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Millennium on the Northern Marches: The Mad Messiah of Durango and Popular Rebellion in Mexico, 1800–1815

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Eric Van Young
Eric Van Young
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Extract

In September of 1810, with a sudden flash of violent rebellion (preceded by months and years of salon conspiracies), the white native-born provincial elite of New Spain began the protracted and painful process of winning political independence from Spain. Although by about 1816 much of the country had been pacified by royal arms, pockets of rebellion continued to smolder and flare throughout the following years. The birth of modern Mexico itself finally occurred in 1821, owing as much to fortuitous political circumstances in Spain as to the military and political manipulations of Agustin Iturbide, the Creole adventurer who consummated the country's independence and briefly became its emperor. Programmatic pronouncements by the Creole and mestizo leadership of the independence movement abound in the form of pamphlets, constitutions, decrees, short-lived newspapers, captured correspondence, etcetera, and provide us with a reasonably clear view into the complex ideologi- cal process of political separatism from Spain. At least in the early years of the independence struggle, however, the insurrectionary armies were manned not primarily by Mexican-born whites or racially mixed groups, but by Indian peasants from rural villages all over the central parts of the country.

Type
The Popular Culture of History
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , July 1986 , pp. 385 - 413
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1986

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References

1 On these ideologies see, among the abundant literature, Villoro, Luis, Elproceso ideológico de la revolutión de independencia (Mexico City, 1967);Google ScholarVillar, Ernesto de la Torre, La constitutión de Apatzingdn y los creadores del estado mexkano (Mexico City, 1978);Google Scholaridem. La indepen dencia mexicana, 3 vols. (Mexico City, 1982); Macías, Ana, Génesis del gobierno constitutional en México, 1808–1820 (Mexico City, 1973);Google ScholarBrading, David A., Los orígenes del nacionalismo mexicano (Mexico City, 1973);Google ScholarDominguez, Jorge I., Insurrection or Loyalty: The Breakdown of the Spanish American Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 1980);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Lafaye, Jacques, Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe: The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness, 1531–1813 (Chicago, 1976).Google Scholar

2 The importance of Indian peasant participation in the independence struggle has been obscured to some degree not only by a lack of fundamental research on the social origins and composition of the movements, but also by the fact that the insurrection initially broke out in 1810, under the leadership of Father Miguel Hidalgo, in the region of the country known as the Bajío, which was not heavily Indian in its racial composition. For a brief discussion of the ethnic composition of New Spain at the end of the colonial period, see text at note 48 below.

3 The documentation of Herrada's case, comprising about 235 folio pages of confessions, witnesses' testimony, investigative reports, judicial opinions, letters of transmission by colonial authorities, etcetera, is to be found in the Fondos Especiales collection of the Biblioteca Pública del Estado (Jalisco), Archivo Judicial de la Audiencia de Guadalajara, section Criminal (hereafter cited as AJAC), paquete 34, expediente 9, document serial number 763 (hereafter cited as 34–9–763). All citations and quotations concerning the Herrada case are taken from this source, unless otherwise noted, and subsequent references to this document are therefore not footnoted.

4 The basic modern English-language treatment of the early phase of the Mexican independence movement, initiated in September 1810 by Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, is that of Hamill, Hugh, Jr., The Hidalgo Revolt: Prelude to Mexican Independence (1966; Westport, Conn., 1981).Google Scholar The literature on the Mexican independence struggle is large, though not much of it concentrates on the nature of the rebellions as social movements. Two of the classic historical accounts are Alaman, Lucas, Historia de Mejico, 5 vols. (Mexico City, 1968);Google Scholar and Bustamante, Carlos Maria, Cuadro historico de la revolution mexicana, 3 vols. (Mexico City, 1961).Google Scholar Among modern treatments, see the seminal essay of Eric Wolf on the region where Hidalgo's movement broke out, “El Bajío en el siglo XVIII: un analisis de integration cultural,” in Los beneficiarios del desarrollo regional, Barkin, David, comp. (Mexico City, 1972), 63–95;Google Scholar and, among others, Domínguez, Insurrection or Loyalty; DiTella, Torcuato S., “Las clases peligrosas en la independencia de Mexico,” in El ocaso del orden colonial en Hispanoamerica, Halperin-Donghi, Tulio, comp. (Buenos Aires, 1978), 201–47;Google ScholarFlorescano, Enrique, “Antecedents of the Mexican Inde-pendence Movement: Social Instability and Political Discord,” in Liberation in the Americas: Comparative Aspects of the Independence Movements in Mexico and the United States, Detweiler, Robert and Ruiz, Ramon, eds. (San Diego, 1978), 69–86;Google ScholarTaylor, William B., “Rural Unrest in Central Jalisco, 1790–1816” (Paper delivered at the Conference on Peasant Uprisings in Mexico, Social Science Research Council, New York, 04 1982);Google ScholarHamnett, Bryan R., “The Economic and Social Dimension of the Revolution for Independence in Mexico, 1800–1824,” Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv, n.s., 6:1 (1980), 1–27;Google ScholarTutino, John, “Agrarian Insurgency: Social Origins of the Hidalgo Movement,” manuscript (1980);Google ScholarArcher, Christon I., “Banditry and Revolution in New Spain, 1790–1821,” Bibliotheca Americana, 1:2 (1982), 58–89;Google Scholar and Young, Eric Van, “Moving toward Revolt: Agrarian Origins of the Hidalgo Rebellion in Central Jalisco” (Paper delivered at the Conference on Peasant Uprisings in Mexico, Social Science Research Council, New York, 04 1982).Google Scholar

