I wish to thank Liliana Paola Ávila Meléndez for her enthusiastic support as research assistant, and Holly Yasui for her translation from Spanish. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers whose comments helped to sharpen the arguments in this text.

1. Ramiro Guillén Tapia, rural schoolteacher and leader of the regional committee, “In Defense of Human Rights” in southern Veracruz. He se If-immolated on September 30, 2008 in front of the Government Office Building in Xalapa upon the refusal by the authorities to resolve the conflicting agrarian claims in his town. Before his death, he had 107 appointments cancelled.

2. Regarding this election, see Servín, Elisa Ruptura y Oposición: El movimiento henriquista, 1945–1954 (Mexico City: Ediciones Cal y Arena, 2001).Google Scholar

3. State regulations designed to lower food prices in the cities established price controls on corn, beans, and other basic food products, controls that remained in place throughout the 1950s. Peasants complained of regulations that forced them to sell their products to the government at artificially low prices. See Gómez, Hugo Azpeitia Compañía Exportadora e Importadora Mexicana, S. Α. (1949–1958): Conflicto y abasto alimentario (Mexico City: CIESAS, 1994).Google Scholar

4. Regarding the occupation of land in northern Mexico, see de Grammont, Hubert C., “La Unión General de Obreros y Campesinos de México,” in Moguel, Julio, ed., Historia de la cuestión agraria mexicana, vol. 8: Política estatal y conflictos agrarios, 1950–1970 (Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores/CEHAM, 1989).Google Scholar Regarding the conflict in Morelos, see Padilla, Tanalís, Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata: The Jaramillista Movement and the Myth of the Pax Priista, 1940–1962 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008),CrossRefGoogle Scholar Chapter 7; Padilla, Tanalís, “From Agraristas to Guerrilleros: The Jaramillista Movement in Morelos,” Hispanic American Historical Review 87:2 (May 2007), pp. 255–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Regarding the movement in Guerrero, see Román, Salvador Román Revuelta cívica en Guerrero (1957–1960): La democracia imposible (Mexico City: INEHRM, 2003);Google Scholar and Bartra, Armando Guerrero Bronco: Campesinos, ciudadanos y guerrilleros en la Costa Grande (Mexico City: Ediciones Sinfiltro, 1996).Google Scholar For a review of these movements, see Política 1:1 (May 1, 1960), and Semo, Ilán “El ocaso de los mitos 1958–1968,” in Semo, Enrique, ed., México: Un pueblo en la historia, vol. 6 (Mexico City: Alianza Editorial Mexicana, 1989), pp. 13–146.Google Scholar

6. SeE the September and October 1961 issues of the magazine Política.

7. There are very few works published on the subject, see Terán, Martha “El levantamiento de los campesinos gasquistas,” Cuadernos Agrarios 10–11 (December 1980), pp. 115–138;Google Scholar Ser vin, Elisa, “Hacia el levantamiento armado: Del henriquismo a los Federacionistas Leales en los años cincuenta,” in Solano, Verónica Oikión and García Ugarte, Martha Eugenia, eds., Movimientos armados en México, siglo XX, vol.1 (Mexico City: El Colegio de Michoacán-CIESAS, 2006), pp. 307–332;Google Scholar and José Luis, Blanco R. “El levantamiento gasquista en Chumarían (1961),” in Méndez, Agustín Ávila and Mercado, Jesús Ruvalcaba, eds., Ctiextecapan: Lugar de bastimentos (Mexico City: CI ESAS, 1991), pp. 151–162.Google Scholar

8. For a historiographical review, see Schmidt, Arthur, “Making It Real Compared to What? Reconceptualizing Mexican History Since 1940,” in Joseph, Gilbert, Rubenstcin, Anne and Zolov, Eric, eds., Fragments of a Golden Age: Tfjc Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 23–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. The exception is the Jaramillista movement which has been the object of a copious historiography, for example, Padilla, , Rural Resistance; Marco BelUngeri, Del agrarismo armado a la guerra de los pobres: Ensayos de guerrilla rural en el México contemporáneo, 1940–1974 (Mexico City: Ediciones Casa Juan Pablos-Secretaría de Cultura de la Ciudad de México, 2003), pp. 17–68;Google Scholar Hernández, Aura Hernández La muerte de Rubén Jaramillo y la paranoia anticomunista del régimen de López Mateos 1960–1963 (Masters Thesis, Cuernavaca: Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, 2001);Google Scholar Jiménez, Plutarco García “El movimiento jaramillista: Una experiencia de lucha campesina y popular del período post-revolucionario en México,” in Crespo, Horacio, ed., Morelos: Cinco siglos de historia regional (Cuernavaca: Centro de Estudios Históricos del Agrarismo en México/Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, 1984);Google Scholar de Grammont, Hubert C., “Jaramillo y las luchas campesinas de Morelos,” in Moguel, Julio, ed., Historia de la Cuestión, to mention a few.Google Scholar

