THE DAVID ROCKEFELLER CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES WORKING PAPER SERIES

Mexicos Revolutions and the Indians of the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca (1800-1910) by Ethelia Ruiz Medrano No. 10/11-2

DAVID ROCKEFELLER CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

WorkingPapers on Latin AmericaSeries

DRCLAS introduces its latest working paper:
Mexicos Revolutions and the Indians of the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca (1800-1910)
by Ethelia Ruiz Medrano (Paper No. 10/11-2) Previously Published Working Papers:

Seminar on Cuban Health System: Its Evolution, Accomplishments Canada, the United States and Cuba between 1959 and 1962: The and Challenges; US-Cuba Relations at the Turn of the 21st Triangular Relation as seen in Cuban Diplomatic History by Ral Century: 3 Perspectives on Improving Bilateral Ties edited by Rodrguez Rodrguez (10/11-1) Lorena Barberia, Dan Nemser and Arachu Castro (02/03-4) La vivienda en Cuba desde la perspectiva de la movilidad social by Lilia Nez Moreno(07/08-4) Poltica social en Cuba. Equidad y movilidad by Mayra Paula Espina Prieto (07/08-3) Equidad y movilidad social en el contexto de las transformaciones agrarias de los aos noventa en Cuba by Lucy Martin Posada (07/08-2) Public Research Universities in Latin America and Their Relation to Economic Development by Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid and Pablo Ruiz Npoles (07/08-1) La poltica espaola ante la Cuba del futuro by Jorge Domnguez and Susanne Gratius (06/07-2) Mining-Led Growth in Bourbon Mexico, the Role of the State, and the Economic Cost of Independence by Rafael Dobado and Gustavo A.. Marrero (06/07-1) The Problem of Money in Electoral Politics: A Latin American Perspective by Alejandro Poir (05/06-1) Understanding Slums: The Case of Havana, Cuba by Mario Coyula and Jill Hamberg (04/05-4) The Case of the Missing Letter in Foreign Affairs: Kissinger, Pinochet and Operation Condor by Kenneth Maxwell (04/05-3) Giving Voice to a Nascent Community: Exploring Brazilian Immigration to the U.S. through Research and Practice, ed. by Clmence Jout-Pastr, Megwen Loveless, and Leticia Braga (04/05-2) Beyond Armed Actors: Carving a Stronger Role for Civil Society in Colombia Proceedings from a conference at DRCLAS (03/04-2) Venezuela responde a sus retos by Ana Julia Jatar, Alesia Rodrguez, and Reinier Schliesser (03/04-1) Iatrogenic Epidemic: How Health Care Professionals Contribute to the High Proportion of Cesarean Sections in Mexico by Arachu Castro, Angela Heimburger, and Ana Langer (02/03-3) The Politics of Educational Inequality: The Struggle for Educational Opportunity in Latin America by Fernando Reimers (02/03-2) Institutions and Long-Run Economic Performance in Mexico and Spain, 1800-2000 by John H. Coatsworth and Gabriel Tortella Casares (02/03-1) Environmental Sustainability of Argentine Agriculture: Patterns, Gradients and Tendencies 1960-2000 by Ernesto T. Viglizzo, Anbal J. Pordomingo, Mnica G. Castro, Fabin A. Lrtora, and Otto T. Solbrig (01/02-2) Something to Hide? The Politics of Educational Evaluation in Latin America by Fernando Reimers (01/02-1) La politica de Estados Unidos hacia Cuba durante la segunda presidencia de Clinton by Jorge Domnguez (00/01-3) Impact of Globalization on the Grasslands in the Southern Cone of South America by Otto T. Solbrig and Ral R. Vera (00/01-2)

The cutoff date on this list is arbitrary, leaving space for forthcoming papers. All older Working Papers are available on the DRCLAS website. The papers address trade, democracy, and violence, as well as many other topics.

The Author Ethelia Ruiz Medrano is currently a researcher at the Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia in Mexico City. She holds a B.A. in the History of Mexico from the University of Guanajuato and a Ph.D. in the History of America from the University of Seville. Dr. Ruiz Medrano was a 2006 Guggenheim fellow in Iberian & Latin American History. Her research interests are centered on the conditions, mechanisms and negotiations of the colonial system that appeared and were consolidated during the viceroyalty of New Spain. She is the author of several books, including Negotiation Within Domination: New Spain's Indian Pueblos Confront the Spanish State. As a Santander Visiting Scholar for the fall of 2010, she worked on her project Mixtec Indian Negotiation with the Colonial and National States in Mexico 1500- 2010.

DAVID ROCKEFELLER CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES Mission The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University works to increase knowledge of the cultures, histories, environment, and contemporary affairs of Latin America; foster cooperation and understanding among the people of the Americas; and contribute to democracy, social progress, and sustainable development throughout the hemisphere. Working Papers on Latin America Harvard affiliates are encouraged to submit papers to the Working Papers on Latin America series. Copies of published working papers may be purchased at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Working papers can be found free of charge online at http://drclas.fas.harvard.edu.

For information about DRCLAS publications, contact: June Carolyn Erlick, Publications Director David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies 1730 Cambridge St. Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel.: 617-495-5428 e-mail: jerlick@fas.harvard.edu

Mexicos Revolutions and the Indians of the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca (1800-1910)1 Ethelia Ruiz Medrano Mixtec Indian Communities from the Period of Independence to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century. At the end of the eighteenth century, New Spains indigenous communities found themselves subject to new pressures and controls that complicated their already fraught relations with colonial power and its representatives. The impetus given in these years by both Spaniards and creoles to the development of commercial agriculture, together with a jump in the indigenous population, created mounting threats against the integrity of land belonging to Indian pueblos.i In addition, the Bourbon reform program instituted in 1765 demanded a rationalization of the finances of Indian pueblos, an obligation they were to meetas the new legislation envisioned by renting out their excess or unoccupied lands.ii The Bourbon reforms also created a new high-level administrative unit (1786), the intendancy, under whose jurisdiction the indigenous communities were also placed. The

intendancys subdelegados, or deputy officials, inserted themselves directly into the supervision of the pueblos financial affairs. This development meant that Spanish colonial authority now played a greater role in matters of indigenous governmentiii and, in turn, that the local political strength of Indian authorities was to some extent diminished.iv Not surprisingly, the changes occasioned by these reforms caused a growing unease within the colonys Indian pueblos, a disquiet which by the end of the colonial period expressed itself in

