamento agrario para la agricultura” was designed to hammer independent rural workers into a domestic submission, and contained few escape clauses or protections for the so-called mozo, or peon. Rather, every article favored the property owner. The law stipulated that all estates have stocks and shackles in which to place recalcitrant workers, while its call for chilillazos, or whippings, as a disciplinary method gave the document a decidedly medieval twist.30 To fill those stocks, Tabasco enacted a vagrancy law, which pressed a broad category of men into estate service. Orphans, “incorrigible” children,

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men without visible employment, men who insulted authority, men who kept bad company: all found themselves swept along by the same oligarchic broom. By 1831 the state contained more than 1,800 cacao estates and 605 sugar plantations—mostly small-scale enterprises, not engines of latifundia—along with sundry farms of corn, coffee, cattle, and fruit. Deep in the riverine interior, loggers continued to exploit palo de tinte, although the great orgy of mahogany cutting lay a half century into the future. The state population hovered around fifty-four thousand (about one-eighth that of the Yucatán peninsula), but most lived fragmented and thoroughly controlled on the haciendas, or on isolated properties and rancherías, where they kept as far away from the Tabascan elites as possible.31 In truth, the hideaways were not missing all that much, for Tabasco remained a cultural wasteland. The elite class dedicated far more time to teapot politics than to writing, education, music, science, and arts combined. The first printing press and newspaper did not arrive here until 1826, when the Argos tabasqueño opened its doors. (Like the antebellum planters of the Old South, the Tabascan elite saw classical mythology as the mark of a gentleman and imagined that their spindly periodical resembled the thousand-eyed giant that was its namesake: all-seeing, ever watchful.) The bulk of early publishing dwelt on political controversies and spoke almost exclusively to the elite classes, albeit through the rhetorical invention of All Tabascans.32 This rough-cut republic had troublemakers far more tangible than the elusive duendes that so plagued the housewife. Given Tabasco’s poverty and inequality, it was not surprising that some of the underprivileged turned to banditry, either to make ends meet, or out of spite for a social and legal order they doubtless perceived to be a loaded deck. Most of the state’s judicial records are now lost, but we do know that a certain Felipe Castellanos led a gang of mounted bandits who terrorized the cities of Jalpa and Nacajuca. The state’s pathetic jails failed to hold them and their kind, and for that reason, the preferred legal approach was to declare them vagos (an elastic term for anyone not under someone else’s control) and to sentence them to service in the navy, with its legendarily awful conditions.33 Indeed, what held for the land held for the sea as well. While maritime trade brought Tabasco most of its wealth, piracy remained a continual problem. These were no longer international freebooters, or the corsairs who once received tacit endorsement of rival empires. Rather, the new pirates

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were simply sailors whom the social order exploited, men who could only make a living by preying on the same system that preyed on them. Hence, references to the imprisonment and trial of coastal raiders turn up in court records of the national archives.34 One of the more famous in later years, a certain Juan Pérez, in fact operated under the name “El Tabasqueño,” in the waters of the southern Gulf coast. In 1852 he committed one of his most sinister crimes; working his way onto a British schooner, Pérez led a murder of the ship’s captain, then turned the ship around and headed to Campeche, and like a scene from “Benito Cereno,” terrorized the crew into silence. Pérez’s story fell apart once they reached port; he was sentenced to be garroted, but no garrote could be found (old Spanish technologies of execution now having fallen into disfavor or disrepair), and El Tabasqueño died before the firing squad that left a traumatic memory with padre Gil y Sáenz.35 Pérez’s misdeeds on the high seas illustrated all too well the threat of a new piracy: crimes by members of the Mexican underclass. The first man to attempt to bind Tabascans to the nation was a provincial commander, Xalapa-born Iturbide stalwart José Antonio Rincón Calcáneo (1762–1846).36 This postindependence governor was Bourbon to his toenails. Well-groomed, of military bearing and discipline, Rincón had actually trained as an engineer and was far happier refurbishing fortifications in the port of Veracruz than wrangling with ignorant river folk. He delegated himself emergency powers and arrested the more vociferous elements of federalist opposition, shipping them off to Mexico.37 This earned Rincón the Tabascans’ everlasting hatred. But when Emperor Iturbide fell in May 1823, thanks to a revolt of military officers led by Antonio López de Santa Anna, states set up congresos constituyentes to name provisional governors until such time as general elections might be held. Rincón thus exited from the governor’s palace the following year, but remained in the state. With the last emperor now behind them, it looked like the long cycle of unrest that had begun in 1808—and in some ways, with the birth of creole peoples themselves—had at last come to rest. But events soon dispelled this illusion. As in Yucatán and elsewhere, local ayuntamiento elections often blew up over family quarrels, arcane personal grudges, and fundamentally different ways of thinking. For example, the 1824 voting in Cunduacán provoked an uprising by the loser—Rincón himself—against one Antonio Serra, who had rigged the ballots to keep his own faction in power. Rincón and his procentralist network drew on wide support that included

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the Tabascan church’s promotor fiscal, padre Manuel Antonio Tello, and extended from its point of origin to include the nearby communities of Jalpa and Nacajuca.38 Ayuntamiento election reports are at best few and sketchy, but the conflicts that raged over the next half century suggest that like Cunduacán, the state’s many communities split over issues of personal glory and political ideology. These interminable quarrels took their toll on the intelligentsia, who spent more time on wrangles than on innovation, industry, or overall creative enhancement of the society. One individual who dedicated himself body and soul to excoriating Bourbon centralism, and who more than anyone embodied the age’s contradictions, was José María Alpuche e Infante, the state’s radical priest and emblematic resentful creole. Born in Campeche in 1780 to a sublieutenant of the port militia, Alpuche studied in the Mérida seminary, where he fell under the influence of the Enlightenment’s local advance agent, instructor Pablo Moreno. Alpuche then worked at a series of clerical posts and became cura of Cunduacán and a hard-core federalist. His political opinions and tempestuous personality repeatedly landed him in conflict. Alpuche was briefly expelled in 1814 with Spain’s royalist restoration; he returned to Tabasco within three years and remained so obsessed with constitutional politics that most of his fellow priests avoided him and were reluctant to trust him with church archives.39 His life was one wrangle after another. In 1823 we find Alpuche petitioning to be compensated for the losses he had suffered for his services in the separatist war of the previous decade.40 Shortly thereafter he defied Rincón on the ad hoc taxes that the governor imposed on village Indians, and his opposition resulted in a second expulsion, this time to Mexico City.41 Whatever persecution Alpuche may have endured stemmed from his federalist addiction to the diputación provincial and its whipsawed constitution, and not from some secret alliance with Miguel Hidalgo and company, let alone concern for indigenous rights. Alpuche regained his footing with the fall of Iturbide and Rincón. He went on to represent Tabasco in the national senate in 1824 and thereafter only rarely dipped his toes in the rivers of his adopted homeland. As senator he tried to prohibit the mention of kings and emperors during mass (a project that doubtless required some biblical rewrites), and he wanted to require priests to explain the federalist system from their pulpit. These opinions endeared him to liberal statesmen like Lorenzo de Zavala and Valentín

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Figure 6.  “Tall, lean, with a bitter and ill-tempered face, and a character that was harsh and caustic” was how a contemporary described padre José María Alpuche e Infante. Embodiment of the furious passions of early federalism, he elevated Tabasco above all other earthly values, and spent most of his adult life fighting to prevent control by outsiders. From Manuel Gil y Sáenz, Historia del Estado de Tabasco (1890).

Gómez Farías, and conversely made him anathema to conservatives Lucas Alamán and Manuel Mier y Terán. Despite being a priest he also somehow rose to become a 32nd degree mason! But Alpuche’s fortunes crumbled once more when centralists, let by General Anastacio Bustamante, overthrew the national government in 1830. He was imprisoned on March 7 and deported to New Orleans a few months later. For reasons unknown

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he made his way to Philadelphia, where he endured cold winters unimaginable along the steamy Grijalva. (Alpuche continued to claim rents from Cunduacán parish, but complained bitterly that most of the money never reached him.) Fear of assassination formed a leitmotiv of his correspondence—either from paranoia, or else a realistic understanding of the age’s cruel politics. The headstrong priest returned briefly in 1832 to take part in the revolt against Bustamante, but two years later he was deported yet again. He initially supported the Texas movement until realizing that it was an Anglo wolf masquerading as a federalist lamb; the ever-volatile Alpuche then tried to ally himself with his old enemy Santa Anna, but was instead imprisoned for having supported Bustamante. After his release in 1838 as part of a general amnesty, Alpuche was confined to scenic Tepotzotlán, the former stronghold of Mexican Jesuits just outside Mexico City, and today a world-class museum of vice-regal art and architecture. Here ill health finally quelled his furies, and José María Alpuche e Infante—remembered as “tall, lean, with a bitter and ill-tempered face, and a character that was harsh and caustic”—died in 1840, a victim of the same passions that laid low his beloved Tabasco.42 For all their activism, figures like Alpuche were too incendiary, too doctrinaire, or simply too techy to attract a mass following. Tabascan xenophobia instead coalesced around the far less controversial figure of Cunduacán patriarch Agustín Ruiz de la Peña (1790–1868). His brother, padre José María Ruiz, was if anything more staunchly federalist than Agustín, a fellow spirit of Alpuche, and living evidence of the way that the federalist issue split the church down the middle. The Ruiz brothers were born of Spanish immigrants and, while speaking the new language of liberty, felt perfectly at home in the hierarchical, honor-bound world of their forefathers.43 Don Agustín enjoyed the support of resident Spanish merchants, who naturally opposed the idea of some nationalistic government based out of Mexico City checking on their activities. He took office in May 1824 as Tabasco’s first-ever elected governor, but was dismayed to find angry iturbidista officers posting threatening broadsides against him throughout the capital. Eventually, a group of Tabascans, led by none other than independence hero José María Jiménez Garrido, not one bit grateful for the fact that pro-Iturbide forces had saved him three years earlier, seized Rincón and a few accomplices and threw them into prison.44 Federalist dreams seemed safe for the moment.

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In reality, Rincón’s incarceration merely set the stage for the province’s next experience with the imperial fist. The Mexico City government could not overlook the arrest of a federal commander, but was hampered by a lack of intelligence, for while on paper Tabasco belonged to a thing called Mexico, few men from the altiplano had much of an idea of Olman. If they knew anything at all, it was that Tabasco was a health hazard. Boosters disputed the claim, insisting that their beloved province suffered from nothing worse that “calenturas” (that is, malaria) and that mortality had fallen to less than four per thousand with the introduction of quinine.45 The hard-traveling Austrian botanist Karl Heller painted a somewhat different picture: Tabasco, the death state, the “graveyard of foreigners,” the land where sinister miasmas issued up to wreck sickness and ruin. One of his few excursions in the notorious insalubrious San Juan Bautista was to visit the tomb of a scientific predecessor from Denmark, laid low only two weeks before Heller’s own visit on November 7, 1847.46 For so many Yucatecans and central Mexicans, Tabasco functioned as a kind of gulag, where political prisoners learned to hate mankind and its refined cruelties. To right matters, Secretary of War Manuel Mier y Terán sent Colonel Francisco Hernández, later supplemented with additional forces under Colonel Antonio Facio. Their combined forces had little difficulty overcoming Tabascan resistance; in fact, most defenders changed sides and joined Facio, some gauge of the real depth of their commitment to the patriarchs’ federalist dreams. Under the threat of this growing force, the governor and congress fled San Juan Bautista with their families, leaving the ayuntamiento’s alcalde, the high-living Santiago Duque de Estrada, to confront the crisis, which he adroitly managed by capitulating at once. Hernández ferreted out the fugitive Ruiz and sent him off to Mexico City to be tried by the national congress.47 While the trial was underway, Tabascans launched elections for governor. Events took a turn entirely to the provincials’ delight when Ruiz de la Peña skipped out of his house arrest, fled back to his home state, and won handily. He assumed office on August 10, 1825, while the national congress found itself distracted by issues far more pressing than the chicaneries of rowdy southeasterners.48 Despite the satisfaction of flaunting national pressure, the early federalist governments proved disappointing, and what they did do often boded ill for the future. The year 1828, for example, witnessed a critical step in Tabascan history, when a November 4 law authorized the creation of local

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militias. It provided for infantry, cavalry, and artillery units.49 The creation of these units tended to favor rural cacao planters, since they were best positioned to organize men, specifically, their own estate workers and clients. However, claims of federalism as popular governance have to be taken with perspective. Surviving legislation during this period demonstrates the same prohacendado disposition as elsewhere in southeastern Mexico. For example, on January 31, 1829, Tabascans strengthened their own vagrancy laws, whereby tribunals based in the partidos (and therefore more susceptible to the influence of local bigmen) assigned homeless and unpropertied men to the cacao estates.50 Similarly, in 1831 a largely federalist congress enacted a new state constitution establishing property requirements that placed public office well out of the reach of most citizens.51 Cultural issues also convulsed the federalist years. The whole period of Bourbon and early national Mexico resembled the turning of some vast and extremely rusty wheel of mentality and culture. Slowly, uncertainly, people began to think things never before permitted. Among the greatest of taboos now challenged was religion. Bourbons preferred their God omnipotent but disengaged; within time, however, even the most sacred tenets of faith fell under attack. As in Yucatán, “some men hated priests,” and by early 1827 the cura of Cunduacán complained that a certain Miguel Olivera, late of Oaxaca, had entered the parish telling people that sacrament of communion was nonsense. Significantly, the cura could do little owing to the fact that Marcelino Margalli, Tabasco’s former vice governor and a reliably secular liberal, found it in his interests to protect individuals like Olivera. Even when out of power, some early Mexican state builders took the opportunity to take their rival down a peg.52 Beyond those changes, early governments accomplished little. Whatever its foundation in national history, federalism—that dream of antiempire, that undying vision of the self-governing locality—brought little in the way of peace and contentment to the river people. It was at bottom a war of turf and offered little in the way of material or economic development. Federalism also undermined the ability to establish any sort of consensus, genuine or fabricated, on national policies of trade and finance: disadvantaged parties could simply withdraw from participation. Moreover, the poorly defined relationship between the central and regional power, together with deep social divisions and lack of experience in self-government, repeatedly led the national government to intervene in Tabascan affairs. Attempts to

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oppose those interventions simply justified more of the same, the circular relationship between the scratch and the itch.

Centr alist Realities Between 1829 and 1839 the mood turned ugly, a change reflecting convulsions at the national level. A national system of indirect elections meant that common people voted for elite electors, who in turn selected the figure of their preference, and not necessarily the popular choice. This translated into voting weighted in favor of conservative patriarchs. In 1828 the system worked against General Vicente Guerrero, the highly popular (and racially mixed) candidate, handing the presidency to gentleman-rival Manuel Gómez Pedraza. But the political architects had counted on lower-class acquiescence and were not prepared for violent resistance. When a riot of angry poor people destroyed Mexico City’s Parián market on December 4 of that same year, the frightened national congress overturned the election and replaced Gómez with his defeated rival. Guerrero soon defeated an attempted Spanish invasion of Mexico, and while this turned out to be the mother country’s last attempt to reclaim Mexico, it rekindled the hysteria about holdover Spaniards, who were believed to be underwriting Bourbonist, centralist tendencies and who also made excellent scapegoats.53 Tabascans found themselves caught up in the populist surge. Guerrero’s frustrated victim, Manuel Gómez Pedraza, had Spanish-Cuban allies who had left their original base in Veracruz and gone to San Juan Bautista, where they finagled appointments as judges. Xenophobic Tabascan elements took advantage of Guerrero’s new policy (selectively applied throughout the republic) to have them exiled altogether.54 Campaigns to purge Spaniards also threatened the more deeply conservative and pro-Spanish upper class, and for that reason Santiago Duque de Estrada, fearing that he would be swept up in the purge, fled to the borderland safety of Teapa, then on to Campeche. State elections in June 1829 favored liberal federalist Agustín Ruiz once again. It was at this time that an obscure but ultimately momentous event took place: a certain Martínez, of whom nothing is known, not even his first name, murdered a ruicista. Martínez took refuge in the chapel of Santa Rosa, but ignoring the ancient tradition of sanctuary and the protests of

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San Juan Bautista’s pious dames, Ruiz had him dragged out and executed.55 These were the first killings. The river people had no way of knowing it, but comparatively low-level crimes like the Martínez incident were the initial risings of an immense flood that was about to consume Tabasco, one which would leave hundreds of bodies in its wake and which would redefine life, labor, and memory for generations to come. Henceforth, murder and politics went together; retribution demanded an eye for an eye, and there was nothing that stodgy colonial institutions like the church could do about it. Tabascan federalists’ next challenge was a far more serious one. In late 1829 momentum gathered for a full-fledged overthrow of Mexico’s ramshackle experiment; loosely gathered around the person of General Anastasio Bustamante, discontents from the military and commercial sectors denounced provincial liberty as oversold goods and demanded a return to something resembling colonial order. At the southeastern level, on November 6, 1829, a Campeche garrison pronounced for centralism, joined three days later by Mérida counterparts. On November 10, a similar revolt transpired in Frontera under Captain José María Parra, and comandante militar Lanuza seconded the proclamation on November 21 in San Juan Bautista.56 Agustín Ruiz found himself hounded from office. However, things did not go as planned—as things tended not to go in Tabasco. Federalists surprised their rivals by rallying under the provincially based defense units known as the milicias activas, led initially by one Francisco Puig, but his health faltered, and power passed to Puig’s brother-in-law and close ally, a Huimanguillo-based patriarch and cacao grower named Fernando Nicolás Maldonado.57 The pivotal roles that this man and his family were to play in Tabascan history require that a few words be said about them. The five Maldonado brothers—Fernando Nicolás, José María, Eulalio, Pomposo, y Pánfilo, together with three anonymous sisters—were the children of a Spaniard educated at the University of Salamanca, but settled into the decidedly unlettered country life of Huimanguillo. Fernando Nicolás himself was born in 1806; orphaned at fifteen, he picked up a smattering of education from a retired Portuguese navigator who had dropped anchor in the pueblo, but other than that dubious tutelage was mostly self-taught. At age twentythree he led a local garrison in putting down a procentralist pronouncement of the federal garrison in San Juan Bautista and ever after remained a large

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caudillo in a small province, a landowner who used his social influence and economic leverage to lead men into battle.58 He sported a Lincolnesque beard, but not a Lincolnesque wisdom. Rather, for the next twenty years, the Maldonados epitomized all the combative and self-centered localism of the rural cacaotero elite. To beat down this unexpected challenge, centralists working out of Campeche organized an invasion of Tabasco. Chief planners were the fugitive Santiago Duque de Estrada and Colonel Sebastián López de Llergo, one of the peninsula’s most prominent military officers and a man who later played an integral role in both causing and then suppressing Yucatán’s Caste War. López led an expedition variously estimated at three to five hundred men, mostly Maya peasants recruited from Bolonchén-Ticul and other villages in what is today west-central Campeche state; for that reason, it became known as “The First Chenes Invasion,” the word chenes, or “wells,” being the region’s nickname. Accounts of the event surely tingled the nineteenth-century spine: “Those armed cannibals came to the estates sacking whatever they could find, grabbing the servants from their beds and sending them to their graves, while destroying their homes with rifle fire.”59 Claims of atrocities must be taken with skepticism, since the creole mind instantly multiplied any act of Indian violence to the power of ten. Despite López’s supposedly Carthaginian tactics, Puig and Maldonado survived by a stratagem that became standard procedure over the next forty years: they retreated to the rugged Teapa-Pichucalco borderlands and waited until the frustrated invaders finally withdrew, having achieved little more than shooting a few cacao workers mistaken for soldiers. By midFebruary 1830 the First Chenes Invasion had ended.60 The victorious new president Bustamante issued a blanket amnesty for all involved in the event, but Tabascan federalists now stood high on his list of enemies. In early March he took the precaution of exiling the uncontrollable padre Alpuche, who soon found himself conspiring in the congenial atmosphere of New Orleans.61 Agustín Ruiz fled exile once again (to Campeche), but returned to resume command of the state, this time clearly out for revenge. The new comandante militar, Francisco Palomino, attempted to halt some of Ruiz’s more punitive acts. But he underestimated this well-connected Tabascan caudillo; Ruiz had a group of supporters arrest Palomino and named a militia captain from Acayucan, one Mariano Vasconcelos, as a more cooperative interim comandante. But centralist

Figure 7.  Fernando Nicolás Maldonado represented all the patrician pretentions of the cacao barons. Together with his brothers he ruled a string of estates concentrated in Huimanguillo and along the Tabasco-Chiapas border. Maldonado proclaimed against Mexican centralism in 1839, but his failure to reproduce Santiago Imán’s success in Yucatán led him to recruit mercenaries who eventually eclipsed him. Perhaps his most lasting achievements, though, were toponmyic. It was Maldonado who added “de las Casas” to the city of San Cristóbal’s name, and who changed “Tuxtla” to “Tuxtla Gutiérrez” in honor of a fallen liberal. From Manuel Gil y Sáenz, Historia del Estado de Tabasco (1890).

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loyalists liberated Palomino before he could embark from Frontera, and instead it was Ruiz who now found himself headed back to a Campeche exile.62 A loose coalition of centralists now governed the state. Replacement governor José Rovirosa soon quarreled with Palomino, the latter suspecting the former of being soft on centralism. In this case the improbable litmus test was Palomino’s secretary, Lieutenant Juan Ricoy, who had formerly served as assistant to fiscal Nicolás Condelle, the man who had sentenced Vicente Guerrero to death. The two leaders quarreled bitterly about Ricoy’s presence and its probable impact; the national government, meanwhile, refused to intervene. Rovirosa needed a military ally, and he found him in Lieutenant Colonel Mariano Martínez de Lejarza, a man who had participated in fomenting the pro-Guerrero riot of 1828. With Martínez’s help, Rovirosa arrested and deported Palomino. But Ricoy remained, as did the underlying issues.63 Martínez’s ascendency by no means pleased conservative hardliners, and some 230 men from the Tabasco and Chiapas companies revolted when Santa Anna, now the apparent defender of federalism, named Martínez comandante militar in June 1832 as part of the former’s Plan of Veracruz, intended to unseat Bustamante and roll the calendar back to 1828. Five men perished in the unsuccessful uprising.64 Santa Anna may have ascended to power, but regional bustamantistas had not surrendered the field. Among those individuals was José Segundo Carvajal Cavero (1791–1860), governor and military commander of the Yucatán peninsula. Carvajal had trained as an army engineer and had constructed some modest fortifications of the port of Sisal during the independence wars. In 1829 he led the military coup against Yucatán’s profederalist government and remained in command for three years.65 Carvajal sent a force variously reckoned as five hundred or a thousand men from Campeche to scotch the pro-santanista Tabascans: one boatful to Jonuta via the Río de Palizada, four others to San Juan Bautista via the Grijalva. Moreover, the invasion gave a foretaste of what was to come not only in Tabasco, but throughout much of modern Latin America, namely, the use of foreign mercenaries in what were essentially internecine wars. The bustamantistas contracted the services of a US mercenary named Thompson, who in turn recruited a band of adventurers from the port of New Orleans, at that moment a less-than-lawful center of international bandits and fortune seekers, and the epicenter of the North American slave trade.66 Fearing

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that this so-called Second Chenes Invasion would be every bit as traumatic as its predecessor, Martínez de Lejarza fortified the banks of the Grijalva approximately five miles down river from the capital, at a spot known as Acachapam, stationing 350 soldiers while keeping another 450 reserves further inland. The outnumbered defenders expected to be annihilated; years later, officer Longinos Díaz still remembered praying that God would give his mother the strength to accept his death.67 On July 25, 1832, the Campeche troops attacked just after daybreak; their ship-board artillery had a longer reach, but the Tabascans had the passion, and after a grueling nine-hour battle managed to turn back the invaders—the second of a long series of invasions to meet its end among the river people. For sheer carnage, though, the province had seen nothing like this since the day that Cortés battled the assembled hosts of Tabscob. Defenders ultimately won the day by discharging cannon-bursts of shrapnel at the attackers.68 Bustamantistas left 137 dead and 35 wounded (defenders lost a mere nine men), and even captured the interloper Thompson. In addition to its short-term consequences, the Second Chenes Invasion exerted a huge influence on later developments. The event mobilized Tabascans in grand scale and handed leadership to the Maldonado family, but also to a certain Evaristo Sánchez, soon to become Tabascan federalism’s bitterest enemy. These men were to have an enormous regional impact over the next fifteen years.69 The invasion also set an ominous precedent as the first time that anyone shelled Tabascan territory with heavy artillery. The Chenes invasion’s failure, together with the overthrow of Bustamante, led to Carvajal’s removal; he retired from politics, dying in Campeche in the final months of the French Intervention. Finally, the repeated mobilization of central-Campeche peasants educated them in military affairs. When the Caste War of Yucatán began fourteen years later, it emerged from the Oriente, an eastern Yucatecan region of dense Maya village populations far from the centers of power. Peasants of the west and northwest generally stayed away from the Caste Warriors, with one important exception: the villagers around Bolochnén and Hopelchén, who, owing to their presence in the Chenes invasions, now had a taste of the life of arms and a certain self-confidence on the field of battle. Centralists still refused to give up the fight. With the aristocratic Duque de Estrada momentarily out of the picture, Tabascan centralism, oddly enough, became far more local and populist in character. It coalesced

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around the aforementioned José Evaristo Sánchez and his brother Zeferino, both of San Antonio Cárdenas and both active as local militia leaders. They came from a family of mulattos who found mobility in nationally controlled militias of the early republic, and who remained loyal to that political persuasion ever after, and who put little stock in the arrogant white planters and merchants who, in their quest to dominate provincial resources, presumed to speak for the Tabascan people.70 Evaristo pronounced in favor of centralism on October 15, 1833, but rival patriarch Nicolás Maldonado managed to put down the revolt eight days later. Don Evaristo suspected that purported allies in Huimanguillo had betrayed him and had them arrested and shot.71 Political violence was in open force here: not the heat-of-battle deaths of the two Chenes invasion, but instead coldblooded killings based on little more than hunches. These purges in no way counteracted Sánchez’s defeat on the battlefield, and the angry caudillo, along with other key conservatives (including a certain Dr. Simón Sarlat García, a San Juan Bautista physician and politician, later to play a central role in the Tabascan civil wars) were briefly exiled from the state, probably to Campeche.72 It was at this precise moment that the global cholera epidemic touched the province. The disease consists of a rapidly multiplying intestinal bacteria believed to have originated in the crowded slums and stagnant waters of India and carried via trade routes through Russia and then to Europe. Cholera brought horrendous suffering. Through unchecked vomiting and diarrhea, cholera victims can lose up to half their body fluids in twenty-four hours. As late as July 1833 Tabascans nervously thanked God for sparing them thus far.73 But the divine exemption did not to last. First noticed in Frontera and Villahermosa in September, the disease was initially believed to have come from Guatemala and Chiapas; more likely the vector was ship-born, carried in vessels bound from Europe and the Caribbean and entering the southeast either through the soon heavily infected port of Campeche, or, as the eccentric traveler and gentleman archaeologist Federico de Waldeck believed, first through Frontera, then on to the peninsula. If there was one place on earth that had reason to tremble before this new epidemic, it was wetlands Tabasco. Its infinity of ponds, puddles, rivers, swamps, and undrained streets and patios, together with the atrocious sanitation practices of the time, made Tabasco a garden of Eden for the microorganism, which lived in human fecal material and in certain species of fishes.74

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Cholera halted politics, at least temporarily. The disease struck, then subsided, then acquired new fury in November and December as it worked its way through rural towns and villages. So many people died that residents had to extend the atriums behind the churches in order to have enough room to bury the dead; these additions came to be known as patios de cólera. One witness to these events was padre Rafael Milla, a Franciscan expelled from Guatemala. Like many Tabascan clergy, he had to cover enormous territory, traveling from his base in Comalcalco to attend parishioners as far as fifteen leagues away. Tropical disease was no stranger; at times it laid him up for two or more months on end. But the true historical marker in the padre’s memory was the terrible cholera epidemic, in which the entire ecclesiastical staff of Jalpa perished, while in nearby towns those fortunate enough to survive did so by running away.75 Milla’s community was no exception. Between its beginning in November 1833, and April 1834, when its effects gradually tapered off, the epidemic killed an estimated 4,570 Tabascans. Using the closest previous census of 1825, when the province contained 54,832 residents, this translates into a mortality rate of 8.3 percent, a chilling statistic. Death rates of this level have thrown societies into religious hysteria, and if cholera did not necessarily inure Tabascans to death, it at least contributed to the breakdown of social order that would culminate in the pandemonium of the 1840s.76 Even as the state pulled itself out of the epidemic, the national political wheel began to turn once more. Key to understanding the next decade of events was Mexico’s 1834 centralist coup. Whipsawed by conflicting political and economic interests, the national government wavered between centralism and federalism. On April 24, 1834, Antonio López de Santa Anna, alarmed by the changes that his liberal understudy, Valentín Gómez Farías, was inflicting on Mexican society, returned to assume power. He dismissed Gómez Farías, dissolved congress on May 31, and issued a series of centralist, socially conservative decrees. These edicts were then institutionalized in the 1836 Constitution called Los Siete Leyes, which for all intents and purposes pushed Mexico back toward the days of the viceroyalty. Provincial autonomy essentially ended, and authority became concentrated in the hands of a powerful president supported by the metropolitan oligarchy and upper clergy.77 The centralist takeover resulted in no small part from concerns about the Texas province. As priests and property owners quarreled in the

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Tabascan village of Cunduacán, and as Maya peasants gathered firewood in the forests of rural Yucatecan villages, Anglos from the United States had begun to settle in the Texas region far to the north under a Mexican-sponsored colonization scheme designed to populate the northern territories with enterprising (read, non-Indian) blood. They settled along the lush, lazy banks of the Colorado and Brazos rivers as early as 1823, bringing with them such strange patronymics as Austin, Milam, and Wharton, and taking the collective name of “Texians.” Three hundred years earlier, the amazing Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca had passed this way, kept alive by pecans and cactus fruit in his seven-year trek to the coast of Sinaloa.78 Texians, to the contrary, put little stock in barefoot asceticism. They found the land ideal for cotton and sugar plantations, and within ten years Mexicans and the so-called Texians were at loggerheads over issues of slavery, regional representation, and the land grants that had Texians forged and finagled in bewildering abundance. War erupted in 1836. After overrunning an improvised defense of San Antonio de Béxar’s Alamo mission and capturing a rebel militia unit outside of Goliad, the Mexicans under Santa Anna imploded under a surprise attack along the San Jacinto River, near present-day Houston. Texas had won its independence. Mexico’s national leaders, however, refused to recognize this fact and spent the next decade attempting to retake their breakaway province. These changes immediately convulsed Tabascan politics. Indeed, even before Santa Anna’s capture at San Jacinto, anti-US sentiment was already growing in Frontera and San Juan Bautista.79 The triumph of Texian secessionism only fanned the hostilities. “Since the commencement of the war in Texas,” consul Henry E. Coleman observed, “we have daily to submit to insult and injustice, not only from private citizens, but from the highest authorities, and there is no prospect for any change, except it be for worse treatment.”80 The situation failed to improve in the months following San Jacinto. Coleman noted thus in June: . . . an American sea captain was unjustly punished and fined by the city authorities, there was a move by one of the council to remit the fine, but the question was asked by another, to what country the captain belonged, and on learning that he was a North American, they replied, “that will do, we will not let pass an opportunity to punish these people.”81

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Even discounting for hyperbole and Anglo pique, Coleman did indeed have reason for concern: the Texas fiasco inaugurated a decade of hard feelings that were to culminate in the 1846 US invasion. But despite provincial resentment over the battle of San Jacinto, southeastern federalists made it perfectly clear that they had no intention of sending their young men to fight in remote wars. Their stubbornness, in turn, simply stoked centralist accusations that the provinces could not be trusted to run themselves. In fact, pro-Mexico City hard-liners, led by Duque de Estrada, physician Simón Sarlat García, and Evaristo Sanchéz, had seized the initiative even before matters in Texas reached their denouement. Santa Anna loyalist Lieutenant Colonel Mariano Martínez de Lejarza was summarily absolved of any wrongdoing and resumed his Tabascan command in June 1835. The following month, the Maldonado brothers found themselves banished.82 Unfortunately for Martínez, prolonged contact with Tabasco had injured not only his reputation but also his health, and in mid-December he had to relinquish his command. His replacement, devout santanista Joaquín Orihuela, arrived three months later.83 Both commanders oversaw a significant military buildup in the province, with the twin goals of fortifying Mexico for Santa Anna’s intended pacification of Texas and to impose a centralist program destined to meet resistance from local elites. It turned out to be tougher work than expected. The highly proper Orihuela found rowdy Tabascan allies like the Sánchez brothers more a nuisance than a help, and in January 1836 ended up exiling them to San Juan de Ulúa for purported military irregularities . . . believable enough, given their nonexistent training and total disregard for legal process. But the Sánchez brothers caught an unexpected break. Orijuela died of typhoid fever on April 10, a mere six days before his patron Santa Anna’s unexpected rout at San Jacinto. Events followed so close upon one another than many in the state insisted that pro-Sánchez elements had in fact poisoned the commander.84 In all likelihood this was mere conspiracy theory; Orijuela probably fell victim to the same epidemic that laid low James Bowie just prior to the battle of the Alamo thirty-nine days earlier. With their principal antagonist out of the way, the prisoners were soon free and on their way back to the lazy rivers they called home. A key purpose of this centralist build up was to allow the government tap the provincially based militias known as the Active Battalions. This institution was a holdover from the 1824 Constitution, a sort of state-level

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national guard. Local patriarchs actually liked the battalions, also known as milicias activas; command of said units meant prestige, while in the more rural areas the soldiers provided a handy workforce. What alarmed everyone was the idea of actually using these militias in some dangerous outof-state campaign. The forced levy provoked fury wherever applied, and the turmoil laid the basis for further revolt—above all, in the troublesome province of Yucatán, where political intrigue was endemic, but also in river country, where any expropriation of local resources threatened ruin for an already precarious situation. No clear evidence exists for a similar draft in Tabasco, but the state nevertheless remained steadfast in opposing power emanating from the national capital. Once centralists had control of Mexico City, then, they quickly moved to dominate the provinces. On June 19, 1837, the Chihuahua-born general José Ignacio Gutiérrez became governor of Tabasco, and immediately he discovered something as unspectacular and as frustrating for him as it would be to later historians: that Tabascan politics hinged not so much on philosophical matters, but rather on family vendettas. (It is worth noting that revolutionary strongman Tomás Garrido, commonly associated with his attacks on religion, spent almost as much passion avenging perceived slights against his father.)85 Centralism failed to bring peace to these wayward clans. From the very start, Gutiérrez found himself confronting a massive uprising in the town of Jalapa, about twenty-five kilometers south of San Juan Bautista (and not to be confused with cool Xalapa, Veracruz, birthplace of Santa Anna and namesake of the famous chile). Dominating the town’s political landscape was the smoldering rivalry between the Oropeza and Zurita families. The former group had the upper hand as of the mid-1830s, to the point that the rival Zuritas demanded an end to political favoritism for their enemies. But then-governor Narciso Pérez Medina would not listen, and in early 1837 named Félix María Oropeza as the partido’s subprefect. The Zurita patriarch, don Gregorio, reacted with fury; he needed a way to get at his enemy and found the justification he was looking for in a law that prohibited officers of the Active Battalion from holding political office: it just so happened that Oropeza met that description. Thus encouraged, don Gregorio mustered his friends and clients to demand the new prefect’s resignation. Gutiérrez tried to arrange a summit of the clans, with the town’s cura presiding, but neither the Zurita nor the Oropeza were interested in peace, and the initiative collapsed.86

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Don Félix María Oropeza knew perfectly well that half the town wanted him deep underground, and instead of adopting a conciliatory line (perhaps impossible under the circumstances), he set about organizing a militia to protect himself. Oropeza’s first attempt in this project failed utterly. Gutiérrez tried to hold things the way they were, turning away Zurita’s petitioners and granting Oropeza permission to void the ban on Active Battalion officers in government; however, Oropeza knew that the balm of administrative decision would never salve his enemies’ injured pride. He begged Gutiérrez to send him soldiers, but the latter had all available forces tied up along the coast, pending possible deployment to Texas. Moreover, Gutiérrez understood that Oropeza would use these men for his own political ends and was reluctant to feed Tabascan rancor, but he reminded Oropeza of a March 20 law that allowed the subprefect to draft vecinos to conserve public order—whatever that might happen to be. This suggestion, doubtless Gutiérrez’s way of trying to get Oropeza to go back to Jalapa, proved a fateful mistake. Oropeza now thought he had clearance for action and proceeded to dragoon men from the small hamlets surrounding Jalapa. Infuriated, Zurita tapped one of his clients, a certain José Loreto Torres, to head an insurrection and even supplied him with some fifteen armed men to get things rolling. The long-awaited violence finally erupted around six in the morning on September 3, when Oropeza arrived in Jalapa with a militia variously estimated at thirty to forty men, determined to arrest Torres and halt the backtalk once and for all. A shoot-out now erupted, leaving three wounded and four dead; four bullets ventilated the august person of don Gregorio Zurita himself. Oropeza panicked and fled to the comparative safety of his hacienda as partisans of both sides fought it out on the street. The situation in Jalapa degenerated into such anarchy that citizens actually cheered and even wept with joy when Gutiérrez’s detachment of troops, marching under torrential rains, at last entered town and restored order. The jalapeños’ unruly behavior invoked that combination of opera buffa and real bloodshed that defined so much of early national Mexico, but it also contained in miniature the factors for the far more lethal civil war just around the corner. Constitutions and legal codes purportedly described the contours of life, but in reality it was clans and their colorful patriarchs that ruled much of the province. Leaders were consistently able to mobilize men in villages and rural properties; the exact means whereby they did this have

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generated much polemic in recent histories, but the Tabascan case suggests that patronage and coercion far outweighed some sort of broad, cross-class ideological sympathies. Indeed, what did cacao pickers in places like Jaquecopa care about don Gregorio Zurita’s injured pride? Finally, the OropezaZurita shootout points to the limits of federalism. Zurita might have resented the fact that General Gutiérrez appointed his enemy, but in fact Tabascans were demonstrating their inability to live together. For all the splendor of the federalist dream, it is difficult not to sympathize with Mexico City leaders who saw strong executive governance as the medicine for Tabasco’s ills. The returning centralists also brought with them the old Bourbon distaste for clerical presumption. The church found itself hedged by a growing secularism on both political sides, but the parish priest embodied localism like few others, and for that reason collided with greater impact against headstrong centralists. No surprise, then, to find persistent churchstate conflicts in this period. In 1834, for example, the governor stripped padre Antonio Martínez of his appointment in the village of Teapa and banished him from the state, all for reasons unknown.87 An even more striking example of anticlerical action turned up in Ríos de Usumacinta. Here as elsewhere the conflict revolved around the rivalry between religious and secular authority. Trouble began in 1839 when none other than Evaristo Sánchez—a centralist, ironically—insulted the vicario in capite during one of the latter’s visits to Cunduacán. Despite complaints to the governor, Sánchez went unpunished. Soon afterward, some verses of political satire began to circulate; although not extant, they apparently ridiculed Sánchez, the governor, and other political associates. Suspicions regarding their authorship settled on a handful of curas. To protest their innocence padre José Dionicio Mangas, cura of Ríos parish, traveled to San Juan Bautista to speak with the governor. While en route he was assassinated by an armed gang. At least according to local priests, the intellectual author of this crime was none other than subprefect Cesario Domínguez; far from being brought to justice, he wandered scot-free through the town, were “we see him strolling along day and night, and making trips from the village to his home.” The point of this story is not so much the murder of one priest, but rather what was becoming a generalized air of conflict. Armed gangs were in fact common in central and eastern Tabasco; the state government provided no justice; even priests were coming to see the neocolonial political order as their enemy.88

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The breaker to the federalist-centralist impasse came from the remotest corner of a singularly remote province. In faraway Tizimín, a town in the Yucatán peninsula’s center-north, an undistinguished cowboy landowner named Santiago Imán y Villafaña decided that enough was enough when Santa Anna signed away Texas to Sam Houston. Fed up with military dragoons and high-handed centralist officers, Imán first attempted an uprising in 1836; jailed, he escaped two years later and started over again, this time with a peasant army, recruited with promises of abolishing the hated religious head taxes known as obvenciones. By giving Maya peasants guns and permission to pillage, Imán changed southeast Mexican history forever. Others had raised peasant armies before him (recall López de Llergo and his Chenes invasions). But Imán did so in the heartland of his own province and targeted them against one of its key institutions of power. His irregulars won the day, handed the Yucatecan Republic on a platter to Mérida’s scheming armchair políticos and, though no one knew it at the time, opened the door to four decades of a violence as uncontrollable as it was hydra-headed: the Tizimín revolt set the stage for the Caste War, whose far-reaching consequences continued to redefine peninsular society and practices well into the twentieth century.89 Even before it was over, the Tizimín uprising was already resonating throughout the southeast, where opposition to Mexican centralism had reached fever pitch. Sensing that a powerful Yucatecan ally would mean victory, and smelling the deliciously vague aroma of that thing called liberty, Tabascan enemies of the current order immediately returned to rid their state of what they considered a vile despotism. All signs pointed to a quick and easy victory, much like Imán’s own. But the insurgents had no idea how wrong they really were, for what they took to be the high tide of their political fortunes was in fact the rising of flood time.

four

The Outsider

He was an outsider, a foreign man. Not a Tabascan, not even a Mexican national, Francisco de Sentmanat (last “-t” silent) came from an island beyond the sea. A filibuster in the grand nineteenth-century fashion, almost an operatic creation written for one of Gioachino Rossini’s tenors, this soldier of fortune managed to make himself the absolute ruler of Tabasco with all the rights and privileges thereof: wealth, properties, titles, women, and even formal recognition by the Mexican state. And yet, in the same way that this astonishing brave fortune came to him, it just as easily vanished. Five years of Tabascan history (1839–44) tell the story of Sentmanat’s meteoric rise, his fall, his horrific end, and his subsequent apotheosis into legend.

Napoleonic Fr ee R adicals Tabasco’s great federalist revolt came under the leadership of the Maldonado family: mainly, patriarch Fernando Nicolás and his four brothers.

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They lived hard, rustic lives and, like other cacao men, seldom thought to write their autobiographies or their opinions. Their behavior refutes any idea that they may have been bound by moral or communitarian scruples. These men stood outside the San Juan Bautista elite and dedicated most of their time to growing and selling cacao in estates in the Chontalpa and Sierra regions. Fernando Nicolás himself—known deferentially as don Nicolás—usually resided in his hacienda La Esperanza, outside of Huimanguillo. His role as regional militia commander gave him enormous influence over the lives of people throughout the province and also allowed him to see a bit further than the average cacao planter. Business and matrimonial ties linked the Maldonados to the Puig, Urguelles, Pardo, Calcáneo, and Ficache families, thus forming a ready-made political party. Their basic complaint with the Mexican government concerned trade restrictions that kept Tabascans from selling their cacao beans to whomever they pleased and other edicts that prevented them from purchasing foreign goods at favorable prices. Over time the Maldonados became accustomed to hearing “no” from the Palacio Nacional, and they reacted vehemently to Mexico City’s often clumsy attempts to govern them. In 1838, then, José María Maldonado joined with kinsman and landowner Salvador Calcáneo to attempt an uprising. The movement failed, and while Maldonado escaped (as Maldonados tended to do), Calcáneo ended up imprisoned in San Juan Bautista. But the defeat did not greatly alter the political landscape, for, as Governor Gutiérrez observed, the Maldonados and their allies always opposed the national government and would continue to do so.1 How right he was. Still, Tabascan affairs might have lurched from one teapot squabble to another, had not unexpected developments, all seeming advantageous for an insurgency, suddenly come into line. Geography, as always, promised to favor the Tabascans. Centralist military operatives controlled San Juan Bautista, but die-hard federalists maintained a stronghold in Tabasco’s byzantine wetlands and the mountains of its southern border. The succession of federalist revolts then exploding throughout Mexico made it difficult to reinforce centralist units everywhere. Economic events also played into Tabascan hands. The 1838 Pastry War brought a French blockade of Veracruz and a momentary spike in trade between Havana and San Juan Bautista. Mexico was thus weak, and Tabasco suddenly flush.2 Finally, the Yucatecan victories offered a blueprint for success, much as the 1959 Cuban Revolution appeared to would-be imitators

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a century later. By February 1840 the unexpected liberator Santiago Imán y Villafaña already expelled centralist troops from eastern Yucatán, and his revolt was then spreading westward to the great cities of Mérida and Campeche.3 The prophecies of a thousand years at last seemed to be coming true, as the ancient grip of Mexico City, formerly seat of the Virreinato de Nueva España, formerly majestic Tenochtitlán, formerly AzcapotzalcoTexcoco, weakened before Maldonado’s very eyes. Thus encouraged, the cacao barons threw themselves into action. Don Nicolás, accompanied by políticos Agustín Ruiz de la Peña and Justo Santa Anna, proclaimed in the village of Tepetitán (just outside of Macuspana, in the Centla swamps) in mid-February 1840. To supplement their rural bases, the Maldonados formed alliances, first with key urban actors, particularly men on the junta departamental, the ruling committee set up to govern the state under the centralist system, and with French consul and lumber merchant Pierre Elys. No poet-warrior, Nicolás Maldonado relied on the trusty slogan of “Federalism or death!”, printed up the obligatory pronunciamiento, and even sent a copy to Santiago Imán himself, fishing for whatever support the great caudillo might throw their way.4 Indeed, the whole approach was a carbon-copy of Imán: rise up in the far-flung periphery, where success was greatest, and hope that the rest of the province would gradually swing your way. However heartfelt, though, the Maldonado movement lacked organization and equipment, and had little popular base beyond their own immediate clientele. The San Juan Bautista garrison remained staunchly centralist, and try as he might, Maldonado simply could not get the better of his opponent. Gutiérrez routed the rebels in a series of lopsided skirmishes, flushing them from one pueblo to another.5 Tabascan federalists, like so many losing parties in the political conflicts of Latin America following independence, would have to look outward for help. To that effect, Maldonado left his troops in Frontera under the command of one Pedro Bruno, an Italian soldier who along with his son Miguel had come to Olman seeking fortune and betterment. The federalist commander then headed for Campeche, where Imán’s revolt stood on the cusp of definitive triumph.6 In the process Maldonado changed his own movement, for arms were not the only form of assistance to reach Tabasco. In his treatise on statecraft, Nicoli Machiavelli had warned that when your own people take up arms against you, there will be no shortage of foreigners to assist them. So

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too in river country. Thus far the rebellion consisted of old-guard federalists. But Mexico’s political disintegration invited the debut of a new entity in Tabascan politics, one far less pliant to loyalties of patria, class, or institution, a group that to whom might be applied the melodramatic label of Napoleonic free radicals. The ideal radical was a young man in the prime of life; he often came from without the province, and even from without the country itself; and he exuded charisma from every pore. This firebrand drew inspiration from a concept of liberty prevalent in the Atlantic world for much of the nineteenth century: abstract and glorious, but at the same time intensely personal and boldly masculine, and little concerned with matters such as corporate efficiency or the plight of oppressed minorities. In terms of personal inspiration, he was second cousin to men like Iturbide, who admired authoritarian state building within a codified legal framework: that is, Bonapartist governance.7 Rather, the young radical favored the more personalist dimension of the Napoleon saga, that narrative in which a whole people might find their destiny in the daring struggles of one man. The free radical offered himself as precisely such a person. Tabasco suffered a greater than usual presence of these audacious characters, in part because of its limited size and its extreme isolation, in part because of the weakness of the other forces. Here an outsider could take the full measure of his ambition. The Napoleonic free radical opposed centralism for the obvious reason: national government, rule-bound and visionless octopus that it was, threatened to constrict his adventurous dreams and thwart his destiny. Perhaps it was a better world in which such men might enact their dreams. Napoleonic free radicals propelled Tabasco’s amazing history, and in the course of the nineteenth century, many an agent of glorious liberty commands attention. But while daring outsiders typically allied themselves with one of the more established Tabascan forces, such alliances seldom endured, for those same radicals had a gift for wearing out their welcome, and today’s comrade often became tomorrow’s enemy. It was in Campeche that Fernando Nicolás Maldonado met and allied himself with two of the age’s greatest Napoleonic free radicals. The first of these, Juan Pablo Anaya, was an honored veteran of the original Mexican independence movement. Born in 1785 of a respectable creole family in the town of Lagos, Jalisco, Anaya had joined the cause of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla when that latter’s mob-army swept westward into Guadalajara. The mercurial Miguel Hidalgo promoted him to field marshal, and in this

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capacity Anaya shared in the rebels’ defeat at Puente de Calderón in 1811, then took part in the retreat northward. But while Hidalgo and other leaders were captured and executed, Anaya managed to escape and continued to play a series of minor roles in the insurgency over the next ten years. Following Hidalgo’s death Anaya actually left Mexico for a while and tasted victory under Andrew Jackson in the legendary 1815 battle of New Orleans. He returned to his home country and fought in few military engagements, enjoying the confidence of the great independence leaders. After 1821 Anaya opposed Emperor Iturbide, and two years after the latter’s overthrow in 1823, he received the comandancia militar of Chiapas. But the centralist takeover hit Anaya hard. Adopting the title “general-in-chief of the federalist forces of Mexico,” he briefly went to Texas following Santa Anna’s loss at San Jacinto, and there discussed the possibility of merging the new republic with other of Mexico’s dissatisfied federalist states. Following the national repudiation of Santa Anna in 1836, Bustamante exiled Anaya back to New Orleans.8 Southeast Mexico’s struggle against centralism fed the passions that burned in the heart of this fifty-five-year-old compulsive warrior. Anaya saw himself as the grand architect of Mexican federalism, the Bolivarian visionary of a movement with both national and international connections, and he quickly perceived Yucatán as central to those designs. In Anaya’s mind, he had single-handedly coordinated revolt in the north (Nuevo León, Coahuila, and Tamaulipas); made peace with the Republic of Texas; won the tacit support of the United States; and through a series of polemical letters fomented the Yucatecan and Tabascan separatist movements. Among his many schemes was to hire a Cuban naval officer named Francisco Reibaud to liberate Yucatán by means of an armed landing on the peninsular east coast, in the Bahía de la Ascención, mere miles from what would soon become the rebel Maya city of Chan Santa Cruz; said invasion was under discussion when Imán’s triumph unexpectedly eclipsed the plan.9 Underneath these grandiose claims lay little more than the wanderings of a restless and compulsive conspirator. Anaya probably did communicate with the parties he mentioned, then tended to attribute all subsequent events to his own agency and design. But the most important foreign soldier of fortune to fight in Tabasco was the outsider in question, one Francisco de Sentmanat y Zayas. He was a character who stepped straight from the pages of Homer and onto the

Figure 8.  Juan Pablo Anaya fought beside the likes of Miguel Hidalgo and Andrew Jackson. He fancied himself the “general-in-chief of the federalist forces of Mexico,” the grand champion of the 1824 Constitution, but outside of his triumph in Tabasco, most of his plots and campaigns came to naught. Anaya at last died in 1850 in his native town of Lagos, Jalisco, when Asiatic cholera achieved what so many opponents had failed to accomplish. From Manuel Mestre Ghigliazza, Gobernantes de Tabasco (1934).

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Gulf coast littoral. Few Tabascans had so much as heard of him prior to 1840, when he and Anaya first joined forces with Maldonado. The first mention of this unusual character in provincial correspondence appears in October of that year, when a letter to Mexico’s war minister reports the arrival of “a certain Francisco Semaná, an habanero who, according to the reports of all who know him, is a public assassin fleeing the law, and has taken part in whatever revolution happens to be in progress.”10 What mysterious past did this newcomer conceal? In reality, the minister’s report proved fairly accurate. Francisco de Sentmanat was the black sheep of a conspicuously white flock of Spanish loyalists, almost all of whom had roots in Cuba’s military aristocracy. His father was a Valencian named Ramón de Sentmanat y Copóns, a brigadier of the Royal Army; Don Ramón married one María Ignacia de Zayas y Chacón, a Cuban creole who had her own illustrious pedigree, including a brother, one José Pascual, who rose to the rank of general. The future filibuster’s own brother José Antonio became colonel of Santiago de Cuba’s plaza, while his sister Josefa (born in 1806) married an artillery officer. But Francisco de Sentmanat himself walked a different path. Born on November 6, 1802, in Havana, he came of age during the tumultuous era of the Spanish-American independence struggles. In the 1820s the young Francisco fell into an abortive movement of Cuban dissidents trying to obtain Mexican funding to liberate the island. Failing in that objective, they returned to Havana and began a chain of secret revolutionary cells around one Simón de Chávez, a charismatic ex-priest popularly known as El Aguila Negra (“the black eagle”). Rumors of the conspiracy reached Cuban authorities via a diplomatic leak in Washington, DC, and they quickly rounded up the plotters. Under questioning, young Sentmanat confessed that the plan had been to attract people of color (read, free mulattos), a fact made all the more alarming by a slave revolt that had recently broken out in Matanzas province.11 Francisco was condemned to death, but his family used their connections to finagle a deal. In 1832 authorities commuted his sentence to life in exile and banished him to New Orleans—a briar patch for would-be revolutionaries—and here he continued to dabble in conspiracies.12 Circumstances in the Crescent City lent themselves to this parvenu. The commercial Mississippi emporium that was New Orleans already had a reputation for accommodating unscrupulous projects. Although Louisiana gained statehood in 1812, federal oversight in the region remained

Figure 9.  “A certain Francisco Semaná, an habanero who, according to the reports of all who know him, is a public assassin fleeing the law, and has taken part in whatever revolution happens to be in progress.” Francisco de Sentmanat y Zayas, the greatest of Tabasco’s Napoleonic free radicals, depicted here in the prime of his fortunes. This, the only known portrait of Sentmanat, was supposedly given to Manuel Gil y Sáenz by one of the Cuban’s grandchildren. From Manuel Gil y Sáenz, Historia del Estado de Tabasco (1890).

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weak indeed. Sentmanat would have seen Louisiana used as the launching pad for the Texas war, the land where James Bowie forged hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Spanish land grants, the city where the ill-fated Alamo defenders recruited their last reinforcements.13 It was also a city where shiploads of African slaves arrived regularly, not unlike his own Havana, and where the crack of the auctioneer’s gavel announced imminent death by overwork in the mislabeled land of liberty. Within a few years of his arrival he married into the city’s claustrophobic repertoire of transplanted French aristocrats, taking as his wife one María Rosa de Marigny, and with her siring the classic patriarchal family: three daughters presumably destined to the charmed life of balls, servants, second-story verandas, and well-chosen matches.14 (One apocryphal version held that he had already married once in his native Cuba, to a certain Mercedes Armenteros, and that their offspring fought in the wars against Spain; the facts of the matter remain hazy.)15 Of Sentmanat’s wife María Rosa, only two things are known with finality. First, she came from the highest echelons of the New Orleans elite. Her grandfather, the illustrious Count Pierre Enguerrand Phillippe Mandeville Eauyer, Sieur de Marigny, Chevalier de St. Louis, dominated the colony of New Orleans back when Bourbon regalism still had clout. His extravagance spawned legends: after the future King Philip dined at his house, Count Marigny had the silverware thrown into the river, insisting that no one else could ever be worthy of touching it. The count’s son Jean Bernard Xavier Marigny de Mandeville (1785–1868) cut an even larger figure in what is the United States’s most flamboyantly unique region. He stood at the pinnacle of a society where French creoles made a point of flaunting their wealth and ancestry. Apropos to a gentleman of leisure, Bernard racked up huge gambling debts, and on attaining his majority in 1806, he covered these by dividing up and selling his plantation on the edge of town; thus was born the Faubourg Marigny, New Orleans’s first suburb, located immediately to the east of the Vieux Carré, just across Esplanade Avenue. The young man may have inherited his father Pierre’s fortune, but not his position of cultural hegemony. Following the 1803 Louisiana Purchase a wave of gauche Anglo newcomers inundated the colony. Bernard (who, for all his Gallic pretensions, spoke only limited French and preferred to eat with his hands) fought these changing times. He wed the utterly non-Anglo Ana Morales, daughter of Juan Ventura

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Morales, Spanish intendant of Fort Pensacola, in Florida, a man who in turn had already entered into Louisiana creole society through marriage to one Catherine Guesnon.16 The crusty Bernard served as president of the Louisiana senate in the 1820s, while his own son married Sophronia Louise Claiborne (1812–90), the daughter of Louisiana’s first Anglo governor, William C. Claiborne.17 Whatever their differences, though, creole and Anglo settlers agreed on the fundamentals of white supremacy. Marigny branded his initials onto his bondsmen’s chests, while it was the elder Claiborne who presided over, and then tried to conceal from history, the atrocious massacre of Louisiana slave rebels in January 1811.18 The second indisputable fact surrounding María Rosa was her catastrophic choice of a husband. Perhaps it is true that in selecting a mate we subconsciously recreate our relationship with our parents. If so, in the brash newcomer she found her father’s concentrated essence, brimming with New Orleans daring and opportunism, and it was a decision she would live to regret. Or perhaps María Rosa had no say in what was essentially an arranged match. In his own lifetime her father Bernard, purportedly the richest man in all of Louisiana, was the implacable foe of the Americans. He earned the nickname “creole of creoles,” a reference to his attempt to do all possible to keep power in the hands of the old French settlers. Sentmanat’s roots in the Bourbon military, with its fixation on honor and status; his Valencian background, with its deliciously silent final consonants; his bilingualism (Spanish and the all-important French); his youth and sheer reckless dash: all made him a storybook sonin-law for this family of creole chauvinists. Sentmanat’s world accounted in large part for the creation of this adventurer. The Gulf of Mexico was then a periphery of empires that plied multiple and often conflicting agendas. To the north lay the United States, a political entity that was anything but united. There, as in so many places, the wedge issue was labor. For centuries, African slavery offered the only viable way to find workers for the area’s vast sugar properties, but by 1840 the Gulf was now torn between radically opposed viewpoints on the subject. Great Britain had ended its role in the trade in 1807, abolished slavery itself in 1834, and did away with the short-lived apprenticeship system, a halfway world between bondage and freedom, four years later. The rulers of Haiti were sponsoring antislave, anticolonial revolts throughout the Americas. Yet in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Texas Republic, and the US South, the

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peculiar institution of African bondage was plainly expanding. Indeed, it was the decline of British and French slavery that threw open the field to newer practitioners, and that fact generated no end of smugglers, boosters, apologists, fire eaters, and freelance suppliers of unfree labor. Cumulatively, these conditions made the Gulf a hive of intrigues and cabals, a land whose many filibusters have generated both solid histories and sweeping conspiracy theories.19 Opinions varied about the exile’s morals and motivations. However, even his detractors agreed that Sentmanat exuded bravery, masculine swank, and immense personal charisma, and at this time and place such qualities mattered deeply. The Cuban was tall and handsome, and wore fine clothes and Garibaldi-like scarves. To his friends he manifested generosity and shrewd judgment, and he enjoyed great personal popularity until the end of his life. Though frequently claiming to be a merchant, his real business was revolution, and to that end he showed the requisite flair for grandiloquent pronouncements and broadsides. At the same time, Sentmanat repeatedly showed himself capable of terrible cruelty. He bore the reputation of a skilled duelist and suffered that fatal infirmity of his ilk, an inability to know when to quit. In this sense, the filibusters’ strength was usually their downfall. It was to this unlikely pair—an Hidalgo holdover and a Cuban bad boy—that Maldonado in desperation turned. We know nothing of their early meetings, except that Mérida and Campeche were places where the tiny political class lived in close quarters, and where it was difficult not to meet educated men of ambition. Almost all accounts hold that Maldonado first contacted Juan Pablo Anaya, who in turn brought in Sentmanat. Their key advantage lay in Anaya’s claim, not totally implausible, to have influence among the Texians and the modest naval force that they had recently assembled. The two outsiders pledged to recruit an assault team of Tabascans and Yucatecans; they also promised to contract the Texas navy as a sort of coast guard to prevent Mexican reinforcements. The terms of that contract remained vague, a fact that eventually came back to haunt the conspirators.20 But whatever the agreement, the pair’s experience and connections in the United States sealed the deal. Without fully considering the consequences of his actions, then, Maldonado had made a fateful decision. Uninhibited by moral scruples about violence or by ties of loyalty to Tabascan families, and blinded by a mixture of federalist passions and sheer

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rebelliousness, Anaya and Sentmanat readily used brutal means to achieve their ends. The actual federalist revolt in Tabasco was surprisingly brief. Anaya, Maldonado, and Sentmanat arrived in Frontera on August 29, 1840. (Interestingly enough, Nicolás’s brother Pomposo was at that very moment sending out peace overtures to the president, possibly as a hedge against future failure.)21 While Anaya stayed behind to await the arrival of the Texian ships, Maldonado returned with 380 men to Macuspana, the original area of his revolt. Sentmanat headed for the Chontalpa with a small group of mercenaries, about whom little is known. They initially based themselves at the Chiltepec sandbar west of Frontera.22 From there Sentmanat passed quickly from town to town, picking up support from key federalist families: first Comalcalco, then Huimanguillo, then Jalpa. However, the event that made Sentmanat famous was his attack on Cunduacán, where on September 16 his men staged an early morning raid on a town still sleeping off its late-night celebration of fiestas patrias. They forced their way into the home of the town’s captain, the hated centralist leader José Evaristo Sánchez. That old conspirator’s intrigues now caught up with him. Finding Sánchez asleep in bed, they took him prisoner and sacked the premises; two days later Sánchez was shot to death before the statue to the 1812 Constitution erected by memorialist and padre Eduardo de Cárdenas.23 In his final moments Sánchez penned a tearful farewell to his wife Josefa, urging her: “Tell my children as often as possible that their poor father was assassinated by foreign hands; but remind them that I died fulfilling my duties, ever loyal to law and order, and to the established government.”24 This individual’s life and tragic death say much about the nature of early Mexican political passions. A mulatto of low social standing, a man who never so much as laid eyes on Mexico City or could hope to dine at Chapultepec castle, he nevertheless came to support a centralist order that in his mind elevated him above the pretentions of local creole landowners: the further away the epicenter of centralism lay, the more it lent itself to what people wanted to imagine, and the stronger its appeal for certain disadvantaged elements. By this point the Tabascan federalist war degenerated into unrestrained violence. Execution-style killings, the dead left unburied, wounded men tied to horses and drug through chaparral: all became common scenes.25 Despite Evaristo Sánchez’s death, Cunduacán militias still loyal to the centralist government flushed sentmanatistas out of that town, forcing the

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rebels to flee to San Juan Mezcalapa, and from there back to Comalcalco. In Huimanguillo, Nicolás Maldonado’s cousin Francisco Pardo was every bit as cruel and vindictive. Before shooting the centralist sergeant José Gil González there, he forced the unfortunate victim to dig his own grave.26 Eulalio Maldonado began similarly ruthless operations in the Tacotalpa area. The area’s commander, Rosendo García Salas, reluctantly armed locals to shore up defenses, but to no avail.27 On October 21, Maldonado raided Tacotalpa. They took hostages for ransom and ransacked private homes for everything from money to petticoats. Sentmanat’s most novelesque victory, and the one that carried the day, came on October 24. Two centralist officers, Colonel Joaquín Rodal and Lieutenant Colonel. Amalio Alarcón, had done a forced march to Comalcalco, through heavy rain, in order to catch Sentmanat unawares. At the moment of their arrival, the Cuban lay sick in his hammock from malaria, in a building next to the town’s church. However, from the altar Comalcalco’s priest saw their approach and sent word to arouse Sentmanat. The filibuster quickly ordered an evacuation but shrewdly left fifteen men in the barracks to draw the centralists’ fire. When the attackers approached, they discovered that the rain had dampened their powder. Sentmanat’s forces now came up behind them and captured the entire unit, with only Rodal and Alarcón escaping (the latter soon defecting to the enemy camp, becoming one of Sentmanat’s closest collaborators). Thus emboldened, Sentmanat defeated another centralist unit under Lieutenant Colonel Mariano Cornejo, in Cunduacán, on November 7. Atasta surrendered ten days later. With the Cuban controlling the Chontalpa, Maldonado with forces both in Centla and around San Juan Bautista, and Anaya and the Texian warships blocking Frontera, Gutiérrez realized that all was lost and withdrew to Huimanguillo with his remaining forces.28 As Sentmanat fought his way toward the Tabascan capital, Anaya remained in Frontera, where he negotiated with Commodore Edwin Moore aboard the Zavala, anchored just beyond the bar. Exactly what the two men agreed upon remains controversial. According to Moore, Anaya committed himself to paying $25,000 (that is, Mexican pesos) for the services of the Texian Navy; Anaya himself later claimed that he merely promised to indemnify any ships that performed active service on federalist behalf, and according to his own ability to pay, since he had no way of forecasting the state of Tabascan finances prior to assuming control. The vagaries of

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this arrangement were compounded by the fact that Moore and his officers spoke no Spanish, while Anaya had only marginally better command of English: all communications took place through a translator.29 It was under this extremely ambiguous agreement that Anaya and Moore parted company, each man content that he had obtained the better of the bargain. Unopposed, Sentmanat now marched into San Juan Bautista itself on November 20, 1840. Styling himself “Major General of the Federal Army and Commander of the Chontalpa Section,” he issued a series of proclamations announcing victory over Gutiérrez and reassuring Tabascans that the new administration would respect liberty, property, and order.30 With the state in the hands of a hybrid junta of federalists and adventurers, no one in Tabasco could now admit loyalty to faraway Mexico City.31 The foreign role in these events remains elusive. Unlike so much of the great wave of filibustering that prospered prior to the Civil War, Anaya and Sentmanat showed no interest in somehow attaching Tabasco to the United States.32 Even the Mexican centralists, ever paranoid about the republic to the north, doubted the participation of US consul Henry E. Coleman, who complained bitterly of post-San Jacinto persecution of his fellow citizens in Tabasco, but who was also believed to disapprove of much of federalist agitation.33 Another popular interpretation had Sentmanat as the operative of merchants and lawyers from Cuba and Yucatán, with both areas intending to use Tabasco as a colony.34 If so, neither power achieved its goal. No evidence of Cuban interests has thus far turned up. The Yucatecan presence is slightly more apparent, since the filibuster repeatedly picked up men (and crumbs of material support) from the peninsula. Tabascan federalists had every reason to look to their eastern neighbor for help. Indeed, almost immediately after Imán’s conquest of Valladolid in February 1840 Yucatán began to provide concrete assistance. Like many other revolutionary states in their moment of triumph, Yucatán armed its neighbors as a way of creating a buffer of defense and support. In April of that same year the Mérida government transferred four cannons, three hundred English rifles, and a wide assortment of munitions to their struggling federalist counterparts in river country, taking advantage of trade routes that passed through Isla del Carmen.35 The southeast thus emerged as a loosely associated front against “the common enemy,” Mexico. Still, Sentmanat had no compunction about betraying Yucatecan allies, who seem to have exercised little control over his decisions.

