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Cárdenas and the Caste War that Wasn’t: State Power and Indigenismo in Post-Revolutionary Yucatán*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Ben W. Fallaw
Ben W. Fallaw*
Affiliation:
Eastern Illinois UniversityCharleston, Illinois
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The Caste War that devastated Yucatán in the middle of the nineteenth century cast a long shadow across ethnic relations and politics in the state decades after its effective end. During the Mexican Revolution and the subsequent period of national reconstruction, revolutionary politicians invoked the Caste War as a precursor to the Revolution and as justification for post-Revolutionary projects, in particular indigenismo. The state’s indigenist policy advocated, in the words of Alan Knight, the “emancipation and integration of Mexico’s exploited Indian groups.” To this end, it offered indigenous people education, legal support, even land; however, these “modernizing” policies also destroyed or appropriated much of their culture and subordinated them to the state. The legacy of the Caste War shaped such indigenist projects in Yucatán from the Revolution to (at least) the 1930s, but its influence was strongest during Cardenas’ visit to Yucatán in August of 1937. The president not only reinterpreted the Caste War to justify land reform and a broad indigenist project; he attempted to mobilize the Yucatecan peasantry along class and ethnic lines and threatened recalcitrant landlords with another caste war should they oppose him. Once armed, however, peasant soldiers turned their rifles not against the landowners but against each other. This essays explores how the Caste War’s legacy shaped the development and deployment of indigenist projects in Yucatán from the Revolution to the late 1930s, focusing on Cárdenas’ aborted mobilization. Along the way, it will consider the impact and efficacy of state-sponsored indigenismo. Above all, it seeks to understand why state efforts to champion the cause of the Maya failed to unify the rural poor of Yucatán under the banner of Cardenismo.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , April 1997 , pp. 551 - 577
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1997

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Gilbert M. Joseph, Terry Rugeley, Paul Sullivan, and members of Eastern Illinois University’s Department of History colloquium for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. Any errors that remain are, of course, the author’s alone. In referring to archival material, the Archivo General de la Nación is abbreviated as AGN, followed by either OyC (Alvaro Obregón y Plutarco Elías Calles), AR (Abelardo Rodríguez), LC (Lázaro Cárdenas) or DGG (Dirección General de Governación), and then the number of the expediente, and, if necessary, the legajo. Material from the Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán is cited as AGEY, followed by either MA, signifying Archivo Municipal, or PE, indicating Poder Ejecutivo, followed by the sección (SG = Governación, SH = Hacienda, and SE = Educación).

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22 Circular of Governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto to all municipal town councils 28 February 1923, cited in Savarino FN 74, 11.

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33 Antonio Betancourt Pérez to Professor Bartolomé García Correa 12 August 1932, AGEY PE 952 SG2.

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35 Heraldo de Yucatán, 30 December 1933.

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52 Diario del Sureste 29 December 1937; Carlos M. Peralta, “Apuntes asunto de Yucatán: Introducción. Algunos antecedentes,” 9 September 1939, AGN LC 404.1/12 caja 201 leg. 9; Humberto Canto Echeverría, “Estudio Sobre la Situación Real de los Ejidos Henequeneros de Yucatán,” 31 July 1939, AGN LC 404.1/12 caja 201 leg. 2.

53 Knight, “Racism,” pp. 87, 95.

54 Benítez, Femando, Kí: El drama de un pueblo y una planta (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1956), p. 233.Google Scholar

55 See Knight, “Racism,” p. 87, and Becker, chapter 4, for different perspectives on the supposedly innate racial characteristics ascribed to indigenous peoples, and beliefs about their “redeemability.”

56 See, for instance, the account of Cárdenas’ visit to Yotholín in Diario de Yucatán, 22 August 1937.

57 Diario de Yucatán, 4 August 1937; Estado, Gobierno del, El Ejido en Yucatán (Mérida: Ediciones del gobierno del estado, 1937).Google Scholar

58 For a reexamination of the actual historical origins of the Caste War, see Rugeley, Terry, Yucatan’s Maya Peasantry and the Origins of the Caste War, 1800–1847 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996).Google Scholar

59 The idea of a single, all-encompassing “Indian” identity had been anticipated by Porfirio Díaz when he erected a statue of Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor, in Mexico City. Diaz’s project, however, was strictly for elite consumption, while Cárdenas’ was not only directed at a broader audience, it also implied positive actions on the part of the national state to aid indigenous minorities—fundamental characteristics that Porfirian proto-indigenism definitely lacked. Knight “Racism,” p. 79.

