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The Rise of Mexican Liberalism: military and administrative aspects

The Rise of Mexican Liberalism: military and administrative aspects. Lecture Week 5, Dr Guy Thomson. La Reforma, 1854-1876. Next two lectures and seminars approach: Nation : transition from a Catholic/Baroque republic to a “modern” secular Liberal Nation - State.

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The Rise of Mexican Liberalism: military and administrative aspects

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  1. The Rise of Mexican Liberalism: military and administrative aspects Lecture Week 5, Dr Guy Thomson

  2. La Reforma, 1854-1876 • Next two lectures and seminars approach: • Nation: transition from a Catholic/Baroque republic to a “modern” secular Liberal Nation - State. • Constitution: “Bill of Rights” in 1857 Constitution • Army: New “model” army in the National Guard • Religion: Separation (subjugation?) of Church and State, religious freedom • Property: Desamortización (sale) of Church wealth and corporate and communal land of civil corporations (towns and villages)

  3. Explosive issues: • Church and Army resist loss of special juridical and corporate status • Vow of allegiance to the Constitution of 1857 • Local controlled National Guard, elected officers • Religious freedom: arrival of Protestants and sprouting of indigenous sects (1869 “Caste war” in Chiapas) • Sale of town and village commons

  4. Wars • April 1853- Aug 1855, last regime of Santa Anna • March 1854-August 1855 Revolution of Ayutla • 1855-56, struggle for Puebla and Intervention of Church wealth • 1856-57 Constituent Congress • December 1857, Plan de Tacubaya. Cons. army revolt starts Reform War (1858-1861) • 1862-1867 European Intervention and 2nd Empire • 1867-1876 struggle within Liberalism (between lawyers & soldiers)

  5. Today: • Military re-organisation around National Guard and district/local civil administration, Liberal caudillismo and caciquismo, Liberal Patriotism • Week 7: • Issues of Church and state, religion & Liberal identity, efforts of Maximilian to “mexicanise the Empire”

  6. Response to defeat • Conservative intellectuals more vocal and proactive than Liberals (Hale ) • 1848: Lucas Alamán’s establishes Conservative Party • 1853: Conservatives invite Santa Anna to return from exile to restores Centralism

  7. Lucas Alamán, 1792-1853

  8. General Antonio López de Santa Anna

  9. Conservative regime: centralisation with justice Indians: brought back under protection of colonial law, restoration of head tax (capitación) in exchange for immunity from military recruitment, sales taxes, etc Clergy: given control of primary education to form obedient, Catholic subjects National Industry and tariff protection: to balance foreign dependence and strengthen social fabric of cities (new factories sited, safely, outside cities in industrial villages)

  10. Centralisation with justice • Reform of the Army under Defence Minister José María Tornel y Mendívil (1795-1853) • Incorporates Nation Guard within regular army • Contracts Prussian officers to retrain army • School of military music established by Jaime Nunó to inspire patriotism: 40 military bands formed • Nunó composes Mexico’s 1st National Anthem • Artillery School (lack of in 1846-7 contributed to Mexican defeat) • Better pay, barracks, uniforms, voluntary recruitment • By 1854: Army absorbed ½ of national budget of 8.5 0f 17 million pesos

  11. José MaríaTornel y Mendívil (1795-1853)

  12. Catalan composer, Jaime Nunó, 1824-1908

  13. Santa Anna’s last regime • 1853: death of intellectual progenitors, Alamán and Tornel • Santa Anna becomes more autocratic, drift towards monarch “Your Most Serene Highness” • 1853 sale of Mesillas region to US in Gadsen Purchase of 1853 • widespread social disorder and ethnic conflict following restoration of the Indian head tax and military sorteo (recruitment by lots) • Liberal opposition to high tariffs and import prohibitions

