Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico

Men, Women, and War

Mark Wasserman

• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9780826343741
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Mexikanische Geschichte

In this new and masterful synthesis, Wasserman shows the link between ordinary men and women-preoccupied with the demands of feeding, clothing, and providing shelter-and the elites' desire for a stable political order and an expanding economy.

The three key figures of nineteenth-century Mexico-Antonio López de Santa Ana, Benito Juárez, and Porfirio Díaz-are engagingly reinterpreted. But the emphasis in this book is on the struggle of the common people to retain control over their everyday lives. Concerns central to village life were the appointment of police officials, imposition of taxes on Indians, the trustworthiness of local priests, and changes inland ownership. Communities often followed their leaders into one political camp or another-and even into war-out of loyalty.

Excesses in partisan politics and regional antagonisms gave rise to nearly eighty years of war, resulting in the nation's economic stagnation between 1821 and 1880 and the mass migration of women from the countryside to the city. The industrialization of urban employment forever altered gender relations. During wartime, women acted as the supply, transportation, and medical corps of the Mexican armies. Moreover, with greater frequency than has been known, women fought as soldiers in the nineteenth century. This account of Mexico from Independence to the Revolution combines lively explanations of social history, political and economic change, and gender relations. Wasserman offers a well-written, thoughtful, and original history of Mexico's nineteenth century that will appeal to students and specialists alike.

"At long last, a clear-headed, non-romanticized, and non-adversarial analysis of everyday life and politics across the vast sweep of a century of change and rebirth. This is a first-rate book, expert and highly accessible."--Professor Timothy E. Anna, University of Manitoba

THE AGE OF TROUBLES

Antonio López de Santa Anna

Antonio López de Santa Anna

Sadly looking back on his life as he was about to turn eighty years old in 1874, General Antonio López de Santa Anna penned the last lines of his memoirs: “ostracized by my countrymen and in exile.” But the old man outlived his harshest critics. With amnesty he returned to Mexico that very same year after an eighteen-year absence. One newspaper exclaimed at the time that “Mexico does not remember the great political errors of the man who so long controlled its destinies.” Santa Anna, who had been president of Mexico eleven times, died embittered, “. . . in the midst of the greatest want, abandoned by all except a few of his friends. . . .” And this was the man who had towered over Mexican politics for nearly forty years!

There has been no more controversial figure in Mexican history than Antonio López de Santa Anna Pérez de Lebrón (1794–1876). In a career spanning more than three decades from the Independence wars through the 1850s, Santa Anna was alternately hero and villain, patriot and traitor. Personal strengths and weaknesses aside, Santa Anna’s life encapsulated the history of an era in Mexico. The general and sometimes president symbolized the ambiguities, uncertainties, and continuities of politics in the Independence epoch and its aftermath.

In her famous account, Life in Mexico, Fanny Calderón de la Barca described Santa Anna as “a gentlemanly, good-looking, quietly dressed, rather melancholy-looking person, with one leg, apparently somewhat of an invalid. . . . He has a sallow complexion, fine dark eyes, soft and penetrating, and an interesting expression of face.”

Legend swirled around him. Some said he had “a way with women,” siring innumerable illegitimate children. Others claimed he was addicted to cockfighting and opium. Perhaps most famous was the story of the leg he lost in defense of the homeland. In 1838 France landed troops in the port of Veracruz in order to collect claims for damages to the property of its citizens living in Mexico. Santa Anna lost his leg below the knee to a French cannonball while leading a cavalry charge. Although most Mexicans saw him as a hero, his detractors said he was in full retreat when the cannonball hit him. He recovered from his wounds, but the lost leg would later become notorious. In 1842, while serving as president, Santa Anna buried the leg in the Santa Paula cemetery in Mexico City with full military honors, including a parade, before an audience of diplomats and luminaries. In 1845 an angry mob, fed up with his rule, disinterred the leg and dragged it through streets to derisive laughter.

Santa Anna was born February 21, 1794, the son of well-to-do Spanish parents. His father was a minor official in Veracruz province under the Spanish colonial regime, and later was a mortgage broker. From an early age Santa Anna was regarded as “quarrelsome.” He chose a military career and saw action as a young officer against the masses led by Father Miguel Hidalgo, who initiated the movement for Mexican independence in 1810.

Antonio was known as “reckless and brave,” but had good military sense. Despite quick promotions in rank, the young man showed certain character flaws. After losing heavily in gambling, he forged his superiors’ signatures on drafts to repay his debts. He escaped dire consequences when higher-ups discovered his misuse of funds, but emerged from the incident penniless. This early love for gambling remained with him throughout his life. As president he was often found at cockfights betting with the common people.

He joined Agustín de Iturbide in 1821 in betraying the royalist army and reaching agreement with the rebels to establish Mexican independence. Santa Anna emerged from the Independence Wars, in the words of his chief biographer Wilfrid Callcott, as a “. . . man trained in a ruthless and brutal school where fear was the chief taskmaster, where morality and ethics were largely unknown and where the end was held to justify the means. With such training and an experience far beyond his years, the record of ensuing decades should not be surprising.”