10. The historiography of the campesino movement in the period after Cárdenas has focused on the mobilizations of the 1970s, and has been the work more of anthropologists and sociologists than of historians. For a more comprehensive perspective see Bartra, Armando Los herederos de Zapata: Movimientos campesinos posrevolucionarios en México (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1985);Google Scholar Moguel, Julio, “La cuestión agraria en el periodo 1950–1970,” in Moguel, , ed., Historia de la cuestión, pp. 103–221;Google Scholar Gómez-Jara, Francisco A. El movimiento campesino en Mexico (Mexico City: Editorial Campesina, 1970).Google Scholar In recent years, historians have begun to fill the breach, for example, Padilla, , Rural Resistance; Samuel Brunk, The Posthumous Career of Emiliano Zapata: Myth, Memory, and Mexico’s Twentieth Century (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Schryer, Frans J. Ethnicity and Class Conflict in Rural Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rath, Thomas, “‘Que el cielo un soldado en cada hijo te dio’: Conscription, Recalcitrance and Resistance in Mexico in the 1940s,” Journal of Latin American Studies 37:3 (2005), pp. 507–531, among others.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. For a historiographie review see Rubin, Jeffrey W., “Decentering the Regime: Culture and Regional Politics in Mexico,” Latin American Research Review 31:3 (1996), pp. 85–126.Google Scholar Some examples of the new historiography of this period include Zolov, Eric Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999);Google Scholar Niblo, Stephen R. Mexico in the 1940s: Modernity, Politics and Corruption (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1999),Google Scholar and Niblo, Stephen R. War, Diplomacy and Development: The United States and Mexico 1938–1954 (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1995);Google Scholar Servín, Ruptura; Padilla, Rural Resistance.

12. In addition to the extensive historiography on Morelos and Chiapas, inspired by the EZLN uprising in 1994, there are a number of important regional studies. For example, Solano, Verónica Oikión Los hombres del poder en Michoacán, 1924–1962 (Michoacán: El Colegio de Michoacán/Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 2004);Google Scholar Newcomer, Daniel Reconciling Modernity: Urban State Formation in 1940s León, Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004);Google Scholar Rubin, Jeffrey W. Decentering the Regime: Ethnicity, Radicalism and Democracy in Juchitán, Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997);Google Scholar Pansters, Wil Politics and Power in Puebla: The Political History of a Mexican State, 1937–1987 (Amsterdam: Center for Latin American Research and Documentation, 1990).Google Scholar

13. The historiography of armed movements in the second half of the twentieth century has been developed considerably. For example, Oikión and García Ugarte, Movimientos armados en Mexico, siglo XX, vol. 1; Bellingeri, , Del agrarismo armado; Fritz Glockner, Memoria roja: Historia de la guerrilla en Mexico, 1943–1968 (Mexico City: Ediciones B., 2007);Google Scholar Castellanos, Laura Mexico Armado 1943–1981 (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2007);Google Scholar Lara, Enrique Condes Represión y rebelión en México (1959–1985), (Mexico City: Benemerita Universidad Autònoma de Puebla/Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2007).Google Scholar

14. de la Peña, Sergio and Ibarra, Marcel Morales “El agrarismo y la industrialización de Mexico 1940–1950,” in de la Peña, Sergio ed., Historia de la cuestión agraria mexicana, vol. 6: El agrarismo y la industrialización de México 1940–1950 (Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores/CEHAM, 1989), pp. 3–250.Google Scholar

15. Cárdenas himself had to decelerate the distribution of land and the formation of individual and collective ejidos during the last part of his term because of increasing rejection of the immediate effects of his agrarian reform.

16. The reform in section XIV stipulated that the owners of land used for agriculture or cattle raising with certificates of exemption could utilize the amparo to prevent deprivation of or impact upon their land or water. Medin, Tzvi El sexenio alemanista (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1990), p. 125.Google Scholar

17. The reform of Section XV defined small property as a spread of 100 hectares of irrigated land or its equivalent, depending upon the type of crop—150 hectares planted with cotton, and 300 hectares for fields to be used for the growing of bananas, sugar cane, coffee, henequén, rubber, coconut, grapevines, olives, quinine, vanilla, cocoa or fruit trees. Huizer, Gerrit La lucha campesina en Mexico (Mexico City: Centro de Investigaciones Agrarias, 1970), p. 83.Google Scholar

18. de la Peña, and Ibarra, Morales, “El agrarismo,” pp. 229–232;Google Scholar Medina, Luis “Del cardenismo al avilaca-machismo,” in Historia de la Revolución Mexicana 1940–1952, vol. 18 (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1978), pp. 277–278.Google Scholar

19. Jaramillo, Rubén and Manjarrez, Froylán Rubén Jaramillo: Autobiografìa y asesinato (Mexico City: Editorial Nuestro Tiempo, 1967);Google Scholar Ravelo, Renato Los jaramillistas (Mexico City: Editorial Nuestro Tiempo, 1978).Google Scholar

20. Torres, Blanca “Hacia la utopía industrial,” Historia de la Revolución Mexicana 1940–1952, vol. 21 (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1984), pp. 252–269;Google Scholar Alvarez, Pablo Serrano La batalla del espíritu: El movimiento sinar-quista en el Bajío (1932–1951) (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1992), pp. 280–291.Google Scholar Another source of discontent was the implementation of mandatory military service. See Rath, “Que el cielo un soldado.”

21. Grammont, “La Unión”; also see Bartra, , Los herederos de Zapata, pp. 68–69.Google Scholar

22. Signers of the Manifesto were: engineer César Martino, for the Comité Nacional Organizador de la Unión de Federaciones Campesinas; attorney Luis Ramírez de Arellano, engineer Augusto Hinojosa and Enrique Sánchez Perea for the Liga Central de Comunidades Agrarias de la República; Adalberto Cortés, Félix Ramos Hernández, and Adalberto Ramírez López for the Liga Nacional Campesina “Úrsulo Galván”; and Cuauhtemoc, Ríos M., Sánchez, Marcos and Cabrera, Nicolás for the Comité Reivindicador de los Derechos Campesinos. La Prensa (November 24), 1950.Google Scholar See also Problemas Agrícolas e Industriales de México 4:4 (October-December 1952).

23. Participants in the Henriquista movement included Graciano Sánchez, Wenceslao Labra and César Martino, founders of the CNC in 1938y as well as Raúl Castellano, Agustín Leñero, Ernesto Soto Reyes, Francisco J. Mugica, José Muñoz Cota and Luis Chávez Orozco, among many others. Trinidad J. García, founder of the CNC, was active in the UFCM, as well as the engineers Alonso Garrido Canabal and Salvador Solórzano, brother-in-law of ex-president Cárdenas. Servín, , Ruptura, pp. 134–158.Google Scholar

24. Celestino Gasea was born on May 19, 1890 in Abasólo, Guanajuato, and from a very young age, he was active in radical workers’ groups as a shoemaker. He was a militant in the ranks of la Casa del Obrero Mundial, was part of the Batallones Rojos (Red Brigades), and later was a member of the Grupo Acción of the CROM. He was governor of the Distrito Federal from 1920 to 1923, and in 1927 he sought the governorship of Guanajuato. He was a diputado for that state between 1937 and 1940 and senator between 1940 and 1946. In 1943 he ran for Secretary General of the CTM but was defeated by Fidel Velásquez’s group. Datos Biográficos del General Celestino Gasea Villaseñor (1890–1981), manuscript provided by Ing. Manuel González Gallardo.