60 For a discussion of how Cardenismo attempted to reformulate ethnic and class identities from above in a region very different from Yucatán, Michoacán, see Becker, , “Black and White and Color: Cardenismo and the Search for a Campesino Ideology,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 29 (1987), pp. 453–465.Google Scholar

61 Benítez, p. 231.

62 Joven Guardia August 1937.

63 Menzay unnumbered special edition issued: September 1937.

64 Diario del Sureste 22 January 1937. On other motives that lay behind the choice of Temozón to begin land reform during Cárdenas’ Crusade, see Ben Fallaw, “Florencio Palomo Valencia, Temozón, y la cuestión agraria en Yucatán: Cardenismo comprometido,” forthcoming in Unicornio.

65 Diario de Yucatan, 23 August 1937; Baroni, Aldo, Yucatán (Mexico City: Ediciones Botas, 1938), pp. 106–110.Google Scholar

66 On the importance of redemption in Cardenista ideology, see Becker, Setting, pp. 104–105.

67 Menzay, September 1937 4–5.

68 Diario de Yucatán, 23 August 1937.

69 Fallaw, Ben, “Peasants, Caciques and Camarillas: Rural Politics and State Formation in Yucatan, 1924–1940” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Chicago, 1995), pp. 208–230.Google Scholar

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71 Izamal’s conservative, Catholic reputation was probably due to the fact that it was the home of a large convent and impressive colonial church, and was the staging ground of the conservative revolt that toppled a Jacobin liberal governor during the Reform. Hernán Menéndez, “El liberalismo en Yucatán: De la Reforma al Imperio,” Unicornio (25 April 1993): 3–11.

72 AGN OyC 438-Y-2. Rationalist schools were founded during the Socialist administration of Carrillo Puerto on the model of Spanish anarchist educator Francisco Ferrer Guardia. See Assad, Carlos Martinez, ed., Los lunes rojos: La educación racionalista en México (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional de Fomento Educativo, Ediciones El Caballito, Secretaría Educación Publica, 1986)Google Scholar; and Vaughan, Mary Kay, “Education and Class in the Mexican Revolution,” Latin American Perspectives 2:2 (Summer 1975), 17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

73 The subject of anticlericalism lies beyond the scope of this essay. As Alan Knight has noted, the sociology of Jacobinism in the Mexican Revolution remains to be written. Knight, Alan, “Popular Culture and the Revolutionary State in Mexico, 1910–1940,” Hispanic American Historical Review 74:3 (1994) fn 123, 418 Google Scholar. However, an important regional study of anticlericalism (focusing on the state of Sonora) has been written. See Bantjes, Adrian, “Burning Saints, Molding Minds: Iconoclasm, Civic Ritual, and the Failed Cultural Revolution,” in Martin, Beezley, and French, , eds., Rituals of Rule.Google Scholar

74 Diario del Sureste 12 September 1937. In municipal elections in the fall of 1936, the agrarista faction (supported by the federal Agrarian Bank) had seized local power from the Socialist Party faction that had long dominated town hall with the support of the state government.

75 Mona Ozouf described a similar process of secularization of public space. See Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), trans. Alan Sheridan, Chapter 6.

76 For a comparative perspective on the importance of time in French revolutionary festivals, see Ozouf, Chapter 7.

77 Pictures of the stadium were featured prominently in Menzay, unnumbered special edition published September 1937.

78 Diario de Yucatán 17 September 1937.

79 Unnumbered special edition of Menzay issued in September 1937.

80 The Classic Maya and Classical European ages were further conflated in February of 1939 when the state government held a peninsular games in Mérida. It featured athletes dressed in supposedly Maya costume that looked suspiciously like Olympian garb. Diario del Sureste 1 February 1939, 4 February 1939.

81 Diario de Yucatán, 17 September 1937.

82 Diario del Sureste, 7 August 1937.

83 Joven Guardia, August 1937.

84 Craig, Ann L., The First Agraristas. An Oral History of a Mexican Agrarian Reform Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 130–131.Google Scholar Cárdenas’ announcement of the militarization of ejidatarios sparked demands from other sectors to be armed. Teachers in Mexico City asked that male teachers receive military training, and that female teachers be trained as military nurses in order to combat enemies of socialist education. The national Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT) requested that urban workers be armed in order to combat extremists on the right and left. The cordage factory workers of Yucatán took advantage of Cárdenas’ presence to ask that workers be armed like the peasants. Cárdenas refused petitions to arm urban workers or government employees, and the closest that the cordage workers got to military training was a drum and bugle corps. Diario de Yucatán, 12 November 1936, 29 October 1936; Echeverría, Pedro V., Los cordeleros, 1933–1980 (Mérida: Sindicato de Cordeleros de Yucatán and Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, 1981), p. 103.Google Scholar

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86 Diario del Sureste, 11 October 1936.

