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The Fragile Revolution: Cacique Politics and Revolutionary Process in Yucatán

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Gilbert M. Joseph
Gilbert M. Joseph*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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It is a paradox that historians of the Mexican Revolution have paid so little attention to the complex social phenomenon that has come to be called caciquismo. Caciques—for the moment, let us identify them as local bosses, strongmen, or chiefs—were such a plague on the Mexican rural populace during the porfiriato that “Mueran los caciques!” took its place alongside “Tierra y libertad!” and “México para los mexicanos!” as the central rallying cries of the 1910 Revolution. Moreover, it is difficult to refute John Womack's proposition that to capture the intent of Madero's slogan “Sufragio efectivo y no reelección,” still the first commandment of the Institutionalized Revolution, it should properly be rendered: “A real vote and no boss rule.” Now, though only recently, a steadily increasing number of studies at the regional level by historians and social scientists is beginning to document that the epic Revolution found its energies in the small towns and villages and that the millions who fought, although primarily moved by the promise of land reform, were more immediately preoccupied with the related problem of breaking the political and economic stranglehold of the local power-brokers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , 1980 , pp. 39 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by Latin American Research Review

Footnotes

*

Research for much of this article was conducted in Yucatán and Mexico City with the assistance of a grant from the Social Science Research Council. I am indebted to Ramón Chacón (California State University, Humboldt) for sharing data, to D. A. Brading (University of Cambridge) and the other participants of the April 1977 conference at the University of Cambridge on “Peasant and Caudillo in Modern Mexico,” and to Barry Carr (La Trobe University), for sharing their insights and critiquing an earlier draft.

References

Notes

1. Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York, 1969), p. 55.

2. Lewis, Life in a Mexican Village: Tepoztlán Restudied (Urbana, 1951), p. 51; Goldkind, “Class Conflict and Cacique,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 22: 4 (Winter 1966): 341–42; Azuela, The Underdogs, tr. F. K. Hendricks (San Antonio, 1963), pp. 189–91, and The Bosses, tr. L. B. Simpson (Berkeley, 1970). Cf. the essays in Roger Bartra, ed., Caciquismo y poder político en el México rural (México, 1975), which argue that the logic of capitalist development has strategically allied caciquismo with the forces of imperialism and latifundismo.

3. San José de Gracia: Mexican Village in Transition, tr. John Upton (Austin, 1974), p. 144.

4. Pedro Martínez, A Mexican Peasant and His Family (New York, 1964), pp. 75–77, 84.

5. DdY, 13 Nov. 1975, p. 1.

6. Paul Friedrich, “A Mexican Cacicazgo,” Ethnology 4:2 (Apr. 1965): 192.

7. Hugh Hamill, ed. Dictatorship in Spanish America (New York, 1965), pp. 10–11; François Chevalier, “‘Caudillos’ et ‘caciques’ en Amérique,” Bulletin Hispanique 64 bis (1962), p. 33; Ricardo E. Alegría, “Origin and Diffusion of the Term ‘Cacique,‘” Selected Papers of the XXIX International Congress of Americanists, ed. Sol Tax (Chicago, 1952), pp. 313–16. For an understanding of how the meaning of the term evolved throughout the colonial period and the nineteenth century, also see Robert Gilmore, Caudillism and Militarism in Venezuela, 1810–1910 (Athens, Ohio, 1964), pp. 3–13; Eric Wolf and Edward Hansen, “Caudillo Politics: A Structural Analysis,” Journal of Comparative Studies in Society and History 9:2 (1967): 177–79; Richard M. Morse, “Toward a Theory of Spanish American Government,” Journal of the History of Ideas 15 (1954):79; and Tulio Halperín-Donghi, “El surgimiento de los caudillos en el marco de la sociedad rioplatense postrevolucionaria,” Estudios de la historia social 1 (Buenos Aires, 1965).