25. Problemas Agrícolas, p. 365.

26. Bartra, , Los herederos de Zapata, p. 86.Google Scholar Moguel, , “La cuestión agraria,” pp. 111–113.Google Scholar

27. Between 1950 and 1951 many regional and local leaders adhered to the Henriquista line, accusing the CNC of passivity in response to the problems of the ejidos and the campesinos. Servín, , Ruptura, pp. 177–183.Google Scholar

28. On July 28, 1951, the Unión de Federaciones Campesinas de México (UFCM) was legally constituted in the Arbeu Theatre in Mexico City during an assembly in which approximately 5,000 participants attended and in which the candidacy of Miguel Henriquez Guzman was formally endorsed. Twenty-six official delegations attended from the states which already had Campesino Federations, in addition to informal delegations from Veracruz, Michoacán, Tamaulipas and Sonora. The National Organizing Committee of the UCFM was made up of César Martino as president, J. Trinidad Garcia in the position of vice-president and Alonso Garrido Canabal as Secretary General. The event ended with a minute of silence in honor of the death of Emiliano Zapata. Servin, , Ruptura, pp. 198–99.Google Scholar

29. The presence of old revolutionaries and agrarian heroes of the stature of Francisco J. Mugica, Graciano Sánchez and Genovevo de la O in the Henriquista movement contributed to the attraction it had for people like Rubén Jaramillo.

30. Regarding the elections and postclectoral events, see Serviti, Ruptura, Chapter 5.

31. Excelsior, October 12, 1952.

32. Excelsior, October 13 and 14, 1952.

33. Excelsior, October 23 and 24, 1952.

34. Montfort, Ricardo Pérez Guía del archivo del General Jenaro Amezcua 1909–1947 (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios de Historia de México/CONDUMEX, 1982).Google Scholar

35. El Universal Gráfico, October 24, 1952.

36. The paramilitary organization was discovered in early October in Mexico City thanks to construction worker Hilario Mercado Ocampo, who passed by the presidential guard in front of the Palacio Nacional in uniform and did not make an appropriate salute. Excelsior, October 4, 1952.

37. Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Ramo Presidentes (RP), Adolfo Ruiz Cortines (ARC), 606.3/3.

38. AGN, RP, ARC, 606.3/3, letters dated June 11, 1953 and June 20, 1953.

39. For example, a letter from Tizapán el Alto, Jalisco noted that there were numerous “Cristero elements” in the Henriquista movement in Jalisco. AGN, RP, ARC, 606.3/3-13, letter dated August 18, 1953.

40. El Universal, October 24, 1952.

41. A report by the Dirección General de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales (DIPS) notes that Ruben Jaramillo had meetings with General Amezcua in the area of Jonacatepec, Morelos. AGN, DIPS, Caja 104, Exp 11, report of October 27, 1952.

42. Jiménez, Emilio García “Lucha electoral y autodefensa en el jaramillismo,” Cuadernos Agrarios 10 (July-December 1994), pp. 95–116.Google Scholar

43. The state elections took place in March 1952. immediately after the elections, Pedro Garcia Velasquez, a close ally of Jaramillo, and the veteran Zapatista Luis Olmedo were kidnapped. Garcia Velasquez managed to survive in spite of the wounds they inflicted upon his chest with an ice pick, but Olmedo died. The incident is narrated by Pedro Garcia himself in Aura Hernández, La muerte.

44. Bellingeri, Del agrarismo armado; Grammont, “Jaramillo y las luchas.”

45. El Norte, October 3, 1952.

46. Servín, , Ruptura, p. 369.Google Scholar

47. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Record Group (RG) 84, San Luis Potosí, October 8 and 30,1952. During the month of October, arrests were made in many different parts of the country without any apparent cause to justify them.

48. This data comes from information published in El Heraldo, taken from NARA, RG 84, Box 132, San Luis Potosí, October of 1951.

49. AGN, RP, ARC, 606.3/3, report of the Procuraduría General de la República, January 31, 1953.

50. Ravelo, , Los jaramillistas, p. 130.Google Scholar

51. AGN, RP, ARC, 606.3/3.

52. On October 18, 1953 a campesino protest was broken up in the city of Veracruz on the pretext that the real purpose of the meeting was to take over the Palacio Municipal. AGN, RP, ARC, 606.3/3–29.

