Indigenous Citizens: Local Liberalism in Early National Oaxaca and Yucatan: Local Liberalism in Early National Oaxaca and Yucatán - Hardcover

Caplan, Karen D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080475764X ISBN 13: 9780804757645

Verlag: Stanford University Press, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Indigenous Citizens challenges the commonly held assumption that early nineteenth-century Mexican state-building was a failure of liberalism. By comparing the experiences of two Mexican states, Oaxaca and Yucatán, Caplan shows how the institutions and ideas associated with liberalism became deeply entrenched in Mexico's regions, but only on locally acceptable terms.

Faced with the common challenge of incorporating new institutions into political life, Mexicans-be they indigenous villagers, government officials, or local elites-negotiated ways to make those institutions compatible with a range of local interests. Although Oaxaca and Yucatán both had large indigenous majorities, the local liberalisms they constructed incorporated indigenous people differently as citizens. As a result, Oaxaca experienced relative social peace throughout this era, while Yucatán exploded with indigenous rebellion beginning in 1847.

This book puts the interaction between local and national liberalisms at the center of the narrative of Mexico's nineteenth century. It suggests that "liberalism" must be understood not as an overarching system imposed on the Mexican nation but rather as a set of guiding assumptions and institutions that Mexicans put to use in locally specific ways.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Karen D. Caplan is Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University, Newark.

Karen D. Caplan is Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University, Newark.

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Indigenous Citizens

Local Liberalism in Early National Oaxaca and YucatnBy KAREN D. CAPLAN

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2010 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-5764-5

Contents

Acknowledgments..................................................................................................................viiMaps.............................................................................................................................ix1. National Liberalism, Local Liberalisms........................................................................................12. The Institutional Revolution in Town Politics: Oaxaca and Yucatn, 1812-1821..................................................383. Reluctant Taxpayers, Unwilling Soldiers, but "Submissive Sons": Oaxacan Villages and the State, 1824-1848.....................634. The Disintegration of a Divided Polity: Yucatn, 1825-1847....................................................................1025. "The Shadow of Liberty": The Politics of Reform in Oaxaca to 1858.............................................................1486. The Transformation of Indigenous Citizenship: Politics in Yucatn during the Caste War........................................181Conclusion: Local Liberalisms and National Liberalism in the Latter Nineteenth Century...........................................216List of Abbreviations in Notes...................................................................................................225Notes............................................................................................................................227Index............................................................................................................................285

Chapter One

National Liberalism, Local Liberalisms

IN APRIL 1846, A YUCATECAN OFFICIAL traveled through his jurisdiction, Motul, to inspect the villages and report on their condition to the state government. The picture the jefe poltico, or political chief, painted in his report was not favorable. Most striking was the near-universal neglect of public buildings. In town after town he saw that the casas consistoriales, buildings intended to house the municipal authorities elected under new republican rules, were near ruin. Jails and military barracks were ill maintained and thus inadequate for the enforcement of republican law. Schools worried the jefe as well. Many villages lacked them entirely, and where they did exist it was often impossible to find a qualified teacher, someone prepared to teach villagers the fundamentals of republican government. The jefe suggested that village authorities levy taxes to address some of these problems, but he recognized that in most cases there were simply no resources to tax. The jefe's observations suggested that Mexico's new institutions were failing to transform the country's indigenous people from colonial subjects into liberal citizens. There was often little distinction in the villages between the older indigenous government bodies sanctioned by colonial Spain and the new republican town councils established for independent Mexico. Because traditional indigenous scribes were often the only literate villagers, the jefe observed, they often served as "perpetual mayors." Thirty-four years after the transition to liberalism, and twenty-five years after Mexico's separation from the Spanish monarchy and its establishment of a republican system, it appeared to officials across Mexico that in the villages little had changed.

Was this perception correct? Certainly, by the time the Yucatecan jefe made his report, there had been significant transformations in Mexican political life. Beginning in 1812, nearly all adult male Mexicans could go to the polls to elect representative legislative bodies, and they did so in large numbers. On a local level, Mexicans now had the opportunity to elect and serve as members of newly established town councils that would oversee affairs in all but the smallest villages. And after Mexico gained its independence and established the republic in 1824, Mexicans acquired a government the ultimate authority of which was located not in far-off Spain, but in Mexico itself, and, practically speaking, in relatively nearby state capitals like Oaxaca City and Mrida. The population had gone in a few short years from being subjects to being citizens, a change that brought with it new ways of organizing administration and new bases for demands on the state.

And yet in some ways little had changed. The range of both candidates and issues on which new citizens could vote was nearly as limited as it had been under Spain, and indirect elections quickly filtered out the intentions of the majority of voters. Long-standing village hierarchies were reproduced in local councils, and thus the new bodies tended to replicate colonial arrangements. Colonial structures, both economic and political, often remained intact even where they had been officially abolished. In Oaxaca and Yucatn-the Mexican states that form the core of this study-most indigenous villagers were still poor, and their labor was still the primary source of income for the nonindigenous elite. And, like their colonial Spanish predecessors, new republican government officials struggled daily with their limited capacity to ensure the cooperation of new citizens. All that had changed, it seemed, were the words that government representatives and indigenous villagers used to describe the political and economic order, and the specific institutions that facilitated its perpetuation.

This book argues that this new language and these new institutions were significant. Evidence from the villages shows that new Mexican citizens, whether indigenous villagers, elites, or state officials, went through the motions that liberalism demanded: elections, representative governance, land reform, and the military draft. Because there was also continuity in the structures of authority, many scholars have seen their compliance with new institutional rules as inconsequential, little more than a veneer. Yet as they went through the motions of liberalism, Mexicans also engaged with the content of liberalism. Crucially, this occurred even where physical evidence of state presence was slight. The book traces the transition to liberalism in the states of Oaxaca and Yucatn, where more than three-quarters of the citizenry was indigenous and where these indgenas composed the vast majority of those living outside of major cities. The Oaxacan and Yucatecan state governments-and certainly the federal government-had few resources to call on in controlling the everyday activities of this majority population, and the authority of the state was often in question. But changes in institutions nevertheless triggered intense negotiation between indigenous people and the state surrounding the meanings of liberal republican institutions, policies, and systems. The meanings that they could agree on became, for them, liberalism. Liberalism in nineteenth-century Mexico cannot be evaluated in reference to any liberal ideal. Rather, it was built in the context of politics on the ground.

Of course, there was not always consensus that this kind of liberalism was indeed liberal. The content of local agreements, forged in the context of local exigencies, often clashed with a developing "official" liberalism-the ideas, policies, and institutions articulated at the level of the national government. Thus,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 080475764X
• ISBN 13: 9780804757645
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande