Mesoamerica:
The Neocolonial Era
Compiled by Brad R Huber
Special Thanks to Carmack, Gasco, and Gossen’s
The Legacy of Mesoamerica (2nd edition)
Introduction:
• During the Colonial period, Mesoamerican
Indians were:
• segregated into isolated rural communities,
• deprived of native leadership at regional
and national levels, and
• sorely exploited by the colonial ruling class.
19th Century: From Independence to Dictatorship
• Modern states emerged between 1810 and 1825.
• The old viceroyalty of Mexico became the new
nation of Mexico.
• The old Captaincy General of Guatemala broken
up into
• Guatemala,
• Honduras,
• El Salvador,
• Nicaragua, and
• Costa Rica.
• Many thousands of Indian villages, especially in
Yucatan, Chiapas, and Oaxaca, and in Guatemala
Centralism, Federalism, Caudillos, and Caciques
• Authority systems were local, not national.
• New nations were somewhat fictional.
Centralists
• Centralists were Creole elites living in capital cities
and provincial capitals.
• Aristocracy of land, army, and church
• Linked by ties of kinship and common interests
• Usually supported central authority,
conservatism, the clergy, and large landholding
interests.
Federalists
• Skeptical of the centralist vision.
• Politically liberal, valuing individual and
• regional expressions of self-interest.
• Associated with presidencies of
• Benito Juarez of Mexico (1854-1862; 18671872), and
• Justo Rufino Barrios of Guatemala (1873-1885)
• Federalists favored:
• the secular state and
• diminished power for the Catholic Church.
Centralist/Conservative periods
• Emphasis on urban centers and access to port cities.
• Wealth flowed from countryside to cities and abroad.
• Centralists emphasized communication and
transportation infrastructure.
Federalist/Liberal periods
• Extension of political and social participation to broader
sectors of society.
Both Centralists and Federalists
• committed to positivist agenda of progress via economic
growth and applied science.
The Rule of Caudillos and Caciques
• Caudillos: regional strong men supported by army
• Caciques were authoritarian rulers at the
community level
• Caudillos and caciques tied together with ritual
kinship links.
• Caudillos (Patrons) were godparents, patrons,
and protectors of Caciques’ (clients’) children.
• Clients owed absolute loyalty to patrons.
Forces Leading To Stable Dictatorship
1. French Positivism
a. emphasized progress and modernization through
science and reason and ideas of social evolution
b. was influential in Mesoamerica during 19th century.
2. Capitalist development with relatively few regulatory
constraints became policy of both liberals and
conservatives.
3. Applied scientists and technicians, known as científicos
(scientists)
a. were essential for the creation of commercial
infrastructure that made economic progress possible.
b. Científicos were comprised of Creole and mestizo
stock within the region as well as 10s of 1000s from
Western Europe and United States.
4. All of the científicos, plus high-ranking army
officers of mestizo background were admitted to
the elite Creole economic, political, and social
networks.
5. New Railroads, telegraph lines, port facilities,
roads, cotton, henequen, coffee, and bananas
a. needed waves of nonprofessionals from
Europe, Asia, and West Indians.
b. Chinese helped with railroads.
c. North Americans preferred West Indians who
spoke English over Spanish speakers on Banana
plantations.
Liberalist and Positivist ideologies
1. led to the displacement of millions of rural
poor, both mestizos and Indians.
2. Policy of privatization of communal property,
which was then used for coffee, henequen,
banana, and beef.
3. Debt slavery on large cattle ranches and
commercial agricultural operations became
common.
4. Debts occurred for food, housing, and
emergency cash needs.
5. Great numbers of displaced rural people fled
to anonymity of cities.
Mesoamericans and the Independence Movements
1. Independence movements were led primarily by
creoles
a. in order to retain political privileges over Indian
peasants and mestizo masses
b. who might otherwise rebel against colonial rule.
c. At time of Independence, there were 2 million
mestizos and 5 million Indians in Mesoamerica,
but only 120,000 creoles.
Hidalgo and the Mexican Independence
Movement
1. Great hero of Independence was Father Miguel
Hidalgo,
a. whose name is recalled each September 15:
b. Hidalgo’s cry “Mexicanos, viva Mexico”.
2. In 1810, he incited his followers in Dolores parish in
the Bajío to rebel against French usurpers of the Spanish
Crown and to strike for independence.
a. He was Creole, and wanted Creole rule in Mexico.
b. 10s of 1000s of Indians and creoles joined him
because they wanted to end tributes, forced labor,
discrimination, landlessness, and political subjugation.
c. Virgin Mary was symbol that united them.