53. The plan consisted of advancing with small, armed deployments from different towns toward Cuernavaca, where they were going to attack the military barracks in order to obtain additional arms and also to liberate prisoners. The order to halt the uprising did not prevent some actions from taking place in various parts of the state, such as the taking of Yautcpec by a group of 20 to 25 campesinos. Ravclo, , Los jaramillistas, p. 131–132;Google Scholar Bellingcri, , Del agrarismo armado, pp. 49, ff.Google Scholar

54. Ibid.

55. AGN, Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS), 48-1-953, L5, H329, October 29, 1953.

56. Pérez, Carlos Gallegos Luto en Delicias: Vida y muerte de Emiliano J. Laing (Chihuahua: Secretaria de Educación y Cultura/Gobierno del Estado de Chihuahua, 2003).Google Scholar The attempted surprise attack had been uncovered by informants of Governor Oscar Soto Máynez, who had infiltrated the Henriquista movement in Chihuahua.

57. AGN, RP, ARC, 559.1/9.

58. According to General Alejandro Mange, commander of the Second Military Region, the Henriquista attempt failed. Excébior, March 3, 1954.

59. Ibid.

60. Bellingeri, , Del agrarismo armado, p. 53;Google Scholar Excelsior, March 8, 1954.

61. In the following years the Jaramillistas maintained contact with Celestino Gasea, who also ended up disappointing them.

62. de León, Antonio García Fronteras interiores: Chiapas, Una modernidad particular (Mexico City: Océano, 2002), pp. 90–95.Google Scholar

63. Martino joined the official bureaucracy as a consultant, taking advantage of the new opening toward Car-denismo by the administration of Ruiz Cortines. Moguel, , “La cuestión agraria,” pp. 122–129.Google Scholar

64. AGN, RP, ARC, June 16, 1953.

65. Marcelino García Barragán had been a close friend of the Henriquez family since the 1940s, when he was Governor of Jalisco. Although he was a fervent Henriquista throughout most of the 1950s, President López Mateos subsequently “reintegrated” him into active duty in the army. In 1964 he became Minister of Defense under President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz.

66. As indicated by police reports since 1954.

67. For a review of these movements, see Política 1:1 (May, 1960), as well as Semo, “El ocaso.”

68. In 1955 a reform of the Agricultural Credit Law was approved, which eliminated the possibility of getting credit for agricultural unions made up of collective ejidos created during the Cardenista agrarian reform. Bartra, , Los herederos de Zapata, pp. 77–78 Google Scholar. The reduction of credit, which especially affected ejidos in the northern part of the country, combined with the increasing demand for redistribution of land and water fomented the move to direct action. Grammont, , “La Unión,” pp. 240–256.Google Scholar

69. de Brody, Olga Pelliccr, México y la revolución cubana (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1972).Google Scholar

70. Terán, , “El levantamiento,” p. 131.Google Scholar

71. Ibid, p. 123.

72. Política, October 1, 1961.

73. AGN, DIPS, Caja 2936/A Exp. 1/1013 “Soluciones al Problema Agrario.”

74. In an interview with Gasea in 1976, he defended his position by saying that the laws of Mexico were based on private property and for that reason, the campesinos had to adapt to this model. Terán, , “El levantamiento,” p. 127 Google Scholar and Bartra, , Los herederos de Zapata, p. 87.Google Scholar

75. Ibid.

76. According to the magazine Política, the relationship between the two men was established in 1959. (Política, September 15, 1961.) On the other hand, reports by the Federal Security Agency indicated that Siegrist introduced Lie. Ignacio Ríos Leal with a card dated February 26, 1961, “as an absolutely trustworthy person.” AGN, DFS, Federación de Partidos del Pueblo Mexicano (FPPM), 48–1–61, L16 H124–127, Mexico, September 14, 1961. Lie. Olaguíbel, Bernardo Cornejo, candidate of the PNM for diputado federal in the 8th District of Mexico City,Google Scholar was also present at the meeting of July 9, 1961. AGN, DFS, FPPM, 48–1–61, L15 H204 and 205, Report of July 9, 1961. All this indicates frequent contact between Gasea and Siegrist.

77. The possibility that Gasea was a Mason is inferred from his political relationships from the time he was a leader in the worker’s movement and in the revolutionary army.

