Mexican Independence Research Articles

Dios y la Nación: The 1837 Revolt and the Maladministration of Mexican New Mexico

Abstract This article examines the revolt of 1837 in New Mexico within the context of Mexico City’s inattention to the North after Mexican independence and the destabilizing effects of U.S. commercial expansion. An analysis tracing the origins of the uprising to its suppression in January 1838 suggests that New Mexico’s unrest had less to do with a federalist movement for autonomy or separatism than it did a rejection of ineffective governance and mismanagement common to both federalist and centralist regimes. More specifically, rebelling nuevomexicanos challenged the prevailing political economy of New Mexico sustained by what can be called the commercial order. This haphazard coalition of wealthy nuevomexicanos, American traders, and officials provided just enough revenue to maintain the basic functions of government; but, in their devotion to the overland trade between the United States and Mexico, New Mexican administrators enacted policies that promoted wars with Navajos and jeopardized the livelihoods of nuevomexicanos who relied on subsistence agriculture and the borderlands trade with independent Indians. Nuevomexicanos in 1837 ultimately rose up against not only the commercial order, but also the national government whose neglect after 1821 helped to engender and then perpetuate the maladministration of New Mexico.

La Güera Rodríguez: The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine by Silvia Marina Arrom (review)

La Güera Rodríguez: The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine by Silvia Marina Arrom (review)

Patriotic Mythologization and Mexico's War of Independence - La Güera Rodríguez: The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine. By Silvia Marina Arrom. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. Pp. 250. $29.95 cloth; $29.95 e-book.

Patriotic Mythologization and Mexico's War of Independence - La Güera Rodríguez: The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine. By Silvia Marina Arrom. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. Pp. 250. 29.95 e-book. - Volume 80 Issue 2

Spanish American Independence Movements: A History in Documents by Wim Klooster

Reviewed by: Spanish American Independence Movements: A History in Documents by Wim Klooster Jane Rausch, Emerita Klooster, Wim, ed. Spanish American Independence Movements: A History in Documents. Petersborough, Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 2021. The independence movements of Spanish America in the early nineteenth century signal the virtual end of Spanish colonialism in the Americas (except for Cuba and Puerto Rico). These independence movements gave rise to the creation of the contemporary Latin American nations that stretch from Mexico in [End Page 229] the north to Chile and Argentina in the south. Wim Klooster's Spanish American Independence Movements: A History in Documents is the ninth instalment of Broadview Press' impressive Sources Series, which was launched with the 2016 publication of The Trial of Charles I. Klooster by K. J. Kesselring, who holds the Robert H. and Virginia N. Scotland Chair in History and International Relations at Clark University and is also the author of Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History and coeditor of The Atlantic World: Essays on Slavery, Migration, and Imagination. Klooster's detailed and thought-provoking introduction provides the information needed to place the primary source documents in historical perspective. Topic discussed in the introduction include Ethnicity, Culture, and Power in the Spanish Territories; Early Revolts and Rebellions; The French Revolution and Spanish America; Napoleon's Invasion of Spain and the Imperial Crisis; The Road to a Constitution; The Constitution of Cádiz; Revolts in New Spain; Creole Ascension in the Río de la Plata; South America's Southern Theater; New Granada: South America's Northern Theater; The Perils of Self-Governance; Fernando's Return; Bolívar's Success; Peru and San Martín's Achievement; South America's Final Battles; and Mexican Independence. The book offers a carefully selected collection of fifty-four documents that cover the major developments from 1780 to 1826. The documents, many of which are appearing in English for the first time, are arranged chronologically in five sections: Prelude (documents 1–3), Imperial Crisis (documents 4–10), Independence Movements Take Off: Fernando's Restoration (documents 11–28), Continued Warfare and Independence (documents 29–41), and Imperial Defeat and Construction of New Regimes (documents 42–54). In addition to the chronological presentation of the documents, Klooster provides an alternative arrangement of the documents by region in a section called "Alternate Table of Contents: Documents Separated by Region." The "Questions to Consider" section offers a pathway to aid students in their assessment of the documents. Spanish American Independence Movements: A History in Documents, which also contains several maps, pictures, a glossary, and an index, can function both as a textbook and as a reference work. Used as a text in an undergraduate course, the instructor might assign the "Introduction" (which includes definitions of potentially unfamiliar Spanish words or phrases) to provide a succinct overview of the whole independence movement and then select one or two of the documents for a more intensive analysis. For example, "Bolivar's letter from Jamaica, [End Page 230] 6 September 1815" (document #30) has often been used to explain Bolivar's interpretation of the form of government that newly independent Spanish American nations might take. Other documents, such as the letters of Pablo Morillo to Spain's Ministry of War in July and September 1818 (documents #39 and #40), offer new insight as to why Morillo decided not to raise a battalion of enslaved Blacks to defend the empire against the insurgents. Used as a reference work, graduate students and scholars will find documents, previously inaccessible or difficult to locate, that are bound to enlarge their understanding of these extremely complicated events. To site just one example: in my capacity as a researcher of Gran Colombia, document #49, an extract from "Francisco María Roca's Friends of the Country or Essays about the Happiness of this Province, 1822," a work previously unknown to me, helps to explain why it was logical that many people in Guayaquil wanted to remain part of Peru rather than to become a department of Colombia (167–70). Klooster has assembled an invaluable collection of documents that will endure as an indispensable resource for students, instructors, and researchers of Latin America by...