Thisstudyispartiallybasedonchapterthreeofmybook:MexicosIndigenousCommunities:TheirLandsand Histories,1500to2010(Boulder:UniversityPressofColorado,2010).See http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/upc/2010springsummer/

a series of disturbances and revolts. In the opinion of Eric Van Young, the discontent which flared into protest in some 150 pueblos at the end of the 18th century and during the first decade of the 19th stemmed from three principal causes: land issues, the demands made for increased tribute payments, and problems internal to Indian community governance.v As Van Young has further emphasized, the majority of indigenous revolts were led by their own authorities, generally the governors of pueblos, who more often than not launched the protest by confronting a Spanish administrative official over questions of power and the recognition of (or challenge to) their own authority.vi It was in this context that the first uprisings for independence occurred in Mexico between 1810 and 1820. Only a small number of historians, such as Van Young, have drawn attention to the fact thatcontrary to what is usually claimedmestizos were not the prime movers in the war of independence, that in reality it was hundreds of thousands of Indians who assumed that burden, a natural enough phenomenon considering that they formed the majority of the colonys population.vii The deficiencies of the first Mexican national censuses notwithstanding, it is important to note that throughout the 19th century the Indian population of Oaxaca, unlike that of any other state, was calculated to number nearly 90 percent of its total population and that in 1910 the two Indian languages most widely spoken in the state were Zapotec and Mixtec.viii Although they constituted a majority population, Indian pueblossuch as those of the Mixteca Altathat were located in areas distant from the centers of Spanish power reacted like bystanders to the conflict between the insurgent and royalist armies, and while hundreds of Indians from the Mixteca Alta were recruited, either voluntarily or by force, into the fighting, the generals in command of the regions armies, which were composed primarily of Indians, looked
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upon the latter with contempt, labeling them la indiada,a bedraggled mob.ix As Rodolfo Pastor has argued, it is little wonder that the support offered by the Indian communities of the Mixteca Alta to either the royalists or the insurgents was piecemeal and isolated, not because they were upholders of the status quo but because the two camps alike used brutal tactics to exact contributions from them. For example, they extorted money from them in various ways, forced them to dig trenches and build huts and small fortifications, and bullied them into delivering provisions for themselves as well as fodder for their animals. Indeed, Pastor cites several examples of how the insurgents went about torching pueblos, such as San Miguel el Grande, in the Mixteca Alta. x Similarly, for no good reason, the royalists lined up the governor and magistrate of Yanhuitln and executed them by firing squad in 1812.xi Thus, if the Mixtec formed themselves into politically autonomous rebel groups, out of which sprang indigenous guerrilla groups that were perceived by non-Indian sectors to be little more than bandits or gangs of irregulars, these groups were clearly entering into combat in pursuit of their own political ends. The most celebrated case of such indigenous insurrectionism is that of Hilario Alonso, or Hilarin, who fought at the side of the Triqui Indians of Copala, in the Mixteca Alta. As we shall see, this phenomenon of autonomous rebellion would repeat itself during the time of the revolution. Despite the armed conflict of these years, a raft of liberal legislationenacted within the context of a weakened Spanish monarchyfueled hopes on the part of many Indian pueblos in Mexico that better, more prosperous days loomed on the horizon. The foundation for the organization of the future Mexican national state was set in 1812, when the liberal-inspired Constitution of Cdiz went into effect. This document divided the state, administratively, into
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provincial councils, or deputations, laid the basis for the organization of municipal power, and established equality of rights among creoles, Spaniards, and Indians (abolishing, for example, tribute payments, the encomienda, and personal service obligations). The creation of municipal or town councils in communities having more than a thousand inhabitants was mandated on the basis of this constitution, as was the requirementsimilar to the practice followed by the colonial cabildothat its members be elected by those eligible to vote. This situation benefitted indigenous communities, since their members were familiar with elections (in contrast to the members of other social groups), and between 1820 and 1830 the participation by Indians in elections was notable. During the colonial period, the rules that governed the election of posts on Indian cabildos had varied according to local custom. In the post-independence period, however, this practice changed, so that only males above the age of 25 could participate in electing persons to municipal offices, for which the vote, furthermore, now had to be indirect.xii Within the indigenous communities, the notion of citizenship was identified with both the payment of taxes and the right to vote for municipal officials, who as a function of their office maintained control over local resources. The ceremonies governing the election of ayuntamiento officials were in fact very similar to those which had been followed within the Indian cabildos, sinceas Peter Guardino notesboth had their origin in traditions surrounding Spanish municipal practice.xiii Above the town councils in the administrative hierarchy sat the provincial councils. On this level, the administration of justice lay outside the sphere of the ayuntamientos and in the hands of the subdelegados. Although the position of the subdelegado had supposedly been annulled with the creation of provincial councils in New Spain, these individuals nonetheless continued
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to function as judges in the first instance and to hold responsibility over matters of war. By and large, Indian pueblos greeted the new structure of government with enthusiasm, since it afforded them a freedom based on the juridical status of their members as citizens and enabled them, via this novel channel, to maintain an active participation in political life. Their enthusiasm,

however, was not shared either by the colonial and national authorities or by the local white oligarchies. The subdelegados were particularly unreceptive, sincefrom their vantage

pointthe Indians ayuntamientos undercut their own jurisdiction.xiv Fernando VIIs failed attempt to reimpose absolute monarchy within Spains kingdoms caused the Constitution of Cdiz to be suspended in 1814, but in 1820 it again became the law of the land in New Spain. These political shifts reverberated within the colonys indigenous communities. All the same, many small and medium-size Mixtec pueblos in the region of the Mixteca Alta managed to continue functioning as republics, which, for them, meant keeping the power that flowed from their traditional political autonomy. For example, despite the

transformation of the political environment, the new municipal authorities of the major mestizo population centers in the Mixteca Alta, such as Tlaxiaco, continued to preserve the old forms of official communication with their once-dependent indigenous communities and to treat them in the traditional manner. For their part, the Indian pueblos conformed to the same pattern,