87 Benigno Pinzón to Governor Palomo Valencia 12 October 1936, AGEY PE 1018.

88 Diario de Yucatán, 26 November 1936, Diario del Sureste 25 January 1938.

89 Benigno Pinzón to Governor Palomo Valencia 12 October 1936, AGEY PE 1018; Diario del Sureste 23 January 1937.

90 Diario de Yucatán, 3 April 1937.

91 See Luciano Kú et al. to President Cárdenas 9 October 1938, AGN DGG 2.311 vol. 85 exp. 28.

92 For instance, Exaltación Cauich of Chablekal, sergeant in the First Battalion, was a leader of the state association of small- and medium-sized producers of henequen. Víctor Baquedano, a lieutenant in the First Battalion, was an employee of the federal Agrarian Bank. Diario del Sureste 26 February, 28 April 1938.

93 Luciano Kú et al. to President Cárdenas 9 October 1938, AGN DGG 2.311M vol. 85 exp. 28; Rafael Molina to President 11 August 1937, AGEY PE 1068 SG 1; Chief of Staff to Attorney General 20 September 1937, AGEY PE 1031 SG 2; Tranquilino Marín M. to President 9 February 1937, AGN DGG 2.311M vol. 83 exp. 13; Diario del Sureste 17 March 1937.

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96 Mayor of Seyé to Public Ministry 22 December 1936, AGEY PE 1068 Sec. Hoctún.

97 Diario de Yucatán, 2 April 1937.

98 Diario de Yucatán, 18 November 1936.

99 Mayor Cirilio Ac Aké to governor 4 February 1937, Police Chief to governor, 12 March 1937, AGEY PE 1031 SG 2; Diario de Yucatán, 15 June 1937.

100 Diario de Yucatán, 5, 9 May 1937; Rufino Lavin to Governor 30 March 1936, AGEY PE 1018 Sec. CLA.

101 José Benignos to governor 8 June 1937, AGEY PE 1044 SG 1.

102 Francisco Millán to governor 13 April 1937, AGEY PE 1044 SG 1.

103 Diario del Sureste, 28 April 1937; Diario de Yucatán, 15,16 April 1937, 5 May 1937; Pedro Pool et al. to Federal Commander of the Zone 24 May 1937, AGEY PE 1044 SG 1.

104 Cárdenas’ inability to control the Agrarian Militia provides an interesting comparison with Porfirio Díaz experience with the Rurales (rural constabulary), who despite their reputation were often prone to unrestrained violence. See Vanderwood, Paul J., Disorder and Progress: Bandits, Police, and Mexican Development (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981).Google Scholar

105 Diario del Sureste 22 August 1937. Although some platoons did turn in their weapons, others still had their guns as late as 1939. See Villanueva Mukul. Henequén y haciendas, pp. 62–63. The peasant militias were not totally disbanded until the term of Cárdenas’ successor, Avila Camacho. Craig, The First Agraristas, pp. 130–131. The involvement of agrarian militias in factional disputes was not confined to Yucatán. In Pisaflores in the central state of Hidalgo, agrarian militias armed with rifles shipped from Mexico City participated on both sides of a factional dispute. Schreyer, Frans J., The Rancheros of Pisaflores: The History of a Peasant Bourgeoisie in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), pp. 90–91.Google Scholar

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108 From letters from Yucatecan peasants to state officials from AGEY and AGN LC.

109 Irwin Press, Tradition and Adaptation: Life in a Modern Yucatan Maya Village (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1975), pp. 18, 22, 72.Google Scholar

110 Savarino.

111 The author is indebted to Terry Rugeley for this observation.

112 Redfield, Robert and Rojas, Alfonso Villa, Chan Kom: A Maya Village (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 229.Google Scholar The author would like to thank Paul Sullivan for bringing this passage to his attention.

113 Schreyer, Franz J. “Ethnic Identity and Land Tenure Disputes in Modern Mexico,” in Kicza, John E., ed., iThe Indian in Latin American History: Resistance, Resilience, and Acculturation (Wilmington, Delaware: Jaguar Books on Latin America, Number 1, Scholarly Resources, 1994), pp. 206–207.Google Scholar

114 Patch, Robert, Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1648–1812 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 65. PressGoogle Scholar; Traditions and Adaptation, p. 16, contrasted Yucatán with the rest of southern Mexico in the 1960s, and concluded that Yucatecan villages lacked the strong social cohesion present in other parts of southern Mexico.

115 For a more detailed analysis of the pitfalls of “racial” classification, see Knight, “Racism,” pp. 73–75.

116 Wells and Joseph describe a similar situation in Yucatán during the tumultuous 1911–1913 period.