For God and Revolution: Priest, Peasant, and Agrarian Socialism in the Mexican Huasteca

3: Peasant Nationalism and Agrarian War, 1848–1856

33 Chapter 3 Peasant nationalism and agrarian War, 1848–1856 . We fight against the Lords who have committed outrageous violations against us for many years. They are the true enemies of Mexican liberty, those who have forced us to live in bondage without land, food, or sunlight and have prohibited our tobacco trades by their monopolies. We demand that the Mexican government recognize our historic struggle against the North American enemy. —“Plan of Tamazunchale,” January 8, 1848 /The guerrilla war against the U.S. Army inadvertently and temporarily shifted the balance of power in the Huasteca in favor of the peasants and against the hacendados.1 Beginning in 1848, agrarian rebels invaded hacienda lands in the states of Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, and Veracruz. The origins of the rebellion rested within specific localities, and yet they were deeply linked. The social origins of these uprisings resided in the peasantry ’s ongoing investment in the federalist political struggles of the 1820s and 1830s and the desire to reassert local control over their pueblo lands and in the attempts to shape an expansive concept of national citizenship, one that included the rural peasantry. In the close geography of northeastern Mexico, the peasant uprisings in the Huasteca Potosina formed part of a broader wave of social unrest that also erupted in the neighboring Sierra Gorda and the Huasteca Veracruzana. The Sierra Gorda is a mountain chain that extends from San Luis Potosí through Querétaro, Hidalgo, and Guanajuato. In January 1847, Otomí, 34 Chapter 3 Nahua, and Totonac Indians from the Huasteca of Querétaro invaded the state capital of Querétaro to protest the governor’s plan to sell large amounts of pueblo lands in order to support the war effort. They noted that their governor refused to sell lands belonging to the large hacendados and that the burden of the war costs fell disproportionately upon their shoulders. Federal troops dispersed the protestors, and they forced many of them to return to their pueblos. Soon enough, however, they began attacking local municipal governments and landed estates across the northeastern part of the state. By June 1848 a group of disaffected military officers, regional elites, and civil authorities at their base near Jalpan, Querétaro, in the Sierra Gorda had organized political opposition to the national government, complaining that it had failed to prosecute the war adequately. They enlisted the peasant rebels and drafted a plan titled “Liberty and War on the Invader.” Led by General Tomás Mejía, an army colonel, the dissenters called for the continuation of the war to force the North Americans to leave even as they refused to recognize the national government. They also called for the elimination of federal taxes. Mejía rallied wide support among the Indian pueblos of the Sierra Gorda. But the peasants soon threatened to turn his antigovernment coalition into a class and ethnic rebellion by seizing the hacienda lands. In August 1848, alarmed by the “rabble” that was quickly joining their ranks, Mejía and other leaders withdrew and accepted a pardon issued by President José Joaquín Herrera.2 At this point the rebellion moved into a more radical phase under the leadership of village heads and lower-class elements. Eleuterio Quiróz took charge of the rebels. He was a muleteer on the Hacienda de Tapanco in San Luis Potosí who had deserted from the fourth light infantry battalion of the Mexican Army during its confrontation with the U.S. forces and had fled to the city of Xichú in the state of Guanajuato, whose citizens had longstanding agrarian grievances. Born in 1825, Quiróz was described by his fellow hacienda workers as a person who earned their respect and admiration because he constantly challenged local officials and estate managers.3 When troops repressed the rebels around Xichú, Quiróz escaped to the Indian pueblos around Huejutla, which then joined the rebellion, and the fighting flared anew. The governors of the neighboring states of San Luis Potosí and Querétaro sent state troops to Guanajuato to crush the revolt in Xichú, but Quiróz’s forces continued to grow. Then Indian pueblos in the neighboring state of Hidalgo and the Huastecan pueblos of Tanchanhuitz and Tamazunchale 35 Peasant Nationalism and Agrarian War joined in. As the rebellion spread across the Huasteca, it created logistical problems for the region’s military. The governor of Tamaulipas denied a...