Celebrating Insurrection: The Commemoration and Representation of the Nineteenth-Century Mexican Pronunciamiento

Preface

This book is about revolutions and fiestas. To be more specific, it is about a very particular kind of revolution: the nineteenth-century Mexican pronunciamiento, and how this intriguing insurrectionary practice was celebrated at the time and commemorated thereafter. It is also concerned with how the pronunciamiento was perceived, depicted, and represented by Mexicans and foreigners who witnessed and/or participated in one or several of them. Given that there were more than fifteen hundred pronunciamientos between the achievement of independence in 1821 and the pronunciamiento that brought Porfirio Díaz to power in 1876, their regular celebration paired with the ambivalent impact they had on the country merits careful consideration. Unlike full-scale revolutions that occur once or twice in the history of a nation and arguably change it forever, displaying in so doing a clear and unambiguous legacy, the frequent and regular pronunciamientos that were staged in Mexico from 1821 to 1876 were, in contrast, full of contradictions and mixed signals. Many pronunciamientos were initiated to address genuine political concerns and to overcome concrete instances of injustice, and yet in adopting what amounted to a blatantly unconstitutional insurrectionary practice, pronunciados also contributed to Mexico ’s notorious chronic instability. Preface viii Preface As becomes poignantly evident in this book, pronunciamientos were celebrated, commemorated, and yet condemned at the same time. The men who led them were likewise damned and venerated. Unlike the sanctified heroes of the U.S. and Mexican Revolutions of Independence (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson , Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, José María Morelos)—whose unambiguous patriotism, selflessness, and righteousness continue to be celebrated to this very day on the Fourth of July and the Sixteenth of September in their respective countries, regardless of whether they were the wonderful individuals we have been led to believe they were—the commemorated pronunciados of nineteenth -century Mexico were characterized by their flawed heroism . They were the interpreters of the ignored and trampled will of the nation. But they were also outlaws who “pronounced” to gain power or promotion and to indulge in all forms of plunder. Studying the contradictory treatment pronunciamientos received reveals a number of crucial aspects of the pronunciamiento as an ambivalent revolution of sorts as well as of Mexican political culture . A key aim of this volume is precisely to decipher what the noted ambivalence tells us about the practice as a necessary yet problematic means of informing political change, and of the culture that reluctantly endorsed it, celebrating the pronunciamientos when they happened, rapidly forgetting them soon after. Celebrating Insurrection provides at one level, and for the first time, a collection of individual yet interrelated studies on the role civic fiestas played in informing the Mexican people’s collective response to these nineteenth-century revolutions “of sorts.” How, for instance, did the celebrations that followed the triumph of most pronunciamientos sacralize and/or legitimize their role and that of their leaders in Mexican history? Did the fiestas that celebrated Preface ix the victorious pronunciamientos and pronunciados contribute to the legitimizing of the pronunciamiento as an accepted metaconstitutional means of effecting political change? And if so, why were these celebrations ineffective in ultimately consecrating the role of the pronunciamiento as a force for good? There are chapters on the memory, representation, and influence of seminal pronunciamientos such as Rafael del Riego’s 1 January 1820 pronunciamiento of Cabezas de San Juan, which forced King Ferdinand VII to restore the liberal 1812 Constitution ; Agustín de Iturbide’s 24 February 1821 pronunciamiento of Iguala, which brought about Mexican independence; and Por- firio Díaz’s action of 2 April 1867, which signaled the end of the French Intervention. There are also essays on how the pronunciamientos and pronunciados of the 1820s–1840s were actually celebrated in Jalisco, San Luis Potosí, and Yucatán as well as during the Mexican-American War. These case studies eloquently describe what the fiestas entailed, highlight the thinking behind their organization and ceremonies, and analyze how the events that gave rise to them were manipulated by the authorities and the pronunciados’ supporters with varying degrees of success. The mixed fortunes that flawed heroes such as Agustín de Iturbide, José Márquez, Joaquín Gárate, Santiago Imán, Ignacio Comonfort , Juan Bustamante, and Porfirio Díaz enjoyed and suffered as figures of both veneration and damnation in fiestas and historiographical texts are also researched...