5 On general fears of a race war by the dark-skinned against the light-skinned, particularly after the famous massacre of whites by Hidalgo's largely Indian and mestizo army at Guana- juato's alhóndiga, see Hamill, Hidalgo Revolt. The conventional wisdom regarding this point is that the slaughter at the alhondiga, and others that followed it in rebel-held areas, alienated Creoles who might otherwise have supported Hidalgo's movement in order to achieve the political independence of the colony. On Indian rebellion in Mesoamerica during the colonial period, see, for example, Capdevielle, Maria Elena Galaviz de, Rebeliones indígenas en el none del Reino de la Nueva Espana, siglos XVI-XVII (Mexico City, 1967);Google ScholarHuerta, María Teresa and Palacios, Patricia, eds., Rebeliones indigenas de la epoca colonial (Mexico City, 1976);Google ScholarWasserstrom, Robert, Class and Society in Central Chiapas (Berkeley, 1983),Google Scholar esp. ch. 3; Taylor, William B., Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford, 1979),Google Scholar ch. 4; and Katz, Friedrich, “Peasant Revolts in Mexico” (Paper given at the Conference on Peasant Uprisings in Mexico, Social Science Research Council, New York, 04 1982).Google Scholar

6 One of these centered on a mysterious Indian prophet named Mariano, and another on the planned destruction of the sanctuary of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the viceregal palace in Mexico City in 1800. The Mariano incident is treated in the Herrada documents in AJAC 34–9–763, and also in considerable detail by Archer, Christon I., El ejército en el México borbónico, 1760–1810 (Mexico City, 1983), 132–135. For the other Tepic conspiracy, see Archive General de la Natión (Mexico) (hereafter cited as AGN), Historia, vol. 428, fols. 37r-76r (1801);.Google Scholar

7 On Indian participation in the early phase of the independence rebellions, through 1812 or so, particularly in the form of local uprisings or village tumultos, see my paper, “Who Was That Masked Man, Anyway? Popular Symbols and Ideology in the Mexican Wars of Independence,” Rocky Mountain Conference on Latin American Studies, Annual Meeting, Proceedings (Las Cruces, N.M., 1984), I, 18–35.Google Scholar

8 Similar allegations of English involvement were made in the investigation of the Tepic plot of 1800 detailed in AGN, Historia, vol. 428, fols. 37r-76r (1801); and in Archer, El ejército en el México borbónico, esp. ch. 4. On the general question of foreign involvement in the independence of New Spain, see Rydjord, John, Foreign Interest in the Independence of New Spain: An Introduction to the War for Independence (New York, 1972).Google Scholar

9 The term Spaniard is used here as synonymous for white, regardless of social status or place of birth. The distinction between Spaniards of European and American birth (peninsulars or gachupines, and Creoles, respectively) was an important one, however, and will be developed somewhat more below.