3. Hidalgo’s rebellion was viewed as an Indian uprising
at the time, so creoles abandoned it.
a. Supported by Nahua and Otomí speakers who
were exposed to proletarianism (wage earning) in the
West.
b. Native peoples south of the Bajío in central and
southern Mexico largely rejected Hidalgo’s call to
arms.
i. Central and South Mexicans came from
stronger peasant communities with traditional
Mesoamerican cultures;
ii. they had sufficient land at that point in time.
c. After Hidalgo’s death, Jose Maria Morelos recruited
mestizos and mulattoes from lowland zones of
Michoacán and Guerrero
d. Agustín de Iturbide, a Creole military official and
creoles took possession of Mexico City in September
1821.
e. They tried to revive the colonial system.
Central America
1. experienced no large Hidalgo-type nativistic movement
2. but many Indian rebellions broke out prior to
independence and indirectly contributed to
independence from Spain
a. For example, the Atanasio Tzul rebellion.
i. Immediate cause was the refusal of the Quiché Maya
Indians of San Miguel Totonicapán to pay tributes.
ii. In 1816, the community’s Indian alcalde, Atanasio
Tzul, refused to collect the tributes for the crown.
iii. By 1820, the larger Totonicapán area rebelled and
Atanasio Tzul became the focal point.
iv. He was crowned king of the Quiché.
v. But his reign was short-lived.
vi. He was captured but pardoned several months later.
vii. Nonetheless, it was a true premeditated conspiracy that
could have easily become a general insurrection.
Mesoamerican Indians Under Liberal Rule
1. The Indians
a. Were less economically diversified than the Mestizos,
b. most of them worked in agriculture as either peasant
cultivators or hacienda peons.
2. Beginning with the Bourbon reforms, Mesoamerican
Indians were under pressure from the liberal faction of the
creoles to assimilate into the wider colonial.
3. Indians were forced to:
a. adopt the Spanish language,
b. become orthodox Catholics,
c. work for wages, and
d. replace native practices and beliefs with Western
ways.
4. In contrast, the Conservative faction of the
Creoles
a. benefitted from keeping the Indians as an
inferior caste,
b. tended to oppose reforms that would modify
their native social condition.
c. Most Mesoamerican Indians preferred the
conservative centralism to liberal federalism.
d. For example, consider, Momostenango, Guatemala:
i. Momostenango was a rather marginal province of
the Quiche Maya empire during prehispanic times.
ii. After independence, the Momostenango Indians
rallied behind the Mestizo Caudillo Rafael Carrera,
and helped him seize the presidency in the 1840s.
iii. They served him as client soldiers and tributaries
in exchange for considerable political and cultural
autonomy.
iv. As late as the 1860s, the ancient pattern of rural
clans and cantons had remained intact.
v. So had customary law.
e. In the 1870s, Justo Rufino Barrios carried out liberal
reforms
i. with the loss of nearly half of Momostenango’s
best agricultural lands, and
ii. forced labor of 1000s on new Pacific coffee
plantations.
iii. Momostenango Indians rose up against liberal
authority in 1876 to preserve traditional way of
life.
iv. The rebellion was quashed, and M’s Indians were
subjected to years of suffocating control under a
series of liberal dictators.
Nativistic Movements in the Mesoamerican Region
1. Mexico and Central America have experienced 100s of
nativistic movements comprised of social criticism,
political activism, and violent protest.
2. Caste War of Yucatan was a nativistic movement.
3. Yaqui Wars were another. Yaqui Indians of Sonora,
Mexico.
a. The Yaqui fiercely resisted conquest by Spaniards
b. remained outside colonial control until voluntarily
submitting to the authority of Jesuit missionaries in
early part of 17th century.
c. For 120 years they lived peacefully in model villages
organized by Jesuits, and governed by their own native
authorities.
d. First major Yaqui rebellion took place in 1828 in
response to liberals attempting to subject Yaqui to local,
regional, and national authorities, and divide their land
into individual plots.
e. Eventually, the area became surrounded by Mexican
mines, haciendas, and ranches, and the Yaqui were
drawn increasingly into wage labor.
f. Cajemé organized an openly nativistic strategy to
i. revitalize their ancient communal land tenure
system,
ii. calendar of rituals, and
iii. council form of government.
iv. He was executed in 1887
v. In 1903, after years of guerrilla warfare, Diaz
deported 1000s of Yaqui men women and
children to Yucatan and other areas of southern
Mexico.
vi. Many fled to Tucson, Arizona.
Growing U.S. Influence In The Region
1. Texas was annexed in 1845, and
2. In 1846, the United States invaded Mexico with the
excuse of collecting debts owed its citizens from the time
of the independence wars.
3. After occupying Mexico City, Mexico ceded the U.S.
half of its territory (Treaty of Guadalupe).
4. Diaz made it legal for U.S. citizens to own property in
Mexico, and gave U.S. companies contracts to build
major rail lines throughout the country.