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European intrigues may also have been at work here. After all, Tabasco was a poor state; excluding customs receipts, most of the money available to political actors came from foreign-owned commercial houses that acted as outposts of progress in a riverine wilderness. For example, the Pierre Pailet company, a French concern, worked out of San Juan Bautista, competing with the British, Germans, and Spanish in the export of cacao and dyewood.36 But the most direct support came from French consul and merchant Pedro Eugenio Elys, who financed at least some of the federalist operations, worked closely with Anaya, and even allowed his home to be used as a rebel headquarters.37 But Elys excluded, this support amounted to little more than forced loans that revolutionaries levied on merchants, a standard nineteenth-century procedure, or perhaps it was merely an insurance policy calculated to win the favor of what appeared the winning side. Embittered centralists mistook appearance for reality, assumed foreign plotting, and periodically extracted revenge. The centralist José Ignacio Gutiérrez, for example, had a special hatred for French involvement (possibly a legacy of the recently concluded Pastry War, in which Mexico, bombarded and humiliated, had to cough up $600,000). During his final defense of San Juan Bautista, he had gone after French residents with a vengeance, confiscating their property and even sacking Elys’s home, the merchant’s diplomatic immunity notwithstanding.38 But it is doubtful that foreigners ever called the shots of a movement led by two megalomaniacs. More likely, the French consul and other foreign residents, almost all of them merchants or logging entrepreneurs, opposed centralist’s corrupt and inefficient aduana system in order to boost their own trade advantages. If so, Elys and other merchants must have been disappointed when Anaya freed all national vessels from duties, but levied an import tariff of 20 percent on goods from the United States, and a whopping 40 percent on anything entering from Europe, Asia, or Africa.39 Fundamental motivation for the conflict lay with Tabascans themselves, while foreigners merely shifted according to their needs. But Tabasco’s problems were only beginning. As with the Mexican Revolution in late 1914, the worst part of the conflict resulted from infighting among the three victorious federalist caudillos. The falling out began over money. On December 12, shortly after Sentmanat had taken San Juan Bautista, Commodore Edwin Moore arrived to collect what he considered his rightful pay. Anaya balked, reiterating his own understanding of the

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deal. Of the three witnesses present at the original negotiations, two were Moore’s own officers, while the third, none other than the French consul Pedro Elys, sided with Anaya. Even today, the truth of the original (and strictly verbal) contract remains elusive. But Moore had might on his side, and after some artillery fire upon the capital, the new Tabascan government saw the wisdom of allocating the funds that he demanded. Moore withdrew his ship to the coast.40 Back in Tabasco, neither Juan Pablo Anaya nor Francisco Sentmanat had any intention of proclaiming themselves governor, at least not yet. Anaya reveled in quixotic campaigns of grand compass, but lacked the drive and the patience to rule; Sentmanat had no such problem, but understood that titles of political office undercut his and Anaya’s claims to be nothing more than armed representatives of popular will. Both men instead retained their positions as military commanders, and used cooperative civilians to give their decisions the appearance of legitimacy and due process. The state’s strongest pocket of centralism, however, lay in San Juan Bautista itself, where numerous mercantile and political interests remained tied to Mexico City. The caudillos quickly arranged for ayuntamiento elections, but to their horror, the centralists won, and the results had to be annulled. A second vote produced an identical outcome. Only on the third try did Anaya and Sentmanat triumph.41 On February 14, 1841, the state congress officially declared the two liberators to be Tabascan citizens, partially cleansing them of the odor of foreign filibusters.42 Three days later Anaya received a special commendation for his services to the state.43 The following month Anaya sacked the governor, and sent primer consejo and old-time político Justo Santa Anna a letter appointing him to the job, an appointment that Santa Anna fawningly accepted.44 Outsiders who came to negotiate with the Tabascans recognized the sham and dealt directly with Sentmanat in all matters of importance. Contrived honors and titles notwithstanding, the stiff payoff the Texians demanded had generated a rift among Tabasco’s new leaders. Cacao patriarch Nicolás Maldonado resented the fact that the revolution had now almost totally escaped his hands. All the more galling, then, that he should actually be expected to honor his promises of huge payment to support a government dominated by two men he viewed as hirelings. The Cuban in particular was little more than an upstart foreigner, and his sudden celebrity had eclipsed a family long accustomed to calling the shots.

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Sentmanat, for his part, took an instant dislike to Maldonado’s arrogant personality and utterly provincial orientation, while Anaya wanted federalism not merely for the Tabascans, but for all of Mexico. More to the point, they blamed Maldonado for not providing more funds. Although Sentmanat maintained his alliance with Anaya, he himself quickly came to detest the Maldonado clan, individuals whom he called “thieves, pickpockets, shameless, crooked, indecent, and cowardly.” Whether his hatred began with withheld payment, or had deeper roots in personality conflicts and power rivalries, Sentmanat’s fury against them soon equaled or exceeded any political sentiments. And unlike most enemies of the Maldonado family, the Cuban could do something about it. En route to the newly created Republic of Yucatán in order to gather recruits and supplies against the inevitable Mexican invasion, Sentmanat and his twenty-five-man escort ran into José María Maldonado in Frontera, confiscated his boatload of cacao bound for export, and extorted $2,000 to contribute to the defense effort.45 The rupture was now complete. With the Maldonado family’s pride injured, patriarch Nicolás went to Huimanguillo with five hundred rifles to build an anti-Sentmanat force. The family formed an alliance with Chiapan centralists under General Ignacio Barbarena and set up a kind of tin-roof government, with brother Pomposa sporting the inflated title of “defense minister.” Seconded by his in-laws Francisco Pardo and José and Cristóbal Urgüelles, Nicolás launched a series of skirmishes against Anaya from as far as the former’s Chiapan home in Comitán. The Maldonado family had various bases of support built around their chain of cacao haciendas; key nodes included Nicolás’s home in Huimanguillo and pockets in Jonuta, Tepetitán, and the Pichucalco area of Chiapas, where his followers went by the regional nickname of coletos, a term still in use today for the more reactionary of the San Cristóbal crowd.46 Sentmanat responded by returning in May 1841 with five hundred soldiers, at least some who hailed from the Yucatecan wars. Followers of Santiago Imán, men such as Lázaro Ruz, had first rebelled in May 1839 under the Liberator and served him until his victorious siege of Campeche. After the Mexican surrender there, Ruz traveled to Tabasco, where he fought in battles throughout the Chontalpa region and was elevated to captain’s rank.47 Manuel Muñoz, a sublieutenant of Yucatán’s permanent infantry, also tendered a Byronesque petition “to lend his services in the cause of

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liberty” in Tabasco.48 Although the majority of Sentmanat’s reinforcements appear not to have Yucatecans, but rather men Anaya had recruited within state, the presence of men like Ruz and Muñoz underscore the many connections between the Imán and Tabascan revolutions. The Cuban also brought along a twenty-cannon corvette and a steamship said to have come courtesy of the Texas Navy, although given the recent conflicts with Commodore Moore, this rumor appears unlikely.49 Sentmanat found Tabasco racked with caudillo rivalries, and he made it a personal project to avenge Maldonado raids on Comitán: “That I promise you,” he vowed.50 He supplemented his contingents with forces supplied by the figurehead governor, then managed to flush Nicolás Maldonado from his home base on April 11.51 Suspecting that San Juan Bautista’s commander, Gabriel Valenzuela, was insufficiently loyal to the new federalist order, Sentmanat banished him to Campeche.52 The defeated Maldonado, meanwhile, retreated across the border and into Chiapas, where on June 25 Sentmanat scored one of the greatest victories of his life when he defeated his rival’s army in direct combat. Despite having his horse shot out from under him—an air of theatricality followed him at every turn—Sentmanat won the battle, killing twenty-two of the enemy and taking eighty prisoners.53 The enemy deaths actually appear to have been post-facto executions, not battlefield casualties, and this act of cold-blooded brutality became yet another stain on Sentmanat, an accusation from which he had to defend himself ever after. The national government, much to its own chagrin, had virtually no leverage over this anarchy. Still reeling from the combined losses of Texas and Yucatán, together with the various federalist wars and the general instability of the late 1830s, there was little any president or minister could do except monitor the audacious rise of Sentmanat through reports and confidential agents. The closest thing Mexico possessed to a listening station for the rebellious southeast was Acayucan, a Veracruzan town close to the Tabascan border. Its comandancia militar then lay in the hands of Gutiérrez; still stinging from having surrendered San Juan Bautista to Sentmanat, in late July Gutiérrez, recruiting heavily from Tabascan refugees in Minantitlán, made a second attempt to intervene in the affairs of river country.54 But he too failed, and when defeated in battle, he was confined to a San Juan Bautista prison.55 A loyal Santa Anna man, Gutiérrez would later go on to occupy a number of subsequent posts, both civil and military, finally dying of a cerebral hemorrhage in Mexico City in 1851, but until

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Sentmanat’s fall, all he would know was the inside of a cell.56 The Acayucan command now went to a colonel named Francisco Marín, who quickly discovered that the Maldonados, with their influence over the ill-defined and poorly controlled border between Tabasco and Veracruz, constituted a greater headache than the Cuban himself. At this point Anaya unexpectedly exited Tabascan politics. This ideologically driven individual needed to believe that his federalist revolution was spreading, and as the next logical step, he resolved to topple Chiapas’s centralist governor and comandante general, one Ignacio Barbarena. Anaya organized a force that purportedly included Texians and Yucatecans, and headed for the border south of Teapa. From there they crossed the border into Chiapas and fortified themselves at the town of Comitán. To confront this invasion Barbarena sent the capable Colonel Miguel Peláez. Despite marching with a smaller force and through torrential rains, the latter inflicted a severe loss on the Tabascans on May 15. Peláez shrewdly diverted his forces from the camino real and attacked from an unexpected direction, routing the defenders, killing over two hundred men and taking sixty-three prisoners.57 Anaya himself escaped and tried to rebound, but suffered yet another defeat in Chiptic. He returned to discover that Tabascans had divided up between Sentmanat and Maldonado.58 Moreover, the costs of his campaign, together with his expropriation (and subsequent loss) of Tabascan artillery, all coming on top of the costly fiasco with the Texas Navy, depleted most of his credibility and his following.59 By April 1841 Gov. Justo Santa Anna had been forced to appeal yet again to the Yucatecan government for rifles and munitions with which to combat the troops of “the oligarchic administration of Mexico”; too many of their own armaments, the governor admitted, had already been funneled to Anaya’s ill-fated Chiapan war.60 It is possible that the highly popular Sentmanat had now consolidated his power in San Juan Bautista, and no longer required the help of his original partner in filibustering. Nicolás Maldonado claimed that back in December 1840 Sentmanat had offered Edwin Moore an additional $20,000 to get rid of Anaya and leave the Cuban himself as Tabasco’s sole caudillo.61 However, any Maldonado claims are tainted by a rabid hatred toward his foreign-born rival and must be taken with extreme skepticism; no document unearthed thus far suggests that Francisco de Sentmanat ever broke with his partner and in fact may even have seen himself as having been left alone to guard the dream of Tabascan

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federalism. Frustrated and discredited as a military leader, Anaya departed for the Republic of Yucatán, never to return. The third member of the now-fractured triumvirate, Nicolás Maldonado, had also fallen. The patriarch and his family were exiled to the Yucatán peninsula, where Sentmanat sympathizers jailed him in the port of Campeche for seven months. When Antonio López de Santa Anna returned to national power in 1841, Maldonado fled Campeche for Veracruz, and then to Mexico City, to state his case. There he discovered to his horror that opinion in the capital—read, the opinion of Santa Anna— had shifted in favor of Sentmanat. But one factor did work on Maldonado’s behalf. Mexico issued a decree linking Huimanguillo, essentially the western quarter of Tabasco, to Veracruz. The motive for this was probably an effort to divide and weaken the Tabascan federalist movement, while simultaneously favoring Santa Anna’s home state. Don Nicolás had no interest in becoming a lackey of Mexico, but found the redistricting a useful justification for remaining close to his home base while keeping the Cuban at arm’s length. Sentmanat, meanwhile, was all too aware of his enemy’s control over hacienda servants and their simultaneous distance from Veracruz. He realized that the move offered Maldonado a free base of operations, and he had no intention of respecting newly redrawn state boundaries while prosecuting his cause.62 But there was little Sentmanat could do at the moment. Allowed to relocate to anywhere but Tabasco or Chiapas, Nicolás Maldonado settled in an Indian village near Acayucan and, professing to have renounced politics forever, waited for a change of fortunes in order to strike back.63

The Liber ator at His Zenith Between April 1841 and July 1843, then, Francisco de Sentmanat wielded virtually unchecked power within the breakaway province. Although Tabasco had a governor and a legislature, the military caudillo held real control; the rest did his bidding. His activities had garnered international attention, to the degree that in 1842 British abolitionists toyed with the idea of inviting him to lead an anti-Spanish revolution in Cuba.64 Tabascan attitudes toward their new leader were complex. Many politicians loathed him, either out of principle or from envy, and forwarded regular complaints to

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Mexico City. What bothered some detractors was Sentmanat’s sultanic lifestyle and proclivity for violence. For example, Sentmanat, like every Tabascan strongman since, was accused of maintaining a harem, accusations that may well have been true. Indeed, there does exist one brief, unsigned, and highly tantilizing note to the strongman, urging him to leave the state’s women in peace.65 But other Tabascans appreciated the filibuster’s theatrical personality. Unlike the petty Maldonados, he tore through the tropical landscape like the macareno andaluz himself. Sentmanat possessed a boundless and unique charisma, almost a character scripted by Christopher Marlowe, and was able to draw adherents who were neither family members nor economic clients. And while no one remembers the backwoods plotters from Huimanguillo, Francisco Sentmanat remains a giant in regional mythology. Little is known of Sentmanat’s relationship with the Catholic Church. Some of the state’s priests clearly disliked him, if not necessarily for political or theological issues; after all, some clergy were ardent federalists, while Sentmanat does not appear to have interested himself in Jacobin anticlericalism of any sort. But the more conservative clergymen could hardly have warmed to this adventurer who made his own rules, and who even in his most violent moments seemed to be protected by some unseen hand. Surviving church correspondence has little to say about him, but that silence may simply reflect the disruption of mail between Tabasco and Yucatán, particularly after the Mexican Army invaded the peninsula in August 1842.66 There is no question that the federalist war, especially in its early years and even to the time of Sentmanat, attracted the support of certain Tabascan clergymen. But what they thought of their new strongman and his randy living will probably always remain a matter of conjecture.67 Meanwhile, the national political landscape shifted. In October 1841 Antonio López de Santa Anna assumed power in a movement later justified by a proclamation called the Bases de Tacuba. He ruled through a system that disenfranchised most Mexicans in favor of a small base of metropolitan oligarchs, but which nevertheless managed to introduce a degree of stability to affairs of state and daily life.68 Eager to bring the renegade province back into the nation, Santa Anna set up a “special commission on Tabasco,” composed of Lieutenant Colonel Alonzo Fernández and patrician Simón Sarlat García, both centralists. They in turn commissioned Veracruz’s military commander Francisco Marín to sound out the

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situation in Tabasco, which the latter briefly visited in the autumn of 1841. What he found was not reassuring. Tabascans in general and Sentmanat in particular received the commander, together with his report of national events, with upturned noses. Regarding reactions to the edicts of Tacuba, Marín reported, “This news has caused a highly disagreeable impression on the mandarins, especially on Sentmanat, for which reason all demonstrate coldness and disdain.” In part Sentmanat acted defensively because he suspected that Marín’s real intention was to punish him for the killings of the twenty-two maldonadistas in June; regarding the deaths of “bandidos,” he asked, “wherein lies the supposed massacre of Mexicans?” Rather than cooperate, then, Sentmanat preferred saber rattling and assured Marín that he had three to four thousand men ready to defend the state. During the visit Sentmanat also published his pledge to defend Tabascans against any attempt to roll back federalism. Marín left on November 7, convinced that his mission had failed.69 At the same time, another power also courted Sentmanat. The Yucatecan Republic, born in dreams of glory but unwittingly destined for one of the most dreadful catastrophes in Latin American history, needed all the allies it could get, and at first Sentmanat was overjoyed to make common cause. On December 19, 1841, he even held a ball celebrating Yucatecan independence.70 It was with some justification, then, that Justo Sierra O’Reilly, Yucatecan statesman and man of letters, arrived a few months later to propose a treaty of mutual defense. Sierra’s own past matched that of Sentmanat for uniqueness. The illegitimate son of the village priest of tiny Tixcacaltuyú, he went on to became a one-man literary movement, tirelessly churning out histories, journals, and polemics, and he also bears the distinction of being Yucatán’s first novelist (his 1848 serialized La hija del judío remains in print and is still highly readable).71 The talented young don Justo married up by wedding the daughter of Campeche’s merchant governor Santiago Méndez Ibarra, assumed the thankless task of trying to cede Yucatán to the United States during the Caste War, came home an embittered man, then returned to literature for the remaining decade of his life, legendarily dying of leprosy in 1861. Sierra O’Reilly’s own son, Justo Sierra Méndez, eventually became the grand vizier of Porfirian education. In reality, the elder Sierra’s 1842 visit to Sentmanat was to promote the creation of a southeastern federation composed of Yucatán, Tabasco, and Chiapas (an idea that in fact had a certain judicial precedent, since

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the three provinces constituted the scope of a single circuit court in the early republic and shared a number of social and historical features).72 But sensing the uncertainty of the matter, and fearful of being subordinated to the larger and more powerful Yucatecan polity, Sentmanat remained aloof to this overture. The visit resulted in nothing more than adding to Sierra O’Reilly’s diplomatic travels on behalf of his ill-fated republic.73 The greater southeastern confederation, much like Anaya’s fantasy of a territorially discontinuous federal alliance, was not to be. Soon the Cuban caudillo distanced himself even further. Realizing that a Mexican-Yucatecan war was now inevitable, he backed off from the bastion of southeastern federalism and instead cast his fortunes with the huge armada soon to arrive from the Veracruz coast. This act of opportunism could have changed the course of history, for a united Yucatecan-Tabascan front might have succeeded in cleaving off southeast Mexico from the national entity once and for all. It is likely, however, that Sentmanat recognized Tabasco as the less defensible of the two and saw that military operations were likely to ravage the state. Certainly he understood that Marín’s visit had nothing to do with the execution of prisoners: after all, Santa Anna never had a problem with such methods. The Maldonados and their allies remained a threat, and a direct confrontation would likely tip the balance in their favor. But if Mexico emerged as the victor and remained an ally, it would provide Sentmanat the opportunity to push Tabascan boundaries into the lucrative dyewood forests of Laguna de Términos, the huge, shallow coastal estuary separating Tabasco from southwestern Campeche. With these considerations in mind, on November 14, 1841, Sentmanat recognized Santa Anna. It was a cold-hearted betrayal of the federalist province to whom the Cuban owed so much of his success. Tabasco’s reincorporation into the republic meant the restoration of the comandancia general, a provincial installation of the national army, and in February 1842 its command went to none other than Sentmanat himself. At the very same time, Pomposo Maldonado did all possible to turn Santa Anna against Sentmanat, accusing the family nemesis of brutality toward women, specifically, the wives of brothers Fernando Nicolás, José María, and Eulalio, all who had been imprisoned for speaking out on their husbands’ behalf. To hear him tell it, Pomposo’s own wife and children had received threats, and he himself, though once a captain, had now been reduced to simple farming!74 But this tactic failed. Santa Anna had plans

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that extended far beyond the welfare of a few distraught housewives, and two months later, in March 1842, decided to consolidate the governorship and the comandancia into a single office in Sentmanat’s hands.75 His motive undoubtedly had to do with facilitating the upcoming invasion of Yucatán, one in which he wanted to neutralize civilian-military conflict in surrounding areas. The decision ratified Sentmanat’s almost unlimited power within the state. An improbable series of events, however, now played into the Maldonados’ hands. In the summer of 1842 a plague, probably the same typhus epidemic that soon crippled Mexico’s invasion of Yucatán, swept the barracks of Acayucan, to which don Nicolás had been banished. With the town’s guard in a weakened state, a new conspiracy emerged involving Maldonado, Francisco Pardo, and several colleagues who happened to be imprisoned in the local jail. The leader was a former Anaya follower and US national resident in Coatzacoalcos, variously reported as Samuel Valdiví or Waldibi, who used his brother John to recruit soldiers of fortune in New Orleans, the standard marketplace for such rowdies. The plan was dirt-simple: seize Acayucan’s captain Francisco Marín, decapitate him, and assume control of the plaza. The larger and unstated goals almost certainly included a return to Tabasco to settle the hash of their Cuban enemy, once and for all. Marín, however, got wind of the plot on June 1, mustered all the loyal soldiers still well enough to stand, identified the plotters, had them beaten with rifle butts to the head, and then asked in a loud voice, “Are there any more traitors?” Not surprisingly, no one spoke up. The plotters were put in stocks; Marín had some doubts about the Maldonados’ complicity in the affair, but decided to get rid of them and, on October 8, sent them back to Huimanguillo.76 For the Maldonados, the events of the summer and fall of 1842 ultimately proved fortuitous. Huimanguillo, like New Orleans, was a briar patch where the Maldonados could once again pursue their mortal enemy. Doubtless they perceived the unfolding Yucatecan war as useful because they realized Sentmanat would have trouble supporting the invasion and maintaining internal control of Tabasco at the same time. Their return to the family stronghold therefore had precisely the effect that Sentmanat feared, that of agitating domestic tranquility, since Tabascans immediately recognized it as a harbinger of further civil wars.77 The now-legitimized Sentmanat, meanwhile, recognized Huimanguillo a watering hole for criminals, deserters, and political disaffects, and in

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August responded by sending Lieutenant Colonel Amalio Alarcón to flush out “those vagabond outlaws who are no good either to society or to themselves.”78 But he recalled Alarcón—not, as rumor held, because the Cuban suspected collusion with the hated Maldonados, but in order to deploy the colonel, together with a force of fifty men, to the Yucatecan front as a sop to Mexican demands for military support and perhaps as a way of isolating a suspected traitor. In typical fashion, Sentmanat even managed to coax $500 from the central government to help clothe “his naked soldiers.” 79 The move appears to have been little more than a feint, for by early 1843 he again turned up in Tabascan affairs, where Sentmanat needed him most. Indeed, the new caudillo had his own plans for the Yucatecan war. Betraying once more his former allies, Sentmanat quickly occupied and absorbed the lucrative logwood region of Palizada, just outside of Carmen. Yucatecans could do nothing about it. But at the same time, he also sensed the visceral popular hatred for out-of-state military impressment and had no choice but to refuse Santa Anna’s demand for money and recruits. Sentmanat needed to watch his back against the wily Maldonados, and knew that taxes and levies were the surest way to alienate the public and hand his enemies the game. When Santa Anna summoned him to Mexico City to account for this disobedience, the filibuster realized that it would be a political and perhaps physical suicide to go, and consequently refused. Francisco de Sentmanat was now poised for direct confrontation with national forces. As the US consul put it, “The political state of affairs are so precarious in this state that we know not what tomorrow may bring forth, although,” he added with evident if guarded relief, “everything seems quiet at the present.”80 By spring 1843 Tabascan-Mexican relations had become impossibly complex. The invasion of Yucatán was failing miserably, the result of disease, faulty planning, and tenacious peninsular resistance. Despite lack of cooperation, Sentmanat at least maintained a facade of civility with Mexico City and continued to correspond with the minister of war throughout. In early 1843 he again dispatched Amalio Alarcón, now to request national funds for the fortification of Punto de la Barra, north of Frontera, the idea being to replace the existing structure of boards and sand with a more solid and permanent structure, even positioning cannons. Santa Anna consented in word to this plan—obviously concocted with an eye to defending the state against the Mexican Army itself—but shrewdly deferred the artillery

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request until Campeche had fallen (which, of course, never happened). To compound its failure, the commission, while returning to the coast from Mexico City, was bushwhacked by bandits who took everything they carried, right down to their hats and coats.81 In reality, much of the MexicoTabasco cooperation was no more than a show on both sides. The secretary of war no longer kept Tabascans posted on the progress of the Yucatecan war . . . perhaps because he no longer trusted Sentmanat, perhaps because peninsular operations were going so disastrously wrong.82 Tabasco therefore remained closed off to most of the nation, and an abundance of rumors circulated throughout the larger republic regarding Francisco Sentmanat and his activities. One held that he was convening all Tabascan military commanders as a prelude to yet another separation from Mexico, using Alarcón as his front man.83 There may have been something in this, for although we know next to nothing about Alarcón, the Cuban filibuster usually made it a practice to cover his hand through a series of doubles. Alarcón’s name is mentioned so frequently in these months that something must have been up. Meanwhile, the perception outside of Tabasco was that Sentmanat had stocked the public payroll with cronies, that most of the troop commanders were actually foreigners, that the caudillo surrounded himself with “young people of perverse habits.”84 What exactly these “perverse habits” were was never stated, but probably referred to carousing and mistresses. Sentmanat was also rumored to be acting erratically, accusing errand boys of spying and seeing machinations of the Maldonado family at every turn.85 In fairness, this behavior may not have been utter paranoia. Rival camps deeply fragmented the state, and the Maldonados were undoubtedly hatching a new plot against the governor because that was what they always did.

Cuban Versus Cuban When the Mexican operation in Yucatán collapsed in defeat in May 1843, Sentmanat suspected, correctly, that the withdrawing invasionary force would come after him. He had defied orders from Mexico, sat atop a precarious political situation in his state, lacked the resources to sustain combat which had been available to the Yucatecans, and still carried the stigma of being a filibuster, contrived proclamations notwithstanding. In

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fact, the invasion of Tabasco began well before the first Mexican infantryman set foot on Yucatán’s western coast, for the Mexicans had initially established themselves in tiny Jonuta prior to occupying Carmen.86 Sentmanat first tried to staunch the occupation administratively. He warned the minister of war and navy that the redirection of operations from Yucatán to Tabasco was causing alarm throughout his state. His protest achieved nothing.87 At the same time, Sentmanat began to rally Tabascans to his cause. At a fiesta in Nacajuca on May 20, for example, citizens found a group of soldiers standing beside a sign that read, “Against the forty-thousand, three hundred.” It is doubtful that the mostly illiterate Tabascans knew their Herodotus, much less understood this obscure reference to the Spartan defense of Greece (in which, incidentally, all three hundred Spartans perished). Nevertheless, similar signs began to appear in San Juan Bautista. Questioned as to their meaning, people on the street replied that a Mexican comandante had asked the Tabascans for $40,000 and three hundred men, but were denied. So much for a Peloponnesian defense of the homeland.88 Meanwhile, the pacification of Tabasco had become a private obsession with Mexican General Pedro Ampudia y Grimarest. Ampudia had a long history of involvement in the nation’s upheavals of the 1830s and 1840s. He was Cuban-born: in fact, in the same city as Sentmanat himself (Havana), and within only two years of one another. The son of Francisco Ampudia and Valentina Grimarest, he had became a cadet at age nine and had joined the Mexican Army under Iturbide in the tumultuous decade of the 1810s. Despite his education and training, Ampudia never overcame a childhood speech impediment that caused him to pronounce certain “r’s” as “s’s.”89 During the 1836 Texas campaign he had served as commander of artillery at the battle of the Alamo, although his rather clinical account (“I fired several cannonades at one of the main quarters where the enemy had taken refuge . . . these shots forced them to abandon their desperate defense”) gives no hint of the mythical dimensions that engagement would later assume.90 Six years later, while commanding the Matamoros garrison in December 1842, he defeated a Texian invasion at Mier, one of Mexico’s few victories in its war with the breakaway republic.91 Ampudia was subsequently assigned to join the Mexican Army in Yucatán, where he dedicated most of his energies to supplying evacuation boats for the defeated troops in May 1843. But once the Yucatecan situation came to its humiliating conclusion, Ampudia

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turned his full attention to punishing the Tabascans, whom he believed had failed to support the national army during the peninsular fiasco. Ampudia was an old-school believer in la mano dura—the iron fist.92 In his mind the matter was largely biological, since all Tabascans were known to be rowdy and difficult. “Guided by audacious and immoral men,” their blood inclined them to rebellions, he thought. For his tastes this included the Maldonados, and the federalist Constitution of 1824 had simply encouraged these darker tendencies. But the real problem, Ampudia believed, was the presence of foreigners: either unscrupulous soldiers of fortune like Sentmanat, or the Yucatecans, or the ongoing contraband cacao trade that so undermined legitimate authority. His solution was to unite political and military authority in one person (himself, for the moment), import a battalion of northerners unfettered by the Tabascan genome, break the power of the key families, expel all Yucatecans, carefully screen political appointees, and tightly control the state borders.93 The anticipated invasion of Tabasco began in July 1843, via Carmen. Ampudia commanded a force of some two thousand men, four warships, and assorted ancillary vessels. Sentmanat had previously seized Palizada and stationed some four hundred men with four cannons there, but their supplies and loyalty were limited, and all fled as the superior Mexican force approached. From there Ampudia proceeded to the sandbar above Frontera on July 5. Once more, Tabascans declined to imitate King Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans, and all defenders dispersed, leaving Tabasco’s principal port of entry open to the Mexican Army. Ampudia had to wait a day for tides sufficiently high to admit his warships, but by the end of the next day he controlled not only the town but all its abandoned artillery as well. Over the course of the following week as a series of negotiations failed to persuade the Tabascan strongman to abandon “his insane project of resistance.” Occupation of San Juan Bautista began on the 11th, with nine hundred soldiers entering in half an hour. Sentmanat had concentrated six hundred troops in the higher points of the city, such as Esquipulas and Encarnación, but lively fire from the Mexican Army quickly routed them. The absence of Mexican cavalry enabled Sentmanat himself to flee. Other Tabascan defenders captured in the engagement were soon released (Ampudia apparently learned from the public relations disaster of the March 1836 Goliad massacre in Texas, where wanton execution of surrendered soldiers stoked popular outrage). The general now found himself in complete

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control of the capital city. It was one of the greatest triumphs of his long and checkered military career.94 Once in control, Ampudia refused to involve the Maldonado clan in matters of governance. He excluded them from positions of power and in his correspondence disparaged them with almost bottomless disgust. The general considered the Tabascan guard units so habituated to mayhem that they would join whatever rebellion came along, and he proposed to replace them with norteños uncorrupted by regional vice.95 Rather, Ampudia appointed merchant and licenciado José Julián Dueñas as governor. A member of San Juan Bautista’s mainstream political set, Dueñas could be counted on for obedience and lack of daring. The governor’s first act was to prepare a long list of Sentmanat’s crimes, which included ruling arbitrarily, exiling Tabascans, defiling underage women, flaunting national authority, and looting the public treasury.96 The truth of these matters was somewhat more complex, since many anti-sentmanatista Tabascans had committed similar misdeeds but had never tasted justice at the hands of an occupational army. Ampudia also made efforts to shore up his conservative flank. For all the nationalist bark, he scrupulously avoided antagonizing foreign merchants. “They have in this state just got through with a revolution,” the US consul noted with satisfaction, “and things are quiet, no Americans have to my knowledge suffered from the above outbreak.”97 To please religious conservatives, he ordered that work resume on construction of the church in Cunduacán, a project that had begun fifty years earlier, but which had repeatedly stalled owing to political upheavals and regional poverty.98 This same brief honeymoon seems to have come over other rural parishes as well. Balancán at last managed to complete its own “sumptuous and new church” of elaborate carved wood columns brought from as far as twenty leagues away, using mahogany from the upper Usumacinta. Timber merchant Joaquín Baqueiro financed the operation and in fact oversaw the cutting and transport of the lumber, but the entrepreneur fell victim to tropical disease, soaring heavenward before he could witness the glorious completion of his project.99 Villagers who entered to behold the carved and painted Doric columns could see little in this peaceful tableau that hinted of the bloodlettings that were to erupt five years later, when the US invasion once again made the province a slaughterhouse. Meanwhile, Sentmanat had not surrendered his grandiose dream of controlling Tabasco. He fled to Atasta, then through Cunduacán, Palizada,

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Carmen, Campeche, Mérida, and from there to his old home in Havana; Francisco Olave, a Spaniard and his closest collaborator, left Jonuta for Balancán and the Petén, not to return until difficulties had cooled.100 Perpetually active, Sentmanat soon returned to New Orleans in mid-March, and there he found time to win a pistol duel with Francisco Reibaud, the naval officer whom Anaya had originally designated to liberate Yucatán.101 The reasons behind this quarrel remain unknown, but presumably related to Reibaud’s failure to follow through with an armed landing in Bahía de la Ascención. What we do know is that Sentmanat emerged victorious, wounding his opponent in the chest; this minor victory must surely have seemed a divine endorsement, a sign that the free radical’s fortunes were once more on the upswing. Thus encouraged, the Cuban set up a recruiting office on the wharf on the town’s south side, not far from a prominent tobacco warehouse. Other accounts pinpoint the meeting place as a café at the corner of St. Piert and Chartres. Sentmanat posed as a powerful impresario with papers from the Mexican government, authorizing him to establish a colony in the Tabascan interior, envisioned much in the Texas style with Anglo settlers. Conveniently, he explained, no passports were necessary. If unhappy with their land grants, the men would be able to return to the United States, expenses paid. His recruits were mostly young, rootless individuals found in abundance in that port. Sentmanat himself later boasted that he had emptied the jails of New Orleans. This was a highly international project, not at all the Scotch-Irish filibusters who fueled the campaigns in Texas, or William Walker’s Central American invasion. The filibuster initially relied on a multilingual Venezuelan merchant, one Bernardo Othón, to serve as interpreter, but that latter gentleman’s services turned out to be unnecessary: thirty-eight of the forty-nine men were either Spanish, French, or Cuban, with only five US citizens present.102 Recruiting began sometime in March and concluded in early June. As it happened, Sentmanat came at a propitious moment because a typhus epidemic was then flogging New Orleans, work was scarce, and many a man was looking for a way to leave. Some recruits owed minor debts, which Sentmanat covered, almost like one hacendado purchasing another’s peons by paying the money they owed. Whatever the lure, Sentmanat managed to round up some thirty-eight men. Stocked with rations of dried meat, beans, potatoes, and hardtack, the untrained, undisciplined, and supposedly deceived mercenaries set sail in a small schooner whose name has been variously

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reported as either the Criolla or the William Turner, the latter being the more reliable version.103 Nunca hubo segunda parte buena, as they say: second comings usually disappoint, and the Cuban adventurer’s case was no exception. The New Orleans expedition generated a wave of rumors that reached the shores well before the invaders themselves did. Santa Anna, still president but resting at his hacienda Manga de Clavo, received periodic updates on the adventure. As might be expected, the Mexican gossip mill inflated this pitiful band of wharf rats into a force of seven hundred men that included refugees from recent Spanish revolutions as well as German artillery officers with two cannons, all traveling in a warship provided by Mexico’s principal nemesis, the hated Republic of Texas.104 These manpower reports were greatly exaggerated, although it is true that the New Orleans group did include men of said nationalities. Once in sight of the Tabascan coast, Sentmanat equipped each recruit with a rifle, cartridges, and a blue uniform—at least he maintained his sense of style. A Mexican brigantine spotted them immediately, and under fire the invaders were forced to disembark at an obscure spot along the coast. Sentmanat marched his men through the Tabascan forests and threatened to shoot anyone who attempted to desert. At last they came to the Nahuatl-speaking village of Tecoluta (possibly Tecolutilla, both meaning “place of the owls”), where they forced the Indian residents to bring them pozole and beans, along with guides to take them to the next town (presumably Comalcalco). This sort of behavior riled the villagers, and one of them informed Ampudia of Sentmanat’s whereabouts. Mexican troops soon captured the hapless band. Sentmanat’s pilot saved himself by surrendering, and in fact many threw down their arms and ran at the first sight of fighting, but were eventually captured. According to one account, Sentmanat was the only one of the invaders who ever so much as fired a shot.105 Once more, however, Sentmanat managed to escape his enemies by fleeing into the woods. Ampudia raised a force of some five hundred men to track down the fugitive but achieved no immediate success. Some days later, however, an old man named Lauriano González spotted a stranger prowling about his cane fields, just outside of Jalpa. Aware of the manhunt then underway, and fearful of being accused of complicity, he called for his workers to surround the field. Within, they came upon Sentmanat, dressed in his blue uniform, worn out and sitting on the ground, calmly munching

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an ear of raw corn. The fugitive at first tried to bargain for his freedom, offering his watch and a bejeweled medal of valor, but González refused to negotiate. Confronted with the inevitable, and with the rancho’s servants all around him, Sentmanat asked where he would be taken. To Jalpa, González replied. “For two days I’ve heard the bells,” said the dejected Sentmanat, “Let’s go, then.”106 It was a forlorn final capitulation for one of the century’s great filibusters. Still, Sentmanat maintained his evasive ways. Under interrogation he insisted that he had been en route to a colonizing project in Honduras when an unexpected storm blew them off course. Many of his men were former soldiers, he claimed, and resulted impossible to control once on foreign soil.107 But this was one Cuban trying to bluff another. Ampudia remained implacable and informed his captive that he considered them pirates and was imposing the death sentence upon all, their executions set for June 23, a Thursday. The appointed moment came quickly. In his last remaining minutes, Francisco de Sentmanat took the time to pen a brief letter of farewell to Rosa Marigny, the wife he had so repeatedly wronged: Rosa of my life, take courage! May religion console you, as well as the idea that your husband has always loved you tenderly and that in this supreme moment, the last of life, you alone occupy his thought. Make my children happy . . . this life is short and in the other world the just one will be compensated! Farewell, my dear rose, receive my last sigh and embrace my children affectionately. rose, farewell. Say a thousand tender things from me to my dear mother and to the whole family. Rose for the love of God, console yourself. Think of your children and don’t ever forget your husband who adores you from the depth of his soul. Farewell! Farewell!108

As mendacity goes, this letter was hard to top, particularly for a man who in erecting his Tabascan empire had repeatedly betrayed his wife and abandoned her to widowhood in New Orleans. He hardly concerned himself with religion, while the nature of his “reward in the other world” is at the very least open to speculation. On a more practical note, he wrote out a rudimentary will and made arrangements for the payment of several outstanding debts. His men made even fewer preparations. They pleaded that they had been deceived, but it was to no avail. Lacking political supporters and their leader’s legendary charisma, they found almost no one to take an interest

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in their last hours. The Spanish consul pressed a few anemic claims for their release to his custody, but mainly for appearance’s sake. US Consul Edward Porter successfully focused on saving the William Turner’s crew, who may or may not have been innocent.109 Padre Eduardo Moncada spent the entire day and night before the executions trying to convince thirteen of the mercenaries to accept the sacraments, but “far from doing so, they preferred insulting and irreverent expressions.” Indeed, moments before their execution the following day, one remarked “that he regretted dying without having enjoyed a Mexican woman.”110 It was apparently the fate of nineteenth-century Tabascan priests to cast their seeds on barren ground. Sentmanat went to his end first. In death as in life, alternate versions of history attend the filibuster. According to Ampudia’s account, in his final moments the condemned man became extremely agitated as the end approached, screaming and shouting in such a maniacal way that it unnerved the firing squad, some of whom had once served under him in the earlier wars. Another version, also by someone who claimed to have been there, maintains that Sentmanat remained calm and composed to the very end, that he in fact availed himself of the hero’s option, giving the signal for the execution to begin. Even the time of his death fluctuates between noon and 3:00 in the afternoon of Thursday. Troops placed him, blindfolded, in front of a firing squad, before the wall of Jalpa’s rectory (the actual place of execution was also variously reported to have Sentmanat’s former home, or in other versions, the home of a local merchant). The rest soon followed. All told, thirty-nine men perished for their role in the invasion. The ill-fated final expedition succeeded in at least one regard, namely, in purchasing Sentmanat the fame that he had so long sought. The event drew considerable coverage in US newspapers, which had never before paid much attention to this unusual individual. The New Orleans Picayune commented, “Thus has terminated an expedition which was conceived in daring, but in which wisdom had no counsel.”111 This same unflattering copy appeared in The New World two days later.112 The Spirit of the Times actually printed a translation of the farewell letter to Rose Marigny, “written by the meritorious and much regretted Sentmanat, to his wife, a few minutes before being shot in Tobasco.” The periodical rather credulously observed, “It is full of religious feeling . . .”113 Of all the diverse reportage that this event generated, though, none was more perspicacious than the Niles’ National Register: “General Sentmanat (son-in-law of Mr. Marigny

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just elected a delegate to the constitutional convention of Louisiana, from New Orleans,) secretly left N. Orleans a few weeks ago in command of a wild, illegal, fool-hardy expedition against Tobasco . . .”114 Said reportage was all the more remarkable for the fact that US newspapers almost never carried anything concerning what English speakers in those days called the state of “Tobasco.” The adjectives might have rankled him, but Sentmanat would surely have enjoyed his military promotion, as well as the overall notoriety. The fate of Sentmanat’s remains has become one of the greatest of all Tabascan tales. In the old Spanish style, Ampudia wished to pose a graphic lesson of the fate that awaited pirates and adventurers. Following the executions in Jalpa, Ampudia had the body taken to San Juan Bautista and kept on public display. He understood that many would never believe that Sentmanat was truly dead unless the evidence was immediate, palpable, and permanent. The general therefore ordered Sentmanat’s head be severed and preserved, and delegated the task to Calixto Díaz, political prefect of Tabasco’s Centro district. Looking for ways to preserve human remains, Díaz consulted a physician named Espinosa, who recommended “bathing” it—that is, keeping it in a jar of aguardiente, like some laboratory specimen pickled in formaldehyde. However, Espinosa lost out to Dr. Simón Sarlat, who argued that while in Yucatán, he had seen executed bandits’ heads cut off and fried in oil as a way of preserving them for exhibition—the so-called baño, or bath. (No record of this practice has thus far turned up in Yucatecan archives, but that may be a lesson that historical papers conceal as much as they reveal.) Boiling severed heads in oil, however, requires more of an art than one might think. Díaz had forced a local criminal named Juan de la Cruz Ascencio to do the grisly work of decapitation and frying, and while he managed to sever Sentmanat’s head form his torso, he botched the actual cooking. Rather than stanching the severed arteries and preserving the head, De la Cruz overheated the oil. Grasping the remains by its hair, he lowered it slowly, but the hot liquid splattered upward, burning his hand and causing him to drop the entire head, suddenly and unexpectedly, into the cauldron; De la Cruz thereby succeeded only in raising a series of hideous welts that disfigured Sentmanat’s face beyond recognition. It was this grisly, mutilated trophy that was placed on a pike in the center of town—exactly the same fate that Louisiana planters had meted out to so many executed slaves thirty-three years earlier.115

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Version of what happened next vary. General Ampudia later claimed that he ordered all remains, including the head, to be buried at once; in other accounts, he wanted to build a special public rack to accommodate the heads of all thirty-nine executed men, but was dissuaded by calmer counsel.116 One way or another, the story somehow got back to the national media, igniting a controversy. Ampudia spent the next month defending himself against accusations of savagery—after all, creole mythology held that independence had liberated Mexico from the barbarism of old Spain, so what was Ampudia doing lobbing off heads?117 Tabascans themselves took things more philosophically; in fact, even the instruments of Sentmanat’s mutilation acquired their own legendary status, when the conservative Margalli family used the original cauldron as a flowerpot and showpiece on their hacienda Paso Real, an item of conversation to impress the occasional guest.118 Finally, there was the matter of the body itself. Following the execution and the debacle of the boiled head, Rosa Marigny, Sentmanat’s long-suffering widow, reentered the picture; working through the Mexican consul in New Orleans, she eventually managed to have her late husband’s remains disinterred and returned to her via Cuba.119 On Thursday, June 26, 1845, the entire New Orleans Legion turned out for his reburial.120 Rosa herself lived five more years, only to pass away in 1849; she was laid to rest beside her husband in the cemetery of St. Louis Number One, the City of the Dead. In that desolate place the Sentmanats yet converse with Bernard Marigny, the Claiborne clan, the fabled voodoo priestess Marie Laveau de Glapion, and others spirits from the Crescent City’s outsized past.121 What to make of the story of Francisco de Sentmanat y Zayas? Although first and foremost this was a dramatic story stocked with largerthan-life characters, several points do emerge concerning the state of early national Mexico. One concerns the fragility of civilian politics. Although Tabasco had all the constitutional formatting required of provinces of the federal republic—governor, legislature, and courts among them—these offices and institutions exerted only limited influence over the motives and behavior of the people. And their curbing effect on Tabascan ambitions was even weaker. Time and again, powerful leaders managed to gain an ascendency over civil governance. Their ascendency normally grew out of the patrimonial relations common to landowning societies characterized by vast illiteracy and profound inequalities of income and

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Figure 10.  The final resting place of Francisco de Sentmanat, beside his wife Rosa Maria Marigny, in New Orleans’s legendary St. Louis Cemetery #1. This photograph was taken in the 1930s, when a headstone still survived; the exact location of the grave has since been lost owing to vandalism and natural deterioration. Courtesy of the Historic New Orleans Collection.

social rank. What separated Sentmanat from the usual magnates was that he managed to forge a powerful personalist army without being a member of the cacao aristocracy—indeed, without being a Tabascan landowner at all. Rather, Sentmanat deftly manipulated divisions within the ranks of the federalist rebels and also worked the angles with the national government, which was then dealing, and quite ineffectually, with the twin secessions of Texas and Yucatán. Most importantly, Sentmanat built his cacicazgo the old-fashioned way, through the kind of audacious military leadership that has always favored caudillos. But the game carried considerable risk. Sentmanat’s intense personalism naturally made him the target of both internal enemies and the vengeful Mexican state, thus virtually assuring a bad end to his enterprise. The 1843 arrival of a large

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body of well-equipped Mexican troops shattered the filibuster’s aura of military invincibility and eroded whatever legitimacy he held among the Tabascan people. Tabasco’s convulsions also signal the weak and fluid state of nationalism. Sentmanat’s story reads as a farrago of international actors: New Orleans recruits, Spanish rejects, Yucatecan nationalists, norteño mercenaries, and two autocratic Cubans in the front ranks of action. The most doggedly nationalist actors in the drama were the generals sent from Mexico City to shore up crumbling centralist control over the provinces. In terms of ground-level patriotism (be it national or provincial in orientation), both Sentmanat and the Maldonados drew upon some level of popular emotion, but that emotion was clearly conditioned by other factors, such as charisma and overall record of success. Moreover, the Indian peoples, the Chontales and Zoques who lived as ethnic minorities in isolated rural communities scattered throughout Tabasco, mostly stayed away from the federalist wars and chose to blow with the winds of whoever happened to control their territory at a given moment. The outcome of the story suggests that they chose wisely: they survived, while the separatists and free radicals did not. The travails of the early 1840s also hint at what might have been but somehow never came about, namely: the emergence of the southeast as separate society. While Yucatán, Tabasco, and Chiapas all enjoyed a certain cultural fingerprint, they also shared a set of familiar problems and concerns that set them apart from Mexicans of the altiplano—to say nothing of such vastly different territories as the sprawling north, or the ranchero culture that flourished in the western Sierra Madre, in places such as Culiuacán, Morelia, and Guadalajara. Some arguably unique and identifiable southeastern culture did exist, even though one never sufficiently unified to constitute a political body in itself. The three principal provinces shared much, including overlapping family networks, provincial isolation, and overwhelmingly agrarian economies that blended haciendas, small free holdings, and communally based slash-and-burn farming. Sugar cultivation also formed a common thread, as did aguardiente, the crude distilled fruit of that cultivation. With industry, literacy, and education all at basic (or lower) levels, the three provinces also suffered a profound underdevelopment even when measured against the standards of early national Mexico. Beyond the features commonly ticked off in grade-school geographies, southeasterners also shared a slate of more intangible cultural elements.

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They had all made their peace with hot, humid weather and a startlingly profuse vegetation. A familiar body of stories and beliefs permeated their lore. Yucatecan statesman Justo Sierra O’Reilly was therefore not totally off the beam in imagining that the three provinces in some way formed a geopolitical foil to the cold-country leviathan of central Mexico. But unity eluded them. Yucatán and Chiapas shared a Maya cultural background, but with linguistic branches that were mutually unintelligible; Tabasco had its speakers of Yucatec Maya, but they shared space with Chontales, Zoques, and even Nahuatl-speaking peoples. Tabasco had also experienced a far greater degree of mestizaje in colonial times, and throughout the terrible nineteenth century, it would be Hispanics, not indigenous peasants, who fought the often self-destructive Tabascan wars. Mexicans intent on travel could enter Chiapas overland, but Yucatán and Tabasco were accessible only by boat, and their strict port access provided a stream of English, Spanish, US, and Caribbean visitors that somewhat counterbalanced the Mexican presence. Each of the three had its geographical hallmark: Yucatán, the flat plane of karst limestone; Chiapas, the chilly mountains with their pine forests; Tabasco, the Mexican swamp and riverine culture par excellence. Intense southeastern localism fed the region’s federalist and even separatist tendencies, but also militated against a greater regional unity that might have made that separation viable. Owing to lack of cohesion, federalist Tabascans ultimately had to settle for the military fiefdom of one Francisco de Sentmanat. What strengthened the region weakened it as well, and Tabascans of the late nineteenth century ultimately settled for a regional underdevelopment, architected by provincial oligarchs but within the political confines of a national dictatorship. And finally there is the matter of the filibuster and his appeal. What motivated this man? He consistently walked a fine line between liberation and filibustering. Despite deep roots in two of the western hemisphere’s most intractable slavocracies, there is no evidence that Sentmanat sought to reintroduce the peculiar institution to Tabasco, to attach the state to some foreign power, to advance a nefarious masonic plot, or any of the other motives that surface among conspiracy theorists of history. Rather, he saw Tabascan federalism as a congenial vehicle for his own ambitions and was both surprised and frustrated by its failure to serve as such. That failure begs difficult questions. Recent historical literature has tended to portray federalism as a movement with widespread popular support, in some way the bonafide

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will of the people out in the provinces. Doubtless this is true at times, but the Tabascan story also underscores federalism’s limitations. At no point do the Tabascan federalist wars appear to have triggered massive groundswells of support analogous to the peasant-backed Imán revolt of Yucatán. Most conspicuously, Olman’s federalist resistance collapsed almost instantly during the 1843 Mexican invasion. Tabascans failed to muster the kind of dogged resistance that would greet the US and French invasions over the next two decades. Some of this had to do with the absence of a clear enemy against which to mobilize the citizenry. Imán recruited Maya milperos who resented church taxes, but the Tabascan priesthood was too weak to inspire this sort of popular resentment. There was no real, fundamental reason to be mad at them. Nor did federalist armies grow out of the insurgencies of the Hidalgo and Morelos years (1810–21), a phenomenon sharply limited if not altogether absent in the river country. One underlying problem was federalism’s oftencontrived nature. Here in Tabasco, a band of a hundred men constituted an appreciable army, and for that number, hacienda employees and local clients more than sufficed. This condition, in turn, underscored the already patrimonial nature of the federalist revolts. Because of its too-close ties with local patriarchs, federalism—at bottom a quarrel about who was going to establish, and benefit from, local laws and tax codes—never developed the kind of broad appeal that greeted nationalism. Nations were large enough, and sufficiently nebulous and abstract, to serve as receptacles for all sorts of hopes; provinces were not. Even the anecdote of Sentmanat’s head is revealing. It points to an unusual fact regarding nineteenth-century Mexico, namely, that the ritual of displaying the dismembered remains of people executed by the state was passing from favor, slowly but unmistakably. For the next sixty years a few notable instances turn up—such as the bandit-king Heraclio Bernal’s caged remains—but for the most part, the idea of hanging heads and severed limbs in town plazas, in crossroads, or before the doors of public institutions was passing from vogue, perhaps for its association with Spanish colonialism, perhaps for an increasing sense of individual rights and enlightened practices, perhaps for an increasing squeamishness with the fate of criminals and the remains of the dead.122 Sentmanat’s unfortunate treatment came during a transitional moment in the history of such practices: still invoked for the more sensational cases, but now with an attached risk of public revulsion.

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The many versions of Francisco de Sentmanat’s life almost give the impression that he had the power to bifurcate history. More than anything his multiplicity speaks of a deeply divided land, and of the well-known duality in which one man’s terrorist is another man’s liberator. Sentmanat’s legacy also derives from a mixture of unconcealed megalomania and genuine liberal sentiments of the early nineteenth-century sort. Frontera never became the pass at Thermopylae. But perhaps what makes Sentmanat attractive to the historian and his contemporaries alike was his sense of acting on a larger stage, a glow that said he was interested in something beyond the price of cacao beans. His only Tabascan rival in personal mythology, revolutionary governor Tomás Garrido Canabal, acted with vastly more resources and often-ironclad national support, and hence never attained the aura of self-made liberator that enveloped the Cuban filibuster. Finally, the matter is clouded by Sentmanat’s inability to speak the simple truth, his inclination toward violence, and his proclivity for ruses and double games. For all these reasons he remains a divisive figure in Tabascan history, loved and reviled in the same breath, an embodiment of regional aspirations but simultaneously a reminder of the potentially horrendous consequences of those aspirations.

five

The Invaders

With Francisco de Sentmanat and his international off-scourings out of the picture, Ampudia dedicated himself to political cleansing. He began by exiling the seven remaining prisoners from the aborted invasion to Havana.1 After some parliamentary formalities, he received his appointment as Tabasco’s governor and comandante general on September 1, 1844. Despite his disdain for civilian politicians and his growing problems with hypertension—“cerebral congestion,” as doctors of the time quaintly labeled it—Ampudia governed conscientiously and with great aplomb. He wisely quashed an initiative on the part of Tabascan followers to rename the Grijalva, “Río de Ampudia.”2 But not all the provincials were so sycophatic, and if Cuban filibuster Sentmanat was dead, sentmanatismo nevertheless lived on. It breathed a bellicose federalism that stressed protective tariffs to help Tabascan cacao but simultaneously the right to import commodities like wheat, items that the Mexican republic could not produce in sufficient quantity. And it came wrapped in a kind of Napoleonic-era conception of liberty, struggle, and glorious personal energy. Many had admired the filibuster, even if they now denounced him publicly. At the same time,

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Ampudia’s relationship with more conservative elements of Tabascan society fared no better. Landowners may have shed no tears for Sentmanat, but they resented the new governor’s attempt to make them start paying rents on public lands that they had essentially come to treat as their own.3 Tabasco thus remained riven and divided. But Ampudia never had the chance to pin this multiheaded beast to the ground. In early 1845 the Cuban-born commander handed the governor’s office to Juan de Dios Salazar and returned to central Mexico to assist in the north’s ill-fated defense against the US invasion. Though victorious against Sentmanat, the Mier invaders, and the hapless defenders of the Alamo, Ampudia’s own military career had often been one of failures— admittedly, less a result of his own abilities and more the difficult conditions surrounding Mexico’s early national period. In the campaigns of Resaca de Palma, Palo Alto, and Monterrey, he tasted multiple defeats but managed to survive a free man. Ampudia was well on in years by the time the French invasion came about. He outlived those terrible times, only to die of kidney cancer in Mexico City, in the early morning hours of August 7, 1868. Forgotten for decades, Ampudia’s ghost rose again in 1948, when his papers were once more reassembled and reviewed as part of a Cuban government campaign to document the biographies of islanders who had once served in the Mexican Army.4 Sentmanat’s confederate Juan Pablo Anaya was also gone now, departed from Tabasco in 1841 for Yucatán, where he remained in political asylum. Gentleman traveler and archaeologist John Lloyd Stephens met him, “the oldest general in the Mexican service, but for two years an exile in Mérida,” during this period, and witnessed a bloody operation to correct Anaya’s cross eyes.5 Anaya then headed for Havana, where he authored a lengthy missive to Santa Anna, arguing that he be allowed to return; after all, why persecute a man who was simply upholding the 1824 Constitution, as both of them had sworn to do? His vision may have been straight now, but his obsession with grand military strategy made the petition digress into a lengthy analysis of why Mexico had failed to retake Yucatán in 1843.6 Not surprisingly, this missive accomplished nothing. Rehabilitation only came with the fall of Santa Anna in 1844, when Anaya was restored to command by interim president José Joaquín de Herrera and even became part of the national Consejo de Guerra; three years later he helped put down the revolt of generals Palacios and Paredes in Sinaloa. Anaya died of cholera

Figure 11.  Pedro de Ampudia y Grimarest, a Cuban-born general whose roller-coaster career epitomized the dramatic changes of early national Mexico. He fought at the battle of the Alamo, served in the abortive 1842 assault on Campeche, dislodged Francisco de Sentmanat from Tabasco, oversaw the restoration of civilian government in Yucatán during the Caste War, then faded into obscurity. From Manuel Gil y Sáenz, Historia del Estado de Tabasco (1890).

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in September 1850, while resting in his hometown of Lagos. His obituary celebrated him as one of the last surviving officers of the Hidalgo revolt, while discreetly brushing aside his misadventures among the river people.7 The departures of Anaya, Sentmanat, and Ampudia did not signal a return of the quotidian. Indeed, the next phase of Tabascan history involved a cast of individuals just as remarkable in their own right. Regional discontent first centered around the person of Miguel Bruno Dazo, no less interesting for being a Sentmanat understudy and ersatz imitation. Like his mentor he inspired alternate versions of history; contemporaries variously depicted him as patriot and brigand; as Tabascan and foreign; as a man driven by blood thirst and desire to defend his land. The Austrian botanist Karl Heller, who came to Tabasco in the height of Bruno’s brief power, described him as a character known for his political intrigues, [one who] belonged to those contemptible individuals who at the expense of their own self-interest work jointly to “put their beautiful fatherland right” . . . in order to line their own pockets and to live off the fat of the land.8

Hard words, those. How close can we get to the truth about this man whom fortune was about to place in the center of an international war? Bruno belonged to a rare class of men fated to play central roles in Mexico’s early national period: regional caudillos who repeatedly defied the central government, and whose defense of local interests fused inseparably with a megalomaniacal concern for their own authority and prerogatives, and who enjoyed widely varying degrees of success. This group of halfheroes includes Santiago Vidaurre of Nuevo León and Manuel Lozada of Nayarit and Jalisco, men mostly destined to live short but exciting lives. Bruno’s career failed to acquire Vidaurre’s level of success or endurance, but nevertheless partook of similar dynamics. It also prospered in the atmosphere of isolation and lawlessness that permeated Tabasco, just as Vidaurre prospered by his vast distance from Mexico City and, conversely, from his proximity to the robust black-market trading of the ever-porous US-Mexican border. By the mid-1840s the struggle to oust Sentmanat was over, but as in Central America in the 1990s, political violence simply yielded to its criminal counterpart. The Campeche/Tabasco border in particular was notorious for outlaw activity. If well connected with the local population, bandits could live in peace as loggers, as did the part-time highwaymen

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whom the naturalist Arthur Morelet encountered in Palizada in 1846.9 Under these sorts of conditions, it was all the easier to raise men, smuggle arms, and hide out from those individuals who for right or wrong sported titles of authority. Bruno’s early life offers a microcosm of the turbulent passions that roiled the Atlantic world in the early nineteenth century. Born in 1818, he was the son of one Pedro Bruno, an Italian who had fought in France’s Napoleonic Army. He came to Tabasco during the early federalist struggles. Pedro’s son Miguel was born in Santa María, Colombia, and in fact had Colombian citizenship. In later years Miguel Bruno claimed to be Tabascan by birth, but this was little more than an attempt to claim provincial leadership by rewriting history. Pedro married a Colombian woman named María del Carmen Dazo. The couple led a peripatetic existence, moving in 1823 to Anglophone Jamaica and then to Campeche, but eventually relocating with their children to Tabasco, where they acquired a certain rancho San Joaquín, only a few miles from the port of Frontera. Both the elder and younger Bruno followed Sentmanat and in fact briefly commanded his troops in 1841 when the latter went out of state to find reinforcements against the hated Maldonados. Pedro weathered the Mexican reconquest but died shortly thereafter, leaving his widow with the responsibility of raising a headstrong young son who knew no other life than the chaotic and often violent politics of early national Mexico.10 Miguel Bruno himself wed a Tabascan woman named Mercedes Fabré. He was one of the young men moved to action by the coming of Francisco de Sentmanat and after taking part in the filibuster’s initial victories was appointed comandante general of Tabasco. Bruno lacked Sentmanat’s sense of theatricality, but compensated with other features. The most legendary qualities about Bruno were his audacity and fiery temperament, that kind of internal lava that invites psychoanalytic speculations. His greatest contribution to the 1840 federalist revolt was to take Frontera, his home territory, where he assassinated cavalry lieutenant Antonio Cerón and dumped his body to the waiting alligators of the Grijalva River.11 Bruno managed to survive the reverses of 1843 and 1844. This child of international adventure had the good fortune to be out of the picture during Sentmanat’s failed invasion and thus escaped execution (rumor held that he fled to Veracruz).12 Attempting to reconjure the Sentmanat magic that united love of province with a deified concept of liberty, he returned

Figure 12.  Bandit, seducer, rebel, hero, freedom fighter: all these monikers attached themselves to Miguel Bruno Dazo. Son of an Italian soldier from the army of Napoleon, he learned his trade under Francisco de Sentmanat, and raised guerrilla bands to fight off the US invasion of 1847, only to be outlawed and executed for refusing to accept the return of Mexican national power. Bruno’s remains were dispersed and lost when revolutionary strongman Tomás Garrido Canabal razed Villahermosa’s cathedral. From Manuel Gil y Sáenz, Historia del Estado de Tabasco (1890).

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and pronounced on June 14, 1845, in favor of the old 1824 federalist constitution, “the sacred cause of the pueblos.”13 Bruno and his ally Francisco Toro managed to take San Juan Bautista, forcing governor Victor Jiménez, together with 150 men under the command of a certain General Vilchés, to flee to the eastern side of the river, and placing a more sympathetic urban politician, Juan de Dios Salazar, in the governor’s chair. The Mexican government, itself reeling from political intrigues and a looming confrontation with its aggressive northern neighbor, attempted to deal with the rebellious state through a commission. Rafael Tunquito and Alejandro García, two officers sent from Xalapa, Veracruz, attempted to reason with Bruno and Toro, but what they found was not encouraging. Throughout the length of their travels there was no authority that attempted to review or limit their movement; rather, Tabasco had become an open state in the most extreme sense of the term. Conditions of nearanarchy prevailed in all corners, and commerce had come to a standstill. Following the recent revolt, Ignacio Martínez and Felipe Montero, both urban allies of Bruno, had squeezed the region for all the revenues they could find, and although Martínez landed in prison, Montero had managed to flee with $25,000, leaving the treasury debilitated. When at last the Tunquito-García commission reached the home of Governor Salazar, they found the former captain Manuel Toro there as well. Bruno, stationed with his forces in Teapa, had assumed the comandancia militar and immediately promoted Toro and his brother to the rank of colonel. Tunquito and García found some support among capital city merchants, and to Toro they argued that a US invasion was certain to come. However, both Toro and Bruno interpreted the commission’s presence to mean national weakness; ignoring threats of an invasion, they remained obdurate in their demands. What exactly did the rebels want? To the Mexican commission Bruno and Toro presented a smorgasbord of demands that drew from both personal ambition and popular goals . . . popular, at least, to Tabascan cacao growers. Under the proposed new order, Bruno and Toro were to retain their self-granted promotions, while Salazar and all other political appointees were to remain as well. A second body of core concerns clustered around protecting Tabasco’s weak economy. Mexico was to raise protective tariffs against foreign cacao, put an end to the alcabalas that were dampening commerce, permit free cultivation of tobacco, lift the ban on trade with the Yucatecan Republic, and allow import of foreign wheat (that which

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came from Veracruz simply failed to suffice). Policies of Mexican nationalism, then, were to yield to Tabasco’s immediate needs.14 Perhaps these demands did indeed embody popular sentiment. But they appear to have emerged more among urban merchants and cacao exporters (most rural people ate corn, not wheat), and at bottom there is no evidence that Bruno and Toro somehow received their ideas from peasants and jornaleros, so the argument of popular federalism rests of faith. It is also important to remember that the size of forces that Bruno and others levied were, in the final analysis, not all that large. Whatever the rebels’ inner motivation, they soon converted the capital into a study of misrule: rather than spearheading the federalist utopia, brunistas hewed more closely to rural Tabascan resentment of the city’s elite and proceeded to sack the homes of prominent citizens. Leaders of the rampage only managed to keep their followers in line by promising additional plunder in the future.15 In panic, General Vilchés contacted Chiapan governor Ignacio Barbarena, and together the two forced the rebels into the sierra, where the Chiapans defeated Bruno in Teapa on September 9, killing many. Bruno himself fled.16 Soon a more professional force of some ninety men, led by one Lt. Col Manuel Peláez, arrived to break up the movement once and for all. On September 25, outside of Teapa, Peláez fought a two-hour battle with the insurgents, killing ten and capturing seventy-one, including Bruno himself. Rebels lost all their arms and leaders in the course of the rout.17 A disdainful Peláez saw little in the movement beyond “robbery and vengeance,” although these sorts of dismissals were common among officers charged with putting down political dissidence. With the authorization of President José Joaquín de Herrera, Peláez issued amnesty for everyone in the uprising.18 Bruno repaid the kindness by denouncing Peláez to anyone who would listen, including the president himself.19 In December, however, the rhetoric abruptly changed. Bruno published a broadside recanting his accusations, insisting that they had been the result of slanders, and claiming that Peláez had won him over with fair treatment.20 The about-face had to do with national changes. President Joaquín Herrera had made the mistake of granting an audience to New Orleans attorney John Slidell, a US agent sent to see about the possibility of purchasing California. Even though Herrera stoutly rejected the offer, the mere act of speaking with Slidell exposed the former to accusations of political weakness, and in January 1846 he was forced out by rival General

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Mariano Paredes. Though a Mexican nationalist himself, the new president had strong ties to Spaniards still infatuated with the vain dream of installing an Iberian monarch on the Mexican throne. As Mexico engaged in increasingly hostile exchanges with Washington, Bruno realized that his best hope lay in the federal government’s forgetting about him as quickly as possible. His complaints and grievances thus ceased. Once free and forgotten, Bruno immediately returned to his old ways. Working with a chum named Baltazar Solís, he went to Ciudad de Carmen where he managed to find support among the very French merchant who had once backed Anaya and Sentmanat. Pierre Elys’s home became a safe house where rebels stockpiled arms and munitions for a second pronouncement. Although never overtly stated, the payoff was presumably a promise of increased trade opportunities under whatever political arrangement the steam-headed Bruno might manage to cobble together. It was impossible to keep these machinations a secret, and Manuel Peláez returned to San Juan Bautista on March 30, 1846, to launch a manhunt for the revolutionaries.21 He managed to arrest Bruno, whom he placed in a prison on Isla del Carmen, “along with his other cronies.” They included men such as retired captain Tomás Lara: “There are no uprisings where he is not to be found in the first ranks,” Peláez opined.22 These were the circumstances in which Tabasco found itself at the very moment when a new and unexpected threat appeared, one whose powers of destruction far outstripped the pitiful raids that were the rebellious provincials’ stock-in-trade. Suddenly, without warning and without any legal or moral justification, a third chance arrived for Miguel Bruno Dazo, here in the last place anyone would have anticipated, when the warships of the United States of America came to call.

