La insurgencia en el departamento del norte: Los llanos de apan y la sierra de puebla, 1810-1816 (review)

La insurgencia en el Departamento del Norte: Los Llanos de Apan y la Sierra de Puebla, 1810-1816. By Virginia Guedea. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora; Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1996. Plates. Map. Bibliography. Index. 244 pp. Paper.

This monograph contributes significantly to the growing literatures on the Sierra de Puebla and the war of independence. Virginia Guedea provides a useful study of the insurgent movement in one region, revealing its political evolution and its geographic dimensions. The work details the tentative efforts of local insurgents to forge a new state while sustaining a guerrilla war and displays a deep understanding of the geographic context of the revolt. It also demonstrates how rebels exploited ties to Mexico City dissidents.

Guedea rehabilitates the insurgents of the Llanos de Apan, particularly José Osorno, who appears not as an anarchic social bandit but as a rebel with an alternative state project. She delves into insurgent documents to recreate the day-to-day affairs of the movement. From this material, Guedea demonstrates the rebel leadership's efforts to create a new order even in the midst of vicious counterinsurgency warfare. Ignacio Rayón and Osorno relied on their subordinates, Carlos María Bustamante and Antonio Lozano, to provide a civil organization to the rebellion in this area that came to serve as a zone of refuge for those persecuted by the royalist army (p. 78). The incipient state spent its energies on propaganda, providing services such as running a hospital, keeping priests in their posts, and preventing abuses by rebel troops (pp. 70-80, 122, 171). The rebels even developed a foreign policy, sending envoys to the United States in search of support (pp. 93, 173). The Puebla insurgents' orderly fiscal base helps explain their successes. Both Rayón and Osorno sought to keep the local economy functioning in order to raise revenues for the war (pp. 84-87, 121). Osorno's dark reputation partly originated from the influential historical account written in the post independence years by an increasingly conservative Bustamante.

Guedea chronicles the limitations of the insurgency as well, pointing out the difficulty Rayón, Aldama, and Osorno had in asserting their authority over local rebel bands. This also hampered their military effectiveness since rebels often failed to press their advantage after military victories. Conflicts over authority at the "national" level between Morelos and Rayón dissipated the energies of the movement and the rebels from the region failed to coordinate their activities with Morelos. Because Osorno had his own resources and followers, both Morelos and the Suprema Junta found him to be frustratingly independent, although Guedea notes during the early years of the insurgency he generally cooperated with the national leadership (p. 92).

The Departamento del Norte was part of the economic hinterland of Mexico City. Guedea demonstrates the links between the pro-independence urban dwellers, organized in the secret society called the "Guadalupes," and the rural rebels. Rebels taxed the commercial activity associated with supplying the city to sustain rebellion. The economic ties and the politicking suggest that the regional insurgencies were well connected to colonywide concerns.

This volume will be essential for scholars seeking to understand the nature of the guerrilla war. The book, as revealed in its title, presents an insurgent point of view (Departamento del Norte was the rebel term for the area). The material gives the book a feel for the everyday affairs and problems of dissident side that is often missing from the royalist military reports and the hagiographic studies of the war. However, it sometimes reveals the limitations of its sources. Based on materials the counterinsurgency army collected in order to prosecute the cabecillas and collaborators of the movement, it concentrates on the political activities of the leadership. As...