Indian Communities and Ayuntamientos in the Mexican Huasteca: Sujeto Revolts, Pronunciamientos and Caste War

Mexico's transition from a colonial society to an independent nation was extremely difficult and civil war seemed to threaten at every turn during the first half of the nineteenth century. Independence required the creation of a new republican order to replace the colonial system of corporate identities and racial domination. The creation of a new liberal order based on individual citizenship was a contested process where competing political actors sought to preserve colonial privileges even as they used the new constitutional system to their advantage. The indigenous communities, the majority of the population at independence, posed a challenge to the new society of citizens. The objective of this paper is to explore the fate of indigenous communities under the new system and how Indians manipulated it in order to survive. The following pages discuss how independence affected villagers by first describing what the change to a new liberal order meant for local town governments. Then using case studies from the gulf region of Mexico, the paper will draw connections between indigenous village politics and the pronunciamientos that frequently destabilized the national government. Pronunciamientos in the provinces had a profound effect that over time tended to create more opportunities for discontented villagers to enter politics. Finally, the paper will discuss how these political divisions played out in the series of rebellions of the late 1840s known as “caste war of the Huasteca.”