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6. Ponciano Arriaga and Mariano Ávila’s Intellectual Backing of the 14 April 1837 Pronunciamiento of San Luis Potosí
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sergio a. cañedo gamboa | Translated by Jaqueline Robinson López Six. Ponciano Arriaga and Mariano Ávila’s Intellectual Backing of the 14 April 1837 Pronunciamiento of San Luis Potosí A year after the Central Republic had come into existence and two months after the Siete Leyes were introduced, General Anastasio Bustamante’s recently elected government “was put to the test by the first federalist movement [to erupt] in San Luis Potosí.”1 This pro-federalist pronunciamiento, promoted by well-known radicals, began shortly after a new system of political organization had been established. The system—at least in San Luis Potosí—was based on the control that moderate and conservative politicians, large importers, and a segment of the clergy had over the government and the prevalence of these groups in positions of power. The radical federalists called them the aristócratas. Historian Michael P. Costeloe has stated that the pronunciamiento is difficult to define for the practical purposes of analysis: “Variable in size, objective, cause and effect, it became an established and recognized means of seeking change. Often but not always accompanied by the threatened use of military force, it was used by leading politicians of all parties to demand change at the national level.”2 The San Luis Potosí pro-federalist movement of 1837 shared several of the characteristics mentioned by Costeloe; however, it was also a pronunciamiento with clear objectives, detailed prior planning, a certain spontaneity, and a committed following of 112 Cañedo Gamboa the pronunciados on the part of new members of the regular and civic militias as well as society at large. Precisely because of this, it can be said that the 1837 pronunciamiento underwent a stage in which its ideologues considered the actions they would take, the phrases they would use, and above all, the ideas they would endorse . Nevertheless, they did not achieve their aim of reestablishing the federal order. The objective in this chapter is to show that the 1837 pro-federalist pronunciamiento in the city of San Luis Potos í (also reviewed in chapter 5 by Linda Arnold) was intellectually backed by two political figures in potosino society—Ponciano Arriaga and Mariano Ávila—even though the visible leaders of the movement were the military officers Ramón García Ugarte and José María Monedero and the potosino journalist Lugardo Lechón.3 Manuel Muro was the first nineteenth-century historian to write an account of the 1837 pronunciamiento espousing the view that Mariano Ávila and Ponciano Arriaga were the intellectual authors of this movement. From his spotlighting of the possibility that these two intellectuals were the architects of this liberal revolt , it is evident that Muro was not writing a detached account of the events. After all, Muro took on the task of writing a liberal version of potosino history and was a lifelong advocate of nineteenth -century liberal thought. It was certainly an engaging way of narrating a passage in which two courageous and intelligent intellectuals risked their lives in an attempt to establish a federal republic, particularly when the moderates and conservatives had just seized power at the regional and national levels. However , conservative potosino historian Primo Feliciano Velásquez described the 1837 pro-federalist pronunciamiento in his Historia de San Luis Potosí—written and printed in the first half of the twentieth century—without mentioning Arriaga or Ávila as the [34.226.141.207] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:25 GMT) Arriaga, Ávila, and the Pronunciamiento of San Louis Potosí 113 men who drew in García Ugarte and the other participants in the movement.4 Yet certain elements help us reveal the active participation of these characters in the pronunciamiento. In Muro’s Historia de San Luis Potosí, he began his account by introducing the two politicians in the following terms: “In this year of 1837 we encounter two young lawyers who are beginning to make a name for themselves in the public sphere, linked from an early age to the liberal party; Don Ponciano Arriaga and Don Mariano Ávila.”5 The author, without reference to any documentary or oral source, goes on to explain how these two individuals were naturally “restless and enthusiastic about their democratic ideals.They had only just joined the public sphere when they conceived their project to establish a federal system in the Republic.” He recounts that this system was viewed as the form of political organization that would bring happiness to the country, and both Arriaga and Ávila believed...