The Yucatecan The US invasion of Mexico was a tragedy years in the making. The tangled story had its roots in two very different civilizations, one a corporate society of relatively slow demographic growth, where the institution of the village ejido kept peasants, however poor and unequal, rooted to their community of origin; the other a dynamically capitalist nation where northern industrialization, southern plantocracy, and institutionalized slavery all combined

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to push a growing free population ever westward. Early Mexican statesmen tried to control the process by colonizing and “mexicanizing” Anglo settlers in the Texas region. But the plan miscarried wretchedly, and with the April 16, 1836, Battle of San Jacinto the so-called Texians gained what many of them had envisioned from the beginning, an English-speaking republic where slavery, agro-export, and anti-Catholicism reined supreme. In terms of territorial definition, the new state builders erred on the side of liberality. Texians could be river people too: they insisted that the border lay at the Rio Grande, an attempt to seize control of one of the west’s largest transport systems and its continent-sized potential for trade and agriculture. Mexicans, to the contrary, adhered to the original maps drawn up for the Stephen F. Austin colonies, with the border lying further north, along the Nueces River. Mexican statesmen had long insisted that annexation of Texas would be causus belli, and that annexation came in early 1846, just weeks before president-elect and ardent expansionist James K. Polk assumed office. Largely ignorant of matters west of the Mississippi, Washington insiders accepted Texian claims, and both nations began to move troops into position alongside the disputed territory. A minor border skirmish in April of that year ignited the long-feared war; on May 8 and 9, 1846, the United States defeated Mexico in the respective battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de Palma. Taylor proceeded southward, fought a bloody engagement in Monterrey, killed many of the town’s defenders and citizens, then pushed southward into San Luis Potosí.23 A full-fledged invasion of Mexico was now underway, and no part of that republic could rest securely. The individual fated to deal with the emerging crisis in Tabasco, one Colonel Juan Bautista Traconis, merits a few words. Born in Mérida, Yucatán, in 1808, Traconis had read deeply in the culture of his home state, where Florentine politics was gospel. His Valladolid-based nephew Daniel Traconis was a Caste War military officer who allied with the French empire, but who managed to rehabilitate himself during the Porfiriato and even served briefly as governor of the state. Juan Bautista learned his lessons well, for throughout his life he remained dogged by accusations of treachery and betrayal. But early on he boasted impeccable credentials: he had fought against the French in Veracruz during the Pastry War of 1838, and then he had served under Ampudia during the latter’s occupation of Tabasco, only to accompany him in departing the state in January 1845, on board the goleta Fortuna. He returned to assume the comandancia militar in late

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August or early September of the following year.24 But above all, Traconis occupies a special niche in Mexican history: to him fell the distinction of winning one of his country’s rare victories in its disastrous war with the United States. What was this triumph, and how did it come about? Tabascan reaction to the US invasion is best seen as part of a bewildering mosaic of responses, all dependent on regional geography, history, and culture. The civil society of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas found itself prostrated by the massive entry of General Zachary Taylor’s army. General Stephen Kearney occupied the New Mexico area, provoking a series of pro-Mexico rebellions in 1847.25 In Morelos, angry campesinos took the opportunity to attack the haciendas that had recently expanded at village expense, driving frightened hacendados to petition the US Army for protection.26 The naval presence in Carmen, meanwhile, caused a general panic in Yucatecan society, tempting Campeche forces to proclaim peninsular independence and neutrality; the resulting destabilization quickly degenerated into the Caste War.27 Tabasco itself experienced the US invasion through the prism of internal civil war. Not only did the Bruno conflict remain alive: this conflict profoundly agitated Mexican political circles, and in January 1848 the conservative General Mariano Paredes, a man closely tied with promonarch Spanish residents, overthrew president and General José Joaquín Herrera. In August 1846 Traconis, leading the state militia, proclaimed against the Paredes government. Accusing him of plotting to overthrow republican institutions and to impose a European monarch, Traconis pronounced against Paredes. San Juan Bautista’s ayuntamiento immediately seconded the measure.28 Under normal circumstances, this act would have brought punishment as treason, but circumstances sanctified. Republicanism (in this case meaning national sovereignty and the absence of a monarch) enjoyed genuine popularity among most of Mexico’s politically aware military officers. Moreover, the unexpected routs at Palo Alto and Resaca de Palma discredited Paredes and allowed for the return of Santa Anna. Traconis emerged from the successful coup not only revalidated in his command, but also as governor of Tabasco state. Finally, the sudden entry of the US Navy complicated the situation and forced Tabascans to accept a defense undertaken by a partnership of factions often as opposed to one another as they were to the invaders themselves. The defense of Olman would utilize the energies of regional free radical Bruno; of Juan Bautista Traconis, who had come to subdue federalists but who himself

Figure 13.  Juan Bautista Traconis, the Yucatecanborn colonel who won a surprise victory over the vastly superior naval forces of Commodore Matthew Perry. When confronted with demands for immediate surrender, Traconis retorted, “Tell the Commodore that my balls aren’t going to hang in the capitol in Washington.” As indeed they did not; but jealousy and internal political wrangles later led to his resignation. This low-ranking and underfunded officer who had the rare distinction of turning back the bluecoats died utterly forgotten in Mexico City in 1870. From Manuel Mestre Ghigliazza, Gobernantes de Tabasco (1934).

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became involved in a national-level coup; and later, of antifederalist officers sent to contain the Tabascans themselves. Unfortunately, the Tunquito-García commission sent to deal with Bruno had spoken the truth about the dangers of national disunity. Political considerations caused President James K. Polk to expand the war by sending a second force under General Winfield Scott: Taylor threatened to become too strong and too popular, and Polk feared political rivals even more than battlefield defeats. Mexico had a well-trained cavalry, and its infantry was larger in absolute numbers (though not in efficiency, as events would demonstrate). But the United States, building on the northern colonies’ old mercantile strength and nascent manufacturing sector, far surpassed Mexico in naval power. Indeed, the maritime forces of colonial days had always been Spanish, not Mexican; after independence, the Mexican Army had to contract foreign vessels to transport its soldiers to places like Yucatán and Baja California. The United States also operated with the advantages of a volunteer army, its own arms and munitions factories, and a superior engineering corp. Finally, Polk blockaded Mexican ports from the conflict’s onset, and it was this fact that brought the war to Tabasco. The man who was to lead the invasion of Tabasco occupies an appreciable role in world history. Matthew Calbraith Perry came from a naval family based in Newport, Rhode Island. His father served as captain in the early years of the United States, and during his command the elder Perry had the rare distinction of meeting the great Toussaint Louverture face-toface while stationed in the Caribbean. But the captain’s brush with Haitian slave liberation failed to imbue his family with anything resembling sympathy for colonialized peoples. Rather, Matthew Perry mainly fretted about the army and marines reaping all the war’s glory, so he looked for opportunities to advance naval reputation through successful combat.29 Initially the events of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León had only limited impact on Tabasco. When US Consul Edward Porter returned to Frontera in June after a three-month visit to Veracruz, the consulate itself had been ordered closed on May 30—not to reopen until June 18, 1848, by which time it would deal with a far smaller Mexico.30 Porter found himself in a town of dwindling compatriots: all US citizens had been ordered to relocate at least twenty leagues inland or else vacate the country. Still, on a personal level, relations between US and Mexican citizens remained “quite friendly.”31 Indeed, even as the US invasion was getting underway,

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Tabascans continued to struggle with more mundane dilemmas. Chief among these was the task of maintaining an established church in a state that suffered from ongoing poverty and chronic political infighting. Often this took the shape of voluntarism. For example, to carry out reconstructions of the church in San Juan Bautista, devout capitalinos formed a sociedad protectora that divided the work of collecting wood, stone, and other construction materials to a series of committees. Ultimately these costs devolved to the peasantry, since orders for collection filtered down to jueces of outlying pueblos and rancherías.32 Tabascan voluntarism in fact previewed strategies that would become commonplace during the later Reform and Restoration, when state-enforced support for the church was replaced by official hostility. Other parts of the state felt no war-related traumas, only decay. Even as Generals Zachary Taylor and Rómulo Díaz de la Vega were squaring off along the Río Bravo, activities of a very different sort were playing out along a very different river. On August 7, 1846, padre José Andrés Rubio y Ramos began his ministry in the parish of Ríos de Usumacinta. His description of places such as Balancán, Tenosique, and Estampilla reveal a region of Mexico in severe deterioration. Not only had sacred vessels and decorations disappeared, but the church records had also fallen apart or simply walked away. Only the huge hacienda Chablé seemed relatively intact, perhaps owing to its self-sufficiency and autocratic control. In fact, only Balancán had a masonry church; the rest, and the vast majority of the private houses, were simple pole and thatch constructions, easy to destroy and almost as easy to rebuild. Moreover, travel was complicated by the rivers terribly swollen from summer rains. Rubios did what he could to restore the churches’ physical plant and to rally the faithful, but what particularly intrigued him were the “two large tribes of Indian infidels who from time to time convert to the faith and are baptized.”33 The Lacandones contacted Mexican civilization but cautiously, and when the power and influence of the outside world seemed too great, these same Indian peoples could take to their canoes and retreat to the banks of remote tributaries seldom visited even today. Peace may have flourished along these upland tributaries, but Frontera and San Juan Bautista remained visible and vulnerable, inviting targets for the pugnacious Matthew Perry, and for them the threat of war was an urgent concern. Trouble began on October 21, when two suspicious vessels

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appeared at the river bar north of Frontera; five more arrived the following day. Working from their flotilla of three steamships and four sailboats, the US Navy effortlessly occupied the ramshackle port of Frontera (a simple matter, for Tabascans had never constructed any sort of defense here). In the process, the invaders seized the Mexican steamers Tabasqueño and Petrita, along with a number of smaller crafts. How to defend against this armada? The problem for Traconis was shortage. Fourteen years earlier the state had acquired some five hundred rifles for just such occasions, but the continued revolutions had reduced this stock to virtually nothing.34 A small fortified position known as the Fortín overlooked the river just north of the city, but its three cannons were useless owing to severely deteriorated carriages; Traconis thus ordered that the point be abandoned. Now was the time for all men—good or otherwise—to come to the aid of their country. With manpower and fighting spirit spread thin, Traconis opened the jails and provided convicted criminals the opportunity to redeem themselves. Among those who walked to freedom between June and September 1846 was none other than Miguel Bruno. Traconis certainly had a taste for dramatic decisions, and this proved to be one of his most momentous. Bruno’s rudderless energies at last found the cause that could transform him into a hero; liberty was no longer an abstract noun found midway through a dictionary. The transplanted Colombian threw himself to his newfound task and passionately defended the controversial Traconis ever after. Three days later, on October 25, the invaders arrived in force, bringing seven hundred men and heavy artillery. They overran the now-empty Fortín, spiked its immobile cannons, then proceeded to the city’s central landing point. In a parley that reversed roles of the Alamo, the vastly superior US forces demanded that Tabascans surrender the city, or else they would burn it to the ground; they gave Traconis exactly twenty-five minutes to consider the proposition.35 Pressed for a response, Traconis refused. Legend has it that the laconic colonel said to US emissaries, “Tell the Commodore that my balls aren’t going to hang in the capitol in Washington.” The fate of San Juan Bautista thus appeared sealed. With only 250 regular forces, some twenty-five guerrillas (including Bruno himself), and a shortage of arms, Traconis prepared to defend as best he could. By placing them in strategic heights above the Grijalva, he positioned their fire in such a way that prevented landing. Frustrated, the US warships took out their

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anger by an artillery bombardment that reduced much of the capital to rubble. (Reading Perry’s correspondence, one is inclined to think that it was Traconis, and not he, who decided to destroy the city, so thorough was this mechanism of transferred wartime guilt.) The firing continued for the next day. However, the invaders still found themselves unable to occupy the banks, and toward midday a group of foreign consuls—British, French, and German, all merchants linked to the mahogany and cacao trades—came out to protest what they described as “a war against women and buildings.” Indeed, most of the town’s defenders had now evacuated, and much of the property being destroyed actually belonged to the foreign merchants themselves. One of them, an Italian, had perished with all his family when a shell directly hit their home. At 2:00 p.m. Commodore Perry decided to return to Frontera, but first burned the two Tabascan steamships as a precaution. Some eighty Tabascans had perished, compared to two US sailors. A cluster of factors persuaded the invaders to abandon the proposed occupation of San Juan Bautista. The first was the Tabascan resistance: though downplayed in US naval correspondence, it was far greater than anticipated; Perry had expected the Tabascan capital to fold immediately, and that did not happen. Second, Perry was deeply concerned about sending sailors into the narrow streets of San Juan Bautista, which he suspected would result in ambushes. Third, and as later Tabascan authors acknowledged, he had arrived with troops insufficient for the purpose of a full occupation, a curious misstep for a man known to obsess over details. Fourth, the pleadings of foreign consuls (who also happened to be wealthy merchants) had some effect. Fifth, in Perry’s mind the larger objective had already been achieved, insofar as a clandestine naval supply out of Tabasco was rendered impossible. The event was not necessarily the rout that Traconis liked to play up in correspondence, but it is hard to blame the colonel for trying to capitalize on his achievement, one of the few moments when Mexicans tasted anything resembling victories. Indeed, his strong showing in San Juan Bautista enhanced morale, injected caution into the US advance, and laid the groundwork for a long-range guerrilla defense in the Tabasco region. Unfortunately for the defenders, the US Navy now imposed a punishing naval blockade upon the Tabascans. Karl Heller’s account of his 1848 visit to Frontera gives some idea of the massive superiority of technology and firepower that the bluecoats imposed over this backward swampland.

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Particularly imposing was the Aetna, with its 17,500–pound cannons capable of firing explosive Paixham shells in all directions.36 Direct resistance against this sort of firepower amounted to suicide. The only option was therefore to resist at lower levels. Traconis began by arresting all US citizens found in the area and confiscating their fortunes to help pay for defense. He also ordered all foreign merchants to evacuate Frontera. The colonel had reason to be suspicious. Like businessmen throughout history, the US crowd at the bar understood that war, handled correctly, carried opportunity. Men such as Richard Johnson left their Mexican-born wives in charge of the stores, thus allowing them to do a lively trade with Perry’s men. (Johnson, incidentally, found other ways to exploit the situation, for as soon as the conflicts had ended, he petitioned to US government to pay for purported war-related damages, per the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo; even Consul Edward Porter, normally the knee-jerk defender of American expatriate merchants, was infuriated.)37 Meanwhile, Traconis also tried to bluff Perry by claiming that two Yucatecan forces were coming to help him, a bluff that was exposed a few weeks later, when a Campeche mercantile clique seized power and proclaimed Yucatecan independence as a way of staying out of the war.38 (In the long run Traconis had the last laugh over the campechanos: they won their coveted neutrality, but inadvertently detonated Yucatán’s Caste War.)39 The comandante also plastered the city with rhetorical proclamations designed to hike up morale among soldiers and citizens alike.40 He reconstructed the Fortín, repaired the spiked cannons and their carriages, and had Tabascans make cartridges as fast as their hands could pack the gunpowder. But this was hardly enough to stop a more concerted second invasion. Traconis therefore pleaded with the minister of war for mortars, two thousand rifles, and $500,000 (an outlandish amount of money in those days, when a modest southeastern hacienda might retail at $2,000), all of which would somehow have to reach him overland, since the invaders had imposed a naval blockade.41 Within days he scaled down his demands by 75 percent, but still insisted on the mortars, probably since these weapons offered his only hope of damaging US warships.42 But it was to no avail. For all intents and purposes, the river people were on their own. Miguel Bruno shared in the moment’s terror and glory. Indeed, the US invasion actually breathed second life into his aspirations. In El espía de la Frontera, one of those early newspapers that flourished for a moment and

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then was gone, Bruno published a proclamation to the Tabascan people, hailing Traconis’s leadership and calling on all citizens to keep up the fight. “We have opposed their enormous cannons with mere rifles, and they have fled,” he reminded his countrymen.43 Appealing to state machismo, he stressed that the gringos had come “to kill our women”—the ancient fear of sexual usurpers that has driven so many men to arms—and painted the invaders as an essentially cowardly people afraid to confront a little light artillery.44 Doubtless Bruno had his own reasons for getting behind Traconis, since a patriotic defense promised to cleanse his political sins and even position him for greater things later on. But at the same time, the two men shared a preference for direct confrontation, while the invasion gave Bruno’s abstract struggle for liberty the motivation it was seeking. Traconis had pleaded, demanded, postured, and threatened, but in vain. Nothing could be spared, let alone shipped, and the requested ended up being routed . . . to Yucatán, of all places. Campeche elites had rebelled in favor of a neutral independence in November, and Mexico’s minister of war, Juan Nepomuceno Almonte, responded by sending two thousand rifles to the loyal but embattled Yucatecan governor in Mérida, the dapper Miguel Barbachano; Almonte accompanied the shipment with an innocent (or more likely, cynical) request that they be returned when Barbachano was finished using them.45 The reason behind this decision in fact lay with the influence of Mexico’s secretary of foreign relations, Manuel Crescencio Rejón. The secretary was a staunch liberal and a close ally of radical anticlerical reformer Valentín Gómez Farías. Born in a tiny southwest town called Bolonchén (“nine wells,” all of which are still visible near the town’s center), Rejón had risen to prominence as a legal reformer, his great contribution to Mexican jurisprudence being a complicated staying order called the amparo. This instrument is still used today, to both good and bad effect: designed as a check to arbitrary justice, it has just as often been deployed to prevent execution of agrarian reform, and its reduction in such cases was key demand of peasant organizations in the 1960s.46 But all these quarrels lay far in the future. For the moment, Rejón was simply worried about the fall of his political ally Barbachano, and even though a US invasion was imminent, the secretary’s provincial loyalties got the better of him.47 The rebuff was too much for Traconis’s low boiling point. “The government,” he fumed, “has left me to my own resources, in a poor and sickly country already ruined by the many forced loans and contributions that

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I have had to impose in order to support my soldiers.”48 On November 19, he proclaimed yet again, derecognizing the Mexican government and insisting that Tabasco would manage its own defense under his direction.49 Stationed in Macuspana with his own irregulars, Miguel Bruno seconded the pronouncement; supporters in Jalpa also joined.50 The November pronouncement was more an act of fury than a calculated manifestation of deep-seated regional separatism. Unfortunately, Traconis’s combativeness had caused him to take an unnecessary political risk. Tabascan political elites, never tolerant of outside encroachment, acquiesced to the Yucatecan’s accumulation of power so long as defense was paramount and the colonel appeared to have ironclad support from the center. They resented his power, and also felt pressure from the army of job seekers that followed provincial politicians; as in Yucatán, the state was the main employer of the professional classes, and those whom Traconis had excluded turned to their own political patrons for help. But as soon as Traconis severed his centralist alliances he left himself exposed, since those same resentful elites could now take the moral high ground and accuse him of treason. Justo Santa Anna (no relation to the generalísimo), the man who had the strongest claim on the governor’s office and therefore who most stood to gain by getting rid of Traconis, attacked him for financial improprieties . . . not entirely doubtful, given the emergency with which Traconis was dealing.51 Chontalpa commander José Julián Dueñas also joined the anti-Traconis parade.52 He and other prominent cacaoteros had reason to turn on the state’s defender, the first being resentment over the fact that a military officer—and on top of that, an outsider—had assumed political control. By their own admission, Traconis had called for provincial elections, but they widely assumed that he planned to use troops to assure his own victory. Second, and very much like Yucatecan hacendados and capitalists who demanded a vigorous Caste War offensive but refused to pay for it, they detested emergency forced loans. There is some suggestion that cacao exporters’ tendency to elevate their pocketbooks over their patriotism put them at loggerheads with the colonel. As commander of the resistance, he severed all commerce with Frontera; the US Navy, apparently, was willing to allow some traffic in and out of the port, but collected all customs receipts. The arrangement favored cacao growers, but did nothing to further the Tabascan defense. Finally, the colonel’s way of doing military

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business also got the patricians’ goat. Convinced that trained soldiers under his command had a better shot at defense than ragtag irregulars under the command of some self-commissioned colonels from the backwoods, Traconis called up the reserves from rural towns, only to confiscate their rifles to distribute among conventional troops.53 All of this made him “the tyrant,” a charge that inevitably surfaces when some forceful and charismatic personality threatens to displace patriarchal rule, either to confront a crisis or force popular reform. Nearby regional powers also feared Traconis’s growing power and uncontrollable temper. From San Cristóbal, Chiapas’s Cuban-born governor and comandante militar, Jerónimo Cardona, expressed his profound skepticism of the revolt, noting that Lieutenant Colonel Peláez had been contacted but had refused to join.54 Calumny always helped in these circumstances, so it came as no surprise when a Mexico City newspaper claimed that the US Navy had actually won the battle of San Juan Bautista, and that Traconis’s reports to the contrary were mere propaganda.55 Finally, Traconis had acted without the broader, pan-Mexican consultation necessary for success. The comandancias militares in provinces such as Oaxaca, Puebla, and Veracruz hung together with the capital and thus repudiated the Traconis pronouncement.56 Civil opinion, such as it was, soon followed the lead of the military commanders on whom public safety depended, and joined the avalanche of voices denouncing Traconis and his independent Tabasco.57 The secessionist movement (if it can truthfully be called that) met its death blow when Antonio López de Santa Anna, now commander-in-chief of the Mexican defense, denounced “what can justifiably be called treason against the fatherland, by reasons of the conditions that beset the country . . .”58 Interestingly enough, Traconis never denied that he had taken extraordinary and unpopular steps such as forced loans. By his own admission, he had squeezed a whopping $30,000 from monied Tabascans. To his mind the situation demanded it, and the distance of nearly two centuries confirms that judgment.59 Still, politics is a kingdom of alliances and appearances, and the Yucatecan’s strength—his feisty belligerence—now caused his undoing. Betrayed and condemned on virtually all sides, and genuinely taken aback by Santa Anna’s anger, Traconis resigned both his military command and the Tabascan governorship on December 28.60 Tabascan caudillos Claro Hidalgo and Miguel Bruno, later to become the bitterest of enemies, also agreed to return to the Mexican fold and work with a civilian government.61

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The six-week crisis had one minor sequel. Traconis had already resigned and handed over his post to Santa Anna when he got wind of the accusations that Tabascan políticos were leveling at him. His first reaction was to storm out of his house and go looking for now-governor Justo Santa Anna in person, with intentions that can only be imagined. Fortunately for Santa Anna, a number of more neutral individuals managed to intercept Traconis and cool him down. A friend of Traconis, an officer from Acayucan, did manage to corner the governor in a café, but once again capitalinos stepped in and saved the governor from a roughing up, or something worse. Santa Anna did not need more warnings; he immediately relocated his government to Teapa, where the cafés offered similar menus but greater privacy . . . not so much from the US Navy, as from Traconis and his outraged followers.62 From there he contacted Chiapas governor Cardona, who came to San Juan Bautista with enough troops to force Traconis to give up on the province once and for all and return to Mexico City on January 5.63 What to make of Traconis’s would-be cacicazgo? Mexican history abounds with instances of politically ambitious military officers who entered some strife-riven province and, recognizing the opportunity for power and enrichment, constructed a political pyramid of their own. However, the events of November-December 1846 involved more than personal ambition. A fairer interpretation argues that Traconis was a sincere nationalist determined to repulse the invasion, using the pitifully inadequate resources at his disposal. He also belonged to that breed of choleric officers who, once in the heat of battle, throw all other considerations to the wind and focus on victory at any cost. In some ways, he bested the Tabascans at their own game of expelling outsiders, only to become victim of xenophobic jealousy.

B r u n o’s R e t u r n a n d t h e S e c o n d US Assault Back in San Juan Bautista, meanwhile, civilian politicians got what they were looking for. Justo Santa Anna had inherited the governorship with Traconis’s abrupt departure.64 For all the governor’s triumphalism and postfacto accusations, though, it quickly became apparent that the “tyrant” had shown remarkable good sense in gearing up against a second invasion. Just

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as Traconis had predicted, emergency money was going to be essential. The governor approached fund-raising in a way far more endearing to the planters’ hearts. On April 15, he promulgated a decree allowing private citizens to purchase terrenos baldíos, whether of the interior or along the coast, for the sum of thirty pesos per hectare, the returns on which were to fund the defense effort.65 Unfortunately for don Justo, the sheer anarchy that was to follow prevented this land grab until the more settled conditions of the Porfiriato at last made privatization a reality, and the decree had virtually no impact on state finances. Compounding problems was the spreading US occupation of Mexico isolated river country. The occupation of Frontera had greatly restricted postal delivery, and now that the United States held both Veracruz and Palizada (this latter being Tabasco’s point of access to the Laguna de Términos), letters and communiques reached a virtual impasse.66 Following these roller-coaster events, Miguel Bruno left Tabasco altogether and somehow ended up fighting beside Antonio López de Santa Anna in the disastrous battle of Cerro Gordo in April 18, 1847; like the Abbé Sieyès during France’s reign of terror, he distinguished himself there “by surviving.” But the event served him well in unexpected ways because it gained him the trust of Santa Anna, who gave Bruno a letter authorizing him to raise an army of resistance in Tabasco.67 Doubtless the jarocho commander-in-chief was merely trying to get as many men in the field as possible without having to pay for them and saw Bruno as one of many potential grassroots leaders. But Bruno himself, either by convenience or bonafide persuasion, interpreted the document as entrusting him with full responsibility for Tabasco’s defense. He returned immediately and set to work with his usual demonic energy. In all likelihood Bruno overread his mandate. Indeed, the most direct evidence that President Santa Anna imagined only limited power for Bruno comes from the fact that only a month earlier he had also appointed General Domingo Echagaray to lead the comandancia general. Echagaray was born in Zacatlán de las Manzanas, Puebla, in 1803, making him exactly the same age as Sentmanat and Ampudia, and only a few years older than Traconis. But the new comandante general’s temperament contrasted sharply with that of his predecessor. Whereas Traconis was a kind of Tasmanian devil, ready to take on opponents many times his own size, Echagaray suffered from a debilitating caution. Or perhaps he served at a later stage of

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the war, by which time he had developed a keener appreciation for how overwhelming the US forces could truly be. When Echagaray assumed command in San Juan Bautista on March 27, 1847, he encountered a city in abject hysteria. Communications with the mainland had grown irregular and invariably brought bad news. Panic over the fall of Veracruz and the loss at Cerro Gordo had caused many people to flee the Tabascan capital; in the process, they forgot all about the emergency defenses that Traconis labored so desperately to erect. Echagaray found only 150 men, the lot of them bearing a mishmash of irregular arms of varying calibers and states of repair. On top of everything, rumor held that San Juan Bautista was to be the next target of invasion.68 He positioned his troops, along with six cannons, at the Fortín (reconstructed and equipped by Traconis, incidentally, though no one bothered to mention the fact). The river was relatively narrow at this point, and the US Navy would have to pass within pistol shot. As an additional measure, the comandante barricaded the river at Acachapan (approximately two miles north of San Juan Bautista) with tree trunks and sunken boats in order to impede vessels of deeper draft.69 Throughout these preparations, Echagaray evinced a hunger for money that made Traconis seem frugal. Prior to the second invasion, the general had already assumed control of all remaining aduana revenues; when those failed to suffice, he simply directed all state funds, including the treasury, to his own control. Any soldier or officer wanting his pay actually had to go to wherever the comandante happened to be staying.70 Echagaray did not have to wait for long. On June 17, 1847, following an intense spate of rumors, the US Navy returned to San Juan Bautista. Matthew Perry still resented his surprise humiliation of the previous October; to his imperialist mind, Traconis had acted treacherously by refusing to submit to a provoked invasion, and this time the commodore came prepared to tangle. Leaving the flagship Mississippi at anchor outside the bar, he pushed upstream with four steamers, eight schooners, a collection of smaller vessels, and a force of 1,100 men.71 (Tellingly, Tabascans calculated the force as two thousand, an exaggeration that gives some idea of how psychologically intimidating Perry’s assault force must have been.) Although Perry provides no exact count of his artillery, the combined US firepower was apparently massive and of a quality far more deadly and professionally employed than anything the improvised Tabascan defenders could match.

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Perry’s ships shelled the Tabascans at the first defense point, forcing their retreat; upon discovering obstructions in the river, Perry sent the smaller ships ahead, then disembarked his men and cannons at a point along the Acachapan banks. Marching through the exuberant Tabascan chaparral, the soldiers recalled the tall grass some had seen on the North American plains. Tabascans themselves were spoiling for the fight, but with no more than nine hundred soldiers at his disposal, Echagaray decided to retreat and wage a guerrilla resistance. Justo Santa Anna now discovered how necessary a full military mobilization was; lacking protection, he retreated with his government to the safety of Tamulté, the outlying Indian village to which so many Tabascan leaders fled. Traconis had been right after all. At this point Tabascans split into two factions, the first being a cautious, peripatetic resistance led by Echagaray himself. He had lost more than two-thirds of his nine hundred men, and after regrouping in Tamulté, the general considered abandoning Tabasco altogether, either for Chiapas or the southern interior of Veracruz. At last he decided for Huimanguillo, and at 4:00 a.m., he embarked with all the forces that remained under his command. One participant remembered the retreat’s hardships: Nor did we have a guide who knew those parts. And for that reason we soon lost ourselves in an impenetrable woods, in which we were horribly tortured by flies, gnats, mosquitos, and all other plagues common to that unhealthy and deadly region. To make matters worse, a huge rain fell, and through it all we had to pass through gullies and paths that were nearly impassable. Night found us in this situation, and it broke one’s heart to see the soldiers, as well as the officers, stuck in swamps and bramble in which they left their shoes and much of their clothing.72

The beleaguered band eventually arrived at a tiny cacao sitio at 8:00 p.m. But Echagaray, who made a habit of not sleeping in the same place as his soldiers (apparently a security measure, but hardly popular), quickly changed his mind and decided to head for Chiapas the next day. They reached Tacotalpa on July 20, then halted.73 As this retreat was underway, a second and more bellicose force coalesced around recycled Sentmanat allies, the most important being Miguel Bruno Dazo. He saw himself as the true commander of homeland defense, and some measure of his importance comes from the fact that he was one of the few Tabascan leaders that US naval correspondence ever mentions by name.74 Active too were cacao planters Pomposo and Pánfilo Maldonado;

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alarmed by talk of surrender to the United States, they now mobilized their own clients and workers, and even brother Eulalio came out of Pichucalco to lend a hand. This growing force of irregulars alarmed Echagaray’s officers, who persuaded the general that to retain leadership he had to go back to Tamulté to confront the invaders. Echagaray acquiesced; directing Eulalio Maldonado and his men to serve under Bruno, on July 28 the general returned to the village he had abandoned at such cost only thirteen days earlier.75 Meanwhile, the foreign occupation of San Juan Bautista took an ugly turn. Rhode Island-born Matthew Perry quickly wearied of the interior’s steam-bath climate and departed on June 20, leaving 150 men under the Commander Abraham Bigelow. Perry understood all too well the precariousness of Marine control here. The debilitating effects of malaria had begun to strike down occupational forces. Moreover, the guerrilla resistance that Perry contemptuously dismissed as “banditti soldiery” failed to disappear and by the best calculations would require hundreds of reinforcements to subdue.76 In fact, the US-imposed occupational governor actually controlled nothing more than what is today the Centro Histórico (known in Villahermosa as the Zona de Luz), but his men could not leave without facing withering sniper fire concentrated in the suburbs and outlying villages long since incorporated into municipal limits, places such as Atasta, Tamulté, Tierra Colorada, and Macultepec. In his efforts to dampen the resistance, Bigelow became the greatest arsonist in the history of southeast Mexico. His troops burned down some eighty homes in the Esquipulas district; and on the 12th, repeated this treatment in Calvario. One estimate placed the total destruction at more than two hundred homes and a hundred deaths.77 Nearly a half century later, visitors to San Juan Bautista could still see the remains of fire-gutted buildings, including those of an old home that Francisco de Sentmanat had used for an armory.78 Frustrated by guerrilla sharpshooters, Bigelow assigned a squadron to hunt down and destroy the resistance at Tamulté. Echagaray initially ignored rumors of a coming attack, but when an Indian gathering firewood reported that he had actually seen the bluecoats approaching, Tabascans once again faced a decision of fight or flight. Versions differ as to what happened next. Echagaray, writing a week later, maintained that he had deployed two columns of troops against the attackers, only to wither before their rapid fire; enemies later insisted that Tabascans themselves raised

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and led the columns against Echagaray’s wishes. One way or another, the confrontation ended in the defenders being routed. The Mexican general again departed for Huimanguillo (getting lost yet again, and ending up in Cunduacán), while Bruno and other lieutenants regrouped their forces in distant towns like Macultepec and Huimanguillo.79 Tamulté was to be the last skirmish of this war ever fought on Tabascan soil. The US Navy had managed to take San Juan Bautista, but it was precisely at this moment that a far more deadly combatant, mere angstroms in length, saved the day for the embattled defenders: yellow fever. This mosquito-borne disease was truly terrifying: once established in the host’s circulatory system, it began to break down the inner organs. Victims vomited their lives away in the form of black, partially digested blood. As if this were not enough, sailors also began to experience “ague” (malaria), something that brought uncontrollable fever and chills that often culminated in death. Military officers knew nothing of the microbiology involved, but they understood perfectly well the danger; malaria and yellow fever had turned the tide of many a war in the Gulf and Caribbean, and in fact, General Winfield Scott based his entire campaign on the need to get out of the low coastal country as soon as possible.80 No such luck for Commodore Perry, who necessarily dealt in sea-level engagements. His men were a virgin population for Tabasco’s tropical epidemics, and the suffocating flannel he ordered them to wear was insufficient to stop the real and unsuspected vectors of death, the mosquitos. Adult Tabascans, meanwhile, were mostly immune to yellow fever, having been exposed in childhood. Perry’s occupational officers urged him to hang on to the capital, but with illness on the rise, and convinced that he had neutralized resistance, the commodore saw no further advantage in occupying a steamy, squalid, and now decimated provincial city; he therefore withdrew all his forces to Frontera on July 22.81 There they remained until the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The diffuse Tabascan resistance had scored a victory of sorts, but for the defenders themselves the situation remained hard indeed. Militiamen in the field had little to eat, but once the second invasion had ended, something resembling normal life returned to San Juan Bautista.82 On July 26, José Julián Dueñas assumed the governorship; with Frontera’s aduana still under US occupation, he had not choice but to sacrifice his monthly $250 salary.83 Anxious to reclaim their only source of revenues, some Tabascan planters agreed to pay the one peso per carga (forty-five pounds) duty that

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Perry charged for cacao exports; the arrangement aided cacao sales, but did nothing whatsoever for the state treasury.84 The urban monied class, meanwhile, forgot all about soldiers in the field. A Chiapan named Felipe Larraínzar described his brief visit there in late October as a continual round of balls where he danced with the “nymphs” of wealthy families, beautiful young women with their hair done up in the prevailing style of back bun, with curls dangling over the face and temples. Larraínzar’s account of embroidered silk blouses, “rich liquors,” almond pastries, and the stirring polkas of a forty-piece Yucatecan orchestra hardly suggest a ruling class in crisis.85 Indeed, it was in part this very propensity to the parfaited good life that stoked the internal fires of men like Miguel Bruno.

B r u n o’s F i n a l D e f i a n c e The months of disorganization and uncertainty dragged on throughout the late Tabascan summer. Then, abruptly and without warning on November 14, Bruno struck. Under his leadership, the garrison at the village of Atasta pronounced against Domingo Echagaray and restored Justo Santa Anna to the governor’s office. Their proclamation denounced the Mexican general for his flight in June 1847. Not surprisingly, the revolt placed Bruno himself at the head of all Tabascan forces.86 With pro-Bruno military commanders stationed in many of the villages, it was an easy thing to arrange for a collection of peticiones that endorsed the coup. Three factors help to explain why Bruno waited four months to depose the tremendously unpopular comandante general. First, news of Mexico City’s fall took a while to reach the provinces, but once the central government was no more, the source of Echagaray’s political legitimacy ended. Second, the romantic Colombian would have required time to build a suitable coalition for his project. Echagaray had made careful use of divisions and rivalries within the ranks of his lieutenants, but with the immediate crisis over, many of these passions had calmed, and the Tabascans returned to their preferred way of dealing with outsiders: conspiracy. The third and final explanation comes from Bruno himself. In his telling, the coup had erupted amid rumors of a third US invasion of San Juan Bautista and fears of yet another Echagaray disintegration.87 Bruno was more of a hothead than a liar, and in all probability he spoke the truth regarding these fears and rumors. We do know

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that in August Echagaray and Bruno had aired serious disagreements about how to manage further resistance. While Echagaray clung to the idea of mobilizing some ten thousand men, a full seventh of the state’s population, Bruno adopted a far more realistic strategy. Tabasco’s geography, he argued, rendered larger forces useless, so it was better to organize a well-trained and well-equipped force of no more than four hundred, while relying on the rest to pay a monthly half peso of support.88 In sum, this last Bruno revolt came not merely from personal ambitions, but from genuine disagreements of how to conduct a war that was still far from over. Bruno’s position suddenly weakened when Mexican and US representatives signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848. Since war emergency no longer gripped the country, what was the further justification for recognizing, or even tolerating, provisional commanders of citizen militias, particularly when those commanders had assumed office by arresting generals sent from Mexico City? To Bruno, however, no such problem existed: the village petitions provided all the legitimacy he needed. In the excitement of the moment, and blinded by his own ambitions, he forgot all about the dubious circumstances in which he had risen to power, and the way in which armed bands could pressure civilians into supporting revolts they might normally have shunned. For the second and last time, the minister of war assigned Manuel Peláez the responsibility of reining in the latest Tabascan Napoleon. Peláez located Bruno in Pichucalco on March 11, but their interview came to nothing; Bruno simply refused to recognize Peláez or to relinquish his own authority over state militias, confident that the federal government would accept the petitions that formed the basis of his supposed authority. An exasperated Peláez returned to San Juan Bautista to reevaluate the situation, but on June 5 Bruno adjutant Carlos Escoffié arrived to present the colonel with an ultimatum: leave the capital within three hours, or be shot. All attempts to mollify this position failed, and fearing the Tabascan’s fiery temper and charismatic control over followers, Peláez discreetly withdrew, along with Governor Santa Anna, to Macuspana.89 With Peláez rebuffed, the federal government now sent another reliable centralist, General Manuel María Escobar (of whom we shall see a great deal in Chapter 6) to attempt the same mission. Escobar arrived in Frontera on June 28. He found the state in total anarchy, since Bruno had driven out the governor and dissolved the uncooperative legislature. Intimidated by a squadron of

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seventy armed irregulars, Justo Santa Anna turned over the governorship to Teapan brunista José Encarnación Prats and retired to his hacienda. Any villager who spoke up against the situation faced threats of violence. How to deal with this compulsive and stiff-necked rebel? Escobar first tried diplomacy. He dispatched his personal secretary, Lieutenant Colonel Juan Duque de Estrada, who found Tabasco’s new self-appointed leader in Jalapa.90 Bruno refused to resign his command, arguing that Escobar’s presence in Tabasco was causing a disturbance; moreover, Bruno apparently hoped that his old patron Antonio López de Santa Anna would return to power and legitimize a brunista Tabasco. Finally, Tabasco itself was poised for a bumper crop of cacao that year, and Bruno hoped to take advantage of the export duties to finance his own position. Duque de Estrada therefore returned empty-handed. Unequipped for an all-out confrontation, Escobar abandoned Tabasco, but not before sending to Peláez orders to assume the comandancia militar of Chiapas as part of a plan to contain Bruno from the south.91 Bruno prepared for the future by stocking up on arms. In August 1848, in a move that partook of Yucatecan Caste War dynamics, he sent his AfroMexican lieutenant, one Felipe Sánchez, to British Honduras to buy rifles. The precise shopping list of preferred weapons, together with their fourpeso-apiece price tags, still survives among the papers of Mexico’s Defense archives.92 Bruno’s dealings serve as reminder that the activities of arms merchants usually fail to conform to any sort of preconceived global design. Itself an improvised creation of imperialism, this small, English-speaking colony represented that kind of wild card that almost inevitably results from remote overseas holdings: a territory with only limited supervision from the home office, but swarming with unscrupulous individuals who take advantage of their trade ties to the mother country to set up lucrative black-market enterprises. Belizean merchants sold arms to anyone who had the money, and Sánchez fit the description. Exactly who was paying for all this remains unclear. Tabascan revolutionaries seem to have had no compunctions about extorting money from merchants and, above all, foreigners doing business in the province. Take, for example, the case of a certain Quaker merchant Aaron Leguett whom Yucatecan writer Justo Sierra O’Reilly chanced to meet in Washington, DC: Involved in God knows what speculations in Tabasco, he found himself caught up in one of the numerous uprisings and pronunciamientos to which that state, like our own and others of the Republic, has forever been victim.93

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Doubtless few who fell into the misfortune that beset Leguett ever recovered their lost money. Nevertheless, the opportunities to turn a profitable business here continued to outweigh the risks posed to ambitious foreigners. But in this case Belizean arms failed to turn the day. Bruno did manage to halt Peláez’s Chiapan militia by occupying Teapa, while his opponent had to console himself by holding up in the relaxing hot mineral baths known as Azufre (still operating as a resort today). Just as Bruno’s militiamen were escorting some captured public employees to Frontera en route to exile, they ran straight into a large and well-armed forced commanded by veteran naval commander and ardent centralist Tomás Francisco de Paula Marín Sabalza, more commonly known Tomás Marín.94 This individual, so important in the history of southeast Mexico, has never received the biographical treatment he deserves. Born in 1805 the small village of Guadalupe Hidalgo, just outside of Mexico City, he entered military training at an early age, rose to the rank of rear admiral, and distinguished himself by fighting Edwin Moore’s Texas Navy to a draw in April and May of 1843 off the coast of Campeche, just as Mexico’s attempt to reconquer Yucatán was coming to a conclusion.95 Marín reached the bar north of Frontera on October 12. He routed Bruno’s surprised forces, liberating the prisoners and forcing Bruno himself to flee. The latter briefly hid in the home of accomplices in San Juan Bautista, then headed via river to an outlying ranch known as Chico-Zapote, named after a tree that produces the chicle sap later coveted as the basis of chewing gum. Here he planned to await a shipment of ammunition that constituted his final hope of holding out. Immediately after the rout near Frontera, Marín arrived unannounced in San Juan Bautista and broke up a brunista gathering the local barracks. He then dispatched two officers—Vicente Yescas and Bruno’s former ally, Claro Hidalgo—to locate and arrest the fugitive. Bruno’s own oarsmen betrayed his location, and since ChicoZapote was surrounded by high water, Bruno had no hope of escape. Yescas and Hidalgo surrounded the ranch house around midnight on October 23, 1848. Quickly disarming three armed guards, they entered to find Bruno in the arms of one Juana Rodríguez, a woman whose only claim to historical mention was for having succumbed to Bruno’s charismatic charms. Cornered and with no defenders or supplies, Bruno had no alternative but to surrender to certain death—again, an eerie replay of the career of his mentor Francisco de Sentmanat.96

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Bruno’s trial ran from October 24 to November 16. Though mostly a foregone conclusion, it revealed some interesting dynamics of local politics. The rebel’s closest associates—including the young Victorio V. Dueñas, who later assumed the leading role in the Tabascan reform—renounced their association with Bruno, but refused to vilify him.97 Taken to Mexico City, they were tried and eventually discharged. According to a novelistic account written a half century after Bruno’s death, the caudillo’s uncontrollable temper boiled over when he heard that he had been condemned to death, and in his fury he brought down his fist on the cell’s table, splitting it in two. For years the two halves lay separated on the floor, mute testimony to a moment in Tabasco’s political passion. Still, Bruno had his defenders. In the days before his execution, citizens in San Juan Bautista and Huimanguillo pleaded for clemency, as did Bruno’s wife and mother. The Miguel Bruno they remembered was the man who organized effective, grassroots resistance against the US invaders at a time when the Mexicoappointed general did little but issue dispatches and rearrange troops: He knew how to expose [his life] to a thousand and one dangers against the foreign enemy, deploying against that enemy his tireless operations, until he managed to keep them from occupying all of the state and obliged them to relinquish the capital, suffering in the process all forms of hardship and fatigue.98

In the end, however, all the entreaties were in vain. Bruno was both patriot and rebel, but in the politically charged atmosphere of the late 1840s, the latter outweighed the former. Tomás Marín proved implacable and used troops to disperse the suppliant women. At 8:00 a.m. on November 17, 1848, Bruno was taken from the capilla and, like Sentmanat, passed before a firing squad.

A n I n va sion E n du r e d The US invasion of Tabasco, a callous and unprovoked intrusion into a province already beset with political instability, carried numerous meanings for those who outlived it. Battles for San Juan Bautista interwove threads from two different tapestries: the overall war with the United States, and the long and tortured history of Tabasco’s civil wars, its own peculiar flood time. To be certain, Tabasco’s version of events reconfirms a

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tale of overwhelming US military superiority. At the same time, this war of a thousand puddles fits well within an emerging overall picture of a grassroots resistance far greater than earlier and unabashedly pro-US histories were willing to acknowledge. The losses at Cerro Gordo and Chapultepec did not necessarily resign provincial Mexicans to uncontested domination at bayonet point. From time beyond memory, foreign powers have learned that it is not the invasion that kills, but rather the occupation. US naval forces repeatedly found control of San Juan Bautista not worth the cost; resistance militias continued under Tabascan volunteers, and not under the command of Mexico’s regular officers. Even the control of the port of Frontera ended as a compromise. If Tabascan planters and merchants worked with the occupiers to order to get out cacao shipments, then the concession cut both ways: the navy had to grant Mexico a certain degree of leeway in continuing their daily commercial activities. But the resistance cross-hatched with deep provincial conflicts. The invasion came on the heels of Francisco de Sentmanat’s takeover and dramatic fall. Sentmanat perished, but his lieutenants lived on, and brunismo very much represented that holdover of early nineteenth-century liberty, the Napoleonic free radical: glorious, combative, at once abstract and immediate, strongly provincial in flavor and goals, and inextricably wedded to an unbridled personal ambition. And it was a manly form of liberation, one in which to be a Miguel Bruno, you had to have a Juana Rodríguez or two. Fully endowed with these personal qualities, Bruno managed to be heroic and conniving, a leader and a rebel, all in the same stroke. Behind the Tabascan antihero stood a cast of forces that remained fairly constant over the century. Urban merchants controlled state politics and society; the melodies of violins and pianos from their tertulias filled the temperate winter evenings of San Juan Bautista, and innumerable minor political posts went to the followers of whichever of the small pool of urban statesmen who made it to the top of the ladder. As elsewhere in this cash-starved society, the lives of state political leaders were not entirely their own; pressure for patronage mostly forced them to monopolize public office and to do whatever possible to oust rivals, including the very commanders sent to protect them. The governor actually wielded little control over armed forces. The comandancia militar and local chiefs took care of that matter, so this tiny elite’s only option was to form tactical alliances embraced one day and discarded the next: first with Sentmanat, then Ampudia, then Bruno, then Traconis, and on and on.

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Popular fury against the US invasion was clearly deep and sincere. But Tabasco’s internal enmities predated—and outlived—the invasion. Planters resented merchants; merchants resented soldiers; commanders disdained civilian inertia and politicking. Would-be Napoleons scorned the pettiness of those too comfortable in their daily existence, or too cautious to wager their lives for what only a select few could see amid the chaos of flood time: a vision that bound provincial autonomy and personal aggrandizement. That vision excused excess, justified acts of violence, and in some mysterious way took men like Miguel Bruno as the soul made flesh of the river people. But as for those who tried to impose order via their power here, whether it was Bruno, Traconis, Echagaray, or Matthew Perry’s occupying force: los devoró la selva. The protagonists of these events came to extraordinarily different ends. Only six years after his scrapes along the Grijalva, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry unwittingly altered the course of world history when he opened Japan to the west, a far-reaching event that helped initiate Meiji modernization, the Japanese-inspired art nouveau and postimpressionist movements, the Second World War, the colonization of Korea and that country’s tragic partitioning, and the entire social transformation of East Asia. Perry’s daughter married August Belmont, the extremely wealthy personal secretary of the Rothschild family and founder of the Belmont Stakes horse race, thus bringing the brusque, salt-water naval officer into the elite social circles of New York City.99 Meanwhile, a considerably different fate awaited Perry’s adversary, Domingo Echagaray, who joined the many generals investigated for misconduct—scapegoated, if one prefers— following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.100 His career in Tabasco may not have marked a high point of leadership, but Mexico had too much need of trained officers to cashier him for failing under impossible circumstances. Echagaray thus regained his place in the military. He became a brigadier general in August 1854 and assumed the simultaneous governorship and comandancia military of Michoacán as the Ayutla revolt gathered steam there. A social and political conservative to the end, Echagaray died of a stray rifle shot while defending Morelia from Juan Alvarez’s rebels on November 24 in that same year.101 The post-Tabasco adventures of Juan Bautista Traconis were nothing short of astonishing. Indeed, his ability to stir controversy did complete justice to his upbringing in Yucatecan politics. For many years thereafter

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his name remained taboo in Tabasco, the province he had so energetically defended. Eventually acquitted of charges of rebellion, Traconis reentered military service and fought in Mexico’s attempted defense of Churubusco in 1847. When the Liberal Party took the reins in 1855, President Ignacio Comonfort appointed him to Tampico, then to the position of military governor of Puebla; there, Traconis distinguished himself by his ruthless liquidation of church-held mortgage funds and was soon accused of funneling of money for his own interests. Accusations of malfeasance (and of just about everything else) flowed easily in those days; the actual truth remains unclear. Still, Benito Juárez placed him under house arrest for thirteen months; the French imperialists liberated and restored him to favor; his level of ideological commitment to the empire remains dubious, but it was the wrong favor at the wrong time, and Traconis lost everything with the empire’s fall. In his final years he married Margarita Marmolejo, a Yautepec woman thirty years his junior. Juan Bautista Traconis, one of the few Mexican officers ever to thwart the United States in its brutal war of conquest, died of hepatitis in the capital on the last day of 1870, a forgotten man at the age of sixty-one, three years after the execution of his last employer, the archduke and one-time Mexican emperor, Maximilian, house of Hapsburg, late of Austria.102 But for the people of Olman, people whose souls require a diet of legends, only a Tabascan will do. It was for that reason that in death, Miguel Bruno Dazo’s shadow stretched across most of the nineteenth-century. Vilified by centralists and eulogized by the provincials themselves, he remained a divisive figure . . . more like Sentmanat than he could possibly have hoped. In 1857 former brunista and now liberal governor Victorio V. Dueñas transferred the caudillo’s ashes to the Cathedral of Esquipulas, in San Juan Bautista. The event featured stirring tributes and weeping women. But the bandit-caudillo’s memory gradually lost much of its emotional immediacy. During the heyday of anticlericalism under revolutionary governor Tomás Garrido Canabal the entire cathedral was leveled to the ground, and the remains interred therein were lost or scattered. Bruno’s widow, “the virtuous señora Doña Mercedes Fabré,” lived on until October 30, 1886, thirty-eight years after her husband’s execution. She confined herself to the miniature world of Frontera, where ships came and vanished over the Grijalva’s horizons, but where little else changed.103

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The Unreformed

The years immediately following Bruno’s death were not kind. Like some punishment from above, floods struck the Usumacinta region in 1851. Inundations from late in the year still closed off travel east of Jonuta during the opening months of the following spring, while roads in many parts of the state’s heartland (near Jalpa, for instance) were unpassable the following August.1 But this experience was nothing compared to the biblical inundation of October of the following year, when heavy rains destroyed the plantings and buildings (including some churches, which were little more than stick constructions), and drove the people into higher grounds of the monte. The price of a carga (forty-five pounds) of corn, normally counted at a peso or below, suddenly tripled.2 In Frontera, meanwhile, the church burned to the ground. The local priest left, never to return, and the people pleaded for the reappointment of their earlier padre, José de la Cruz Osalde y Sáenz; despite his drinking problem, he was at least the old familiar and was there when they needed him.3 Pressures also came from the east, where Yucatán’s Caste War, erupting in July 1847 and continuing over the next three decades, sent an undetermined but apparently large number of refugees into Tabascan territory; as campechano Marciano Barrera described it

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as “an untabulated emigration . . . that of Yucatán in 1847, owing to the Indian uprising in the east and south.”4 However, these disasters were mere warm-ups for the next real conflict, a state-driven plan to redefine Mexico along lines of secular individualism. Was it really possible to slough off the colonial past, with its corporate trappings? Could Tabascans put aside an older mentality that assumed a natural order of inequality and divine intervention in the affairs of humanity? Between 1855 and 1862 Tabascans attempted to sort out the scope and meaning of the changes set in motion by the Liberal Reform, but like so many other floods, the reform left a society only partially changed, and not always for the better.

The Stor m Befor e the Stor m: Tabasco in the Age of Escobar Tabasco’s own version of the Liberal Reform and its attendant war was first prefaced by another round of bloodletting. Between 1847 and 1852 state politics walked the same fitful course as the rest of the nation. Tabasco enacted its third constitution in 1850 under the tutelage of a renewed Mexican federalism. But governor José Julián Dueñas continued to struggle with the staggering deficits, and to counteract them he had few choices but to increase the tax on cacao exports and up the fee for licenses required for cutting pimienta.5 This, in turn, infuriated planters, who always assumed that urban merchants were attempting to balance the budget on the backs of the former. Some of the ensuing conflict was unfinished business from the Sentmanat era. With most of the 1840s protagonists out of the picture, political unrest erupted once again, this time over the lingering fiefdom of the Maldonado family. Although repeatedly outmaneuvered at the gubernatorial level, they continued to lord over the Sierra region; displaced by Sentmanat, Bruno, and Traconis, they ensconced themselves in Chiapan politics, where throughout this process Eulalio Maldonado’s hacienda Limón served as a kind of family castle—quite literally, since a marshy lagoon that surrounded it provided a moat. During most of the early to mid-1840s, centralists had held control of Chiapas, the focal point of their power being the governorship of General Gerónimo Cardona. But help came from an

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unexpected source when Ampudia entered Tabasco, driving many men to desert from Sentmanat’s army and flee to the Sierra frontier with Chiapas, where they found asylum working on the family’s estates. For years the Maldonado strategy had been simple: foment wars and use the opportunities to take over their rivals’ estates, and resist to the death any attempt to tax their treasured cacao. Cardona himself was closely tied the Centralists’ failed defense of Mexico against the invading US forces, and by the time the war was over, federalism had returned as the only conceivable means of resistance: every province for itself. In March 1848 Chiapans took advantage of the confusion by deposing Cardona and elevating none other than Fernando Nicolás Maldonado, Sentmanat’s old rival.6 Maldonado moved the capital to Pichucalco, where he could be assured of his brothers’ support and, should circumstances dictate, a quick getaway. He also made two lasting changes of nomenclature. First, Tuxtla became Tuxtlá Gutiérrez, in honor of an independence-era warhorse and martyred federalist, one Joaquín Miguel Gutiérrez. Second, the capital city received the name San Cristóbal de las Casas—an odd combination, given midcentury state-builders’ distaste for anything smacking of the indigenous rights and culture that Bartolomé de las Casas himself had championed.7 Hints of some sort of link between Las Casas and the self-serving landowner and inveterate conspirator Maldonado were far-fetched, but the Dominican friar served as a convenient symbol of opposition to Spanish power, here substituted as a symbol for centralism. These strong-arm tactics naturally generated enemies, and in early 1850 anti-Maldonado sentiment coalesced around a group of individuals loyal to the deposed Cardona.8 From this fact came the Plan of Pichucalco. Dueñas, ostensibly liberal, looked down on the Maldonados, who represented the old planter hostility to San Juan Bautista merchants and políticos, and was only too eager to see the nascent revolt succeed.9 He had other reasons as well. Whatever his faults, Cardona had sent aid to Tabascans when they fought against the US Navy, while a Maldonado-dominated government in Pichucalco would mean endless unrest and pronouncements along the Sierra border. Beyond that, the entire southeast appeared to be slipping yet again into chaos. The Caste War still raged, and it was at this precise moment that Hispanic state builders began to receive alarming reports of a Speaking Cross that was inciting the Maya rebels to eternal warfare. To top off matters, cholera was beginning a resurgence. The disease had been

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lurking around the Gulf region since the 1830s and flourished in Tabasco’s abundant waters and dubious sanitary conditions. In late 1854 it resurfaced with force in Yucatán, where it prospered in the chaos of the peninsula’s late federalist wars.10 It was the quest for stability among these alarming circumstances that led Tabascan federalists to support their ideological opposites in Chiapas. The Mexico City government once again sent General Tomás Marín, now versed in the tabasqueños’ rowdy ways, to contain this difficult province. The nation’s limited naval and merchant marine capacities forced the army to contract US ships to carry munitions to inaccessible Tabasco, much in the way that Mexico had relied on the British merchant marine to carry men and supplies for the 1842 invasion of Yucatán.11 Marín was no lover of provincial freedom, but had to confess that he could find no bonafide federalist revolt in the Teapa area, no ideological principles at war, and no guiding philosophy other than a widespread hatred of the Maldonado mafia. And while deploring pronunciamientos, he could not help but sympathize with the cardonista rebels he was sworn to pacify.12 Still, the mere presence of the general and his soldiers calmed the situation. With the border seemingly quiet, Marín liberated the various individuals who had joined Miguel Bruno in the overthrow of Echagaray—Nicolás Oropesa, Manuel Garrido, and others—in May 1850, on the basis of time served.13 Political pressure from state congressional enemies, heightened by chronic budgetary insolvency, forced Dueñas to resign in October 1850, giving rise to a two-year series of interims, none of great importance.14 By January 1851 the Plan of Pichucalco appeared to have withered on the vine, and Marín resigned his commission as general-in-chief of the sección pacificador in order to return to the Federal District.15 But sighs of relief were premature, for no sooner had Marín vacated the province than the Pichucalco uprising got a second wind. Trouble erupted when Marín’s replacement, one Alejandro García, adopted posture antithetical to that of his predecessor. García had actually been carrying out much of the pacification campaigns along the Tabasco-Chiapas border; during that time he developed an intense dislike for José Julián Dueñas, deposed but still active behind the scenes, and rather than excoriating the Maldonados, he interpreted the Pichucalco uprising as part of the former governor’s attempt to return to power. Demonizations aside, García may have had a point, since Dueñas stood to gain by aiding the Pichucalco rebels in their attempt to

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overthrow the troublesome cacao barons who now threatened to turn the Tabasco-Chiapas borderland into a kind of marcher kingdom loyal only to itself. This second coming of the Pichucalco rebellion amounted to little more than sputters, but it wrought at least one permanent change on the political landscape. On April 7, 1851, Eulalio Maldonado, simultaneously Pichucalco’s jefe político and comandante militar, led an expedition of sixty men to root out antifamily rebels from Huimanguillo. Arriving three days later at 2:00 in the afternoon, they found themselves caught in a close-quarters ambush; multiple rebel leaders perished, while don Eulalio suffered a wound that claimed his life six days later.16 The border conflict subsided, then, and little had changed. Tabascan politics remained highly patriarchal, with parties centered around financially well-endowed individuals like Gregorio Payró, whose family ran shipping operations from San Juan Bautista to New York City. The parties’ exclusivity was matched only by their intransigence, as evidenced all too perfectly in their nicknames: extreme liberals called themselves La Piedra (“the rock”), while Moderates adopted the name El Cocoyol (a large and extremely hard tree seed common in southeast Mexico).17 From June 1852 through September 1853 the mostly liberal governor Joaquín Ferrer Martí managed to hold power while beating down nascent uprisings by rivals of the same persuasion; Ferrer scrounged up what funding he could from a regressive head tax known as the contribución personal, an odd choice for a province whose neighbor’s dependence on just such an arrangement helped provoke the Caste War. Ferrer also added a .3 percent levy on urban property.18 But national trends ran against him. A new comandante militar arrived, a domineering general named Manuel María Escobar y Rivera. Simultaneously, national conservatives made one more attempt to impose by force their vision of order; deposing the hapless General Mariano Arista from the presidency in January 1853, they threw their support behind Santa Anna, who assumed power for one final time on April 20. The Napoleon of the West dismissed Ferrer but retained Escobar, since the dictatorship depended on the support of strong-willed and sympathetic provincial comandancias. The bald, burly, and bearded Escobar intended to drain Tabasco’s political fen once and for all. The general himself was born Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, on the first day of 1807.19 In the terms of the now profoundly

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unstable Tabasco, his term (1852–53 as comandante militar, with two more years as concurrent governor) stands out for its longevity. His was to be the last pre-Reform administration, and it would not be an easy time. The problems all came down to money. Tabasco’s chronic poverty hampered every attempt at development and was particularly critical for political stability, since state employees needed pay to function even at their accustomed inadequate levels. To take only one branch of government—the judiciary—by 1855 salaries had fallen into arrears, with employees receiving less than 40 percent of their due.20 Balancán was so impoverished that it could not even afford the salary necessary to maintain a magistrate to deal with the problems of daily life.21 And as with so many other places in Latin America, the absence of a vibrant private sector forced white-collar professionals to cling to these starvation wages rather than strike out in search of new opportunities. Ironically, at that very moment a new industry was incubating under Escobar’s very nose, an industry whose history serves as a testament to unbridled human greed. By midcentury, the Spanish and British Caribbean’s lavish supply of mahogany, prized for its hard and lustrous wood, was all but gone, sacrificed to service an insatiable European demand for fine furniture and trim. In desperation, exporters began to scour the Tabascan lowlands, where they found trees of inferior quality but larger in size. Mexico’s riverine caoba became the bannisters and Chippendale writing desks that graced Europe and New England; in exchange, the Tabascan government received operating expenses that scarcely stretched from one month to the next, while losing much of its upper-story forest in the process. Logging here originally centered on the low-lying Chontalpa, where it was easy to get the lumber out of the country and into the hands of foreign purchasers. But it would be decades before mahogany logging—most of it conducted far upriver from Tenosique, and even into the Guatemalan Petén—bore any substantial fruit for the state economy. For all intents and purposes, the revenue of 1850 came from the same gimpy sources of forty years earlier. Confronted with the problem of the empty till, Escobar had to think creatively. He resorted to lotteries for almost every occasion: one for the construction of roads, another to build a church in one of Villahermosa’s barrios. This approach had worked before, as when Jalpa reconstructed its own church a few years earlier. The dream of possible riches led people to

Figure 14.  Burly and bearded, Manuel María Escobar Rivera originally haled from Guatemala, but rose to become a general in the Mexican Army. He made one last attempt to hold Tabasco to a socially conservative and politically centralized government, but the liberal revolution of 1854 overtook him, and Escobar was forced to resign. He outlived all his antagonists and most of his friends, dying peacefully in Campeche in 1891. From Manuel Gil y Sáenz, Historia del Estado de Tabasco (1890).