8. Much as Eul-Soo Pang, “The Politics of Coronelismo in Brazil: The Case of Bahia, 1889–1930” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California at Berkeley, 1969), pp. 45–55, established a broad, seven-fold, functional typology of Brazilian coronéis, the student of Spanish American caciquismo might profit diagnostically by constructing a similar model. Pang's types include: coronel-landlord, merchant, industrialist, priest, warlord (“a coronel of coronéis,” comparable to a Spanish American caudillo), cangaceiro (social bandit), and party cadre. Indeed, with the possible exception of the coronel-priest, these Brazilian types would find counterparts in the existing literature on Spanish American caciques. Moreover, the studies of anthropologists Ricardo Pozas and Henning Siverts for Chiapas, and my own research on Yucatán, suggest that the increasingly powerful revolutionary maestro (rural schoolteacher) and the dictatorial ladino “secretary” or “agent” in isolated Indian communities might also qualify as possible Mexican cacique types. Pozas, Juan the Chamula, tr. Lysander Kemp (Berkeley, 1962), pp. 79–83; Siverts, “On Politics and Leadership in Highland Chiapas,” in E. Z. Vogt and Alberto Ruz, Desarrollo cultural de los mayas (México, 1964), pp. 367–68, 374–76. As with the generic term “peasant,” social scientists continue to debate the merits of a broad or narrow construction of “cacique.” For the problems of defining such terms, see Henry Landsberger, “The Role of Peasant Movements and Revolts in Development,” in Landsberger, ed. Latin American Peasants (Ithaca, 1969), pp. 3–5.

9. Paul Friedrich, “The Legitimacy of a Cacique,” in Marc J. Swartz, ed., Local Level Politics (Chicago, 1968), p. 247.

10. Wolf, “Aspects of Group Relations in a Complex Society: Mexico,” American Anthropologist 58 (1956): 1015–78; Siverts, “The ‘Cacique’ of K'ankujk,” Estudios de cultura maya (México), 5 (1965):339–60; Bartra, ed., Caciquismo, pp. 48–49, 139–47 and passim. I have attempted to flesh out the central features of this definition in “Caciquismo and Revolutionary Process: An Analysis and a Yucatecan Case Study,” in D. A. Brading and Jean Meyer, eds., Peasant and Caudillo in Modern Mexico (Cambridge, U.K., forthcoming). For a slightly different definition of caciquismo, see Robert Kern and Ronald Dolkart, eds., The Caciques (Albuquerque, 1973).

11. Hamill, Dictatorship, pp. 10–11.

12. For example, cf. the distinction between the “caudillo” and the “cacique” found in Fernando N. A. Cuevillas, “El régimen del caudillaje en Hispanoamérica,” Boletín del Instituto de Sociología (Buenos Aires) 11 (1953):60–75.

13. Zapata, p. 72.

14. Ibid., pp. 73, 81–82, 111, 131.

15. The following discussion draws heavily upon chaps. 6, 7, and 8 of my larger treatment “Revolution from Without: The Mexican Revolution in Yucatan, 1915–1940 (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1978), which contains extensive bibliographic references and more complete documentation of events than space will permit here.

16. John K. Turner, Barbarous Mexico (Chicago, 1910), pp. 9–66; Henry Baerlein, Mexico, Land of Unrest (Philadelphia, 1914), pp. 143–98; Frederick J. T. Frost and Channing Arnold, The American Egypt (New York, 1909); Salvador Alvarado, Actuación revolucionaria del General Salvador Alvarado en Yucatán (México, 1965): Friedrich Katz, “Labor Conditions on Porfirian Haciendas: Some Trends and Tendencies,” HAHR 54:1 (Feb. 1974):14_23, 44–47.

17. AGE, Felipe Ayala M. to Felipe Carrillo Puerto, 21 March 1922. Sucúm is Yucatec Maya for “our big brother,” a term of great respect and affection, which Carrillo's status as Yucatán's regional caudillo warranted and the use of which he openly encouraged. Cf. the very personal, kinship-oriented terms of respect that are used to address caciques in Tzeltal Chiapas (mamtik, “respected grandfather”) and Tarascan Michoacán (tata, “father”). “The ‘Cacique’ of K'ankujk,” p. 356; Friedrich, “A Mexican Cacicazgo,” p. 153.

18. E.g., Renán Irigoyen, Felipe Carrillo Puerto (Mérida, 1973), pp. 6, 18–19, 39; R. A. Sosa Ferreyro, El crimen del miedo (México, 1969), pp. 25–29; Antonio Betancourt Pérez, “Nuestro viejo abuelo,” RUY 85 (Jan.–Feb. 1973):66–67. For having sent Lenin's embattled Soviet regime shipments of food and medical supplies in 1920, a street in Moscow was named after Yucatán's revolutionary governor.

19. “Poemas de Elmer Lianes Marín,” Orbe (Mérida) 44 (Dec. 1955):98.

20. For Carrillo Puerto's mythologized portrayal in the traditional historiography, see Joseph, “Revolution from Without,” chaps. 6, 8; cf. the June 1974 issue of the popular satirical comic book, Los Agachados, entitled “Felipe Carrillo Puerto: El Salvador Allende Mexicano.”