Liberalismo e independencia en la era de las revoluciones: México y el mundo hispánico

Liberalismo e independencia en la era de las revoluciones: México y el mundo hispánico

From Bourbon Reform to Open Markets in California, 1801-1821

The Consulado de México was the mercantile guild that acted as commercial nerve-center of Spain’s empire in the Americas. From 1801 to 1821, one of its members, Pedro González de Noriega, influenced California’s economic growth by putting his nephew, José de la Guerra y Noriega, into the colony’s military supply line. In 1801, for what purpose did De la Guerra y Noriega come to California? Whatever his intention, his life-plan changed in 1810, when insurgency broke out in New Spain, and military payroll ceased to arrive in California. Between 1811 and 1821, how did De la Guerra y Noriega adapt to this structural change by negotiating with international merchants from Manila to San Blas and Lima to supply California? As Spain’s empire unraveled, we follow the microhistory of the Noriega mercantile network, as it reconfigured to the macroeconomic context of political transformation of the Pacific Rim in the context of Mexican independence from Spain. The De la Guerra Collection at the Santa Bárbara Mission Archive-Library reveals that Guadalajara was Mexico’s emerging center for Pacific commerce, with San Blas as Guadalajara’s principal port. By Mexican independence in 1821, De la Guerra had established Santa Bárbara, California as the center of his family’s business, rather than Mexico City. Even as Manila merchants relocated to Tepic, he maintained ties with them. He also traded with the British in Callao, Peru, which is how he came to send his son to be educated in Liverpool with the Brotherston family.

La Iglesia católica en el México decimonónico : entre tradición y cambio

During the nineteenth century in Mexico, the form of the relationship between the Catholic Church and the State was a matter of public discussion. Since the Mexican Independence and until the Reform, there were multiple attempts to define the role of the ecclesiastical institution in the new nation. In the mid-century, the Church reshape itself as an answer to the process of secularization in Mexico and a great part of the Western world.

Arrom, Silvia Marina (2021) La Güera Rodríguez: The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine, University of California Press (Oakland), xii + 250 pp. $29.95 hbk.

Bulletin of Latin American ResearchVolume 42, Issue 1 p. 175-176 Book Review Arrom, Silvia Marina (2021) La Güera Rodríguez: The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine, University of California Press ( Oakland), xii + 250 pp. $29.95 hbk. Maarten van Delden, Corresponding Author Maarten van Delden mvandelden@humnet.ucla.edu University of California, USASearch for more papers by this author Maarten van Delden, Corresponding Author Maarten van Delden mvandelden@humnet.ucla.edu University of California, USASearch for more papers by this author First published: 14 February 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/blar.13453Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume42, Issue1Special Section: The Cultural Politics of Reproduction in Latin AmericaJanuary 2023Pages 175-176 RelatedInformation

