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

2: From Pueblo to Nation: The Huasteca Potosina, 1810–1848

17 Chapter 2 From Pueblo to nation the Huasteca Potosina, 1810–1848 . Their enthusiasm and bravery as soldiers and their patriotism to the national authorities is a living testimony. /The Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821), the subsequent postindependence armed struggles associated with the federalist movements of the 1830s, and, most importantly, the war against the U.S. invasion (1846–1848) severed the Huastecan peasantry from their colonial caste subjugation.1 During the course of these struggles a radical shift in peasant consciousness evolved into an empowered sense of nationalist identity and heightened awareness of class and political inclusiveness. By the late 1840s the Huastecan peasantry had internalized a tremendous amount of ideological and political propaganda and military training, and this served to energize a subaltern sense of class and nationalist identity. Far from resisting participation in the new nation, the Huastecan peasantry sought to actively shape its outcome through a series of political and military alliances. On September 16, 1810, Padre Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla launched the Mexican War of Independence. When Hidalgo’s army entered the state of San Luis Potosí, the peasants of the western portion of the state, who inhabited large estates, failed to heed the call to insurrection for a variety of reasons . The most important of these rested in the dependent relationship that existed between the peasantry and the large estates. The estates provided permanent employment, guaranteed maize rations, and ensured a social 18 Chapter 2 safety net. This interdependent relationship proved a crucial factor in the lack of support among peasants for Hidalgo’s insurgency.2 In contrast, the eastern portion of San Luis Potosí, the Huasteca, heeded the call to arms. Throughout 1811 and 1812 the Potosina pueblos of Tamazunchale, Valles, Ciudad del Maíz, Río Verde, and Xilitla formed an insurgent stronghold in northeastern Mexico and linked with proindependence revolts in neighboring Huejutla.3 In the Huasteca Veracruzana, insurgent peasants joined the movement and occupied Pahuatán, Chicontepec, Papantla and the Veracruz hinterlands.4 Lucas Alamán described the Huasteca as a “revolutionary vortex.”5 The ideological and political outcome of the insurgent struggle had deeper and more lasting consequences for the peasantry and indigenous villages of the Huasteca Potosina. An emerging body of literature supports the pivotal importance that independence brought to Mexico’s rural peasantry.6 First, participation in the insurgency expanded the range of rebellion from the pueblo or village level that had characterized the resistance of the late colonial area to the region-wide level and in the process linked these village rebellions to the new nation. Second, the independence struggle legitimized violence as a means of addressing political and social conflict and introduced many of the Huastecan peasantry to guerrilla warfare skills and tactics. These tactics would prove useful in future conflicts—for example, in the federalist revolts of the 1830s and the struggle against the U.S. invasion of the 1840s. Third, both sides injected a large amount of political propaganda into the struggle among the peasantry and village communities and introduced modern notions of constitutionalism, republicanism, and nationalism, which all served to ideologically sever the Huastecan peasantry from colonial notions of village loyalty and caste subjugation and widened their intellectual horizons and visions. Fourth, the independence struggle strengthened the peripheral regions of the new nation at the expense of the central core and weakened the larger landed estates that were economically tied to the metropolitan and North Atlantic economies. This led to what John Tutino calls “a period of agrarian decompression” during which the pueblos advanced their economic and social interests and power at the expense of the hacienda estates.7 The events that unfolded for the Huasteca Potosina from the 1810s to the 1840s confirm Tutino’s observations. Michael Ducey finds further evidence for this concept of agrarian decompression in the fact that villages in the adjoining Huasteca Veracruzana held their village titles and lands well into the Porfiriato.8 Fifth, the emergence of federalism shifted the 19 From Pueblo to Nation political center of gravity from the metropolitan core to the periphery and to the municipal level. And finally, the successive independence struggle and the constitution of 1824 expanded suffrage to include the newly independent male Indian population, lowered taxes, allowed for greater municipal autonomy , and provided for a more inclusive ethnic and cultural notion of citizenship that now incorporated Indians, mulatos, and Euro-Mexicans alike. Terry Rugeley notes...