accepting official correspondence from this former cabecera (or district capital) on the basis of their dependent condition under the colony, a condition now supposedly defunct. Thus, the subdelegado Jos Pimentelxv wrote a brief missive at the end of October 1820 to the alcaldes of each of the Mixtec and Triqui communities formerly dependent on the municipality of Tlaxiaco; namely, Santa Mara Yucuhiti, Santo Toms Nuy, San Pedro Yosotatu, Santiago Yozatichi, and
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San Juan Copala, informing them that: The esteemed constitutional municipal council of this town and district capital of Tlaxiaco, which assumed its functions yesterday, has by an action taken today determined that the pueblos noted in the margin will necessarily continue as dependent communities of this same district capital, subject, as they were under the former system of government, to justice administered by those empowered within this same district capital, which fact obliges them to have recourse to this esteemed body in all matters pertaining to the resolution of conflicts and other such privileges granted them by the august constitution to which all the republics, along with us, swore allegiance on the 2nd of July of the current year.xvi Subsequently, on 30 November 1820, the alcaldes of each of these pueblos replied to Pimentel and swore obedience to their former cabecera. It is vital to note that each alcalde penned a letter and signed it, underscoring the fact that a considerable number of Indian authorities in fairly remote locales knew how to read and write. This knowledge and ability was important to the Mixtec in enabling them to carry out negotiations with a new set of non-Indian state authorities in Mexico. In the view of some scholars, the changes that occurred in the wake of independence signified the loss to the native population of the limited autonomy which it had enjoyed under colonial rule. Yet an in-depth study of relations between the Indian pueblos and the national governments demonstrates that the pueblos possessed a great capacity for negotiation. Depending on the region and the specific time period involved, this capacity enabled many pueblos to maintain and even to augment their field of autonomous action and to preserve certain privileges in the face of a national climate of opinion that was thoroughly hostile to the survival of the traditional ways and practices of Indian pueblos. Moreover, the Indians capacity for negotiation in the face of state power was not a recent acquisition, but rather extended back to at least the early days of the colony. Michael Ducey has pithily summed it up as the notable
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ideological flexibility to claim, within the bounds of the state, a place in the national society, something which the Indians managed by adopting new political systems at the same time as they kept alive and maintained practices emerging out of the colony.xvii As Rodolfo Pastor points out, it was this propensity for pragmatic accommodation and negotiation that in 1822 allowed 149 Indian pueblos in the Mixteca Alta to swear loyalty, amid music and fireworks, to both the Sovereign Congress of the Nation and his Imperial Majesty, Agustn Iturbide. Indeed, a short time later, when his republican opponents sought to induce the Mixtec communities to rise up against Iturbide, only four pueblos answered the call. When Iturbide was deposed in 1823, however, numerous Mixtec pueblos again took an oath of loyaltythis time to upholding a liberal constitution.xviii The reality was that some indigenous zones situated far from the capital of the new country were free to enjoy a certain autonomy which the emergent government lacked the means to curtail. Thus, to swear loyalty to a new emperor or to a new constitution of republican bent could, without any contradiction, be equally the motive for local celebrations, just as it served to buttress a sense of shared community among the Mixtec pueblos as much as to signify the implantation of a new political model. During this period, the Indian pueblos continued to display a notable ideological flexibility, in which their traditional cultural practices played an important role, and they did so in a newly complex environment, since, as a result of the legislation enacted by the constitutional assembly of Cdiz, followed by the actions of successive liberal and conservative governments, they lost the special protection that the Spanish Crown had given them with respect to their legal-juridical status. The separate court and judicial system that had been created for them under the colonial regime no longer existed; henceforth, they had to coexist on an equal legal footing with other
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social groups, absent the protectionthough it had been confined to the realm of legislationof a paternal monarch. While in theory the Indians enjoyed the very same rights as other groups, in reality conditions were not so uniform, and the pueblos had rapidly to learn the new rules of successive governments thatwhatever their ideological differencesshared in common the belief that the native population was an obstacle to the creation and consolidation of a modern state. On this score, it is important to emphasize that, as Peter Guardino notes, the Indians idea of what it meant to be a citizen represented, at bottom, a new expression of their ingrained sense of community identity, a vision of the national community as a simple extension of the local community. For them, the notion of citizenship pivoted not on the individualism characteristic of non-Indian groups but on the possibility of belonging to a wider community that encompassed the nation, an entity formed out of and constituted by the pueblo, in which everyone had rights and obligations without distinctions of race or class. xix It was from this perspective, as recognized Mexicans, that the Indians evolved strategies to preserve the colonial order in different aspects of their lives,xx and perhaps most powerfully as concerned the governing of their own pueblos. Thus, the manner in which indigenous communities responded to threats and changes impinging on them from without during the first half of the nineteenth century contained core elements of their traditional cultural practices. Examining events within the Mixteca Alta, then, one observes that its indigenous authorities maintained close communication with local and state officials even as the two parties clashed on cultural terms, especially over issues of land and land boundaries. For example, in 1823 the Mixteca Alta community of Magdalena Peascoxxi was renting some land belonging to Tezoatln,
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located in the Mixteca Baja. The authorities of Tezoatln, a cattle ranching municipality situated at some distance from Magdalena, xxii carefully compiled a list of all the campesinos in Magdalena who rented out land, calculating the latter in maquila de semillas, a unit of agricultural measurement (and area for planting seeds) equivalent to 286 square metres.xxiii (See Table 1) The total parcel of land used by the Magdalena campesinos amounted to approximately 10 hectares, for which they paid an annual rental fee of 15 pesos.xxiv A portion of what they planted was given over to Magdalenas religious confraternity, the Cofrada de Nuestra Seora del Roco. In 1823, however, a neighboring Mixtec pueblo of Tezoatln, San Antonio

Monteverde (likewise belonging to the Mixteca Alta),xxv declared that the lands under lease to Magdalena were rightfully its property. Caught in a confusing situation, Magdalena appealed to the authorities of Tlaxiacoto whose municipal district it belongedto intervene and clarify matters. Accordingly, Tlaxiacos alcalde wrote to the authorities of Tezoatln, stating in his letter that in the name of the supreme congress they should suspend the rental of any of their pueblos land until the matter had been vetted. The response made to this request by Tezoatlns authorities demonstrates what the Mixtec at this time took to be their rights and how clearly they saw them: In virtue of your communication in which you inform me that I cannot exceed the orders of the [Mexican] Supreme Congress now in forceI beg to tell you in whatever manner you wish that this community has possession of its land, [and] nobody can suspend its rentals. It seems to me that if San Antonios declarations of legitimate ownership of the land are backed up by any documents, they could have gathered them together and made them known to us since last year, so that we could come to a harmonious arrangement: for which reason it is well that you bear in mind that each looks to the good of his own. You also inform me that this will later cost money [for the litigation] and [that] the guilty party will bear the cost. May God be with your m.a. (est muy bien). Chapter hall of Texoatln, 18 July 1823.xxvi Without wasting words, the pueblo of Tezoatln dismissed the pertinence of the Supreme
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Congress of Mexico, as well as the authority of Tlaxiaco; norby the same tokenwas it inclined to jump into the threatened legal fray with San Antonio, seemingly sketched out by Tlaxiacos official, for which the monetary cost would be very high. As is evident, the letter was respectful toward Tlaxiacos authorities but firm with respect to its argument. Ultimately, the pueblos foremost concern was that its rights over its lands be respected. Indeed, many years later, in 1910, a conflict broke out between Tezoatln and San Antonio over a question of adjacent land, in which each pueblo accused the other of invading its territory. The conflict lingered, and in 1934 it apparently escalated to such a degree that the government dispatched troops to the community of San Antonio in order to pacify both Mixtec pueblos.xxvii As can be inferred from this case, Indian pueblos generally opted during the nineteenth century to negotiate with the authorities, just as they had been doing since the colonial period. Such negotiation was typically prompted by their apprehension over the legislation that was being imposed on them. In addition, with the establishment of the ayuntamiento, the Indians managed to hold on to older, colonial-era political practices, in which the appointment of the governor of a republic was replaced by the naming of the chief alcalde.xxviii As Edgar Mendozas research has shown, the constitution adopted by Oaxaca in 1825 set two conditions for the creation of an ayuntamiento. The first specified that communities having more than 3,000 inhabitants would have the right to establish a municipal council. The second, on the other hand, stipulated that settlements with at least 500 inhabitants would be recognized as republics. Oaxacas Indian pueblos found favor with this privilege, since these republics had the same attributes and faculties as those granted the ayuntamientos. Thus, at least in Oaxaca, many small Indian pueblos were able to operate politically as a republic and enjoy a certain degree of
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autonomy, given that their authoritiesunder this systemwere appointed on the basis of popular representation, in similar fashion to the practice of the former colonial Indian cabildo.xxix In 1826, out of the 220 pueblos located in the Mixteca region, 87 had a population, on average, of slightly more than 500.xxx As of 1825, all 87 were officially Indian republics. This circumstance meant that on a local level, government in the Mixteca Alta remained in the hands of the pueblos own inhabitants throughout the nineteenth century, independent of wider political events, wars, and invasions. With the adoption of the constitution of 1857, the ayuntamientos were now led by municipal presidents. Furthermore, all that was required to create a municipality was that a community number at least 500 residents. In this way, thanks both to the Indians political agility and to the 1825 law, many pueblos in Oaxaca consolidated themselves as municipalities and retained the land that they had managed to keep since the era of the colonial composicin (a process through which land lacking private title could be regularized through the payment of a fee to the colonial treasury).xxxi If it is true that the pueblos of the Mixteca Alta hewed to a very locally focused agenda, it is also true that some of them chose to become involved in national political movements. When federalism was established in Mexico by means of the Constitution of 1824, it followed that the countrys form of government would be that of a popular federal representative republic. Between 1829 and 1831, the office of president was occupied by the prominent strongman of the independence struggle, Vicente Guerrero. Guerrero, who fell to an assassins bullet in 1831, enjoyed strong support from Indian pueblos, and under his short-lived government and the federal system in general Indians attained a greater, more visible participation in political life. Within Mexicos federated regions, the number of municipalities was virtually equal to the
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number of Indian republics which had existed during the colonial period and, moreover, the practice of universal male suffrage was guaranteed by law. And while the Indians paid taxes to their municipality, the monies were administered on a purely local basis. For many Indians, the term federalism signified the diffusion of power onto local levels.xxxii Although there were certainly municipalities that were controlled by mestizos and whites, who maintained strong regional interests and wielded power over the pueblos pertaining to their respective municipality, this does not negate the fact that many municipalities were controlled by Indians. The latter situation was especially noteworthy in the Mixteca Alta, where the non-Indian population had been numerically small since the early colonial period. The federal system in Mexico lasted only until 1834, when those favoring centralism came into power. The power of the centralists (1835-1841) dealt a serious blow to the interests of indigenous communities. Centralist officials reduced the number of municipalities, leaving