Indigenous Life after the Conquest: The de la Cruz Family Papers of Colonial Mexico

Caterina Pizzigoni and Camilla Townsend's translation of a set of Nahuatl-language documents represents the 16th volume in Latin American Originals, a series edited by Matthew Restall that presents translations of primary source texts with specialist scholarly apparatus. Colonial-era wills and other forms of mundane documents have long provided scholars a rich source of material to study Indigenous history, notably in the groundbreaking work of the late James Lockhart. The materials in Pizzigoni and Townsend's Indigenous Life after the Conquest are distinctive in this tradition because the records belonged to a single family and were maintained by that family over centuries. As Pizzigoni and Townsend explain in their introduction, the de la Cruz family from the Toluca Valley were elite but not noble. They were the sort of family whose wealth and status grew in the colonial period, much to the chagrin of Indigenous families descendant from the great tlatoque who ruled over central Mexico before the arrival of Europeans. The core set of de la Cruz documents was initially identified by Lockhart in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City. He shared transcriptions of the materials with Pizzigoni, who in turn located additional records related to the family in various archives. In this slim volume, Pizzigoni and Townsend present translations of five of these documents accompanied by a robust introduction that provides insight into the multiple generations of family members who produced them.The lengthiest of the texts, the first document is titled “The de la Cruz Family Record Book,” and it, unlike the remaining four documents, is presented initially in Nahuatl as transcribed from the manuscript and then in English translation. Don Pedro de la Cruz began the book in 1647 to keep records of donations he made to local churches. A decade later, around the time that don Pedro assumed the role of gobernador of the altepetl of Tepemaxalco, the book evolved to become a repository of other events related to his community, in the tradition of Nahua historical annals, or xiuhpohualli. This book would be maintained by the family until the nineteenth century. The final entry is in the year 1842, decades after Mexican independence. The document provides an extraordinary window on the daily lived experiences of Nahua elite families during the colonial period. We find records of financial accounts and labor tribute, descriptions of harvests and building projects including evolving repairs and additions to the church, and entries detailing the specific positions that individuals in the community held. The notations are remarkable for the precision with which they capture daily life in an Indigenous community, as the authors recorded events they deemed significant, ranging from an eclipse to the donation of a bell to the church and the purchase of chickens used to entertain guests from Mexico City. The quotidian becomes noteworthy through its sheer consistency and duration.Document 2 provides records for the year 1658 from a tribute roll maintained by don Pedro de la Cruz during his first eight years as governor of Tepemaxalco, from 1657 to 1665. In addition to alphabetic notations of monetary tribute, the document contains a duplicate accounting in non-European pictoglyphic notations that show contributions from each tlaxilacalli, or subdistrict of the altepetl. Document 3 provides the seventeenth-century birth records of members of the de la Cruz family found in the Archivo Parroquial de San Pedro y San Pablo in Calimaya, Mexico. Document 4 is the will of don Pedro de la Cruz, dated 1667, while document 5 is the will of his son-in-law don Juan de la Cruz, dated 1691. Don Juan's will was written with care over a period of time and reflects with great consideration how his assets should be distributed and how his death should be remembered in his church and community. This final document is followed by several brief scholarly supplements, including an epilogue, a note on language and orthography, and a glossary.Renowned experts, Pizzigoni and Townsend bring their knowledge of colonial Nahuatl as well as Nahua cultural and social history to these unique sources. The ancillary materials situate the corpus of colonial-era manuscript records for the reader, while the documents themselves provide a rich depiction of daily life for the de la Cruz family, an Indigenous family whose members held leadership positions in their local community over the course of centuries. In this way, these records attest to the survival and endurance of Indigenous lives and traditions under Hispanic colonial rule.

