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Confraternities and Popular Conservatism on the Frontier: Mexico’s Sierra del Nayarit in the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

K. Aaron van Oosterhout
K. Aaron van Oosterhout*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
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Extract

I’ve passed two frightful years due to this same gang, and was even robbed by them,” wrote the priest Dámaso Martínez on September 29, 1857. “I suffered all of this, but did not think my own life was in danger. Today, this is not the case. … I believe the Indians have sold my life to them.

During the nine months prior to the writing of this report to the Guadalajara See, the parishioners of Santa Maria del Oro had presented a series of demands for money in the priest’s possession. Some 400 pesos had been gained from the forced sale of their lay brotherhood’s property, and they wanted the money so they could buy back the land. By August 1857, however, the parishioners’ attempts at legitimate reclamation, through both ecclesiastical and civil channels, had ended in disappointment. Rumors had long circulated that these Indian parishioners were allied with a prominent gang leader in the region, Manuel Lozada. Thus it likely came as little surprise when Martinez found himself huddled in his church in late September as Lozada’s gang ringed the town, accompanied by the town’s prominent Indians, and demanded that the priest and the local magistrate come out and surrender. Martinez was rescued only by the intervention of state troops, who scattered Lozada’s gang and allowed the priest to flee.

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Research Article
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The Americas , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , July 2014 , pp. 101 - 130
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014

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References

I thank Benjamin Smith and the anonymous reviewers and editorial board of The Americas for their comments on the various drafts of this article. I also thank the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for funding my research in Mexico.

1. Archivo Histórico de la Arquidiócesis de Guadalajara [hereafter AHAG], Gobierno, Parroquias, Santa Maria del Oro, caja 1, carpeta 1849–1857, September 29, 1857. All translations are mine.

2. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Santa Maria del Oro, caja 2, exp. 25, April 20, 1852.

3. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Santa María del Oro, caja 1, carpeta 1856, January 24, 1856. As for Manuel Lozada, he would soon earn the military title of “general,” but here I follow the sources. Prior to the Reform War, parish priests and government officials branded him the leader of a pandilla, or more often the gavilla de Álica (referring to the Sierra de Álica, another term for the Sierra del Nayarit).

4. AHAG, Gob., Parrs., Santa Maria del Oro, caja l, carpeta 1849–1857, September 6, 1859. Martinez’s successor, Fr. Cosme Santa Anna, would also parley with Lozada. AHAG, Gob., Parrs., Santa Maria del Oro, caja l, carpeta 1849–1857, January 20, 1865.

5. Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 94.

6. For “spiritual economy,” I draw on the adapted concept of E. P. Thompson’s “moral economy,” as elaborated by Benjamin Smith and Kevin Gosner on the Mixteca Baja and the Yucatán, respectively. See The Roots of Conservatism in Mexico: Catholicism, Society, and Politics in the Mixteca Baja, 1750–1962 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012), pp. 7–8; and Soldiers of the Virgin: The Moral Economy of a Colonial Maya Rebellion (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992).

7. Mario Aldana Rendón offers the quintessential Marxist interpretation of religion’s claim on the rebellion, calling any adherence to the Church the result of clergy’s “ideological oppression.” Aldana Rendón, La rebelión agraria de Manuel Lozada: 1873 (Mexico: CONAFE, Fondo de Cultura Econòmica, 1983), p. 71. For an example of the late-nineteenth-century literature, see y Zubieta, Salvador Quevedo, Mexico: recuerdos de un emigrado (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1883), pp. 83–85.Google Scholar

8. Silvano Barba González characterized Lozada and the Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata as “authentic and fierce defenders of Mexican agriculture.” González, Barba, La luchaporla tierra: vol. 1, Manuel Lozada (Mexico: Barba González, 1956), p. 109.Google Scholar

9. Meyer, Jean, Esperando a Lozada (Mexico: CONACYT, 1984), pp. 126, 146–160.Google Scholar

10. Brittsan, Zachary, “Not for Lack of Faith: State, Church, and Popular Politics in Midcentury Tepic,” paper presented at the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies, Park City, Utah, March 30, 2012, pp. 2, 9–13 Google Scholar. Brittsan’s two-part argument—composed of both a negative “push” from liberals and a positive “pull” to conservatives—finds its analogue in Thomson, Guy, “La contrarreforma en Puebla, 1854–1886,” in El conservadurismo mexicano en el siglo XIX, Fowler, Will and Morales Moreno, Humberto, eds. (Puebla: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 1999), pp. 243–244.Google Scholar