Two years later, Santa Anna led the republicans against Iturbide, his former ally, who had established himself as Emperor Agustín I (1822–23). He played an important role in politics during the 1820s, serving two short stints as governor of the state of Veracruz and a brief term as governor of Yucatán, and then acting as an important ally of Presidents Guadalupe Victoria (1824–29), and Vicente Guerrero (1829). In 1829 Santa Anna led Mexican forces that repelled a Spanish invasion seeking to reconquer its former colony. After ousting President Anastasio Bustamante (1830–32), the general took the reins of government himself in 1832. For the next two decades he shuttled in and out of the presidency.

During the early 1820s, Santa Anna began acquiring property in the vicinity of Jalapa in the state of Veracruz, which was strategically located on the main road connecting the port of Veracruz to Mexico City. Eventually, he became one of the region’s largest landowners with his showplace, the Hacienda Manga de Clavo (Clove Spike). He was married in 1824 to Doña Ines García. They had two daughters and three sons (one of whom died at five and another who was sickly or disabled). Doña Ines died in 1844 at age 33. After a scandalously short period of mourning, Santa Anna married María Dolores Tosta.

In financial matters Santa Anna was a man of contradictions. On the one hand, the general was infamous for his corruption. There were times, for example, when he had difficulty distinguishing between the national treasury and his own fortune. On the other hand, during the war with the United States he used his own funds, some raised from mortgaging his properties, to outfit an army to fight the invaders.

Santa Anna was at the center of Mexico’s disastrous foreign wars. He drove the Spaniards from Veracruz in 1829. He suffered the ignominious defeats that led to the loss of Texas in 1836. Nonetheless, he recovered from his shame and won a hero’s plaudits in 1838, when he lost his leg resisting the French.

His greatest defeat lay ahead, for in the midst of the crisis of war in 1846, he took over the defense of Mexico against the invading armies of the United States. Santa Anna fought bravely, if ineptly, and his valiant and bloody resistance temporarily restored his military reputation. But the peace treaty that ended the war cost half of Mexico’s territory to the northern colossus.

After years in exile, Santa Anna returned once again in 1853 to establish his harshest regime. Although uncrowned, he insisted on all of the trappings of royalty, including the title of “His Serene Highness.” The next year he was overthrown for the last time by a coalition of southern country people and northern Liberals who objected to his centralized rule. The new government not only forced him into exile, but also confiscated his properties. Conservatives restored them a few years later, but in 1866 the Liberal regime of Benito Juárez declared him a traitor.

Santa Anna’s career symbolized the complexities of Mexican politics in the post-Independence era. He epitomized the uncertain choices that confronted the people of the new nation. He began as a monarchist, switched sides to become a republican in 1821, and then in his later career took on the trappings of royalty during his dictatorship. Further, he illustrated the dilemma between federalists and centralists. Initially he was a federalist, but soon he recognized the impracticality of regionalism and changed to a centralist position. Nonetheless, Santa Anna was first and foremost a regional political boss. His remarkable ability to rebound from defeat owed in great part to his strong political and military base in Veracruz. In his first presidency he allied with the Liberals, but he abandoned that stance almost at once. Moreover, Santa Anna was proof of the domination of the military in an era of foreign and civil wars.

The general was probably a political genius. Otherwise, how can we account for his longevity and for his many remarkable comebacks? Until the emergence of Benito Juárez (president of Mexico from 1857 to 1872), Santa Anna was the only leader who had the charisma and ability to unite his nation even for a short period. Despite his catastrophic losses, given the poor weapons, training, and leadership of his armies, it is doubtful that anyone could have done more.

Independent Mexico searched for more than half a century for legitimate successors to Iberian colonial rule. Given the geographic, ethnic, and class divisions that separated Mexico, and the daunting economic difficulties that confronted it, the Mexican people turned to military officers who had emerged during the Wars of Independence to obtain badly needed leadership. The burdens of colonial rule—regional fragmentation, the wide gap between law and practice, corruption, and economic stagnation—proved too heavy for even Antonio López de Santa Anna.

TIMELINE

The Age of Troubles

1810	Grito de Dolores
1821	Independence
1822–23	Emperor Agustín I (Iturbide)
1824	Constitution (Federalist)
1824–29	Presidency of Guadalupe Victoria
1828	Parián Riot (Mexico City)
1829	Presidency of Vicente Guerrero
1829	Spain attempts reconquest
1830–32	Presidency of Anastasio Bustamante
1833	First presidency of Antonio López de Santa Anna
1833	Presidency of Valentín Gómez Farías
1836	Constitution (Centralist)
1836	Texas War
1838	Pastry War (France)
1845	Annexation of Texas by the United States
1846–48	War with the United States
1853	Treaty of Mesilla (Gadsden Purchase)

Chapter 1

EVERYDAY LIFE, 1821–46: TRADITION AND TURMOIL

After Independence Mexico experienced a half-century of transition. The country was much changed, especially in the realm of politics and governance, but the core of everyday life retained its essential characteristics. Neither thousands of years of indigenous tradition and culture, nor 300 years of Spanish colonial heritage disappeared. Most Mexicans ate the same foods, resided in the same kind of dwellings, and wore the same kinds of clothes as had their ancestors for decades if not centuries. The constant tension and frequent conflict between elite visions of a modern nation, the reluctance of common people to accede to them, and the transformations that would result do much to explain the often muddled events of the nineteenth century. The conditions of daily life both influenced and were affected by local, regional, and national politics. The major issues of the era, such as local autonomy, access to land, taxes, the military draft, the role of the Catholic Church, and the fair application of laws were deeply interwoven into the fabric of everyday life and were contested at all levels.

