Restoring Anáhuac: Indigenous Genealogies and Hemispheric Republicanism in Postcolonial Mexico

Abstract

AbstractThis article turns to postcolonial Mexico to analyze the importance of Indigenous political thought for the transformation of radical republicanism during the Age of Revolutions. I argue that Mexican insurgents deployed Indigenous genealogies to instantiate what I call “restorative revolution,” a form of revolutionary thinking that prioritized memorialization over absolute foundation. Mexico's restorative project began with calls for the return of the Anáhuac Empire, an Indigenous genealogy that memorialized histories of popular self‐rule to legitimize postcolonial demands. I suggest that the Anáhuac movement transformed the principles of radical republican thought by mobilizing around religious, plebeian, and hemispheric identities. Each of these characteristics problematizes dominant interpretations of republicanism as a secular, elite, and national enterprise. This article uses popular objects and archival ephemera to illustrate the importance of engaging with the political contributions of marginalized groups from the spaces, practice, and languages they used to envision postcolonial emancipation in collective terms.