10 Erikson, Erik H., Life History and the Historical Moment: Diverse Presentations (New York, 1975), 47; and see in particular the chapters entitled “‘Identity Crisis’ in Autobiographical Perspective” and “On the Nature of Psycho-Historical Evidence.”.Google Scholar

11 San Juan Bautista del Río (not to be confused with the town of the same name much further to the south, near Querétaro) lies about sixty-five miles north of the city of Durango. Around 1800 the total population of the town and its district was approximately 10,300; Bonavia, Bernardo, “Lista o noticia de las jurisdicciones o partidos de la comprension de la provincia de Nueva Vizcaya. … ” in Descripciones economicas regionales de Nueva Espana. Provincias del None, 1790–1814, Florescano, Enrique and Gil, Isabel, eds. (Mexico City, 1976), 88.Google Scholar Three caveats of a methodological nature should be made here briefly with regard to the interpretation of Herrada's story on the basis of the evidence. First, the records of his interrogation and confession do not lend themselves as readily as might be hoped to close textual reading, since it is doubtful that they all represent verbatim transcriptions of his statements. Second, the colonial authorities who tried Herrada were interested in determinations of fact bearing upon what was essentially a crime of lese majeste, and not in his beliefs or subjective states, as might have been the case had he fallen under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. This means that a precise reconstruction of Herrada's beliefs and mental condition, based upon an analysis of his words and the nuances of expression, is substantially barred to us. On the fastidiousness of Inquisition legal procedures in this regard, see, for example, two articles of Tedeschi, John, “Preliminary Observations on Writing a History of the Roman Inquisition,” in Continuity and Discontinuity in Church History, Church, F. and George, T., eds. (Leiden, 1979), 232–49;Google Scholar and “The Roman Inquisition and Witchcraft: An Early Seventeenth-Century‘Instruction’ on Correct Trial Procedure,” Revue de I'histoire des Religions, 200:1 (1983), 163–88;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and also Demos, John P., Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England (Oxford, 1982).Google Scholar I am grateful to my colleague John Marino for bringing Tedeschi's work to my attention. For an outstanding example of what such detailed and intimate Inquisition records can do in reconstructing the subjective states and mental universe of a single individual, see Ginzburg, Carlo, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (Baltimore, 1980).Google Scholar Finally, the application of psycho- analytic concepts to collective action, and to the links between such action on the part of Indian villagers and the highly individual pathology of the mad messiah of Durango, is somewhat problematical. This is so because violence in general, and collective violence in particular, seem largely outside the purview of clinically based psychoanalytic theory owing to the clinical setting itself, from which the theory is ultimately derived. On this point, see Erikson, , Life History and the Historical Moment, 106;Google Scholar and Kernberg, Otto F., Internal World and External Reality: Object Relations Theory Applied (New York, 1980), 217. Despite these difficulties, psychoanalytic interpretations of collective action may be employed as a kind of large metaphor for psychosocial processes that seem to demand an explanation beyond the knee-jerk functionalism of traditional social and economic interpretations.Google Scholar

12 Such bullfights were commonly associated with civic and certain religious celebrations in provincial towns; some of the corridas would have been fought on horseback, as well. Judging by modern examples of country bullfights in Mexico, the level of the participants' skills was probably not high.

13 Ignorance of one's own age, or the stating of age in very approximate numbers (usually rounded to the nearest five years) or estimates, was fairly common among Indians.

14 Some of the “languages” in this list are deformed, and some ridiculous. “Indio Blanco” (white indian) is a nonlanguage that may have some bearing on Herrada's own inner conflicts, while “Come Crudo” (he eats it raw) may have been intended as a taunt, an insult, or simply nonsense. On the Indian languages of this area, see McQuown, Norman, vol. ed., Linguistics, Vol. V of Handbook of Middle American Indians, Wauchope, Robert, gen. ed. (Austin, 1967).Google Scholar

15 At least three of these individuals bore the common patronymic Sarinana, which is undoubtedly the source of Herrada's assumed name.

