Urban Rebels: The Mexican Tenant Movement in the 1920s

URBAN REBELS: THE MEXICAN TENANT MOVEMENT IN THE 1920S Andrew Wood University of Tulsa It was the hope of every citizen of Veracruz that the Swedish Consul would consent to overlook and forgive the tragic error [a bomb explosion], since these were stern days, with danger lurking everywhere for all. In the meantime, the lamentable incident might even so have its good uses if it should serve as a warning to the heartless, shameless exploiters of honest Veracruz tenants that the Revolution had indeed arrived in its power, that the workers were adamant in their determination to put an end to social and economic wrongs, as well as to avenge themselves fully for wrongs already done them. -Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools, 1945 The Mexican Revolution has largely (and quite rightly) been characterized as deriving from a predominately rural base. Yet collective concern regarding urban housing, public health and services has an extensive and much related history in Mexico as well. In fact, a series of strikes organized by houserenters in several Mexican cities during the 1920s constituted one of the earliest social movements in twentieth century Mexico. As with their inspired campesino brethren following soon-to-be forsaken popular heroes, theirs is lesser known, yet similarly ill-fated collective struggle in the pursuit of social and economic justice. In February 1922, the makings of what would soon become a virtual national tenant movement (el movimiento inquilinario) burst onto the political scene when a group of prostitutes in the port of Veracruz La Huaca neighborhood threw their rented mattresses into the street and announced the suspension of payment to their landlords. Some were inspired by the rise of communism in Russia. Others found hope in collective action taken by workers elsewhere. Closer to home, nearly all felt emboldened by the initial promise of the Mexican Revolution and its popular slogans “Mexico for the Mexicans” and “Land and Liberty.” Defying simple ideological classification, mobilization in different areas articulated more of a hybrid ideology as they combined nationalist, anarchist , syndicalist, socialist and proto-feminist perspectives. Whatever the particular combination at any given moment, the Mexican tenant movement of the 1920s was characterized by high expectations for progressive social change. Coming out of the city’s popular neighborhoods in the Port of Veracruz, residents (porteños) founded the Revolutionary Syndicate of Tenants led by C  2010 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 121 The Latin Americanist, December 2010 anarchist Herón Proal, Marı́a Luisa Marı́n and a handful of other militants. By mid-March, their mobilization had grown to include nearly 40,000 residents or more than seventy-five percent of the total city population. Soon after, similar protest began in other urban areas in the state, including Orizaba (and adjoining towns of Rı́o Blanco, Santa Rosa and Nogales), Córdoba, Soledad de Doblado, Minatı́tlan, Puerto México (today Coatzalcoalcos ), Tierra Blanca, Tuxpan and the capital, Jalapa. Elsewhere in Mexico , tenants organized strikes in Guadalajara, Puebla, Mérida, San Luis Potos ı́, Mazatlán, Monterrey, Tampico, Torreón, Durango, Aguascalientes, Ciudad Juárez, Piedras Negras, and Mexico City. In each of these areas, countless male and female renters blocked evictions , participated in marches and attended open-air meetings. Calling attention to high rents and substandard housing conditions, strikers targeted landlords, rent collectors, police and politicians. According to one scholar, tenant collective action constituted a “combative and heroic [although largely] anonymous mass movement” informed, at least in part, by new attitudes toward citizenship, a growing democratic influence in Mexico as well as changing perspectives regarding the status of women.1 More than isolated cases of urban unrest, these protests challenged the growing conservatism and corruption of political elites at a time when national, state and local governments were in an early stage of revolutionary realignment.2 To quiet housing protesters, politicians negotiated with, co-opted and, in some cases, deployed violently repressive tactics. Still, collective action on the part of organized tenants gave rise to still somewhat unknown social reforms which today represent an important urban historical dimension of the Mexican Revolution and its immediate aftermath. The Political Economy of Urban Housing Mexico around the turn...