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help with public finances in a way that threats and decrees could not.22 Escobar also recognized that the huge floating body of army deserters provided grist for uprisings—after all, these were men who hated authority and who had nothing to lose—and ordered a round-up in the Chontapla district, where they were particularly numerous.23 He also taxed cacao. In this penurious setting, the temptation to draw revenues on Tabasco’s principal export proved irresistible, and the Escobar years saw the most onerous duties on cacao haciendas since the MexicanAmerican War. Gauging the popular perception of said taxes is next to impossible, given the absence of documentation regarding working-class Tabascans. But Escobar’s four real per thousand levy on cacao clearly hurt growers. Since they had the burden of feeding their labor force (usually with ring-shaped hardtack known as totoposte, and the corn-meal beverage known as pozole), the pain made itself known at lower levels as well. As if all this were not bad enough, cacao prices continued to fall over the next few years: fifty- to sixty-thousand pesos per carga in 1853, to twentyfive thousand the following year, to fifteen thousand in 1855. One observer described Teapa, formerly a bastion of cacao wealth, as “in a frightful misery never seen before.”24 Some of this was political rhetoric, but the quest to liberate the cacao trade still nourished the coming Liberal Reform here. A significant portion of the Tabascan population was willing to gamble on reducing taxes as a way of stimulating productivity. True, political reform was not the only strategy. The people of early national Mexico also reacted to the problem through the easier and more familiar path of smuggling. Tabasco was a repeat offender in a land of scofflaws, mostly because neither those who sold the treasured cacao, nor those who purchased it, welcomed the aduana. Duties raised prices, slowed shipments, and promoted costly bribes. Throughout the 1850s, then, illegal Tabascan cacao turned up virtually everywhere: in Ciudad del Carmen, in Yucatán, and in deeply traditional Puebla, where the demitasse of chocolate formed one of life’s basic necessities.25 It traveled all the way to dinner tables on faraway places like Durango and Zacatecas, passing from Frontera to Tampico, and then up small rivers to San Luis Potosí, and finally westward on mule back.26 Similarly, French ships harbored in San Juan Bautista unloaded illegal merchandise in broad daylight and warehoused it with prominent merchants.27 The practice must have been far vaster than these isolated cases of interception suggest. The Mexican government had

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every reason to tax a high-volume internal trade, but arguments concerning the greater good lost every time. Cheap merchandise was popular, customs agents elicited public scorn, and if provincials had a view of the national government, it was most likely through this prism of unpopular taxation. At the same time, Escobar’s brief rule showed certain progressive tendencies. He made valiant efforts to clean up the chronically filthy capital, lined the boulevards with palm trees, and created a public market to take the place of the muddy canoe landing where Tabascans had gathered for generations to purchase their goods and groceries. The governor’s personal crusade for corrections led to a refurbished prison, public service for inmates, and even a jail facility for women—quite possibly the first of its kind in Mexico.28 Escobar also tried his hand at public health. To stanch the spread of cholera, he carried out a regional program to gather leaves of a plant called huaco or micanahuaco, believed to have medicinal value against this terrible scourge. Huaco came in three types—purple, green, and white— but any color would do.29 But it was not these reforms that Tabascans chose to remember. Rather, Escobar attracted a reputation for cruelty and for regal living. Assessment is difficult for the simple reason that dark legends—whippings, jailings, ruinous fines, and capricious governance—often attached themselves to santanista governors for propaganda reasons. The most famous story of Escobar’s mailed fist held that he kept two cannons in front of the governor’s palace: a larger one that he named El Gallardo, and to which he tied the rebellious and the religiously impious for their whippings; and a smaller one named El Culebrina, which served the same purpose for misdemeanors.30 Still, it was common to defame chief executives, and hence these tales must be taken with some skepticism. Escobar represented the broad consensus of late santanista appointees, men who were weary of theoretical arguments and failed democratic experiments, and who saw dictatorship as the best solution to Mexico’s innumerable ills, but who lacked the wherewithal either to contain dissent or to solve long-term social problems. Yucatán’s strongman-governor, General Rómulo Díaz de la Vega, comes to mind, and as with Escobar, his outsider status made construction of a permanent state-level power base difficult.31 But Díaz had the overarching crisis of the Caste War to galvanize support, whereas Escobar inherited a poor, balkanized state where the construction of unified cacicazgos remained a dream.

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Conservative authoritarians supposedly defended the Catholic faith as a unifying factor. Indeed, fear of religious diversity already weighed on the minds of the Tabascan right as early as 1848, when there appeared an anonymous pamphlet entitled “Tolerance for the Unlettered.” In this still highly readable tract, Tío Diego, manservant to an anonymous gentleman, advances the liberal arguments of foreign colonization: technological progress, economic development, and better agriculture, if only Tabascans could learn to accept people of different faiths. But his arguments crumbled before the homespun logic of Procopín el Payo. To tolerate, Procopín observed, was to confess religion’s secondary importance and hence to take the first step toward ruin. And as for the idea that Protestants, Jews, and Moslems would eventually convert, Procopín threw out a metaphor that every Tabascan could understand. It was like the time when old Tiburcio was drowning in a river, and young Panfilito jumped in to save him; instead of returning to safety, both perished together. To finalize Tío Diego’s defeat, the women of the house come forward to shame him: How could he love them, when he proposed to bring in people who hate Catholics? This tract, with its buffoonish characters and country dialect, captured the very real anxiety that beset conservatives at that moment, and it gives some idea of why they rallied to a post-Bruno, centralist government.32 But as in early 1850s Yucatán, military support for the church was mostly lip service. The governor stepped in to resolve quarrels among rural curas, even removing the more difficult of those curas, as in Cunduacán in 1853.33 Meanwhile, if rural priests continued to endure holdover Bourbon hostility, popular piety’s other institution, the lay religious fraternities known as cofradías, limped on into the age of Benito Juárez. To take only one case, as of early 1852 Macuspanans still maintained the “cofradía dedicated to the Crucified Divine.” However, this organization suffered from the haphazardness and underfunding that characterized so much of rural Tabascan enterprise. Its capital investment reached $600, but virtually all of that wealth consisted of cattle, many of which had strayed into the woods and could no longer be found. Others had roamed into the town and directly to the hands of new owners.34 Jalpa, located in the relatively prosperous Chontalpa district, maintained its brotherhood dedicated to the Virgin of Candelaria, although details of its operations have eluded posterity.35 None of the scant paperwork that survives for any of these cases suggests organizations of pomp and majesty, let alone keys to economic power or obstacles

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to some imaginary modernization. Rather, they seem to have been shoestring associations dedicated to endowing village life with meaning and ceremony. State upkeep of cemeteries also lagged. As in Yucatán, Tabascan municipal authorities launched a fitful campaign to control burials shortly after independence. But by the 1850s the state’s many cemeteries were in a deplorable state: human remains lay exposed, or else were interred in shallow soil, only to be dug up and devoured by wild beasts. Poor people often buried their dead secretly in order to avoid paying burial taxes to the cura. When the liberal government established itself in Mexico City, the matter was placed under the recently created Ministry of State, Justice, and Ecclesiastical Affairs, and the secularization of cemeteries, together with the relocation outside of city limits, once more became a priority. However, even conservatives such as Escobar feared tampering with traditional ways of doing things since, “like everything that touches upon the interests of the church, this is by its nature a delicate matter.”36 Not surprisingly, the renewed strength of the centralist current reawakened old demons. By the autumn 1853 the Maldonados, together with allies of blood kin like the Urgüelles families, were once again in arms. Like the regional warlords of some small emerging nation during the Cold War, Nicolás Maldonado opposed the idea of centralized government, obtaining arms and material from abroad and changing his ideological cut to suit the times and the donor. And like those warlords, he ultimately detracted from both national and state well-being in his quest for a self-centered utopia. In this case, the Chiapas-based caudillo picked up some support from the normally standoffish Zoque Indians who made their homes in those hills, and who resented attempts to collect Tabasco’s state head tax. Adopting what was by now standard practice, Maldonado, like Miguel Bruno before him, used canoes to smuggle in guns and ammunition from British Honduras through the bars of Santa Anna and Tonalá. And as in their dealings with the Bruno movement and the Maya Caste War rebels, the Belizean arms merchants evidenced no ideology and certainly no preconceived imperial plan, only a stupendous avarice for the profits to be made on southeast Mexico’s chronic revolts. Additional supplies came via the remote ranchos of western Yucatán, soon to be Campeche state.37 When Maldonado’s last hurrah finally materialized in October 1853, it took the form of a relatively small military canton pronouncement in Huimanguillo.38

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Working out of San Antonio Cárdenas, Escobar managed to contain the revolt, but by the time of his hopeful reports in April 1854, a more serious uprising had already taken root in southwestern Mexico: the Ayutla rebellion.39 As in so many parts of the nation, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided a catalyst of change. It galvanized a young generation of Mexicans, men for whom the glories and traditions of Spain meant nothing, and determined them to remake Mexican society at all costs. Santa Anna’s sale of southern Arizona to the United States proved the last straw. Originating with Juan Alvarez’s March 1 pronouncement in Ayutla, Guerrero, the movement swept out Antonio López de Santa Anna once and for all in August 1855, and in late December Alvarez handed power to the young Liberal Party, a group that proposed to “liberate” the energy and initiatives of the individual by jettisoning corporate institutions and promoting capitalist enterprise. Ignacio Comonfort assumed the presidency, with former Oaxacan governor Benito Juárez acting as chief of the country’s supreme court. In Tabasco the Reform found its champions in a small cluster of petit bourgeois promoters, men readied for the task by experience in midlevel politics and militia service. At their center stood a certain Colonel Benito Haro. He resembled so many other key actors of provincial history in that he himself was not Tabascan at all; rather, Haro hailed from the faraway mountain city of Toluca, where his stridently pro-Ayutla opinions resulted in his exile in Cunduacán. Much like padre Hidalgo conspiring in the remoteness of Dolores village, Haro found Cunduacán’s rustic cacao groves provided the ideal shade against unwanted scrutiny. He discovered kindred political souls in León Alejo Torre, José Victor Jiménez, Mateo Pimienta, and the former Sentmanat officer, the Spanish-born Francisco Olave. The inclusion of Olave was particularly revealing because it signaled a link between the new hard-nosed liberalism of the Juárez era and the more Byronesque quest for abstract liberty that had motivated an earlier generation. The liberal circle also included one Victorio V. Dueñas, a man whose own career defined much of later Tabascan history.40 Escobar came up short when casting about for ways to defend the centralist order, for whatever its ills, by 1853 Tabasco had sharply diverged from the Yucatecan path of standing militias. The comandante-governor had received the same order that went out to all of Santa Anna’s chief functionaries in the state, obliging him to reorganize the national-guard units

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under his command: impossible, however, for most of the province’s guard units had been demobilized shortly after the defeat of Miguel Bruno in 1848. Experience had shown that the national guard was the first to lend itself to coups and revolts, and had played a critical role in the chaos of the 1840s. The only organization that remained was lists of potential soldiers in each town; should trouble arise, men were levied ad hoc, only to return to their civilian lives when the trouble had passed. What did exist were small, utterly informal town-based squadrons known as guardias de policía. In essence, then, there would be no armed force to resist the liberal revolt.41 Escobar struggled heroically to prop up the Tabascan domino, but by January was already confronting vociferous pro-Alvarez crowds in places like Teapa.42 Eventually a committee of two prominent merchants plus friar Eduardo de Moncada, later to become a bitter opponent of reform, cornered Escobar at his hacienda Santa Anita and urged him to resign; fearing that an echo of Ayutla fighting would erupt here, Escobar complied. He later went on to side with conservative forces during the Reform War of 1857–59 and was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. This transplanted Guatemalan survived his loss in that conflict and eventually outlived most of his contemporaries, dying of old age in Campeche in 1891 amid enviable peace and prosperity.43 But for the moment, Escobar appeared one of the losers in the grand contest for the heart of Mexico. The new Ayutla-born government replaced him with Benito Haro on August 17, 1855. Tabasco’s liberal era had now begun.44

Illiber al Tabasco Begun, but not ended: unlike other changes of power over the last thirty years, the new order proposed a far-reaching transformation of Mexican society, and to achieve that goal would require both time and tribulation. Political architects in the Palacio Nacional wanted to convert a corporate, neocolonial society of privileged guilds and subsistence peasants into a nation of secular mentality, private initiative, thrift, and legal uniformity. Leaders set their bar dubiously high, and it only remained to see how far short the execution fell in places like river country. Discord began in that gray territory where religious and civil power overlapped. In November 1855 the Ley Juárez stripped the church and

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the military of the judicial privileges known as fueros, whereby members accused of crimes went to special courts of their institutional peers. Whatever its weaknesses, the Tabascan church had no choice but to react. Clerics enjoyed a better-than-average education, more institutional support, and greater awareness of events beyond the sand bars, and priests naturally fell under suspicion of opposing the Reform. Most chose to go through the motions in order to ride out what, by their perspective, might be nothing more than a transient enthusiasm. But others were not so passive. By December 1855 the cura of San Antonio de Cárdenas, padre Francisco Gutiérrez Echagaray, had already been expelled for organizing uprisings both there and in Cunduacán. Authorities dealt lightly with padre Gutiérrez, sending him to Frontera where he would be safely isolated from people of the interior. Such leniency probably reflected the fact that the Reform was still in an early and uncertain stage, for during the subsequent Reform War (1857–60) in the altiplano, politicized priests such as Gutiérrez often were summarily shot.45 But the lack of qualified personnel eventually allowed Gutiérrez to return to active service in Tabascan parishes. Stationed in Jalpa during the year 1857, he found the place utterly destitute, and the Indian peasants in particular without money, a clue to what may have motivated his earlier political agitations.46 At least the new order enjoyed one lucky break: the final disappearance of Fernando Nicolás Maldonado. He briefly governed Chiapas, until the Ayutla revolt elevated to power the more connected Angel Albino Corzo. During don Nicolás’s lifetime he changed political allegiances many times. Rivalries and personal grudges usually outweighed ideological considerations, and Maldonado’s destitution in Chiapas led him to favor, if passively, the French Intervention of 1861–67. From here on, business and family interests prevailed. Don Nicolás moved to Minantitlán, Veracruz, where he worked as a lumber contractor for the foreign merchant partnership of Welsh and Allen. There was always something weirdly inbred about planters like Maldonado, who himself was married (and widowed) three times: first to a daughter of the Puig family, then to her aunt, then to his late brother Pánfilo’s widow. Doubtless the Tabascan creoles’ minority status, together with the pressure to keep wealth in the family, made such closeness necessary. In 1888, stricken by a bladder infection but keeping his wits to the last, don Nicolás died a glorious patriarch’s death on his hacienda San José del Carmen, outside of Minantitlán. His many children

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stood dutifully around him, and tears flowed as his spirit took leave. He had outlived the hated Sentmanat by forty-four years.47 The federalist old guard was passing, but more serious revolts against the new order appeared, just as liberal legislation was first taking shape. The first such revolt’s promoter was Justo Santa Anna, the conservative politician who had so bitterly opposed Traconis and Bruno. Little is known about the uprising, other than the fact that Santa Anna collaborated with property owner and former Bruno ally Claro Hidalgo. Benito Haro suppressed the revolt during the last week of November 1855, and Santa Anna himself fled to Carmen.48 As usual, victorious factions offered hyperbolic accounts of their defeated counterparts, almost like something culled from the pages of a medieval Chinese novel: tales of men who “swam with open arms in the raging river of their criminal desires.” But Hidalgo had yet to accept defeat. From Carmen he repaired to the Guatemalan Petén, where he organized of force of some seventy men, then marched on Macuspana, a part of Tabasco hitherto largely free from rebellions. Hidalgo’s rebound stemmed directly from the fact that he received support from Guatemalan strongman Rafael Carrera against the liberal government that Carrera detested with a religious fervor. In the course of his twenty-seven-year presidency, Carrera repeatedly intervened in the affairs of surrounding nations as a way of shoring up his populist neocolonial order, and tossing a few arms to Petén-based allies amounted to small change on his part.49 But Haro raised a force of a hundred men and chased Hidalgo back into the Sierra, eventually confronting him in February 1856 beside the Río Diego, where most of the rebels were captured or dispersed.50 Unphased by these and similar protests, the national liberals pushed on. In April 1856 Finance Minister Miguel Lerdo de Tejada authored the farreaching Ley Lerdo, whereby corporately held property was to be divided and sold to individuals. Lerdo’s famous decree displayed considerably more ambiguity than commonly supposed and contained safeguards, however tepidly enforced, for indigenous communities: it specifically excluded outlying woods and pasture lands, and committed the state to forcing payments from mestizos who acquired Indian property. But the law’s later rewriting into the 1857 Constitution removed these safeguards and became a legislative template, however slowly and irregularly applied, for the privatization of both public and community lands.51

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Haro immediately threw the liberal remedies into operation. The first order of business was to clean the political house, and in only two months the new comandante could proudly report that all Tabascan towns had adhered to the Ayutla plan . . . just as they had adhered to earlier plans.52 Individuals whom Santa Anna had sent to internal exile in Tabasco now returned to their points of origin.53 This much seemed natural to Tabascans, for they had gotten used to ostracizing political enemies and contriving apparent consensus. On other fronts, Haro tried valiantly to eliminate long-standing abuses. For example, he outlawed the adoption of orphans as a thinly disguised form of indentured labor; his prohibition was supposedly popular, but weak state power made it doubtful that the new governor’s decrees had much effect. Orphan servitude prospered for decades thereafter in neighboring Yucatán, while Tabascan haciendas, even though hardly enjoying the dominance of counterparts elsewhere, certainly walked the same general path of Porfirian Mexico, discounting popular protest in favor of private property, export agriculture, and the coerced labor that fed both. The provisional governor also tried to free up commerce: he struck down the cacao alcabala and even abolished export tariffs on palo de tinte.54 But even if correctly reasoned, these policies would have required years to make any appreciable effect and could have had but scant impact on the Tabasco of the moment. The basic problem was that there was little to reform, at least in economic terms. No information survives concerning Tabasco’s application of the Ley Lerdo. However, two factors suggest that the law’s effects were muted here. First, the original Ley Lerdo did not address the matter of baldío, or untitled land, frequently vacant owing to matters of geography and isolation. A considerable amount of Tabasco consisted of baldío, but the fact that these were only privatized in the final decades of the nineteenth century argues that no great change in land tenure had taken place as of 1880.55 Second, and more importantly, Tabasco’s formidable topography had militated against the old colonial system of Indian landholding, consisting of a municipal area (fundo legal) surrounded by measured ejido lands, and the very circumstances that hindered recreation of the central Mexican colonial order here made an attack on that system less meaningful. It is worth bearing in mind that the Ley Lerdo’s creation was strongly influenced by the existence of the two enormous indigenous parcialidades that

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surrounded Mexico City. These entities resembled counties, contained numerous pueblos, resources, and corporate land-holdings that generated usage rents for parcialidad members—the epitome of precapitalist, ethnically based rural stasis that liberals excoriated.56 But nothing even remotely resembling a parcialidad existed around San Juan Bautista, or anywhere else in the province. Land pressures remained far weaker than in neighboring Yucatán or the densely populated Valley of Mexico. Reformers could not scapegoat Indian communities for underdevelopment, since those communities were few in number and enjoyed their greatest vitality either in the southern mountains; or else in the swampy and mosquitoinfested expanses of Centla, where would-be planters preferred not to venture. Moreover, Tabasco already boasted a tradition of rancheros and small farmers. The province had a far smaller percentage and absolute number of Indians than places like Puebla, Chiapas, or Yucatán. If there was a serious attempt to change their way of life, or if they lashed out against threats real or imagined, the available documentation remains silent. Nor does the theme surface in older narratives. Cumulatively, then, both evidence and reasoning suggest that the initial rise of the liberals failed to produce any radical discontinuity of land-tenure practices. Then what was the fighting all about? Midcentury controversy appears to have revolved mostly around the secularization process and its impending changes: that is, around the idea of reform, and not reform itself. Over the ages Catholicism had constructed a world in which religious meaning infused all aspects and moments of human existence. This included major life passages such as birth, marriage, and death, but the church also supervised education, adjudicated morality, counseled the mighty, officiated at public events, maintained vital statistics, alleviated the burden of sin through confession, marked the passage of the ceremonial year, and offered a place where women could be active and engaged beyond the drudgery of the home. To suddenly impugn these values angered men and women who had built their lives around them and who had invested emotionally in any of the various levels of parish activity. Priests expected to be listened to in matters great and small; patricians enjoyed the church’s emphatic endorsement of the social order; poor folk drew inspiration from the comfort of ritual, in the hope of eternal redemption, and from the promise of help, be it in the form of either daily luck or miraculous intercession. Even beyond the theological issues lay the simple affront of being told that the way you

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were living was all wrong. In Tabasco as elsewhere, then, anyone planning to take apart this intricate, centuries-old arrangement could expect a tussle. On a lesser if more practical note, the church was also threatened as the holder of mortgages, a paper empire it had built over the course of years as a result of gifts, investments, and deathbed donations. But in the matter of material wealth, too, things did not conform to liberal assumptions. Reminiscent of Yucatán, the church owned but a single property, the cacao hacienda San Raymundo Poposá outside of Tacotalpa. This actually belonged to the Dominican chapter based in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, in Chiapas. Rather than giving birth to some fabled small property owners, it tumbled into the pocket of the Yucatecan magnate Manuel Regil, thus reinforcing the overall Reform trend of strengthening latifundistas by knocking down their only rival, the Catholic Church.57 In most instances, the Tabascan church held only paper wealth, the then-common mortgaging system wherein loan capital concentrated in church-supervised funds known as capellanías. Once contracted—for a house, for a hacienda, for what have you—the debt became virtually eternal. Sluggish markets made sales difficult, and rather than foreclose, the beneficiaries of the capellanía usually preferred to extend the loan in order to receive piddling if secure payments. If this went on long enough, the debtor could end up paying considerably more than the property’s actual value, making it all the more tempting to welch on the deal. Some of Yucatán’s massive Uliburri fund, for example, had gone out to Tabascan properties, but investigation revealed that the two principal debtors—Rafael Flores and Juan Bautista Marcín—had stopped making payments a long time ago and could not be hectored into changing their minds.58 This sort of malingering, combined with the fact that provincial church finance records were in shambles long before 1856, meant that the Tabascan Reform mostly consisted in the simple evaporation of debt, a formal forgetting about something that most people had already forgotten anyway. Conflict intensified in 1857 when the national liberal government promulgated a new constitution, one that incorporated the aforementioned legislation and that added insult to injury by requiring Mexican priests to swear allegiance to the new document; the church, in turn, declared that any priest who did so was excommunicated. Some refused to comply; some took the oath, and of those, several soon recanted. But clerical resistance sputtered, and for a variety of reasons, the first of them being understaffing.

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The church itself was weak in both number and quality of personnel. Even as the Reform legislation was taking place, the jefe and ayuntamiento of Frontera were busy pressuring Yucatán for a priest to provide religious services. Nor was Frontera alone.59 However, Yucatán, convulsed in its own initial stages of Reform, had none to give, for even in their increasingly limited state of finance, few were willing to take Tabascan assignments. The man fated to deal with this crisis was José María Sastré, the vicarioen-cápite of San Juan Bautista and the single most important figure in the Tabascan religious hierarchy, came from a Spanish family that handled part of the logwood commerce coming out of the province. He had purportedly been an ardent federalist in his earlier days, but was already sixty-five years old when the Reform began and thoroughly exhausted by the problems of clerical administration and personal health. To combat the pain of arthritic knees he relied on a variety of home remedies involving mixtures of aguardiente, wine, camphor, water, and opium. To combat the headache of alcoholic or hyperpoliticized priests he had no such concoctions, only the limited recourse of rotating them from parish to parish.60 Haro briefly held the positions of both governor and comandante militar under the brief presidency of Ignacio Comonfort (December 1855 through January 1858). But the former’s authority foundered on an unlikely and distinctly apolitical crisis. In April 1856 a prominent hacendado of the San Antonio Cárdenas area, one Fernando Rosaldo, went missing; although a body never turned up, a search soon revealed a trail of blood on the outskirts of his property. Haro happened to be in the region, and since the local magistrate had mysteriously fled, the new governor decided to launch his own investigation. Haro unraveled a sordid tale. Rosaldo’s wife, Tomasa Fuentes, wanted to dispose of her husband in order to take up with a lover, who happened to be none other than the now-fugitive magistrate. Failing in her initial plan to serve Rosaldo poisoned pozole (the bad taste caused him to throw it away), she instead stole a page from Macbeth by hiring a trio of murderers to dispose of her inconvenient spouse. This they did, but were too clumsy to avoid detection. Even as the investigation was underway, Haro had the perpetrators shot, and for good measure threw in Rosaldo’s stepson, who had been implicated in the killing. (Tomasa Fuentes’s fate remains unknown.) These unorthodox executions convulsed the state as deeply as had the crime itself. Haro’s enemies naturally seized advantage of the situation and launched a campaign to discredit him.61

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The Rosaldo affair offers tantalizing glimpses into rural Tabasco. The techniques of investigation may strike the modern reader as odd, insofar as the wives of the accused men testified against their own husbands, some evidence of the pressure that the dominant class could bring to bear against peons and Indians. The state executive (the trigger-happy Haro) did provide some degree of check on the abuses of the local magistrate (the lover-accomplice). Questionable executive acts found their own balance in the form of accusations to higher-ups. The idea of capital punishment for women remained a rarity, then as now. Summary executions still shocked, even after the convulsions of filibustering and foreign invasion. Benito Haro suffered no punishment; as he pointed out, the Claro Hidalgo revolt was just then coming to an end, the town was convulsed by the murder, and the legislature had invested him with special powers. But the incident scuttled his political future, and the governor was soon called to Mexico City to explain himself. Haro’s last remaining function was to oversee elections and then stand aside. Whatever the final truth about the killings, the headstrong colonel never again tasted the signature grilled pejelagarto of his adopted homeland. Despite reasonable oversight, the 1857 election lived up to the state’s high standards of disorder. Sent from Mexico City to contain the situation—virtually a necessity whenever Tabascans voted—the interim comandante, one José Justo Alvarez, found the anticipated conflicts well underway by May. Spanish merchants were reliably conservative (at least with a lowercase “c”) and were frequent victims of persecution.62 Alvarez created a municipal police force, but found little interest in his attempts to impose restraint. He also discovered the basic shortcoming of the Tabascan political order: poverty. Municipal juntas had to depend on the revenues from internal arbitrios, and because trade remained stunted, there was little to draw upon. So too, magistrates could scarcely depend on their pitiful salaries, and their susceptibility to bribes kept legal cases dragging on indefinitely. It was the classic Latin American dilemma: the state at any level did little for people because it had no resources with which to operate, and in turn there was no respect for institutions and less inclination than ever to fund them.63 In this situation of pueblo penury, the advantage lay with the few who had liquid capital in their hands, and that meant that urban merchants, persecutions notwithstanding, still held the cards. Voting favored Justo Santa Anna, but rivals among his fellow conservatives nixed the idea. Led by the wealthy

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merchant and customs administrator José María Castañares and right-wing stalwart Simón Sarlat, conservatives pressured for a moderate substitute, one Victorio V. Dueñas.64 The new governor would become a dominant force in Tabascan politics during the years of liberalism, the Reform War, and beyond. Born in San Juan Bautista on March 23, 1821, the grandson of former governor José Julián Dueñas, Victorio lost his father Bernabé Dueñas when only seven years old and with his widowed mother Amada Eloísa Outrani migrated to Campeche, where he managed to acquire a better-than-average education in the city’s Colegio de San Juan. He subsequently attended the Jesuit university in St. Louis, Missouri, in those days popular with affluent Mexicans because of its Catholicism, its safe remove from Latin American upheavals, and its accessibility by boat, via the Gulf of Mexico and then the Mississippi River. But Dueñas was not inclined to follow in the footsteps of his religious instructors and went to work in a commercial house in New Orleans. Here he picked up ideas and attitudes far more progressive than those of the average Tabascan hombre de bien.65 Like his contemporary Pablo García—son of a mulatto seamstress from the Crescent City, and a man who by dint of ability rose to become Campeche state’s founder and first governor—Dueñas had never sipped from the chalice of Spanish glory and had little stake in preserving some fabled past.66 Still, contemporaries found the new chief hard to read. Although liberal in outlook, his most distinctive political characteristics were pragmatism and conciliation, qualities not altogether to the liking of the midcentury Mexican left. Moreover, divisions within his own family mirrored the controversies of the day, since his brother José Julián became one of the French Intervention’s staunchest southeastern collaborators. The difficult circumstances of Victorio Dueñas’s seven governorships—most especially, the strong presence of armed conservatives and the profoundly rooted Catholic folkways of both city and country—often forced him to tack to the right, and that tactic naturally invited rival claimants to liberal leadership. The greatest challenges confronting Dueñas involved Tabasco’s chronic fiscal problems. By 1857 Tabascan liberals found themselves in control of a state teetering on bankruptcy. In the state judiciary, for example, salary arrears were chronic by early 1855, with employees receiving less than 40 percent of their pay. The overall number of judiciary employees was not great—some twenty-four distributed over the five key districts—but they represented key

Figure 15.  Victorio Victorino Dueñas occupied the Tabascan governorship seven times between 1857 and 1875. US-educated and of Liberal persuasion, Dueñas was fundamentally uncomfortable with the military option and consistently chose to side-step conflict, traits that infuriated his more headstrong associates. An inflamed liver finally succeeded where revolts and invasions failed, and Dueñas passed away at his hacienda in Jalpa in 1885, at the age of sixty-three. From Manuel Gil y Sáenz, Historia del Estado de Tabasco (1890).

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people in key positions, charged with the responsibility of administering the laws of the state and the nation.67 Much of the problem owed to the state’s profound instability since the mid-1830s. The federalist wars and US invasion had severely hurt cacao exports, while the Caste War depressed sales in Yucatán, one of the product’s most dependable customers. Meanwhile, Tabascan’s second-largest sources of revenue, its dyewood trade with the United States and Europe, was beginning to feel the effects of unrestrained environmental plunder. Most of the easily gotten timber in the Chontalpa and Centla areas had been logged out, and the great forests upriver from Tenosique, the source of so much Porfirian wealth, had yet to open. For the moment, at least, the industry was shifting eastward to the recently formed state of Campeche, and out of Tabascan hands.68 The nation most directly affected by this decline was the United States, where palo de tinte extracts formed an essential part of the northern textile industry. The United States purchased about half of Tabasco’s dyewood export—distantly followed by Britain, France, Germany, Spain, and Belgium—and could ill afford its loss.69 In a move that anticipated later first-world responses to Latin American control of rubber and other lucrative tropical plants, US Consul E. P. Johnson had already smuggled out a box of dyewood seeds to the customs agents in New Orleans, thinking that the tree might prosper in marshy Louisiana.70 Apparently the experiment never caught on. Then as now, obstacles to development were multiple, but people looked for scapegoats. Tabascans from the diputación provincial onward had blamed the Yucatecan church, planted in communities but largely taking away rather than building. At least when seen in a certain way, cracking down on church prerogatives meant muscling out the foreigners. Juárez-era changes thus helped consolidate a state-based secular polity against disproportionately strong neighbor states. In this regard, the Reform’s attraction lay precisely in its most nebulous component: the vision of a world where authority and deference shifted to secular, urban hands. Merchants, lawyers, and educators seemed poised to wrest social power from the archaic network of priests, Indian caciques, career military officers, and autocratic, quasi-Spanish officials. And if some leaders of the new order were to become military leaders in the process . . . well, that was simply a temporary arrangement and part of the cost of human betterment, as later happened for men like Francisco Madero and Alvaro Obregón.

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The Liberal Party also drew support through its vision of free trade. In retrospect the weakest and most poorly considered of liberalism’s basic planks—midcentury Mexico had little hope of competing with a rapidly industrializing North Atlantic world—it spoke to the pocketbooks of cacao growers, who supposed that their short-term gain would benefit not only the region but the nation itself. Time and again, experience showed that natural advantage in Latin America meant agro-mineral export and all the retrograde social formations that came therein. Finally, the Tabascan Reform contained a component hidden in virtually every change of national identity, in Mexico and elsewhere: changes at the top allowed provincial and local outgroups to seize the initiative, whether or not they shared any philosophical basis with the national leaders. As with nineteenth-century Yucatán, “state actors used national events to cloak their designs,” and it was this reality that Victorio V. Dueñas would have to confront.71

The Death of the New Old Order For all its optimistic beginnings, then, the Dueñas administration was fated to take its place in the long string of Tabascan turmoils. In December 1857 Mexican conservatives proclaimed against the government of Ignacio Comonfort, issuing the Plan of Tacubaya, which called for the sanctity of the fuero, the rollback of liberal legislation, and the reunification of church and state. The general who headed this counterrevolution, incidentally, had his own experiences with the river people. Félix Zuloaga had served as lieutenant colonel under Pedro de Ampudia back in May 1843 and had been commissioned to negotiate with Francisco de Sentmanat when the Mexican Army prepared to occupy Tabasco. Negotiations were underway even as Ampudia, headquartered in Carmen, received orders to invade; in fact, Zuloaga was then staying at Sentmanat’s own home. In the hysteria preceding Ampudia’s arrival, some citizens demanded Zuloaga’s execution, but Sentmanat, gallant to the point of theatricality, not only protected him, but in fact gave him the canoe that he used to make his way back to Frontera. The lieutenant colonel repaid this kindness by leading the subsequent assault on San Juan Bautista.72 But Tabascans had no time to mull the ironies of history, for the counterrevolution soon arrived. On December 26, two of Zuloaga’s representatives,

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Enrique Benjamín and Vicente Sánchez, came to Villahermosa with a commission to bring city elites on board what might be called the “new old order,” a Conservatism that boiled down to little more than Spain without the Spaniards. Dueñas decided to play a double game with the Tacubaya crowd. Maintaining superficially favorable relations with Zuloaga’s new government, he worked cooperatively with the conservative commander-inchief Francisco Velásquez, but as later events showed, was all the while loyal to the liberal movement and simply waited until favorable circumstances allowed him to make a move. A number of Tabascan priests had broken ranks and sworn fealty to the 1857 Constitution, but the majority of these switched sides when the Tacubaya revolt came along, and for vicario Sastré, that sufficed to absolve them of any wrongdoing.73 The most vitriolic opposition, then, came from rival factions within the state liberal ranks. In the polarized atmosphere of 1858, they felt little inclination to tolerate a conservative counterrevolution. Dueñas’s refusal to break with Zuloaga also infuriated Tabascan planters, who saw liberalism as the final solution for eliminating both cacao export tariffs and the hand of Mexico City. Why temporize, they asked themselves. Dueñas himself left no recorded thoughts on the matter. Perhaps the precariously balanced governor never really had a strategy and was merely waiting to see what happened with national politics. If the remains of the Comonfort government dissolved into nothingness, as had so many other administrations since 1829, then there was no point in putting himself at risk. To modern-day observers the Juárez victory looms as the foregone conclusion, but in 1858 the matter was anything but preordained. Or perhaps allowing rival Tabascan caudillos to make the first move carried advantages. Their initiative could measure the degree of popular support; their manifestos and plottings performed the essential task of first mobilization, and their battles, however inconclusive, sapped the energy conservative forces. Unlike Guanajuato, Dueñas commanded no state militia that allowed him to concentrate power in the governor’s office and remained very much at the mercy of local and usually highly informal militias and their ambitious leaders.74 First strikes also exposed Dueñas’s rival leaders, who ran all the initial risks of attacking conservative counterrevolution at its apogee, allowing Dueñas himself to inherit proconstitutional leadership at reduced cost. So long as he held the governorship, he retained some ability to communicate with local political bosses, allocate resources, and tap into the state treasury.

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Since January 1858 small uprisings had broken out in favor of the comandante militar. Quite possibly Velázquez himself sponsored these as a way of promoting his own career, but like Dueñas and the early constitucionalista uprisings, found it convenient to maintain an illusion of cool distance. Under these circumstances both men naturally distrusted one another.75 The first significant rebellion came under the leadership of one Lorenzo Prats y González, based in Tacotalpa, close to the southern border with Chiapas. Prats was a young man at the time, part of an extended clan that haled from a Catalan-born Bourbon militia officer who had made his home in the Tabascan sierra during the empire’s waning years.76 Don Lorenzo’s plan, announced in late January 1858 at the hacienda Poposá, demanded that Dueñas stay on as governor, and that Tabasco itself remain neutral in the dawning Reform War. He also proclaimed himself commander-inchief of Tabascan forces and demanded the exile of all officials and public employees who did not second his plan within twenty-four hours.77 Conservatives naturally described the rebels as “anarchists,” but unmistakably represented liberal and federalist sentiment that had characterized the state since the 1830s. Events now unrolled with great speed. Prats allied himself with José María Maldonado, the latter’s son-in-law Antonio Suárez, and others of same clan and its economic clients. The would-be caudillo initially enjoyed the support of a veteran force sent to put down a similar if smaller uprising in Tacotalpa. Apparently Dueñas considered this action ahead of its moment. Still uncertain that liberals could prevail nationally, fearful of the destruction that might ensue and determined to hang on to the governorship, he refused to side with the rebels. The governor initially tried to mediate, but in vain, leaving him no choice but to side with the conservative Velázquez. Defeated in the Tacotalpa area, Prats relocated to Huimanguillo, then on the 21st approached San Juan Bautista with five hundred men. They attacked at 11:00 a.m., but were forced to retreat after a day-long battle (superior forces usually being needed to take a well-defended city). In the process, Velázquez captured the rebels’ artillery. By February 27, Prats’s movement had ended, and its leader fled to Veracruz along with $20,000 of funds that he had forcibly extracted from citizens throughout the state. If Dueñas’s numbers were correct, then Lorenzo Prats and his funds may well have been instrumental in helping the Juárez government survive in the port city during the terrible year of 1858.78 Prats had actually proclaimed in

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the name of the Plan of Tacubaya, and although this was almost certainly a feint on his part, that fact was difficult to explain outside of his home state. Prats’s platform of neutrality irritated the Juárez government, and the Tacotalpan caudillo was imprisoned on the warship Carolina, while prominent Tabascan allies Benigno Pardo and former brunista Carlos Escoffie ended up in San Juan de Ulúa, where the latter quickly contracted dysentary.79 Meanwhile, a new and more serious revolt irrevocably forced Tabasco into the Reform War. Liberal puro Lino Merino, a wealthy Tacotalpa landowner and the jefe político of the same district, proclaimed for Benito Juárez in February. For Merino any solution also involved replacing Dueñas with old-guard político Justo Santa Anna. This second liberal revolt was quickly seconded by Manuel Regil, whose acquisition of the state’s only church-owned estate gave him an unequivocal stake in reformed Mexico.80 Dueñas held on to official power as long as he could—until March, when Zuloaga, exasperated by the state’s chronic instability, replaced him with Velázquez (yet another of Tabasco’s combined military-civilian leaders).81 This left little option for either man. Dueñas refused to recognize the change, and Velázquez placed his rival under house arrest. Quite unexpectedly, though, Velázquez, the man trained for war and bloodshed, underwent some sort of nervous collapse, leaving military and political leadership in the hands of civilians. He retired to Frontera, and later to the Federal District, where he died the following January. This brought merchant and conservative stalwart, Dr. Simón Sarlat García (1800–77) to office in March 1858. Sarlat had survived the Sentmanat years (recall that boiling the head in oil was his idea), and he knew Tabasco well enough to understand the real depth of the trouble in which he now found himself. Manuel María Escobar was once more designated to the state’s comandancia militar, but owing to the Reform War’s chaotic circumstances never arrived.82 This left Sarlat to somehow improvise a defense against the amassing liberal forces. The rise of Sarlat precipitated yet another balance-of-power struggle among the state’s decentralized forces. Led by Francisco Ortoll and Francisco González, and soon joined by the fugitive Dueñas, they drew inspiration from the Sentmanat movement by working the vast and uncontrolled marshes that ringed Laguna de Términos and managed to push into Centla, occupying Jonuta.83 At first officers loyal to Sarlat—chief among them being Colonel Mariano Martínez de Lejarza, once a pro-Guerrero radical federalist and in 1823 Tabasco’s comandante militar—appeared to

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get the better of the situation, defeating an Olave-led force at the pass at Cosaullapa on September 3 and routing the rebels back into Chiapas.84 Liberals regrouped, as always, in Pichucalco, just across the Chiapan border. Most sources identify the Chiapan caudillo, Governor Angel Albino Corzo, as the principal leader. Corzo, born in the village of Chiapa, some seventeen kilometers east of present-day Tuxtla Gutiérrez, boasted strong credentials. He had supported Ayutla from the beginning and had developed battle toughness during his 1856–57 campaign to stamp out a separatist movement in the province of Soconusco. Like other liberal strongmen, he adhered to the movement’s principles, but supplemented them with a willingness to use force against anyone who appeared too conservative or insufficiently nationalistic. Both Dueñas and Merino coveted Corzo’s favor, but Merino got to him first; he had managed to capture his slippery rival, who remained a prisoner for most of the coming siege of San Juan Bautista, and with his back covered, Merino was thus able to arrange a Chiapan invasion force allied with him alone.85 The rebellion’s circumstances, as well as its methods and constituency, are not entirely clear. According to their enemies, Corzo and Olave behaved like Mongol raiders during their time in Teapa, forcibly dragooning hacienda mozos and forcing extortionate “loans” from the hacendados themselves. Mules and other beasts of burden were fair game for their depredations, while prominent individuals who opposed their constitutionalist ideas found themselves arrested or harassed into silence. Admittedly, these accounts come from their political enemy Sarlat, but presumably do contain some truth as to the ways that rebel armies operated in the Tabascan Sierra.86 As the Tabascan civil war deepened, it naturally embroiled the church. Conservatives found stalwart if not particularly powerful allies in San Juan Bautista’s clergy, the more metropolitan branch of the Tabascan church. The provincial vicario José María Sastré certainly opposed Dueñas and the Reform; moreover, the fact that the padre was based in San Juan Bautista tied him to the city’s conservative defenders. But if Sastré at least maintained a decorous distance, not so his closest associate, Eduardo de Moncada. Moncada was actually Guatemalan by birth and a Franciscan friar. Expelled from his native province in 1830, during the early and ultimately abortive period of liberal ascendency, he had gone with four other associates to Mérida and was subsequently deployed to Tabasco, where

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he not only spent the remainder of his life, but also witnessed firsthand most of the critical events of the nineteenth century.87 Moncada dedicated himself to elite urban education, and in the days immediately preceding Ayutla cofounded and codirected San Juan Bautista’s fledgling Academy of Arts and Sciences.88 Moncada served as Tabasco’s vicario in capite during the days of the federalist revolts; it was also he who in 1844 had tried to persuade Sentmanat’s hard-bitten mercenaries to accept Jesus and who had overseen the disinterment of the Habanero’s remains.89 But things were easier then; for all of Sentmanat’s sins, his brand of freedom hailed from an earlier era, and he appears never to have spoken against the church. The midcentury liberals were a different breed. Indeed, it must have pained Moncada to have been part of the junta that pressured fellow Guatemalan conservative Escobar to hold elections per order of a movement bent on secularizing Mexican society. Now confronted with this more explicitly anticlerical threat, Moncada organized a group called the Legión Sagrada. It foreshadowed the twentieth-century cristero movement of western Mexico by calling for grassroots opposition along strictly religious-ideological lines. Members wore a red cross over the chest and swore to exterminate liberal partisans throughout the state. Beyond that—and the fact of their ultimate failure—we know nothing.90 Surprisingly, clerical response was neither monolithic nor predictable. The Tabascan church manifested more than its share of internal divisions: some along ideological lines, others built on regional resentments or thwarted ambitions. During the Escobar cacicazgo, Tabasco became the destination of padre Bernardino Carvajal, exiled from Jamiltepec, Oaxaca, because he opposed the return of Santa Anna and the further sale of Mexican territory.91 Tabasco’s profound isolation and poverty made it useful as a gulag for banishing internal dissidents (recall Benito Haro), and during the years of Mexico’s civil wars the demand for such gulags ran high. Another Oaxacan-born priest, Cristóbal Ignacio Gómez, cura of Huimanguillo, fell into continual conflict with the metropolitan clergy. When Lorenzo Prats launched his anti-Dueñas rebellion in early 1858, Gómez joined immediately, much to the disgust of Sastré and other capitalino priests.92 But Tabascan-born clergymen, too, jumped ship upon occasion. Gerónimo Antonio Hernández, cura of Jalpa, became a strong ally of Dueñas, so much so that when the war ended, the restored governor appointed him chaplain of the newly created Juárez Battalion. Far from being troubled by the alliance,

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Hernández was fond of opining that “Jesus Christ was the first liberal,” and that the 1857 Constitution was the second coming of the Evangel, and something that he would defend to his last drop of blood.93 These heterodox and improbable metaphors, unthinkable for the reactionary Yucatecan clergy, carried a certain cogency in the land of chocolate. The first reason was expediency: liberals had the rifles, and out in the villages, accommodation became a wise strategy. Beyond that, simple poverty drove some village priests to gamble on a new system. If Tabasco was still the backwater of backwaters after three centuries of colonial rule, perhaps it was time for a different gospel, especially one that spoke so confidently of growth and development. Finally, there was the matter of regionalism in all its varieties. To many people, village priests included, any level of hierarchy above cura meant the Yucatecans, or their well-appointed allies in San Juan Bautista. To padre Gómez, who detested both Sastré and Moncada, an alliance with liberals became the logical way of evening scores. Finally, the Tabascan Liberal Party also appealed to old-fashioned creole nationalism. Padre Hernández in particular disliked Spaniards and became one of Dueñas’s point men for confiscating peninsular goods. Rather than a simple war of secular versus religious mentalities, then, the Tabascan Reform split the society down the middle. Whatever the partisan alignment east of Acayucan, the liberals showed unexpected tenacity. Pro-Juárez insurgents had the advantage of the state’s impenetrable terrain. Moreover, national conservatives were unable to provide much help beyond a twenty-man warship that Angel Albino Corzo ambushed and captured on the Grijalva. Initially Corzo appeared reluctant to attack the capital, his main objective, apparently fearful of the size of the fight involved. He remained holed up in Teapa for weeks, vainly trying to persuade Sarlat to relinquish control, and reiterating guarantees to respect foreign property. Scarcely reassured, US Consul E. P. Johnson hinted to the secretary of state that the river at Frontera was now twenty feet deep, sufficient to accommodate a man-of-war.94 Johnson perhaps exaggerated when he claimed to have long been accustomed to the “high consideration in which this consulate is now held here,” and during previous episodes of unrest, Tabascan factions had always allowed the consul’s servants to pass freely through the streets in search of food, water, and firewood.95 But his expressions of growing concern were somewhat more persuasive, as many Tabascans began to join Corzo’s forces in hopes of sharing in the spoils. Moreover, Sarlat, fearing

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the worst, stationed cannons just behind the US consul’s home and, though polite enough, refused to move them.96 No vessel arrived, and by October 25, rebels from different areas at last managed to convene around San Juan Bautista. For the fifth time in fifteen years, the city was about to sustain a serious assault, now prefaced by a week of intermittent shelling.97 Whatever one might want to say about the chronic rebelliousness of Tabascan caudillos, though, it must be granted that they did not simply pass the risk on to their men: Sarlat himself led the two-hundred-man defense force against Corzo. Unsuccessful, the beleaguered governor settled back for a siege characterized by steady bombardment of the city.98 The final siege of San Juan Bautista began on October 26, 1858, and ended twelve days later. The consul’s fears of a Roman pillaging turned out to be unfounded. Despite purported saber rattling, Corzo largely respected foreign life and property during the assault on San Juan Bautista. Significantly, neither side wished to antagonize the United States; no foreign citizen was harmed, at least, although the consul’s house, vulnerable because of its central location, took a serious hit. The columns of the porticos sustained a thousand musket balls and grape shot, while fire from attacking constitutionalists shattered the flagpole. Still, there is no indication that this was some payback for the terms of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Far from having it in for the consul, both sides requested that he allow his home as the site of peace negotiations, a wish that E. P. Johnson was delighted to indulge.99 On November 6, Sarlat agreed to surrender, coaxed by the generous terms that Corzo offered: respect for life and property, safeguards for different political opinion, and all civil and military officials to maintain their positions. Entering liberal forces under Corzo did violate treaty guarantees to person and property, while Corzo immediately dismissed known conservatives from public service. The losers either had to abandon their families in order to flee to Havana, as did Sarlat himself, or go into hiding.100 Still, even the accounts of defeated conservatives do not mention mass executions; a certain restraint stayed the partisans’ hands. But Corzo was not done with the Tabascans. To pay for the cost of returning home, he demanded $2,000 in silver from padre José María Sastré. When the padre pleaded inability to pay, the Chiapan caudillo had him arrested and taken to Teapa under the guard of Captain Garrido. Nor were the Chiapans any more successful in extorting cofradía funds, for the

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simple fact that these latter had never existed, or were long since dissipated. Sastré finally managed to scrounge up a ransom of $600, a sum that the Chiapans supplemented with eighty-nine cattle and assorted horses, mules, and furniture from Sastré’s haciendas San Lucas and Cacao, both located near Cunduacán.101 With this far reduced sum in his pocket, Corzo at last decided that his occupation of Tabasco had reached the limits of its usefulness. For reasons unclear, he restored Dueñas to the governor’s office, then withdrew to his home state. With this development the provincial version of Mexico’s Reform War came to an end. The defeat of Velázquez, Sarlat, and Moncada’s ineffectual Legions of Christ marked the death of the new old order, a restored Conservatism imposed largely by central Mexico interests. Once again, Tabasco had come out the spoiler of outside machination. So river country was now to be liberal, an order of affairs doubtless as confusing to its participants as it has often been to modern-day observers. A broad consensus now views Mexico’s Liberal Reform’s popularity as a product of its highly diverse and often contradictory meanings. It linked (and perhaps balanced) a naive, late colonial gatidano liberalism and the hardnosed Porfirian elitism that defined the age of railroads, telegraphs, and ultimately revolution. Its celebration of progress and its rhetoric of respect for individual rights and pueblo autonomy only partially concealed the fact that in practice it tended to limit village options and downgrade the quality of life for many rural Mexicans. But that fact could not have been known so clearly at the time. Its celebration of nationalism and progress did in some ways resonate, even with those Mexican citizens who stood to lose. The matter was no different here in Tabasco, where liberalism wore many faces. In some ways, the dramatic events of the mid-1850s constituted a generational shift, partially displacing the memories of epic figures such as Sentmanat and Traconis. As if to symbolize the change, January 1859 saw the death and burial of one of Tabasco’s legendary characters. Francisco Olave, the Spaniard who had fought in so many provincial engagements, who qualified as a low-ranking Napoleonic free radical, and who had eluded the vengeance of Pedro de Ampudia and lived on to fight for the honor of his adopted province, passed away in Jalpa of natural causes. Witnesses reported that in his final moments the old free thinker had repented his sins and expressed his heartfelt desire to make amends with the church.102 It is hard to know what to make of this account. Tales of deathbed conversions often circulated among the priests, who treasured them like heirloom

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jewelry. (Clergy were the only source of the event, and a secondhand source at that: hence, a certain credibility gap.) The narrative created the missing factor that rectified a morally disjointed world and for that reason bear all the stamp of folklore. Still, the concept of secularism pressed but lightly on this society, and even individuals who had lived their lives far from clerical supervision nevertheless accepted the larger vision of faith, particularly when their only confirmable existence was about to end. Whatever the final truth on this point, Tabasco now lost a thread that had connected political actors from Sentmanat and Bruno to the liberal statesmen and soldiers of the late 1850s. Whatever the triumphant ideology, governance was not going to be easy. To begin the Tabascan Reform War also took place in the midst of a renewed wave of cholera. It struck hard in Cunduacán in early 1858, then lingered for at least a year, working its way west to east, hitting Tenosique in January 1859.103 The overall effect of the epidemic on politics remains a bit difficult to assess. It probably hurt conservatives the most, since they remained besieged in San Juan Bautista, and hence had no way to escape from the effects, and while dense urban populations favored cholera’s spread, liberal siegers, to the contrary, remained dispersed and mobile. Epidemics undermined the state’s overall economic efficiency and bode ill for the liberals’ already rose-colored developmental dreams. But microorganisms cannot bear all the blame. Indeed, it is difficult to escape the fact that the Reform War failed to build the Tabascan state. Fundamentally an elite power struggle, the conflict did not involve whipping state resources into a sleek fighting machine, a project whose benefits might have carried over into peacetime. Nor did it result in any agreement over political institutions, any fair and effective revenue program, or any unifying national identity. Like so much of Mexico, Tabasco emerged not in triumph but in tatters. Twenty years of infighting also took their toll on productivity. The US vice-consul was perfectly correct in asserting that Tabasco had not been as devastated by the Reform War as other parts of Mexico. The state had also managed to pick up some of the highly critical US trade when the war closed off Juárez-controlled port of Veracruz from the interior of the country; indeed, more than threequarters of Tabasco’s nearly half-million dollars’ worth of commerce now came from or went to places like New York, Boston, or New Orleans.104 Still, those who knew the Tabascan haciendas from earlier times were

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struck by the decay and unproductiveness into which they had fallen by the late 1850s.105 Reform struggles also placed Tabascans in a complicated dilemma when it came to the province’s most distinctive feature, its resistance to outsiders. While at least some Tabascans clearly shared core values of the conservative party—say, authoritarian politics and the Catholic vision of a hierarchical, harmoniously organized life—the individuals most actively promoting that party’s interest were federally appointed officers like Manuel Maríá Escobar and Francisco Velásquez. Conservativism thus came dangerously close to imperial meddling. But in ridding themselves of that meddling, liberal defenders had to bring in a non-Tabascan caudillo to get the job done. Angel Albino Corzo was at least Chiapan (a Tabascan with dry feet, one might say), but an outsider nonetheless, like Francisco de Sentmanat. The desperate strategy of using outsiders to fight outsiders went wrong when Corzo extorted Tabascans to pay for his services, a scaled-down version of Edwin Moore’s payment for guarding the coast in 1840. But the overall gamble succeeded, and by 1859 the river people were on their own again, their most comfortable position. Where to go? With the vengeful Corzo out of the picture, Dueñas once more staked a conciliatory path, but to limited success. Victorious liberals confronted a continuous undercurrent of revolt, whether from unrepentant conservatives (evidently unimpressed by popular liberalism, if not flatly outraged), or from some sort of local grievances let loose by the civil war. As Tabascan magistrate José Payró put it, “Tumults and public disorders, provoked by certain unquiet spirits, are frequent in this state. For the most part their leaders aim to discredit and derecognize their authorities, whether local or of the state itself.”106 Dueñas and fifteen other leaders gathered in Villahermosa on March 4 to swear loyalty to the restored liberal government and to commit themselves to defense against further conservative invasions. Indeed, within a month’s time the governor sent four hundred men to Veracruz despite the fact that the recent upheavals in Tabasco had bankrupted the treasury, and despite persistent rumors of an invasion force organizing along the Veracruz border and organized by (who else?) the Maldonados. The boat that carried the Tabascan reinforcements was a vessel named Francia y México; the fact seemed innocent enough at the moment, but ultimately proved a bird of ill omen.107

seven

The Resistance

With the state still smoldering from the Reform War and the Chiapan invasion, a new crisis emerged from far beyond the horizon of the Tabascan coastline. Mexico’s midcentury growing pains posed temptations for European powers, for whom the concept of empire had assumed new legitimacy with the British raj in India, the expansion into Pacific Ocean territories like Australia, and the emergence of tropical plantation agriculture in Southeast Asia. The problem was that new territories were increasingly hard to come by. Following the implosion of Bourbon power between 1750 and 1815, Britain consolidated much of its control over the globe. Even if the United States had failed to reduce many Indian groups by 1870, or to resolve its North-South divide, the idea of rival European empires here nevertheless seemed out of the question; Russia’s 1867 sale of Alaska merely confirmed that understanding. The Netherlands retained Indonesia as a check on French expansionism.1 Further African conquests awaited, but as events like the Boer War demonstrated, only at the cost of tremendous bloodshed.2 So where to go? Latin America’s interminable postindependence crises seemed to open possibilities. Dazzled by dreams of an American colony, and drawn by “the

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silver of the mines” that Joseph Conrad later converted into a metaphor for western imperial greed and third-world connivance, France’s Napoleon III allowed himself to be swayed by conservative Mexican exiles that a wounded people awaited his help. It was a rash and ultimately fatal misstep, but in 1861, this reality was not self-evident. Mexican and Central American state consolidation seemed far off, and as the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo showed, parts of national territory were there for the taking if one were sufficiently strong and cynical. The United States itself seemed destined to be torn apart by issues of slavery and regionalism. France, initially aided by a coalition with the British and Spanish, began to move troops into Veracruz in December 1861. The foreign allies dropped out almost immediately, but the soldiers of Louis Napoleon stayed the course. Their May 5 attempt to take the fortress at Puebla failed disastrously, but the invaders regrouped, reinforced their ranks, and entered both Puebla and Mexico City the following year. The Juárez government fled into a peripatetic existence in northern Mexico, while the empire gradually spread its tentacles throughout the land. Campeche and Yucatán fell in early 1863.3 It was now that the Tabascans, long accustomed to geographical isolation, and always most dangerous when most vulnerable, found themselves hemmed in on all sides.

I n va de d Ag a i n At first the imperial presence along the Tabascan coast amounted to little more than saber rattling. The French occupied Ciudad del Carmen, and working through conservative jefe político Manuel M. Sandoval, they extended threats to surrounding provinces, threats supported by warship L’Eulaire. Victorio V. Dueñas, who almost certainly knew of the recent Mexican victory at Puebla when on May 18, 1862, categorically refused to submit to Sandoval’s demands.4 Tabasco would have to be taken by force. Oversight of the job fell to admiral Tomás Marín, the man who carried out Miguel Bruno’s dramatic execution sixteen years earlier, and who had subsequently embraced the French cause. In 1860 he had betrayed his duty as naval defender of the Juárez-held port of Veracruz, fled to Havana, and organized a modest flotilla as a way of aiding conservative general Miguel Miramón, then waging his campaign in Veracruz state. Marín, now

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declared a pirate, lost a skirmish with the US sloop-of-war Saratoga and was taken into a humiliating arrest in New Orleans in March, a turn of events that occasioned a certain nationalist indignation back home in Mexico.5 Marín saw the arrival of French warships as his chance for revenge; restored to his former rank, and with extensive experience in Gulf coastal affairs under his belt, he assumed control of Carmen.6 No doubt about it, the land that Marín proposed to invade was having its problems, above all in matters of money. The twin civil wars spun out of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had a severe negative impact here. “The rebellion of the Southern States has caused a notable decline in the commerce of the United States with this country,” the consul reported in mid1861.7 Indeed, by January of the following year that commerce had reached its lowest point since the Mexican-American War. Cacao shipments to the Mexican interior, shipments conducted almost entirely by sea, had similarly suffered. Benito Juárez had ordered a levy of two thousand Tabascans to shore up defenses against the French.8 In other ways, too, the year 1863 was shaping up to be a bad one for the river people. The past few cacao crops had failed almost completely, with profitability upheld only by the corresponding price increase.9 Almost like clockwork, the ten- to twelve-year cycle of heavy rains and flooding repeated itself, and most people of the region worried about salvaging their homes and their crops.10 And while ranchers worked to keep their cows’ heads above water, the vicario in San Juan Bautista struggled to suppress the popular craze for colorful textiles and “high shoes” (probably a reference to heel size) that was then sweeping much of Mexico, including its clergy.11 For nearly a year, then, life here continued as always—poorer, to be sure, but uncharacteristically peaceful.12 Tomás Marín delegated the state’s pacification to a colorful individual named Eduardo González Arévalo (who for some reason downplayed his father’s last name). Interventionist personalities tended toward the operatic, and Arévalo was certainly no exception. Little is known of his life or service prior to Tabascan adventure. Born in Granada, Spain, in 1832, he came to Mexico in 1856 and changed nationality in time to join the conservative army in 1858. His activities for the next five years remain a mystery, except that he shared in his cause’s defeat. We do know that by 1863 Arévalo had not only been politically rehabilitated with the coming of the French, but in fact elevated to the status of comandante.13 Conservatives themselves would eventually come to despise this would-be champion, but in early

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1863 his shortcomings were not so obvious. Out of the mists of one hundred and fifty years, he still peers at us, haughty and reserved, from his sole known photograph. Republican authors frequently commented on that look: derisive, autocratic, contemptuous. Indeed, Arévalo might be called the last of the Napoleonic free radicals, the final twinklings of a moment when one man’s will could transform his world, and for such a man a look of imperious disdain was perhaps necessary. But timing is everything. By the 1860s that vision of glorious liberty had begun to fade, to appear something else altogether different in the reactionary ambience of midcentury Europe, and it is no accident that we find this charismatic leader, quite unlike his predecessors, working on behalf of restored monarchy. Arévalo’s first foray into the land of chocolate failed as miserably as the recent cacao harvests. He led a force of fifty men in two canoas through the swampy region between Palizada and Jonuta. It was the worst possible way to enter the province because any intruder without extensive knowledge of the meandering wetlands stood little chance against locals; just as these low-lying marshes served as a brake against hurricanes, they also impeded the entry of military aggressors. Tabascan forces, with the help of General Pedro Baranda, who functioned as Mexico’s appointed military advisor throughout much of this early conflict, managed to ambush the invaders at the hacienda San Joaquín on February 15. Arévalo’s initial defeat highlighted the fact that anyone hoping to rule the river people hit them directly, taking on San Juan Bautista on preannounced voyages up the Grijalva from Frontera. (Sentmanat was something of an exception, since Tabascan allies escorted him into and through the provincial countryside.) The failure of an eastern entry, then, left no option but the Perry approach.14 Tomás Marín made no secret of his plans, but rather counted on the appearance of superior forces to cow Tabascans into submission. Announcing that he was sending “the intrepid commander don Eduardo G. Arévalo,” Marín counted on Tabascans’ awareness of their own military limitations. Arévalo arrived with significant firepower, including the massively armed El comandante and four canoas de guerra. But these weapons concealed a severe weakness, namely, a lack of troops. He had only two hundred men recruited from among the diverse population of Ciudad del Carmen. Some accounts specify an assault force of only 180 soldiers, possibly suggesting that Arévalo left a contingent force in Frontera. That meant

Figure 16.  “Arrogant” was the word contemporaries used time and again to describe Eduardo González Arévalo. A hot-tempered Granadan, Arévalo briefly headed the French interventionist government here. Overthrown in early 1863, he changed sides, led an abortive republican attack on Isla del Carmen, fled to the Guatemalan Petén, then perished in a suicidal assault on pro-French conservatives in the city of Mérida. As he put it, “I scorn the title [of bandit], and would not bother to refute it, except to protect the reputation of those who have rallied around me.” From Manuel Gil y Sáenz, Historia del Estado de Tabasco (1890).