La Güera Rodríguez: The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine

La Güera Rodríguez: The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine

Un militar realista en la independencia de México: Estudio y edición del diario personal del oficial de infantería Modesto de la Torre (29 de mayo de 1821–4 de junio de 1822)

Un militar realista en la independencia de México: Estudio y edición del diario personal del oficial de infantería Modesto de la Torre (29 de mayo de 1821–4 de junio de 1822)

Islands in the Lake: Environment and Ethnohistory in Xochimilco, New Spain by Richard M. Conway

The canals and chinampas (raised fields) of Xochimilco are the last substantial remnant of the extraordinary wetland agricultural system that fed Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Mexica Empire, and Mexico City, the seat of power for the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Inscribed as a unesco World Heritage site in 1987, a portion of Xochimilco has enjoyed a degree of protection from development unparalleled in the region, but its complex and remarkable history has remained relatively unknown. In Islands in the Lake, Conway brings this rich history to light through a careful and comprehensive study of the Spanish and Nahuatl documents produced in and around Xochimilco from the 1540s to the 1790s.Islands in the Lake provides a detailed account of Xochimilco’s political and social organization, land tenure, demography, and economy during the colonial era. Conway argues that Xochimilco persisted in the ways that it did because “the lakes, and the ways local residents modified and used them, acted as a buffer against the disruptions of Spanish rule” (15). The first chapter establishes the ecological and political histories of Xochimilco, with close attention to the fifteenth-century origins of the chinampas and how local leaders adjusted to the demographic, economic, and ecological crises of the sixteenth century. The second chapter documents the conspicuous absence of outsiders among the chinampas in the sixteenth century, though the Xochimilca were far from isolated; they experimented with non-native crops and maintained strong ties to the markets in Mexico City. In the third chapter, Conway shows how canoes, causeways, and canals promoted commerce and supported Indigenous artisans, porters, inns, wharves, warehouses, and merchants, as well as resellers, thieves, and dealers in stolen goods.Chapters four and five focuses on how disease (for which the lakes offered no buffer) and increasing climate instability in the seventeenth century created conditions ripe for exploitation as a new generation of Nahua leaders sought to acquire and maintain power. Chapter six focuses on the eighteenth-century incursions into Xochimilco by Spanish hacienda owners who expanded their pastures into the lake and by engineers who blocked the lake to protect Mexico City from flooding. These disruptions of local hydrology combined with a period of particularly wet years to cause catastrophic flooding on the eve of Mexican independence. The final chapter focuses on the continuity of Nahuatl document production in Xochimilco and its eventually decline in tandem with the political, economic, and climate disruptions of the late eighteenth centuryIslands in the Lake is a valuable contribution to the history and ethnohistory of central Mexico that adds an important local perspective to patterns and processes that historians have documented at a regional scale. It benefits from Conway’s inclusion of recent insights from the findings of environmental history, climate science, and disease ecology, and it invites readers from disciplines other than history to pay attention. Archaeologists should see an opportunity to work more closely with historians of Indigenous Mexico. Although Conway uses archaeological sources to establish the Prehispanic roots of Xochimilco (mostly in the first half of the first chapter), future works should consult a rich and growing archaeological and bioarchaeological literature about the urban and rural communities of the sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Basin of Mexico.Critical historians will notice the nature of archival production in Xochimilco. For example, gender plays a prominent role in Chapters 2 through 4, in which Conway makes important points about how Indigenous women protected land through wills and testaments, brought revenue into the community as sellers in markets throughout the region, and used marriage alliances to maintain continuity of local leadership. Gendered, and maybe other, disparities of record keeping, are worth investigating (perhaps in conversations with historical archaeologists). Historical ecologists and political ecologists will find Conway’s environmental-history approach a welcome addition to their studies of the recursive relationships of humans and their environments in the Basin of Mexico and beyond.

Ethnic Entrepreneurs, Crony Capitalism, and the Making of the Franco-Mexican Elite

