Confraternities and Popular Conservatism on the Frontier: Mexico’s Sierra del Nayarit in the Nineteenth Century

I’ve passed two frightful years due to this same gang, and was even robbed by them,” wrote the priest Dámaso Martínez on September 29, 1857. “I suffered all of this, but did not think my own life was in danger. Today, this is not the case. … I believe the Indians have sold my life to them.¹

During the nine months prior to the writing of this report to the Guadalajara See, the parishioners of Santa María del Oro had presented a series of demands for money in the priest’s possession. Some 400 pesos had been gained from the forced sale of their lay brotherhood’s property, and they wanted the money so they could buy back the land.² By August 1857, however, the parishioners’ attempts at legitimate reclamation, through both ecclesiastical and civil channels, had ended in disappointment. Rumors had long circulated that these Indian parishioners were allied with a prominent gang leader in the region, Manuel Lozada.³ Thus it likely came as little surprise when Martínez found himself huddled in his church in late September as Lozada’s gang ringed the town, accompanied by the town’s prominent Indians, and demanded that the priest and the local magistrate come out and surrender. Martínez was rescued only by the intervention of state troops, who scattered Lozada’s gang and allowed the priest to flee.

But within two years, the situation was reversed. Lozada became a leading commander in the pro-Church forces during the Reform War, redirecting widespread rebellion into support for clerical privilege and Catholic exclusivity while becoming the Church’s principal benefactor in the region. Martínez, meanwhile, established a close rapport with the former gang leader, frequently traveling unaccompanied to Lozada’s hometown of San Luis in order to “personally keep the peace.”⁴ What had changed? Why did parishioners in Santa María del Oro at first rebel against their priest, then give their lives to defend the Church for the next two decades? What was the nature of their relationship with the Church and its clergy before rebellion?

The episode between Martínez and his rebellious parishioners offers a window into the nature of popular Conservatism on the frontier of the nineteenth-century Sierra del Nayarit. At first glance, rebel behavior in the region appears merely pragmatic and self-serving, as parishioners apparently had little trouble alternating between persecuting and supporting the local priest. And Manuel Lozada was certainly an unlikely paladin for the Church. While some priests aided the former outlaw, either by stationing themselves in his hometown or providing him with arms, Lozada’s relationship with the clergy was typically strained. Indeed, as Martínez discovered, it was the priests’ aggressive interventions in the lay brotherhoods of Nayarit that provided the catalyst for rebellion and sent fighters into Lozada’s ranks in the mid 1850s.

Such ambivalence has led many scholars to dismiss popular adherence to Conservatism as reactionary, or the result of Liberal ineptitude in capitalizing on peasant angst.⁵ But, on the contrary, rebels in Nayarit displayed a remarkably coherent worldview when negotiating with Church and state authorities. This worldview elevated religion—particularly the local control of religious property and worship—above all else. Moreover, it drew on a long tradition of negotiation between the clergy and their flock in the region. Between 1700 and 1850, priests and parishioners alternated between amicable bargaining and violent struggle to shape the Church. These negotiations centered on confraternities, or lay brotherhoods dedicated to a saint or devotion that held land and livestock in common. Put another way, a spiritual economy had developed on the frontier. In this economy, confraternity property was the currency that paid for Masses, church upkeep, and the needs of individual cofrades (confraternity members). And cofrades and clergy frequently wrestled over how that currency was spent.⁶ In short, popular Conservatism in Nayarit was the defense of the village’s spiritual economy.

In order to examine priest-parishioner debates and their eventual politicization, this...