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that he was attempting to capture a provincial capital using less than a third to a half the number of defenders, estimated at four to six hundred.15 Nor did any of this take into consideration the far knottier problem of a prolonged occupation. The invasion force reached San Juan Bautista on June 17, sidling up to the city with the expected artillery bombardment. Torrential rains delayed the interventionist soldiers from disembarking; the weather cleared during the night, but the dawn witnessed a barrage of republican rifle and cannon fire. Things quieted toward 8:00 a.m. as republican munitions ran low. At this point foreign consuls came aboard to request immunity for themselves as nonnationals; the exact results of these discussions remain unknown, but combatants themselves failed to reach an understanding, and at 1:00 p.m. bombardments resumed. Four hours later Arévalo sent a column to occupy the plaza. According to Dueñas, the invaders managed to take the upper balcony of one of the higher buildings, and their fire from above startled republican defenders into retreating. By 11:00 p.m. the city was in interventionist hands.16 What followed recalled events of the October 1847 US invasion, when the implosion of capital-based power threw leadership to decentralized bands that had fewer resources but far greater determination. Republican defenders initially organized a guerrilla resistance in the rural areas surrounding San Juan Bautista, places where terrain and local sympathy worked in their favor. Dueñas, who had taken the precaution of carrying off the state treasury, first camped in nearby Atasta, where he managed to organize some seven hundred men, including a hundred recently arrived from the hinterlands of Palizada, and sent for two cannons that he had wisely kept hidden in the monte. At precisely that moment, however, the governor made another of his abrupt about-face decisions when he disbanded his force. Worse still, he had the two cannons thrown into the rivers, only later to have conservatives fish out one of them and turn it against the republicans themselves.17 By July 5, Arévalo began setting up redoubts in Atasta, Tamulté, and other points surrounding the capital, points formerly occupied by the republican defenders. After a series of skirmishes, Dueñas himself withdrew to Teapa, abandoning altogether the idea of somehow besieging San Juan Bautista.18 Perhaps a cautious nature led Dueñas to avoid fights of uncertain outcome; perhaps he lacked confidence in himself as a military

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leader; perhaps it was the right decision. His early departure puzzled even the imperialists, who were expecting more of a fight. Nor did more combative members of the guerrilla resistance forget this retreat, and they sent reports to Benito Juárez, accusing Dueñas of dissolving the state brigade “without having fired so much as a single cartridge.”19 Victorio V. Dueñas has taken a beating ever since for this decision to abandon the struggle. His own explanation held that while planning a return march against San Juan Bautista, he noticed a profound disorganization and discontent among the ranks; in Dueñas’s telling, the soldiers had managed to get their hands on a printed broadside announcing that imperialists already occupied Mexico City, thus leading them to believe the game was lost. Even the radical republicans of Palizada, who had already bested Arévalo once, preferred guerrilla tactics in the monte and could not be persuaded to take him on in a fortified capital city. Soldiers thereupon expressed their opinions by desertion. A July 12 meeting among officers—in which the later liberator Gregorio Méndez was present, incidentally—concluded that their only hope was to disperse into small groups and wait for a more favorable opportunity.20 Whatever the real motive, and regardless of whoever may have been involved, the decision to scatter into small bands probably saved them against the knockout blow that Arévalo hoped to deliver. But the shift to guerrilla resistance did not save Dueñas from becoming the scapegoat for momentary failure. He made one more attempt to raise support in other states, but after trips to both Chiapas and Oaxaca came away emptyhanded. Abandoning hopes for state leadership, he resolved to incorporate himself into the Juárez forces, working his way through Coatzacoalcos, to Tlacotalpan, and finally to Veracruz’s Paso de Ovejas, where he learned to his dismay that imperialists now occupied the altiplano. Dueñas made for his finca San Vicente outside of Jalpa, but the Tabascan convulsions refused to let him rest. On June 22, 1864, a group of armed men came to the hacienda with the intention of assassinating him; he managed to fend them off, killing one in the process, but this attack convinced the former governor to abandon his home state. He finally ended up in imperialist-controlled Campeche. Ironically, when the walled city finally fell to republican forces on June 1, 1867, Dueñas was at the home of his deeply conservative brother when the city’s imperialist commander, Juan Espejo, was apprehended there while looking for refuge. (Shortly afterward, a vengeful Pablo García, Campeche state’s governor and founding father, took out Espejo and

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two associates, packed them in a carriage whose wheels had been wrapped in burlap so as not to awaken sympathetic citizens, and took them to the outskirts of town, where they were shot.)21 Whether right or wrong, the decision to abandon San Juan Bautista marked a hiatus—not a definitive end—of Dueñas’s long and vacillating political career. Beyond the military conflicts he neither provoked nor desired, he is best remembered as a promoter of education and author of a law mandating universal education, even though the law lacked resources and local support, and was never carried out. In some ways he resembled Quintus Fabius, the “delayer” who saved Rome from the Carthaginian hordes by avoiding battles he knew he could not win. But as happened with Echagaray, the more headstrong of the Tabascans, unimpressed by classical history, disdained this sort of sidestepping, and leadership now passed to a younger generation. Once in possession of the capital, Arévalo got on with the formalities of power. Like other contemporary statesmen and revolutionaries, he immediately organized a series of pueblo adhesions, in which leading citizens of the towns and villages swore allegiance to the new order. In San Juan Bautista, to take only the most prominent example, Arévalo assembled the ayuntamiento, the vicario, the city’s civil servants, and employees of the all-important treasury. July 2 was designated as the date for the acta constitutiva, in which Tabasco formally joined the growing empire; adhesions seconded the event.22 While this exercise, so common throughout nineteenth-century Mexico, strikes us as transparently contrived and insincere, it did have its uses. The pueblo adhesions helped create an illusion of consensus that people so desperately craved. The adhesions impressed higher-ups by demonstrating that provincial commanders had their situations under control. On a more practical note, the process of summoning the local intelligentsia and reading a public manifesto served to inform people of the new order. And for those who signed, they bought momentary peace and a breathing space in which the unreconciled could plan their next move. At this moment Eduardo Arévalo sat atop the wheel of fortune . . .  at once the best and worst possible place to be, as every Elizabethan antihero knows. He followed the long tradition of Tabascan conquistadors by assuming the simultaneous titles of political prefect and comandante militar, and to celebrate that fact, on September 21, Arévalo hosted an elaborate ceremony that began with an exchange of cannon salutes between the El comandante and the city plaza. At 7:00 p.m. supporters gathered

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for a banquet initiated with fireworks and stirring tunes from a military band. The festivities involved nine enormous tables—eight for the military, one for civil servants—under the arches of the palacio de gobierno, and within sight of the Grijalva, which rolled on indifferent to the absurdities of human pretention. Bells rang out periodically, as though moved by their own spontaneous joy. Following nineteenth-century protocol, the revelers indulged themselves in round after round of toasts both stirring and sentimental, punctuated by cries of viva! After dinner the organizers lit a huge light display known as an árbol de fuego, then waltzed in the streets until long after midnight. Peace had come, it seemed, in the form of a transplanted Spaniard.23

Guerrillas Again There the matter stood, with Tabascan republicans routed in disarray, while French-backed conservatives awarded themselves honors, patronage, and self-congratulatory galas. Or so it seemed. What actually followed was a story repeated many times in human history: an overly confident occupational force finds itself confronted by decentered guerrilla resistance that saps imperial will and resources. Troubles began immediately, when Arévalo’s tenuous hold over the state gave little room for the changes that supposedly justified the Intervention. The few initiatives the new comandante did manage to launch manifested the same uncertainty that characterized the empire elsewhere. Most noticeably, he attempted to impose a state-run labor system, rather like the practices that colonial Spain had adopted when Indians began to die in biblical numbers in the mid-1500s. Alleging the laziness and indifference of autochthonous villages, he decreed that hacendados could apply to the political prefects for all the labor they needed; the prefect, in turn, forced Indians out of their communities with the threat of seven months of community service, but saw to it that they received a daily pay of two reales.24 It is doubtful that Arévalo, in his mere two months in Tabasco, had acquired a particularly informed or realistic view of the province’s indigenous communities. He probably thought the decree was a sure-fire attraction for hacendados, unaware of the small scale of their operations and their relatively low labor needs. The measure clearly failed, since no support emerged in

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the leading cacao regions of the Chontalpa or the Sierra. Nor is there much reason to think it ever would have worked. State-directed labor drafts like Mexican repartimiento of the 1560s or Peru’s legendary mita under Francisco de Toledo had never functioned very well; their bureaucratic insensitivity infuriated villagers, while Spaniards and Indians alike resented the corrupt bottlenecks that supervising officials invariably became.25 Even in the eighteenth century, attempts to revive repartimiento rights may have helped turn poor-boy peninsular Pedro Romero de Terreros into the fabulously rich Conde de Regla, but they also provoked an angry backlash that forced Terreros into a reclusive, Howard Hughes-like existence.26 Unfortunately, Arévalo sat atop no veins of silver and had no option of retreating into the citadel of Mexico City. Interventionists hoped for assistance from another source, the not terribly secret Confederate tendency (hardly a plan) to use Tabasco as an ally and trading station. Immediately after the fall of Fort Sumpter and the onset of hostilities, Abraham Lincoln imposed the Anaconda strategy of a southern naval blockade, suggested by no less a person than retired General Winfield Scott. To the apoplectic fury of new US Consul James H. Mansfield, a hard-core Unionist from righteously slave-free Delavan, Wisconsin, Confederate blockade runners sailed to Nassau, where they reflagged their ships as British, then headed for Frontera and San Juan Bautista in search of trade opportunities. That latter city had its share of pro-Confederate residents who fell into an easy friendship with French merchants.27 Most dared do no more than trade with the rebel states, but a few actually took up arms in service of the Intervention. For example, Arévalo attracted the services of one Theodore Englehart, a US physician of conservative leanings; under the Intervention, Englehart actually rose to become the political prefect of Macuspana.28 His motives remain unknown, but anti-Union sentiment, along with flat-out opportunism, must be suspected. Among the most important of Confederate sympathizers, and by any measure a force in Tabasco’s export economy, was one Count Félix de Nemegyei. Born in Transylvania in 1825, he rose to become an engineer in the Hungarian Army. Nemegyei championed Hungary’s nationalist revolution of 1848, but the Austrian victory meant either prison or execution, so he fled East Europe and headed to New Orleans, at that time a Mecca of commerce and slave trading.29 There the Count’s surveying skills attracted the attention of a circle of investors interested in constructing a railroad

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across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. This initiative was ahead of its time and soon collapsed in the face of technical difficulties and political convulsions. Nemegyei next obtained an appointment to the US Boundary Survey commission, for which he produced two of the fifty-four index maps (basically, central New Mexico’s part of la gran línea, the imaginary demarcation that separates the United States from its southern neighbor), staying with the project until 1856.30 The following year he returned to Mexico and spent two years authoring a grandiose prospectus for connecting the Isthmus of Tehuantec, Minantitlán, Tabasco, and Laguna de Términos that augmented natural riverways with a series of man-made canals. Unfortunately, the country was now convulsed by the Reform War, and since Nemegyei offered nothing in the way of securities, the Juárez government politely declined.31 By this point the adventurous Hungarian transplant had experience in surveying, in southern Mexico, and in the New Orleans trade, and though rebuffed in his canal plan, he relocated to Tabasco to begin a lucrative enterprise of logging and exporting precious woods. Over six feet tall, and with a velvety Hungarian accent and a soldier’s erect bearing, Nemegyei must have stood out among the diminutive Tabascans. Once a count, always a count: his Europeanism and his business ties to New Orleans, together with the rebuff he endured at the hands of the Juárez government, made him a natural sympathizer with interventionist and Confederate causes, but he wisely kept his opinions discreet. Confederate alliance, however informal, could be more a liability than a benefit. But interventionist limitations did not stop there. The invaders commanded a strictly military-based power, not one grounded in popular or even clear-cut oligarchic support (if that latter term was even applicable for such an impoverished place). Not a single French officer or soldier took part in Arévalo’s too-easy capture of San Juan Bautista, or in any other battle fought on Tabascan soil. Very much in keeping with the Yucatecan experience, the Intervention boiled down to round two of the Reform War, only with large-artillery warships thrown into the mix. Nor could Arévalo count on the French to divert much-needed men from the far more essential campaigns of the altiplano. The interventionists thus had no reliable source of reinforcements. All Mexican militaries of the nineteenth century suffered high desertion rates, but regionally based combatants could usually round up more men, while foreign aggressors had to work with finite and ever-dwindling numbers.

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Beyond the matter of recruitment, Arévalo also discovered that the warship was a mixed blessing in this land of rivers. These sorts of vessels may have been invincible in open waters, but their deep draft limited them to major waterways like the lower Grijalva. They could reduce cities (and archives) to cinders, but failed miserably at pacifying the countryside. Wouldbe conquistadors therefore had to attempt a land war, in which ignorance of the province’s tortuous terrain and vulnerability to its terrible diseases threw the advantage to the defenders. These factors made any invasion of Tabasco a war of countryside against capital city. And because the capital produced nothing, but merely processed goods, taxes, and paperwork, a city without its corresponding provincial interior amounted to little more than an oversized and understocked fortress. The invaders’ overreliance on their naval advantage functioned as one of their chief limitations as well, much as it had sixteen years earlier, in the days when a frustrated Matthew Perry railed against Tabascan perfidy. The easy early victory thus laid the seeds of Arévalo’s later undoing. Without much reason to justify it, he now saw himself as invincible, the latest in a line of mighty conquistadors stretching from Hernán Cortés to Francisco de Sentmanat, men who wrested Tabasco from the hands of lesser beings. At the very least, Tabasco had been the school for these men, and thus promised to offer the same instructions to Arévalo. But as the old Spanish proverb goes, what nature does not give, Salamanca does not teach. Time and again, Arévalo made questionable decisions that undermined his own authority and assured that his tenure here would be brief. While it lasted, though, Arévalo lived the conquistador’s role to the hilt. As with Sentmanat and Bruno, he became the platform for a series of amorous legends, the most famous of which concerns his thwarted romance with a Tabascan belle. In this case, the legend built upon substance. Newly ensconced in San Juan Bautista, Arévalo took a fancy for one Fidencia Fernández Sastré, teenaged daughter of Juan Fernández Veraud (of Canarios, Spain) and Leonarda Sastré (of Cunduacán). Learning of Arévalo’s intentions, the parents had Fidencia cut her hair and ride out from the family hacienda Santa Rosalía, in Cárdenas municipio, disguised as a man, as though from some play by Lope de Vega. She fled to Huimanguillo, San Cristóbal, eventually finding her way to Havana. There Fidencia remained until Tabasco’s republican triumph was complete.32 The flight of young Fidencia remains among the beloved of all Tabascan tales. She is the only woman of nineteenth-century state history to ascend

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to the pantheon of próceres, or honored forebearers. A street in central Villahermosa bears her name, while writer José Luis Inurreta made her the heroine of his fanciful novel El guaraguao. Perhaps this adulation owes to the fact that her escape brought together so many threads of provincial attitude. Popular narrative commonly attributes historical events to matters of the heart (the Trojan War stemmed from beautiful Helen’s abduction, Homer tell us, not from east Mediterranean trade rivalries); it provides a motivation even the most unlettered can understand. Doña Fidencia helped out her own legend by surviving until 1939, dying at the advanced age of ninety-five.33 Perhaps her fame points to underlying macho attitudes, whereby a woman can only win renown by acting in unfeminine fashion. Or perhaps it was because Fidencia was the one bright spot in an otherwise bleak situation, a defenseless female who somehow managed to thwart Arévalo in what mattered to him the most. She provided a much-needed victory, and of a sort that only a woman could deliver.

The Hard Fruit of Jahuactal The Tabascan branch of the empire first began to unravel along the Chiapan border. The sheer remoteness of that latter province insulated it from foreign adventurers and helped a republican nucleus to retain power under the leadership of aging governor and caudillo Angel Albino Corzo, Tabasco’s Reform War benefactor. But rather than splitting into two clearly defined sides, Chiapas degenerated into a chessboard of local caudillos, many of them more interested in preserving their own land and power than advancing some preconceived ideology; by the time the Intervention ended, Chiapan mayhem had reached such an extreme that it encouraged the state’s cynically abused Tzotzil and Tzeltal peoples to attempt their own uprisings.34 To Arévalo’s frustration, Corzo tolerated the presence of small camps of armed Tabascans just south of the Chiapan border, the remnants of Dueñas’s failed defense militia. A small faction of conservatives, led by one Juan Ortega, therefore commissioned padre José Joaquín Castillejos to solicit Arévalo’s assistance in overthrowing what they perceived as an interfering liberal dictatorship. Hungering for an easy victory and a sympathetic southern neighbor, Arévalo sent three hundred men and some artillery under Pedro Torres; Torres, in turn, set himself up in Teapa and imagined

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that it would be a simple matter to subdue the borderlands through forceful sweeps. Unfortunately, conservatism existed here only in small and disorganized pockets. Area republicans quickly rallied under the leadership of a carpenter named Eusebio Castillo, and on July 24, 1863, inflicted a devastating defeat on Torres’s troops in Ixtacomitán, a small town just south of Pichucalco. The victory taught several lessons: Arévalo was vulnerable, conservatism rested on a narrow base, and republicans did not require the leadership of top-hatted gentlemen to accomplish their ends. Indeed, if a gutsy carpenter could beat back the mighty empire, then humble townsfolk of Tabasco could save Mexico.35 Nuclei of resistance thus began to emerge within river country, encouraged by Arévalo’s own rural sweeps. The most important band of guerrilla republicanism coalesced around one Andrés Sánchez Magallanes. He hailed from the town of San Antonio de los Naranjos, later renamed Cárdenas in honor padre José Eduardo de Cárdenas, who represented Tabascans in Spain’s short-lived constitutional assembly in Cádiz. Born two months after padre Hidalgo’s 1810 call to revolt, young Andrés grew up with the country. Orphaned in childhood—originally as Andrés Vidal Sánchez— he was adopted by a kindly individual named Magallanes, whose surname Andrés gratefully adopted. Claims that he was a humble peasant are clearly mistaken. Advanced literacy alone set him apart; moreover, by age fifty he had become a homeowner and prominent citizen of his hometown and a man with innumerable republican contacts throughout the province.36 Being somewhat older than his peer republicans, he was above all an ardent federalist, had scoffed at Iturbide’s empire, had fled the state following the centralist takeover of 1833, and had only returned with Sentmanat’s 1841 triumph: in that sense, yet another understudy of Tabasco’s rogue progenitor. Sánchez Magallanes also took up arms against the US Navy in 1846, and then sided with Dueñas against the conservatives in 1858.37 In this sense he exemplified a common filament that ran through almost all the great conflicts of this book. Maximum leadership, however, emerged in the much younger person of small-town merchant Gregorio Méndez Magaña. Born in Jalpa on March 27, 1833, Méndez, like Dueñas and Sánchez, lost his father at an early age. The aggrieved widow, one Petra Magaña, relocated to Comalcalco, where Gregorio and brother Pedro took their place in the long line of orphaned Tabascan heroes searching for their lost fathers somewhere in the symbolic

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folds of a mythologized patria. Under these circumstances Gregorio Méndez grew up quickly. As an eleven-year-old child he witnessed the execution of Francisco de Sentmanat. By age twenty-five he had married a woman named Petrona Pérez and owned a store called “La flor comalcalqueña” (The flower of Comalcalco). He was known for a genial personality and a passionate love of music. In reality Méndez nursed ardent liberal sympathies, but, perhaps for commercial reasons, feigned disinterest in all things political and to the outer world gave little hint of the role of patriot liberator which he was later to play.38 Rather, he shared the classic nineteenth-century petit bourgeois fondness for improving projects, for he converted the upper floor of his shop into a night school and even offered music lessons under the tuneful ear of an instructor brought from Guatemala. Méndez had been present at the June 1863 decision to disband the resistance army, but unlike Dueñas, took no heat for the decision.39 Following the lead of Sánchez Magallanes, he pronounced in his hometown and soon found himself commanding a hoard of several hundred men. Where to pinpoint leadership on the socioeconomic map? With their risible incomes and tiny homes and stores, individuals like Méndez and Sánchez Magallanes hardly qualified as oligarchs, even when adjusted for Tabascan scale. They certainly had nothing to do with an indigenous peasantry. Rather, these self-appointed liberators hailed from the province’s small-town collection of merchants and tradesmen, just as Yucatán’s Buenaventura Martínez y Basto typified the minor landowner, or as campechano Pablo García represented low-born professionals and merchants of the provincial capitals. Other Tabascan leaders, men such as Bernabé Fuentes, had more obscure origins, but did not deviate fundamentally from the pattern sketched above.40 In both Tabasco and the Yucatán peninsula, republican leadership came from lesser elites enjoying relatively close ties to a heterogeneous poor folk, and they were able to claim command precisely for the fact that while they knew more and had more, they also risked everything. Followers remain even more elusive. Méndez apparently attracted a cluster of men not much different from himself: mestizo townsfolk, small ranchers, artisans, would-be improvers of Tabascan life. If officers owned haciendas, it seems likely that they raised their own men (as had the Maldonado clan in early conflicts), even though no solid evidence attests to this fact. But again, the reduced Tabascan scale meant that a few hundred

Figure 17.  Fidencia Fernández’s dramatic life was an exception for Tabascan women. Surviving documentation— mostly of state, church, and military—says little about their experiences. As elsewhere in Mexico, the nature of those experiences greatly varied according social class, from matriarchal entrepreneurs at the top to humble village women such as these at the bottom. Their dark features suggest Indian or African ancestry; their bare feet and omnipresent children speak to the hardship of rural existence. By permission of the Archivo Histórico y Fotográfico del Estado de Tabasco.

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men constituted a serious threat. A classic example of the entrepreneur who loaned out his workforce for political ends was one Policarpo Valenzuela Yera, an individual destined to play key roles in regional history. Born in 1831, he began his rise to prominence with a political apprenticeship under Andrés Sánchez Magallanes in the 1850s, on behalf of the Reform. Don Polo learned that political favor was the gateway to opportunity. He subsequently retreated to his coastal logging operations, but kept his apples polished, contributing his own loggers as soldiers in Gregorio Méndez’s war against the Intervention.41 Valenzuela not only helped tip the balance in the republicans’ favor, but in the process became one of the richest men in the history of southeastern Mexico, a central figure in both the logging industry and state politics. Western Tabasco thus emerged as the new theater of anti-imperial resistance. Sánchez Magallanes had participated in the retreat from San Juan Bautista and made for his hometown of Cárdenas, where, with an eye to future engagements, he kept a hidden arms cache. The town’s political prefect, one Antonio González, intuited what was up and, being a friend of Sánchez’s wife, María Gallegos, attempted to avert bloodshed through negotiation. María arranged a parlay between the two men at Sánchez’s own home, an evening of furious Tabascan rain providing the melodramatic backdrop on this late September evening. González set aside his sword and pistols as a show of good faith (but kept a small picket of soldiers stationed outside) and offered Sánchez amnesty if he joined the empire; Sánchez in turn promised to think it over, then went straight to group of followers concealed in the woods some distance away and, with the Ixtacomitán lesson under his belt, launched his own revolt.42 In no time Sánchez Magallanes had a force of more than one hundred men recruited from Comalcalco, Cunduacán, and Huimanguillo. On October 7, they descended upon Cárdenas and imprisoned the prefect and other prominent imperialists. The Intervention’s thin support became obvious, and in fact the crowd clamored for the prisoners to be executed as soon as possible. To his credit, Sánchez refrained from unnecessary bloodshed.43 Almost immediately his pronouncement echoed in Comalcalco, the only absent republican figure of consequence being Gregorio Méndez; ordered into exile, Méndez had gone to Jalpa on the pretext of settling his affairs, but in reality used the visit to his hometown to round up rifles, which he promptly sent back to Comalcalco.44

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Arévalo surprised the Comalcalco republicans on October 10. Arriving unexpectedly at 5:00 p.m. despite western Tabasco’s legendarily awful roads and leading a unit of ninety men, he descended on the hapless town from three different points. No doubt about it, the imperialists cut a fearsome sight. Dressed in the dazzling red and blue jackets that earned them the nickname colorados, they were splendidly armed and mounted, and brought with them two cannons, whose main use in rural Tabascan engagements was for shrapnel discharge, among the nastiest and most lethal of mid-nineteenth-century weaponry. The hapless victims of said weapon were apt to find nails, horseshoes, and fragments of scrap metal tearing through their flesh, and with theories of antibacterial treatment nowhere in sight. Arévalo’s musicians, meanwhile, sounded the ancient Moorish strains of degüello, the dreaded announcement of no quarter. The startled and ragtag defenders, many of whom were armed with no more than machetes, quickly fled to the woods. Left with no real opponent, the interventionists proceeded to vent their anger on the defenseless town. Among other targets, they visited special destruction on Méndez’s beloved Flor de Comalcalco and destroyed whatever they could not carry away, even burning his books and breaking his flowerpots. In the improbable way of these things, the only item that survived was a travel guide to Corinth, Greece. Méndez’s wife Petrona Pérez had the good sense to stay hidden, but not so the town’s poor and alcoholic crab vendor. Waking up in the street while all of this was underway, he quickly discovered that he had retailed his last crustacean. The imperialists seized and bound him, then dragged him through the town and shot him as a kind of sacrificial goat substituting for the republicans who had gotten away.45 The rebels sustained three deaths, together with twenty-one men wounded or captured, but survived; while the imperialists, like so many occupation forces dealing with an acephalous insurgency, had to console themselves with enemy casualty counts.46 The surprise rout at Comalcalco was the republicans’ darkest hour. Reassembling in Santa Ana three days later, they discovered that there was now a $1,000 reward posted for either Sánchez or Méndez. This was a fortune in those days and no small incentive to collaboration.47 Moreover, Arévalo himself understood the value of the victory, and back in San Juan Bautista, with an exaggeration aimed at fostering his ferocious image, he announced that he had left bandits hanging in Comalcalco plaza.48 At this point unity was everything, and a clear-cut leader was necessary. Méndez, an eminently

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modest individual of deep bonhomie but with no military past, reportedly demurred. But he could not escape so easily from the role fortune had chosen for him. The only alternative was Andrés Sánchez Magallanes, but too many shortcomings limited his effectiveness. Twenty years older than Méndez, of sickly disposition and an effeminate voice (in other words, none of that critical masculine swank of his long-deceased mentor, Francisco de Sentmanat), Sánchez was too tied to the old cause of federated provinces to serve as the champion of Juárez-era liberalism. At the same time, all other potential leaders, including the long-lived Lino Merino, were isolated in the Sierra. For these reasons Gregorio Méndez Magaña, the man who had hoped to bring chamber music, calico fabrics, and Greek vacations to the Chontalpa, thus evolved from shopkeeper to gunrunner to supreme resistance commander, all in the space of a few months.49 The raid on Comalcalco thus failed to provide the knockout blow for which Arévalo had hoped. On top of that, attempts to subdue the Sierra ended in failure. Both regions carried enormous economic and strategic importance, since the Chontalpa remained Tabasco’s economic heartland, the heart and origin of the global cacao trade, while the Sierra functioned as the entry point for Chiapan republicans, and its elite had always behaved themselves like English marcher barons, men-in-the-middle who used their power over the borderlands to influence events ostensibly more metropolitan in nature. How vexing for the empire, then, that an almost identical guerrilla movement had formed in this latter region, with old-guard federalist and liberal Lino Merino heading the partisans in picturesque Tacotalpa, and the far larger city of Teapa defended by Eduardo Rosario and José María Bastar. While struggling with resistance in the Chontalpa, then, Arévalo sent Captain Felipe Roguera to mop up the south. It was easier said than done. Republicans lured the overconfident Roguera into an ambush in the middle of a seemingly undefended Teapa, and then cut the interventionists to pieces and captured Roguera himself. Here as so often elsewhere, tales of daring women accented the Tabascan landscape. The damas of Teapa supposedly printed a manifesto urging on their menfolk to the task, with one Rosa Giorgana leading the chorus. The audacious doña Rosa doled out ammunition during the ambush, and, per Teapan legend, personally stripped Captain Roguera of his arms.50 If not absolutely true, the story of the combative doña Rosa contains the same nest of meanings that inform the story of Fidencia Fernández: it celebrates the spirit of their

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women, but simultaneously exalts women who tended to act more in the roles of men. On top of Arévalo’s frustrations with holdout republicans, there remained the knotty problem of United States antipathy. J. H. Mansfield was only one person, but he represented a powerful force indeed—one temporarily neutralized, but who could say when North American affairs might suddenly resolve themselves, and the harpings of a lone consul translate into substantial material aid for juarecista Mexico? After all, by this date Vicksburg had fallen, cutting the Confederacy in two and robbing it of the Mississippi; seemingly overnight, the Union had mastered the art of ironclad warfare; General Robert E. Lee’s incursion into northern territory had failed on an epic scale; and the Emancipation Proclamation had placed the North on moral high ground, thereby neutralizing British sympathies for an independent South. These events amplified Mansfield’s irritating voice and set his outraged pro-French and pro-Confederate antagonists to work. Felix Nemegyei and others laid a trap by sending Mansfield a “present” of a handsome red shirt of the French Foreign Legion; taking the bait, the indignant consul publicly burned the item on the street in front of his offices. On October 28, Mansfield found himself arrested for having insulted French honor. Arévalo himself brought the consul for an interview and, after dressing him down in the foulest of language, imprisoned Mansfield in the public jail, “which was filled to suffocation by criminals of all descriptions.”51 Beside herself over his disappearance, Mansfield’s wife, from far away in the Wisconsin winter, began to press Secretary of State William Seward for information as to the consul’s whereabouts, but for the next four months, the consul was lost to the world.52 Jailing pesky foreigners felt gratifying. But like all counterinsurgency officers, Arévalo needed a showpiece victory to convince higher-ups and subject peoples alike that he was in charge. Eager and arrogant, he turned a potential triumph into his personal defeat, and brought about the pivotal loss in the empire’s brief struggle for river country. What then was the battle of Jahuactal? How did it happen, and what factors enabled Tabascans to score their surprise defeat of this powerful foreign invasion? The chance that Arévalo had been looking for came in late October, when he received word that Méndez and Sánchez Magallanes had occupied Cunducacán with some seven hundred men, passionate but without training or adequate weapons. Arévalo determined to flush them out, and

Figure 18.  Colonel Gregorio Méndez Magaña, the Tabascan of Tabascans. Orphaned at an early age, he gave up his comfortable life as merchant and music-lover to lead a precocious victory over the French Intervention. But political currents sidetracked him, and 1887 Méndez died a lonely and broken man in Mexico City. His remains only returned to Villahermosa twenty-four years later, at the dawn of a revolution he would scarcely have understood. From Manuel Gil y Sáenz, Historia del Estado de Tabasco (1890).

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departed San Juan Bautista on the evening of the 31st; trusting too much in the superiority of his troops, he traveled undermanned, with only one hundred infantry, fifty cavalry, and a single cannon. Méndez had not actually intended on a showdown here, but feared that a retreat might discredit him as leader and for that reason settled on a trap. He lined the republican soldiers behind the dense woods on both sides of a narrow road. Interventionists reached the outskirts of Cunduacán municipio at 6:30 the following morning, where they fought a brief skirmish with outlying forces. Arévalo thought he had routed them, but this was nothing more than a sentry group posted to warn of his arrival. About half a league from the city the invaders came to a point called Jahuactal. The term jahuacte refers to a type of palm common in central Tabasco, and which produces an intensely hard, golf-ball-sized fruit seed similar to Yucatán’s cocoyol; reaching a height of fifteen to eighteen feet, the tree is today prized for its palm fronds, which make excellent thatch for roofing, although in older times humans found one end or another for all parts of the plant, even using the seeds as marbles and in other games.53 The suffix “-al ” indicates a planting of something, and “Jahuactal” thus means “grove of jahuacte.” It was into this supremely tropical landscape the interventionists blundered. The layout of the area should have alerted them to potential problems: the road lay on a strip of dry land a mere sixty feet wide, with swamps and dense forests (the jahuacte in question) on both sides. Moreover, months of Tabascan monsoon had saturated the ground, meaning that anyone who did not know this terrain intimately would be unable to leave the road in hot pursuit of guerrillas. Mounted riders in particular would have to keep to the narrow elevated strip of dry road. The invasion forces thus passed through an area unsuitable to cavalry, facing an enemy that outnumbered them nearly three to one, and which surrounded them as they progressed through a narrow passageway in hostile and unfamiliar territory.54 Oblivious to all danger signals, Arévalo pushed on. Republican ambushers were so energized that one impatient sergeant attacked prior to Méndez’s orders, thus precipitating the battle. At the first sign of enemy advance, Arévalo readied a cavalry of some fifty horses, but could not deploy them, for Méndez’s troops kept safely within the swamp forest on either side, putting out a withering sniper fire that interventionists could not answer. Arévalo fired a cannon shot dead ahead, felling both riders and their animals, but the real problem came from the guerrilla forces, their guns at

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nearly point-blank range, on either side. Within ten minutes all of the interventionists’ horses were dead or riderless, with panicked soldiers fleeing wildly. The piteous cries of injured men rang out from all sides. Arévalo tried to rally the survivors; as he later wrote, “I shouted to my soldiers that if was necessary to die, then leave the honor of imperial arms intact.” This bloodshed went on for slightly over two hours. Republicans actually exhausted their ammunition within the first thirty minutes, but fortuitously managed to capture a crate of interventionist munitions and hence were able to renew their fire. The only thing that saved the interventionists was repeated cannonades of scrap metal capable of tearing their victims to shreds. Overuse eventually caused this weapon to come off its mounting; the desperate survivors crouched in a tightly compacted square with their bayonets placed, but by this time Méndez’s soldiers were themselves exhausted and retreated back into Cunducacán, while Arévalo himself repaired to the nearby hacienda Trinidad to lick his wounds. The hard fruit of Jahuactal had fallen squarely on Arévalo’s own head. Indeed, his propensity for exaggerating now worked against him, since a surprise loss perforated all the false expectations he had so carefully cultivated, thus heightening the magnitude of his loss. Although the general did his best to project an air of confidence in subsequent communiqués, his overblown reports of vast guerrilla casualties failed to conceal the magnitude of the disaster. Not only had he lost a third of his men, three officers, and most of the horses, including his own; another third of the imperial troops lay wounded. Méndez, to the contrary, had lost a mere six men. He too had cavalry present, but never used them in the battle for the simple reason that he never had to. Ever disingenuous in his reporting, Arévalo insisted that the republicans had lined up before him on the Jahuactal road, thereby concealing his lack of judgment in entering into such the trap. On top of that, another resistance force under Teapa caudillo Lino Merino now threatened San Juan Bautista . . . forcing a return to the capital, as Arévalo explained, even though he lacked the wherewithal to march on the guerrillas in Cunduacán. What had gone wrong? Critical in the battle of Jahuactal had been Tabascan familiarity with the terrain and the people. Méndez had laid a clever trap that made use of the narrow roadway and surrounding swamp forest rendered all the more forbidding by autumn rains. Imperial hubris factored as well, with Arévalo convinced that he could take on a force three

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times his size without difficulty. Even to the end Arévalo continued to believe that the towns were loyal to him, and that the guerrillas passed through them essentially as criminal elements. But whatever the specific combination of causes, Jahuactal marked a turning point in Mexico’s war against the empire. From this point onward the comandante dedicated himself to a defensive siege, only seldom venturing out of the confines of San Juan Bautista. Méndez’s victory prevented imperial consolidation in Tabasco, making the state a redoubt of free Mexico and a nucleus of resistance for republican forces from the entire southeast. Tabasco would never be conquered.

Besieged Again From this point onward, interventionist Tabasco contracted into little more than a beleaguered capital-city enclave. Arévalo continued to struggle with San Juan Bautista’s empty treasury and found only token support from anxious merchants and hacendados.55 The guerrillas, conversely, now felt heartened by their victory and easily managed to gather both men and supplies. Lino Merino built up such a considerable force in the Teapa region that Arévalo found himself compelled to journey out once again into unpacified territory. By this point, the late November vast rains had made it impossible travel except by cumbersome boat expeditions fully evident to insurgents concealed along the shores. It was unnerving stuff: seventy men charging up the Teapa in the steamboat Conservadora, with river banks so narrow that they often scraped the sides of the ship. After a journey of some twelve hours, Arévalo managed to engage the enemy in an early morning battle; despite losses, most of the guerrillas successfully evacuated, while Merino himself fled in a swiftly moving Tabascan cayuco.56 The Tabascan stalemate thus entered its sixth month, with no sign of resolution. Worse still, two former allies of Arévalo, José María Maldonado and Antonio Sauri, got to General Tomás Marín, at that moment impatiently sifting reports at his office in the Carmen prefecture. As they saw it, Arévalo’s easy victory in taking San Juan Bautista had convinced the Spaniard that he was a military genius, the new Hernán Cortés. Stocking his ranks with Spanish soldiers who had deserted when their country withdrew from the trinational occupation of Veracruz, he allowed them to loot to their

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hearts’ content: money, animals, canoes, and servants were all fair game. Arévalo turned out to be the chief offender in this practice, arresting property owners and holding them in the capital until their families paid the ransom. Summoning their harshest damnation possible, Maldonado and Sauri declared him, “worse than Juárez.”57 Now convinced that the problem with rural pacification stemmed from Arévalo’s personal incompetence, Tomás Marín opted for a change of command. The replacement leader of the occupational forces was none other than Manuel Díaz de la Vega, an arrogant conservative whose brother Rómulo had briefly operated a private pre-Reform cacicazgo in Yucatán, and who himself had seen extensive service in the Caste War. The general left Veracruz with his estado mayor, or personal guard, on December 6 and traveled from Veracruz to Isla del Carmen and then set out for interventionist-dominated Frontera on the 15th. Díaz marked his arrival by announcing that he had come to bring peace and unity.58 By now this had become the standard imperialist spiel, one that not even its proponents believed. Indeed, in private Díaz recognized Tabasco could only be reduced by a massive show of force, and that was something he simply did not possess.59 His final destination, the beleaguered city of San Juan Bautista, offered little hope for a glorious victory. Arévalo had created a minor fortress out of the Casa de Gobierno, the building called the Principal, and the city blocks that immediately surrounded them. Heavily fortified breastworks lined the streets, while windows were boarded up or else modified for marksmen. The Granadan kept his soldiers loyal, or at least in place, through forced loans extracted from city merchants, on the grounds that he was defending their interests.60 In fact, Díaz’s journey to San Juan Bautista actually jeopardized the city’s defense. Because republican insurgents worked sniper positions along the Grijalva’s lower banks, the Conservadora had to go to Frontera to escort him back upriver. This vessel contained the interventionists’ most powerful weapons. It lacked the power to dislodge republicans from their redoubts, but at least kept them from advancing into the city proper. Once it was out of the way, Méndez launched his own artillery barrage, in the early morning hours of the 18th, then threw a thousand men at his target. Arévalo managed to repel them, but the mere fact of the assault revealed how weak the interventionist position had become.61 Exactly what sort of artillery the republicans used is hard to say. The heaviest cannons of the day would have been an impossibility in every way,

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too enormous and expensive for the forces that Méndez commanded. In all likelihood most of their pieces were late Bourbon Spanish leftovers, light field guns that fired projectiles ranging from one to four pounds. These were nice friends to have in a fight, but this same weaponry carried limitations. To begin with, a cannon was one of the more complicated technologies of its day; it could require seven or more men to operate, and some eight or nine tools for loading, firing, and cleaning. Méndez’s field cannons would have also suffered from the two weaknesses of their kind: the wooden carriages tended to fall apart with use, especially in chronically wet Tabasco, while the weapon’s portability came at the cost of a thinner bore wall more susceptible to fractures. The Spanish had also left a number of mortars lying around when they withdrew in 1821, and samples of these even turned up in Yucatán’s Caste War, in which they were next to useless. Mortars were short, stubby guns with extremely thick walls and a permanent mounting angle. Essentially siege weapons, they allowed assailants to fire projectiles vertically over a high wall at close quarters. Neither the siege of San Juan Bautista—and much less the skirmishes in the Yucatecan forests—had any place for said device, but people were reluctant to abandon anything that promised military superiority.62 Both cannons and mortars used huge quantities of black powder. Mexico itself happened to produce this item, but in locations far from Tabasco, and it would have been a constant struggle to keep the powder dry in the face of the province’s relentless humidity. In all probability, then, the weaponry of Méndez’s siege resembled the organization of his forces: highly improvised, and with little training involved. If anything, the fact that imperialists, fortified in a city of wood, held out for as long as they did against besiegers armed with artillery, and firing down from superior elevations, suggests that Méndez’s gunners left much to be desired. The general himself did not reach the capital until later that same day of the 18th; guerrillas harassed him along the way, but the Conservadora managed to disperse them with deadly discharges of scrap metal loaded into a cannon and fired like the pellets of some oversized shotgun. He arrived uninjured but facing a nearly impossible situation. To begin with, Arévalo was smoldering over his loss of command. The two men conferred on the French cannon boat Tourmente, with Arévalo taking the opportunity to recount his past achievements.63 But by the time Díaz reached the plaza of San Juan Bautista, he discovered that the small resistance army led by

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Gregório Méndez had grown considerably.64 Arévalo stayed on through the next month, but relief of command marked the beginning of his disaffection for the emerging empire, whose principal benefit for Napoleonic free radicals like himself was to allow them to indulge their personal fantasies. The siege speeded the fortunes of at least one resident. As republicans pushed closer to San Juan Bautista’s heart, Díaz removed the imprisoned consul James Mansfield and relocated him to a nine-by-twelve room further from the line of battle. When even that proved inadequate, Mansfield was placed aboard a steamboat anchored in midriver and from there to house arrest in his own consular offices. Never at a loss for the vivid description, Mansfield painted the Intervention’s final days in Tabasco thus: Ingress or egress from the place is now a matter of impossibility. Cruel reprisals are made on both sides and the state of the city or rather that part of it in the possession of the imperialists can hardly be worse as leaving one side the danger of the shot and shell which are continually flying in all directions, there is a complete dearth of the common necessaries of life. For instance, bread is sold at a rate, which is equivalent to a price of $200 per bbl. for flour and everything else in the same ratio. Private individuals considering themselves fortunate when they obtain any even at these costs.65

Turning to the citizenry, Díaz immediately imposed martial law, decreeing the death penalty for anyone who stole so much as a single peso, noting, “The adjudication of this class of crimes will be swift and summary.”66 Meanwhile, other forms of larceny remained perfectly legal. The general shook down merchants and property owners to the tune of $12,000, with some individuals paying as much as $1,700. Incidental protection money doubtless could be understood, but Tabasco was not a wealthy state, and these extortions cost imperialists their last remaining support.67 Outside the small area controlled by the interventionists, Gregorio Méndez had begun to sequester the goods and property of suspected imperialist sympathizers (some was later returned, some was declared forfeit and sold at auction).68 As the situation deteriorated even further, the general decreed the circulation of $2,104 in promissory notes, which city merchants were forced to accept.69 Díaz also appointed old José Julián Dueñas (who had coughed up $1,000) along with two others as a “reconciliation commission.” But these measures had little effect. Resistance leaders answered by assassinating two Spanish and two Mexican collaborators, and almost killed the commissioners themselves. Indeed, the imperialists controlled almost nothing except

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the Principal, which lay a short distance from the Grijalva’s west bank. Ensconced in redoubts throughout the town, the enemy pelted the Casa de Gobierno with a fierce if undisciplined fire.70 Under these bleak circumstances, interventionists could muster the strength for one more offensive measure. On February 2, Díaz threw a column against the republicans fortified in the Iglesia de la Concepción, not far from the Casa. The engagement quickly degenerated into gruesome hand-to-hand combat of machetes against bayonets, and while the latter was decidedly the superior weapon (stabbing thrusts being more efficient than hacking motions, precisely the advantage that Spanish swords enjoyed against the Aztecs’ obsidian-studded macuahuitl clubs), the republicans’ superior numbers eventually forced a withdrawal.71 Díaz managed to fortify his position with additional soldiers and two cannons from Veracruz. Unfortunately, one of the two weapons’ carriage broke apart in the first fifteen minutes of firing. Again, the incident underscores the limitations of artillery as a weapon in this time and place. Any number of factors could go wrong, including carriage failure, poor or wet gunpowder, and uncertain aim. As with the republicans, artillery certainly helped a cause, but still was not a definitive key to success. On February 11, the resistance fighters staged a frenzied raid on the Principal and at last succeeded in hacking open some of the doors. Once inside, they discovered that the interventionists had covered the floors with nail-studded boards, points upward, to check the invaders’ mobility. But this primitive obstacle was easily circumvented by tossing down an improvised gangway. Moreover, a simultaneous attack on the cavalry’s headquarters ultimately settled the battle in republican favor.72 With the fall of the Principal, the rebels also came into control of a modest supply of arms, several crates of ammunition, and that coveted if somewhat unnecessary siege weapon, a mortar. The situation was now clearly out of reach. Arrival of some fifty to sixty dejected interventionists from Chiapas simply compounded the hardship.73 Díaz received orders from French contra-admiral Bosse to evacuate all troops and material from San Juan Bautista; without their support, further occupation was impossible, and on February 28, Díaz organized a general retreat to Frontera. According to legend, the furious Arévalo walked back to the breastworks, symbolically emptied his pistol at the enemy lines, then boarded the Conservadora for Veracruz, never to set foot on Tabascan soil again.74 The time of the Napoleonic free radicals had ended, and the

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imperial occupation of the capital had failed.75 The battle for San Juan Bautista had lasted exactly forty-five days: from January 14 to February 27.

E m p i r e ’s E n d Tabascans had always lived close to nature, and in its works and capricious moods they found signs for their own triumphs and heartbreaks: rivers, one might say, as a sort of divine cursive handwriting. It was in this spirit that on October 2, 1865, Tabascans beheld the perfect metaphor for the failed French Intervention. A vast cloud of locusts flew over the land, so many that they darkened the sun for more than three hours. Like the French, they failed to set down or to ravage the crops, but instead flew on and disappeared to the west.76 The river people were to somehow escape the coming wave of imperial occupation and repression. The locusts may not have left a desert, but they certainly did their share of nibbling. The traumatic battle for San Juan Bautista had already left Tabasco visibly torn. US Consul Mansfield now walked free but physically ill and emotionally scarred; with his own country’s civil war now concluded and the problem of Confederate smuggling no longer an issue, he returned to the safety of Delavan, Wisconsin.77 “Business is almost entirely suspended,” wrote Benjamin Sanders, his replacement, in 1864, “and there is a general prostration in every branch of commerce; the frequent forced loans, in addition to the enormous taxes, having compelled many of the merchants to close their places of business.”78 The inner core of San Juan Bautista lay in ruins, while almost everywhere property was either destroyed, or bereft of a workforce, or abandoned altogether. And while interventionists had disappeared from Tabasco, imperial control in the Yucatán peninsula remained strong and the threat of an interventionist French return persisted. It was in this unsettled state of affairs that Gregorio Méndez promulgated decrees expropriating the haciendas of prominent prointerventionists.79 He also issued his December 1864 agrarian labor law. Perhaps Méndez had a fundamentally more humane outlook than the warmed-over Spaniards who had guided Mexico forty years earlier. The colonel reiterated most of the familiar tenets of rural Mexico—debt peonage, compulsory service, a round-up of broadly defined “vagrants”—but compared to its 1826 forerunner, the Ley

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Agraria showed some surprisingly enlightened tendencies. The stocks, chains, and mandatory whippings were all gone; debt ended with the death of the mozo, rather than passing to his heirs; sexual advances toward the worker’s spouse automatically canceled all contractual obligations. Méndez had a war to manage, and his decree specifically allowed mozos to opt out of estate service by enlisting in the army, even though a soldier’s pay was to be garnished to liquidate his debt to the estate. Doubtless he hoped that this clause would help to fatten enlistments. We know next to nothing of how the document functioned in practice, and if the Yucatán case is any indication, the rural poor normally preferred the estate over the barracks, but at least as a conceptual framework, the 1864 decree revealed considerably more enlightened thinking than its earlier counterparts.80 The conflict also touched Tabasco’s long-suffering clergy. Most readings of the period portray the church as the empire’s jilted sweetheart— the ardent supporter that never received the favor it expected.81 Tabasco confirms this tale. Its priests become all but invisible to us for the space of three years, mainly because the flow of parish correspondence was suddenly closed off as French steamers continued to patrol waters off the Frontera bar, and the Bishopric of Mérida was more distant than ever. In one of the rare communications from this renegade province, padre Eduardo Moncada, former head of the failed Legión Sagrada, complained that warships stationed at Frontera were intercepting and confiscating all communications. Letters had to be smuggled via canoe through isolated backwaters, to the bar at Chiltepec.82 The picture that did emerge in mid-1866, once French withdrawal allowed interprovincial correspondence to resume, was of an institution in crisis. San Juan Bautista’s center, with its churches and state buildings, lay in ruins. Frontera too had suffered from a nearly continuous four-year occupation. As padre Contreras lamented, “The war has placed us in a terrible conflict, and with nothing more than the help of God . . .”83 True, the destruction had been uneven, for in parishes far into the interior, places like Teapa, the finishing touches of a new church tower were just then in process.84 So too, the picturesque village of Tacotalpa, with its Appalachian topography and Spanish-style roofs, had become a bastion of routine by mid-1867, just as the empire was in its violent death convulsions in places like Querétaro and Mérida.85 Beyond the matter of buildings, the state’s isolation also meant a decline in clergy through natural attrition, with a

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shortage of priests in the Sierra, the Chontalpa, Centla, and San Juan Bautista itself.86 Nor were their resources sufficient to support their work, for tithes and major obventions were now items for antiquarian conversation, not living practice. That left only voluntary contributions—unlikely at best—and a collection of fees for clerical services. Oddly enough, dispensas de parentezco, or special permits to marry within family circles normally considered incest, actually increased. The explanation lay in a simple mathematics of racism: the Indians and castas (mixed race) were many, mestizaje was increasing, and the only option for many self-consciously white Tabascans was to wed with first and second cousins, hence generating a petition with its accompanying fee. But once couples had the dispensa, they tended to go through the civil service alone, instead of paying twice for the church wedding. And, as Tabascan curas noted to their dismay, “What saddens us the most is that the empire has made the law of the Registro Civil even stronger than before, as we read in the Mexico City newspapers.”87 Believers simultaneously had to pass through one of the most wrenching of all experiences for true believers of any faith or creed: generational change, in this case one that proceeded in tandem with the Reform War’s transition from one set of hero-leaders to another. Padre Francisco de Salas Hernández Oramas, cura of Cunducacán, caught sight of this very shift in attitudes. He found older folks reasonably devout. “But in regard to youth,” he lamented, “with few exceptions, they are so corrupt, that they are interested only in worldliness, the Devil, and the flesh, and however much I preach and exhort, it is though I were speaking in a desert.”88 These laments of moral decline may have amounted to little more than old-man history, but they were common enough. The elderly padre Moncada, his days of organizing proto-cristero militias behind him, struggled to keep up the motions of routine, dutifully smuggling back to Mérida the pittances he earned by charging for marriage dispensations.89 The state was poor, and what money people did have usually did not make it to the hands of the priest. The cura of Teapa found himself so strapped that his only contribution to funding the bishopric in 1866 was “a jar of peaches in syrup”— tasty, no doubt, but hardly the soil in which key social institutions foliate.90 Whatever beliefs may have dwelt in the Tabascan hearts, then, the province’s clergy remained poor, undermanned, and above all, alone, and whatever hopes the Tabascan priesthood may have entertained at the start of the Intervention ended in little more than bitter disillusionment.

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Yet despite traumas both secular and religious, the plagues ultimately passed over, leaving a people intact. Tabasco remained free territory for the next three years, while the rest of Mexico roiled in a prolonged and extremely bloody campaign to expel the French and suppress their national collaborators. French warships maintained their blockade of Gulf coastal Mexico until November 1866, but smuggling of both arms and humans became increasingly common. Tabascans responded to the challenge by converting their state into an armed camp. San Juan Bautista remained heavily fortified. Its commander, captain and engineer Rafael M. Téllez, erected a series of breastworks, stationed artillery in the high points along the river, and built a road from Atasta to Esquipulus for easy supply (and, if need be, escape). Gregorio Méndez also stationed sniper points in the nearby woods.91 The Tabascan capital consequently remained a liberalcontrolled free zone, one of the few significant cities where leaders of the national resistance could gather unmolested. In fact, when French troops captured Porfirio Díaz in Oaxaca in early 1865, prominent liberals from that state, Chiapas, and Veracruz convened here to elect Colonel Alejandro García as his successor. Their meeting was public knowledge, and reports appeared in newspapers outside the state.92 San Juan Bautista was an open city. The line of contention between imperial and republican forces now shifted eastward to a complex coastal and riverine area that stretched eastward from Frontera and San Juan Bautista, through the vast Tabascan swamp of Centla, around the south of Laguna de Términos, and into the riverine lowlands of what is today southwestern Campeche state, defined by capillary rivers bearing the names of Este, Champan, Pimental, Pejelagartos, and Candelaria. Interventionists did hold one final stronghold in Jonuta, in the remote region of Centla. But this was hardly a crux on some international chessboard. Centla’s swampy terrain isolated it from the rest of the province, and in fact for that reason, it served as a refuge for the Chontal Indians. Shortly after Méndez entered San Juan Bautista, a pro-French force of some two hundred men, led by Chiapan conservative Juan Ortega and friar Victor Antonio Chanona, occupied the town. Their reign was to be brief. A force of Chiapans led by one Comandante Miguel Utrilla attacked on April 19, 1864, joined by Tabascan commander Federico Alvarez (an astonishingly mature twenty-two year old from Ríos de Usumacinta) attacked this rump Intervention. Both Orgeta and Chanona

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managed to escape, burning the entirely wood city in the process and leaving Utrilla with a bullet in the leg as a memento of his victory.93 Fears of an imperial return to the Centla region persisted for the next year, and republicans regularly purchased extra grains and supplies in order to be ready for whatever challenge might come.94 The degree to which pro-Intervention sentiment persisted in Tabasco after mid-1864 remains open to speculation. Almost all surviving records from this point on come from the triumphant republicans, who emphasized consensus. At rare moments, however, signs of discord do peep through. For example, Méndez had to dispatch a squadron of thirty men to Cunduacán in order to prevent constant shoot-outs, including volleys directed at the jefe político and the prominent Sánchez family. The exact nature of these quarrels remains elusive, but circumstances suggest them to have been sequels of the recent liberation war.95 Even when victorious, Tabascans remained in conflict. In spite of these complications, though, the province’s role in leading the liberation of southeast Mexico remains beyond dispute. Like Haiti a half century earlier, it served as a place where would-be revolutionaries could find shelter and support. In late September 1866, three months after a grassroots republican revolt had broken out in Yucatán under minor propertyowner Buenaventura Martínez, implacable Campeche liberal Pablo García came to Villahermosa to conspire with Gregorio Méndez.96 García, who maintained close ties to Yucatecan republicans such as Eligio Ancona and Manuel Cepeda Peraza, used Tabasco’s comparative liberty to forge a resistance movement that ultimately captured his native city of Campeche following a six-month siege.97 Perhaps the greater challenge facing victorious republicans, one of which was to bear enormous consequences in later years, was the matter of who exactly was in charge. By a strict reading of the constitution, Dueñas’s resignation had placed command in the hands of his vice-governor, Felipe J. Serra. The problem was that Serra was colorless civilian and capitalino at a moment that called for decisive military action at the level of rural municipios . . . in other words, under the leadership of Méndez, Merino, and others. The terrible immediacy of the resistance tended to paper over this conflict, especially since the struggle made orderly conduct of state functions impossible anyway. Serra himself understood this point clearly enough at the moment, and in fact recognized Méndez as governor

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following Jahuactal, and remained content with the supporting position he had held under Dueñas.98 But once some degree of peace returned, the whole issue of civilian versus military authority returned throughout Mexico, ultimately leading the revolts of Porfirio Díaz against a more legal and lettered establishment that lacked his sanctification of battle scars. It was exactly the same division that bedeviled leaders of the 1895 Cuba Libre movement, with José Martí representing the civilian sector, while Máximo Gómez and other generals claimed authority by way of having leading the army.99 Secondary for the moment, the issue returned in force in Tabasco—and the rest of Mexico—once the Intervention had been retired to the history books. One unexpected change was the about-face in terms of Mexican relations with its powerful northern neighbor. The new consul, Benjamin W. Sanders, was an interesting man. Unlike so many of the individuals who had represented US interests in Tabasco, he manifested an intellectual curiosity that ranged beyond scrutinizing ship manifests. Intrigued by the pre-Columbian past, Sanders traveled extensively throughout the countryside even as the war ground on and came upon “the ruins of two ancient cities which have remained unknown and unnoticed since the days of the conquest.” According to Sanders, one lay fifteen miles west of Frontera, while the other was opposite “the present city of Laguna de Términos [that is, Carmen], and was known before the conquest as Xicalanca.” “I might add,” he continued in his extremely brief if picturesque account, “that the present sites of these cities are the pictures of desolation and can with truth be called ‘howling wilderness.’” Neither of these sites is evident today. (What the consul reported was almost certainly not the ancient trading port of Xicalango, which had consisted of little more than primitive structures made of perishables elements like pole and straw; possibly he had visited one of the smaller sites such as Santa Rita, Concepción, or Las Minas.) Sanders intended to push southward to the frontier area between Guatemala and Mexico, scene of ruins far vaster than he could possibly have imagined, but he ultimately returned to the United States, for reasons unknown, on January 18, 1866, leaving a space of some two years in which Washington, then embroiled in Reconstruction and the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, lacked diplomatic presence in river country.100 It is worth noting that Sanders was not the only one prying into regional prehistory. Even as these conflicts raged—and in some ways, because of

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them—a seminal event took place in the uncovering of the Tabascan past. In 1862 an individual named José María Melgar y Serrano visited the area of San Andrés Tuxtla, just to the west of the Tabascan border, and reported the discovery of the first Olmec colossal head. Melgar was himself a Mexican national and something of an archaeological free radical, a selftaught antiquarian and explorer who sought out rare, eye-catching pieces to acquire and resell for profit: what today would be called a saqueador, or looter. His ears pricked up to a report that a peasant near Río Hueyapan had uncovered a giant basalt sculpture, an item now known to the archaeological world by the antiseptic title of Monumento A. Like the sixteen others of its sort, the head is thought to represent a deceased and deified ruler and has become an emblem of both Tabascan and Veracruzan culture. While commonly identified with the Olmec site of Tres Zapotes, its real point of origin remains controversial. What is clear is that the French Intervention helped stimulate a market for the Mexican antiquities that were Melgar’s bread and butter. His discovery did indeed attract French curiosity, but Monumento A, with its unforgettable visage and incalculable value, was far too heavy to be spirited to some private collection, and Melgar had to content himself with a seminal report in the Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística. The colossal head today sits in the community museum of Tres Zapotes as a signpost to one of the enigmatic ancient worlds from which humanity arose.101 It also reminds us of how much archaeological knowledge emerged in the wake of imperial projects: in Tabasco, as in Egypt, the Tigris-Euphrates, and elsewhere. The allure of mist-enshrouded pasts notwithstanding, the consul soon found himself distracted by more pressing issues. During his brief tenure, Mexico and the United States made their peace, for in both countries, republican elements beset by challenges now had a newfound mutual appreciation. The Fourth of July, 1865, thus witnessed ceremonies hitherto unknown among the river people. As Sanders proudly reported, “The day was celebrated here as it had never been before in Mexico.” The city’s surrounding fortifications all wore patriotic bunting. Governor Méndez sent a public proclamation to Sanders, congratulating the Union on its recent victory. That evening, a delegation of San Juan Bautista’s leading citizens, proceeded by a brass band, called upon Sanders at his residence beside the main plaza, receiving in exchange a complementary US flag, a heartfelt thanks, and finger food aplenty. “My welcome was appropriately replied to,

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on their behalf, by Gov. Méndez.”102 However flattering to national pride, Sanders understood the self-interest behind such displays. Despite Méndez’s recent victories, the Intervention remained alive, and deadly, throughout most of the country, and US assistance was now more necessary than ever. The Tabascans too probably intuited his attitude, one that he preferred to restrict to his diplomatic correspondence with the State Department: The Mexicans, though indolent and in many instances superstitious, are essentially democratic in action and in thought. What they supremely need is a diffusion amongst them of Anglo Saxon activity and energy to their political movements and social development. This can be done by the prompt expulsion of the French, Austrian and Belgian contingents, and the establishment of the Republic under the Protectorate of the United States, and in so organizing the army that will afterward garrison the different parts of the country, that it may be composed equally of the United States and Mexican troops.103

Despite the posturings of self-interest, this convergence of interests, unimaginable a mere fifteen years earlier, did indeed come to pass, albeit at the cost of spoiling Sanders’s own, more imperialist recommendations. Granted, not every US citizen in Tabasco was so welcome. The painful struggle to expel the Intervention naturally invited reprisals from the vengeful Republican forces, and those reprisals did not respect nationality. Theodore Englehart, the southern physician who had opportunistically joined Arévalo’s government, fled the country with the fall of his patron. In late 1865 Méndez provided him with a safe-conduct pass to return, but Englehart made the mistake of passing through his old haunts in Macuspana. Republican soldiers immediately recognized and nabbed him, and demanded that he be shot. Their commanding officer refused, but rather suspiciously left Englehart unguarded, whereupon the indignant republicans did the job themselves, sometime in January of 1866.104 For the French Army as for Englehart, things had turned bleak. They controlled no more than the northeastern areas adjacent to Campeche state, republican armed resistance had erupted in the once solidly imperial Yucatán peninsula, and the withdrawal of French troops now seemed imminent, given France’s looming war with Prussia.105 To better regulate affairs in the haciendas, villages, and rancherías along the Usumacinta, the imperial authorities sent armed canoas as patrol units. Benito Azcuaga, for example, commanded the Diana; for his service he was promoted, in October

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1864, to resolve long-standing lawsuits in the town of Manamantel, quarrels whose exact nature eludes reconstruction. Azcuaga went on to become subprefect of Palizada the following June, and at approximately the same time organized support for Colonel Daniel Tranconis’s expedition against the Tabascan dissidents. Azcuaga also undertook a census of villages lying close to the city of Carmen, although the census itself apparently does not survive.106 The vast wetlands south of Carmen, meanwhile, continued to be a place of sniping and skirmishing for the next few years. To shore up republican control of this no-man’s land, Méndez appointed Colonel Lorenzo Prats, last encountered as he attempted to revolt against Victorio V. Dueñas during the Reform War. Prats’s family background connected him to some surprising currents of the larger world. His father José Encarnación Prats had sympathized with Miguel Bruno and briefly held the governorship just before Bruno’s capture and execution. Lorenzo’s paternal aunt Teresa, meanwhile, married none other than José Prim, a Spaniard of modest background who by dint of sheer talent rose to become one of his nation’s leading generals. Prim’s background inclined him to liberalism; he held his nose while leading the Spanish division that accompanied the French occupation of Veracruz in late 1861, and until the Spanish withdrawal from the Intervention a few months later, he remained one of the more credible of the occupation officers. Perhaps it was this brush with ersatz monarchy that moved Prim to lead the overthrow of Spain’s Queen Isabel five years later. Prim’s coup encouraged Cuban separatists to launch the Ten Years’ War (1868–78), thus laying the groundwork for Cuban independence and the long and tempestuous love-hate relationship between that island and the United States. For his troubles, Prim was shot dead in the streets of Madrid by a radical democrat who considered him too centrist and compromising. The exiled queen, incidentally, sent her son and future king, Alfonso, to the Theresianum Academy in Vienna, where he studied under none other than Karl Heller, the botanist who had explored Prats’s home territory of Teapa twenty years earlier. Like the Usumacinta itself, then, Prats’s family river had long and tangled tributaries.107 Unfortunately, Lorenzo Prats had no more luck here than in his earlier revolt. Following his defeat in a minor battle in Palizada on June 5, 1865, he fled to Tepetitán, bringing down accusations of incompetence and a permanent break between the Teapan and Gregorio Méndez. The wounds

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opened by this disagreement appear never to have healed; Prats sided with Porfirio Díaz during the Tuxtepec revolt and hence came away sanctified, whereas Méndez, who had done infinitely more in the defense of republican Tabasco, ended up marginalized in a series of minor posts, mostly far from home. The Palizada skirmish did have one other lasting effect, in that it halted the life and career of Claro Hidalgo, former Bruno ally, former client of Guatemala’s Rafael Carrera, and one of the first to revolt against Tabasco’s liberal government in 1855. Claro’s side won the engagement against the republicans, but in the process he caught a bullet in the leg, and subsequently died of gangrene in Carmen after refusing to allow an amputation.108 For all the many far-flung threads of history that these battles brought together, much of the activity served no purpose, however, since the area in question was lightly populated and of little strategic importance. Real power lay in the control of major cities; in key areas of economic production; and in the ability to place an army in the field. As the imperial project collapsed throughout Mexico in the early months of 1867, conservative supervision of peripheral areas like Los Ríos simply vanished. News of Maximilian’s defeat and execution in July 1867 reached the state more like a welcome afterthought than some sensational event, notification that the rest of Mexico had finally caught up with what the river people had accomplished years earlier. Of all the casualties of the French interventionist fiasco, none fared worse than would-be conservative strongman Eduardo Arévalo. His Tabascan government had lasted exactly seven months and two days; his subsequent career endured only slightly longer and was every bit as remarkable. He fought briefly in a Veracruz regiment, then in an abrupt about-face returned to the southeast to serve in the republican cause. What motivated this fiery Granadan? Arévalo claimed that he had supported the Intervention because it promised peace and order, and because Maximilian had pledged to work exclusively with Mexican nationals, but neither promise materialized, for in Arévalo’s own pithy phrase, Maximilian “was never so Austrian as when he proclaimed himself Emperor of Mexico.” Doubtless injured pride and the growing realization that the empire would fall— a presentiment stronger than ever after Appomatax Court House—also played a role. Whatever the exact combination of factors, there remained no choice but to join the resistance. At the beginning of April 1865 Arévalo

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led a ridiculously small party of eleven men in an attempt to liberate Isla del Carmen, but was quickly betrayed to French troops and fled eastward, into the land of remote, hard-luck ranchos south of Champotón. A conservative enemy spread the word that the arevalistas were bandits, and far from being greeted as liberators, they found themselves under fire at the rancho Cunujá, where Arévalo took a bullet in the leg. His men carried him in a hammock all the way to Sacluk, deep in the Guatemalan Petén, where he composed a manifesto justifying his decision to forsake the empire.109 The tireless and unpredictable Spaniard nursed his wounds, but could not accept inactivity. In early 1867 he went to Mérida and took up sides with Cepeda Peraza, who had inherited leadership of the Yucatecan republicans from founder Buenaventura Martínez y Basto. In this case Arévalo’s politically inconstant militarism proved fatal. He led a squadron of men in an assault on imperialists fortified behind the pacas, or bales of henequen fiber, in plaza Santa Ana, carrying a section of a door in front of himself as a shield. But the would-be conqueror of Tabasco perished, along with several of his followers, in a headwind of bullets. An air of suicide informed his final actions, as if taken in order to atone for having cast his fortunes with a side that was so manifestly wrong. Dates of Arévalo’s death vary, but most accounts place it at early May or early June (the latter most likely, given the time of this final republican siege). The last of the Napoleonic free radicals to trouble Tabascan waters, he was buried in the church of barrio Santa Ana, slightly to the north of Mérida’s center. Unlike many Yucatecan churches, however, Santa Ana contains no lapidary stones on its walls or floors; the location of his final resting place, much like his origins and his ultimate motivation for entering Tabasco’s swamp of insoluble disputes, remains elusive.110

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By 1881 Tabasco’s reputation for exotic danger had situated the province within the realm of dime novels, case in point being El Rubio Bravo, King of the Swordsmen: or, The Terrible Brothers of Tabasco. The author of this work was one Colonel Thomas Boyer Monstery, “Champion-at-Arms of the Two Americas,” an expert boxer, swordsmen, duelist, and international adventurer whose own exploits formed the basis of his fiction, and who was biographied even in his lifetime. Baltimore-born Monstery (1821–1901) haled from Danish background and purportedly picked up the nickname “Rubio Bravo,” or “Daring Blonde,” for his adventures in El Salvador. His rollicking narrative recounts the tale of a heroic gringo who saves longsuffering Hondurans from the predations of the terrible Gómez gang of Tabasco, seven siblings who plundered Central Americans for loot, women, and sheer sport. The book’s typology of heroes and villains apparently owed to real experience, since Monstery adored Central Americans, but detested Tabascans, who he claimed had robbed him of “$50,000 in gold and jewels” when passing through Pichucalco in 1860. El Rubio Bravo consequently had axes to grind against the river people. But for all its florid

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plot and questionable assertions, Monstery’s work did build on his substantial knowledge of Latin American history and geography, and above all put its finger on the sort of dubious fame that by now had attached itself to this unruly land.1 For long-term publicity, however, no one topped Edmund McIlhenny in making Tabasco a household synonym for tropical fury. This canny transplanted Marylander, one of the many larger-than-life figures who inhabit Louisiana history, launched his own brand of hot sauce in 1868, even as the rest of the South was struggling to overcome its crushing defeat. Legend held that he had received the “Tabasco peppers” from a mysterious Confederate infantryman named Friend Gleason, who promptly disappeared into the maw of the Civil War. After Union forces torched his own farm, McIlhenny discovered that the pepper plants alone had survived and even prospered—an unmistakable sign of their providential nature. Sagely counseled by freedmen who knew the secrets of the chile from Africa and the Caribbean, he mixed salt, vinegar, and pepper mash to create the flavor that conquered the world. The truth behind Tabasco sauce was somewhat more prosaic. McIlhenny apparently learned the recipe from a nearby plantation owner fond of embellishing upon French cuisine and then took advantage of his father-in-law Daniel Avery’s inexhaustible salt dome, located on a swamp island, to launch production. In fact, some of McIlhenny’s most devoted customers were actually Yankee soldiers, who began sending home bottles of this delicious condiment. Whatever the specific combination of events, his branding technique exceeded all possible expectations, and Tabasco sauce, together with its indelible image of a sultry wetland, soon found its way to far corners of the globe: to breakfast in the White House, to cafés in downtown Tulsa, to bivouacs in Vietnam, to some of the first Himalayan expeditions.2 How much contemporary Tabascans themselves knew of these marketing coups remains doubtful. Even as Edmund McIlhenny was elevating scrambled eggs to an art genre, residents of places like Tacotalpa and Balancán had to grapple more with reality than with the legends attached thereto; as the last colorados disappeared beyond the horizon, and Maximilian went to his storied end on the hillsides of Querétaro, the river people had to confront the fact that glorious victories had borne ambiguous results. In fact, all of Mexico found itself in the same situation. The Liberal Party had led the resistance, and its sacrifices and eventual victory bathed

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it in a legitimacy hitherto unattainable. But as tends to happen with dominant parties, liberals themselves immediately splintered into a series of rival currents and caudillos. The civilian faction feared what it perceived as a slide into militarism, while officers resented claims to power on the part of those who had born the sword, or suffered the hardships of the campaign. Popular elements, meanwhile, saw their participation in the restoration as the basis of claims to a greater say in state and national affairs. Post-French executions had been few, meaning that Mexican conservatives, the real backbones of the ersatz empire, awaited their opportunity to work their way back to power. On top of all this, the republican restoration transpired amid deep insolvency at every level of Mexican society. Hardly surprising, then, that in working their way through this period, Tabascans followed a long and curving path, as river roads tend to be.

