Junta Democrática: Californios and Reconstruction in California

Abstract

Abstract During the Civil War and Reconstruction Era, elite Californios—Mexicans of mixed-race descent made citizens by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo—supported legislation and political platforms that rejected the varied attempts at biracial democracy. Through an examination of the political life of Antonio Coronel, this article reconsiders elite Californios as state makers and obstructors of Reconstruction in California. At the end of the U.S.-Mexico War and until his death in 1894, Coronel, like other Californios, collaborated with Anglo American politicians to maintain his regional power by supporting a racially restrictive state. In offering their cooperation, elite Californios momentarily maintained their privileged social status in areas where Californios held local political control, such as Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. While Anglo American settlers relied on elite Californios for political legitimacy and state making, they viewed Californios as unassimilable into whiteness because of their Spanish culture and mixed ancestry, and they gradually denied Californio claims to racial superiority and socio-legal privileges, as political cooperation became less crucial to the success of the state project. As a direct result of Coronel’s and other elite Californios’ cooperation before the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865) and through Reconstruction (1863–1879), the California government rejected the federal government’s experiment in biracial democracy and supported policies of white supremacy that targeted the state’s growing non-white populations, a rejection that eventually jeopardized Californio power, including Coronel’s. This article demonstrates that Californio participation was crucial to the state’s rejection of Reconstruction.