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  • For God and Revolution: Priest, Peasant, and Agrarian Socialism in the Mexican Huasteca by Mark Saad Saka
  • Paul Hart
For God and Revolution: Priest, Peasant, and Agrarian Socialism in the Mexican Huasteca. By Mark Saad Saka. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013. Pp. 208. Maps. Index. $50.00 cloth.

Based on extensive original research in the state archive of San Luis Potosí, Mark Saad Saka’s For God and Revolution explores the origins and meaning of the Huastecan Peasant War, 1879–1884. The uprising broke out in response to the privatization of community lands, as roadways and railroads linked the region to national and overseas markets. The uneven benefits of modernization and export agriculture favored the wealthy and well-connected, but both deprived the native pueblos raising staple crops of their traditional landholdings and denied them a place to prosper in the new order. The mostly indigenous peasants of the Huasteca, which ranges through the states of San Luis Potosí, Veracruz, Querétaro, Hidalgo and Tamaulipas, framed their revolt in an ideology of citizenship earned and defined by their participation in the popular resistance to the United States invasion of Mexico in 1846–1848, and the French occupation of 1863–1867.

Moving beyond specific material concerns of land and water rights, they demanded to be treated as equal citizens rather than as members of a marginalized ethnic caste. When they rebelled in 1879 they did so informed by anarchist and socialist ideas, blended with an egalitarian Christian humanism as preached in their communities by Padre Mauricio Zavala. Saka’s work shows how local circumstances merged with the larger national project defined by nineteenth century Liberalism, offers insight into the popular origins of Mexican nationalism, and also reveals some of the underlying tensions that burst to the surface nationwide during the Mexican revolution of 1910–1919.

During the U.S. invasion many peasants in the Huasteca joined guerrilla forces to resist the occupation. They were supported by local clergy who called on the populace to fight the occupiers, offering sermons that condemned the “treacherous and immoral Yankees” and urging the citizenry to “Defend our ancestral home: the land of the Aztecs, Hidalgo, Morelos, and Iturbide.” When the U.S. army withdrew, armed villagers moved from being patriotic defenders of the nation to challenging the social order. They sought to eliminate federal taxes and to end old land and labor abuses suffered at the hands of local hacendados. They occupied hacienda lands, executed abusive foremen, and called for the end of monopolies of tobacco production and the elimination of land taxes. They issued radical proclamations urging that people disregard all authority that emanates from the government and calling for [End Page 175] communities to elect their own leaders, “with preference to be given to the indigenous class in order that they may determine their own destiny.” The Mexican army repressed the uprising, but the action marked a new level of agrarian consciousness in the region. A similar process unfolded during the French occupation when the over-matched federal army again equipped local volunteers. The higher clergy supported the occupation, but parish priests were divided: many in the Huasteca served as chaplains to nationalist military units while others joined their local constituents in the resistance, even joining citizens’ militias.

Saka demonstrates the local effects of Mexico’s Liberal modernization project as it assailed both communal ownership and open access to public lands during the period 1856–1884; both efforts contributed directly to the Huastecan Peasant War. Other books have studied similar processes in other parts of the country, but this book moves beyond a discussion of the better-known material deprivations of the period to explore the ways in which the local populations understood the changes, including the development of what the author calls “a Mexican Theology of Liberation,” as formulated by Padre Mauricio Zavala. Padre Zavala was born in the city of San Luis Potosi in 1832, the son of Guatemalan immigrants. In 1882 he led local campesinos in an attack on the regional hub, the Ciudad del Maíz. The rebels took the city and demanded restoration of recently usurped pueblo lands. They carried red and black flags...

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