While most people are aware that Mexico was ruled by the same political party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional and its previous iterations, from 1929 to 2000, few may connect this institutionalized dictatorship to a more complicated history of economic and political cronyism. José Galindo's recent book, Ethnic Entrepreneurs, Crony Capitalism, and the Making of the Franco-Mexican Elite, explains precisely that history, using as a case study a group of French immigrants and, within this group, the Jean family, most famously connected to the Banamex banks and the Televisa media network. Galindo expands on previous efforts to look at corruption by combining political, economic, and cultural analyses with the use of UCINET software, which allows him to map the players of political and economic networks and to calculate their relative influence within each organization. Galindo's key argument is that Mexico's success in achieving greater economic and political stability during the Porfiriato (the administration of Mexican president Porfirio Díaz from 1876 to 1911) was due in large part to social networking, which contributed to today's ongoing patterns of crony capitalism or what Galindo calls “collusive corruption,” in which networked relationships between government officials and economic actors allow for the appropriation of what is public for personal benefit.Galindo is well positioned to take on this interdisciplinary approach to his topic: since 2015, he has coordinated no fewer than four interdisciplinary anthologies dealing with corruption in Mexico and published nine chapters of his own writing. Alongside publishing articles for academic journals and magazines such as Forbes, Galindo worked for Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights. The book under review here reflects Galindo's mastery of scholarship on the Mexican economy, covering the Porfiriato, the 1911 revolution, 1930s Cardenismo, 1970s efforts at implementing an import substitution industrialization model, and more recent patterns of resource privatization. Though Galindo does little to push against traditional takes on the Porfiriato as ending the “chaos” of previous eras through President Díaz's efforts to encourage foreign investment, ally with rival state governors, and follow the lead of the científicos (such as the Franco-Mexican finance minister José Yves Limantour), his discussion of the postrevolutionary era is more nuanced, especially through his analysis of Mexican economics by individual sectors (p. 77).One drawback of the book is that a key argument—pointed to by the inclusion of “ethnic entrepreneurs” and “Franco-Mexican elite” in the title—is not given sufficient attention by the author himself. As Galindo describes the rise of this Franco-Mexican elite, we note the many privileges that they enjoy simply for being French. Beginning as early as the 1830s, foreign immigrants were encouraged to colonize purportedly undeveloped agricultural areas of Mexico. Such efforts were also geared toward “improv[ing] the Mexican race” by bringing European culture, connections, know-how, and whiteness into Mexico (pp. 24, 53). Succeeding administrations continued this pattern, providing concrete incentives like the 1886 Naturalization and Aliens Act granting Mexican citizenship to purchasers of real estate or the 1884 commercial code providing tax exemptions on imported machinery. “Frenchification” of Mexican values and tastes grew under Napoleon III's supervision during the French occupation of Mexico from 1863 to 1867, followed by another resurgence of Francophilia during the Porfiriato, influenced by French positivist understandings of the role of industry in providing social welfare. Though in a few cases Galindo asserts that these proclivities for French immigration and the laws that supported them could themselves be motors of crony capitalism, even delving briefly into the role of “cultural capital” in keeping sociopolitical networks relevant, Galindo nonetheless does not make the clear connection between a history of cronyism and corruption and one of racism and imperialism, sticking instead to his insistence on the continued pervasiveness of “weak institutions” as fueling corruption's persistence (pp. 38, 142).Galindo's book is unique in its range of perspectives (cultural, political, economic) and historical scope, stretching from Mexican independence to today. Within this framework, he has nestled the history of a group of “ethnic entrepreneurs.” While an interesting case study in itself, the story of the French immigrants may actually detract from his discussion of crony capitalism in Mexico more generally, since “ethnic entrepreneurship” brings with it a variety of distinct variables of its own that Galindo does not adequately analyze. The marriage of these two topics—corruption and immigration policy—would be an absorbing contribution to a variety of fields, testing the thesis that racism and imperialism are themselves forms of corruption. Galindo chooses a different direction, contributing to Mexican economic history and the study of cronyism by tracing the roots of Mexico's multicultural elite. In doing so, he provides a text useful for graduate seminars on Latin American development, society, and economy, as well as on the methodology of prosopography.

Review: We Are the Land: A History of Native California, by Damon B. Akins and William J. Bauer Jr.