11. O’Gorman, Edmundo, La supervivencia política novohispana: reflexiones sobre el monarquismo mexicano (Mexico: CONDUMEX, 1969), p. 5 Google Scholar. See also Pani, Erika, ed. Conservadurismo y derechas en la historia de Mexico (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econòmica, 2009)Google Scholar; Hamnett, Brian, “Mexican Conservatives, Clericals, and Soldiers: The ‘Traitor’ Tomás Mejía through Reform and Empire, 1855–1867,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 20:2 (2001), pp. 187–209 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fowler, and Morales, , El conservadurismo mexicano Google Scholar; and Connaughton, Brian F., Dimensiones de la identidad patriótica: religión, política y regiones en México: siglo XIX (Mexico: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Iztapalapa, División de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, 2001)Google Scholar.

12. Fowler, Will and Moreno, Humberto Morales, “Introducción: Una (re)definición del conservadurismo mexicano del siglo diecinueve,” in Fowler, and Morales, , El conservadurismo mexicano, pp. 11–36.Google Scholar

13. Connaughton, Brian F., Clerical Ideology in a Revolutionary Age: The Guadalajara Church and the Idea of the Mexican Nation, 1788–1853, Healey, Mark Alan, trans. (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2003), p. 80 Google Scholar; Connaughton, , Entre la voz de Dios y el llamada de la patria (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econòmica, 2010), pp. 171–202.Google Scholar

14. Pani, Erika, “‘Las fuerzas oscuras’: El problema del conservadurismo en la historia de Mexico,” in Conservadurismo y derechas en la historia de Mexico, Pani, Erika, ed. (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econòmica, 2009), p. 21.Google Scholar

15. Hamnett, “Mexican Conservatives,” p. 190.

16. Guy Thomson also contributes to our understanding of popular Conservatism in his article on the Puebla highlands, in which he discusses loyalty to priests and the significance of confraternity land to conservative bands in the region. Thomson, , “La contrarreforma en Puebla, 1854–1886,” in Fowler, and Morales, , El conservadurismo mexicano, pp. 244, 247 Google Scholar. Outside Mexico, James Sanders provides a comprehensive discussion of “popular indigenous conservatism” in Colombia’s Cauca region. Sanders, , Contentious Republicans: Popular Politics, Race, and Class in Nineteenth-Century Colombia (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

17. Smith, The Roots of Conservatism, pp. 66–67, 174.

18. For “spiritual conquest,” see Robert Ricard’s cristero-era classic The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico: An Essay on the Apostolate and the Evangelizing Methods of the Mendicant Orders in New Spain, 1523–1572, Lesley Byrd Simpson, trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966). For indigenous “resistance” to this conquest, see Balsera, Viviana Díaz, The Pyramid Under the Cross: Franciscan Discourses of Evangelization and the Nahua Christian Subject in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005)Google Scholar; and Ebright, Malcolm and Hendricks, Rick, The Witches ofAbiquiu: The Governor, the Priest, the Genizaro Indians, and the Devil (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

19. For a more developed discussion of historiographical trends in the study of religion, see Nesvig, Martin, “Introduction,” in Local Religion in Colonial Mexico, Nesvig, Martin Austin, ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), pp. xviii–xx Google Scholar.

20. Taylor, William, Shrines and Miraculous Images: Religious Life in Mexico Before the Reforma (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010), p. 166 Google Scholar. For a definition of the term “local religion,” see Christian, William A. Jr., Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 3 Google Scholar. Carlos, M. N. Eire does an excellent job of dissecting the term in “The Concept of Popular Religion,” in Nesvig, , Local Religion in Colonial Mexico, pp. 1–29.Google Scholar

21. Taylor, Shrines, p. 177.

22. O’Hara, Matthew D., A Flock Divided: Race, Religion, and Politics in Mexico, 1749–1857 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 101, 149–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Rugeley, Terry, Rebellion Now and Forever: Mayas, Hispanics, and Caste War Violence in Yucatán, 1800–1880 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), p. 3.Google Scholar

24. Taylor, Shrines, p. 168.

25. Smith, The Roots of Conservatism, p. 10.

26. Butler, Matthew, Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion: Michoacán, 1927–29 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 3.Google Scholar

27. Will Fowler and Humberto Morales Moreno also find that “respect for religion and customs seems to have been … the primary condition for all alliances between towns and highland caudillos.’” Introducción,” in Fowler and Morales, El conservadurismo mexicano en el siglo XIX, p. 30.