21. Joseph, “Revolution from Without”; Antonio Betancourt Pérez, El asesinato de Carrillo Puerto (Mérida, 1974), esp. pp. 17–28; Irigoyen, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, p. 41; Alma Reed, “Felipe Carrillo Puerto,” BdU 4:1 (June 1924): 20–21; J. W. F. Dulles, Yesterday in Mexico (Austin, 1961), p. 231; Sosa Ferreyro, El crimen, pp. 42, 115; Rosa Castro, “Sobre la ruta de Carrillo Puerto, el Mesías de Motul,” Hoy, 15 March 1952.

22. Gilbert M. Joseph, “Apuntes hacia una nueva historia regional: Yucatán y la Revolución Mexicana, 1915–1940,” RUY 19:109 (Jan.–Feb. 1977): 12–35.

23. Acrelio Carrillo Puerto, La familia Carrillo Puerto de Motul (Mérida, 1959), pp. 11–12, 23–32; interview with Felipe Carrillo's sister, Angelina Carrillo Puerto de Triay Esperón, 7 Nov. 1975; Frank Tannenbaum, Peace by Revolution (New York, 1933), p. 159.

24. Carrillo Puerto, La familia, pp. 31–32; cf. Womack, Zapata, pp. 3–9.

25. AGE, Jacinto Cohuich to Alvarado, 20 Dec. 1916; AGE, Víctor J. Manzanilla and Rafael E. Matos to Alvarado, 30 Aug. 1917. Bernardino Mena Brito, Reestructuración histórica de Yucatán 3 (México, 1969), p. 301, points out that during the early part of his political career, Carrillo enjoyed the protection of perhaps the most powerful Yucatecan boss of his time, Gen. Francisco Cantón.

26. New York Times, 16 Sept. 1923, p. 10; AGE, Gov. Manuel Berzunza to Subsrio. de Gobernación, 16 Mar. 1921; cf. Paul Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1970), pp. 79–90.

27. Carrillo Puerto, La familia, pp. 80–115.

28. José Vasconcelos, El desastre: Tercera parte de Ulises Criollo (México, 1968), p. 86; Dulles, Yesterday, pp. 57, 77–78, 121, 136–37.

29. AGE, typescript, “Que el Gobierno de Yucatán fomenta el bolshevismo en México y en Cuba,” n.d. (1924); RdY 28 July 1924, p. 1; Alfonso Taracena, La Verdadera Revolución Mexicana 9 (México, 1965), pp. 42, 123. Also see the warm cable correspondence between Calles and Carrillo in the AGE's special “Telegramas” files for 1922 and 1923.

30. RDS, 812.00/25188; SD-CPR, Confidential Correspondence, 1917 to 1935 (hereafter cited as Con. Corr.), File 800, Marsh to Secretary of State, 29 Sept. 1921; AGN, 424-H-2, María del Pilar Pech to Manuel Carpio, 8 Jan. 1921; RdY, 21 Feb. 1921, pp. 1–2.

31. P, 8 Mar. 1923, pp. 1, 4; Francisco Paoli B., “Carrillo Puerto y el PSS,” RUY 16:91 (Jan.–Feb. 1974):87–91; Ernest Gruening, Mexico and Its Heritage (New York, 1928), pp. 404–5; Marjorie R. Clark, Organized Labor in Mexico (Chapel Hill, 1934), p. 208.

32. Paoli, “Carrillo Puerto,” p. 89; AGE, Rafael Gamboa to Felipe Carrillo Puerto, 3 Mar. 1923; RdY, 28 July 1924, p. 1.

33. For some of the religious images and symbols captured in the “martyrological” treatments of Carrillo Puerto, see Betancourt Pérez, “Nuestro abuelo,” p. 67; Eduardo Urzáiz, “El simbolismo de la Resurrección,” BdU 4:1 (June 1924):6–8; Irigoyen, “Carrillo Puerto, Mártir de la cultura,” RUY 1:1 (Jan.–Feb. 1959):20–23.

34. AGE, Jacinto Cohuich, Nicolás Sánchez, and others to Alvarado, 20 Dec. 1916; Carrillo Puerto, La familia, pp. 28–31.

35. Sosa Ferreyro, El crimen, pp. 31ff; Luis Monroy Durán, El último caudillo (México, 1924), p. 477.

36. RDS, 812.00/25068; SD-CPR, Corr., 1924, vol. 3, File 350, “Declaration of Manuel López,” n.d. (1921); AGE, Berzunza to Procurador General de Justicia, 27 June 1921; AGE “Relación de los departamentos administrativos del Estado…, ” 23 Sept. 1924 (see especially the category entitled “localidades deshabitadas”); RdY, 7 Nov. 1920, p. 1, 21 Dec. 1920, p. 1, 10 June 1922, p. 5.