In 1800 there were approximately 6 million residents of New Spain (colonial Mexico). Fifty years later, with the population growing at less than one percent a year, there were 7.6 million inhabitants. Incessant wars, periodic epidemics, including a deadly cholera outbreak in 1850, and the expulsion of Spaniards following Independence accounted for the slow population growth. Most Mexicans were Indians or mestizos. The countryside was more Indian than the cities. At the turn of the nineteenth century, for example, the state of Puebla was 75 percent Indian, 10 percent white, and 15 percent castas (mixed bloods, such as mestizos and mulattoes), but the city of Puebla was 25 percent white, 40 percent casta, and 35 percent Indian. In 1814 the Yucatán peninsula was 75 percent Maya (Indian), 14 percent European, and 11 percent mixed blood.

Typically, nineteenth-century Mexicans resided in one of four categories of communities. Most lived in the countryside either on haciendas (large landholdings), where they worked for the hacienda or leased its land as tenants or sharecroppers, or in villages, where they cultivated their own individual or communal small plots. A third much smaller group lived in mining camps. Mexico’s urban population was concentrated overwhelmingly in Mexico City, whose population from 1820 to 1900 fluctuated between 150,000 and 200,000. In rural areas much of the land was controlled by owners of haciendas, known as hacendados. The majority of the rural population consisted of Indians, who continued to live as in colonial times in relatively autonomous villages (pueblos). The milpa—the small, individual plot of land used for family subsistence farming—was the basis of rural life. There were also small properties called ranchos. (The term “rancho” had different meanings according to region.) Communally held landholding predominated in many regions, particularly in the Valley of Mexico and its environs.

The Haciendas

Conditions on Mexican haciendas in the nineteenth century are much debated by scholars. Because their operations varied widely according to era, region, size, and crops, it is almost impossible to describe a typical hacienda. Fortunately, records from a number of haciendas survive for the period. It is from these illuminating documents that we can piece together the following descriptions.

Haciendas had a unique hierarchical structure. At the top of hacienda society was the owner, the hacendado, and his family. Beneath the hacendado were the supervisors and administrators, headed by the chief administrator or mayordomo. Males typically headed haciendas, but occasionally a widow operated a large property. Hacendados, at least in the early decades of the nineteenth century, hardly lived in opulence on their estates. Fanny Calderón de la Barca, the wife of the minister (now called ambassador) of Spain to Mexico, visited the sugar estate of Anselmo Zurutuza near Cuernavaca in the 1840s, and wrote the following:

As for the interior of these haciendas, they are all pretty much alike . . . a great stone building, which is neither farm nor country-house . . . , but has a character peculiar to itself—solid enough to stand a siege, with floors of painted brick, large deal tables, wooden benches, painted chairs, and whitewashed walls; one or two painted or iron bedsteads, only put up when wanted; numberless empty rooms; kitchen and outhouses; the courtyard a great square round which stand the house for boiling the sugar, whose furnaces burn day and night; the house with machinery for extracting the juice from the cane. . . .

Although many hacendados lived modestly without opulence, the economic boom that came later in the century would change all this. Large landowners who lived near towns and cities often chose to reside away from their estates to enjoy the greater comforts of urban life.

In general there were two broad groups of people employed on the large estate: those who worked permanently on the hacienda and those who were temporary laborers. Permanent inhabitants included resident peons, tenants, and sharecroppers, though the latter two types of workers did not necessarily have to reside on the property. Temporary labor on the haciendas came from neighboring villages. Villagers supplemented their incomes from communally held land or family plots by working seasonally at planting and harvest on the hacienda.

Some hacendados farmed their own land with their own employees. Others rented or sharecropped the land to locals. Depending on the time, place, and crops, tenants paid their rent to the hacendado in the form of cash or a portion of the harvest. Though most tenants leased small plots, there were a few who leased entire haciendas. Sharecroppers paid the landowners a predetermined percentage of the harvest, usually half. Although the hacendado’s profit potential was higher when he farmed his own land, the risk was greater. Tenants and sharecroppers assumed the risks of drought and failed harvests. Probably the most common arrangement in this era was a mixture of owner-and renter-cultivated lands. The hacienda’s directly farmed land employed permanent and temporary labor, who may or may not have lived on the estate. What is considered to have been a typical arrangement in the central region of Mexico between the hacendado and his employees and tenants is described below.

Resident peons earned wage...