28. López Cotilla, Noticias geográficas, p. 134.

29. A number of anthropologists have conducted extensive ethnohistorical research on the Cora and point to the group’s alliance with Lozada. They include Coyle, Philip, From Flowers to Ash: Nàyari History, Politics, and Violence (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Warner, Richard, “An Ethnohistory of the Coras of the Sierra del Nayar, 1600–1830” (Ph.D. diss., University of California-Santa Cruz, 1998)Google Scholar; and Magriñá, Laura, Los coras entre 1531 y 1722: ¿indios de guerra o indios de paz? (Mexico: CONACULTA-INAH, 2002)Google Scholar.

30. Alexander von Humboldt testified to Tepic’s significant tobacco agriculture. For example, see Susan Deans-Smith, Bureaucrats, Planters, and Workers: The Making of the Tobacco Monopoly in Bourbon Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), p. 28. For coffee, see AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Tepic, caja l, January 26, 1859. For silver mining in the hinterlands, see Archivo Histórico de Instrumentos Públicos del Estado de Jalisco [hereafter AHIPEJ], Libros de Gobierno, book 8, fols. 16–23.

31. In addition to sheltering Indian raiders (Cora, in this case), the Sierra del Nayarit remained a Sargasso Sea of Nueva Galicia until the early 1700s, collecting drifters such as runaway slaves, refugees from the various Indian rebellions nearby (such as the Mixtón War of 1541 and the 1616 Tepehuan Revolt), “apostates” from the piedmont missions, and even fugitive Spaniards. See Matías Ángel López de la Mota Padilla, Historia de la conquista del reino de la Nueva Galicia (Guadalajara: Gallardo y Alvarez del Castillo, 1920) p. 507; Juan de Santiago Garabito, “Carta del obispo de Guadalajara …,” Relaciones 18:69 (Winter 1997), p. 86; José de Ortega, S.J., Apostólicos afanes de la Compania de Jesús … (Barcelona: Pablo Nadal, 1754), p. 70; McCarty, Kieran and Marson, Dan S., “Franciscan Report on the Indians of Nayarit, 1673,” Ethnohistory 22:3 (Summer 1975), p. 214 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Delarrosa, Francisco, “Entrada del obispo de Guadalajara en la provincia de los Coras Nayaritas …,” Relaciones 18:69 (winter 1997), p. 82.Google Scholar

32. For tribute exemption, see AHIPEJ, Ramo de Tierras y Aguas, 2a. colección, leg. 23, vol. 70, exp. 6. Such exemption would not last beyond a generation or two, however. Many frontier residents were paying tribute by the late eighteenth century. AGN, Instituciones Coloniales: Indiferente Virreinal, Tributos, caja 2018, exp. 010; ibid., caja 5096, exp. 046.

33. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Santa María del Oro, caja 2, exp. 20, June 23, 1788. Christopher Black situates confraternities within Catholic reform movements of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Black, “Confraternities and the Parish in the Context of Italian Catholic Reform,” in Confraternities and Catholic Reform in Italy, France, and Spain, John Patrick Donnelly and Michael W. Maher, eds. (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 1999), pp. 1–26.

34. Although it is outside the geographic area of this study, the seventeenth-century charter for the Indian pueblo of Tlajomulco, south of Guadalajara, can be found in AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Xalisco, caja 1, exp. 28, November 17, 1672.

35. William Taylor finds a similar distinction throughout Jalisco. Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 304.

36. Delarrosa, “Entrada del obispo,” p. 82.

37. AHIPEJ, Ramo de Tierras y Aguas, 2a. colección, leg. 34, vol. 136, exp. 15. In the Yucatán, Nancy Farriss also finds that confraternities acted principally as mutual-aid societies, with funds going toward tax assistance and financial aid for the disabled, widowed, and indigent. Farriss, Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 266.

38. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Santa María del Oro, caja 2, exp. 20, June 23, 1788.

39. The bulk of confraternities elsewhere in Jalisco were also founded in the first decades of the 1600s. William Taylor and John K. Chance, “Cofradías and Cargos: An Historical Perspective on the Mesoamerican Civil-Religious Hierarchy,” American Ethnologist 12:1 (February 1985), p. 8.

40. In the early to middle colonial period, mayordomos were selected from among Indian town leaders, variously gobernadores, cabecillas, principales, or caciques. For Tepic, see González, Pedro López, Las cofradías en Nayarit: Cap. Juan López Portillo y Rojas, pionero del desarrollo socioeconómico en Tepic en el siglo XVII (Tepic: López González, 1980), p. 15 Google Scholar; For Jalisco, see AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Jalisco, caja 1, exp. 21, April 15, 1626; For Jala, see ibid., Jala, caja 1, exp. 3, January 15, 1707.

41. Ibid.

42. For an examination of this turn of events in Mexico’s capital area, see Costeloe, Michael, Church Wealth in Mexico: A Study of the Juzgado de Capellanías in the Archbishopric of Mexico, 1800–1856 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. A few excellent studies of these complex, macro-level political and cultural shifts include David Brading, Church and State in Bourbon Mexico: The Diocese of Michoacán, 1749–1810 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Pamela Voekel, Alone Before God: The Religious Origins of Modernity in Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002); and Brian Larkin, The Very Nature of God: Baroque Catholicism and Religious Reform in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 2010).

44. See for example AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Jala, caja 1, exp. 18, July 24, 1804.

45. This is an adaptation of John Tutino’s phrase, which he used to describe rural landownership from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth. From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750–1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

46. This challenges Costeloe’s study of the Juzgado de Capellanías, which finds that the Church ramped up divestment of real estate precisely at those moments when federal anticlerical legislation threatened its holdings. As he explains, “From the clerical point of view it was no longer advisable to keep all assets in the easily confiscated form of property.” Costeloe, Church Wealth in Mexico, p. 123. Margaret Chowning, on the other hand, finds the Church in Michoacán actually accumulated property from 1810 to 1840 during that diocese’s long sede vacante, and between 1840 and the Reform divested itself of that property and more. Notably, Chowning finds this latter divestment had more to do with a favorable real estate market than with an unfavorable political environment. Chowning, “The Management of Church Wealth in Michoacán, Mexico, 1810–1856: Economic Motivations and Political Implications,” Journal of Latin American Studies 22:3 (October 1990), pp. 459–496.

47. The seventh article of Jalisco’s 1824 constitution, for example, granted the state government the responsibility of paying clerical salaries, effectively subjecting ecclesiastical finances to state control. The governor assumed the right of patronato (the ability to award benefices) in Decree 30 of 1826, and Decree 151 dismantled communally owned property of “the aforenamed Indians” two years later, in 1828. Even religious festivals were swept up: Decree 76 of 1827 forbade the use of municipal funds to foot the bill for these annual celebrations. For Decree 30, see Colección de los decretos, circulares y órdenes de los poderes legislativo y ejecutivo del Estado de Jalisco, vol. 2 (Guadalajara: Congreso del Estado, XLIX Legislatura de Jalisco, 1981), pp. 237–238; for Decree 151, see Colección de los decretos, vol. 3, pp. 288–292; and for Decree 76, pp. 14–15.

48. O’Hara, A Flock Divided, p. 19.

49. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Jalisco, caja 1, exp. 24, November 28, 1800.

50. Ibid., Jala, caja 1, exp. 11, September 13, 1798.

51. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Jala, caja 1, carpeta August 26, 1777 [sic (September 26, 1777)].

52. In 1826, for instance, Santa Maria del Oro’s Confraternity of Our Lady of the Assumption held 114 head of cattle and 26 horses. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Santa María del Oro, caja 2, exp. 15, April 14, 1826.

53. Taylor and Chance, “Cofradías and Cargos,” p. 14.

54. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Jala, caja 1, exp. 18, July 24, 1804.

55. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Jala, caja 1, carpeta 1826–1827, November 8, 1828.