many of them under the control of mestizo and creole elites who subjected the Indian pueblos to their jurisdiction. Taxes were also increased during these years, producing great unrest among the Indians, who reacted by rising up against their payment, most notably in the present-day state of Guerrero. In addition, the centralists imposed a more restrictive form of universal suffrage. A minimum annual income of more than 100 pesos was established in 1836, and raised to 200 pesos in 1843, a condition which totally eliminated the participation of Indian campesinos in elections.xxxiii As a result of these developments, various Indian pueblos in what today forms the state of Guerrero (both its mountain and coastal regions) rebelled against the centralist government. The first uprising took place in Chilapa, where after the centralists assumed power the white and
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mestizo elite of the municipality had tried to exert control over a cluster of neighboring Indian pueblos by manipulating their internal political affairs. This interference quickly became a central grievance of the campesino population, which engaged in outright rebellion in 1840 and after.xxxiv The insurgent Indians around Chilapa were joined by many other pueblos who opposed the centralist laws. The matter of higher taxes in particular sparked a major movement against the central government which swept over extensive areas of Guerrero. In addition, the centralist government was torn by internal factions. This weakness was exploited by non-Indian leaders who enjoyed strong political backing. Among them was the federalist Juan lvarez, who came to the aid of the Indians in their demands. lvarez was a key figure in the creation of the state of Guerrero in 1849. The success of the Guerrero statehood drive owed much to the support it received from the indigenous community, to whom in turn lvarez pledged his support for the redress of their grievances. Of course, the North American invasion of Mexico and Mexicos ensuing loss of national territory also contributed significantly to the weakening of the centralist government. Employing guerrilla tactics and supported by many Indians from Guerrero, Juan lvarez himself fought against the U.S. army.xxxv In the Mixteca Alta, too, various Indian pueblos also embraced the federalist cause and threw their support behind lvarez, as did other communities of Nahua, Amuzgo, and Tlapaneco Indians, along with the Mixtec in Guerrero. A case in point was the Mixtec community of Teposcolula, who took up arms on behalf of the federal government in 1844.xxxvi Their militancy is not difficult to understand, since the payment of the capitacin (a centralist-inspired personal tax) served as one of the most important sources of state revenue in Oaxaca during the first half
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of the nineteenth century, and while the amount levied seems to have been modest, it was nonetheless hiked up during the years of civil strife and war.xxxvii Similarly, the Triqui of Copala rose up against the Oaxacan state authorities in 1839 and 1843, in protest against Governor Antonio de Len, who had stripped several pueblos, Copala among them, of their land and was now profiting from renting the land back to the Indians. To bolster their campaign, the Indians of Copala joined forces with the legendary outlaw Hilaro Alonso, whowhile intervening to defend the interests of indigenous communities against the statealso devoted himself to plundering ranches and sugar mills in the region. In payment for its rebellion, Copalas Triqui community was brutally repressed. Even so pressed, however, the Triqui rebels managed to take Tlaxiaco and to reach Teposcolula. Along the way, they attacked the property of some of the wealthy and powerful landowners of the region, giving the authorities reason to view them as bandits, savages, thieves, and murderers.xxxviii Although some pueblos in the Mixteca Alta were motivated to revolt openly against the state, as a general rule Indian communities, both in the nineteenth century and after, adhered to a long tradition of marshalling political and legal resistance in defense of their highest priority: their land. For them, land was not only an economic resource but also a source of political rights and of collective freedoms in the face of hegemonic state power.xxxix Thus, while for the Indians the organization and presentation of a legal defense was an essential recourse and tool, for state authorities as for much of Mexican society at large such resistance on the part of pueblos was viewed as the malicious machinations of the Indians own attorneys, who were contemptuously referred to as tinterillos (pen-pushing shysters).xl It is important then to recognize that at times during the nineteenth century the Indians were
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able to exercise certain political rights and protect land belonging to their pueblo, and that legislation and legal proceedings were instrumental in this regard. Nevertheless, successive governments were not inclined on the whole to guarantee the survival of indigenous communities in the national period, and they were particularly intent on converting communal-corporate held land into land that would be owned privately. Unsurprisingly, some indigenous communities expressed regret for the disappearance of the colonial regime, calling attention to the fact that under the colony, the Spanish monarchy had provided a protective umbrella for Indian pueblos. xli INDIAN PUEBLOS IN THE MEXICA ALTA AND THE ISSUE OF LAND BEGINNING WITH THE LAWS OF THE REFORM Broadly speaking, between 1821 and 1850 successive national and state governments tried to isolate and detach various types of land belonging to the Indian pueblos.xlii Yet a much heavier blow was delivered to the collective land rights of Indian pueblos through the 1856 Ley de Desamortizacin, enacted by the liberal government which had taken power in that same year, and under whose terms church, government, and other corporate properties held in mortmain, were to be sold, subject to certain exclusions.xliii The legislation allowed pueblo communal lands to be divided, parceled out, and separated, although such action did not take place immediately nor did it occur uniformly across the country. Because the law of disentailment made it possible for a great number of Indian pueblos to lose the usufruct of their communal lands, in the end it was supported not just by the liberals but by the conservatives and large landowners as well.xliv It is also the case, as recent studies have shown, that many Indian pueblos managed to preserve their land, shielding it under special legal injunctions secured by loopholes contained in the legislation itself. Public service lands, for example, were exempted, and as the law was written,
16