16 There is no evidence in Herrada's case that he had, in fact, any direct relationship with the Indian city-state. Tlaxcala had played a key role in Cortés's conquest of the Aztecs, furnishing him with considerable logistical support and large numbers of auxiliaries; see Gibson, Charles, Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century (Stanford, 1967);Google ScholarPadden, Robert C., The Hummingbird and the Hawk: Conquest and Sovereignty in the Valley of Mexico, 1503–1541 (New York, 1970);Google Scholar and Camargo, Diego Munoz, Historia de TIaxcala (Mexico City, 1947–1948). Because of their aid to the Spanish, TIaxcala and its Indian aristocracy enjoyed certain privileges throughout the colonial period. Also, because of their presumed loyalty, small groups of Tlaxcalan colonists were established throughout many areas of New Spain by the conquerors, including parts of the far north, to aid in the pacification of the country. Gibson, TIaxcala in the Sixteenth Century, 181–89, discusses the limited but important Tlaxcalan colonization in Nueva Vizcaya in some detail. After the early 1590s few if any northern colonists actually came from TIaxcala itself to the northern marches, but already established mother colonies there continued to send groups. Whether San Juan del Rio itself or other towns in the area had received colonists in the sixteenth century is not clear, but certainly the Indian officials of San Juan implied that Herrada's putative Tlaxcalan origin entitled him to special consideration, “…dándole como dice ser de Tlascala el lugar correspondiente.” Other emissaries from TIaxcala heralded Indian revivalist movements as well, including the mysterious Mariano who appeared in the Tepic area about the same time, claiming also to be a cacique of TIaxcala and the son of its Indian governor. Communication between the Indians ofTepic and those of TIaxcala also figured vaguely but centrally in the other Tepic conspiracy of 1800 (AGN, Historia, vol. 428, fols. 37r-76r (1801)). In early 1811 two Indian men in the Cuernavaca area were arrested for fabricating a letter addressed to local village officials, ostensibly from the Indian governor of TIaxcala, claiming that King Ferdinand VII was secretly coming to the town of Cuautitlan and asking (in his name) for contributions of money from cajas de comunidad (see AGN, Criminal, vol. 204, exped. 10, fols. 191r-205v (1811)). Given the anomalous status of Tlaxcala it is hardly surprising to find Indian revivalist hopes focussed on it. On this point, see also Archer, El ejército en el Mexico borbónico.Google Scholar

17 It was never made clear exactly whom Herrada purported to be as the enmascarado, and in fact the municipal authorities in Durango had no records of such an individual's arrest. The preponderance of evidence indicates that this episode was a fantasy of Herrada's. There are two points of interest about this fabrication, however. First, Herrada claimed in subsequent testimony that it was actually his father, the Indian governor of Tlaxcala, who had been arrested in September 1799, as the enmascarado of Durango. This same identification with his father—or perhaps transposition would be a better word—occurred at another point in his testimony, lending support to the view that he was obsessed with this fantasied figure. Second, the enmascarado theme came to be fairly common in the political mythology of popular rebellion in 1810 and after, especially with regard to a mysterious figure in the country districts of New Spain generally rumored to be Kind Ferdinand VII, come to lead a mass uprising against the gachupines. For some examples of this, see AGN, Criminal, vol. 134, exped. 3, fols. 36r-50r (Mexico City, 1810); vol. 175, fols. 369r-392v (Cuautla, 1811); and vol. 454, no exped. number, no pag. (Orizaba, 1811); and, for a discussion, Van Young, “Who Was That Masked Man, Anyway?” It is not clear why the masked figure should have been selected as the symbol of these millenarian hopes. One possible interpretation suggests itself strongly, however, which is that the masking of the messianic figure provided a powerful metaphor of selective invisibility. Thus the masked man could be corporeally present, but perceptible only to the elect—especially the Indians—without violating the fundamental unities of time and space.

18 There was no evidence to indicate that any family member had accompanied Herrada on his travels, or even that he was married. In her testimony Herrada's mother stated that he had told her he had married a woman named Concepcion and had two small children, a boy and a girl. In view of his apparently oedipally charged relationship with his mother it is interesting that in speaking to her he should have chosen the name Concepcion for his fantasy-wife. This may also throw some light on his pathologically strong identification with his “father.” These are at best speculations, however.

19 Inquiries made by the intendant to authorities in the towns where Herrada claimed to have been jailed produced few recorded replies, all negative.

20 The Jesuit order was expelled from Spain and its American dominions by royal decree in 1767.

21 Charles IV, of course, did not succeed to the crown until 1788. In this passage Herrada said his father's name was Felipe Alcántara González, Marqués de Santiago, whereas earlier the name given was Pedro or José Antonio. Questioned during his confession of 26 February as to this inconsistency, as well as about the fact that he himself was named at the head of the forged decree as the authority commanding compliance from Indian officials, though the decree was signed by his father, he replied, “…. por que asi viene escrito su padre, y que siendo él, la misma persona que su padre, lo mismo es que lo mande uno que orro,” i.e., that he and his father were one and the same person, not juridically, but physically. See note 17 for another instance of this boundary collapse in Herrada's personality. It is also interesting that Herrada consistently claimed that his name was Sarinana, though his father's was González—this point was pursued in interrogation, but was evaded and never resolved.

