Malcontents, Rebels, and Pronunciados: The Politics of Insurrection in Nineteenth-Century Mexico

Introduction: Understanding Individual and Collective Insurrectionary Action in Independent Mexico, 1821–1876

Why do people rebel? At what point do they realize that they need to disobey the government, break the law, take up arms, use violence if need be, to make a difference, bring about change, and improve their lot in life? When analyzing the reasons 1,284 insurgents gave for resorting to violence during the Mexican War of Independence (1810–21), Eric Van Young eloquently shows that reasons were indeed many and varied and that they were informed by local and economic grievances, conflictive class relationships, political culture, and, significantly, the “individuals’ life-course events and/or personal experience.”1 His question: “Might not a person become involved in the insurgency from a combination of factors, including ideological leanings, economic necessity, and, let us say, sexual obsession or the desire to ensure the safety of a younger sibling or a parent?” is indeed an extremely important one. Personal motivation is critical and cannot be ignored or underestimated .2 After all, the reasons an individual enlists in a revolutionary army (with its disposition to employ violence to achieve its ideological aims) is inevitably tied to his or her own individual circumstances, beliefs, needs, and context. It may be tempting to view revolutions as mass movements in which the individual becomes anonymous and disappears in the revolutionary torrent, dragged along by that “mighty undercurrent” that sweeps people Introduction Understanding Individual and Collective Insurrectionary Action in Independent Mexico, 1821–1876 xviii Introduction with it, to use Hannah Arendt’s metaphor.3 Or one may view the individual in revolutions as “history’s dispossessed,” to quote the Subcomandante Marcos, “without a face and a name.”4 However , behind every revolutionary movement there have been thousands of individuals, all of whom have chosen to resort to political violence for reasons that were particular and unique to them. In Mexico as elsewhere, people have risen up in arms because of their political convictions, but also because they were tired of economic hardship, because they opposed social injustice, because they had nothing to lose. They have done so to follow their loved ones into the fray, or because they thought such valor and recklessness would impress someone. Whether the impulse was to flee unhappy households, to escape longstanding debts, or because they were bored and curious or were excited by the prospect of adventure, individuals’ motives have invariably included a very personal dimension. These motives have always been specific and general, private and public, the result of a complex combination of individual and collective needs, yearnings, fears, and desires. People have felt compelled to fight for resonant yet abstract concepts such as liberty, equality, and fraternity, and to avoid paying onerous taxes or avoid conscription, all at the same time. Revolutions have offered many a good excuse to rob and pillage. They have been used to settle generations-long grudges against unfriendly neighbors, insolent masters, or longstanding village foes. And more often than not, individuals have found themselves joining a given revolutionary army, band, or horde because of peer pressure , as a matter of family pride, because their friends thought it was a good idea, because it made them look good, because they had no choice, or because they found themselves, quite simply, at the wrong place at the wrong time. Introduction xix Going back to Van Young’s question, the need to address the issue of personal motivation is important because in attempting to answer it we can come closer to understanding what was at the heart of a given example of collective insurrectionary action. It is a question that forces us to look beyond sweeping generalizations and to place the particular insurrectionary movements involved— otherwise amorphous, nondescript, and depersonalized—under a figurative analytical microscope that allows us to engage with the lives of real people (with faces, names, families, childhood memories , feelings, hopes, and aspirations). These people made real decisions with very real consequences, which ultimately entailed disobeying the authorities and, in many cases, harming others, for the sake of their “imagined communities,” to use Benedict Anderson ’s enduring phrase.5 Notwithstanding the need to address the question of personal motivation when attempting to understand the origins of any form of insurrectionary action, it is obvious that the context remains of fundamental importance. In other words, the context must lend itself to revolutionary activity, otherwise an individual ’s desire for social justice and/or self-advancement would not be translated into a willingness...