MEXICAN SOCIETY AFTER INDEPENDENCE The New Order

After independence, Article 12 of the Plan of Iguala, which declared all Mexicans to be legally equal, guided government policy. Not only were Mexicans legally equal but all official usage of racial categories was discontinued. No longer did census, marriage, or baptismal documents indicate one’s ethnicity. An 1822 marriage register in a Mexico City church contained the following notation:

By order of the superior government a proclamation was made public on the 14th of this month of January ordering that the qualities of Spaniards, Indians, Mulattoes, etc. no longer be specified in parish registers, but that everybody receive the qualification of American, and this order will be carried out from today onwards.142

Though race disappeared from official documents, not surprisingly it did not vanish as a social concern. Race simply became an unwritten component of Mexican culture, with roughly the same significance as before. In the 1840s, U. S. Ambassador Waddy Thompson remarked, “At one of these large assemblies at the President’s palace, it is very rare to see a lady whose color indicates any impurity of blood.”143

A society based on class replaced legally mandated racial categories, leaving individuals, in most cases, with the same social standing as they had enjoyed before independence. The white man remained on top of society, with the Creole replacing the Spaniard. Especially favored were Creoles who had served in the royalist army and then followed Iturbide.144

The abolition of racial categories did provide for increased social mobility. Mestizos began to take advantage of new opportunities to rise on the social scale. Non-whites, in general, could obtain better jobs and interact more freely with other groups at all but the upper levels of society. Former slaves and their descendants began to vote, run for, and be elected to public office. A few Indians, most notably Benito Juarez, also took advantage of increased opportunity for social mobility.145

In rural areas, large estates remained in the hands of a relatively small group of Creoles, who were often bound together by kinship ties, which they used to dominate rural labor and resources. In many areas where severe combat had occurred, diverse rural peoples challenged Creole dominance. In some areas of the Bajio, where commercial agriculture had been abandoned after heavy fighting, tenants enjoyed much greater autonomy than before as they became responsible for producing their own crops.146

In other parts of rural Mexico, as throughout Spanish America, the new order brought little in the way of improved material circumstances, let alone electoral democracy. The independence movement had been essentially conservative. Debt peonage increased after independence due to a labor scarcity resulting from the number of war dead. Historians’ interpretations of debt peonage vary. Some see it as an oppressive force trapping rural workers in a never-ending cycle of poverty and exploitation. Others see it as reflecting rural workers having sufficient bargaining power to demand a cash advance during times of labor scarcity. At the time, a few liberals, such as Melchor Ocampo, denounced the immorality of debt peonage. However, he and other liberals were afraid of social conflict, so they took no action on the issue.147

No longer did taxes fall on specific social groups, such as the tribute born by the Indians in colonial times. Nor were special taxes levied to finance corporate groups, such as the merchant guild. Policy makers embraced laissez faire economic policies, assuming that a free market would enable all citizens to prosper. However, as historian Richard Graham noted, “Those reformers could not have been expected to know that when superimposed on still remaining hierarchical and elitist traditions, these policies would mean merciless exploitation.”148

The government, having eliminated ethnic classification, tried to inculcate allegiance to the state and nation rather than to the Indian village. Communities countered the state’s effort by striving to retain their indigenous cultures. Their success in large part resulted from the limited coercive power of the modernizers. At the same time, rural violence increased, as peasants responded to the weakness of the state by attempting to forcibly resolve conflicts with landowners. Similarly, landowners felt that without a strong state they could dispossess peasants by force. In addition, both liberals and conservatives would mobilize peasants to bolster their political projects, using them as cannon fodder.149

The government did make a valiant attempt to provide universal public education, although such an undertaking clearly exceeded the resources available. An 1842 law made education obligatory for boys and girls aged seven to fifteen. As has often been the case in Mexican history, this law reflected more a statement of good intentions than a change in educational practice. Schools were simply not available for all the children the law compelled to attend. In 1844, only 4.8 percent of children were in school.150

Between independence and the middle of the nineteenth century, Mexico’s population grew slowly due to war, famine, poor sanitation, lack of medical care, and the failure to attract immigrants. During this period, births equaled roughly 4 percent of the population each year, while deaths equaled 3 percent. Between 1820 and 1854, Mexico’s population increased from 6.2 million to 7.9 million.151

Most of Mexico’s mestizo population lived in rural areas or in small villages. Such villages had dirt streets, few amenities, and were dominated by the village church, both architecturally and spiritually. Retail sales were largely transacted in weekly open-air markets held in the principal square, where a wide variety of wares were offered for sale. As was the case in Indian villages, residents of mestizo villages had little contact with the outside world, which increased the difficulty of inculcating a sense of national identity. Village life had changed little since the late colonial period.152

The collapse of colonial rule ended royal efforts to protect Indian lands. However, a weakened central government gave villagers more room to maneuver. Their goals included minimizing taxes, protecting individual and collective land holdings, and limiting interference in village life by state and national governments. To further these goals, they promoted local leaders whom they felt would further their interests, went to court, and resorted to violence. They influenced events at the regional and national level by supporting aspirants to power whom they felt would serve their interests.153

About 1850, Carl Sartorius, a German who had lived in Mexico for decades, described a typical rural home:

Inside the hut, upon a floor of earth just as nature formed it, burns day and night the scared fire of the domestic hearth. Near it, stand the metate and metlapil, a flat and a cylindrical stone for crushing the maize, and the earthen pan (comal) for baking the maize bread. A few unglazed earthen pots and dishes, a large water pitcher, a drinking cup and dipper of gourd-shell constitute the whole wealth of the Indians’ cottage, a few rude carvings, representing saints, the decoration. Neither tables nor benches cumber the room within, mats of rushes or palm leaves answer for both seat and table. They serve as beds for their rest at night, and for their final rest in the

In dry areas, homes were often built of adobe. Few homes were made of wood, since, due to its scarcity, it was too expensive. The price of wood, the only available fuel, also made the use of kiln-baked bricks prohibitively expensive. In wetter areas, logs often supported a thatched roof while wickerwork, which allowed air and light to enter, formed the walls.154

Cities differed from villages not only in population size but in the number of amenities, the presence of retail shops, and in their having a substantial Creole population. Creoles typically served

Figure 7.2 Hut near Cordoba, Veracruz

Source: Reproduced courtesy of the Benson Latin American Collection, the University of Texas at Austin

As craftsmen, government officials, physicians, lawyers, merchants, manufacturers, and mine operators, and in the higher orders of the clergy. The affluent lived near the central square in multistory houses. The sides of the main square not occupied by the church or official buildings had ground floor arcades where warehouses, wine and coffee shops, and retail stores supplied a wide variety of goods, many of which were imported. Larger cities had numerous convents and monasteries and some, such as Puebla, Guanajuato, and Guadalajara, had permanent theaters. For the less sophisticated, there were bullrings.155

The one-story dwellings of the less affluent stood further from the city square. As in colonial times, the poorest residents occupied city fringes. Sartorius commented on these outlying areas:

In Mexico, the suburbs are mean and dirty, and inhabited by the lowest classes. Refuse and filth, carcasses of animals and rubbish of buildings are found piled up at the entrances of the streets, by the side of wretched hovels, the abode of ragged vagabonds or half naked Indians.156