22 When asked about the recent conduct of his son (hijo), Herrada pointedly answered that he knew nothing about his stepson (hijastro).

23 Of Herrada's visit in 1800, his stepfather said that “he conversed with him no more than to say hello on the occasion of visiting his mother”; the record adds: “… although the said Bernardo was in the house to visit his mother, wife of the witness, in his presence [Sarinana/ Herrada] said nothing.

24 That Herrada's stepfather was on the scene well before the boy left home seems almost certain, though it is nowhere explicitly stated. Not only did the stepfather identify him from personal familiarity, but also the illegitimate boy carried the stepfather's surname.

25 Rural people in general, and Indians in particular, seem to have moved around the countryside a good deal more than we had once thought, on both temporary and permanent bases; for a general discussion on this point, see Young, Eric Van, Hacienda and Market in Eighteenth-Century Mexico: The Rural Economy of the Guadalajara Region, 1675–1820 (Berkeley, 1981), 245–64. What was unusual in Herrada's case was not the fact that he left, but his age at leaving.Google Scholar

26 On the real Conde de Santiago, whose name was occasionally associated with the rebel cause after 1810, see Ladd, Doris, The Mexican Nobility at Independence, 1780–1826 (Austin, 1976). In making this identification, by the way, however foggy the nature of it may have been in his own mind, Herrada gave clear expression to his own ambivalent feelings about whites and simultaneously bridged the gulf of his ambivalence.Google Scholar

27 “ … fingiéndose una especie de hombre incógnito, de poder, v autoridad.”

28 For an interesting treatment of the association of Indian Christ figures with rebellion, which she calls the passion theme, see Bricker, Victoria Reifler, The Indian Christ, The Indian King: The Historical Substrate of Maya Myth and Ritual (Austin, 1981), esp. ch. 11.Google Scholar

29 Mariano had something of a program for his movement, however, involving the restitution of Indian lands and elimination of Indian tributes, whereas Herrada made only vague suggestions as to changes that might follow his father's coronation. See also Archer, , El ejército en el México borbónico, 132–35.Google Scholar

30 This was taken up by postcolonial writers on Mexico, as well; see, for example, Alaman. Historia de Mejico, I, ch. 1.

31 AGN, Criminal, vol. 250, exped. 1, fols. lr-36r (1800); vol. 47, exped. 15, fols. 443r-574v (1810); vol. 240, exped. 3, fols. lr-47v (1814).

32 AGN, Criminal, vol. 57, exped. 6, fols. 101r-l 16r (Ixmiquilpan, 1810). Another asesor in a trial of accused Indian insurgents from Amecameca said of Indians in general that ”where some jump, all follow blindly without noticing the precipice“ (AGN, Criminal, vol. 156, no exped. number, fols. 20r-I67v (1810)). The subdelegado of Etla described the natural character of the Indians as being ”easily seduced“ (AGN, Criminal, vol. 400, no exped. number, no pag. (1800)). For more on this point, see Young, Van, Hacienda and Market, 318–19. Forasomewhat different view-that villagers in some parts of New Spain were actually willing to put up with a good deal of exploitation as long as it did not violate the principles of their particular moral economy—see Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, esp. ch. 4.Google Scholar

33 I have attempted to sketch these trends in my essay, “The Age of Paradox: Mexican Agriculture at the End of the Colonial Period, 1750–1810,” in The Economies of Mexico and Peru in the Late Colonial Period, 1760–1820, Jacobsen, Nils and Puhle, Hans-Jiirgen, eds. (Berlin, 1985).Google Scholar For the development of a hypothesis on how these complex pressures affected the internal social dynamics of peasant villages and their relationships to outsiders in one region of Mexico, see Young, Eric Van, “Conflict and Solidarity in Indian Village Life: The Guadalajara Region in the Late Colonial Period,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 64:1 (02 1984), 55–79;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Van Young, “Moving toward Revolt”; and, for a full-scale study of late colonial agrarian change in one important region of the colony, see idem. Hacienda and Market, esp. the conclusion. Among the best of recent regional studies that tend to substantiate the views outlined here are Brading, David A., Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajio: Leon, 1700–1860 (Cambridge, 1978);Google Scholar and Martin, Cheryl E., Rural Society in Colonial Morelos (Albuquerque, 1984).Google Scholar