  14. New Liberal generation • Charles Hale: muted & ambivalent Liberal response to defeat: introspection and pessimism, seen in Mariano Otero’s “Considerations” in 1847) • Otero (Jalisco) was part of a new generation of Liberals trained in provincial law schools: Benito Juárez (Oaxaca), Ignacio Altamirano (Guererreo), Ignacio Ramírez (Mexico State), Santos Degollado (Guanajuato), MelchorOcampo (Michoacan), Jose Maria Lafragua (Puebla).... • many were of humble social and ethnic origin, men of the pen rather than the sword (served in National Guard but opposed to Regular army), occupied state governorships but weak profile nationally.....needed a challenge before they would act as a national party. • Santa Anna regime provided that challenge

  15. Mariano Otero, 1817-1850

  16. Revolution of Ayutla, March 1854 September ‘55 • Broadly based provincial armed uprising against Santa Anna’s monarchism and authoritarianism: • March 1854, Plan de Ayutla calls for restoration of Liberal and Republican institutions. Led by Juan Alvarez, former insurgent, landowner from the Costa Chica of Guerrero : “popular federalist”, legendary leader of “Pintos” mulatto and Indian militias (held back by Santa Anna from fighting the Americans in 1847) See (Peter Guardino, Peasants, Politics and The Formation of Mexico’s national State, Guerrero 1800-1857 • backed by head of Acapulco customs house, Ignacio Comonfort, Moderate Liberal from Puebla, in Plan de Acapulco....

  17. Revolution of Ayutla, 1854-55 Juan Alvarez, 1791-1867 Ignacio Comonfort, 1812 - 1863

  18. Revolution of Ayutla, 1854-55

  19. Revolution of Ayutla, 1854-55 • Two pronged movement: • South under Alvarez and Comonfort • North under Santiago Vidaurri, commander of National Guard of Nuevo León • intervening provinces joined movement • Juan Alvarez & Pintos enters Mexico City in September 1855....a new age commences (comparable moments: 1876, 1911, 1914, 1995)

  20. Santiago Vidaurri, 1803-1867

  21. Reform Laws and Constitution of 1857 • Under Juan Alvarez (President August 1855) and Ignacio Comonfort (President September 1855-January 1858) Liberal aim to establish a secular state and to curb the power of the Army by building up the National Guard. As Conservatives and Church react and rebel. Liberal secularising laws become more draconian • Ley Iglesias October 1855: ending compulsory parish fees and services. Civil code for births, deaths and marriages • Ley Juarez September 1855 : judicial immunity (fueros) of army and church abolished • LeyLafragua September 1855: return of the Nation Guard • October 1855-October 1856 Conservative uprisings in Puebla • LeyLerdo: June 1856, corporately owned capital funds and landholdings to be put on sale, current tenants given first refusal in auctions, filing of purchases • February 1857, Promulgation of 2nd Federal Constitution: forbids imprisonment for debt, compulsory services, monastic vows, etc.

  22. Tacubaya uprising (December 1857)* Three Years’ War • December 1857: Conservatives rebel behind General Felix de Zuloaga. Comonfort agrees to suspend Constitution. • Liberals and Conservatives are at war: Felix de Zuloaga President of (Conservative) Mexico, 1857-1860, Benito Juarez, President of (Liberal) Mexico, 1858-1872 • Three Years’ War: Conservatives control the capital cities and hacienda regions of the plateau (Altiplano) while Liberals consolidate in Sierras and on the peripheries (port of Veracruz and the North) • After Liberal triumph in 1860, Conservative army is abolished and New Army is created on the basis of the National Guard of the states

  23. Liberal patriotism and the National Guard • Three decades of civil and patriotic warfare between 1846 and 1876 (the American war, the Three Years War, the French Intervention, and Diaz’s revolts during the 1870s reshaped Mexico’s i) military organisation • ii) citizenship • iii) political geography

  24. Military organisation: National Guard • Old army abolished in 1861, new army formed on basis of National Guards of the State • elected officers • locally funded • voluntary recruitment in lieu of “mustering out tax” (Pension de Rebajados) • Pensions/land for widows • Possibility of serving close to home • Land for military service (e.g. Xochiapulco – La Villa del 5 de Mayo - in the Sierra de Puebla)