T h e Pe ac e T h at Wa sn’t Those seeking a simple explanations for post-Intervention violence in Tabasco are doomed to disappointment. Rather like the instability that plagued Mexico between 1920 and 1935, a cluster of related tensions guaranteed violent uprisings and repression (and not necessarily in that order). The first source of conflict was the backlog of anger and resentment that civil wars often leave behind. Almost everyone held a grudge against some fellow Tabascan—over a killing, or perhaps theft of property, or perhaps failure to play a role in the liberation. Some expected preferment they had failed to receive. The Tabascan population had grown steadily throughout this mayhem, reaching approximately eighty-three thousand by 1869, and that fact meant more people than ever competing for the province’s limited resources.3 Beyond that lay the matter of political divisions. No Tabascan could any longer proclaim himself a conservative, for alliance with the French mercenaries had discredited their cause. But liberals immediately factionalized into two parties: the progresistas and the radicales. Neither group was particularly progressive, and certainly not radical. In fact, these two parties had relatively little to do with ideas or political philosophy, and a great deal to do with personalism and private ambitions. Nor were they mere puppets of great national caudillos. Alliances with outside figures and movements remained relatively weak, particularly given the enormous

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differences separating Tabasco from the national capital, and as events would show, state-level allegiance to any external cause was fleeting and quickly reversible. The split originated with the decision to remove Gregorio Méndez and replace him with the latter’s civilian predecessor, Felipe de Jesús Serra, in June 1867; the following year Juárez extended his appointment until 1871. Who lay behind this decision is a mystery. Both Juárez and Díaz had an interest in demilitarizing the society, given the fact that the army was now consuming more than two-thirds of the national budget. Either man may have been tempted to isolate individuals deemed too powerful at local levels. Perhaps Juárez, already fearful of excessive military power arrayed behind his emerging rival Díaz, played a hand in removing Méndez. Or perhaps Díaz recognized Méndez’s lack of interest in the movements of 1871 and 1876, and preferred less independently minded allies. Whatever the motives, this decision led to Radicals siding with Juárez and Serra (and later, Juárez’s successor, the far more elitist Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada), and sharing their stridently anticlerical attitudes. Progresistas, really a loose collection with provincial-level cacique interests at their core, made hay by denouncing undue federal intervention in Tabascan affairs, much as the young Porfirio Díaz would do on the national stage. Like Díaz, the progresistas took a more pragmatic position toward the Catholic Church and former interventionists, both an ongoing presence in the state. Finally, both sides had their figureheads. Radicals attracted diverse claimants to power, including Pedro Sánchez Magallanes, son of Gregorio Méndez’s close ally. Progesistas, meanwhile, found a public face in old-timers like Victorio V. Dueñas, or in Simón Sarlat Nova, physician, scion of a patrician family, son of former governor Simón Sarlat García and one of the province’s dawning literary stars. A comparison with neighboring Yucatán, which experienced a similar political fission, is instructive. In both cases, what might be called the anti-Juárez opposition party gelled around key individuals and economic interests. But Yucatán had its Caste War, and its die-hard interventionists, mostly eastern military officers, and the peninsula’s anti-Juárez group tended to draw on this crowd, with its settler mentality and pseudopopulist rhetoric, for support.4 In Tabasco, to the contrary, the Intervention had been too brief and abusive to garner real support and lacked the appeal of military conquest (and Indian slaving) that drew in men like Valladolid’s

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Colonel Francisco Cantón. Nor were there votes to be gleaned from promising shares in railroad interests, or privatization of ejido lands of prime henequen country, since neither of these economic opportunities existed in Tabasco. Finally, neither side adopted an openly proclerical position. Either this approach had become politically infeasible, or more likely, neither side initially perceived the church as much more than collateral damage. These grievances subtracted, there remained personal scores, frustrated ambitions, anger over political exclusion, and avarice concerning the rights to future land and timber concessions. Propelled by this rough portfolio of causes and grievances, Tabascans squared off once again. Post-Intervention violence began almost immediately, and it started with the matter of spoils. A rebellion followed Serra’s appointment, this time led by one Eduardo Rosario Bastar of the Sierra. Bastar had provided heroic services during Arévalo’s defeat and naturally concluded that some significant promotion was in the works. He traveled all the way to Mexico City to collect what he thought was his due, but was met with indifference. Suspecting lack of support on the part of known civilian governor Serra, Bastar returned to Teapa in November 1867, only to find both town and state roiled in election controversies. In the absence of clear-cut authority, the disappointed and angry veteran unilaterally assumed Teapa’s jefatura política and organized a seventy-man march on Frontera, drawn by the hope of extorting merchants to fund a revolution. But luck ran against him, and Bastar came away with nothing more that $292, some bolts of cloth, and thirteen barrels of wheat . . . hardly the engines of a war machine. Despite this pitiful underprovisioning and the complete lack of a justifying pronouncement, Bastar’s movement drew in enough post-Intervention discontents to inspire minor echoes throughout coastal Tabasco. Porfirio Díaz’s man in the southern Gulf, Colonel Francisco de Paulo Aguilar, chased Bastar back to Tacotalpa; on December 15, Aguilar’s lieutenant Juan Morales at last caught up with the rebels at Azufre, a hot mineral bath (and still a functioning resort today) near Teapa, dispersing them. Bastar refused to surrender and during the attack perished in a hail of lead while trying to mount his horse.5 Still, discontent simmered in the border region of Teapa for the next year.6 Another, and less documented, revolt erupted in Huimanguillo in March 1870. It was led by former republican commander Antonio Gil, presumably drawing from connections he had formed during the anti-Intervention war, but it was soon suppressed; beyond that, we

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know virtually nothing.7 But Governor Serra found the state of affairs so unsettling that he stationed a detachment at the Santa Ana bar in order to guarantee that the lumber exports, whose revenues undergirded much of the government operations, continue unmolested.8 Radical-progressive conflicts intensified dramatically in the summer of 1871. As in so many parts of Mexico, unrest reflected the controversies surrounding the national elections of June and July, in which Benito Juárez engineered a victory over the ambitious Díaz. In Tabasco this same year witnessed the second round of state-level voting after the empire’s fall, making it a litmus test of the ballyhooed ideal of no reelection. Hoping to capitalize on his status as old-guard liberal hero, progresistas nominated aging Victorio V. Dueñas. Progresista legislatures, working in concert with key national-guard commanders, ran Serra out of the governor’s office and forced congress to accept the appointment of Dueñas. But Gregorio Méndez and many others detested Dueñas as a symbol of the do-nothing civilians who had offered so little in the way of resistance to the Intervention and prevailed upon Juárez to dispatch two hundred soldiers under Colonel Bonifacio Topete. Dueñas’s governorship lasted a mere five days. Following the national pattern, progresistas drew support from the discontent that followed the election of Benito Juárez, and from Porfirio Díaz’s ill-planned revolt of La Noria, formally proclaimed on November 8 but in fact in the works since well before national elections ever took place.9 The Tabascan congress named the Yucatecan-born Ignacio Vado Ruz to serve out Serra’s term until new elections could be organized. These anarchic conditions were, as the old phrase puts it, “bad for business,” and the man fated to defend US interests in the face of emerging liberal infighting was none other than the polymath Transylvanian, Count Félix de Nemegyei. He was an astute choice for consul, since he knew, and had practiced, most of the tricks of the world of commerce. Nemegyei may have carried a pro-Confederate past (hardly a rarity in these parts), but he also had an extensive knowledge of the Spanish language and Mexican society and politics. He understood perfectly well that, as he put it, “Legitimate commerce of importation is hardly carried on, smuggling is the general mode of commerce, and this through the customhouse at half shares with the customs officers.”10 The consul could live with such abuses; after all, it was not his money. More irritating was the fact that between his appointment and the departure of predecessor Benjamin Sanders, a nearly

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two-year period when there was no consul to raise his voice in protest, the Tabascan government had grown accustomed to shaking down foreigners. Faced with crippling revenue shortfalls, severe destruction, and smoldering political unrest, Governor Felipe Serra imposed an ad hoc $125 per foreigner levy in order to guarantee exemption from draft into the Mexican Army. All this was done informally through the jefes políticos so as to allow deniability. It was a world Nemegyei had known for years, but which he now found himself in the difficult position of confronting.11 The consul was no fool, and as early as June 1871 perceived the link between growing violence and the upcoming vote. In requesting a manof-war, he observed that “with the increasing excitement of the coming elections, assassinations are of frequent occurrence, industry and commerce nearly paralyzed.”12 He never received this protection, but his concern was born out the following month, when a full-scale revolt broke out. The Hungarian astutely recognized that this was not some nationally organized movement, but rather a state-level bloodletting over who was to control post-Intervention spoils.13 Nemegyei’s premonitions were realized in September 1871, when Tabascans went to the polls again—at least the highly limited number of Tabascans who could go to those polls— and the progresistas came out on top, with Dueñas assuming the governorship for a final time. Now it was the radicals’ turn to revolt. Under the leadership of Pedro Magallanes Sánchez they launched a full-scale uprising early the following year. Forces of the progresista government responded with overwhelming force, besieging Magallanes in Cárdenas for three weeks; Paraíso, a coastal redoubt of radical interests, was burned to the ground.14 Regarding this uprising’s leaders and followers, the former is easier to reconstruct. Nemegyei, who certainly had no love for a group increasingly inclined to extort foreign merchants, identified Pedro Sánchez Magallanes and one Salvador Colorado as the titular commanders, but noted cryptically that “the real leaders are persons who remain behind the curtains till its success.”15 He probably referred to Policarpo Valenzuela, the wealthiest nonforeigner in the state. Valenzuela deep ties of personal friendship to Sánchez’s father; he had actively supported the anti-Arévalo struggle and had every reason to want to take down foreign logging competition a peg or two. Don Polo would also have been smart enough to avoid visible participation in the revolt. However, the matter remains at the level of conjecture.

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More troubling still was the matter of lower-class involvement. Doubtless recruits included workers, clients, poor relatives, and the usual assortment of riverbank toughs, all familiar as secondary protagonists in the last halfcentury’s political saga. Still, there was cause for alarm. Tabascans only had to look eastward to see a Caste War that now in its twenty-fifth year demonstrated extraordinary virulence, with Maya rebels regularly raiding into Yucatecan villages. Everyone was perfectly aware that this catastrophe began when quarreling Yucatecan Hispanics recruited indigenous peasants to do their dirty work. Nemegyei believed he saw much the same mistake repeated before him. “This Radical party,” he wrote in January 1872, have at their head some of the most notorious characters of the state and have not only committed outrages, murder and robbery, but have caused the uprising of many of our Indian villages and thereby inciting the Indians to a war of “Castas,” at all times considered the most fearful and destructive of policies, which is no sooner carried out than it is bitterly repented of by its own promoters.16

Doubtless the real danger of a Yucatecan situation was remote, given the fact that Tabascan Indians in no way constituted a majority and were divided into different ethnic groups dotted around remote rural areas. Nevertheless, there is probably some truth to his accusation that radicals had been trying to drum up popular support among a lower class that they otherwise disdained. Eventually a group of some sixty men, led by one Asunción Carbonell, attacked Frontera on January 29, 1872. Rallying behind cries of “Viva Juárez, and death to foreigners!” they easily overpowered the fifteen-man garrison, then took whatever they could extort from foreign merchants, including the consul and vice consul. Nemegyei managed to get his family aboard the US schooner Teddie, but this most recent stage of radical harassment ended his Tabascan dreams. With his mahogany cutting sacked and his family and commercial house threatened, he abandoned river country and river commerce for the stability of the United States, never to travel more along the Grijalva’s brooding splendor.17 The progresista-radical war outlived the La Noria revolt by several months, and in fact, only crescendoed on May 30, 1872, after Díaz himself had given up. During the preceding conflicts, radical forces had killed Colonel Cornelio Castillo, brother of Eusebio, the Teapa carpenter who

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had first raised his hand against the Intervention. Don Cornelio’s assassination had been singularly horrific, for his captors had literally hacked him to ribbons with their machetes. Women of San Juan Bautista gathered for the wake, but mournful resignation was not on the agenda: rather, they grew so infuriated by the sight of his desecrated body that they headed for the jail with the intention of shooting all of the recently arrested radicals. In this society of deepest machismo, there was no greater insult than to be publicly shamed by derisive females. A detachment of the national guard quickly joined in, and by the time it was all over, the enraged lynch mob had slaughtered thirty defenseless prisoners in their cells and had injured innumerable others, including Governor Serra himself.18 The bloody ferment of 1871–72 ultimately subsided without generating any substantive change in political alignments. Porfirio Díaz’s own Oaxacan-based revolt of La Noria failed definitively with the battle of La Bufa, in Zacatecas, on March 2, 1872; Díaz’s mentor-uncle Félix was assassinated in Juchitán, Oaxaca; while the caudillo himself fled to the United States disguised as a priest. Finally, the sudden death of Benito Juárez on July 18 momentarily took the wind out of rebel sails, allowing incumbent provincials like the Tabascan progresistas to hang on via judicious application of force, legal or otherwise. It hardly mattered that progresistas tended to support Díaz, for that was not the point: provincial uprisings needed national causes to cloak their true designs, and in the absence of those causes risked isolation and defeat. But the passing of Juárez placed power in the hands of his more doctrinaire associate, jurist Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada. Brother of the man who had authored the eponymous 1856 legislation mandating the breakup of corporately held properties, Sebastián had worked shoulder to shoulder with Juárez through the upheavals of the 1850s and 1860s. He quickly amnestied everyone involved in the La Noria uprising (albeit with loss of rank and privilege), but hung tough on laws bent on secularizing the society and on preserving the sort of centralized machine politics that Juárez had constructed to deal with the anarchic aftermath of the Intervention. His five years in power thus witnessed a renewed Liberal Reform at the national level.19 These disturbances crippled effective government, but they also troubled Tabasco’s other key institution, the long-suffering Catholic Church. For the devout, things were already bad enough, if only for the ongoing problems generated by the province’s punishing climate. For example, in April 1869

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the wooden church at Balancán, itself recently reconstructed, burned to the ground, taking a good part of town with it; poverty and political upheaval still prevented its reconstruction as of 1875.20 In the summer of 1874 new inundations brought life of the Teapa area to a virtual standstill. The cura, who had recently launched a campaign for contributions to reconstruct the town church, found the matter paralyzed through a combination of apathy and general hardship.21 Almost everywhere, the churches themselves had degenerated to a thread-bare austerity that would have warmed the hearts of early Franciscans. By the early 1870s most church decorations were now in private hands, originally a precaution against having them stolen by cash-hungry caudillos in search of treasures to sell. Predictably, custodians of these coveted and prestigious imágenes soon came to see themselves as the rightful owners. Should priests try to reclaim them, parishioners merely went to the civil authorities, who automatically sided with private citizens.22 Tensions between pro- and anticlerical Tabascans expanded dramatically under Lerdo’s doctrinaire leadership. Indeed, renewed Reform found fertile ground in this province, where church-state conflict had been common since the late Bourbon period, often growing from nothing more controversial than quotidian matters of management. Teapans knew that they were poor, but, they asked, did this justify the heavy drinking of cura Casiano Osorio?23 In other cases, however, deeper philosophical divides came into play. Communities like Jalpa had a reputation as the cradles of liberal opinion; it was a short journey from there to other points, “and there is no shortage of preachers throughout the pueblos, river banks, and sitios who exhort compliance with the Reform laws.”24 Similarly, the cura of Frontera discovered that in the post-Juárez order, “The inhabitants of this town, who only look for a pretext not to contribute to the material support of the cura, deny me any sort of resources.”25 The best-documented case of lerdismo in practice comes from Tacotalpa, in the heart of the southern sierra. Here the renewed Reform also pitted faithful laymen against the clergy. Cura Manuel Ortiz maintained only a tenuous hold over his parish’s mayordomos, men committed to the care and veneration of the santo patrón; he adamantly opposed fiestas for the santo in his absence, a practice to which the mayordomos themselves were inclined. Like most priests, Ortiz saw it as his inalienable right to preside over public religious functions, while everyone understood the revenues that fiestas and processions generated. But Tacotalpa was a large and overwhelmingly rural

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parish, and cura Ortiz could not be everywhere at once. As soon as he left the cabecera, the mayordomos took matters into their own hands and held the fiesta according to their own preferences, flatly ignoring the protests of Ortiz’s representative, the fiscal. They found an ally in secular officials such as the town’s magistrate, who, in allowing public processions despite the official prohibitions, saw a way of using popular religious sentiment against the pesky Ortiz. Fiscales and cantores in outlying communities behaved in much the same way as their mayordomo counterparts in the larger towns, conducting processions and singing salves, and collecting the revenues normally destined for the priest. Under such circumstances, unorthodox folklore practices naturally inserted themselves. In nearby Tapijulapa it had become custom for the fiscal to perform a type of folk baptism, sprinkling the newborn infant with water in exchange for a ceremonial cup of aguardiente. For all intents and purpose, Tacotalpa had become a folk church in which the cantores even refused to make available certain matracas or noise-makers which the priests normally used during Holy Week, on the grounds that they themselves needed them!26 Like so many other values of Hispanic society, the quarrel found its symbolic embodiment in religious iconography. In April 1875 Tacotalpa’s ayuntamiento ordered padre Ortiz to turn over the church’s decorations and iconography “as interests belonging to the people.” Ortiz tried stonewalling his antagonists by hiding the statues and paintings in his own house, but faced with a forced entry yielded to the inevitable. The padre found himself left with nothing but the bare essentials necessary for saying mass and decided to relocate to Teapa, where he hoped to count on more support. Unfortunately, Teapa’s ayuntamiento gave him the same treatment and designated a commission to oversee confiscation of the icons. When Ortiz resisted, the commission repaired to jefe político Manuel Merino who, after arguing with the padre for two solid hours, had the imágenes carted away to be weighed and inventoried. The commission even took away the church key.27 Ortiz may have been stubborn and inflexible, but the ayuntamiento’s enthusiasm exceeded mere fidelity to the law. Rather, secular expropriation of imágenes carried the vindictiveness of a new political force intent on putting a rival in his place. Jefes políticos throughout Tabasco now took similar actions, sparing only those priests whom they considered appropriately subordinate. Returning once more to the example of Tacotalpa, the jefe controlled smaller villages through the jueces subalternos, instructing them

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to deny new curas entry into their own churches in such outlying communities as Tapijulapa.28 Meanwhile, former cura Ortiz could not return to his old home of Tacotalpa because of threats on his life. He eked by in San Juan Bautista, picking up pittances on baptisms, the last remaining sacrament for which people were willing to hand over a coin. Capitalinos, he lamented, had too much freedom of thought and too little conscience, and for the most part were under the sway of the Merino family, fire-eating liberals all.29 This philosophical controversy over the role of the spirit in the modern world played itself out in the local newspapers. Expresión del pueblo sided with Lerdo, taking up the cause of a young man denied the rites of matrimony because his liberal political beliefs. The typical Mexican priest, Expresión insisted, was a “disciple of Torquemada,” interested in little more than plots and profits, while clerical disloyalty under the empire was notorious. Proclerical forces responded in the prochurch publication El bien público.30 The back-and-forth had the effect of making permissible the mention of ideas once strictly silenced, and it was under these circumstances that dissident religious ideologies, specifically in the form of spiritism, or spiritualism, now seeped into the region. Adherents to this movement held that human beings, using séances, Ouija boards, possessions, and even the new art of photography, could open conversations with spirits in order for both living and dead to evolve toward a higher plane of existence. From Bishop Leandro Rodríguez de Gala in Mérida came letters prohibiting Catholics from reading “the Demon’s books . . . all of which pertain to Spiritualism.”31 In particular, the bishop cautioned against the writings of the eccentric French astronomer Nicolas Camille Flammarion (1842–1925), who, when not uncovering proof of life on Mars, found time to become a leading voice in the quest for living-to-dead communications. His funeral oration for the movement’s legendary founder, Allan Kardec, set the seal on Flammarion’s status as the world’s foremost spiritist.32 However, anti-Flammarion damage control failed to suffocate the Mexican middle class’s newly awakened curiosity. As in Yucatán, where the creative journal La ley de amor (“The Law of Love”) and its doctrine of otherworldly conversations proved irresistible to those tired of intellectual doldrum, spiritism was beginning to catch fire in Tabasco. The pseudoscience of communing with disembodied souls quickly spread among literate individuals of San Juan Bautista, and

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by 1876 a women-only circle, headed by a certain Catalina Zapata, held meetings and published their own newsletter.33 Doubtless it strikes us as odd that people so poor, so isolated, and so directly confronted with the hardships of life should suddenly focus their attention on esoteric doctrines that had no basis whatsoever in demonstrable fact. Yet this was precisely the point. Even under the limiting circumstances of river country, the human mind remained engaged and inquiring, especially to the grand unanswerable questions of existence. The more naked and brutal the reality, the more urgent the need to find alternate planes where humanity might dwell. One man who earnestly tried to think his way through this dilemma was Manuel Gil y Sáenz. Even from the distance of 150 years, Gil remains a profoundly sympathetic character, a man almost Tennysonian in his struggle to reconcile faith with the glittering attractions and grim power of the modern age. Promoted to vicario of Tabasco in 1869, Gil naturally accepted the tenets of faith and embraced the Catholic Church as a positive moral influence on the society. But he was far from reactionary. Deeply pro-Tabascan, his long tenure in Macuspana parish belied a passion for science and letters, his many writings share the liberal yearning for growth, material progress, personal responsibility, and overall uplift. In appraising the ills of his society, his private correspondence tended to avoid antigovernment screeds and instead laid blame on the people’s incorrigible character. As he lamented in 1870: If your Illustrious Holiness were to study the character of the Mexican people, and above all, that of our Tabascan, we have reached such a state of indifference regarding ideas of religion that the people are very close to believing in nothing. They do not fear censure, and perhaps do not even call in a priest to give absolution in that supreme and terrible hour. . . . I do not consider myself a cura, but rather a missionary for Christ, conquering what has already been lost.34

Two years later, reviewing the effects of the Liberal Reform, Gil found the indifference deepening even further; contributions had now dwindled to practically nothing, and when calling a priest to bless their homes, they offered him nothing more than something to drink. “Tabasco will always be Tabasco!” he lamented, “even when I kill myself with good works.”35 Gil understood that the church had relatively few cards to play in this struggle. Indeed, there was nothing to be gained by direct confrontation.

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The vicario tried to limit complaints by removing priests such as padre Vega of Nacajuca, men who simply made matters worse by taking the hard line. However, given the shortage of available hands there was little option except to transfer them to other parishes, where the whole process tended to repeat itself.36 Curas read Rodríguez de Gala’s October 19 circular warning Catholics not to cooperate with the Reform laws and for good measure carried out a census of all remaining church decorations in the event of future expropriations.37 But were further Reform wars in the offing? In December public altercations broke out in Teapa and Jonuta; while denying the political content of these episodes, poorly documented and still little understood, the opponents of Reform nonetheless held that “they are bad omens, and it is well known that when a nation is in a ferment, the fact is manifested or begun by such minor symptoms at the onset.”38 The other important tactic was to withhold religious rites, services that despite liberal doctrine were often considered critical to life passages such as birth, marriage, and death. Men who had sworn to the constitution were denied religious weddings unless they signed a written retraction; this applied regardless of person or rank, a point evidenced clearly enough when Eleuterio Vallasano, commander-in-chief of the federal forces in Tabasco, tried to marry into the influential Lanz family, only to find his allegiance to lerdista policies blocking the path.39 Gil y Sáenz floated a plan for prohibiting clerical visits to haciendas where owners refused to pay the religious contribution.40 Unfortunately, the vast reservoir of faith and good will that many churchmen thought the public held toward the church simply evaporated. Regarding matrimony, the burden of living together in sin resulted in not as ponderous a chain as previously imagined. Without the cudgel of sanctions, most Tabascan Hispanics simply withheld material support, just as Yucatán’s Maya peasantry had done sixty years earlier. Still another response was to throw a positive spin on the Reform concept itself. In modern Mexico the idea of separation of church and state has had a far different meaning than in the adjoining United States. In the case of the United States, secularist governance prospered for the fact that the nation’s various churches were many and divided. The Mexican state, to the contrary, had to deal with a pervasive and monolithic institution whose hegemony and influence were greater than its own. Rather than a kind of passive and formal separation of the two (for example, refusing to allow state funds to underwrite religious education), separation in Mexico

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has always meant a forceful reduction of church wealth and privilege in order to allow the relatively weak state to assume greater importance. In the United States, the task has always been to keep religion out; in Mexico, it is to take it out, a far trickier proposition. Tabascan clergy were certainly aware of the distinction. Even when they did accept the idea of reform, they advanced a more passive version, one in which the Catholic Church would accept the existence of other religions but, in exchange, would be let alone. The expression “libertad de cultos” could thus also mean the Catholic Church’s freedom from state harassment, and “la independencia del Estado y de la Iglesia” could also mean the latter’s freedom from the former, a spiritual laissez-faire in which the institution of the forefathers almost certain stood to prosper.41 Under these circumstances, the only abiding support for the church was Tabasco’s indigenous peasantry. Evidence for this point emerges in places like Macuspana. Once the parish of Yucatán’s great cura Raymundo Pérez, then later shepherded by Gil y Sáenz, by 1878 the town had largely given up on its commitment to the clergy; weddings and funerals brought nothing, and even vecinos with money had no interest in paying for church services. As cura Tiburcio Talango (a native of Seibaplaya, Campeche state) lamented, “The only ones who recognize the church are the unfortunate Indians who, turning a deaf ear to the propaganda of Catholicism’s enemies, continue to bear all burdens on the road to truth.”42 Similarly, in Puscatán, a tiny village near Tacotalpa, only the indigenous peasants kept the institution alive.43 The troubles of these communities exposed a basic irony of life and religion in restoration-era Mexico: the gente visible (that is, the wealthy) perceived the clergy as economic rivals, and far from seeing themselves obliged to subsidize those rivals, in fact imposed a tax on priests as members of a “lucrative profession.”44 The mostly indigenous poor, who could least afford it, saw greater benefit in spiritual ministerings, perhaps because these were the only ministerings that they were likely to receive. As usual, subtleties of indigenous attitude and response remain shrouded in silence. Perhaps they acted out of the deeply ingrained religiosity that remained at the core of community ethos. Or perhaps by the late 1870s the Catholic Church seemed like the sole remaining institution that in some way kept the peasant interests in mind. Seen from almost any angle, the church-state conflicts peaked in the years 1875–76. It had become extremely difficult to reproduce the institution

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at the level to which it had become accustomed even in the late colonial period, a time far removed from the social ascendency enjoyed in the seventeenth century. Priests such as Nicanor José Hernández maintained a tiny school for religious vocational training in remote Teapa, but only rarely sent a successful graduate to the Mérida seminary for further training.45 The conflict over an institution and cultural matrix that had once defined life in Spanish America predisposed many southeasterners to accept some kind of peace, whatever it may have been. Their answer came in the form of a Oaxacan general not particularly known for piety. National politics once again touched events in Tabasco, but this time the political change would be unambiguous and long-lasting. In January 1876, far away in the town of Brownsville, Texas, but with key allies based in Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, General Porfirio Díaz proclaimed against the Lerdo government. Díaz’s coffers brimmed with donations from sympathetic US interests, who entertained their own dreams of the way Mexico should be, and with an army consisting of as much as 50 percent foreign mercenaries, Díaz set in motion a political wave that would soon reach the southeast. As one Tabascan priest wrote in late July, “This tremendous war which has swept over the entire nation . . . has put an end to commerce, to agriculture, and to all other branches and sources of wealth,” while it was believed that at any moment diacistas would take the city of San Juan Bautista.46 Curiously, the Tabascan clergy never portrayed it in any of their correspondence as a church-state controversy. The dissonance was significant: Tuxtepec was a war not fought in terms of religion (after all, both of the leading caudillos were liberals), but Mexico’s religious controversy nevertheless helped destabilize the society and foster revolt. Previous political loyalties hardly mattered now. Those out of power, even if originally allied with Lerdo, became de facto Díaz supporters, and for Tabasco’s embattled public employees, regardless of whatever they believed in their hearts, support for Lerdo remained an act of faith. Disappointed political outcasts who had once rallied under Juárez now seized on Porfirio Díaz’s Revolt of Tuxtepec to regain control of the state. Supporters chose relatively remote Cárdenas as their base of operations. Policarpo Valenzuela provided money, guns, and ammunition. Militia officers Ramón Ricoy and Faustino Sastré, formerly on opposite sides of the political fence, now joined in pro-Díaz uprising, and the group chose Ricoy, a recycled warrior from the failed 1871 revolt, as their military commander.

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Their army of 560 men marched unopposed into Cunduacán, then took the capital itself.47 The man whom Lerdo chose to deal with diacista Tabascans came from the highest echelons of southeastern political royalty. Pedro Baranda Quijano (1824–91) haled from a Campeche-based family long active in civil and military affairs. His father Pedro Sáinz de Baranda (1782–1845) had championed a socially conservative, gaditano independence; thereafter, he founded the famous Aurora Yucateca cotton mill in Valladolid, a bold experiment in industrial revolution that ultimately foundered on the twin shoals of contraband competition and the Caste War. Pedro Baranda’s younger brother Joaquín (1840–1909) became a leading Porfirian governor and statesman, while Pedro himself had fought with Pablo García to create the state of Campeche, then fought against the interventionists in Tabasco. Promoted to the rank of General by Juárez, he then served as the first governor of the state of Morelos and later as senator to his home state. The honorific “Campeche de Baranda” commemorates his role there, while an enormous statue of his father don Pedro the elder, sword tightly in hand, greets the modern-day motorist along the city’s malecón.48 Baranda was a man of superior training and talent, but the unsettled conditions of the Tuxtepec revolt forced him to wait for weeks in Veracruz while a steamship could be found. Ricoy and Sastré attempted to spread their revolt, but the Tabascan national guard confined the movement to the capital even before Baranda arrived. Once in river country, the general wasted no time in corralling the diacistas in San Juan Bautista, and on July 13, 1876, after a seven-hour battle forced Ricoy, Sastré, Valenzuela, and the rest to flee westward, abandoning their artillery and a even a steamship.49 At this point, the final triumph of Tuxtepec remained unclear, and at the provincial Tabascan level, the movement’s greatest disadvantage came from within, for unscrupulous leaders like Lieutenant Colonel José María Sol and Captain Andrés Sosa took the opportunity to raise funds for the revolt, then absconded with the money. As diacista Faustino Sastré lamented, “That’s how those gentlemen give a good name to our cause.”50 Tuxtepec’s Tabascan initiative had been contained. However, irony soon trumped strategy, for the national revolution succeeded elsewhere and with Díaz assuming power in Mexico City on December 1. Baranda thus found himself in the unusual position of arranging to hand power to the very rebels he had just defeated. River people

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had once more found a way to manipulate the waves of power emanating from the great faraway capital. Baranda thus stepped down on the December 21, and after certain legal protocols of interims, power settled for two comparatively peaceful years into the hands of Simón Sarlat Nova, physician, founder of the state’s first civil hospital, son of the conservative midnineteenth-century politician, and dependably Porfirian. The peace that wasn’t gave way to a real peace, one in which power radiated from above, not below.

B a n d a l a’s B o n a n z a As the loose ends of old Tabasco went their separate ways, the flood time of angry politics increasingly appeared a thing of the past. Post-Intervention factional quarrels persisted for another nine years after Tuxtepec, reaching a climax of sorts in the assassination of gymnastics and fencing instructor turned governor Manuel Foucher. Foucher’s enemies had not forgotten that he had accepted a post under the hated Arévalo, and his deft ripostes came up short when they assassinated him on November 2, 1882, as he crossed the Puente Ampudia—less for the nationalist symbolism, and more as a way of catching him in a remote and undefended location.51 Díaz’s solution to the incorrigible river people reached back into state’s troubled past: a comandante militar, preferably a non-Tabascan but at any rate imposed from without, subsequently promoted to governor. Abraham Bandala Patiño was born in the vanilla country of Papantla, Veracruz, in 1838, then joined the army at nineteen to champion the liberal cause. He fought beside Díaz at the two landmark Puebla battles of May 5, 1862, and April 2, 1866, and cemented his Porfirian credentials by aiding in the suppression of autonomous Yaquis in Sonora. Indian killing made for good press in the late nineteenth-century Americas, and Díaz appointed the now famous Bandala as military chief of Tabasco in 1885; the Veracruzan became governor shortly thereafter. For the next fifteen years he controlled the state with an iron rod, either directly or through a series of operatives, confiscating ejido lands and selling out prisoners as enganche workers, until the revolution shuttered the windows of his tropical cacicazgo.52 In all likelihood, the scrappy Bandala would have met with the same uproars that toppled his predecessors, but he enjoyed one thing that no

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Tabascan chiefs of state had ever known: prosperity. Growth had been difficult and extremely uneven, but nevertheless real, and the long-term casualty of that growth was certainly cacao. Indeed, of all the graves of empire that dot the Tabascan landscape, none is deeper than the Maldonado family’s dream of a vast plantation system dwarfing the wealth of upstarts like Simón Bolívar. As late as 1910, cacao still constituted 29 percent of state revenue, and its nearly two million pesos represented an all-time annual high.53 Haciendas and ranchos still peppered the terrain, and even the smallest of homeowners cultivated a few trees in their backyard. Debt peons had long replaced sacred monkeys as the main propagators. But hopes of rivaling producers like Venezuela and Ecuador, or the emerging fields of West African nations like Ghana, had perished forever. Never rich, the province had staggered under the weight of conflicts and the long-term decline of the cacao industry. Tabasco in no way matched the henequen boom of Yucatán, or the somewhat lesser wealth of Campeche. Even Carmen (not Tabasco proper) showed far greater prosperity than any towns that lay further up the Grijalva and Usumacinta, largely owing to its place in the dyewood trade and its military fortifications.54 Cacao land was still a poor land, and what wealth did exist remained in the hands of a select few. Even as Bandala settled down to his desk, another wave was sweeping river country, one that placed it squarely within the national transformations of the Porfiriato. As the easily accessed coastal mahogany disappeared, ambitious lumber exporters pushed inland in search of new forests. Indeed, inland trees provided a wood superior to that of the water-saturated lowlands. But the post-1876 logging industry necessarily depended on improved transportation. Railroads remained impossible for decades, but there were always the rivers, which promised entry into new lands of untapped riches. Chiapans and Tabascans in fact had their own version of the Northwest Passage, the belief that the area’s river system might somehow enable them to travel from San Cristóbal to Flores to San Juan Bautista without so much as setting foot on dry land. Once identified, said river network would allow entrepreneurs to cut mahogany in the Lacandón forest and float it to market via eastern Tabasco. A variety of explorers had tried it, including a group of determined US nationals; all drowned. In the early 1860s a new series of expeditions fared somewhat better, but could never get their canoes beyond certain hazardous stretches of rapids.

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The man who eventually charted this remote unknown was a character straight from the novels of Jules Verne. His story is a testimony to the human spirit, but also a sad lesson in the way that high-minded achievers lose out to unscrupulous cads. As a young man, Juan Ballinas (1842–1905) stood on the exotic shores of the Jataté River of Chiapas, where the sight of fat mahogany trees tempted him to the seemingly impossible task of proving that a log tossed into the waters of his hometown would somehow find its way to the mouth of the Usumacinta. The impassioned dreamer found financial support from Policarpo Valenzuela and Marcial Gutiérrez, two wealthy Tabascan loggers who stood to reap fortunes by opening up new forests of mahogany and dyewood.55 Ballinas’s first four attempts failed. He accomplished little more than widening a few trails and making occasional contact with the elusive Lacandones, widely if erroneously believed to be cannibals. By 1875 Ballinas was reduced to planning in secret in order to avoid public ridicule. A fifth and final expedition of forty-four men began on September 1, 1877, now with the blessing of the state government, which granted him six Remington rifles to ward off cannibals, along with the utterly useless title, “Discoverer of the Eastern Wilderness of Ocosingo, called the Lacandón.” This time everything went right. Far from craving human flesh, the Lacandones proved an affable bunch interested in trading with outsiders and proud to show off the huts in which they held religious ceremonies. All communication took place through hand gestures. Fortified with atole and roasted monkey, Ballinas pressed on; he eventually reached Flores, where he was arrested on suspicion of filibustering against Guatemala’s strongman-president Justo Rufino Barrios. An interview with el señor presidente cleared things up, and Ballinas returned San Juan Bautista in triumph. Through subsequent experiments he demonstrated that logs cut along the Jataté could be floated down to Tenosique and onward to the coast. Yet Ballinas was not to enjoy the reward of his daring. His enemies (apparently the Bulnes family of Spain, conniving with their agent Manuel José Martínez, Ballinas’s partner in the first four expeditions) got to Porfirio Díaz first, and the explorer found himself accused of pirating “national forests.” Ballinas came away ostracized. By any reckoning one of the greatest explorers in modern Mexican history, his only claim to posterity is a little-known but engaging memoir, while the logging concessions resulting from his discoveries produced immense

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fortunes for men who seldom strolled beyond the confines of their commercial houses. At this point the logger’s ax began to swing freely. The discovery of these mahogany forests, coupled with the overall growth of exports in Porfirian Mexico, transformed the value and the ownership patterns of Tabascan land. In an 1882 treaty Mexico and Guatemala finally resolved their longstanding dispute over the Chiapas-Soconusco region, with that territory (nearly 28,000 square kilometers) going to Mexico in exchange for small slivers a mere tenth that size along the Usumacinta’s eastern banks.56 One year later, a Mexican national decree allowed the privatization of huge tracts of untitled public land. For the next ten years the state conducted a massive campaign in which entrepreneurs acquired purportedly vacant or unused land by “denouncing” the area in question and filing a modest fee. In the process some 178,933 hectares passed from public domain into individual ownership. Virtually all important actors in Tabascan economic and political life participated, including priests like Manuel Gil y Sáenz, who picked up 183 hectares outside of scenic Tacotalpa. Unsurprisingly, the so-called denuncias proceeded in highly unequal fashion, with thirtyone of the total 630 (5 percent) accounting for approximately 34 percent of the total land claimed. Still, Tabasco was no private fief. The vast majority of the remaining denuncias were limited to one hundred hectares or less, while the sheer number of claimants spread the acquisitions so broadly that no single family or individual gobbled up the land the way the TerrazasCreel clan did in Chihuahua.57 Surveying companies, meanwhile, divided up the lands upriver. Millions of hectares passed into the hands of companies founded by ambitious foreigners. Canuto Bulnes, late of Spain, founded the Casa Bulnes and turned it into a lumber giant. Manuel Jamet, son of French immigrants, allied with the Spanish family of Sastré, to create Jamet y Sastré. Oveidaborn Román and Manuel Romano forged the powerhouse Casa Romano, soon to control lands along the Lacantún and just south of Tenosique. The German entrepreneurs Maximilian Doremberg and Frederick Schindler carved out their own respective empires near Ocosingo and in the lands between the Usumacinta and Lacantún. All followed a similar modus operandi: large capital backing, strong political connections in Mexico City, marriage into the Tabascan and Chiapan oligarchy, a side business of surveying, and a general absence of scruples.58 Of Tabascans themselves, only the ruthless Policarpo Valenzuela managed to hold his own beside

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Figure 19.  The Porfirian era brought with it a boom in mahogany cuttings. Most of these gigantic trees were felled in Guatemalan or Chiapan territory, then floated downriver to Tenosique, where they were bound into rafts like the ones seen here. They continued on to the coast, from whence they went to line the staircases and writing desks of old Europe. Mahogany barons like Policarpo “don Polo” Valenzuela Yera became some of the richest men in all of Mexico. By permission of the Archivo Histórico y Fotográfico del Estado de Tabasco.

the foreign companies that controlled so much the province’s destiny. By now Valenzuela, respectfully known as don Polo, was the most prosperous fellow around. Valenzuela had the good sense to side with the Revolt of Tuxtepec, and his loyalty repaid itself in spades. Adjusting for inflation, he became one of the richest men in the history of river country. Valenzuela went on to become a federal diputado, succeeded brilliantly in the massive land surveys, and emerged wealthy enough to rival foreign-owned powerhouse Casas like Bulnes, Dorantes, Romano, and Jamet-Sastré.59 All the logs of Tabasco now flowed down the river to the sea, but the demand was not filled. Rather, the developed world’s insatiable craving for fine, elegant woodwork meant vast profits for those who controlled the industry and stability for the state that agreed to be their servant.

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Even as the mahogany boom reached its zenith, a new export was emerging, one destined to displace all the rest. Don Polo would have scoffed at the intimation that an overgrown species of wild grass might somehow exceed the value his treasured logging industry, yet that is precisely what happened. Between the years of 1907 and 1940, Tabasco transformed itself into a monocrop empire of bananas. Human beings now consume more bananas than any other fruit, but it was not always thus. Global banana consumption did not begin in earnest until the last two decades of the nineteenth century, after Boston sea merchant Lorenzo Dow Baker, acting on a whim, imported several hundred bunches from Jamaica. Baker’s astonishing success led to his creation of the Boston Fruit Company, which later merged with railroad entrepreneur Minor Keith’s Tropical Trading Company, based in Costa Rica. The resulting United Fruit Company, soon joined by rival giants Standard Fruit and Cuyamil, both capitalized out of New Orleans, dominated Central American economy and politics.60 The fruit was certainly known here as early as the days of the independence wars.61 But as of 1890, almost no one in Tabasco ate them, let alone cultivated them. Like mangos and pineapples, these African transplants prospered here and formed the bulk of the local export economy when Tomás Garrido Canabal tried to turn his state into the “laboratory of the revolution.” In Tabasco the banana was known for the place where planters obtained their first seeds, namely, Honduras; it thus picked up the name plátano roatán and was first introduced in 1899 by the combined efforts of lumber magnate Manuel Jamet and José Jesús Dueñas, nephew of no less a person than Victorio V. Dueñas. The first banana left Frontera for sale abroad in 1907. It took time for exporters to overcome provincial inertia, but by the time that Don Porfirio resigned the presidency, a full-scale banana craze was underway. Those who attended Tabasco’s 1911 carnival were treated to the sight of the delightful señorita Carmela Fernández del Campo decked out in a dress made entirely from banana leaves and fibers. But the craze had more substantive roots, and far more remunerative ones. Between 1921 and 1933, Tabasco went from ninth to second place among the world’s largest producers, and the amount of money to be made left poor Carmela’s risqué dancing in the shade. Planters now axed heirloom cacao trees to plant the African upstart, eventually selling much of their holdings to the Southern Fruit Corporation, a fully owned subsidiary of Standard. An older

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generation of patriarchs, men like Fernando Nicolás Maldonado, would have been horrified, but there was no stopping the boom. Tabascans never quite got around to their dream of dredging the dreaded bar at Frontera, but never mind: revolution or not, banana fever now swept the land, and by 1930 had completely displaced the more traditional exports of lumber and cacao.62 “It is impossible to build a telegraph in Tobasco,” quipped the satirical British Puck with condescending arrogance: “As soon as one is completed, the monkeys perch on it in such numbers as to break it down.”63 But armed with these new revenues, Bandala soon proved the world wrong. Tabasco became a thoroughgoing oligarchy. While logging and chicle tapping prospered in public forests of the interior, land concentration enabled entrepreneurs to invest in cattle, fruit, sugar, and tobacco. Tabasco’s annual exports swelled from $1.2 million to $6.6 million pesos. Small-scale industry little elevated above the level of artisanry flourished in the cities, and towns everywhere witnessed the initial growth of an educated middle classes; more quickly than could have been imagined, telegraphs (monkeyfree) soon united the province and connected it to a wider Mexico. But as elsewhere, this growth came a cost. Small free-holders declined, while the number of hacienda peons quintupled. The tiny middle class may have been literate, but most real decisions were worked out between the Díaz government, here represented by the watchful Abraham Bandala, and timber oligarchs like the Bulnes, Jamet, and Valenzuela families.64 Meanwhile, the Catholic Church, which had matured during centuries of feudal European inequality, countenanced these changes. Grateful that the deluge of violence had subsided, it counseled the people to suffer their hardships in quiet and to await their reward in the hereafter. One man who witnessed these changes was Désiré Charnay, a professional travel writer and photographer from the town of Fleurie, in the eastern French province of Rhône. Charnay was born in 1828 to a banking and wine-vending family, but the works of gentleman-archaeologist John Lloyd Stephens inspired him to dedicate the rest of his life to global travel. He first arrived in Mexico at the port of Veracruz in 1857, carrying with him a mere 3,600 pounds of baggage and equipment. In the course of the next thirty years he made three different trips down the Usumacinta, drawn in part by his fascination with Maya ruins, in part by the region’s unrivaled opportunities for shooting defenseless animals. Charnay’s hopes of being

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recognized as a giant of archaeology never quite panned out; his decision to work as a photographer for a scientific commission associated with the French Intervention tarred him in Mexican eyes, while friend and rival Alfred Maudsley managed to beat him to the discovery of Yaxchilán. But the Frenchman did enjoy popularity in his day as an explorer, photographer, and travel writer, and he penned numerous accounts of his journeys there before dying in Paris in 1915, at the advanced age of ninety-four.65 Charnay found that while Tabasco had grown by the 1880s, in many ways it had remained the same place as always. The logistics, and even the basic experience, of a trip to river country had not changed all that dramatically from the earlier years. Once setting out from Carmen via steamship, the visitor faced a twelve-hour trip to Villahermosa. The first stop was still Frontera. The stench of stagnant water impregnated its air, and outbreaks of smallpox, dysentery, and yellow fever were common. Cacao cultivation had ended altogether here, the victim of the civil wars and changing demand; Tabascan peasants worked their milpas and orchards, and when they from time to time came upon the clay idols of the ancestors, they carefully destroyed them to prevent evil spells.66 Travelers were apt to be disappointed by the state capital. Under strict liberal ascendency, the name Villahermosa slowly gained favor over San Juan Bautista. In the 1880s the city still amounted to little more than a place where a “long string of houses extends along the river without a pier for disembarkations.”67 Two churches could be found, but Villahermosa, despite profits from the lumber trade, had the unkempt and filthy demeanor of a poor city, altogether inferior to the port of Carmen. This was hardly surprising, since most of the money generated by the lumber exports made its way out of the state. Within the city’s confines, a small urban gentry kept up and even developed, however incrementally, the life of refinement. It was they who had always managed the affairs of state and commerce, and who wrote the emotive nineteenth-century poetry that now seems as overly laden as the Tabascan vegetation. They also carried on the rituals of Carnival, complete with guitarists, skyrockets, public dances, men disguised as beggars, and the occasional pistol fight.68 Meanwhile, waterways remained the principal means of travel in and out. And despite Porfirian rhetoric of an “age of steam,” most people still traversed these waters by other means. Mahogany dugouts could cover twelve leagues per day with the current, much less against. Those who traveled in such devices had nothing to do except marvel at the surrounding jungle while smoking “those fine cigars

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of Tabasco, the best in the world.”69 Smoking was in fact universal, a habit the locals began as early as five years of age. Not too far from San Juan Bautista, however, the destruction of flood time was evident. Things may have changed somewhat as a result of the prolonged violence, but the centrality of political authority had held its own: visitors still found it advisable to obtain letters of presentation from the governor before leaving to explore points of the interior. One such point was Paraíso, a village north of the ruins of Comalcalco. By 1880 it lay in utter ruin; its happy-go-lucky population left garbage in the street, but whereas in Yucatán and central Mexico pigs and zopilotes did the cleanup, here crabs came out the water to devour anything they could find. (In fact, one of the most astonishing sights to greet visitors was the occasional crab migration, when thousands of the little crustaceans, for reasons known only to themselves, decided to cross the road en masse.) Among the city’s other inhabitants were an assortment of foreign merchants, mostly Spanish. These men of commerce found that tropical airs loosened their moral restraint along with their neckties, and often took up with local women despite maintaining wives and children back in the Iberian peninsula. They cared little for the rites of the mother church, and sometimes even maintained both wives in San Juan Bautista itself.70 Elsewhere, the occasional visitor could, via steamship, pass by the archaeological ruins in Jonuta, and by the lagoon of San Carlos, where peasants still hunted alligators as they had for their cura, padre Raymundo Pérez, three-quarters of a century earlier. Daring sancarloseños dived into the water with nothing more than a knife in their hand; some returned with alligators, others returned without all their fingers.71 The last stop on the trip from the coast to the logging camps was Tenosique, the final pueblo of what Tabascans called the llano, or plains. When swollen with rain, the river here measured an incredible two hundred meters wide. Thereafter, the flatlands yielded to hills of dense forest, while the broad river gave way to rapids. Tenosique itself would only have seemed interesting to the Lacandones whom curiosity periodically tempted to venture in, or to the loggers returning from months in the monte. It consisted of rude huts that swarmed with fleas, mosquitos, and ticks. There in 1882 locals could still remember the life of thirty years past, when a haughty Indian cacique ruled the town through his collection of gendarmes, known here and elsewhere as tupiles; the cacique’s picote, or whipping stone, still

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stood in the town square. More civilized than in that unreformed age, the locals now used it merely as a stock, not a place for public lashes. Beyond this artifact of colonial authority, the town’s only other emblem of civilization was a marimba that Charnay learned to play while waiting for the rains to abate.72 It was only beyond the squalid civilization of Tenosique that one entered into lumber camps comprising the true economic motor of Tabasco. In the early days the great mahoganies often exceeded ten feet in diameter, but relentless logging in the century’s latter half so thoroughly depleted holdings of this slow-growing plant that today it is virtually impossible to locate a mature tree in the entire state. By century’s end, while labor was almost entirely Tabascan, almost all the forests lay alongside the rivers of the Guatemalan Petén and the Chiapan Selva Lacandón, far from human settlement. To some degree logging camps worked on the sweat of men who found appeal in the rough freedom of the highlands. But the call of the wild never sufficed to keep operations moving. Rather, the remoteness of these camps, or monterías, necessitated violent methods for procuring and retaining labor: recruiters loaning advances or cadging contract signatures among drunks of the cantinas; caporales armed with dogs, bullwhips, and shotguns; and inescapable and ever-rising debt dutifully recorded in ledgers as final as the Final Judgment. Little wonder that these monterías acquired reputations akin to that of the Belgian Congo for their mistreatment of laborers.73 All along this tortuous itinerary, prosperous or otherwise, rural society remained very much a reflection of hacienda culture. This was clearly true for the older and denser portions of Tabasco, in the region from Villahermosa to Comalcalco. Though Chontalpa towns had suffered, one could still find functional and prosperous plantations of coffee and cacao in nearby points along the rivers. Haciendas also flourished in the great expanse from San Juan Bautista eastward to Campeche state. The estate of San Gregorio, located in the Tabascan corridor between Campeche and Chiapas, had over a hundred indebted peons; when taken along with their families, this number made San Gregorio the size of a village. And it acted accordingly, setting up its own private oratory to provide religious services for its people.74 The Teapa region once more bustled with estates of cacao, coffee, and corn. Technology had mitigated the isolation of earlier years, for Teapans could now receive news of the outside world via telegraph.

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The people of the region received occasional reminders that they lived at the grace of mysterious forces far more powerful than themselves. In this world, water still trumped technology, and pretty much anything else. Charnay observed that Tabasco was “[a] marvelous country, if it doesn’t rain without stop!”75 But rain it did. The downpours were so ferocious, so prolonged, that even the ducks came into the homes to escape the relentless pelting of water. In September 1879 an inundation without precedent tore through the state. After five days of uninterrupted rain, waters rising over eight feet in height scourged Nacajuca, carrying off pigs, cattle, and cornfields in a single confused torrent; some fourteen thousand livestock drowned. In Macuspana only twenty-three of four hundred homes survived. For more than a year the village of Tapijulapa ceased to exist. Porfirians prized electricity as the modern magic, but in the space of a moment, the river could rip down the gossamer wire nerve that linked Teapans to a larger Mexico, inflicting that destruction that Puck had mischievously attributed to monkeys. Teapans may have heard coded voices coming over a wire, but the ancient cycle of catastrophe and rebirth persisted. At such moments the river as well as the land remained impassible to human means.76 Survivors compared the extraordinary 1879 flood to the civil wars and the subsequent epidemics (smallpox and typhus) and famine, while people in Yucatán scraped together pittances to relieve the victims.77 But the waters came and went, and the people rebuilt. They took comfort in the deepening calm surrounding matters of faith and popular religion. At first the situation seemed poised to deteriorate even further, given the passing of old Pope Pious IX; tidings of that event reached Tabasco in early 1878.78 But in time it become apparent that his death and succession by less intransigent pontiffs was necessary for the institution to adapt to the modern world. By the next decade the epic ideological controversies of midcentury were clearly subsiding. Letters from communities such as Nacajuca and Teapa no longer carried tales of sacrilege and impiety; instead, one finds only casual, almost laconic reports that all was quiet.79 Cofradías returned to life, religious festivals resumed their place in the village, and the locals once more began to attend the rites of the church.80 Similarly, padre Nicanor José Hernández opined that despite the hard knocks brought upon him personally in “the continuous revolutions that have torn through the country,” the church itself maintained its adherents, and that at least in places such as Teapa the physical structure itself was intact, clean, even

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well decorated.81 Minor sequels of church-state controversy rumbled on for decades: over quality of services, over priestly decorum and its occasional absence; over the Registro Civil; over who owned imágenes and what that ownership entailed.82 But nothing in Mexico goes away forever. The tide of Tabascan cultural life was returning to its preferred doldrums, happier times in which daily routine trumped the dramatic mode. One institution to emerge from the Reform controversies was the junta católica, the equivalent of today’s parish councils. These bodies consisted of prominent faithful laymen of community who promised to use their connections, prestige, and influence to guarantee the continuation of the familiar institutions of the church. Beyond their mere existence, however, their activities were not widely recorded. Clearly they could fall prey to all the political foibles of the age. For example, when Frontera’s junta president quarreled with the ayuntamiento (apparently composed of men who were rivals in both personal and ideological terms), the latter organization saw to it that church income stopped altogether. The only solution was for the cura to pressure the junta president out of office, and to look for someone more sensitive to the over delicate matter of church-state relations.83 Hundreds of years of Tabascan history culminated in 1880, when the Catholic Church decided to create a separate bishopric for Tabasco. The idea had popular provincial roots, since the existing arrangement had always smacked of Yucatecan imperialism. But to peninsulars as well, separation seemed the only way to stabilize the chronically convulsed southeast. Bishop Leandro Rodríguez de Gala seriously took up the matter upon becoming caretaker in 1863 (and formal appointment as bishop six years later), perhaps as a way of limiting the financial and personnel responsibilities of an overextended organization. But the Intervention and turbulent aftermath postponed action. In mid-1879, however, the project got underway in earnest, with a petition of prominent Yucatecan clergy all supporting the change.84 A question remained as to who would head this new bishopric. Those on the inside of church affairs understood that, given the still smoldering embers of Reform-era politics, it was doubtful that either Tabascan or Yucatecan could be chosen; rather, the new bishop would have to come from outside.85 Infuriated by being passed over, Manuel Gil y Sáenz resigned as vicario in January 1880—ostensibly owing to a chronic stomach ailment, but in reality heart-sick from being denied appointment as bishop.86 He returned

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in disgust to his beloved Macuspana, all the while maintaining an hacienda outside of the capital.87 Two years later, Gil abandoned the priesthood altogether. In this case, religion’s loss was literature’s gain, for he dedicating the remaining twenty-seven years of his life to studying of history and culture of his beloved patria chica. Many of the documents available to the historian today exist thanks to this man. Gil y Sáenz had already published his monumental Compendio histórico, geográfico y estadístico del Estado de Tabasco (1872), and now he found the time for numerous other achievements, including El caporal: El trabajo empírico en el campo de Tabasco (1884).88 This brief work, a masterpiece blending agronomy and costumbrismo, follows a series of conversations between property-owner Don Caralampio, his unlettered caporal Juan José, and the wise Don Tomás Vives, recently arrived from Spain to educate the children of the hacienda. Don Tomás’s pedantic explanations of how the rude Tabascans could improve their agriculture now come off as both naive and condescending; indeed, in many ways Gil y Sáenz’s Spaniard, with his dubious prescription of clear-cutting and deep plowing, foreshadowed the modern-day disaster transpiring in the Amazon. But for all its Porfirianism, El caporal still opens a welcome window into both Tabascan farm life and the idiosyncratic and good-natured vernacular that flourished there. While rustic Juan José wrestled with the concept of soil nitrogen, famous Tabascans were passing from the scene. Victorino V. Dueñas had fled to Campeche in the wake of Tuxtepec, but true Tabascans cannot imagine living elsewhere. When political tempers calmed a few years later Dueñas finally return to Jalpa, where he died of an inflamed liver on February 15, 1885.89 His conservative predecessor, former General Manuel María Escobar Riviera, also retired to Campeche, where he lived to ripeness, outlasting Dueñas by six years. Unquestionably, the man who came away the best from these struggles was the entrepreneur and consummate survivor Count Félix de Nemegyei. After the 1872 revolt Nemegyei decided that he had had enough of Mexico, and returned to the United States where in 1877 he purchased the Hardman Furnace ironworks in Preston County, West Virginia. Within two years the newly renamed Irondale Furnace was belching out ten tons of pig iron a day; strategic investments soon tripled that figure. His creamy Hungarian accent (to say nothing of his lucrative ironworks) endeared him to the local ladies, and before long the now-widowed Nemegyei took a certain

Figure 20.  While Gregorio Méndez symbolized Tabascan armed resistance, padre Manuel Gil y Sáenz will forever remain the patron saint of Tabascan letters. Long-time cura of Macuspana, he also served as head of the provincial church, discovered petroleum deposits, and authored pioneering studies of the river people’s history and culture. The Tabascan character, he wrote, “is honest, loyal, courageous, affable, generous, and hospitable.” One is inclined to add, “scrappy.” From Manuel Gil y Sáenz, Historia del Estado de Tabasco (1890).

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Miss Young of Charlestown as his wife. Despite frequent labor wrangles, the count also found time to dabble in railroad construction, glassworks, and water bottling. But the roller coaster of his life had not yet come to ground. Irondale tumbled during the terrible depression of the 1890s, and Nemgeyei, pleading with tearful eyes in a bankruptcy court, was forced to sell the enterprise for a mere $11,500. To the end of his days he never fully mastered spoken English, though he wrote it with remarkable proficiency. Newspapers posthumously misreported him as Russian. Nemegyei died on January 24, 1904, bequeathing what little remained of his fortune to his daughter Adele. It was an industrial career unimaginable to the people he had left behind to quarrel over wood-cutting rights along the Grijalva watershed.90 One who did not shine so well in the glow of Porfirian splendor was Tabasco’s greatest liberator, Gregorio Méndez Magaña. Mexico has never been kind to its heroes, and the last years of the victor of Jahuactal were sad ones indeed. Despite his achievements, at bottom he remained a curiously apolitical man, a misplaced shopkeeper and music lover whose strength lay in his doglike fidelity to the causes of home, nation, and the established order. This was a rare quality indeed for a time when guile and betrayal abounded, and it made him suspect in certain quarters. Perhaps because he had been too independent (Méndez had opposed the La Noria revolt, or at least declined to join it), Díaz kept him marginalized in Mexico City, far from the healing warmth and spreading jacaranda trees of Jalpa. Méndez’s exile to the cold, dank capital almost recalls Toussaint Louverture’s final days in the Fort de Loux, high in France’s Jura Mountains—only without the iron bars. Indeed, how could a man who had basked in the primordial sunshine of the Chontalpa see this city as anything but a prison? One who encountered him in his final years described Méndez as follows: In the evenings he was accustomed to wander the Zócalo and the gardens of the Cathedral, scrawny, head cast downward, shoulders stooped. His clothes entirely wrinkled and his body supported by a cane, he moved laboriously because rheumatism had rebelled against him, paralyzing his knees, so that he lurched forward in a painful and difficult jerking motion.91

Prematurely aged and broken, Méndez finally died of pneumonia on March 28, 1887, at the age of a mere fifty-one. While cautious of living rivals, Díaz poured on the generosity at their passing, and he saw to it that Gregorio

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Méndez was buried with full military honors. Only in 1911, with Díaz in his final months in office, did Tabascan strongman Policarpo Valenzuela have Méndez’s remains exhumed, placed in state in the Principal, and then reburied in the Panteón Civil. The huge ceremony stretched over two whole days—February 8 through 10–-and was complete with music and speeches.92 The Tabascan of Tabascans had at last came home, and to a world transformed, a political patria that to him would have seemed strangely quiet, a land peaceful as the vast alluvial plains after the fearsome Usumacinta had receded.

Conclusion: The Death of a Fakir and the Agony of Old Tabasco

On June 29, 1913, a horrific event shocked the villahermosinos. On that date the powerful and mysterious Fakir Ali Ben Hur had arranged to perform his most astonishing feat: burial and resurrection before an astonished crowd. Willing himself into a deathlike state, Ali was then buried six feet underground in a glass coffin in the center of the city’s bull ring, to be disinterred only after the last event. However, the Fakir (in reality one Rafael Latorre, late of Cuba) left instructions that he was to be dug up immediately in the event of thunder. The rousing final contest was underway when a sudden storm blew in. His wife implored the jefe político to uncover her husband at once, but the jefe, too caught up in the drama of it all, demurred until the last bull had been dispatched. When Latorre was finally disinterred, shocked onlookers beheld a hand and leg protruding from the coffin: the sound of thunder had awakened Ali from his catatonia, just as he had feared, and he had struggled desperately before succumbing to asphyxia.1 This sort of event was too extraordinary to be written off as happenstance. To devout Tabascans, Latorre’s death prophesied that the people were about to suffer terribly, and that however much they might struggle, their fate, like that of Fakir Ali Ben Hur, could not be averted.