56. Ibid., carpeta 1802–1838, October 28, 1829.

57. Ibid., caja 2, carpeta 1828–1860, August 9, 1828.

58. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Jala, caja 1, exp. 16, October 31, 1806.

59. Ibid., Santa Maria del Oro, caja 2, exp. 16, March 29, 1827.

60. From 1824 to 1836, when Bishop Diego de Aranda would be appointed to head the diocese. In that interim Bishop José Miguel de Gordoa briefly filled the sede vacante for 11 months in 1831–32.

61. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Jala, caja 1, exp. 8, September 2, 1839.

62. Ibid., Jalisco, caja 1, exp. 26, January 22, 1830.

63. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Santa María del Oro, caja 1, carpeta 1832, December 17, 1831.

64. Ibid., carpeta 1824–1846, I, July 12, 1842. These “transient priests” find their echo in the beatos of the late-nineteenth-century Brazilian sertão, most notably Antônio Conselheiro of Canudos fame. See Levine, Robert M., Vale of Tears: Revisiting the Canudos Massacre in Northeastern Brazil, 1893–1897 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65. Staples, Anne, “The Clergy and How It Responded to Calls for Rebellion Before the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” in Malcontents, Rebels, and Pronunciados: The Politics of Insurrection in Nineteenth-Century Mexico, Fowler, Will, ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), p. 72 Google Scholar; Smith, The Roots of Conservatism, p. 135.

66. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Santa María del Oro, caja 1, carpeta 1849–1857, April 30, 1849.

67. By “anticlerical decrees,” I refer particularly to the Lerdo law, the federal disamortization decree of June 25, 1856. Analysis of the 205 extant land adjudications made under this law in the Tepic region shows that little to no municipal or ecclesiastical property along the Nayarit frontier was sold under its purview. Archivo Histórico del Estado de Nayarit [hereafter AHEN], Protocolos, Vicente González, 1856 (vols. 1–3); ibid., Vicente González, 1861; and AHEN, Jueces de Primera Instancia de Tepic, Ignacio Cruz y Francisco Pintado, 1856–1859.

68. Although Fr. Avelar’s recollection suggests he was ordained in either 1833 or 1834, he was likely ordained in either 1831 or 1832, when Bishop Gordoa briefly presided during an extended sede vacante; AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Jala, caja 1, carpeta 1843–1844.

69. Ibid., July 4, 1844.

70. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Jala, caja 1, exp. 6, September 16, 1850.

71. Ibid.

72. Ibid., exp. 19, March 16, 1851.

73. Ibid., exp. 12, October 10, 1852.

74. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Santa Maria del Oro, caja l, carpeta 1824–1846, I; ibid., carpeta 1849–1857; ibid., carpeta 1844 [sic] (1854); ibid., carpeta 1856. See also AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Santa María del Oro, caja 2, exp. 21, October 15, 1841; ibid., exp. 22, November 22, 1846; ibid., exp. 19, January 8, 1847; and ibid., exp. 25, April 20, 1852.

75. Ibid., exp. 19, January 8, 1847. “Debt peonage,” is the practice whereby an hacendado paid his or her employees in advance and thus ensured their continuing labor.

76. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Santa María del Oro, caja 1, carpeta 1824–1846, 1, January 30, 1849 [sic (1850)].

77. Ibid., Ahuacatlán, caja 2, exp. 20, September 13, 1850; ibid., June 2, 1851.

78. Ibid., Santa Maria del Oro, caja l, carpeta 1853, April 13, 1853. It is interesting that it was Our Lady of Atocha who appeared here, and not her son. Juan Javier Pescador finds veneration of the Santo Niño de Atocha spread along the Camino Real from Zacatecas to New Mexico in the early nineteenth century, while his virgin mother was left by the wayside. Crossing Borders with the Santo Niño de Atocha (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009), pp. xx, 39–76. The “child Jesus” reportedly also appeared on the walls of Acuña ranch in 1853, but he does not seem to have been the center of attention. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Santa María del Oro, caja 1, carpeta 1853, May 31, 1853.