  25. Local examples: Sierra de Puebla Veteran of Battle of 5 May 1862, c.1922, Xochiapulco, Sierra de Puebla Armed citizenship • service in the National Guard and shedding of blood the Nation provided indigenous citizens with negotiating counter. Tax exemption, the right to bear arms, access to land through the desamortización, freedom from compulsory services, political autonomy, musical instruments, roads, schools..... (Thomson, Patriotism, McNamara, Sons of the Sierra and Mallon, Peasant and Nation)

  26. Political geography New Army, combined with exigencies of war, meant that power and initiative devolved not only to the states but also to districts and municipalities where NG was raised and financed. States: Rise of Liberal Caudillos: e.g. Santiago Vidaurri in Nuevo León, Benito Juarez & Porfirio Diaz in Oaxaca, Juan N. Mendez and Juan Francisco Lucas in Puebla, Trinidad Garcia de la Cadena in Zacatecas, Luis Terrazas in Chihuahua, etc.

  27. Districtsand Municipalities: Rise of Liberal caciques - politics before the 1860s had not lacked such local leaders, but they were poorly integrated within the national system. Liberals succeeded in creating a system of district leaders (Prefects & Sub-Prefects of “Jefes Politico”) who applied the new Liberal legislation, introduced secular education and organised the National Guard E.G. Remote mining town of Tetela de Ocampo in Puebla Sierra was home to two Liberal State governors (both started as school teachers, sub-prefects and national Guard commanders) and to Nahua cacique, Juan Francisco Lucas

  28. Sierra de Puebla • close to strategic Mexico – Veracruz corridor, used by Liberals and Conservative for supplies and military recruits • Towns and villages in the Puebla Sierra learned to negotiate with outside leaders, demanding autonomy in exchange for military support. • Nahua cacique, Juan Francisco Lucas, emerges as intermediary between villages and outside forces, a function he performed from the 1850s until his death in 1917 (See Thomson, Politics, Patriotism & Popular Liberalism)

  29. Sierra de Puebla

  30. Liberal State governors from Tetelade Ocampo, Puebla Sierra Juan NepomucenoMéndez (1880-84) Juan Crisóstomo Bonilla (1876-1880)

  31. Nahua cacique Juan Francisco Lucas (1832-1917) 1856, Captain of “indioscuatecomacos” 1879, Jefe Politico of Tetela

  32. Lucas during the Revolution c.1915 c. 1916

  33. Lucas Funeral, Tetela de Ocampo, 1917

  34. Caudillo & Cacique: Benito Juarez & Felipe Garcia, Zapotec men Guelatao, Sierra de Ixtlan • Felipe Garcia, 1808-1908, peasant, soldier and officer holder • Benito Juarez, 1806-72, Governor of Oaxaca, late 1840s, early 1850s, introduced two important reforms (“Second Conquest of the pueblos “ Marcello Carmagnani) • Reform One: 1849, National Guard, “a military force that by its morality, its discipline, and its training can quickly respond by giving aid in any corner of the state” (Juarez). Began in 1847, by 1850 Juarez could count on 800 permanent and 2,500 reserve. • 1855: Felipe Garcia, as senior “pasado” (elder or past office holder) was elected captain of Guelatao’s NG. Garcia was still • referring to his military service and the patriotic blood sacrifice of the people of Guelatao during the 1850s and 60s when petitioning to Porfrio Diaz for a village school in 1903

  35. Benito Juárez (1805-1872)

  36. Sierra de Ixtlán, Oaxaca

  37. Benito Juarez & Felipe Garcia, Guelatao • Reform Two: Juarez established Prefects and sub-prefects, to oversee community affairs: • Sub-prefects “should not limit themselves to counting heads and dictating official letters, but rather they should do something nobler and more difficult: they should govern the people” (Juarez, 1852) • In 1855 Porfirio Diaz was appointed as Sub-prefect of Ixtlan and organised the “Ixtlan Batallion of NG” (including Felipe Garcia, captain of Guelatao’s National Guard company)

  38. Porfirio Díaz (1830-1915)

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