37. Joseph, “Revolution from Without,” chaps. 6, 7, and 8; cf. Bartra, “Caciquismo,” p. 39.

38. E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (New York, 1959), pp. 3–6, 13–56; Friedrich Katz, “Labor Conditions,” pp. 44–45; Moisés González Navarro, Raza y tierra (México, 1970), p. 231.

39. The chart summarizes disparate data uncovered during the course of systematic year-by-year archival (e.g., AGE, AGN, RDS, SD-CPR) and press research (RdY, DdY, P, C, La Voz) for the 1915–40 period. Documentary evidence was corroborated, in several cases, by interviewing at the local level. Due to the sensitive political nature of these interviews, the names of these informants will not appear in print.

40. SD-CPR, Corr., 1921, 4, 800, newsclipping of editorial from RdY, 24 June 1921, p. 1; RdY, 10 June 1922, p. 5; AGE, Memoria from vecinos of Yaxcabá to President, Liga Central de Resistencia, 25 Aug. 1920; AGE, Bartolomé García Correa, President, Liga Central to Gov. Iturralde, 2 Oct. 1925.

41. AGE, Municipal President, Sotuta, to Carrillo Puerto, 10 Oct. 1920; AGE, Municipal President, Dzán, to Carrillo Puerto, 3 Oct. 1922; RdY, 12 Nov. 1920, p. 2, 11 Aug. 1921, p. 1; P, 21 Mar. 1923, p. 1.

42. RdY, 19 Apr. 1922, p. 5; AGN, 408-Y-1, José B. Garma to Obregón, 9 Mar. 1922; AGN, 428-Y-3, Carmela Aragón to Obregón, 26 July 1922; RDS, 812.00/25608, 25654; AGE, “Circular núm. 27, a los CC. Presidentes y Comisarios Municipales …,” 11 Aug. 1924; P, 27 Mar. 1923, p. 1, 4 Apr. 1923, pp. 1, 4. Also see DO for the years 1922–23, when the frequent replacement of municipal governments by order of the governor, in conjunction with other evidence, suggests that Felipe often strengthened an opposing faction at the expense of the incumbent cacicazgo.

43. RdY, 27 Mar. 1920, p. 3, 6 May 1921, pp. 1–2, 31 Oct. 1922, p. 5; DO, 3 Jan. 1922, p. 2; Sosa Ferreyro, El crimen, pp. 54–55.

44. C, 21 Apr. 1923, pp. 1–2, 13 Oct. 1923, pp. 1, 4, 1 Dec. 1923, pp. 1–2, 4; RdY, 13 July 1920, p. 3, 19 Nov. 1923, p. 3.

45. AGE, Municipal President, Tahmek, to Liga Central, 11 June 1919; AGE, Miguel Cantón to Carrillo Puerto, 21 Dec. 1920, Cantón to Carrillo, 28 Mar. 1921; AGE, Vecinos of Dzilnup to Carrillo, 11 Dec. 1922; RdY, 12 Mar. 1919, p. 7, 21 Feb. 1920; C, 15 Nov. 1923, p. 1; Goldkind, “Class Conflict,” pp. 333–44.

46. AGE, Decree by Carrillo Puerto amending el estado seco, 14 June 1923; AGE, Regidor, Ayuntamiento de Umán, to Gov. Carrillo, 29 June 1922.

47. AGE, Felipe Carrillo authorizes García Correa's concession, 28 Mar. 1923; AGE, El Oficial Mayor Segundo, Sría, de Fomento, Dpto. de Colonización, to Carrillo, 20 Nov. 1922; RdY, 18 Aug. 1921, p. 3; AGE, Cantón to Braulio Euán, 26 Aug. 1921.

48. AGE, Circular from Benjamín Carrillo Puerto, Secretary of the Liga Central, to “compañeros,” n.d. (1923); C, 23 Nov. 1923, p. 1; Tierra, 27 May 1923, p. 22; P, 10 July 1922, p. 1, 12 July 1922, pp. 1, 4; RdY, 12 Sept. 1921, p. 1.

49. Joseph. “Revolution from Without,” chap. 6; RDS, 812.61326/254, 812.00/22315, 22887; Manuel M. Escoffié, Yucatán en la cruz (Mérida, 1957), pp. 197–203; and see the frequent accounts of violence, “bandolerismo,” and “caciquismo” in C and RdY during the 1918–23 period.