78. For example, in the meeting of January 29, 1961, Gasea “criticized the agrarian policy of the current administration and said that the triumph of the Federacionistas’ struggle would mean the application of their agrarian program, which has currently been put into practice in Cuba. … Referring to the new President of the United States, he said that [the U.S. President] was doing everything possible to win back Cuba for the purpose of submitting it to his designs but he would not achieve that since the Cubans and the Federacionistas Leales of Mexico are dedicated to preserving and struggling for their independence. The movement in our country indicates a new era for Latin American nations.” AGN, DFS, FPPM, 48–1–61, L–15 H–212, Memorandum signed by Manuel Rangel Escamilla, Mexico City, January 29, 1961.

79. For example, in the meeting of July 31, 1960, “an Othonista teacher reported at length to those in attendance about the origin and motives of the teachers’ conflict in Section IX of the SNTE (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación), seeking support from them and saying that it was not just a struggle for the teachers, but for the people in general.” AGN, DFS, FPPM, 48–1–60, L15 H54, report by Manuel Rangel Escamilla, July 31, 1960.

80. Araujo worked as a train dispatcher for the National Railway of Mexico in San Luis Potosí, according to information published in the presidential campaign of 1952.

81. The leader of the teachers in Mexico City, Professor Othón Salazar, participated in the Henriquisfa organization during the presidential campaign of 1952, initially from the ranks of the Partido Constitucionalista. He was one of the teachers who sharply criticized the attempts to incorporate the Alemán Doctrine into the SEP (Secretaría de Educación Pública) curriculum. Servín, , Ruptura, p. 187;Google Scholar del Castillo, Amparo Ruiz Othón Salazar y el Movimiento Revolucionario del Magisterio (Mexico City: Plaza y Valde’s, 2008).Google Scholar

82. Terán, , “El levantamiento,” p. 130.Google Scholar

83. Política, October 1, 1961.

84. AGN, DIPS, Box 2936/A, Memorandum of the Procuraduría General de la República, July 3, 1962.

85. Ibid.

86. For example, “One campesino group from Oaxaca said that in one place in that state, numerous farmers in the service of an American business had invaded the forests and plots of land belonging to members of the FPPM, which took up arms and captured four of them who were then taken to the respective Authorities, General GASCA having then affirmed that ‘the Fcderacionistas are not willing to continue to tolerate the invasion of their lands and they will have to shoot to kill those who are sent by the Yankees to appropriate the lands of others,’ the General adding that ‘that is the only way to resolve the problem.’” AGN, DFS, FPPM, 48–1–61, U5 H204 and 205, Mexico City, July 9, 1961.

87. AGN, DFS, FPPM, 48–1–61, L15 H203–205, Mexico City, January 15, 1961.

88. Cárdenas, Lázaro Obras I: Apuntes 1957–1966, 2nd ed. (Mexico City: UNAM, 1986), pp. 213–216.Google Scholar

89. The Movimiento de Liberación Nacional was a mixture of Cardenistas, leftist parties, and groups of intellectuals and artists who pushed for a continuation of the Cardenista agrarian reform as a central point of the MLN’s Integral Agrarian Reform program. As part of that process, the Central Campesina Independiente (CCI) was formed in 1963, also predominantly composed of Cardenistas and some of the campesino bases organized since the 1930s and reactivated in the 1950s. See Beltrán Villegas, Miguel Ángel “El MLN: Historia de un recorrido hacia la unidad (Mexico City: 1957–1967)” (Ph D. Dissertation in Latin American Studies: UNAM, 2000), pp. 140, ff.Google Scholar In May 2009, Professor Beltrán was arrested under false charges by Mexican authorities and, in complicity with the Colombian government, illegally expelled from the country back to his native Colombia, where he remains imprisoned under trumped up charges. I wish to express my solidarity with him and demand his immediate release. For further discussion of the MLN see also, Zolov, Eric “¡Cuba sí, Yanquis no!: The Sacking of the Instituto Cultural México/Norteamericano in Morella, Michoacán, 1961” in Joseph, Gilbert M. and Spenser, Daniela eds., In From the Cold: Latin Americans New Encounter with the Cold War (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), pp. 214–252.Google Scholar

90. AGN, DFS, FPPM, 48–1–61, L15 H204 and 205, Mexico City, July 9, 1961.

91. La Jornada, May 30, 2002. Relations between the Federacionistas Leales and the MLN remain an unresolved historical question that merits further research.