The title We Are the Land sums up the argument of this book, a history of Indigenous people in the present-day state of California. Ten chapters, ranging from origin stories to 1980s land battles, survey Indigenous relationships to their lands over time despite colonial displacement. Two maps orient readers to territorial areas and the region remade by colonization. Short “special vignettes” between chapters interrogate San Diego, the Ishi Wilderness, and Rome, among other locations. The book posits that “California is both a place and an idea” (p. 3). While the place is Indigenous, the idea is a product of settler fantasies of Indigenous disappearance through pogroms, assimilation, and removal that this text thoroughly upends.An exploration of the many ways that the people understood and stewarded their lands, from stories, songs, and place names to hunts, controlled burns, and irrigation establish Native worlds. Kinship, trade, and ceremony knit people across space and ameliorate conflict. Oak savannahs and their acorns, an essential food source, represent the interconnectedness of Indigenous worldviews and the region itself.During exploratory contact Native people “forced the Spanish to adhere to social protocols,” incorporating strangers into their economic and political systems (p. 42). Viewed from the beaches, the foreign expeditions which are often at the center of historic narratives are instead transitory. Diseases and settlers were not.The Spanish missions intensify the disruptions of exploration and disease. Priests and soldiers “came to stay,” reorganizing the landscape into presidio districts, ranchos, and missions, and by clearing the land and introducing domesticated livestock that trampled Indigenous foods (p. 67). While the missions “exposed Indigenous People to violence,” Native people indigenized Catholicism, strategically used mobility to retain their autonomy, and formed new refugee communities (p. 74).The patterns of colonial oppression and the exploitation of Indigenous labor shape the rest of the book. Mexican independence led to the secularization of the missions and coincided with the rise of the hide and tallow industry, which relied on Native laborers. The Gold Rush and Americanization brought genocidal violence, treaties, and another system of unfree labor. Indigenous land claims and labor became increasingly entangled, with Mexican and then American land policies reflecting the necessity of Indigenous labor in California’s early agricultural industries.Equally important was Indigenous resistance, according to the authors, who carefully outline its patterns over time and space. In the twentieth century, Native people creatively leveraged boarding schools and allotment to protect their communities. Termination and relocation led to another period of dispersal but bars, Indian centers, and college campuses emerged as sites for urban organizing. By the end of the century, many tribes invested gaming revenues in lands they had lost decades before.This well-written, accessible book reconceives California as Indigenous land with a focus on the ongoing practices of colonization and resistance to it. While it uses the language of theoretical framings like settler colonialism and survivance lightly, the text itself is a powerful illustration of the ongoing challenges of colonialism and the Indigenous survival of its many formations.

El Es Dios!

This article outlines a brief historical sketch of the Danza Azteca-Chichimeca, or danza for short, which is becoming ubiquitous in areas of the United States with a significant Mexican American population. It looks at its origins during the early colonial period of Mexico, especially its mythological beginnings, to help elucidate the deep foundation of the dance tradition. This sketch also addresses the evolution of danza after it spread from its place of origin in the Bajío into major urban areas like Mexico City, where, once there, it changed due to ideological and political trends that circulated in the post-revolution period. The article also looks at danza’s pseudo-militaristic undertones to suggest that it might have contributed to the growing discontent among peasants and indigenous people, leading to Mexican independence. Some scholars have suggested that it, as a revitalizationist tradition, belongs in the “crisis cult” category. This analysis became evident when danza encountered neo-Aztec philosophies that promoted nationalistic and restorationist ideologies. In sum, the article touches on the popularity of danza in the United States despite the current climate of xenophobia and anti-migration, and nods at its growing international and global appeal.

Tejano Patriot: The Revolutionary Life of José Francisco Ruiz, 1783–1840 by Art Martínez de Vara