79. Ibid., April 22, 1853.

80. Ibid., May 31, 1853.

81. Ibid., June 22, 1853.

82. Ibid., June 13, 1853; ibid., June 15, 1853.

83. AGN, México Independiente: Justicia y Negocios Eclesiásticos, Justicia Eclesiástica, vol. 158, fols. 249–250; Brittsan, “Not for Lack of Faith,” pp. 11–13.

84. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Santa Maria del Oro, caja l, carpeta 1853, June 2, 1854.

85. The quote comes from AGN, México Independiente: Justicia y Negocios Eclesiásticos, Justicia Eclesiástica, vol. 158, fol. 468.

86. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Santa María del Oro, caja 1, carpeta 1853, June 2, 1854.

87. Ibid., carpeta 1844 [sic (1854)], June 20, 1854; ibid., carpeta 1849–1857, August 22, 1854.

88. Ibid., carpeta 1849–1857, September 27, 1854.

89. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Jala, caja 1, exp. 13, February 25, 1855.

90. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Jala, caja 2, carpeta 1850–1854.

91. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Santa María del Oro, caja 2, exp. 25, April 20, 1852; AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Santa María del Oro, caja 1, carpeta 1856, January 24, 1856; ibid., carpeta 1849–1857, September 29, 1857.

92. For riot as a bargaining tool, see Hobsbawm, E. J., Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959)Google Scholar; and Taylor, William, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979)Google Scholar. For evidence of the continuation of this tradition, see Gillingham, Paul, “Maximino’s Bulls: Popular Protest after the Mexican Revolution, 1940–1952,” Past & Present 206:1 (February 2010), pp. 175–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

93. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Santa María del Oro, caja 2, exp. 17, June 20, 1856.

94. From early August to late September 1856, Bishop Espinosa approved at least five sales in the Tepic region alone. Totaling 18,550 pesos, the amount of the sales was nearly one-third the total value of all compulsory ecclesiastical sales from that region adjudicated under Lerdo. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Tepic, caja 1, August-September 1856; AHEN, Protocolos, Vicente González, 1856, vol. 3. At least eight more sales were pending in late September when Espinosa’s moratorium took effect.

95. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Santa Maria del Oro, caja 2, exp. 17, June 20, 1856.

96. Ibid.

97. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Santa María del Oro, caja 1, carpeta 1856, January 24, 1856.

98. Lozada’s forces would also occupy Jala’s confraternity territory in Acuitapilco, likely invited by angered cofrades. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Jala, caja 2, carpeta 1867–1868.

99. Jean Meyer, La tierra de Manuel Lozada.: colección de documentos para la Ustoria de Nayarit, voi. 4 (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 1989), pp. 153–154.

100. A number of signatories to a late 1867 pronouncement, for instance, also appear in contemporaneous church documents from Jala, Jomulco, and Santa Maria del Oro. The pronouncement is found in Meyer, La tierra de Manuel Lozada, pp. 200–206. “Eusebio Plodo,” from Jomulco, appears in a series of documents related to a dispute over clerical replacement that same year. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Jala, caja 2, carpeta 1867–1868, May 10, 1867; ibid., June 27, 1868. “Antonio Camberò,” from Jala, signs his name to the same dispute. Ibid., carpeta 1869–1870, May 18, 1868. “Antonio Rodriguez,” from Santa Maria del Oro, appears in an unrelated clerical dispute. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Santa Maria del Oro, caja l, carpeta 1849–1857, January 15, 1866. “Ysidoro Jacobo,” from that same missive, shows up at the head of 300 men in Lozada’s 1873 campaign. Meyer, La tierra de Manuel Lozada, pp. 322–328. Regarding concessions, the “indígenas menesterosos” of Jala sought—and received—a rearrangement of fondo municipal disbursement in 1863 through a land commission appointed by Lozada. AHEN, Juicios Civiles, Ahuacatlán, caja 1, leg. 1, no. 92, fols. 13–14. Throughout the case, no mention is made of Jala confraternities, or any religious ends of the land, for that matter. Nonetheless, this land redistribution seems to represent the Immaculate Conception reborn as a secular institution. The majority of junta members appear elsewhere in various appeals for church reconstruction and processions, and general confraternity affairs. AHAG, Justicia, Cofradías, Jala, caja 1, exp. 6, September 16, 1850; AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Jala, caja 1, carpeta 1847–1863, July 14, 1861; ibid., caja 2, carpeta 1850–1854, May 29, 1854; ibid., carpeta 1869–1870, December 28, 1873.