these could be interpreted to include both ejidos and the site of the pueblo proper.xlv The pueblos could also constitute themselves as agrarian societies and adopt the practice of joint ownership.xlvi On this point, John Monaghan has found that more than 178 instances of joint ownership existed, collectively, in Guerrero, the Mixteca Baja, and among the Mixtec communities in the state of Puebla. In the majority of cases, Indians in these Mixtec pueblos purchased the lands from the descendants of their iyya, or caciques, frequently doing so on the basis of credit and private loans. In Monaghans opinion, there were Mixtec pueblos in these regions which, not having the means to make payment on loans, split up, their members dispersing and the pueblo itself ceasing to exist.xlvii In the Mixteca Alta, however, the practice of joint ownership scarcely took hold; to date, research in the records indicates there may have been a maximum of five.xlviii Communal land was preserved and retained through other strategies. In both the Mixteca Alta and in Oaxaca more generally many Indian pueblo ayuntamientosas a result of the laws of the Reformmade common cause with their parish priests and curates to defend their properties and capital by using the funds held by their cofradas to make physical repairs to their churches, and to set up capillas de viento (church musical groups) and pay for the instruction of their musicians and singers.xlix That is, before cofrada funds and capital passed into the hands of the state, pueblo authoritiesin concert with their priest and the community as a wholetook preemptive action, using the funds to buy expensive wind instruments, which were often complemented by classical music scores. The popularity enjoyed (and still enjoyed) by musical bands from the Indian pueblos of Oaxaca derives in part from this initiative of the 1840s.l In addition, some indigenous communities managed to gain title to their land and maintain it
17

under collective control by placing it in the name of all of the campesinos who worked it. In general, this maneuver succeeded when the land in question was not particularly attractive to either whites or mestizos.li Such was the case with the Mixteca Alta pueblo of San Pedro Tida, whose Mixtec inhabitantsas a consequence of the 1856 reform lawstogether amassed the sum of 1,165 pesos and named a member of their community, Hilario Rodrguez, as their prestanombre (nominee or legal proxy) following which he purchased a wheat threshing mill that became the pueblos most important source of income. By means of this crafty scheme, to which the municipal authorities fully subscribed, the mill generated profits, through its sub-contracted rental, that were shared collectively; to this day, in fact, San Pedro Tidas families refer to this episode as the mill raffle.lii This type of response on the part of Indians in the Mixteca Alta evidences their strong capacity to negotiate and to defend their pueblos land and capital stock by threading their way through the legal maze. Their success in drawing upon such legal tactics as obtaining injunctions, oras in the example of Tidamaking a business investment through a single shell owner that yielded income for the community as a whole, enabled them to retain a significant part of their communal lands. Furthermore, the Mixteca Alta, though lacking large-scale productive enterprises, such as haciendas, did have some millsfor example La Concepcinwhose economic benefits rippled out across the region. In addition, many Mixtec men found

employment as agricultural wage laborers, ranging as far away as Veracruz, and their earnings from such work allowed them to maintain a certain level of material well-being. Finally, it should be remembered that the land in the Mixteca Alta was not particularly fertile, yet many communities preserved their traditional unity and managed to negotiate certain advantages for
18

themselves in dealing with the non-Indian population, in both political and social terms. Once the laws of the Reform were enacted, the Indiansapart from enjoying a slight breathing space under the imperial regime of Maximilianwere allowed no rest in the defense of their lands. The situation thus warranted that they use whatever resources and tools they had at their disposal to cling to their territory. With the triumph of the liberals over the empire in 1867, however, the legal changes brought about under Maximilians government were annulled, and the 1856 legislation directed against the ownership of communal land again entered into force.liii This latter body of legislation served as an important precedent and springboard for the agrarian policy which Porfirio Daz pursued during the more than thirty years that he spent as president of Mexico (1876-1911). For Daz, the indigenous communities and their various forms of collective ownership of land were a major impediment to his project of constructing a modern, liberal nation state. In 1883, the Daz regime unleashed a powerful legal offensive against indigenous land holdings through its Decreto sobre Colonizacin, a decree concerning land use and settlement. The decree mandated the separation and division of all the countrys vacant lands, the idea being that this land would be ceded to both foreign immigrants and Mexicans who wanted to settle on it. Another element of the decree authorized companies to survey and demarcate the land andin return for doing soempowered them to take ownership of one third of it.liv These companies were almost all from the United States, and their central objective in carrying out surveys was to carve up and exploit the vacant lands. Dazs next major land-related assault came in 1894, in the form of a law on the occupation and alienation of vacant lands in the United Mexican States. By means of this law, vacant lands,
19

or land not designated for public use, as well as surplus land, odd extensions of land, and federal land could be assigned and given to anyone who laid claim to it, without any limit set on the size of parcels awarded.lv This law continued the program of getting rid of small land holdings, as well as of communal and village-based land assets. In this environment, many Indians lost their land and were compelled to hire themselves out as laborers on ranches and estates in order to survive. The legislation thus privileged the concentration of land in medium and large-scale holdings; it benefited foreign investors and speculators, companies prepared to carry out land and boundary surveys, large landed estates, and cronies of President Daz, while also facilitating the liberalization of the labor market.lvi By 1889, as a result of this legislation, private companies had surveyed and demarcated 38 million hectaresa full third of the national territoryand 12.7 million hectares were ceded to them as compensation. On top of this gift, the Porfirian regime also sold 14 million hectares of land to these companies at an absurdly low cost. Through all of these channels, the legislative initiatives of 1883 and 1894 strengthened the case of those who opposed community-held land and facilitated the acquisition of land and legal titles thereto by the wealthiest segment of the population.lvii Although in these respects the Porfirian landscape was profoundly adverse to the interests of indigenous communities, some scholars hold that the notion that Indians and campesinos lost their lands en bloc during the Daz years needs to be modified. If it is true that many pueblos suffered such losses, it is also true that cases exist on a regional basis in which they managed to preserve the communal administration of their land. This counter-trend was especially noteworthy in the Mixteca Alta, and it reflected three principal factors: the pueblos great capacity for negotiation, which remained an active element of the indigenous cultural inheritance,
20

the distance at which they sat from the center of the regional economy, which meant that large business and industrial enterprises, such as the railways, would see no reason to covet their land, and the comparatively poor quality of portions of their land when used for agricultural purposes. The Mixteca Alta (Oaxaca) municipality of Tepenene illustrates this dynamic. Its common lands persisted through the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, and the municipality continued to administer its common agricultural land and the land dedicated to the support of its community government, generating income by renting parcels to private individuals. Tepenenes authorities in fact used some of this money to pay part of the costs of a lawyer whom they kept under contract to litigate the conflicts in which they were embroiled over issues of land.lviii