Reviewed by: Tejano Patriot: The Revolutionary Life of José Francisco Ruiz, 1783–1840 by Art Martínez de Vara Francis X. Galán Tejano Patriot: The Revolutionary Life of José Francisco Ruiz, 1783–1840. By Art Martínez de Vara. ( Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2020. Pp. xvi, 270. $35.00, ISBN 978-1-62511-058-9.) Historian and attorney Art Martínez de Vara captures the essence of Tejano politics in the Texas borderlands with this powerful biography of José Francisco Ruiz. For too long, Ruiz has been "an enigmatic figure" as one of two native-born Texans who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence yet whose role in history has been made to serve nation-building within the broader ideology of manifest destiny and American westward expansion (p. 2). This book particularly challenges the traditional Anglo narrative of Texas and patriotism that simply says, "Tejanos could only identify with either Texas or Mexico, but not both" (p. 3). Martínez de Vara shows that Ruiz's life story and the Tejano experience need to be understood from a deeper "history of frontier survival" in Mexico and a tradition of "provincial autonomy," such that Ruiz became "one of the most ardent Texas revolutionaries, but his zeal for liberty developed slowly and was tempered with pragmatism and a statesmanlike sense of political timing" (p. 8). Ruiz's significance is paradoxically due not just to his role as a revolutionary, first in the Spanish and then the Mexican era, but also to a lifelong career of always working toward trade and peace, rather than violence and warfare, on the Texas frontier by developing friendships with Anglo and Comanche leaders. Martínez de Vara utilizes a balanced mix of primary and secondary sources to situate Ruiz's life in the proper context of the times, from New Spain (colonial Mexico), through Mexican independence, the First Mexican Empire, and the First Mexican Republic, to the Republic of Texas. Readers truly get a refreshing glimpse of Ruiz's family roots, migration, and community, which began in San Luis de la Paz in the province of Querétaro (the present state of Guanajuato), founded in 1552 "along the Spanish Camino de la Plata ('Silver Road') which linked the mines near Zacatecas with Mexico City" (p. 10). During the following century, Ruiz's family became established in San Luis de la Paz with work in the merchant trade and education until the mid-eighteenth century, when they were recruited to join the José de Escandón expedition to the lower Rio Grande Valley. However, Ruiz's father, Juan Manuel Ruiz, migrated farther to San Antonio de Béxar, bringing his mother and sister with him to settle in the Barrio del Sur (Southside) of the Plaza de Armas, where he worked from home as a tailor. Ruiz's mother, Manuela de la Peña y Valdés, was born in Saltillo, Coahuila, where her grandfather had served as a captain in the Spanish army before retiring to Texas, where Manuela's father, Ignacio de la Peña, "established a successful ranch on the San Antonio River" and was among those who sent cattle to New Orleans in support of the American Revolution (p. 17). Through marriage and kinship, Ruiz's family became linked with the Navarro, Veramendi, Seguin, and Y'Barbo families. Ruiz's [End Page 151] father died when Ruiz was fourteen, and his eldest brother, who was a presidial soldier, moved back in with the family, but Martínez de Vara explains that the Ruiz matriarchs—Manuela and eldest surviving daughter, Manuela Josefa, who married Ángel Navarro—wielded great influence on him and kept the family together, especially after the tumultuous battle of Medina (1813) and the short-lived first Republic of Texas. In 1804 at Mission Concepción, Ruiz married María Josefa Hernández, whose own family had arrived with the original Alarcón expedition that established the presidio at San Antonio de Béxar in 1718 and received a Spanish land grant. This biography establishes a greater understanding of the importance of family and land in the Texas borderlands in Ruiz's career as an educator, military officer, rancher, diplomat, businessman...

Nueva Galicia en llamas: aspectos estratégicos en la Guerra del Mixtón

The Mixton War (1540–1541) was the last symmetric war within the viceroyalty of New Spain until the arrival of the insurgency and the Mexican Independence War in the early 19th century. In this paper, I approach, from military history, those aspects corresponding to the military strategy carried out by both sides in order to understand the decisions that were made, the reason for them and how these led to the defeat of the indigenous army at the end of 1541.

Política, gramática y enseñanza del español en los últimos años de la Nueva España y principios del México independiente: una aproximación desde la prensa periódica

After Mexican Independence, the new social order also required discussing the drift that the language of its new citizens would take, one of the few inheritances that was not willing to give up. For this, the legislative powers should talk about how they would designate their communication instrument and about how it should be taught in schools. The discussions around the language and its political drift was the subject of controversy in the first years of Independence, which was fully reflected in the Mexican newspapers. This study aims to account for the main discussions around the language and its teaching in the main Mexican public opinion media in the first decades of the 19th century, as well as to offer an overview of the antecedents of this situation since the beginning of the press of the Nueva Espana in the 18th century

Finding Afro-Mexico: Race and Nation after the Revolution

Finding Afro-Mexico: Race and Nation after the Revolution

La Güera Rodríguez: The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine by Silvia Marina Arrom

La Güera Rodríguez: The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine by Silvia Marina Arrom