34 I have used an admittedly evasive terminology here—socioethnic—in labelling large-scale intergroup conflict in late colonial Mexico because of the formidable difficulty in applying the concept of class, except in the most nontechnical sense, as a structuring principle in explaining collective political violence. This is so because, although there was a great degree of overlap between economic status and ethnicity in the colony, they were never perfectly congruent, and the degree of congruence seems to have lessened perceptibly in the late colonial period as the economy of New Spain developed and ethnic endogamy declined. Nonetheless, Indian political and cultural autonomy, based on the communal landholding village, survived to a surprisingly great degree. This meant that insofar as conflict with non-Indians was concerned, the locus of the Indian peasant's economic identity was the same as the locus of his ethnic and cultural identity- the village. Peasant proletarianization and the replacement of social relations based upon eth- nicity by those based upon class took place within this context. For a more detailed discussion of this view, see Young, Van, Hacienda and Market, 352–53,Google Scholar et passim; and for a stimulating comparative treatment of the historical process of proletarianization, see Goodman, David and Redclift, Michael, From Peasant to Proletarian: Capitalist Development and Agrarian Transfor- mations (New York, 1982).Google Scholar The degree of congruence between race and class has been the subject of an interesting debate in recent years, beginning with the book by Chance, John K., Race and Class in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford, 1978),Google Scholar and continuing with various articles and rejoinders about colonial Oaxaca in the pages of Comparative Studies in Society and History by Chance, and Taylor, William B. (1977, 1979); Stuart Schwartz, Robert McCaa, and Arturo Grubessich (1979); and Patricia Seed, Philip F. Rust, Robert McCaa, and Stuart Schwartz (1983).Google Scholar

35 On this point see, again, the extensive treatment by Bricker, Indian Christ, Indian King; for an interesting comparative analysis of inversions and historical re-enactment rituals in Mexico and the Andean area, see Wachtel, Nathan, The Vision of the Vanquished: The Spanish Conquest of Peru through Indian Eyes (New York, 1977),Google Scholar esp. pt. 1. For some general comments on symbol and inversion in ritual dramas, see Turner's, Victor “Comments and Conclusions,” in The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society, Babcock, Barbara A., ed. (Ithaca, 1978), 276–96;Google Scholar for a provocative but less than convincing interpretation of the Hidalgo revolt of 1810 in terms of psychoanalytic theory, see Turner, Victor, “Hidalgo: History as Social Drama,” in his Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Svmbolic Action in Human Society (New York, 1974), 98–155.Google Scholar

36 AGN, Criminal, vol. 229, noexped. number, fols. 263r-413v (1811); vol. 231, exped. 1, fols. lr-59r (1811). For some other instances of mob violence by Indian villagers against gachupines, see the cases, among others, of Amecameca in AGN, Criminal, vol. 156, no exped. number, fols. 20r-167v, 175r-416v, 432r-450v, 521r-530v (1810); and of Cuemavaca in vol. 147, exped. 15, fols. 443r-574v (1810). For a relatively late instance of such a riot, see the case of Jilotepec in AGN, Criminal, vol. 26, exped. 9, no pag. (1818).

37 AGN, Criminal, vol. 45, exped. 6, fols. 15Or-181r (1811); vol. 279, exped. l.fols. lr-4v (1811).

38 Literally dozens of village riots occurred in central Mexico, broadly defined, in the early stages of the independence period, particularly around 1810–12, though of course they over- lapped with other forms of popular rebellion as well. Sometimes linked with the activities of local guerrilla bands, most such tumultos shared the characteristics of classic peasant jacqueries: they flared suddenly, were quite violent, had broad local participation, and died down as quickly as they had begun, often apparently as much because of loss of momentum as of effective military repression. These local, short-lived uprisings were endemic to certain parts of New Spain before 1810 and often involved resistance to outside authority or conflict with neighboring villages. For a detailed treatment, see Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion.

39 On the cathartic effects of violence in anticolonial wars, see the suggestive comments of Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth (New York, 1966);Google Scholar and for a chilling reconstruction of the crime of a “psychotic” killer, see Lindner, Robert, The Fifty-Minute Hour: A Collection of True Psychoanalytic Tales (New York, 1954).Google Scholar

40 AGN. Criminal, vol. 134, exped. 3, no pag. (1810). Michael Burke cites the same docu- ment in his provocative “Peasant Responses to the Hidalgo Revolt in Central Mexico. 1810–1813,” manuscript (1980).