INDIAN LANDS IN THE MIXTECA ALTA AND THE REVOLUTION

As the year 1910 approached, substantial contingents of both Indians and campesinos in Mexico found themselves landless. Since the end of the nineteenth century, this situation had caused many pueblos to engage in open rebellion, despite the repressive measures that Dazs government employed to clamp down on dissident activity.lix In 1911, Emiliano Zapata and his followers published the Plan de Ayala, in which they denied recognition to the government led by President Francisco I. Madero (1911-1913) and took the position that land should be distributed to the countrys communities. Between 1910 and 1919, Zapata championed and spearheaded an agrarian movement of transcendent importance. Recent scholarly work demonstrates that Zapatismo produced a coherent and radical political blueprint for the global
21

transformation of a complex society. Moreover, the proposals advanced by the armed movement behind Zapata were not static; they changed throughout the struggle that was mounted to distribute land to Mexicos pueblos, although such changes as were made always took their cue from the political program elaborated in the Plan of Ayala.lx The Plan of Ayala had injected a call for fundamental agrarian reform into the revolutionary discourse; the response to this demand took the form of the ejido, or community land grant. For campesinos, however, a pueblos ejidos were simply the lands which they had always controlled and cultivated, that is, the full spectrum of the pueblos lands which during the colonial period and the nineteenth century had included its common cropland (terreno de comn repartimiento), land set aside for the support of the communitys government (propios), the land that made up the site of the community itself (fundo legal), and the communitys livestock grounds (ejido). After 1856, this collection of differentiated lands was given a single nameejidos.lxi In the case of the Mixteca Alta, a zone of dense Indian population (see Table 2), the situation both prior to and after the Revolution was and in some respects continues to be exceptionally complex. For example, during the years 1897 and 1930 (see Table 3), numerous armed

invasions took place between various neighboring pueblos in the region, a condition which intensified between the years 1910 and 1915. Pueblos in the Mixteca Alta formed small armed bands which invaded and attacked other pueblos. Many of these conflicts originated in the colonial period or even pre-dated the Spanish conquest, andin the case of the Mixteca Altawere bound up with the economic, social, and political power associated with the yuhuitayu, or Mixtec cacicazgosthe domain of a caciques rule (combining yuhi/petate, a mat for sleeping on, with tayu/asiento, the seat of authority). The absence or weakened state of a
22

particular yuhuitayu made it an easy target for the regions caciques, who customarily capitalized on the situation to seize additional land.lxii To the non-Indian authorities, these invasions were but another instance of the barbarism of the Indians and a reason for calling them bandits. Yet it should be remembered that in the thinking of this same community, Emiliano Zapata was nothing but a bandit. This complex picture strongly suggests that, just as they functioned as bystanders during the independence period, many pueblos in the Mixteca Alta did not join and fight with one group or another during the Revolution, at least not in any publicly recognizable way. Furthermore, the revolutionary ideals of Madero and Zapata found much more fertile ground among the coastal Mixtec, who had been dispossessed of their communal lands and generally mistreated by a strong representation of ranchers in the region. The ideas behind the Mexican Revolution had been imported into the Mixtec coastal areas by insurgents from Guerrero, where the revolutionary impulse was strong. The noted episode of the Mixtec kingdom of Pinotepa Nacional clearly reveals the unalloyed desire for liberation by a Mixtec population that been systematically oppressed by non-Indians.lxiii In this episode, the local Mixtec rose up in arms, assassinating some of the authorities and wealthy men of the pueblo and causing others to flee, following which they crowned a Mixtec woman as their queen. While Francis Chassen saw this historic event purely as a metaphor, today we know it to have been otherwise. The Mixtec of this locale have up to the present preserved a long oral tradition about the ancient Mixtec kingdom of Pinotepa, and not only were the proclaimed queen and kingdom, which lasted but a few days before being brutally repressed, real, but in all likelihood the Mixtec woman coronated as queen descended from the pre-Colombian and colonial iyya of the Pinotepa region.lxiv
23

Within the Mixteca Alta, however, things apparently played out differently. There, many pueblos took advantage of the violence and fighting that accompanied the years of revolution to invade lands that they considered, historically, as their own, in order to enlarge their territory and destroy the boundary markers of neighboring pueblos. Numerous assaults and incidents of stealing cattle by armed groups of Mixtec men took place in the region (see Table 3). We need to ask ourselves, however, what really lay at the bottom of this aggression. Conflicts and confrontations over land are common not only across the Mixteca Alta but also in the state of Oaxaca more widely as well as in many other indigenous and campesino regions of Mexico. I have tried to shed light on this phenomenon in the Mixteca Alta by examining it from the vantage point of two disciplines: history and ethnography. Six years ago, I began to collaborate with a group of people in Santa Mara Cuquila, a community belonging to the municipal district of Tlaxiaco in the Mixteca Alta, on a project to recover its history. This pueblo has had a history of conflicts over land with neighboring pueblos since the colonial period, but these broke out with greater intensity in the years after the Mexican Revolution. At present, Cuquila is embroiled in a land conflict with the pueblo of San Miguel Progreso, which had been a dependent community of Cuquila until 1938. In that year, owing to political changes, Cuquila lost its status as a municipality and in turn became subordinate to the administrative jurisdiction of Tlaxiaco, a city of predominately mestizo ethnic-racial composition. My Cuquila friends have pointed out to me on many occasions that the conflict with San Miguel Progreso stems from the fact that government civil engineers set the same limits on the final maps that demarcated the boundaries and territory of both pueblos, thus making each the owner of the same land. These friends and my Cuquila compadre Emiliano Melchor have also
24

emphasized to me many times over the years that this is a quarrel between Mixtec brothers. At times they even tell me that they and their San Miguel counterparts are the same people. When I follow up this admission by asking them why people who are so close would persist in conflict that at times turns violent, they respond by simply shrugging their shoulders. My contention is that one must resort to ethnology to gain the analytical toehold that will prepare the ground for advancing some preliminary hypotheses about this problem. In this context, different specialists note that it is entirely natural that people prefer to be in the company of those who share the same ethnic background, a proposition which has been utilized to great effect in discourses pertaining to both nationalism and ethnicity. In keeping with the logic of this idea, cultural diversity within a discrete society is taken as something abnormal, a species of social fragmentation. The idea is reasonable, since we dont hear of ethnic conflicts in which a key factor driving the antagonism is that the affected groups think of themselves as being overly similar, although such thinking may actually be a key factor. On the contrary, it is cultural distinction and difference (including the biological) which is underscored in the etiology of ethnic conflicts. In line with this orientation, ethnic groups can claim that conflicts reflect and arise from inherent differences between them. The universal view is that powerful ties of social cohesion are manifested through the existence of common values, a shared past, and expressed loyalty toward the same symbols.lxv Nonetheless, a line of thinking exists in the social sciences, whose most outstanding exponent is the specialist on Melanesia, Simon Harrison, which holds that certain intense conflicts can occur precisely between groups possessing a common cultural heritage, by reason of their very similarity. This pattern is seen among groups in Melanesia. The people of Tanna,
25

an outer island of Vanuatu, follow the custom that when one group takes the territory of another in war, the victorious group acquires not just the land but also the rights and personal names of its erstwhile owners. To make their possession of the new land legitimate, the victors must assume the social identity of the defeated, whose names and identities are apparently thought of as inextricably tied to the land itself.lxvi Personal identity thus seems to be conceived of as something transferable in a way that does not exist for western societies, in which ones identity can perhaps be imitated but not alienated or reassigned. Such transference, however, is possible in some Melanesian societies. Clearly, what produces a conflict between these societies is not so much that they are different from each other but rather that they are fundamentally the same.lxvii In the case of Cuquila and of many other pueblos in the Mixteca Alta, it can be posited that Mixtecs living in close proximity take each others lands as a way of capturing the others prestige; Mixtec pueblos gathering in and taking over the prestige of other Mixtec pueblos by taking possession of their territory. This possible dynamic intensified during the years of the revolution. It should be added, too, that as members of a single society unified around a calendar of anniversaries and national commemorations we tend to think that national political and social movements of overarching importance, such as independence from Spain and the Revolution, have a common meaning and significance for all of us, Indians and non-Indians alike. Yet the countrys indigenous communities have a logic of their own which the rest of the Mexican population quite often fails to acknowledge, much less recognize. During the time of the Revolution, the pueblo of Santo Toms Ocotepec, Cuquilas neighbor and bitter enemy under the colony, decidedin keeping with its own political intereststo align
26