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The portent spoke truth. Coahuilan political visionary Francisco Madero liked to call Tabasco “that wretched state” (“ese desventurado estado”), and while wise men of the academies and commercial houses dismissed his criticisms, many common folk shared Madero’s view that something had gone seriously wrong here.2 And though the river people of the early twentieth century had no way of knowing it, the occasional grumbling heard in barber shops and street corners and around the evening fires of the lumber camps and haciendas were the first risings of yet another flood time, one every bit as terrible as the first. Porfirian exclusivity and political stage management came back to haunt the Tabascan upper crust; inspired by the Madero movement in northern Mexico, a disgruntled secondary elite embraced revolutionary rhetoric with a fury that far exceeded any disadvantage or repression that they had ever suffered. Very much like the Yucatán peninsula, early revolutionaries divided between the more radicalized petit bourgeois leadership of the Reds (originally led by General Carlos Green), who advocated a thorough purging of the Porfirian machine, along with a host of other much-needed reforms; and the Blues, moderate hacendados akin to Yucatán’s Partido Liberal (Liberal Party) who wanted to preserve the status quo by sacrificing a handful of old-guard figureheads. These two groups dedicated more time to shooting each other than to taking on federal forces, of whom there were few here anyway. In 1915 revolutionary leader Venustiano Carranza imposed on the Tabascans one of his most capable and radical followers, a certain General Francisco Múgica, but the instability of the times limited Múgica’s hand. Real ferment only came with the 1920 Revolt of Agua Prieta and the rise of its leader, General Alvaro Obregón. A young Tabascan licenciado named Tomás Garrido Canabal astutely sided with the Sonoran dynasty, received the state governorship, and became Tabasco’s strongman for the next fifteen years. Revolution would be different here, for, in the words of an apocryphal comment commonly attributed to Garrido himself, “It wasn’t necessary to tear anything down, because nothing had ever been built up.” The governor imposed prohibition, wished a pox on smokers, and worked tirelessly to squeeze the most out of the state’s natural advantages. Tabascan hacienda development was limited compared to places like Yucatán or Durango, while Garrido himself came from the landowning class—from the Tabascan-Chiapas borderlands, like the Maldonados—and while he picked up many radical ideas from Yucatecan governor Felipe Carrillo

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Puerto, he had also internalized that class’s fundamental respect for private property. This fact helped to make Tabascan land tenure one of the least affected of the entire revolutionary republic. Rather, Garrido’s agrarian policies merely took the shape of producers’ cooperatives, with the governor himself acting as mayordomo for what amounted to an enormous plantation. His promotion of the crop approached such single-mindedness that banana production now surpassed that of the Bandala-Valenzuela days. The revenues from this arrangement in turn allowed the governor to raise wages, expand infrastructure, and forge other basic advances.3 However, Garrido will forever be remembered for his frontal assault on religion. He ran all priests out of the state, had churches physically demolished, and gave livestock the names of saints. Garrido’s Tabasco picked up a sobriquet that would define that era of state history ever after: la tierra sin Dios, “the land without God.” To support the new order, Garrido relied on his quasi-military youth league, the Red Shirts, a group strongly reminiscent of organizations from Italy and Germany. His motives in all this appear to have been an amalgam of personal power, lucre (he was a landowner and entrepreneur), and genuine passion for real reform. The caudillo governor’s own way of thinking was a homegrown form of the Enlightenment: human beings, beginning with Tabascans, were capable of achieving perfection if only they gave up drinking and quit kowtowing to the saints. Garrido only fell from power in 1935, when Lázaro Cárdenas broke from the Sonoran chiefs and replaced regional strongmen with institutionalized support. Thereafter, Garrido Canabal’s extravagance gradually gave way to a one-party politics that toned down conflict and drifted away from utopian innovations.4 Post-1935 Tabascan history is unlikely ever to inspire the impassioned writing associated with its predecessor, but those native sons who did carve a name for themselves—men like Carlos Madrazo, “the cyclone of the southeast”—trained under Garrido or else took their inspiration from him, and from the entire legacy of nineteenth-century tradition that informed his actions.5 Madrazo actually began as a leader of Garrido’s Red Shirt youth groups, then transited to mainstream politics, becoming governor in 1959. Like populist president Luis Echeverría (1970–76), he somehow managed to be a party stalwart and the party’s most stinging critic, all at the same time, while his early (1969) death in a plane crash wrapped him in the Robert Kennedy mantle of would-have-been messiah.6 As if the links between Tabasco past and present were not sufficiently

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obvious, the most visible of these legatees, Manuel López Obrador, a real rebel against the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and a controversial presidential candidate, even authored his own history of regional resistance against the French Intervention.7 In a certain way, then, the lingering ripples of flood time still slosh over Mexico’s contemporary public affairs. Outside state confines, too, the Tabascans’ fame as trigger-happy ruffians exceeded billing in those years. For example, it was Colonel Juan Ricárdez Broca of Comalcalco who in January 1924 ordered the cold-blooded execution of Yucatán’s reforming governor, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, along with three of Carrillo’s brother and eight of his closest associates. Ricárdez Broca had entered the ranks of caudillo Venustiano Carranza and came out a winner, servant-at-arms to a constitution that promised a newer and better Mexico; yet after joining the national revolt figureheaded by Adolfo de la Huerta in late 1923, he eliminated Carrillo in a way that many nineteenth-century river people would have understood, passing him and the others before a firing squad in the public cemetery at 4:00 in the morning, after a kangaroo hearing. But the De la Huerta revolt crumbled four months later, and Ricárdez fled the country a marked man. Significantly, it was a fellow Tabascan, Colonel José Preve, who was assigned to deal revolutionary justice in the matter. Preve carried out his kill mission in 1930 by tracking Ricárdez Broca to a café in remote Puerto Castilla, Honduras, trumping up an argument, then shooting him dead.8 But the bullets and saint-burnings gradually declined. The routinization of Tabascan politics, that dream of so many generations of statesmen, came hand-in-hand with a fundamental restructuring of the state’s economic base. To begin with, the post-Díaz years brought greater justice and a long-range economic decline, not all of which can be laid at the feet of the revolutionaries. In March 1913 constitutionalist forces, under the leadership of General Luis Felipe Domínguez, entered the logging regions south of Tenosique; in the process, the industry began its long decline. Like Salvador Alvarado in Yucatán, Domínguez destroyed the legal underpinning of the industry when his May 15 decree abolished debt peonage. Most of the camps continued operations in one way or another, but declined over the next quarter-century; their foreign origins made them vulnerable to a nationalist government that soon began to revoke their concessions.9 By the same token, the many small haciendas of cacao and cattle also tumbled. Like latifundia everywhere in Mexico, the system could only function by

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depressing wages to below-subsistence levels, and that fact left it vulnerable to political enemies and to more tempting work opportunities elsewhere. So, too, the banana empire met its demise at unlikely hands, when a fungus known locally as mal de chumasco, or to Central American planters as sikatoga, wiped out whole fields in the late 1930s; this, combined with revolutionary expropriations and a huge hurricane in 1944, quashed banana fever once and for all.10 Africa’s peculiar gift to mankind would live on in Tabasco, but never again as its absolute master. As fate would have it, within twenty-five years another export boom swept Tabasco, this one qualitatively different from its predecessors, and like so many things Tabascan, it was an event foretold. In 1864, even as resistance against the Intervention continued, padre Gil y Sáenz, the man to whom historians owe such an incalculable debt for our knowledge of the Tabascan past, was allowed one brief glimpse into the province’s future. Gil had gone to Tepetitán to preside over one of those nine-day prayer sessions known as novenas, but received word that his mother had fallen gravely ill. Desperate to return home as quickly as possible to Macuspana, he hired an Indian guide to escort him through the woods. The two quickly became lost. Gil’s horse bogged down in a sort of marsh, and upon clearing the area and freeing the unlucky steed, he discovered that he had stumbled onto a mina de petróleo—that is, a pool of crude oil seepage. Local Indians knew the place, he learned, but kept it a strict secret, as they considered it something evil, the home of a spirit named Chugilbá, petulant owner of the monte. Gil extricated his horse, then experimented with canning and selling the mina’s black, gummy liquid, and even managed to export a barrel or two to New York City, but leery of quarrels with the anticlerical liberal state, he declined to file a claim on the property itself, using the oil mainly to illuminate Macuspana parish. Ambitious friends had no such qualms and went behind Gil’s back to denounce the mina as their own. They later sold it to Sir Weetman Pearson, polymath civil engineer and owner of the Mexican Eagle, the country’s largest petroleum concern.11 People had seen the change coming for years. Indeed, as far back as the days of the French Intervention, Benjamin Sanders, US consul and amateur archaeologist, issued a judgment more prophetic than he could possibly have known: “It is my opinion that this country is as rich as any in the world in oil, and to prove the fact the numerous openings which issue from the mountains only require to be properly developed.”12 But for whole

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generations nothing happened, since global refining and marketing applications grew slowly, and the great revolution intervened. When systematic drilling and extraction finally did arrive, they did not take the course of so many other export booms in Tabascan history, for the petroleum development happened under direct federal control. Since the 1917 subsurface mineral rights had returned to national jurisdiction, while the 1938 petroleum expropriations eliminated foreign competition in that sphere. Still, more than half a century would pass before Tabasco’s subsurface riches fully revealed themselves. In the 1950s this lackadaisical situation suddenly changed. New discoveries elevated petroleum production to 715 million cubic feet by 1957. Within twenty years Tabasco had superseded the Veracruzan Faro de Oro, zone of so many preexpropriation struggles, as the Mexico’s leading energy source, with petroleum exports accounting for some 40 percent of national revenues ever after.13 If darkness was here yesterday along the immense snaking waterways, what replaced it was not undiluted shimmering light. Oil brought roads, bridges, gas ducts, and urbanization; along with new tastes, new expectations for a more comfortable life, and a rejection of so many of the ways and beliefs of earlier times. Gone were the swarms of militias and the discount Napoleons that had defined society for over a hundred years. River water ceased to quench the thirst of so many working men. Tamborilera and zapatero musicians now gave way to blaring pop tunes and relentless cumbia prerecorded in distant cities. Infant mortality fell, while cancer, obesity, and heart disease took its place. Women gradually established themselves in the classroom, in the office, and in the voting booth; simultaneously, growing national and international marketing systems sexualized them in ways unimaginable to the protective parents of young Fidencia Fernández. The duendes and river monsters decamped, but so did the free and easy lifestyle that had once characterized old Tabasco. Traffic jams, litter, pollution, and commercially driven media culture now define the landscape. Viewing the sprawling and improvised rush of development that has transformed so much of the state, one is sometimes inclined to think that Chugilbá extracted a terrible price for the theft of his treasure.14 It all happened so far from the national narrative, this story of a defiant if self-destructive people. Nineteenth-century Tabasco took its place alongside of Afghanistan, the Scottish highlands, and the Amazon basin,

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lands where grandiose imperial dreams have come up short. It did so not because of unity but for unity’s opposite. The province’s peculiar geography, its fragmentary patches of earth unconnected by roads and separated by unpredictable and often unanswerable arguments of water: these were the bases that made Tabascans so unsatisfactory as imperial subjects. Endemic disease too mattered. Scourges such as yellow fever, typhus, and malaria placed a cordon sanitaire around the area once ruled by the haughty Tabscob. So invincibility came with a price. If Tabascans triumphed over outsiders, it was always with the awareness, more vivid here than anywhere else in Mexico, that they lived upon an expanse of the world that owned them, and not vice versa. They knew rivers ancient as the world and understood their power. Human beings of the twentieth century tried to subjugate nature through feats of hydraulic engineering; ambitious dams like the Nezahualcoyotl in northern Chiapas have reduced the risk of crecientes that once so scourged this region. But in the year 2007 biblical rains beat down on the Chiapan and Tabascan uplands, creating river surges that curas of nineteenth-century Balancán would have recognized instantly. The surges rolled downstream from their remote mountain watersheds, flattening everything in their paths. For all the advances of the preceding century, the citizens of Villahermosa took to their roofs, just as Tabascan town dwellers had done so many times in ages past. Like the Mississippi River, the Grijalva and Usumacinta will always have their own way. But would-be conquerors have had to contend with something less tangible than currents. In grand part it was the peculiarities of their character and society that made Tabascans a people hard to dominate. The arrows aimed so long ago at Juan de Grijalva somehow ended up in the torso of Iturbide’s neo-Bourbon empire, in the heart of Mexican centralism, and across the face and chest of overconfident invaders. The Tabascans’ sheer fragmentation along the many creeks and waterways impoverished the people; made them mellow and jovial in the small circle of neighbors and that welcome bottle of aguardiente; turned them mean and truculent toward the will of their fellow man; and in doing all of this rendered those people adverse to imperial oversight. For over a century, it was the place where so many a would-be conquistador left his shoe in the mud. Even the Porfirian order, with all its bloodhounds and gun-toting caporales, could not hold it forever, and Tabasco’s darker tendencies exploded all over again once the

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Figure 21.  Humankind proliferated and built, but as in the days of Tabscob, it was still the rivers that ruled. Here, residents of downtown Villahermosa travel by canoes during the extraordinary flooding of 1929. As recently as 2007, Tabascans took to their rooftops yet again, a reminder of the gods’ fickle friendship with humanity. By permission of the Archivo Histórico y Fotográfico del Estado de Tabasco.

old order fell. True, entire millennia separate the Tabasco of today from Olman, that kingdom that no one can reckon, that no one can remember. Nor is it the province that padre José Eduardo Cárdenas described in his pioneering Memoria, a pseudodemocratic plantocracy yearning to be. Yet not all has changed. Even today, to be Tabascan means to be rough-cut, and the state continues to produce a kind of defiant politics almost calculated to affront metropolitan sensibilities. Reflecting on the turbulence of flood time, the river people were left with their own unanswerable question: Who are we, that we have done such things? Today Tabasco is a part of Mexico, yet an outsider as well— like Gregorio Méndez and so many other provincial heroes, a fatherless child forever condemned to search out his own elusive destiny. Cut off from the altiplano by geography and distance; isolated from foreigners by heat, steam, sand bars, and mosquitos; shut out from the separatism of Yucatán and its never-ending uayismos, the relentlessly self-referential linguistic “here-isms” that set the peninsula apart; curiously aloof from the

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corrosive racial animosities of Chiapas and Guatemala—the Tabascan goes his own way. Contemplating their amazing past, might not the river people plausibly ask themselves whether they were not in some inscrutable way chosen as the stage for great filibusters, as the province that embarrassed the mighty US Navy, as the quagmire to powerful interventions . . . indeed, as the spoiler of empires?

Abbreviations

Archives AGCA AGEY AGNM AHAY/DO

AHFT



AHDN BPE



BUJM CAIHY



DUSCT HNOC HPS NA TUL



UTA WA

Archivo General de Centroamérica, Guatemala City Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán, Mérida, Yucatán Archivo General de la Nación de México, Mexico City Archivo Histórico de la Arquidiócesis de Yucatán, Decretos y Oficios, Mérida, Yucatán Archivo Histórico y Fotográfico de Tabasco, Villahermosa, Tabasco Archivo Histórico de la Defensa Nacional, Mexico City Biblioteca Pública del Estado José María Pino Suárez, Villahermosa, Tabasco Biblioteca Universitaria José Martí, Villahermosa, Tabasco Centro de Apoyo a la Investigación Histórica de Yucatán, Mérida, Yucatán Dispatches of the U.S. Consuls, Tabasco, 1832–1874 (microfilm) Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans, Louisiana Hemeroteca Pino Suárez, Mérida, Yucatán National Archives of the United States, Washington, DC Tulane University Latin American Library, New Orleans, Louisiana Nettie Lee Benson Library, University of Texas at Austin, Texas Western Americana: History of the Trans-Mississippi West, 1500–1900 (microfilm from the Beineke Library, Yale University)

Edited Collections of Primary Documents APD Archivo del General Porfirio Díaz. Memorias y documentos. Prologue and notes by Alberto María Carreño. 30 vols. México: Editorial “Elede,” S.A., 1951. CH Gil y Sáenz, Manuel. Compendio histórico, geográfico y estadístico del estado de Tabasco. México: Consejo Editorial del Gobierno

300

abbreviations

del Estado de Tabasco, 1979 (facs., 1872). This rather complicated document merits a word of explanation. In 1872 Manuel Gil y Sáenz published the original Compendio histórico, consisting of a chronological narrative, assorted statistical documents, and a charming catechism of Tabascan history and culture. Twenty years later the document was reprinted by Mosé María Avalos, now with extensive notes added by Rómulo Becerra Fabre and Justo Cecilio Santa-Anna; in size and complexity these notes far exceed the text itself and incorporate many invaluable primary documents that are no longer extant. In addition, Manuel Mestre Ghigliazza added a biographical introduction, complete with correspondence from Gil y Sáenz. This compilation of three separate sources forms the basis for the 1979 facsimile. Notes in River People that cite roman numerals within the Compendio actually refer to the additions of Becerra Fabre and Santa-Anna; in the interest of clarity, when a full primary document is part of their note, I have added that bibliographical information in my own note. References to the Compendio drawing upon Gil’s original writing appear in Arabic numerals. I have treated Ghigliazza’s introduction as a separate bibliographical entry. TTH Tabasco: Textos de su historia. Edited by María Eugenia Arias G. et al. 2 vols. México: Gobierno del Estado de Tabasco, 1985. DHT Documentos para la historia de Tabasco. Edited by Manuel González Calzada. Two Series, 4 volumes each. México: Consejo Editorial del Gobierno del Estado de Tabasco, 1980. DDHT Documentos y datos para la historia de Tabasco. Edited by Manuel Mestre Ghigliazza. 4 vols. México: Universidad Autónoma Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, 1984. INT Invasión norteamericana en Tabasco (1846–1847): Documentos. Edited by Manuel Mestre Ghigliazza. México: Imprenta Universitaria, 1948.

Notes

Introduction 1. See Baker. 2. See Lyon. 3. Writings on the Vietnam War are nothing short of massive. For a recent synthesis on what Lyndon Johnson called that “damn little pissant country” and its triumph over massive foreign intervention, see Lawrence. 4. See Thucydides; the story of the Sicilian fiasco and its enormous consequences runs in and out of Books 6, 7, and 8 of this timeless work. 5. See Centeno. 6. O’Brien, 767. 7. See Guardino; Thomson; and Ducey. 8. See Fallaw; and Smith. To an extent, my own Of Wonders and Wise Men fits into this group. 9. See, for example, the collected essays in Boyer. 10. To begin, see Wolf’s classic study, Sons of the Shaking Earth. 11. For three representative works, see Wells; de Vos; and Meyer. 12.Vautravers Tosca, 24.

Chapter 1 1. Cusack, 4–5. 2. Ibid., 54–56, 67–68, 144–47. 3. For the etymology of these Tabascan place names, see Becerra, 69, 97. 4. Czaya, 181–86. 5. Correa, 21; Balcázar Antonio, Tabasco, 22–24. 6. Becerra, 91, 95, 203. 7. Czaya, 52–53. The largest four are the Amazon, Río de la Plata, the Orinoco, and Colombia’s Magdalena. This list excludes the Río Bravo, most of whose catchment lies within US territory. 8. Becerra, 49. 9. Ibid., 50.

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10. Galindo, 59; and also Griffith, 25–52. 11. J. Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, I, 375. 12. Morelet, 51. 13. Walker, 119. 14. Caddy, 106. 15. Becerra, 98. 16. Ibid., 40. 17. Walker, 181. 18. Becerra, 96–97. 19. Archivo Histórico de la Arquidiócesis de Yucatán, Decretos y Oficios [hereafter, AHAY/DO], 3 November 1852, Ríos de Usumacinta. 20. AHAY/DO, 25 July 1874, Teabo. 21. See Romero, whose account of visits to Palenque and Comalcalco originally appeared in Anales del Museo de Arqueología, Historia y Etnografía. 22. Morelet, 25, 29–30. 23. Heller, 213–14. 24. Caddy, 113. 25. AHAY/DO, 10 October 1874, San Juan Bautista. 26. Heller, 226; Diccionario enciclopédico de Tabasco [hereafter, DET], 645–46. 27. Popol Vuh, 134–60. 28. Diccionario enciclopédico de Tabasco [hereafter, DET], II, 607, 644–46. 29. Russell, 212. 30. DET, “La pesca,” II, 511–14. 31. West, Psuty, and Thom, 26. 32. Ibid., 31–33. 33. Bolland, 25–28. 34. Benson, 17–19; Diehl, 14–18. 35. Covarrubias, Indian Art, 50–83; Cobean, 64–69. 36. Fernández-Armesto, 170. 37. See Covarrubias, “El arte olmeca”; Taube; and Urcid. 38. Kowalski, 295–98. 39. González Lauck, 78–79. 40. Diehl, 29–38 (on San Lorenzo), 60–77 (on La Venta), and 182–83 (on Tres Zapotes). Chapters 6 and 7 of this same volume explore in detail the Olmec influence in both eastern and western Mesoamerica. 41. Flannery and Marcus, 71–76. 42. Wendt, 56–59. 43. Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest, 14–16. 44. Carrasco, 30–35. 45. León Portillo, 21–22, cited in Coe, Mexico, 84. Actually, León Portillo and Coe use either “gobierno” or “government,” which sounds strangely parliamentarian; I have substituted “kingdom,” a term that would have conformed more closely to prevailing political concepts. 46. Becerra, 41.

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47. Ibid., 44. 48. Ibid., 96–97. 49. Magaloni Kerpel; Miller. 50. Diccionario Maya Cordemex, 949, 978. 51. Hassig, War and Society, 45–61; Adams, 231–36. 52. Covarrubias, Indian Art, 62, 82. 53. “San Claudio, Tabasco,” 12. 54. Harrison, 92, 119–33, 192–93; Coe, Maya, 131–32. 55. Becerra, 80; Scholes and Roys, 31. 56. Scholes and Roys, 48, 50, 52, 53. 57. Ruz, 11–60; Piña Chan, 132–44. Anthropologists Oliver LaFarge and William Gates collected some Chontal vocabulary in 1925, using preprinted forms that allowed them to jot down their informants’ names, the villages in question, and the replies. Gates obtained most of his material in Comalcalco, while LaFarge collected in Nacajuca and Macuspana. See Tulane University Latin American Library [hereafter, TUL], #28, “Middle American Research Institute Faculty Papers,” Box 2, Folder 68B, 1925. 58. Kepecs, 137–41. 59. Dating the collapse of Chichén Itzá presents ambiguities. One version has the Itzá polity disintegrating between 1000 and 1050; see Ringle, Negrón, and Bey, 183–232. Schmidt, 194. 60. Sharer, 613, 616–18; Coe, Maya, 202–4. 61. Civeira Taboada, 12; Heller, 165–67. 62. Galindo, 63. 63. Keegan and Carlson; Reid; Izard Martínez, 237–50. 64. Díaz del Castillo, 18, 20–21. 65. Gerhard, 35–36. 66. Díaz del Castillo, 50–62. 67. Townsend, 34–43. 68. Scholes and Roys, 88–122. 69. C. Ruiz Abreu, Señores de la tierra, 43–52. 70. On the founding of Santa María de la Victoria, see Izquierdo y de la Cueva, 91–115. On the lost location of early coastal settlements, see Salazar Ledesma and Chávez Jiménez, 61–90. 71. C. Ruiz Abreu, Señores de la tierra, 114–19. 72. Gerhard, 36–37. 73. Scholes and Roys, 161–62, 185–220. 74. Incháustegui, Chontales de Centla, 23–25. 75. Ibid., 32. 76. Heller, 210–12. 77. Incháustegui, Las márgenes, 201–21. 78. Becerra, 35; AHAY/DO, 24 July 1854, Balancán. 79. Heller, 228. 80. See Foster; and Soto Laveaga.

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81. AHAY/DO, 14 February 1878, San Juan Bautista. 82. Santa Anna, Notas para la historia, 9–10; Ladesma Gallegos, 43. 83. See Palka. See also Valenzuela, 406–7. 84. Duby and Blom, 277. 85. Palka, 111–12. 86. Soza, 157–58. 87. Palka, 25; Duby and Blom, 277–80. 88. Barrera, 32–42. 89. Gerhard, 25. 90. Archivo General de la Nación de México [herafter, AGNM], Justicia Eclesiástica, 180, 6 June 1857, 467–81. 91. AGNM, Justicia Eclesiástica, 180, 6 June 1857, 467–81. 92. Van Young, 453–94. 93. “El gobernador de Tabasco avisa de haber indicios de conspiración entre los indios de San Antonio y Guimanguillo. Contestación de hacer averiguación sobre este particular,” in Documentos para la historia de Tabasco [hereafter, DHT], Series One, vol. IV, 4 April 1810, 201–35. 94. Morelet, 1871, 122. 95. Ibid., 1871, 129. 96. Russell, 210. 97. Morelet, 1871, 130. 98. Ibid., 1871, 129–30. 99. Ibid., 1871, 129. 100. Santa Anna, Tradiciones, 71–73. 101. AHAY/DO, 4 July 1844, San Isidro de Comalcalco. 102. Julián Murillo Pulido “El pueblo de Cupilco, y su Virgen de la Asunción,” found in Biblioteca Pública del Estado José María Pino Suárez, Villahermosa, Tabasco [hereafter, BPE], Novedades de Tabasco en la cultura, 16 July 1989, 6–8. 103. Manuel Gil y Sáenz, Compendio histórico, 215. 104. AHAY/DO, 8 March 1878, Nacajuca. 105. Biblioteca Pública del Estado José María Pino Suárez, Novedades de Tabasco en la cultura, 11 August 1985, 1, 4. 106. See Pérez Suárez. 107. Tabasco: Los Tamborileros de la Chontala de Eugenio Córdova Hernández (Ciclón) (México: IM Discos, no date); and Flauta chontal de Tabasco, field recording by René Villanueva (México: Instituto Politécnico Nacional, 1999), featuring Fredi Román Arias on wooden flute. 108. Correa, 41, 43. 109. Ibid., 66. 110. West, Psuty, and Thom, 127; from TTH, I: 63.

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305

Chapter 2 1. Hobsbawm, 59–60. 2. Wolf, Europe, 104–8; Darwin, 51–73. 3. Gibson, Spain in America, 20, 80; Curtin, 129–32; and Dubois, 31–33. 4. Gibson, Spain in America, 92–93. 5. See Dubois. 6. Wolf, Europe, 315–17. 7. Becerra, 44, 59, 64, 96–97. 8. Ibid., 91. 9. C. Ruiz Abreu, Tabasco, 44–45; West, Psuty, and Thom, 225–27, 233–39, 241. 10. Del Aguila Figueroa, Tabasco, 19–20. 11. Barrera, 54. 12. Walker, 170–72; Caddy, 109–10. 13. Caddy, 112–14. 14. Ibid., 116. 15. Tregle, 51. 16. Padre Rudecindo María Hernández to Bishop Guerra, AHAY/DO, 13 July 1854, Jalpa. 17. López, 129. 18. Heller, 205–6. 19. Dispatches of the US Consuls, Tabasco, [hereafter, DUSCT], 22 April 1873, Frontera. 20. Again, see Heller, 213–14. 21. Caddy, 138. 22. “Diligencias que promueve Domingo Antonio Valcarcel, propiendo la apertura de un camino que partiría del puebo de Oacapan hasa el de San Juan Guchicovi, a fin de contar con un medio que comunicase en forma más directa las provincias de Tabasco y Guatemala,” in DHT, Series Two, vol. II, 8 March 1801, 119–25. 23. Barrera, 67, 69–70, 72–73; C. Ruiz Abreu, Tabasco, 84. 24. Barrera, 52. 25. AGNM, Justicia, 240, 45, 2 June 1840, San Cristóbal, 271–73. 26. C. Ruiz Abreu, Tabasco, 199–221. 27. Balcázar Antonio, “Orígenes,” 10–11. 28. Morelet, 1871, 39–43. 29. “Pedro Dufán Maldonado, del presidio del Carmen, informa que en los pueblos sujetos a su jurisdicción, como ya había expuesto no existen pueblos de indios y sólo hay gente de color,” in DHT, Series Two, vol. IV, 4 July 1783, 55–58. 30. C. Ruiz Abreu, Tabasco, 50. 31. Ortiz Escamilla, 79–88, 98–99. 32. Cárdenas, “Memoria,” in Documentos y datos para la historia de Tabasco [hereafter, DDHT], 30–33. 33. AHAY/DO, 11 January 1853, Cunduacán.

306

notes

34. Hu-DeHart, 8–11. 35. Faragher, 428–31, 435–36; Guirard and Brassieur, 34–40. 36. C. Ruiz Abreu, Tabasco, 188–91. 37. A. Ruiz Abreu, 56–57, 85. 38. See the 1854 description of rural Jalpa, extracted from the Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística, VII, 392–402, reproduced in BPE, Novedades de Tabasco en la cultura, 17 June 1988, 6–7. 39. Russell, 215; Domínguez López, passim. 40. López Reyes, 161. 41. See “Memoria con que el C. José Rovirosa, Gobernador constitucional del Estado de Tabasco, dio cuenta de su administración al honorable congreso del mismo, el día 1. de Agosto de 1831.—San Juan Bautista.—Imprenta de Estado, dirijida por Trinidad Flores,” in CH, xl–xlvi. 42. Russell, 207. 43. With the exception of the information on azucemas, these details are culled from “Dos días en la capital de Tabasco,” Justo Sierra O’Reilly’s acount of San Juan Bautista, reproduced in Tabasco: Textos para su historia [hereafter, TTH] vol. I (1985), 289–304. The document is undated, but given the reference to fruitless campaigns against Texas, probably comes from the late 1830s. 44. BPE, Novedades de Tabasco en la cultura, 24 January 1988, 6–7. 45. Morelet, 1871, 132, 140–41. 46. See Mora, 15, 16, and 18; DET, II, 551. 47. Santa Anna, Tradiciones, 39–41. 48. Ibid., 65–67. 49. A. Ruiz Abreu, 84. 50. Becerra, 97. 51. AHAY/DO, 20 June 1838, San Juan Bautista. 52. Becerra, 70. 53. AHAY/DO, August 1846, Balancán/Usumacinta; 11 August 1846, Balancán; 26 August 1846, Usumacinta; 26 August 1846, Tenosique; 31 August 1846, Usumacinta. 54. AHAY/DO, 3 November 1852, Ríos de Usumacinta. 55. Ladesma Gallegos, 51–57; Rico Medina, 46–51; and Morales Valerio, 58–61. 56. Gerhard, 15, 21, 40. 57. Rico Medina, passim. 58. CH, Manuel Mestre Ghigliazza, “Datos para la biografía del Presbítero Manuel Gil y Sáenz,” xviii. The execution in question actually took place in 1852 or 1853 in Campeche, but because both Gil and Pérez were Tabascans—Pérez in fact operating under the pirate nom de guerre of “El Tabasqueño”—the responsibility of final comfort and ministrations fell to him. Gil had been a priest for a mere eight months when it happened. He personally communicated his memory of the event to Ghigliazza. 59. AHAY/DO, 14 February 1878, San Juan Bautista; the observation on languages comes from the letter of José Antonio Rojas Coello, who had served sixteen years in Chontalpa, and who spoke all of the mentioned tongues except Maya.

notes

307

60. AHAY/DO, 21 March 1867, San Juan Bautista, Eduardo Moncada to Pedro Maciel Guerra. 61. The best articulation of both the grievances and the demands of the Tabascan clergy appears in padre José Eduardo de Cárdenas’s “Memoria,” delivered in Cádiz on 24 July 1811. Again, this critical document is reproduced in DDHT, vol. I, 22–79. For critical passages on ecclesiastical issues, see 36–39; and Barrera, 54. 62. AGNM, Bienes Nacionales, 32, 36, 13 May 1836. 63. AHAY/DO, 29 March 1816, Teapa, José Eugenio Quiroga to Bishop Agustín Estévez y Ugarte. 64. To take only one example, padre Manuel Buelta Quiñones of San Juan Bautista had two fincas at the time of his death: one of sugar cane, the other cacao. Both were deteriorated and badly in debt. See AHAY/DO, 1 March 1816, San Juan Bautista. 65. AHAY/DO, 17 May 1838, San Juan Bautista. 66. AHAY/DO, 1 August 1839, Cunduacán. 67. As, for example, the complaints of “sacrilege” leveled against Juan José Arana; see AHAY/DO, 9 August 1838, Carmen. 68. AHAY/DO, 11 June 1835, Cunduacán. 69. Brading, 389–439. 70. Rico Medina, 58–60. 71. Canudos Sandoval reports that Tomás Garrido Canabal received the first four zebus as gifts during a visit to Yucatán in 1923 (13). 72. Barrera, 51–53, 78. 73. “Breve historia,” 12–13. 74. “Razas de maíz,” 64–65. 75. Gil y Sáenz, El caporal, 19–21. 76. Ortiz Ortiz, 95. 77. Santa Anna, Notas, 13. 78. TUL, A. C. Hartenbower, “A Report upon the Agriculture of the State of Tabasco, Mexico” (1925, unpublished manuscript), 77. The agronomist Hartenbower produced this comprehensive and fascinating analysis at the request of radical governor Tomás Garrido Canabal. It was intended for the governor’s eyes only, but a copy survives in Tulane’s Latin American Library. 79. Vela, 7. 80. Details on early agriculture are culled from Gil y Sáenz, El caporal. See Chapter 7 for a discussion of this text. 81. Juan Manuel de Torres to General Ramón Rayón, February 1831, Cunduacán, reproduced in BPE, Novedades de Tabasco en la cultura, 4 August 1985, 2. 82. Correa, 84–85. 83. Ortiz Ortiz, 118–19. The ill-fated pepper protection program dated from 1824. 84. Vasconcelos Ramos, 34–35, 38, 42. 85. Contreras Sánchez, 25–26, 28. 86. Barrera, 47–48; Heller, 196–97.

308

notes

87. See Baños Ramírez. 88. US Consul E. P. Johnson to Secretary of State Lewis Cass, in DUSCT, 30 September 1860. 89. Young, 2–8; Ogata, Gómez-Pompa, and Taube review existing theories of the plant’s prehistory. 90. Deiss and Greenhill, 83. 91. Ibid., 20. 92. Young, 32; Gasco, 325–26. 93. Henderson and Joyce, 143–47. 94. Dreiss and Greenhill, 108–15. 95. See Figueroa de Dueñas. 96. Aguilar-Moreno, 275–76, 283–87; Kourí, 25. 97. Aguilar-Moreno, 277–81. 98. Gage, 143–45. 99. Gage, 151–59. 100. Kourí, 5–33. 101. Information on cacao cultivation comes from my own observation of stillfunctioning Tabascan cacao haciendas; from TUL, Hartenbower, “A Report upon the Agriculture of the State of Tabasco,” 57–58; from Correa, 74–79; and from J. West, 105–21. 102. TUL, Hartenbower, “A Report upon the Agriculture of the State of Tabasco,” 61–63. 103. Gil y Sáenz, El caporal, 19–21. 104. Balcázar Antonio, Tabasco, 221–22. 105. C. Ruiz Abreu, Señores, 13. 106. C. Ruiz Abreu, Tabasco, 52–56. 107. Balcázar Antonio, Tabasco, 156. 108. Cárdenas, “Memoria,” in DDHT, vol. I, 54. 109. Archivo General de Centroamérica [hereafter, AGCA], B, 28545, 11, 6 March 1847; 1 January 1849; 10 April 1849. 110. Balcázar Antonio, Tabasco, 164–68. 111. C. Ruiz Abreu, Tabasco, 91–94. 112. AGNM, Justicia Eclesiástica, 146, 6 February 1849, 504–7. 113. C. Ruiz Abreu, Tabasco, 67–73. 114. “El ministro de Real Hacienda de Tabasco don José Llergo sobre que se le conceda su retiro,” in DHT, Series One, vol. IV, 8 February 1814, 297–310. 115. C. Ruíz Abreu, Tabasco, 258–59.

Chapter 3 1. D. Davis, 181–82. 2. Berlin, 338–50. 3. Trouillot, 45–82.

notes

309

4. Moya Pons, 191–93, 204–19. 5. Knight, 12–14, 50–54, 91–92. 6. See Couturier. 7. Moore, 156–60. 8. See M. Stephens. 9. Gibson, 306–26. 10. Rugeley, Yucatán’s Maya Peasantry; Rugeley, Wonders; and Rugeley, Rebellion Now and Forever. 11. See the collected essays in Salinas Sandoval, Birrichaga Gardida, and Escobar Ohmstede. 12. AGNM, Justicia, 22, 30, 8 January 1824, San Juan Bautista, 135–41. 13. Voekel, 77–98; McCrea, 83–93. 14. Cárdenas, “Memoria,” in DDHT, 22–79, is long on rhetoric but short on progressive reforms. 15. “Testimonio de información sobre insulto del presbítero Don Juan José Godoy al Gobernador de la Privincia,” in DHT, Series One, IV, 21 July 1812, 251–56; and “Testimonio del oficio del señor vicario de Tabasco sobre su jurisdicción limitada en contesto del que se le pasó por este gobierno quejándose del presbítero Don Juan José Godoy que también va compusado,” in DHT, Series One, vol. IV, 21 July 1812, 257–60. 16. “El gobernador de Tabasco sobre excesos de algunos eclesiásticos de esta provincia,” in DHT, Series One, vol. IV, 7 September 1812, 287–95. 17. Ibid. 18. AHAY/DO, 29 March 1816, Teapa, padre José Eugenio Quiroga to Bishop Agustín Estévez y Ugarte. 19. Arias G. et al., 51. 20. AHAY/DO, 6 February 1817, San Juan Bautista, Francisco de Heredia y Vergara to Bishop Augustín Estévez y Ugarte. 21. AHAY/DO, 9 February 1817, San Juan Bautista, José Eugenio Quiroga to Bishop Agustín Estévez y Ugarte. 22. AHAY, 5 March 1816, Usumacinta, José Eugenio Quiroga to Bishop Agustín Estévez y Ugarte. 23. AHAY/DO, 22 March 1817, San Juan Bautista, Francisco de la Barreda to Bishop Agustín Estévez y Ugarte. 24. CH, xxx. 25. AGNM, Justicia, 16, 15, 2 July 1823, ff. 287–89. 26. AGNM, Bienes Nacionales, 33, 5, 28 April 1860. 27. “Antonio y Juan López y otros vecinos del partido de Agualulcos piden a su Excelencia la declaración de la competencia suscitada entre el justicia de este partido y el gobernador de Tabasco,” in DHT, Series One, vol. IV, 20 November 1804, 31–36. 28. Holden, 48–49. 29. Arias G. et al., 62, 65–66. 30. “Reglamento agrario para la agricultura,” issued by Marcelino Margalli (San Juan Bautista, 13 November 1826), in González Calzada, 169–75.

310

notes

31. Arias G. et al., 76, 84–85. 32. Ibid., 81. 33. AGNM, Justicia, 105, 30, 20 June 1828, San Juan Bautista, ff. 242–53; AGNM, Justicia, 105, 17, 21 April 1828, San Juan Bautista, 136–39. 34. AGNM, Justicia, 70, 6, 16 August 1830, Mérida, 46–73. 35. AGNM, Justicia, 408, 3, 23 January 1852, México, ff. 15–47. 36. Mestre Ghigliazza, Apuntes, 4–5. 37. López Reyes, 153, 155–57. 38. AGNM, Bienes Nacionales, 35, 22, 4 July 1824, other dates. 39. AHAY/DO, no date, 1817, San Juan Bautista, Dámaso de Torres to Bishop Agustín Estévez y Ugarte. 40. AGNM, Justicia Eclesiástica, vol. XXIX, 31–34, 9 April 1823. 41. AGNM, Justicia, 33, 2, 20 May 1823, San Juan Bautista, 210–36. 42. Gurría Lacroix, 93–135. See also AGNM, Justicia, 33, 2, 20 May 1823, San Juan Bautista, 210–36; and 47, 7, various dates, 1830, 179–252. 43. CH, xxxix. 44. López Reyes, 153–54. 45. Manuel Zapata Zavala, “Apuntes estadísticas sobre el Departamento de Tabasco,” 1842, in DDHT, vol. 3, 334–35. 46. Heller, 211. 47. López Reyes, 154–56, 157. 48. Ibid., 160–61. 49. Ibid., 167. 50. Ibid., 168. 51. Ibid., 177. 52. AGNM, Justicia, 52, 8, 22 January 1827, Cunduacán, ff. 273–83. 53. Anna, 213–19, 224–27. 54. AGNM, Justicia, 150, 15, 5 November 1829, San Juan Bautista, ff. 97–100. 55. López Reyes, 168. 56. Ibid., 169. 57. Ibid., 171. 58. See Manuel Mestre Ghigliazzi’s notes in DHT, vol. III, 5–10. 59. Miguel García to the Ministro de Guerra y Marina, in Archivo Histórico de la Defensa Nacional [hereafter, AHDN], xi/418.3/744, 8 February 1830, Teapa. 60. López Reyes, 171–73. 61. Ibid., 173. 62. Ibid., 174–75. 63. Ibid., 179–81. 64. Ibid., 181; Fowler, 136–42. 65. “Carvajal Cavero, José Segundo (1791–1866),” in Yucatán en el tiempo, 113–14. 66. DUSCT, 18 August 1832, San Juan Bautista. 67. See CH, xlix–l, from the unpublished memoir of Loginos Díaz. 68. DUSCT, 25 July 1832, Frontera, report of Martín Francisco Arriola.

notes

311

69. López Reyes, 181–84. I have thus far been unable to locate any documentation on either the First or Second Chenes invasion in the Yucatecan archives. 70. Pomposo Maldonado to President Anastasio Bustamante, in AHDN, xi/481.3/1616, 4 September 1840, ff. 381–82. 71. López Reyes, 187. 72. Ibid., 187–88, 189. 73. DUSCT, 21 July 1833, San Juan Bautista. 74. Waldeck, 6–11. 75. AHAY/DO, 14 July 1844, San Isidro de Comalcalco. 76. López Reyes, 191–92; “Población y demarcación,” in TTH, vol. I, 147–50. 77. Fowler, 154–57. 78. See Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; and Reséndez, Land So Strange. 79. DUSCT, 14 April 1836, San Juan Bautista. 80. DUSCT, 18 May 1836, San Juan Bautista. 81. DUSCT, 6 June 1836, San Juan Bautista. 82. López Reyes, 192–94. 83. Ibid., 201. 84. Ibid., 209–10. 85. Balcázar Antonio, Tabasco, 125. 86. AGNM, Justicia, 217, 18, 20 September 1837, San Juan Bautista, ff. 154–99. 87. AGNM, Justicia Eclesiástica, tomo 120, 163–67, 2 October 1834. 88. AHAY/DO, 2 November 1839, San Juan Bautista. 89. Rugeley, Yucatán’s Maya Peasantry, 117–23; and Rugeley, Rebellion, 1–4.

Chapter 4 1. AGNM, Justicia, 128, 13, 23 June 1838, San Juan Bautista, 32–74. 2. DUSCT, 7 September 1839, San Juan Bautista. 3. Rugeley, Yucatán’s Maya Peasantry, 117–22; and Rugeley, Rebellion, 1–3. 4. AHDN, xi/481.3/1620, 20 January 1840, ff. 16–17; López Reyes, 222–23. 5. López Reyes, 224–27. 6. Ibid., 227. 7. Frasquet, 249. 8. “Biografía de Juan Pablo de Anaya,” in DDHT, vol. III, 113–27; and in “Sobre los procedimientos de D. Juan P. Anaya en Texas,” AGNM, Justicia, 135, 26, 2 November 1839, ff. 269–72, México, Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores to Ministro de Interior. 9. “Alocución del Escmo. señor D. Juan Pablo Anaya a sus conciudadanos” (Tabasco: Trinidad Flores, 6 December 1840), in Western Americana: History of the Trans-Mississippi West, 1550–1900 [hereafter, WA], microfilm of the Beineke Library, Yale University. 10. AHDN, xi/481.3/1575, c. 20 October 1840, ff. 67–71, José Ignacio Gutiérrez to Secretario de Guerra y Marina.

312

notes

11. Barcía, 122–23. 12. Enciclopedia de Cuba, 292–93; Del Aguila Figueroa, Tabasco, 15, citing the 1878 Diccionario biográfico cubano; Suchlicki, 10; and “El Capitán General Conde de Santa Clara,” Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami, http://www.cubangenclub. org. 13. W. Davis, 91–112. 14. Charles E. Nolan, Sacramental Records of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, J. Edgar Burnes, trans., Vol. XIX (New Orleans: Archdiocese of New Orleans, 2004), 109, New Orleans Historical Collection [hereafter, NOHC]. 15. DDHT, vol. IV, 622–23. 16. Nolan, Sacramental Records, vol. XII, 106–7, in NOHC. 17. Tregle, 113–14. 18. See Rasmussen. Powell, 344–46. 19. May, 146–79. 20. Anonymous report, 8 February 1841, from San Cristóbal, Chiapas (in AHDN, xi/481.3/1691, ff. 761–62). 21. AHDN, xi/481.3/1616, 4 September 1840, ff. 381–82. 22. Chiltepec is a small coastal village protected from waves by a sandbar. In the nineteenth century it formed a modest land point for smaller vessels; see Heller, 205–7. 23. López Reyes, 228–29; AHDN, xi/418.3/1575, 5 October 1840, ff. 61–63. 24. DDHT, vol. IV, 17 September 1840, 160–61. 25. Report of José Ignacio Gutiérrez, AHDN, xi/481.3/1617, 10 August 1840, ff. 55–74. 26. AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 8 June 1842, ff. 15–18, report from the commander of Acayucan. 27. AHDN, xi/481.3/1575, c. 20 October 1840, ff. 67–71, José Ignacio Gutiérrez to Secretario de Guerra y Marina. 28. López Reyes, 229–31. 29. “Contestaciones entre el General Don Juan Pablo de Anaya y el Comodoro de la Escuadra tejana,” in DHT, III, 96–102. The text states, “Extractado de EL PROGRESO, periódico de San Juan Bautista de Tabasco, por EL COSMOPOLITA de México, número del 10 de Febrero de 1841.” The material originally appeared between December 12–16, 1840, as events were unfolding. 30. AHDN, xi/481.3/1575, 17 November 1840, f. 33. 31. Pedro José Hernández to José Anastasio Hernández, in AHND, xi/481.3/1631, 5 September 1841, ff. 80–81. 32. In this sense, the Tabascan federalist revolution differs from many of the more famous filibustering episodes that May reviews in “Manifest Destiny’s Filibusters.” 33. Miguel Carrillo’s report in AHDN, xi/481.3/1620, 20 January 1840, ff. 16–17; DUSCT, 18 May 1836, San Juan Bautista. 34. Letter from Gabriel Valencia, San Juan Bautista’s former commander, in AHDN, xi/481.3/29 November 1841, ff. 789–91.

notes

313

35. Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán [hereafter, AGEY], Poder Ejecutivo caja 46, Milicias, volume I, expediente 2, 30 April 1840. 36. Heller, 210–11. 37. Account of José Ignacio Gutiérrez, in AHDN, xi/481.3/1620, 14 March 1840, ff. 26–27; and xi/481.3/1617, 10 August 1840, ff. 55–74. 38. José María Ortiz Monasterio, Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores to Ministro de Guerra, in AHDN, xi/481.3/1616, 30 November 1840, ff. 88–89. 39. El progreso, o, Anaya en campaña, #1, 29 November 1840, filed in AHDN, xi/481.3/1691, f. 611. 40. “Contestaciones,” DHT, III, 96–102; Francisco A. Foucher, Secretario General de Gobierno, to the governor’s junta consultiva, dated 16 December 1840. 41. Testimony of Juan Ricoy, AHDN, xi/481.3/1690, 16 March 1841, ff. 976–80. 42. AHDN, xi/481.3/1691, 25 May 1841, f. 667. 43. University of Texas at Austin Latin American Library [hereafter, UTA], Genaro García Collection, Juan Pablo Anaya Papers, Series 1, 17 February 1841, San Juan Bautista. 44. AHDN, xi/481.3/1691, 31 March 1841, ff. 557–58. 45. Anonymous account from Chiapas, found in AHDN, xi/481.3/1691, 8 February 1841, ff. 761–62. 46. AHDN, xi/481.3/1691, 26 June 1841, 27, Huimanguillo, Francisco de Sentmanat to the Secretario del Despacho de Guerra y Marina del Estado; Report of José Ignacio Gutiérrez, AHDN, xi/481.3/1575, c. 20 October 1840, ff. 67–71. 47. AGEY, Poder Ejecutivo caja 46, Milicias, volume I, expediente 18, 9 January 1841. 48. AGEY, Poder Ejecutivo caja 46, Milicias, volume I, expediente 15, 9 August 1841. 49. AHDN, xi/481.3/1690, 5 January 1841, f. 7. This report comes from the commander of the Mexican pilot boat Paz, which had just come to Veracruz from Tabasco. 50. “Francisco Sentmanat a los pueblos del Estado,” in AHDN, xi/481.3/1691, 25 May 1841, f. 729. 51. Pomposo Maldonado to Francisco Marín, AHDN, xi/481.3/1690, 11 April 1841, ff. 958–60. 52. Gabriel Valenzuela, AHDN, xi/481.3/160, 29 November 1841, ff. 789–91. 53. Sentmanat to Guerra y Marina, AHDN, xi/481.3/1691, 26 June 1841. 54. AHDN, xi/481.3/1690, 20 July 1841, ff. 563–64. 55. Report of Manuel María Sandoval, in AHDN, xi/481.3/1805, 19 December 1843. 56. López Reyes, 230–31. 57. TUL, 33: Chiapas, Box 5, f. 31, 26 May 1841, Ignacio Barbarena to Ministro de Guerra y Marina, “Detalle de la acción dada en Comitán el 15 de mayo de 1841 por las tropas del Supremo Gobierno.” 58. López Reyes, 236. 59. AGEY, Poder Ejecutivo caja 46, Milicias, volume II, expediente 25, 4 April 1841.

314

notes

60. Ibid. 61. Fernando Nicolás Maldonado’s letter of 1 January 1842, in (San Juan Bautista), and reproduced in DDHT, vol. III, 294–96. 62. AHDN, xi/481.3/2002, 7 May 1842, ff. 40–41, Sentmanat to Guerra y Maria. 63. Nicolas Maldonado to Santa Anna, AHDN, xi/481.3/2002, 12 March 1842, ff. 24–25; xi/481.3/1633, 8 November 1842, ff. 27–30. 64. Paquette, 169–70. 65. AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 10 March 1842, f. 14. 66. AHAY/DO, 25 March 1844, Cunduacán, Luis José Presenda to Bishop Guerra. 67. The all-critical AHAY/DO ramo, source of much information on the nineteenth-century southeast, lacks Tabascan material for 1840–44, 1846–48, and 1863–67, reflecting the latter province’s militarily enforced isolation during those years. 68. Fowler, 209–17. 69. AHDN, xi/481.3/1631, 4 October 1841, ff. 66–67; report of Franciso Marín, AHDN, xi/481.3/1631, 14 November 1841, f.101; Sentmanat’s proclamation, printed in the mouthpiece La aurora de la libertad, appears in AHDN, xi/481.3/1631, 4 November 1841, ff. 102–3. 70. Centro de Apoyo para la Investigación Histórica de Yucatán [hereafter, CAIHY], El yucateco libre, 4, 43 (8 January 1842), 1. 71. This well-known novel has most recently been reprinted in two volumes as part of the Universidad Veracruzana’s Clásicos Mexicanos series (Xalapa, 2008), with editing, notes, and introduction by Manuel Sol. 72. On the greater southeast circuit court, see AGNM, Justicia, expediente 135, 13 October 1848, San Juan Bautista, 354–55. 73. Regarding Justo Sierra O’Reilly’s mission, nothing survives on the Yucatecan side of the documentation, perhaps owing to secret character of the operation. However, it is referred to frequently and openly in Tabascan documents, while Sierra O’Reilly published several travel sketches based on his observations, albeit based on an earlier visit of 1831. These are reprinted in TTH, I, 289–308. 74. Pomposo Maldonado’s indignant accusations appear in AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 18 January 1842, ff. 10–11. 75. AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 10 March 1842, f. 14. 76. AHDN, xi/481.3/2002, 1 June 1842, ff. 45–48, Acayucan, Francisco Marín to the Comandancia General of Veracruz; and AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 8 June 1842, ff. 15–18; and 17 October 1842, f. 22. 77. Sentmanat’s protest to Guerra y Marina, found in AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 11 October 1842, ff. 24–25. 78. AHDN, xi/481/3.1763, 3 August 1842, ff. 6–7. 79. AHDN, xi/481.3/1763, 6 September 1842, f. 74. 80. DUSCT, 1 January 1843, E. Procter to Sec. of State Daniel Webster. 81. AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 1 February 1843, f. 52; various dates, January-February 1843, ff. 41–47, Sentmanat to Ministro de Guerra y Marina.

notes

315

82. See AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 6 February 1843, f. 60. 83. Governor of Veracruz to Ministro de Guerra y Marina, AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 20 March 1843, 62–63. 84. AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 17 April 1843, ff. 65–70. 85. Prefect of Acayucan to Ministro de Guerra y Marina, AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 15 May 1843, ff. 76–79. 86. Report of Manuel María Sandoval, AHDN, xi/481.3/1805, 19 December 1843. 87. Sentmanat to Ministro de Guerra y Marina, AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 26 June 1843, f. 99. 88. Juan Manuel de Torres to José María Iglesias, in AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 20 June 1843, ff. 87–89, Huimanguillo. 89. López Reyes, 267. 90. AHDN, xi/481.3/1655, 27 March 1836. 91. Haynes, 67–75. 92. AHDN, xi/481.3/1977, 4 September 1843. 93. Report of Ampudia, AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 6 August 1843, 254–56. 94. See Ampudia’s account in AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 20 July 1843, 189–93. 95. AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 2 August 1843, ff. 244–45. 96. AHDN, xi/481.3/1633, 18 July 1843, ff. 210; 31 July 1843, ff. 265–69. 97. DUSCT, 3 August 1843, Frontera, E. Porter to Sec. of State John C. Calhoun. 98. AHAY/DO, 12 March 1844, Cunduacán/San Juan Bautista, Ampudia to Salvador Basenda, prefect of Chontalpa. 99. AHAY/DO 27, 29 April 1844, Balancán. 100. López Reyes, 255. 101. Ibid., 264. 102. DHT, vol. IV, 137. The rest were Germans, Italians, Colombians, or, in one case, Tabascan. 103. AHDN, xi/481.3/2052, 17–19 June 1844, various ff.; 11 July 1844, ff. 102–4. 104. AHDN, xi/481.3/2051, 4 May 1844, f. 17; xi/481.3/2053, 8 June 1844, ff. 195– 96. This latter account came from Yucatecan military commander and former governor José Tiburcio López Constante. 105. E. Turner, US Consul (who was not personally present), DUSCT, 20 July 1844, Frontera. On the etymology of Tecoluta/Tecollutilla, see Becerra, 96. 106. The vivid details of this account appear in an appendix to CH, lxiv, purportedly excerpted from the memoirs of one Longinos Díaz. 107. AHDN, xi/481.3/2051, 13 June 1844, ff. 180–82. 108. I am profoundly indebted to Ms. Marguerite LeBreton Merz for this document and its translation. By a curious set of circumstances, the document passed into the hands of her grandmother, one “Dagmar Renshaw LeBreton of New Orleans, a professor of French and Italian languages and literatures at Newcomb College” (communication of Ms. Merz, 2 July 2009), and from her was passed on to Ms. Merz herself. Upon learning of my research into the history of Francisco de Sentmanat, she was kind enough to send me a scan and transcription of the original document; the translation that appears here is her own and is reproduced

316

notes

by her extremely kind permission. A translation, apparently created at the order of Ampudia, can be found in AHDN, xi/481.3/2051, undated, f. 183. The Spanish version conveys the overall idea, but lacks the original’s drama. 109. DUSCT, 24 September 1844, Frontera, E. Porter to Sec. of State James Buchanan. 110. AHDN, xi/481.3/2053, 20 June 1844, ff. 11–26. 111. New Orleans Picayune, 18 July 1844, 3. 112. The New World: A Weekly Family Journal of Popular Literature, Science, Art and News, 20 July 1844, 94. 113. Spirit of the Times: A Chronicle of the Turf, Agriculture, Field Sports, Literature and the Stage, 3 August 1844, 271. 114. Niles’ National Register, 13 July 1844, 320. 115. Rasmussen, 147–48. 116. The story of the proposed rack of heads, see López Reyes, 274. 117. AHDN, xi/418.3/2053, 23 June 1844, ff. 131–32; and 13 July 1844, ff. 81–82. 118. López Reyes, 272. 119. AHDN, xi/481.3/2053, 27 July 1844, f. 110. 120. New York Observer and Chronicle, 5 July 1845, 107. 121. Saxon, Dryer, and Tallant, 323–28; Long, 177–81. 122. Hunt, 98–108.

Chapter 5 1. El astro de la libertad, periódico oficial del gobierno de Tabasco, found in AHDN, xi/481.4/14673, 9 May 1945, ff. 959–60. 2. López Reyes, 259, 261–62. 3. AGNM, Justicia, 264, 38, 11 October 1844, San Juan Bautista, 249–53. 4. AHDN, Cancelados, xi/111/1–211, various dates. 5. J. Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, II, 62–63. 6. UTA, Genaro García Collection, Juan Pablo Anaya Papers, 6 May 1843, Havana. 7. Mestre Ghigliaza, “Biografía de Juan Pablo de Anaya,” in DDHT, vol. III, 127. 8. Heller, 211–12. 9. Morelet, 25. 10. Report of Manuel de Lara, captain of the Frontera port, in AHDN, xi/481.3/2051, 7 June 1844, ff. 162–63. 11. Accounts of this event surfaced eight years later, at Bruno’s final trial; see Invasión norteamericana en Tabasco (1846-1847): Documentos [hereafter, INT], edited by Manuel Mestre Ghigliazza (México: Imprenta Universitaria, 1948), 331– 36, 16 November 1848, San Juan Bautista. 12. AHDN, xi/481.3/2053, 1 November 1844, f. 173. 13. See Bruno’s manifesto, AHDN, xi/481.3/2094, 20 July 1845, ff. 90–91.

notes

317

14. AHND, xi/481.3/2095, 25 July 1845, ff. 11–12. 15. AHDN, xi/481.3/2094, various dates and folleto numbers, July–September 1845. 16. Ibid. 17. Report of Manuel Peláez, AHDN, xi/481.3/2099, 30 October 1845, f. 3. 18. AHDN, xi/481.3/2099, 20 October 1845, f. 58. 19. Bruno, “Al público,” 20 December 1845, San Juan Bautista, in AHDN, xi/481.3/2167. 20. Ibid. 21. AHDN, xi/481.3/2201, 30 March 1846, f. 23. 22. AHDN, xi/481.3/2215, 21 May 1846, f. 4. 23. Clary, 50–51, 53, 95–99, 105–16, 194–97. 24. AHDN, Cancelados, xi/iii/2–733; see also, INT, 167–71, no date. 25. Reséndez, Changing National Identities, 253–63. 26. Hart, 42–43. 27. Rugeley, Rebellion, 55. 28. INT, 12 August 1846, 7–10, 10–11. 29. Schroeder, 9. 30. DUSCT, 20 June 1846, San Juan Bautista, Gov. J. Victor Jiménez to the Vice Consulate in Frontera; DUSCT, 18 June 1848, Frontera, Edward Porter to James Buchanan. 31. DUSCT, 6 July 1846, Frontera, Edward Porter to James Buchanan. 32. AHAY/DO 29, 5 May 1846, San Juan Bautista. 33. AHAY/DO, 13 August 1846, Ríos de Usumacinta; 31 August 1846, Ríos de Usumacinta. 34. AHDN, xi/481.3/2373, 21 September 1846, f. 16. 35. AHDN, xi/481.3/2373, 27 October 1846, ff. 8–9 (INT, 23–26); El indicador, 9 November 1846 (INT, 33–34); El republicano, 18 January 1847 (INT, 37–39); and La sombra de Cepeda, 1888 (INT, 42–44). 36. Heller, 241. 37. DUSCT, 29 June 1850, Frontera, Edward Porter to John M. Clayton. 38. INT, 26 October 1846, 27, Juan Bautista Traconis to Matthew Perry. 39. See Rugeley, Yucatán’s Maya Peasantry, 164–71. 40. INT, 26 October 1846, 28–29. 41. AHDN, xi/481.3/3273, 21 October 1846, f. 18; INT, 27 October 1846, 30–31, Traconis to the Secretaría de Guerra y Marina. 42. INT, 29 October 1846, 86, Traconis to SGM. 43. INT, 27 October 1846, 29–30. 44. AHDN, xi/481.3/2373, 27 October 1846, f. 11. 45. AHDN, xi/481.3/2373, 27 October 1846, f. 18; INT, 9 November 1846, 84–85. 46. González Navarro, 176. 47. INT, 16 November 1846, 75, account of Esteban Foucher, secretary general of the state of Tabasco; INT, 28 September 1846, 88, account of Rejón. 48. INT, 16 November 1846, 68–69, Traconis to Ministro de Guerra y Marina.

318

notes

49. INT, 19 November 1846, 62–64, pronouncement of Juan Bautista Traconis; AHDN, xi/481.3/2208, 12 December 1846, f. 239. 50. INT, 5 December 1846, 106–7, reprinted in the 5 January 1847 issue of Revista de periódicos. 51. Traconis’s later self-defense, in El monitor republicano (INT, 25 February 1847), 133–38; Justo Santa Anna’s version, La restauración (INT, 11 February 1847, 176–79); anonymous version of 28 January 1847, found in La restauración (INT, 161–66). 52. See Dueñas’s manifesto in INT, 7 January 1847, 151–54. 53. Account of José Julián Dueñas, 18 January 1847, in INT, 159–60. 54. INT, 10 December 1846, 104–5, Jerónimo Cardona to Ministro de Guerra y Marina. 55. El simplón, INT, 19 December 1846, 105. 56. Oaxacan commander Juan Díaz condemned the revolt on 17 December 1846 (see INT, 117–18); and for Puebla, see Manuel Arteaga’s repudiation in INT, 18 December 1846, 118–19. 57. El regenerador republicano (Puebla, INT, 12 December 1846, 107–9); El zempoalteca (Veracruz, INT, 12 December 1846, 109–10); El indicador (Veracruz, INT, 13 December 1846, 110–13); and El republicano (Mexico City, INT, 17 December 1846, 113–16). 58. INT, 19 December 1846, 119–20. 59. El monitor republicano (INT, 25 February 1847, 133–38). 60. INT, 28 December 1846, 129–30. 61. INT, 28 December 1846, 123–25. 62. See article from San Juan Bautista newspaper La restauración, in INT, 10 January 1847, 154–55. 63. See 28 January 1847 article in La restauración, reprinted in INT, 161–66. See also, INT, undated, 158; 13 January 1847, 156–57; and 18 January 1847, 159–60. 64. INT, 28 December 1846, 129–30. 65. Proclamation of Justo Santa Anna, 15 April 1847, in INT, 190–91. 66. INT, 16 May 1847, 192–93, Justo Santa Anna to Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores. 67. INT, 265, 29 April 1847, letter of Antonio López de Santa Anna, Orizaba. 68. AHDN, xi/481.3/2532, 9 May 1847, 30–32, Domingo Echagaray to Ministro de Guerra. 69. Report of Justo Santa Anna, 24 June 1847, INT, 194–95; José María Roa Bárcena, Recuerdos de la invasión norteamericana, 1846-1847, por un joven de entonces. Obra de Don José María Roa Bárcena, miembro correspondiente de la Real Academia Española (México: Libería Madrileña de Juan Buxó y Compañía, 1883), reprinted in INT, 209–12; “Relación histórica de la segunda invasión que hicieron los americanos en Tabasco, y de la conducta que observó en ella el Comandante General de aquel Estado Don Domingo Echagaray, escrita por un testigo imparcial y verídico” (Veracruz: J. M. Blanco, 1847), reprinted in INT, 229–47. 70. “Relación histórica,” 230–31, 231–32.

notes

319

71. Perry’s own account of the second invasion appears in the National Archives [hereafter, NA], microfilm roll 56, 24 June 1847, “Flagship Mississippi,” Perry to (Secretary of the Navy) John Mason. Special thanks to the very capable Mr. Jeff Fortney for obtaining NA material for me. 72. Again, from “Relación histórica.” Campos apparently participated in the retreat. 73. “Relación histórica,” 235–36. 74. NA, microfilm roll 56, 20 June 1847, San Juan Bautista, Commander Mackenzie to Matthew Perry. 75. “Relación histórica,” 236–38. 76. NA, microfilm roll 56, 25 June 1847, “Off Tabasco River,” Matthew Perry to John Mason. 77. “Relación histórica,” 238–39. 78. The detail on Sentamant’s old armory comes from Roa Bárcena, whose account closely matches the narrative provided here. 79. Echagaray to Ministro de Guerra, INT, 205–7, 5 July 1847, Cunduacán; “Relación histórica,” 238–39. 80. McNeill, 33–36, 52–53, 291–92. 81. NA, 57, 19 July 1847, “Off Tabasco River,” Perry to Commander A. Bigelow, Senior Naval Officer, Tabsco. 82. Eulalio Maldonado’s letter to Jerónimo Cardona in INT, 207–9, 24 July 1847, San Juan Bautista. 83. INT, 215–16, 26 July 1847, San Juan Bautista. 84. “Relación histórica,” 244. 85. INT, 251–55, 30 October 1847, San Juan Bautista. 86. INT, 262–63, 14 November 1847, Atasta, pronouncement of the Atasta garrison. 87. INT, 264–65, 15 November 1847, San Juan Bautista. 88. Bruno’s letter of 24 August 1847, Comalcalco, in INT, 218–19. 89. Testimony of Manuel Peláez in INT, 291–93, 24 October 1848, San Juan Bautista. 90. Juan was possibly the son or brother of patrician Santiago Duque de Estrada. 91. INT, 20 July 1848, 279–85, Veracruz, Escobar to Ministro de Guerra. 92. AHDN, xi/481.3/2829, 22 August 1848. 93. Sierra O’Reilly, Impresiones, 454–55. 94. INT, 315–19, 4 November 1848, San Juan Bautista. 95. AHDN, Cancelados, xi/iii/3–1035, “Marín, Tomás.” 96. INT, 315–19, 4 November 1848, San Juan Bautista. 97. INT, 295–97, 24 October 1848, San Juan Bautista. 98. AHDN, xi/481.3/2804, various dates, November 1848. 99. Schroeder, 154–56; Fahr-Becker, 9–10. 100. AHDN, Cancelados, xi/iii/2–838. 101. INT, anonymous footnote to Campos’s “Relación histórica,” 247.