41 AGN, Criminal, vol. 175, noexped. number, fols. 369r-392v (1811); vol. 204, exped. 10, fols. 191r-205v (1811); vol. 194, exped. I. fols. 1 r-13r (1811).

42 AGN, Criminal, vol. 454, no exped. number, no pag. (1811).

43 AGN, Criminal, vol. 147, exped. 15, fols. 443r-574v (Cuernavaca, 1810); vol. 454, no exped. number, no pag. (1811).

44 AGN, Criminal, vol. 226, exped. 5, fols. 267r-361r (1808).

45 On the use and significance of this slogan in the comunero revolt in New Granada (Colombia) in the early 1780s, see the suggestive treatment of Phelan, John L., The People and the King: The Comunero Revolution in Colombia, 1781 (Madison, 1978).Google Scholar

46 For detailed discussion of these traditional explanations, see Van Young, “Who Was That Masked Man, Anyway?” 21–24.

47 Much of the Indian protectionist legislation, it is undeniable, was violated in both spirit and letter: the laws against the free and unconsidered alienation of Indian lands provide an example. Fora fuller discussion of this point for one region, see Young, Van, Hacienda and Market, 271–342,Google Scholar et passim. Nonetheless, other royal institutions provided protection in fact as well as in symbol; one of the most important was the General Indian Court, established in the sixteenth century, which insured privileged access for Indians to the colonial legal system. See Borah, Woodrow, Justice by Insurance: The General Indian Court and the Legal Aides of the Half-Real (Berkeley, 1983).Google Scholar

48 On the racial composition of New Spain at the end of the colonial period, see Humboldt, Alexander von, Ensayo político sobre el Reino de la Nueva Espana (Mexico City, 1966),Google Scholar 35ff; and, among others, David, A.Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763–1810 (Cambridge, 1971), 13–14;Google Scholar Colin MacLachlan, M. and Rodriguez, Jaime E., The Forging of the Cosmic Race: A Reinterpretation of Colonial Mexico (Berkeley, 1980), 197,Google Scholar et passim; and Sanchez-Albornoz, Nicolas, The Population of Latin America: A History (Berkeley, 1974), 135–38. Humboldt's figures have been much criticized, but for present purposes they are sufficient to indicate orders of magnitude. Out of a total Mexican population exceeding 6 million people, whites made up slightly more than a million, or about 18 percent, and Indians more than 3.5 million, or about 60 percent. European-bom Spaniards amounted only to about fifteen or twenty thousand, much less than 1 percent of the total. On fears of caste war, see Hamill, Hidalgo Revolt, and DiTella, “Las clases peligrosas.”Google Scholar

49 On the relatively high rates of intermarriage between Mexican-born whites and nonwhites in general, but especially among ethnically proximate groups in the population, see Cook, Sherburne F. and Borah, Woodrow, Essays in Population History: Mexico and the Caribbean (Berkeley, 1974), II, 180–269;Google ScholarBrading, David A. and Wu, Celia, “Population Growth and Crisis: Leon, 1720–1860,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 5:1 (1973), 1–36; Chance, Race and Class in Colonial Oaxaca. All these authors point, however, to the considerable regional variations in marriage patterns and racial mixing.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

50 Such ambivalence, in fact, is an essential element of the symbiotic mother-child rela- tionship of early childhood, and gives rise to the splitting alluded to above. Before the child learns that its negative and positive feelings may be both received and reciprocated by its primary object, the mother, it defends itself from the implications of its own occasionally destructive rage against that object by splitting the mother into separate personae, one good, the other bad. This psychic defense, while adaptive in the infant and appropriate to an early developmental stage, is inappropriate and even pathological at other stages, and is considered a regression later on. On this point see, among others, Mahler, Margaret S., “Rapprochement Subphase of the Separation- Individuation Process,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 41:3 (1972);, 487–506;Google ScholarPubMed and Giovacchini, P., Treatment of Primitive Mental States (New York, 1979), 20–39.Google Scholar

51 Such rumors were associated with the 1810 tumultos at Atlacomulco, Cuemavaca, and Amecameca, mentioned above, and with other incidents at Toluca in November 1810 and in the summer of 1811—AGN, Criminal, vol. 225, exped. 3, fols. 39r-75v (1810); vol. 15, exped. 8, nopag. (1811); at TulancingoinMay 1811—AGN, Criminal, vol. 61, exped. 7, fols. 3O3r-323r (1811); at Ixmiquilpan in June 1811—AGN, Criminal, vol. 64, exped. 5, fols. 108r-162v (1811); and at Guadalajara, before the climactic battle of Calderon, in early January 1811—AGN, Operaciones de Guerra (hereafter cited as OG), vol. 4A, fols. 123r-v (Cruz to Calleja, 7 January 1811).