itself with the Zapatistas. Reflecting the enmity between the two pueblos, the Cuquilans then decided that the proper course of action was to join the Carrancistas.lxviii The Santo Toms Ocotepec Mixtec met this decision by attacking Cuquila, and, as a trophy, carried off the miraculous Virgen of Cuquilita, whose image the Cuquilans venerated. In the words of the sacristan Don Juan Hernndez: [Those from Santo Toms Ocotepec] carried off the virgin of Cuquilita so that she would wed the lord of that place, Ocotepec [that is Santo Toms]. She no longer wanted to exist, did not want to go on living, like you who are women and who wouldnt be able to live in a house with bad folk where you would feel uncomfortable, well it was like that with her, the virgin, and we went to bring her to Tlaxiaco and the first, second, and third mass that we have here in August was celebrated. Yes, thats the reason the virgin came back and ran into the little cave and ran up to the opening and sat down, the virgin ran up to there, and hid herselfthats how it was.lxix According to some of my other friends in Cuquila, the virgin was recovered thanks to the intervention of Tlaxiacos priest, who traveled to Santo Toms Ocotepec to prize her away from the people of Ocotepec, who had hidden her in a cave. Moreover, the virgin was recovered on 8 December, the day on which the pueblo celebrates its most important festival. This festival has political significance as well, for it marks the day on which the elected officials of Cuquilas municipal government leave office, to be succeeded by a newly elected slate of officials who take up their duties on 1 January.lxx Unquestionably, the life of this community is profoundly influenced by a set of crucial, interwoven symbols connected to ancient, inter-pueblo struggles over land, struggles which the social and political upheavals of the Revolution served to intensify. I would conclude by noting that as historians who focus on the experience of indigenous communities, we clearly broaden and deepen our knowledge and understanding of their past and their present when we work in a reciprocal way with them.
27

JohnTutino,Globalizaciones,autonomasyrevoluciones:poderyparticipacinpopularenlahistoriadeMxico,

pp.2585in Crisis,ReformayRevolucinMxico:Historiasdefindelsiglo,coord.byLeticiaReinaandElisaServn, (Mexico:Taurus/Consejo Nacionalpara laCulturayLasArtes/Institutio NacionaldeAntropologa eHistoria):29; Felipe Castro, La rebelin de los indios y la paz de los espaoles (Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios SuperioresenAntropologaSocial/InstitutioNacionalIndigenista,1996):40.
ii

Margarita Menegus Bornemann, Los bienes de comunidad y las Reformas Borbnicas (17861814), in

EstructurasagrariasyreformismoilustradoenlaEspaadelsigloXVIII(Madrid:MinisteriodeAgriculturaPescay Alimentacin):383389.
iii

WayneOsbornSmyth,ACommunityStudyofMeztitln,NewSpain,15201810(Ph.D.dissertation,University

ofIowa,1970),19798.
iv

WilliamB.Taylor,ConflictandBalanceinDistrictPolitics:TecaliandtheSierraNortedePueblaintheEighteenth

Century, in The Indian Community of Colonial Mexico. Fifteen Essays on Land Tenure, Corporate Organizations, IdeologyandVillagePolitics,ed.ArijOweneelandSimonMiller(Amsterdam:CEDLA,1990).
v

Eric Van Young, The Other Rebellion. Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence,

18101821(Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress,2001),40815.
vi

Ibid,423. William B. Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in EighteenthCentury Mexico (Stanford:

vii

StanfordUniversityPress,1996),29697.
viii

LeticiaReinaAoyama, Caminosdeluzysombra. HistoriaindgenadeOaxacaenelsigloXIX(Mexico:Centrode

InvestigacionesyEstudiosSuperioresenAntropologaSocial/ComisinNacionalparaelDesarrollodelosPueblos Indios,2004),10205.
ix

Ibid,95.

28

RodolfoPastor,Campesinosyreformas:Lamixteca,17001856(Mexico:ElColegiodeMxico,1987),417420. ReinaAoyama,Caminosdeluz,9495. PeterF.Guardino,Peasants,Politics,andtheFormationofMexicosNationalState[of?]Guerrero,18001857. Ibid,92. AliciaTecuanhueySandoval,LaresistenciadelsubdelegadodeAtlixcoalosayuntamientosenlospueblosdel

xi

xii

xiii

xiv

partido,18121814,in Memoriasde laAcademia MexicanadelaHistoria correspondiente delaRealde Madrid (Mexico:AcademiaMexicanadelaHistoria,2002),2627,3536.

xv

For more information about Pimentel, a mestizo who apparently descended from indigenous caciques, see

Pastor,Campesinosyreformas,42223.
xvi

ArchivodeTlaxiaco,Oaxaca.AsuntosdeTlaxiaco. MichaelT.Ducey,Hijosdelpuebloyciudadanos:identidadespolticasentrelosrebeldesindiosdelsigloXIX,

xvii

pp. 12751, in Construccin de la legitimidad poltica en Mxico (Mexico: El Colegio de Michoacn, Universidad AuttomaMetropolitana,UniversidadAutnomadeMxico,ElColegiodeMxico,1999),127.
xviii

Pastor,Campesinosyreformas,42627.

xix

Guardino,Peasants,Politics,9192.

xx

Seearequest[fromGuadalajara?]toeliminatethewords mulatos, negros,and indiosandtoreplacethemwith

thewordMexicanos,inAGNGobernacin,40/4expediente67,1822Guadalajara.
xxi

Inthisperiod,thepresentdaypuebloofMagdalenaPeascowasknownasMagdalenaYutanuyia. 1821. Independence was declared in Tezoatln by General Antonio de Len. Accorded the status of a

xxii

municipality,itwasboundedonthenorthbySanAndrsDinicuiti,SantiagoCacaloxtepec,andSanMartnArteaga; onthesouthbySantoReyesTepejilla;ontheeastbySantoDomingoYodohinoandSanAntonioMonteVerde,and onthewestbySilacayoapam.Atpresent,itisestimatedthat30percentofitsterritoryisdevotedtoagriculture and60percenttocattleranching.MixtecaBaja,HuajuapanDistrict.