50. AGE, “Relación de las Ligas de Resistencia … adscritas a la … Liga Central del Gran Partido Socialista del Sureste …,” 1 Sept. 1922; Felipe Carrillo Puerto, “New Yucatán,” Survey 52 (1 May 1924): 141. Cf. Dulles, Yesterday, p. 137, who estimates League membership to be as high as ninety thousand.

51. DO, 13 Mar. 1922; RdY, 23 Mar. 1922, p. 3; Vasconcelos, El desastre, p. 69; Ernest Gruening, Un viaje al Estado de Yucatán (Guanajuato, 1924), p. 14; Acrelio Carrillo Puerto, La familia, p. 31; Sosa Ferreyro, El crimen, pp. 24, 29.

52. Irigoyen, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, pp. 21–27; Castro, “Sobre la ruta,” Hoy, 15 Mar. 1952, pp. 27, 66; P, 9 Mar. 1923, p. 1.

53. C, 15 Dec. 1923, p. 1; cf. Sosa Ferreyro, El crimen, pp. 107–110.

54. RdY, 17 Dec. 1923, p. 1.

55. Ibid.; AGE, President, Liga de Opichén, to Iturralde, 17 Feb. 1925.

56. RdY, 24 Apr. 1924, p. 1; cf. RdY, 18 Dec. 1923, p. 1.

57. Mena Brito, Reestructuración 3:336; Betancourt Pérez, El asesinato, p. 50.

58. Primitive Rebels, pp. 26–28.

59. RdY, 13 Dec. 1923, p. 1, 18 Dec. 1923, p. 6. Joseph, “Revolution from Without,” chap. 9, discusses the decline in the vitality and organization of the ligas following the defeat of delahuertismo and the reinstatement of PSS rule in 1924–25; cf. Victor Goldkind, “Social Stratification in the Peasant Community: Redfield's Chan Kom Reinterpreted,” American Anthropologist 67 (1965):879–80, for the ligas in the early 1930s.

60. RdY, 7 Dec. 1923, p. 1, 8 Dec. 1923, p. 1, 11 Dec. 1923, p. 6; AGE, “Ejército Revolucionario (i.e., delahuertista), Documentos de entrega de la Comandancia Militar,” Apr. 1924; Betancourt Pérez, El asesinato, pp. 31–32.

61. “Militarización de las Ligas de Resistencia será desconocida la que no presente un sección cuando menos bien organizada,” RdY, 12 Dec. 1923, p. 2.

62. RdY, 17 Aug. 1923, p. 3; Loló de la Torriente, Memoria y razón de Diego Rivera 2 (México, 1959), pp. 225–28.

63. E.g., see AGE, 1920, for petitions from various pueblos and campesino groups for the return of their shotguns; AGE, Felipe Ayala, President of the Liga de Resistencia “Eulogio Rosado,” to Carrillo Puerto, 21 Mar. 1922.

64. SD-CPR, Con. Corr., 800, Marsh to Secretary of State, 11 Dec. 1923, Álvaro Gamboa Ricalde, Yucatán desde 1910 3 (México, 1955), p. 345.

65. Betancourt Pérez, El asesinato, pp. 20–22; Irigoyen, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, pp. 36–37.

66. Fidelio Quintal Martín, “Quince años trascendentales en la historia de Yucatán,” RUY 93 (May-Aug. 1974), 130–31; AGN, 428-Y-5, Federico Carlos León to Obregón, 28 Apr. 1924; AGN, 428-Y-5, Elvia Carrillo Puerto to Obregón, 2 Sept. 1924; AGN, 428-Y-5, Pedro Lugo Z. et al. to Obregón, 3 Sept. 1924; AGN, 101-R2-4, José de la Luz Mena to Obregón, 13 May 1924.

67. See Joseph, “Revolution from Without,” chap. 8. The Cambridge University conference on “Peasant and Caudillo in Modern Mexico” (Apr. 1977), in which the author participated, also arrived at this conclusion.

68. Cf. Heather Fowler Salamini, Agrarian Radicalism in Veracruz, 1920–1938 (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1978), pp. 108–40; Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt, pp. 124–30; and the chapters by Dudley Ankerson (San Luis Potosí) and Ian Jacobs (Guerrero) in Brading and Meyer, eds. Peasant and Caudillo. It should be noted that the Figueroas have once more reasserted their power in Guerrero.

69. Joseph, “Revolution from Without,” chap. 8.