52 See, for example, the reports relating to the general situation in the pubelo of Huautla, in the Huasteca region, in the years 1806–8, in AGN, Criminal, vol. 280, exped. 9, fols. 387r-419r (1808). Specifically with regard to ethnic and social relations on colonial haciendas in one region of New Spain, see Young, Van, Hacienda and Market, 266–68. Although they were not often made explicit, such feelings must have been behind much of the Indian xenophobia towards non- Indian outsiders as described, for example, in Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, ch. 4.Google Scholar

53 AGN, OG, vol. 9, fols. 63r-65v (1817). Earlier testimony in the Amecameca case indi- cated that the pejorative coyote was widely used by local Indians to refer to all whites (AGN, Criminal, vol. 156, no exped. number, fols. 20r-167v (1810)).

54 AGN, Criminal, vol. 274, exped. 2, fols. 3r-49v (1811); “…que lleguen breve los insurgentes para quitarles las cabezas a todos los de razón.”.

55 The idea of a destructured moral universe is drawn from Wachtel, Vision of the Vanquished. The Church, by the way, would have represented the same principle of authority, which accounts, at least in part, for the prominence of ecclesiastics in the early phases of the independence struggle. Whether churchmen led or followed the rebellions is not always clear, however.

56 This point is made at greater length in Young, Van, Hacienda and Market, 352–53; idem, “Conflict and Solidarity”; idem, “Moving toward Revolt,” 23–25.Google Scholar

57 AGN, Criminal, vol. 251, exped. 10, fols. 309r-319v (Zacualtipan, 1812): ’… que no creyeran en el Rey”.vol. 163, exped. 18, fols. 3O7r-32Or (Molango, 1811): “[Allende] vaa ser nuestro catolico.” On an earlier plot in the Tepic area, see AGN, Historia, vol. 428, no exped. number, fols. 37r-76r (1801); and on Mariano, see the Herrada case, AJAC 34–9–763 (1801–1806).

58 The typology of peasant revolts in Mexico developed by Katz, Friedrich in “Rural Uprisings in Mexico,” manuscript (1982), recognizes the tendency for those in peripheral areas (i.e., outside the center of the country) to take on a more clearly millenarian flavor.Google Scholar

59 Ultimately it is inadvisable to attempt to apply a diagnostic label to Herrada's mental disturbance, for a number of reasons. Where the evidence and the expertise of the observer in clinical evaluation are stronger, however, such efforts can yield fascinating results; see, for example, the brilliant piece by Kris, Ernst, “A Psychotic Artist of the Middle Ages,” in Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Writings on the Visual Arts, Kleinbauer, W. Eugene, ed. (New York, 1971), 285–92. Kris analyzes in this short article the work and character of Opicinus de Canastris, an Italian cleric of the early fourteenth century, and credibly concludes that he was (in the clinical sense) a schizophrenic. It is interesting, in passing, that Opicinus's work, much of it containing autobiographical elements, shares certain characteristics with Herrada's testimony: grandiosity, an obsessional quality, occasional disjunctions of thought, etcetera. The reference to Kris's article I owe to Ann R. Milstein. held on the Hacienda de Tlacotes, outside Zacatecas, and disappeared. The colonial authorities were still looking for him in February of the following year, but presumably never found him. What became of him? Did he continue to wander the dusty roads of New Spain in search of his father and a few pesos begged from credulous Indians? Did he live out his life as an eccentric farmer in a quiet village? One is tempted to think that he took up arms in 1810 under the banner of the Virgin and worked upon the chaotic reality of those times the equally chaotic fantasies in his head. If so, did he end face down in the mud, like many other tortured modern heroes, on some obscure Mexican battlefield, at Aculco, or Las Cruces, or Calderon? Part of his story, with its power and pathos, he left us; the rest of his secrets he never surrendered.Google Scholar