29

xxiii

The maquiladesemillasisaunitofagriculturalmeasurementthatequalsahalf celemn(indrymeasurement,

approximately4.6liters)or286.5squaremetersoflandonwhichtoplantseeds.Usedfromtheeighteenthtothe twentieth century, the celemn was the equivalent of some 537 square metres, the amount of land that was considerednecessaryforplantingonecelemnofwheat.
xxiv

ArchivodeTlaxiaco,1823Juzgadode1 InstanciadeTlaxiaco.DiputacinProvincialdeOaxaca.

xxv

ThemunicipalityofSanAntonioMonteVerdebelongstothedistrictofSanPedroandSanPabloTeposcolula,

whichissituatedintheregionoftheMixtecaAlta.
xxvi

ArchivodeTlaxiaco,1823Juzgadode1a.InstanciadeTlaxiaco.DiputacinProvincialdeOaxaca. http://www.elocal.gob.mx/work/templates/enciclo/Oaxaca/municipios/20105a.htm EdgarMendozaGarca,LosbienesdecomunidadyladefensadelastierrasenlaMixtecaoaxaquea.Cohesin

xxvii

xxviii

yautonomadelmunicipiodeSantoDomingoTepenene,18561912.(Mexico:SenadodelaRepblica,2004),90.
xxix

Ibid,9093.

xxx

Pastor,Campesinosyreformas,420. This development also explains the great number of municipalities which exist in the presentday state of

xxxi

Oaxaca,anumberwhichexceedsthatofanyotherMexicanstate.MendozaGarca,Losbienesdecomunidad,93.
xxxii

Guardino,Peasants,Politics,95. Ibid,101,174. ChrisKyle,Land,Labor,andtheChilapaMarket:ANewLookatthe1840sPeasantWarsinCentralGuerrero,

xxxiii

xxxiv

Ethnohistory50,no.1(2003),89130.
xxxv

Guardino,Peasants,Politics,14777. ArchivodelaSecretaradelaDefensaNacional,legajo9.Operacionesmilitares,aode18441845. Pastor,Campesinosyreformas,427. ReinaAoyama,Caminosdeluz,17172,17677;ArchivodelaSecretaradelaDefensaNacional,XI/481.3/2119.

xxxvi

xxxvii

xxxviii

Aode1845.

30

xxxix

Antonio Escobar Ohmstede, Introduccin..., in Los pueblos indios en los tiempos de Benito Jurez

(18471872),coord.AntonioEscobarOhmstede(Mexico:UniversidadAutnomaMetropolitana,2007),1129.
xl

LapresenciaindgenaenlaprensacapitalinadelsigloXIX. Catlogodenoticias1,ed.AntonioEscobarOhmstede

andTeresaRojasRabiela (Mexico:Instituto Nacional Indigenista/CentrodeInvestigacionesy EstudiosSuperiores enAntropologaSocial,1992),292.

xli

WayneOsborneSmyth,ACommunityStudyofMeztitln,NewSpain,15201810(Ph.DDissertation,University

ofIowa,1970),20608.
xlii

RobertJ.Knowlton,ElejidomexicanoenelsigloXIX,HistoriaMexicana48,no.1(1998),7196. Manuel Fabila, Cinco Siglos de legislacin agraria [14931940] 2 vols. (Mexico: Secretara de la Reforma

xliii

Agraria/CentrodeEstudiosHistricosdelagrarismoenMexico,1981):1,book5,109115.
xliv

DonaldJ.Fraser,Lapolticadedesamortizacinenlascomunidadesindgenas,18561872,HistoriaMexicana,

21,no.4(84)(1972),615652.
xlv

Article8ofthelawstipulatesatitsend:Thosepropertiesbelongingtothemunicipalcouncils,buildings,ejidos,

andlandsdevotedexclusivelytothepublicserviceofthepopulationstowhomtheybelongwillalsobeexempted, Leydedesamortizacindebienesdemanosmuertas,Mexico,28June1856.
xlvi

Jointownership referredtopropertythatbelongedto multipleowners, whodidnot enclosetheir individual

parcelsoflandbutinsteadkeptthemasapartoftheoverallunit,eachrecognizingthelandholdingsoftheothers andsharingtheexpensesarisingfromanylegalconflictswithotherpropertyownersaswellasthepaymentofany taxes owed. The institution of joint ownership went back into the colonial period. Escobar Ohmstede and GutirrezRivas,ElliberalismoylospueblosindgenasenlasHustecas,18561885,inLospueblosindios,25397.
xlvii

PersonalcommunicationwithJohnMonaghan,whoisintheprocessofwritingabookonthissubject. PersonalcommunicationwithJohnMonaghan.

xlviii

31

xlix

SergioNavarretePellicer,LascapillasdemsicadevientoenOaxacaduranteelsigloXIX,Heterofona: Revista

de Investigacin musical, CNIDIM (JanuaryJune 2001), 927. I am grateful to Maestro Aurelio Tello for having furnishedmewiththisinterestingarticle.
l

Ibid,927. EscobarOhmstede,Introduccin VicenteMoctezumaMendozaandAndreaCaldernGarca,SanPedroTida.UnavastahistoriaenlaMixtecaAlta

li

lii

(Mexico: Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana/Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia/Proyecto de Conservacin,IdentidadyDesarrolloComunitario,2009),13638.

liii

Fabila,Cincosiglos,15968. Ibid,18389.

liv

lv

Ibid,189205. EscobarOhmstedeandGutirrezRivas,Elliberalism,272,286. DanaMarkiewicz, TheMexicanRevolutionandtheLimitsofAgrarianReform,19151946(BoulderandLondon:

lvi

lvii

LynneRiennerPublishers,1993),15.
lviii

MendozaGarcia,Losbienesdecomunidad,21824.

lix

Markiewicz,TheMexicanRevolution,1617.

lx

Arturo Warman,The PoliticalProjectof Zapatismo,[trans. Judith Brister], in Riot,Rebellion,and Revolution:

RuralSocialConflictinMexico(Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress,1988),321337.
lxi

Seenote56. Ethelia Ruiz Medrano, Mexicos Indigenous Communities: Their Lands and Histories, 15002010 (Boulder:

lxii

UniversityPressofColorado,2010),chapter4.
lxiii

ThisepisodehasbeenstudiedbyFrancieR.ChassenLpezinherbook FromLiberaltoRevolutionaryOaxaca:

TheViewfromtheSouth,Mexico,18671911(UniversityPark,PA:PennStatePress,2004),51822.

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lxiv

Foradetailedrecountingbothofthisepisode,andofthelongoraltraditionregardingtheMixteckingdomasit

survivesamongthePinotepaMixtectoday,seeHermenegildoF.LpezCastroandEtheliaRuizMedrano, Tutuuu Oko, Libro del pueblo Veinte. Relatos de la tradicin oral de Pinotepa Nacional, Oaxaca (Mexico: Centro de InvestigacinyEstudiosSuperioresenAntropologaSocial,2010).
lxv

Simon Harrison, The Politics of Resemblance: Ethnicity, Trademarks, HeadHunting, Royal Anthropological

Institute,8,no.2(June2002),21132,322,326.IamgratefultoGuilhemOivierforpointingouttomethisarticle offundamentalimportance.
lxvi

Ibid,215. Ibid,21516. InterviewinJuly2008withtheauthoritiesofSantaMaraCuquila.

lxvii

lxviii

lxix

August2005interviewwithHernndez,sacristanofSantaMaraCuquilaschurch.

lxx

Although Cuquila ceased to be a municipality more than seventy years ago, it still maintains the practice of

electingafunctioningmunicipalgovernment.

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