320

notes

102. TTH, 2, 626–27; INT, 167–71, undated; Biografías de tabasqueños ilustres, 23–27. 103. INT, 338, 341, 350.

Chapter 6 1. AHAY/DO, 19 February 1852, Palizada; 25 August 1852, San Juan Bautista. 2. AHAY/DO, 3 November 1852, Balancán. 3. AHAY/DO, 23 December 1851, Frontera. 4. Barrera, 46. 5. Arias G. et al., 186–88. 6. Marín’s report to Ministro de Guerra y Marina, in AGNM, xi/481.3/2913, 16 February 1850, ff. 10–13. 7. Zebadúa, 103–4; see also “Joaquín Miguel Gutiérrez,” in Enciclopedia de México, vol. VII, 3783. 8. Marín’s report to the Ministro de Guerra y Marina, in AGNM, xi/481.3/2913, 16 February 1850, ff. 10–13. 9. AHDN, xi/481.3/2913, 14 January 1850, f. 56, letter of José Julián Dueñas. 10. McCrea, 98–129. 11. AHDN, xi/481.3/2913, 3 January 1850, ff. 58–60. 12. Marín’s report to Ministro de Guerra y Marina, in AGNM, xi/481.3/2913, 16 February 1850, ff. 10–13. 13. AHDN, xi/481.3/2804, 5 May 1850, ff. 1–3. 14. AHDN, xi/481.3/3120, 15 October 1850, ff. 36–37. 15. AHDN, xi/481.3/2913, 28 April 1850, f. 6. 16. AHDN, xi/481.3/3244, 14 April 1851, ff. 11–14, M. E. Molina to Ministro de Guerra y Marina, from San Juan Bautista. 17. Arias G. et al., Tabasco, 188, 190–91. 18. Ibid. 19. See Manuel Mestre Ghigliazza’s biographical footnote in INT, 285. 20. AGNM, Justicia, 543, 9 April 1855, 46–61. 21. AGNM, Justicia, 459, 42, 1 August 1854, Balancán, 440–58. 22. AGNM, Gobernación [unclassified material], 1853–55, 1 August 1853. 23. AHDN, xi/481.3/3451, 4 July 1853, ff. 2–3. 24. AHAY/DO, 22 July 1855, San Juan Bautista, José María Sastré to Pedro Maciel Guerra. 25. AGNM, Justicia, 431, 50, 24 July 1853, San Juan Bautista, 365–380; and 443, 34, 27 January 1855, Puebla, 217–21. 26. AGNM, Justicia, 492, 47, 8 February 1854, Durango, 303–8; and 480, 14, 6 July 1854, Guanajuato. 27. AGNM, Justicia, 351, 18, 16 August 1853, San Juan Bautista, 240–275. 28. Arias G. et al., 191–93. 29. AHDN, xi/481.3/3515, 8 November 1853.

notes

321

30. López Reyes, 378. 31. Rugeley, Rebellion, 114–16. 32. TUL, Documents Group 33: Chiapas, Box 5, Folder 34, “Tolerancia al alcance de los que no tienen estudios,” written by “Un Católico Chiapaneco” (Tabasco: Imprenta de José María Abalos, 1848). 33. AHAY/DO, 12 March 1853, San Juan Bautista. 34. AHAY/DO, 2 January 1852, Macuspana. 35. Rudecindo María Hernández to Bishop Guerra, AHAY/DO, 13 July 1854, Jalpa. 36. AGNM, Justicia Eclesiástica, 170, 9 April 1855, 269–77. 37. Tomás Marín to Ministro of Guerra y Marina, AHDN, xi/481.3/4598, 4 October 1853, ff. 11–12, Acayucan. 38. AHDN, xi/481.3/4598, 11 October 1853, ff. 7–8. 39. AHDN, xi/481.3/4432, 29 April 1854, f. 10. 40. AHDN, xi/481.3/488, 17 August 1855; Del Aguila Figueroa, Tabasco, 211–12; Arias G. et al., 194–95. 41. Haworth, 51; AGNM, Gobernación [unclassified material], box 1853–55, 28 May 1853. 42. AGNM, Justicia, 218, 30, 8 January 1855, San Juan Bautista, 196–98. 43. INT, 285, 1943. 44. Arias G. et al., 194–95. 45. AGNM, Justicia Eclesiástica, 179, 31 December 1855, 42–49. 46. AGNM, Justicia Eclesiástica, 180, 6 June 1857, 467–81. 47. DHT, vol. III, 5–10. 48. Benito Haro to Ministro de Guerra y Marina, AHDN, xi/481.3/5185, 22 November 1855, f. 1; 29 November 1855, f. 9. 49. For example, Rafael Carrera repeatedly stoked conflicts in adjoining Honduras to prevent the rise of liberally minded governments; see Sarmiento, 180–87, 372–81; and Woodward, 229–46. 50. Benito Haro to Ministro de Guerrra y Marina, AHDN, xi/481.3/5546, 24 February 1856. 51. Lira, 197–201. 52. Benito Haro to the Ministro de Guerra y Marina, in AHDN, xi/481.3/5198, 22 October 1855, f. 115. 53. AGNM, Justicia, 549, 23, 10 May 1856, San Juan Bautista, ff. 115–16. 54. Arias G. et al., 196. 55. See Chapter 8 for a discussion of the privatization of Tabascan baldío lands. 56. Lira, 203–14. 57. Arias G. et al., 205. 58. AHAY/DO, 20 February 1858, San Juan Bautista, Sastré to Pedro Maciel Guerra. 59. AHAY/DO, 21 November 1856, San Juan Bautista. 60. AHAY/DO, 10 June 1858, San Juan Bautista, Sastré to Bishop Guerra. 61. AGNM, Justicia, 548, 59, various dates, 1856, Cárdenas, 383–413; and AGNM, Justicia, 551, 86, various dates, 321–46.

322

notes

62. José Justo Alvarez to Ministro de Guerra y Marina, in AHDN, xi/481.3/3763, 31 May 1857, San Juan Bautista. 63. José Justo Alvarez to Ministro de Guerra y Marina, in AHDN, xi/481.3/4004, 24 June 1857. 64. Arias G. et al., 197; Del Aguila Figueroa, Tabasco, 212. 65. AHT, 15; Del Aguila Figueroa, Tabasco, 50–55. 66. Sinkin, 37. 67. Arias G. et al., 205; AGNM, Justicia, 483, 24 February 1854, 177; AGNM, Justicia, 543, 9 April 1855, 46–61. 68. Report of Consul E. P. Johnson; see DUSCT, 30 September 1858, San Juan Bautista. 69. DUSCT, 30 September 1858, San Juan Bautista. 70. DUSCT, 10 May 1858, San Juan Bautista, Consul E. P. Johnson to Secretary of State Lewis Cass. 71. Rugeley, Rebellion, 176. 72. López Reyes, 252. 73. AHAY/DO, 17 February 1858, San Juan Bautista, Sastré to (Provisor y Secretario de Cámara y Gobierno del Obispado) Pedro Maciel Guerra. 74. Haworth, 52–53, 71–73. 75. Arias G. et al., 208. 76. Rosado G., 36–37. 77. AGNM, xi/481.3/6287, 31 January 1858, f. 4. 78. AHDN, xi/481.3/6289, 1 January 1858, f. 4; 5 February 1858, ff. 1–2; 6 February 1858, f. 5; 14 February 1858, ff. 6–7; 22 February 1858, ff. 9–10; 24 February 1858, ff. 12; 25 February 1858, ff. 14–15; and finally, 27 February 1858, f. 17. 79. AGNM, Justicia, 614, 20, June–November 1858, Veracruz, ff. 119–65. 80. Arias G. et al., 209. 81. Ibid., 211–12. 82. AHDN, xi/481.3/6571, 28 July 1858, f. 1. 83. AHDN, xi/481.3/6139, 27 August 1858, f. 7, and 28 August 1858, f. 4, both Simón Sarlat to Ministro de Estado, San Juan Bautista. 84. AHDN, xi/481.3/5785, 3 September 1858, f. 3, Mariano Martínez de Lejarza to Simón Sarlat. 85. Memoir of Eleuterio Pérez Andrade, a Merino lieutenant, in CH, xci–xciii. 86. Sarlat’s account appears as an article in #2 of the Boletín oficial, 17 October 1858, although dated to two days earlier. This particular item survives because it was included in the US Consular Reports, Tabasco. 87. López Reyes, 175. 88. BPE, Novedades de Tabasco en la cultura, 17 June 1990, 6–8. 89. AGNM, Justicia, 138, 27 July 1844, México, no ffs. 90. Arias G. et al, 214. 91. AHDN, xi/481.3/3413, 2 November 1853. 92. AHAY/DO, 10 March 1858, San Juan Bautista, Eduardo Moncada to unknown; 18 June 1858, San Juan Bautista, José María Sastré to José María Guerra.

notes

323

93. AHAY/DO, 8 April 1859, San Juan Bautista, José María Sastré to José María Guerra. 94. See letters from E. P. Johnson in San Juan Bautista to Lewis Cass in DUSCT, 30 September 1858; 6 October 1858; and 10 October 1858. See also, DUSCT, 15 October 1858, hacienda San José de Cruz, Angel Albino Corzo to E. P. Johnson. 95. DUSCT, 17 May 1858, San Juan Bautista, E. P. Johnson to Lewis Cass. 96. DUSCT, 30 September 1858, San Juan Bautista, E. P. Johnson to Lewis Cass. 97. That is, first under Edwin Moore in 1841, then under Pedro de Ampudia in 1844, and twice by Matthew Perry, in 1846 and 1847. 98. DUSCT, 30 September 1858, San Juan Bautista, E. P. Johnson to Lewis Cass; AHDN, xi/481.3/6294, 29 October 1858, ff. 11–12, Angel Albino Gómez to Ministro de Guerra y Marina, San Juan Bautista; and 7 November 1858, f. 40, Angel Albino Corzo, San Juan Bautista, to Ministro de Guerra y Marina. 99. DUSCT, San Juan Bautista, 10 November 1859. 100. This account comes from Sarlat himself; see AHDN, xi/481.3/6139, 24 May 1859, ff. 17–18, to Ministro de Guerra Antonio Corona, from Mexico City. On the terms of the treaty, see Corzo’s own summary in AHDN, xi/481.3/6294, 7 November 1858, ff. 41–42. 101. AHAY/DO, San Juan Bautista, November 1858, Sastré to José María Guerra. 102. AHAY/DO, 15 November 1859, San Juan Bautista, Eduardo Moncada to José María Guerra. 103. AHAY/DO, 5 January 1858, San Juan Bautista, José María Sastré to Bishop Guerra; 5 January 1858, San Juan Bautista, José María Sastré to Pedro Maciel Guerra; and 16 January 1859, Ríos del Usumacinta, Anacleto Marcelino Sandoval to Pedro Maciel Guerra. 104. See report of Consul E. P. Johnson to William Seward, in DUSCT, 30 September 1860, San Juan Bautista. 105. Barrera, 53. Barrera was ostensibly comparing the decline between the 1820s and 1830s, but published the account in 1858 and appears to have been conflating observations of the latter two dates. 106. AGNM, Justicia, 620, 28, 11 February 1860, San Juan Bautista, ff. 227–29. 107. AGNM, xi/481.3/7437, 20 November, 1858, f. 31; 19 February 1859, f. 20; 4 March 1859, ff. 33–34; and 9 April 1859, f. 21.

Chapter 7 1. Wolf, 284–94; Darwin, 162–85. 2. Darwin, 317–18. 3. Rugeley, Rebellion, 199–200. 4. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 15–17.

324

notes

5. New York Times, 5 April 1860. 6. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 21. 7. DUSCT, 30 June 1861, San Juan Bautista, Consul E. P. Johnson to Secretary of State William Seward. 8. DUSCT, 16 January 1862, San Juan Bautista, Consul Noah S. Wilson to Secretary of State William Seward. Wilson’s term, an interim between the longer service of E. P. Johnson and James H. Mansfield, was a matter of mere months. 9. DUSCT, 30 September 1863, San Juan Bautista, James H. Mansfield to William Seward. 10. AHAY/DO, 16 August 1862, San Juan Bautista, Eduardo Moncada to Pedro Maciel Guerra. 11. AHAY/DO, 17 October 1862, San Juan Bautista; Rugeley, Wonders, 215–17. 12. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 20–21. 13. DET, I, 280. 14. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 22. Del Aguila Figueroa also reproduces a report from the Leandro García, jefe político of Jonuta, which claims that the interventionist forces were commanded by one Pedro Pucurrull. While Pucurrull did indeed exist, he was in all probability not the actual commander. 15. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 27–28. 16. We possess various sources on the battle. There is Dueñas’s account, which was published in the Mexican newspaper Siglo XIX, and reproduced in Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 28–29. That same source includes two proimperialist accounts: Tomás Marín’s proclamation, on page 24; and Arévalo’s own 19 June version (on pages 29–32), reproduced from the proconservative Carmen newspaper El pájaro verde. 17. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 37, 38–39. We know that Dueñas removed the state treasury from Arévalo’s own somewhat delayed admission of that fact; see AHDN, D/481.4/9536, 10 November 1863, ff. 213–14. 18. AHDN, xi/481.4/9536, 25 July 1863, f. 131; and 31 July 1863, reports of Eduardo Arévalo. 19. AHDN, D/481.4/9536, 2 and 5 February 1864, ff. 241–44. The report in question is a letter from Tabascan resistance leader Felipe J. Serra, printed in the resistance newspaper, Boletín oficial de la campaña, dated 12 December 1863. 20. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 42–44. 21. See Menéndez, 73–80. 22. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 59, 61–70. 23. I follow the 30 September account of the newspaper El orden, reproduced in Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 72–73. 24. This decree of 13 August 1863 is reproduced in Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 83. 25. Gibson, Aztecs, 81–97; and Cole, 28–36. 26. Couturier, 75–76. 27. DUSCT, 30 September 1863, San Juan Bautista, James H. Mansfield to William Seward.

notes

325

28. DUSCT, 26 January 1866, San Juan Bautista, Benjamin W. Sanders to William Seward. 29. Much of the information on Nemegyei’s early history is found in an unlikely source, namely, “Appalachian Blacksmiths Association,” www.appaltree.net/aba/ ironworks4a.htm; see also, Gergely, 353–54. 30. Rebert, xvi–xvii, 51–52, 201. 31. Nemegyei’s prospectus and map are found in AGNM, Fomento, Desagues, legajo 17, expediente 29, 19 May 1859. Special thanks to the resourceful Ariana Quezada Covarrubias for tracking down this intriguing document. 32. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 81–83. 33. DET, vol. I, 245 (“Fernández Sastré, Fidencia”). 34. Zebadúa, 110–14. 35. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 88–89, 90–93. 36. DET, vol. I, 68–29 (“Cárdenas, José Eduardo de”); vol. II, 613–14 (“Sánchez Magallanes, Andrés”); Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 142–43. 37. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 141–42. 38. Felipe B. Enríquez, “Comalcalco. Reminiscencias de mi niñéz. Apuntes históricas de 1860 a 1863,” reproduced in TTH, II, 81–91, originally from DHT, 87–97; Ramón Mendoza H., “Biografíás tabasqueños para escolares,” unpublished manuscript located in the Archivo Fotográfico e Histórico de Tabasco [hereafter, AFHT], 28–31. 39. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 113. 40. AHDN, D/484.4/9536, 10 October 1863, f. 215. 41. “Valenzuela, Policarpo,” in DET, II, 684. 42. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 139–40. 43. Ibid., 140–41. 44. Ibid., 144. 45. Ibid., 144–45; Felipe Enríquez, Comalcalco: Reminiscencias de mi niñéz: Apuntes históricos de 1860 a 1863, in turn found in F. J. Santamaría’s Documentos históricos de Tabasco, I, 90–92. 46. AHDN, xi/481.4/9536, 10 October 1863, f. 215, report of Eduardo Arévalo. 47. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 152. 48. Ibid., 151. 49. Ibid., 154. 50. Rosado G., 30–31. 51. DUSCT, 10 February 1864, J. H. Mansfield to William Seward, San Juan Bautista. 52. DUSCT, 11 January 1864, Delevan, Wisconsin, Mrs. J. H. Mansfield to William Seward. 53. DET, vol. II, 361. 54. AHDN, D/481.4/9536, 1 November 1863, ff. 185–87; Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 164–66. 55. AHDN, xi/481.4/9536, 10 November 1863, ff. 213–14, report of Eduardo Arévalo.

326

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56. AHDN, D/481.3/9536, 24 November 1863, ff. 174–75, report of Eduardo Arévalo. 57. UTA, Genaro García Collection, I-F, “Documentos misceláneos,” 26 October 1863, Carmen. 58. AHDN, xi/481.4/9536, 15 January 1864, f. 211. 59. AHDN, xi/481.4/9536, 16 January 1864, f. 205. 60. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 187–88. 61. Ibid., 190–91. 62. See Manucy, 54–55, 58–61; Antochiw, 234–42. 63. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 195–96. 64. TTH, vol. II, 125–28. 65. DUSCT, 10 February 1864, J. H. Mansfield to William Seward, San Juan Bautista. 66. AHDN, xi/481/.4/9836, 15 February 1864, f. 253. 67. AHDN, xi/481.4/9536, 5 February 1864, f. 255. 68. AHFT, circular of 2 September 1863; AHFT, Tribunal Superior, March 1864, San Juan Bautista; and 10 October 1864, San Juan Bautista. 69. AHDN, D/481.4/9536, 19 February 1864, f. 274. 70. See Manuel Díaz de la Vega’s letter in AHDN, D/481.4/9536, 31 January 1864, ff. 256–57. See also, Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 197–98. 71. Ibid., 207–8; Hassig, Mexico, 25, 37. 72. AHDN, D/481.4/9536, 12 February 1864, ff. 277–78, report of Manuel Díaz de la Vega; Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 218–20. 73. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 227–28. 74. Ibid., 233. 75. AHDN, D/481.4/9536, 28 February 1864, f. 284, Manuel Díaz de la Vega. 76. DUSCT, 5 October 1865, San Juan Bautista. 77. DUSCT, 29 November 1864, Delavan, Wisconsin, William Mansfield to William Seward. 78. DUSCT, 20 September 1865, San Juan Bautista, B. W. Sanders to William Seward. 79. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 119–21. 80. “Ley agraria,” issued by Gregorio González (San Juan Bautista, 21 December 1864), in Manuel González Calzada, ed., El agrarismo en Tabasco (México: Consejo Editorial del Estado de Tabasco, 1980), 195–202. 81. Hanna and Hanna, 142–43; Ridley, 179–80. 82. AHAY/DO, 29 May 1865, San Juan Bautista, Eduardo Moncada to Pedro María Guerra. 83. AHAY/DO, 1 January 1867, Frontera. The individual writing to Bishop Gala is unknown, but presumably a certain padre Contreras, who we find leaving Frontera two months later; see AHAY/DO, 21 March 1867, San Juan Bautista, Eduardo Moncada to Pedro Maciel Guerra. 84. AHAY/DO, 1 July 1866, Teapa, Nicanor Hernández to Pedro Maciel Guerra.

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85. AHAY/DO, 15 July 1867, Teapa, Nicanor Hernández to Pedro Maciel Guerra. 86. AHAY/DO, 29 May 1865, San Juan Bautista, Eduardo Moncada to Pedro Maciel Guerra. 87. AHAY/DO, 7 June 1866, San Juan Bautista, Eduardo Moncada to Pedro Maciel Guerra. 88. AHAY/DO, 29 November 1866, Cunduacán, Francisco dee Salas Hernández Oramas to Bishop Gala. 89. AHAY/DO, 1 February 1866, San Juan Bautista, Eduardo Moncada to Pedro Maciel Guerra. 90. AHAY/DO, 29 August 1866, Jalpa, Gerónimo Antonio Hernández to Gala. 91. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 253–55. 92. Hemeroteca Pino Suárez [hereafter, HPS], Periódico oficial, 16 June 1866, 1. 93. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 243–47. 94. HPS, Periódico oficial, 23 January 1865, 3. 95. HPS, Periódico oficial, 13 September 1865, 3, reproducing a letter from Carmen, dated 5 September. 96. AHAY/DO, 3 October 1866, San Juan Bautista, Eduardo Moncada to Pedro Maciel Guerra; Rugeley, “Forgotten Liberator.” 97. See Menéndez. 98. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 169–70. 99. Tone, 34, 58–59. 100. DUSCT, Benjamin W. Sanders to William Seward, San Juan Bautista, 8 January 1866; 18 January 1866. On smaller archaeological sites near Frontera, see Fernández Tejedo et al., 48. 101. See Taladoire. 102. DUSCT, 8 July 1865, San Juan Bautista, Benjamin W. Sanders to William Seward. 103. Ibid. 104. DUSCT, 26 January 1866, San Juan Bautista, Benjamin W. Sanders to William Seward. 105. Rugeley, Rebellion, 240–45. 106. AGEY, Poder Ejecutivo 159, Gobernación, Prefectura Política, Laguna, 28 February 1866. 107. DET, vol. II, 588–89; Carr, 162–63, 283, 319; Ridley, 98–90; Rosado G., 36–37; Heller, 6. 108. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 258–63; Rosdado G., 31–32. 109. “Manifestación que hace al Estado de Tabasco D. Eduardo G. Arévalo, explicando su conducta política respecto de los últimos acontecimientos ocurridos en Carmen y Campeche” [signed and dated as Sacluk], 16 June 1865; reprinted in its entirity in El eco de Tabasco, 22 November 1908, page 1, Biblioteca Universitario José Martí [hereafter, BUJM].

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110. DET, vol. I, 280; Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención. 78–79 (reproducing material from a 1908 newspaper El eco de Tabasco).

Chapter 8 1. Monstery’s novel (New York: Beadle & Adams, 1881) formed part of Beadle’s now legendary New York Dime Library. A full account of his life appears in an adulatory biography entitled, The Sword Prince: The Romantic Life of Colonel Monstery, American Champion-at-Arms, written by a Captain Frederick Whittaker (New York: Beadle & Adams, 1882); the passage concerning Monstery’s outrage at Tabascan hands appears on page 22. The source of information (indeed, if not the author) was almost certainly Monstery himself. 2. Rothfeder, 1–4, 5–6, 43–44. 3. “Noticia estadística de la población de Tabasco, formada según el padrón de 1869 . . . ,” in Manuel Gil y Sáenz, Compendio histórico, 242. 4. Rugeley, Rebellion, 290, 292–95, 298–301. 5. ANDN, xi/481.4/9724, 7 November 1867, f. 4; 25 November 1867, f. 8; 30 November 1867, ff. 10–12; and 18 December 1867, f. 14. These pages constitute articles from the newspaper La libertad, plus reports from the comandancia militar to General Porfirio Díaz. See also Rosado G., 38–39. 6. AHDN, xi/481.4/9292, 24 November 1870, Veracruz, report from Comandante Rodríguez to the Ministro de Guerra y Marina. 7. AHDN, D/481.4/9741, 16 March 1870, f. 6, 9, jefe político of Cunduacán to Serra. 8. AHDN, D/481.4/9741, 1 April 1870, Felipe Serra to jefe subalterno Mejía. 9. Perry, 166–70. 10. DUSCT, 4 October 1869, Frontera, Felix de Nemegyei to Hamilton Fish. 11. DUSCT, 29 November 1869, Frontera, Felix de Nemegyei to Hamilton Fish. 12. DUSCT, 14 June 1871, Frontera, Felix de Nemegyei to (Assistant Secretary of State) William Hunter. 13. A point that Nemegyei explicitly stated in his report to William Hunter; see DUSCT, 16 July 1871, Frontera. 14. Del Aguila Figueroa, Tabasco, 234–37. 15. DUSCT, 7 February 1872, Frontera, Felix de Nemegyei to William Hunter. 16. DUSCT, 24 January 1872, Frontera, Felix de Nemegyei to William Hunter. 17. DUSCT, 7 February 1872, Frontera, Felix de Nemegyei to William Hunter. 18. Del Aguilar Figueroa, Tabasco, 238–40. 19. Perry, 172–73, 177–82. 20. AHAY/DO, 1 January 1875, Usumacinta. 21. AHAY/DO, 24 July 1874, Teapa. 22. AHAY/DO, 8 March 1878, Nacajuca; AHAY/DO, 20 December 1878, Nacajuca. 23. AHAY/DO, 1 January 1876, San Juan Bautista.

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24. AHAY/DO, 3 April 1878, Nacajuca. 25. AHAY/DO, 28 February 1875, Frontera. 26. AHAY/DO, 3 September 1874, Tacotalpa. 27. AHAY/DO, 3 May 1875, Teapa. 28. AHAY/DO, 21 April 1876, Teapa. 29. AHAY/DO, 14 May 1876, San Juan Bautista. 30. AHAY/DO, 23 January 1875, San Juan Bautista. 31. AHAY/DO, 18 August 1874, Villahermosa. 32. Rugeley, Wonders, 194–95. 33. HPS, Ley de amor, I, 11, 1 June 1876, 86–88, “Miscelánea.” See Rugeley, Wonders, 193–200, for a discussion of the promises and pitfalls of Lerdo-era spiritism. Sadly, I have been unable to find any copies of Sra. Zapata’s newsletter. 34. AHAY/DO, 12 January 1870, San Juan Bautista, Gil y Sáenz to Bishop Gala. 35. AHAY/DO, 4 December 1872, San Juan Bautista, Gil y Sáenz to Gala. 36. AHAY/DO, 22 March 1878, San Juan Bautista. 37. AHAY/DO, 8 December 1874, Tacotalpa. 38. AHAY/DO, 22 December 1874, Frontera. 39. AHAY/DO, 31 May 1875, San Juan Bautista. 40. AHAY/DO, 27 November 1875, San Juan Bautista. 41. AHAY/DO, 21 April 1876, Teapa. 42. AHAY/DO, 20 February 1878, Macuspana. 43. AHAY/DO, 14 February 1878, San Juan Bautista. 44. AHAY/DO, 6 April 1879, Macuspana. 45. AHAY/DO, 31 August 1874, Teapa. 46. AHAY/DO, 30 July 1876, San Juan Bautista. 47. Archivo del General Porfirio Díaz. Memorias y documentos [hereafter, APD], edited by Alberto María Carreño (México: Editorial “Elede,” S.A., 1951), vol. XX, 27 March 1877, 179–83; Manuel C. Castillo’s account of the Tuxtepec revolt in Tabasco written to Porfirio Díaz. 48. Yucatán en el tiempo, vol. I (1998), 469–70; vol. V (1998), 384–85. 49. Del Aguila Figueroa, Tabasco, 244–46. 50. APD, vol. XIII, 17 November 1876, 235–36, Faustino Sastré (in Achuatlán), to Porfirio Díaz. 51. “Foucher, Manuel,” in DET, vol. I, 263. 52. “Bandala, Abraham,” in DET, vol. I, 48–49; and “Bandala Patiño, Abraham,” in Diccionario histórico y biográfico, vol. VI, 703–4. 53. Tostado Gutiérrez, 84. 54. Charnay, Viaje, 424–25. 55. See Ballinas. 56. Vautravers Tosca, 57–59. 57. AGNM, Ramo Terrenos Baldíos, various dates and places, Tabasco, 1885–92. 58. De Vos, ch. 5. 59. “Valenzuela, Policarpo,” in DET, vol. II, 684. 60. Langley and Schoonover, 33–39, 163–66.

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61. Mestre Ghigliazza, Apuntes, 52, 59–60. 62. López, 14–17, 19, 97, 101, 129–35. 63. Puck, 6 June 1888, 249. 64. Summarized from Tostado Gutiérrez. 65. See Lorenzo Ochoa’s prologue to Charnay, Ciudades, 11–22. 66. Charnay, Viaje, 426–28. 67. Charnay, Mis descubrimientos, 310. The original French text of Charnay appeared in 1881. 68. BPE, Novedades, 24 January 1988, 697, reproducing a memoir originally published in 1949, but which reflected back to a far earlier time. Among the individuals who participated in those carnivals was the father of the great Tabascan poet, Carlos Pellicer. 69. Charnay, Mis descubrimientos, 312. 70. AHAY/DO, 27 October 1875, San Juan Bautista. 71. Charnay, Mis descubrimientos, 320–22. 72. Charnay, Viaje, 431, 435. 73. De Vos, 194–201, 255–57. 74. AHAY/DO, 5 January 1879, Palizada/Jonuta. 75. Charnay, Mis descubrimientos, 315. 76. AHAY/DO, 25 September 1879, 1 October 1879, Teapa. 77. AHAY/DO, 8 November 1879, Macuspana; AHAY/DO, various dates, August–September 1879, Hunucmá; AHAY/DO, 20 November 1879, Homún. 78. AHAY/DO, 5 March 1878, San Juan Bautista. 79. AHAY/DO, 26 August 1879, Nacajuca, 10 July 1879, Teapa. 80. AHAY/DO, 4 March 1880, Nacajuca; HPS, Razón del pueblo, 13 October 1879, 4. 81. AHAY/DO, 26 June 1878, Teapa. 82. AHAY/DO, 6 May 1879, San Juan Bautista; 1 August 1879 and 8 August 1879, Nacajuca. AHAY/DO; 10 August 1879, Jalpa; 7 October 1879, San Juan Bautista/Tacotalpa; 7 October 1879, San Juan Bautista/Tacotalpa; 14 August 1877, Jalapa; 2 March 1880, Frontera; 14 March 1880, Macuspana; and 20 September 1880, Macuspana. 83. AHAY/DO, 27 October 1880, Frontera. 84. AHAY/DO, 20 May 1879, Mérida. 85. AHAY/DO, 14 February 1880, San Juan Bautista. 86. AHAY/DO, 10 January 1880, San Juan Bautista. 87. AHAY/DO, 9 January 1882, San Juan Bautista. 88. In 1985 this work was reissued as part of a series called the Biblioteca Básica Tabasasqueña; see Gil y Sáenz, El caporal. 89. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 46–47, 47–49, 50–55. 90. “Appalachian Blacksmiths Association,” www.appaltree.net/aba/ironworks4a.htm; Washington Post, 6 August 1898, page 3; Washington Post, 26 January 1904, 9.

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91. Pola’s account of the final Méndez years originally appeared in “Gregorio Méndez Magaña,” in Liberales ilustres, 166. 92. Del Aguila Figueroa, La intervención, 124, 125–26, 129–32.

Conclusion 1. “La muerte del fakir,” in BPE, Novedades de Tabasco en la cultura, 19 January 1986, 2. His tombstone reads, “Rafael Latorre (alias, the Fakir), June 29, 1913. He was an artist who submitted himself to cataleptic sleep. He passed to eternal rest. Transience: just as a pueblo that saw him die mourned his death, pray now for his soul.” 2. Diccionario histórico, vol. VI, 782. 3. See Ridgeway. 4. See Martínez Assad; Canudos Sandoval; Torres Vega; and Torres Vela. 5. Guzmán Ríos, 72–77. 6. Jiménez Méndez, Tiempo y destiempo, 28–30. 7. Grayson, 15–29, 33–50. See also López Obrador. 8. “Ricárdez Broca, Juan,” in Diccionario histórico, vol. V, 6, 769. 9. De Vos, 228–57. 10. Balcázar Antonio, Tabasco, 237–42. 11. Gil y Sáenz recollects the event in a letter to Manuel Mestre Ghigliazzi, dated 17 November 1905; this letter is reproduced in its entirety in CE, ix–x; and in BPE, Novedades de Tabasco en la cultura, 16 March 1986, 3. 12. DUSCT, 5 October 1865, San Juan Bautista. 13. Cadena Kima-Chang and Suárez Paniagua, 92–93. 14. See Limón González.

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Newspapers New Orleans Picayune The New World: A Weekly Family Journal of Popular Literature, Science, Art and News New York Observer and Chronicle New York Times Niles’ National Register Puck Spirit of the Times: A Chronicle of the Turf, Agriculture, Field Sports, Literature and the Stage Washington Post

Index

Acalán-Tixchel (pre-Hispanic settlement), 21, 28 Acayucan (town), 80, 97, 126, 127, 128, 132 Active Battalions, 104–5 Afghanistan, 1 Aguilar, Gerónimo de, 25 Alamán, Lucas, 91 Alarcón, Amalio, 121, 133 Alpuche e Infante, José María, 90–92, 97 Altar de Sacrificios (pre-Hispanic settlement), 19 Alvarado, Salvador, 292 Ampudia y Grimarest, Pedro de: administers post-Sentmanat Tabasco, 149–59; assumes control of Tabasco, 137; background and early life, 135–6; and Catholic Church, 137; later career and death, 150; links to Félix Zuloaga, 206; links to Juan Bautista Traconis, 158; and Francisco de Sentmanat’s execution, 140, 141; and Francisco de Sentmanat’s remains, 142 Anaya, Juan Pablo: defeated in Chiapas, 127–8; early history, 112–3; establishes independent Tabascan government, 124; later career and death, 150–1; negotiations with Texas Navy, 121–2, 123–4; plans 1840 invasion of Tabasco, 119–20 Ancona, Eligio, 249 Arévalo, Eduardo González: abandons Tabasco, 244–5; attacks Comalcalco, 234; and Battle of Jahuactal, 236–40; consolidates power, 222–5; difficulties as administrator, 225–6, 228; imprisons U.S. consul, 236; invades Tabasco, 220–2; later career and death, 254–5; origins and early career, 219–20; romantic advances thwarted, 228–9 Argos tabasqueños (1826), 8 Arista, Mariano, 187

Arroyo Caribe River, 21 artillary: of republican forces, 241–2 Atasta (town), 52, 137, 222 Ayutla Revolt, 194, 196 Azufre, El (mineral baths), 14 Baker, Lorenzo Dow, 278 Balancán (town), 29, 52, 137, 162, 188, 265 Ballinas, Juan, 274–5 bananas, boom, 278–9; decline, 293 Bandala Patiño, Abraham, 273–4 banditry, 88 Baranda Quijano, Pedro, 220, 271–2 Barbena, Ignacio, 125, 127, 156 Barrios, Justo Rufino, 275 Bastar, Eduardo Rosario, 235; rebellion of, 260 Bastar, José María, 235 Belize, 10, 16; arms sales to Miguel Bruno, 177; trade with Tabasco, 71 Bigelow, Abraham, 174 Blom, Frans, 16 Bonampak (pre-Hispanic settlement), 19, 20 Bool Menché, 31 Boston Fruit Company, 278 British Honduras. See Belize Bruno Dazo, Miguel, 111, 228, 253; in Cerro Gordo battle, 170; after fall of Francisco de Sentmanat, 153–7; final arrest and execution, 178–9; memories of, 182; origins and early career, 152–3; purchases arms in Belize, 177–8; recognizes Mexican government, 168; released from jail, 163–4; and resistance to second U.S. invasion, 172–3; returns to Tabasco after Cerro Gordo, 170–1; revolt following second U.S. invasion, 175–8; seconds Traconis pronouncement, 167; and Tabascan defense, 165–6

348

index

Bruno, Pedro, 111 Bulnes family (Casa Bulnes), 275, 276, 277, 279 bungos See Tabasco: river vessels Bustamante, Anastacio, 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 99, 100, 113 cacao, 9, 23, 32; decline of, 274; origins and cultivation, 64–70; and rural planter class, 85; taxes on, 190 Caddy, John Herbert: description of Tenosique, 43; on howler monkeys, 11; on travel in rural Tabasco, 42, 47 Calakmul, 20 Calzada brothers (Laureano and Rómulo), 14 Campeche, 29, 45, 48, 59, 63, 71, 73, 84, 89, 90, 95, 97, 101, 111, 119, 125, 126, 130, 131, 134, 138, 152, 153, 159, 165, 166, 193, 195, 203, 218, 240, 241, 250, 253, 254, 255, 272, 274, 282, 285 Candelaria River, 21, 28 canoas. See Tabasco, river vessels capellanías. See Catholic Church: role in finances Cárdenas, José Eduardo de, 80, 87, 120, 230, 296 Cárdenas, Gerónimo, 184–5 Carlos III, 79, 85 Carlos IV, 79 Carmen (island and city), 46, 64, 122, 133, 135, 138, 159, 190, 197, 206, 219, 240, 241, 250, 255, 254, 255, 275, 280; logging near, 47; Carranza, Venustiano, 290 Carrera, Rafael, 197, 254 Carrillo Puerto, Felipe, 290–1, 292 Carvajal Cavero, José Segundo, 99 Casa de Contratación, 39, 72 Caste War of Yucatán, 72, 108, 158, 159, 165, 167, 177, 185, 187, 191, 205, 241, 242, 259, 263, 272; immigration from 183–4 Castillo, Cornelio, 230, 263–4 Catholic Church: after Eduardo Arévalo’s departure, 246–7; conflicts with secular officials, 80–82, 107; creation of Tabascan bishopric, 284; in early Tabasco, 55–60; fears of religious tolerance, 192; hardships of priests, 56–57; and Inquisition, 56; marriage patters following intervention, 247; opposes Liberal Reform, 200–1; opposition to, 59–60; in Porfirian era, 283–5, 279; pre-Reform finances, 192–3; priests who support Liberal Party, 211–2;

during Restored Republic, 264–71; role in finances, 57–58; and spiritism, 267–78; and Tabascan letters, 59 cattle ranching, 13 cayucos. See Tabasco, river vessels Centla region, 11, 13, 25, 28, 29, 42, 111, 121, 199, 205, 209, 248 centralism: defined, 83 Cepeda Peraza, Manuel, 249, 255 Chacamax River, 19 Champotón (town) & Champotón River, 21, 23, 24, 255 Charnay, Désiré: travels in Tabasco, 279–82 Chávez, Simón de (“El Aguila Negro”), 115 Chiapas, 7, 9, 13, 14, 17, 22, 46, 55, 56, 63, 67, 73, 99, 101, 126, 130, 145, 172, 177, 186, 196, 199, 210, 213, 223, 229, 248, 274, 282, 297 Chichén Itzá, 21–22, 303n59 Chiltepec sandbar, 9, 120, 246 chocolate. See cacao cholera: epidemic in 1830s, 101–2; medicinal plants used to treat, 191; return in early 1850s, 185–6; return in late 1850s, 215 Chontal peoples, 28–29, 34, 146, 248; language, 21, 22, 303n57 Chontalpa region, 9, 11, 13, 15, 34, 120, 121, 167, 188, 192, 205, 226, 235, 282, 287 Christophe, Henri, 76, Chugilbá (spirit owner of forest), 293, 294 Claiborne, William C., 118, 143 Coatzacoalcos (town), 26, 132 Coconá caves, 14 Cocoyol (political party), 182 cofradias, 192–3 cojó. See Tabasco: indigenous dances and music Coleman, Henry E.: on anti-U.S. sentiment in Tabasco, 103; on Sentmanat movement, 122 Comalcalco (town), 7, 18, 34, 68, 102, 120, 121, 139, 230, 233, 235, 281, 282 Comotán (pre-Hispanic settlement), 21 comandancia general. See comandancia militar comandancia militar, 85–87 Comonfort, Ignacio, 182, 194, 201, 206, 207 Conde de Regla, 77, 226 Constitution of 1857, 42, 197, 207, 212 Copilco (pre-Hispanic settlement), 21 Cortés, Hernán, 2, 25–26, 228, 240 Corzo, Angel Albino, 229, 253; assumes governorship of Chiapas, 196; compared to Francisco de Sentmanat,

index 216; extorts Tabascans, 213–4; and Reform War, 210 Covarrubias, Miguel, 16 crecientes. See floods Cuba, 73, 115, 122, 128; and slavery, 77 Cunduacán (town), 18, 41, 48, 59, 68, 89, 90, 92, 94, 103, 107, 121, 137, 174, 194, 228, 233, 238, 239 Cupilco, Virgin of, 34–35 Cuyamil Company, 278 De la Chica, Manuel, 31 Dessalines, Jean Jacques, 76 Díaz de la Vega, Manuel: abandons Tabasco, 244–5; replaces Eduardo Arévalo, 241, 242–4 Díaz de la Vega, Rómulo, 191 Díaz, Porfirio, 36, 259; captured by Interventionists, 248; and death of Gregorio Méndez, 287; and logging boom, 275; La Noria revolt, 263–4; Revolt of Tuxtepec, 271–273; ties to Lorenzo Prats, 254 diputación provincial, 79, 80 Domínguez, Felip, 292 Dominican order, 56 Doremberg, Maximilian, 276 Duque de Estrada, Juan, 177 Duque de Estrada, Santiago, 84–85, 93, 95, 97, 100, 104 Dueñas, José Jesús, 278 Dueñas, José Julián, 137, 184; assumes governorship, 174–5; opposes Juan Bautista Traconis, 167; pays wartime contribution, 243; supports French Intervention, 203 Dueñas, Victoriano Victorino, 194, 230, 231, 249, 253, 278; abandons San Juan Bautista to Interventionists, 222–3, 224; betrays Miguel Bruno, 179; confronts early Reform War, 207–8; death, 285; opposes early Intervention, 218; origins and early career, 203; problems of first governorship, 203–6; and progresista party, 259, 261; reburies Miguel Bruno, 182; resigns, 209; and restored liberal government, 216 dyewood, boom, 63–64; decline, 205; Francisco de Sentmanat takes control of, 131, 133 Echagaray, Domingo, 224; later career and death, 181; opposed by Miguel Bruno,

349

175; origins and temperament, 170–1; prepares against second U.S. invasion, 171; retreats from San Juan Bautista, 172 Elys, Pierre (Pedro) Eugenio, 111, 123 empires, concept and practice, 38–41 encomienda, 27 Englehart, Theodore: executed, 252; supports Intervention, 226 Escobar y Rivera, Manuel María: death, 285; final appointment as comandante militar, 208; forced from office, 194–5; as governor and comandante militar of Tabasco, 187–93; later career and death, 195; sent to confront Miguel Bruno, 176–7 Esquipulas (street), 52, 136, 173, 182 Estampilla (town), 162 Fabré, Mercedes: later life, 182; marries Miguel Bruno, 153 Fakir Ali Ben Hur. See Latorre, Rafael federalism, defined, 83 Fernández Sástre, Fidencia, 228–9, 294 Fernando VII, 79, 81 First Chenes Invasion, 97 Flammarion, Nicolas Camille, 267–8 floods, 11–12; in late nineteenth century, 283 Flores, Petén, 44 Foucher, Manuel, 273 Franciscan order, 28, 55 French Intervention: collapse of, 252–254; origins, 218 Frontera (town), 9, 25, 42, 57, 96, 101, 103, 120, 148, 153, 161, 164, 176, 178, 182, 183, 196, 201, 206, 209, 212, 215, 220, 226, 241, 244, 248, 260, 262; description in Porfirian times, 280 fueros, 196 Galindo, Juan: on Usumacinta River, 10; on Indian memories of antiquity, 25 García, Alejandro, 155, 186, 248; conflict with José Julián Dueñas, 186 García, Pablo, 203, 223–4, 231, 249 Garífuna peoples, 24 Garrido Canabal, Tomás: compared with Francisco de Sentmanat, 148; ideological predecessors, 81; and personal vendettas, 105; promotes banana industry, 278; as radical governor, 290–1; razes church, 182 Gil y Sáenz, Manuel: and church-state conflict during Restored Republic,

350

index

268–9, 270; claims public land, 276; discovers petroleum, 293; early history of, 59; on indigenous culture, 35; passed over as first bishop of Tabasco, 284–5; recalls execution, 56, 89; on Tabascan fertility, 13 Giorgana de Llergo, Maríá Gertrudis: and ostentatious pious spending, 79–80 Girón, Andés, 80 Gómez Farías, Valentín, 58, 90–91, 102, 166 Gómez Pedraza, Manuel, 95 Green, Carlos, 290 Grijalva, Juan de, 24–25, 26 Grijalva River, 9, 11, 13, 28, 30, 42, 51, 53, 92, 99, 149, 153, 163, 182, 212, 220, 225, 228, 241; bar of, 44, 81 Guatemala, 13, 17, 69, 102, 297 Guerrero, 17 Guerrero, Vicente, 95 Gutiérrez, José Ignacio: as centralist governor of Tabasco, 105–7; death of, 126–7; and Francisco de Sentmanat invasion, 123 Gutiérrez, Marcial, 275 Haitian revolution, 76–77 Haro, Benito: appointed governor, 197–8; champions Ayutla Revolt, 194; removed from office, 201–2 Havana, 110, 149, 213, 218, 228 Heller, Karl: on Chontal living conditions, 28; depiction of Miguel Bruno, 152; description of U.S. warships, 164; links to Spanish royal family, 253; on Tabascan health conditions, 93; on Tabascan patriarchy, 49; on Tabascan race relations, 37; on Tabascan river travel, 12; visits mineral bath, 14; on Zoque peoples, 29 Heredia y Vergara, Francisco de, 81 Herrera, José Juaquín, 159 Hidalgo, Claro: betrays Miguel Bruno, 178; death, 254; recognizes Mexican authority, 168; revolt against Liberal government, 197, 202 Hidalgo, Miguel, 90, 112–3, 147, 230 Huimanguillo (town), 7, 32, 45, 68, 96, 101, 120, 121, 125, 128, 129, 132, 172, 174, 179, 193, 208, 211, 228, 233, 260 Imán y Villafaña, Santiago: compared to Tabascan counterparts, 111, 147;

federalist revolt of, 108; spread of revolt, 111; assistance to Tabascan federalists, 122, 125, 126; , 147; supporters go to Tabasco, 125–6 imperial spoilers, concept explained, 1–5 inundaciones. See floods Incháustegui, Carlos, 29 indigenous peoples: avoidance of armed conflict, 145–6; beliefs, 33–34; ceremonies, 35; dance and music, 35–36; demography, early twentieth century, 31; languages, 57; survival, 27–37 Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 42, 45, 226–7 Iturbide, Agustín de, 1, 82, 84, 85, 89, 92, 113 Ixcomitán (town), 46 Jackson, Andrew, 113 Jahuactal, Battle of, 236–40; term explained, 238 Jalapa (town), 105, 177 Jalpa, 41, 44, 44, 90, 120, 139, 140, 141, 167, 192, 196, 211, 214, 223, 230, 233, 265; banditry in, 88 Jamet family (Casa Jamet): and banana industry, 278; and logging, 276, 277, 279 Jataté River, 275 Jiménez, José Victor, 84 Jiménez Garrido, José María, 82, 92 Johnson, E.P.: on conditions during Reform War, 212; negotiates end of Tabascan Reform War, 213; smuggles dyewood seeds into New Orleans, 205 Jonuta (town), 28, 99, 125, 135, 138, 183, 220, 248, 269, 281 Juárez, Benito, 182, 192, 194, 207, 219, 223, 259, 264, 272 Kardec, Allen, 267 Keith, Minor, 278 Lacandón peoples, 30–31; contacted by explorers, 275; plans to evangelize, 162; visits to Tenosique, 281 Lacantún River, 10, 30, 276 La Farge, Oliver, 16 Laguna de Términos, 11, 21, 24, 64, 131, 170, 209, 227, 248 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 56 Latorre, Rafael, 289 Lerdo de Tejada, Miguel, 197 Lerdo de Tejada, Sebastián, 259, 264, 267 Ley Juárez, 195

index Ley Lerdo, 197, 198 liberty, varying concepts of, 75–78 Lincoln, Abraham, 97, 226 Llergo, José, 79 logwood. See dyewood López de Llergo, Sebastián, 97, 108 López de Santa Anna, José Antonio, 85, 99, 113, 128, 131, 139, 150, 159, 172, 187; commissions Miguel Bruno, 170; defeated and captured in Texas, 108, 113; opposes Traconis government, 168; overthrows Gómez Farías, 102; prepares to invade southeast Mexico, 129–130; removed from office, 194 López Obrador, Andrés Manuel, 292 López, Ramón: on difficulties of crossing river bar, 44 Louisiana, 44, 72, 75–76; Cajuns of, 49. See also New Orleans Louverture, Toussaint, 76, 161, 287 lumber camps, description of, 282 macareno andaluz. See Tabasco, popular legends of Macuspana (town), 41, 54, 111, 120, 167, 176, 226, 270, 285 Madero, Francisco, 36, 290 Madrazo, Carlos, 291 mahogany industry, 188, 274 Maldonado, Eulalio, 96, 121, 131, 173, 184, 187 Maldonado, Fernando Nicolás: and Acayucan revolt, 132; begins 1840 federalist revolt, 109–12; breaks with Francisco de Sentmanat, 124–5; buys arms in Belize, 193; early history, 96–97; final revolt, 193; as governor of Chiapas, 183; later career and death, 196–7; opposes Evaristo Sánchez, 101; plans 1840 invasion of Tabasco, 119–20; retreats to Veracruz, 128; returns to Tabasco, 131–2 Maldonado, José María, 96, 131, 208, 240; conflicts with Francisco de Sentmanat, 125 Maldonado, Pomposo, 96, 120, 131, 172–3 Maldonado, Pánfilo, 96, 172–3, 196 Malpasito (pre-Hispanic settlement), 7, 29 Mansfield, James H.: imprisoned by Eduardo Arévalo, 236, 243; opposes Confederate sympathizers in Tabasco, 226 Margalli, José Gómez Marcelino, 84, 94, 143 Marigny de Mandeville, Jean Bernard Xavier, 117–8, 147

351

Marigny, María Rosa de: death and burial, 143; farewell letter from husband, 140–1, 315n108; marriage, 117 Marín, Francisco: assigned to Tabasco, 129– 30; suppresses Acayucan revolt, 132 Marín Sabalza, Tomás Francisco de Paula: arrests Miguel Bruno, 178–9; imprisoned in New Orleans, 219; organizes Intervention in Tabasco, 218, 220; removes Eduardo Arévalo, 240–1; suppresses Pichucalco Revolt, 186 Martínez de Legarza, Mariano, 99, 100, 104, 209 Martínez y Basto, Buenaventura, 231, 249, 255 Maudsley, Alfred, 280 Maya peoples: in Classic period, 18–21; in Postclassic period, 21–23 McIlhenny, Edmund, 257 Melgar y Serrano, José María, 251 Méndez Magaña, Gregorio, 223, 259, 296; and Battle of Jahuactal, 236–40; breaks with Lorenzo Prats, 253–4; emerges as leader of republican resistance, 234–5; later career and death, 287–8; origins and early career, 230–1; and siege of San Juan Bautista, 240–5 Mérida, 5, 90, 120, 138, 158, 166, 246, 255 Merino, Lino, 239, 240; as republican resistance leader, 235; revolt of, 209 Mexican independence, 77–78 Mezcalapa River, 7–8, 42 Mier y Terán, Manuel, 91 Mina, Francisco Javier, 81 Miramón, Miguel, 218 Mixe-Zoque language, 16 Moncada, Eduardo de: in committee to remove Manuel María Escobar, 195; and execution of Francisco de Sentmanat’s followers, 141; organizes Legión Sagrada, 211; origins and early career, 210; and post-Intervention frustrations, 246, 247 monkeys, 10–11, 279 Monstary, Thomas Boyer, 256, 328n1 Monte Cristo (town), 44 Montejo, Francisco, 26, 38 Monumento A (Olmec artifact), discovered, 251 Moore, Edwin, 121–2, 127, 178, 216 Mora, Manuel R.: on Tabascan mentality, 52 Moral-Reforma (pre-Hispanic settlement), 19

352

index

Morelet, Arthur: encounters bandits, 153; on indigenous peoples, 33; on Usumacinta River, 10 Morelos, José María, 80, 147 Moreno, Pablo, 90 Nacajuca (town), 41, 54, 90, 135, 269, 283; banditry in, 88 Nahuatl-speaking peoples, 22, 23, 29–30, 32, 34, 146 Napoleon, invades Spain, 79 Napoleonic free radicals, 181, 220, 214, 244, 255; term explained, 111–112 Nemegyei, Felix de, 236; abandons Tabasco, 263; becomes U.S. Consul, 261–2; later career and death, 285–7; origins and early career, 226–7 New Orleans, 73, 91, 97; and banana industry, 278; battle of 1815, 113; business ties to Tabasco, 227; conditions in 1830s, 115–9; Victorio V. Dueñas in, 203; Félix de Nemegyei in, 226; Francisco de Sentmanat’s final burial in, 143; and Francisco de Sentmanat’s second invasion of Tabasco, 138; late colonial trade with, 74; and mid-century trade with Tabasco, 215; and Second Chenes Invasion, 99 Oaxaca, 17, 45, 94, 168, 211 Obregón, Alvaro, 290 Ocosingo River, 10 Olave, Francisco, 194; death, 214–5; defeat in Reform War, 210 Olid, Cristóbal de, 26 Olman, term explained, 18 Olmec peoples, 13, 16–18, 24, 251 Oropeza, Félix María, 106 Oropeza-Zurita feud, 105–7 Ortiz, Manuel, 265–6 Osorio, Baltazar de, 26 Oxolotón church, 55–56 Pailet, Pierre: logging company of, 123 Palenque, 19, 20, 31, 42 Palizada (town), 52, 133, 153, 170, 220, 222, 223, 253 palo de tinte. See dyewood Paraíso (town), 7, 21, 262, 281 Parián riot, 95 Pardo, Francisco, 125 Paredes, Mariano, 157, 159 Pasión River, 10, 19

Pastry War, 110, 123, 158 Peláez, Manuel, 156, 157, 168, 176, 177 Peloponnesian War, 2, 148, 301n4 pepper cultivation, 63 Pérez de Méndez, Patrona, 231, 234 Pérez, Raymundo, 59, 281 Perry, Matthew Calbraith, 3; first invasion of Tabasco, 162–4; frustrations with Tabascan insurgency, 228; later career, 181; origins and early career, 161; second U.S. invasion of Tabasco, 171–5; withdraws forces from San Juan Bautista, 174 Petén, Guatemala, 10, 19, 30–31, 46, 71, 138, 188, 197, 254, 282 petroleum, 18, 293–4 Pichucalco (town), 46, 97, 125, 176, 230; 1848 revolt in, 184–7 Piedra (political party), 187 Piedras Negras (pre-Hispanic settlement), 19, 20 pirates: execution of, 56; and illegal logging, 64; in nineteenth century, 88–89 Plan of Tacubaya, 206 Polk, James K., 161 Pomoná (pre-Hispanic settlement), 19, 20, 21 pongos. See Tabasco, river vessels Porter, Edward: and execution of Francisco de Sentmant’s followers, 141; on Tabasco under Ampudia, 137 on wartime relocation of U.S. nationals, 161–2 Potonchán (pre-Hispanic settlement), 21, 24, 25 Prats, José Encarnación, 253; assumes governorship, 177 Prats y González, Lorenzo, 208, 211; breaks with Gregorio Méndez, 253–4; links to Spanish republican movement, 253 Preve, José, 292 Prim, José, 253 progresista party, 258–9, 263 Puyacatengo River, 9 radical party, 258–9, 263 repartimiento, 27 Reibaud, Francisco: duel with Francisco de Sentmanat, 138; plans Yucatecan landing, 113 Rejón, Manuel Crescencio, 166 Reform War, origins, 206–9 Regil, Manuel, 200, 209 Ricárdez Broca, Juan, 292

index Ricoy, Ramón, 271–2 Río de Palizada, 99 Río Seco, 9, 21, 42 Ríos de Usumacinta (town), 12, 54, 107, 162 Ríos de Usumacinta (region), 42, 46, 254 Rincón Calcáneo, José Antonio, 89, 92, 93 riverine societies, varieties of, 49 rivers, as metaphors, 6–7 Rodríguez de Gala, Leandro, 267, 269, 284 Roguera, 235 Romano family (Casa Romano), 276, 277 Rome, 1 Romero, Pedro, 12 Rosaldo murder case, 201 Rovirosa, José Narciso, 14, 99 Rubio y Ramos, José Andrés, 54; on Lacandón peoples, 162 Ruiz de la Peña, Agustín, 92, 93, 95, 96, 111 Ruíz de la Peña, José María, 92 Sáinz de Baranda, Pedro, 272 Salinas-Chixoy River, 10, 19 San Antonio de Cárdenas (town), 32, 42, 68, 80, 196, 201, 230, 233, 262 San Claudio (pre-Hispanic settlement), 20 San Juan Bautista de Villahermosa. See San Juan Bautista San Juan Bautista, 9, 42, 48, 52, 53, 56, 57, 64, 81, 83, 84, 93, 95, 96, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107, 123, 124, 155, 157, 159, 162, 163, 164, 169, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 178, 179, 180, 182, 185, 187, 188, 190, 201, 203, 206, 208, 210, 211, 212, 213, 215, 219, 224, 226, 233, 238, 239, 245, 246, 248, 249, 251, 264, 267, 274, 282; besieged during Reform War, 212–4; bombarded by Texas Navy, 123; culture of, 51–52; declared minor port, 74; description in Porfirian times, 280–1; and federalist revolt (1840), 110, 124; founded, 26; jail massacre in, 264; and Mexican invasion, 136–7; occupied by Interventionists, 222; republicans besiege, 240–5 San Lorenzo (pre-Hispanic settlement), 17 San Pedro Mártir River, 10 San Pablo River, 10, 21 Sánchez, José Evarista: and anticlericalism, 107; assassinated, 120; and centralist revolt, 104; origins, 101; and Second Chenes Invasion, 100 Sánchez Magallanes, Pedro, 231, 233, 234, 235, 236, 249, 262; origins and early career, 230; and radical party, 259

353

Sanders, Benjamin: becomes U.S. consul, 245; as early prophet of Tabascan petroleum, 293; leaves U.S. consulship unoccupied, 245, 261–262; on TabascanU.S. relations, 250 Sandoval, Gerónimo, 26 Sandoval, Manuel M., 218 Santa Anna, Justo, 111, 124, 127; assumes governorship following first U.S. invasion, 169–70, 172; and elections of 1857, 202; final governorship, 209; installed as governor by Miguel Bruno, 175; opposes Juan Bautista Traconis, 167; resumes governorship, 177; revolts against Liberal government, 197 Santa Maríá de la Victoria (town): founded, 25–27, 42 Sarlat García, Simón, 101, 129; assumes governorship during Reform War, 209; and desecration of Francisco de Sentmanat’s remains, 142; and elections of 1857, 203; governor during Reform War siege of San Juan Bautista, 212–3; role in centralist revolt, 104 Sarlat Nova, Simón, 273; appointed governor, 273; and progresista party, 259 Sastré, Faustino, 271–2 Sastré, José María, 201, 206, 207, 210, 213 Sauri, Antonio, 240 Schindler, Frederick, 276 Scott, Winfield, 161, 174, 226 Second Chenes Invasion, 99–100 Segura, Julián, 31 Seibaplaya (town), 270 Sentmanat y Zayas, Francisco de, 153, 206, 220, 228; armed conflict against Maldonado family 125–7; background and early history, 113–9; capture and execution, 139–40; desecration of remains, 142; emerging conflict with Antonio López de Santa Anna, 129–30; first invasion of Tabasco, 120–2; followers executed, 140–1; foreign support for, 122–3; former armory destroyed, 173; at height of power, 128– 31; links to republican resistance leaders, 230–1, 235; marries into Marigny family, 117–8; and Mexican invasion of Tabasco (1843), 134–7; plans first invasion of Tabasco, 119–20; posthumous influence, 149, 178, 179, 180; recognizes Antonio López de Santa Anna, 131; relationship

354

index

with Catholic Church, 129; remains returned to New Orleans, 143; second invasion of Tabasco, 137–9; significance of, 143–8; and Yucatecan diplomatic mission, 130–1 Serra, Felipe de Jesús, 259, 261, 262, 271; removed as governor, 249–50 Sierra O’Reilly, Justo: diplomatic mission to Tabasco, 130–1; on Tabascan pronunciamientos, 177 Sierra region, 226, 235 Spanish Constitution of 1812, 79, 81 Southern Fruit Company, 278 Standard Fruit Company, 278 Stephens, John Lloyd: description of Usumacinta River, 10; influence on Désiré Charnay, 279; meets Juan Pablo Anaya, 150 Tabasco: African peoples in, 47–48; agrarian code (1826), 87–88; agriculture, 60–72; anticlericalism, 80–82; attitude toward indigenous peoples, 32–33; bananas in, 62; Battle of Jahuactal, 248–9; beginnings of political violence in, 95–96; Catholic church in: See Catholic Church; cattle ranching, 60–61; centralist takeover in, 99, 102–3; under centralism, 105–8; climate, 15; coastal geography of, 13; and colonial trade restrictions, 72–74; colonization of, 27; compared to Cuba, 250; communities of, 41–42; conditions following U.S. invasion, 165; Confederate-Interventionist alliances, 226–7, 236; control of cemeteries, 193; corn cultivation in, 61–62; creation of militias, 93–94; creole class, 48; demographic collapse of 1500s, 31–32; description in Porfirian times, 279–83; diet of, 49–50; early effects of U.S. invasion on, 161–3; early governments of, 89; early print culture, 28; elections of 1857, 202–3; emerging resistance to Intervention, 229–33; and environmental studies, 4; exploration of Usumacinta watershed, 274–6; and federalism, 82–95; fertility of, 13, 15; final years of Intervention, 245–26; first U.S. invasion, 162–4; health and illness, 29, 51; Francisco de Sentmanat invades, 120–2, 134–7; hacienda system ends, 292–3; indigenous peoples of: See indigenous

peoples; Intervention begins, 218–22; Intervention defeated in Teapa, 235–6; labor law of 1864, 245–6; labor systems of, 70–72; land tenure complications, 198– 199; late Intervention conflicts, 248–54; late nineteenth-century floods, 283; and Liberal Reform, factors complicating, 195–201; Liberal Reform and church property, 200; literary culture of, 50–51; mentality of, 92–93; merchant class, 83– 85; and Mexican independence, 78–82; and Mexican Revolution, 290; mountains of, 13–14; logging: See dyewood; nineteenth-century archaeological discoveries, 250–1; political violence during Restored Republic, 258–64, 271–3; popular legends of, 53; Porfirian logging boom, 273–4; post-Comalcalco republican resistance, 234–6; postIntervention relations with U.S., 250, 251–2; post-Garrido leadership, 291–2; post-Reform conditions, 214–6; poverty in, 54; Reform War in, 194–5, 206–16; regions of, 42; republican leadership and followers, 231–2; resistance to U.S. invasion reviewed, 179–81; rise of political violence in, 107; privatization of public lands, 276–7; river vessels, 12, 28, 45; during Restored Republic, 258–75; river systems of, 7–14; second U.S. invasion, 171–5; separate evolution from Yucatán, 47, 48; in southeastern context, 146; and Spanish conquest, 24–27; as subject of dime novels, 256–7; supplemental crops, 62–63; transportation in, 44; vagrancy laws, 87–88 Tabasco Sauce, 257 Tabscob, 25, 37 Tacotalpa (town), 14, 22, 42, 172, 208, 235, 246, 265–7, 276 Tacotalpa River, 9 Taíno peoples, 24 Talango, Tiburcio, 12 tamborilera. See indigenous peoples, dances and music Tamulté (town), 52, 172, 173, 174, 222 Tapijulapa (town), 283 Taylor, Zachary, 159, 161, 162 Teapa (town), 12, 22, 46, 58, 68, 95, 97, 107, 156, 195, 210, 222, 228, 235, 239, 240, 246, 247, 253, 260, 263, 265, 266, 269, 283 Teapa River, 9, 12

index Tenosique (town), 12, 19, 31, 41, 42–43, 162, 188, 276; in Porfirian times, 281–282 Teotihuacán, 20 Tepetitán (town), 54, 111, 125, 253 Texas Navy: agreement with Juan Pablo Anaya, 119, 121–2; bombards San Juan Bautista, 123–4; rumors linking to Francisco de Sentmanat, 126; Tomás Marín opposes, 178 Texas revolt, 102–3, 113, 158 Tikal, 20 Tonalá River, 7 Torno del Diablo. See Tabasco, popular legends of Traconis, Juan Bautista: and first U.S. invasion, 163–4; later career and death, 181–2; origins and early career, 158–9; pronounces against Mariano Paredes, 159; pronounces for Tabascan separatism, 166–9 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 174, 176, 181, 194, 218, 219 Tres Zapotes (pre-Hispanic settlement), 17 Tropical Trading Company, 278 Tupilco Bar, 7 typhus epidemic, 104 United Fruit Company, 278 Urgüelles family, 125 U.S. invasion of Mexico: advances southward and westward, 159; early battles, 158; halted by disease, 174; and naval blockade, 161; origins, 156–8; and wartime profiteering, 165 Usumacinta River, 9, 10–12, 19, 20, 21, 23, 30, 252, 253, 279; and bar, 44 Valcárcel, Domingo Antonio, 45 Valdiví, Samuel, 132

355

Valenzuela Yera, Policarpo (Don Polo): and logging industry, 275, 276, 277, 279; returns remains of Gregorio Méndez, 288; supports radical party, 262; supports republican resistance, 233 Valliant, George, 16 Velásquez, Francisco, 216; assumes comandancia militar in Tabasco, 207–209 as governor, 209; nervous collapse and resignation, 209 La Venta (pre-Hispanic settlement), 17 Veracruz, 74, 48, 55, 67, 85, 95, 110, 127, 128, 156, 168, 169, 172 Vietnam, 1, 2, 301n3 Villahermosa. See San Juan Bautista Waldeck, Federic de: on cholera epidemic, 101 Walker, Patrick: on Tenosique, 42–43 women, in republican resistance, 235–6 Xicalango (pre-Hispanic settlement), 21, 23, 24, 25, 30, 250 Yaxchilán, 19, 20, 21; discovered, 280 Yucatán, 7, 20, 27, 51, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 73, 84, 94, 99, 111, 121, 125, 129, 132, 133, 135, 138, 145, 158, 161, 167, 190, 191, 192, 193, 199, 200, 218, 227, 246, 267. See also Caste War of Yucatán Yucatec Mayas, 29, 30, 57, 78, 130, 135, 138, 144, 275 Yucatecan Republic, 108 Zapotitlán (colonial settlement), 28 Zavala, Lorenzo de, 90 Zoque peoples, 7, 22, 23, 29–30, 146, 193 Zuloaga, Félix, 206, 207, 209 Zurita, Gregorio, 105–6