101. AHAG, Gobierno, Parroquias, Santa María del Oro, caja 1, carpeta 1856, September 6, 1859.

102. Ibid., Jala, caja 1, carpeta 1847–1863, March 23, 1863.

103. Ibid., Santa Maria del Oro, caja 1, carpeta 1849–1857, July 1, 1863.

104. Zachary Brittsan, “In Faith or Fear: Fighting with Lozada” (PhD diss., University of California-San Diego, 2010).

105. Smith, The Roots of Conservatism, pp. 75–158.

106. Civil, Legajo 1795–1799: Sobre tierras de la congregación de Bernal (Cadereyta), con los indios gañanes de ellas, Archivo Histórico de la Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Acervo Microfilm, rollo 24. See also ibid., rollo 26, Civil, Legajo 1806: Cadereita: Naturales de S. Miguel de las Tetillas, sobre abusos del subdelegado E. Villanueva, 1804–1809.

107. Archivo Histórico del Estado de Querétaro, Fondo Notarias, Protocolos, Jalpan, 1842, fojas 55–59; ibid., folio s/n but dated March 14, 1842.

108. Cypher, James, “Reconstituting Community: Local Religion, Political Culture, and Rebellion in Mexico’s Sierra Gorda, 1846–1880” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 2007), pp. 164–165 Google Scholar. For Puebla, see Thomson, Guy P. C. and LaFrance, David G., Patriotism, Politics, and Popular Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Juan Francisco Lucas and the Puebla Sierra (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1999), pp. 48–49 Google Scholar.

109. In 1840 mission residents of San Miguel de las Palmas (Tolimán) battled their friar when he took control of community goods, including some pertaining to the confraternity, but did not produce the promised school, agricultural tools, or benefits to the cult. Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado de México, 1840, caja 52, exp. 52.

110. Ibid., 1855, caja 100, exp. 21.

111. Ibid., 1853, caja 88, exp. 33.

112. Flaquer, Maribel Miró, El general Rafael Olvera: cacique de la Sierra Gorda y gobernador de Queretaro (Queretaro: Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, 2012), p. 46 Google Scholar. For the October 1856 pronouncement, see Ramírez, Fernando Díaz, La vida heroica del General Tomás Mejia (Mexico: Editorial Jus, 1970), pp. 29–30 Google Scholar.

113. Meyer, La tierra de Manuel Lozada, pp. 153–154.

114. Ibid., p. 267.

115. Thomson and LaFrance, Patriotism, Politics, and Popular Liberalism, p. 18.

116. Thomson, “La contrarreforma en Puebla,” p. 243; Díaz Ramírez, La vida heroica, p. 66. For Antonio Rojas’s anticlerical outrages, see Brittsan, “In Faith or Fear,” p. 120; and Joaquín Herrera, Dentro de la República: episodios, viajes, tradiciones, tipos y costumbres (Mexico: S. Lomeli y Co., 1889), pp. 117–118.

117. For Lucas’s gentler stance on Catholic celebrations, see Thomson, and LaFrance, , Patriotism, Politics, and Popular Liberalism, p. 231 Google Scholar. For Lucas’s title, see ibid., 64–65. For Lozada’s title, see Meyer, La tierra de Manuel Lozada, p. 295.

118. For secular schooling, see Thomson and LaFrance, Patriotism, Politics, and Popular Liberalism, pp. 18–22.

119. Terry Rugeley, Yucatán’s Maya Peasantry and the Origins of the Caste War (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), pp. 14, 24–25. Farriss, on the other hand, points to the Yucatecan confraternity as a fully lay institution, providing aid to the community at large and not to the priest. Maya Society, p. 325–326.

120. Rugeley, Yucatán’s Maya Peasantry, pp. 44, 58–59. Unlike in Nayarit, where confraternities supplied the greatest portion of Church income, in the Yucatán the head tax, or obvención mayor, filled that role for the Franciscans in the colonial period, and for the secular clergy in the nineteenth century. Ibid., pp. 27–28.

121. Ibid., pp. 174–175.

122. Thomson and LaFrance, Patriotism, Politics, and Popular Liberalism, p 23.