92. This characterization is direcdy opposed to the current historiography in which Nava and his movement have been considered precursors in the struggle for democracy in the second half of the twentieth century.

93. AGN, RP, Adolfo López Mateos (ALM), 559/2, “Aviso,” July 21, 1961.

94. Terán, , “El levantamiento,” p. 132.Google Scholar

95. AGN, DIPS, Box 2936/A, Memorándum of the Procuraduría General de la República, July 3, 1962.

96. Ibid.

97. For example, in a letter to Gasea, he was warned “there was a gathering of Catholics in Puebla on June 4. The majority of campesinos have become discouraged because they think that our cause attacks the church, and for that reason we have to visit all the towns to let them know that we arc not Communists.” AGN, DFS, 48–1–61, L18, H31, undated letter.

98. Novedades, September 24, 1961.

99. AGN, DFS, FPPM, 48–1–61, L16, H93, memorandum dated September 10, 1961, signed by Manuel Rangel Escamiila.

100. Política, September 15, 1961. Both the Unión Nacional Sinarquista and the Partido Nacionalista Mexicano distanced themselves from the insurrection. Ruiz, Edgar González MURO, Memorias y testimonios 1961–2002 (Mexico: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, 2004), p. 316.Google Scholar

101. According to U.S. Embassy reports, there were books about guerrilla warfare by Gasea himself and Guevara, Che Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files. Mexico: Internal Affairs 1960–1963 (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1999),Google Scholar 712.00/9–1661, telegram from the Embassy in Mexico City to the State Department, September 16, 1961. (Hereafter, Confidential.)

102. AGN, DFS, FPPM, 48–1–61, L16, H124–143, September 14, 1961.

103. Confidential, 712.00/9–1661, telegram from the Embassy in Mexico City to the State Department, September 16, 1961.

104. AGN, DFS, FPPM, 48–1–61, L17, H177, memorandum dated September 15, 1961; Confidential, 712.00/9–1861, report by the Consulate in Veracruz, September 18, 1961.

105. The information about the state of Veracruz is taken from a report by the U.S. Consulate in Veracruz to the State Department, Confidential, 712.00/ 9–1861, September 18, 1961.

106. The police reports note that “approximately 200 heads of households, all of them campesinos, wooed by David García Rodriguez, Ejido Commissioner, and Daniel Nava, a construction worker, had joined the Gasquista group in order to try to take the Presidio de Perote fort with a group from Tenextepec.” AGN, DFS, FPPM, 48–1–61, L17, H97, report dated September 18, 1961.

107. Blanco R, “El levantamiento”; Confidential, 712.00/ 9–1861, September 18, 1961.

108. In a report by the DFS it is noted that Gallegos was a veteran of the revolution. AGN, DFS, 48–1–61, L17, H43, September 17, 1961. It is possible that he was in contact with the organization of Antonio Caballero.

109. Política, October 1, 1961

110. AGN, DFS, FPPM, L17, H176, memorandum dated September 15, 1961.

111. de León, García Fronteras interiores, p. 95.Google Scholar

112. AGN, DFS, FPPM, 48–1–61, L17, H31, memorandum dated September 15, 1961.

113. AGN, DFS, FPPM, 48–1–61, L17, H145, telegram dated September 20, 1961.

114. AGN, DFS, FPPM, 48–1–61, L16, H39 and L17 H116, August 30, 1961 and September 21, 1961.

115. Confidential, 712.00/9–2761, report of the U.S. Consul in Monterrey to the State Department, September 27, 1961.

116. El Universal, September 17, 1961.

117. Política, October 1, 1961.

118. Ibid.

119. According to a police report, the Federacionistas had a national membership of 4,580 persons, of whom 1,400 were coordinators and 3,180 were “helpers.” Enfoque (supplement to Reforma), June 16, 2002.

120. A former school teacher and guerrillero leader, Lucio Cabañas was interviewed in the 1970s by the Spanish journalist Luis Suárez. This interview was published in Suárez, Luis, Lucio Cabanas, el guerrillero sin esperanza (Mexico: Roca, 1976),Google Scholar and is cited in Scmo, “El ocaso.”