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

Preface

xi Preface . /In the summer of 1879 the peasants of the Huasteca Potosina, a region associated with the Sierra Madre Oriental of northeastern Mexico, openly rebelled against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz and state elites in San Luis Potosí. They tore down fences, invaded haciendas, seized lands that they felt were rightfully theirs, and established their own local governments . In the years that followed, the violence spread throughout the region and culminated in the occupation by rebel forces of such notable cities of regional importance as Tamazunchale and Ciudad del Maíz. The origins of the Huastecan revolution lay in two sets of causes: longand short-term forces, both material and moral. The long-term and material bases of the revolution derived from the inequalities between the indigenous people and the Spaniards established during the conquest of the region in the sixteenth century. The short-term material origins resided in the privatization of Huastecan agriculture and lands that began in the 1850s, which deprived the rural lower classes and villagers of their land, leaving them desperate. The moral basis of the revolution rested on the synthesis of a subaltern nationalist ideology that derived from participation of the Huastecan peasantry in two patriotic wars and a radical anarchist and socialist consciousness that demanded an egalitarian political system and economy. The agraristas, those who advocated radical social doctrines, included village clergy that provided local leadership and anarchists from Mexico City who, in the case of the Huasteca, introduced subversive ideas into the area, hoping to form political alliances. The agraristas and their allies sought to preserve the peasantry and their community holdings. Padre Mauricio Zavala, a local parish priest, emerged as a key figure in articulating the moral economy of the Huastecan peasantry. Zavala, a socialist , organized the construction of schools, delivered revolutionary sermons, and fought for the redress of indigenous rights in the courts. He taught a xii preface form of ethnic populism that elevated the status of the indigenous people to that of Europeanized Mexicans. Zavala synthesized Christian humanism and anarcho-agrarian thought in support of the social, political, and economic rights of the indigenous peasantry of Mexico. In doing so, Zavala attempted to forge a more humane moral and material order in the hope of raising the dignity and aspirations of indigenous Mexicans. Based on previously untapped sources, this work presents a new social and cultural history of a significant portion of the Mexican countryside in the nineteenth century. The story of the Huastecan uprisings offers a new perspective on the origins of Mexican nationalism and incorporates the peasantry into the national historical process. ...