For God and Revolution: Priest, Peasant, and Agrarian Socialism in the Mexican Huasteca by Mark Saad Saka (review)

This book focuses primarily on a peasant uprising that occurred in east-central Mexico between 1879 and 1884 as part of a broader wave of agrarian violence that erupted during the early years of the liberal dictatorship of José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz. Saka argues that the rebellion had both long- and short-term causes. The long-term causes stretch back to the Spanish conquest of the sixteenth century and the implantation of a harshly exploitive and frankly racist agrarian regimen. After chronicling the origins of that regimen, Saka zooms forward to the period of Mexico’s war of independence (1810–1821). At least some of the indigenous peoples of the Huasteca participated enthusiastically in that war, which helped to broaden their intellectual horizons, spark in them a sense of nationalism, and inspire them to challenge the stifling colonial ethos. This influence played itself out during the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846 to 1848, when the Huastecan peasants first fought as guerrillas attacking U.S. supply lines, and later as rebels against the Mexican government and the dominance of large landowners.

At mid-century, liberal ideology triumphed in Mexico with the end of the War of the Reform (1857–1861). A new generation of leaders championed notions of self-government and the rule of law, which rural people embraced, but those leaders also promoted individualism and private enterprise, which peasants soon found to be a serious threat. The Lerdo Law of 1856 banned the corporate ownership of real estate, leading to widespread confiscation of ecclesiastical and communal village lands by metastasizing haciendas. The 1870s saw a flurry of road, railroad, and telegraph construction that connected formerly remote regions like the Huasteca with large cities and ports. The cultivation of corn and beans gave way to the production of commercial crops, while peasants, unable to provide the documentation that authorities demanded, lost their lands and were reduced to the status of low-paid wage workers or, worse, unpaid draftees. Rapid population growth exacerbated the growing tensions.

The book has some peculiarities. The nearly half of it that is devoted to the period before 1856 includes much material that is of dubious relevance to the book’s main theme. Moreover, why does Saka pay so much attention to the period preceding the 1879 rebellion, while saying virtually nothing about the rebellion’s aftermath, leaving readers with an incomplete sense of the broad historical context? As evidenced by the book’s title, Saka wants to emphasize religion and revolution, but these themes are curious choices. An entire chapter is devoted to one of the rebellion’s key leaders, the Catholic cleric Mauricio Zavala, who denounced liberalism, encouraged village autonomy, built schools, defended indigenous language and culture, and generally developed what Saka calls a “Mexican theology of liberation.” Yet Saka says little about the rebellion’s secular leaders, and the role of religion remains unclear. Likewise, the suggestion that the events of 1879 to 1884 in the Mexican Huasteca should be considered a “revolution” is odd. Saka never clarifies what he means by the term. The rebellion certainly had a strong ideological component and ambitious goals, but it was too local and too lacking in any realistic chance of success to qualify as a bona fide revolution, at least according to most standard definitions. Indeed, many scholars doubt that even the Mexican Revolution of 1910 qualifies as a genuine revolution.

Saka has nonetheless provided by far the most in-depth consideration of an important, and largely neglected, episode in the history of Mexico, and he adds materially to our understanding of how the regime of Porfirio Díaz suppressed tensions that later gave way to the decade of bloodletting that followed.