Between 1700 and 1820, at least 150 village riots occurred. More than a hundred of these riots occurred after 1765, with the highest frequency between 1806 and 1810. They were generally characterized by violence, levity, and inebriation. Commonly such uprisings resulted from suppression of a local religious cult or abuses of power, often by a priest who had raised fees for baptism, marriage, burial, and the celebration of Mass. They were carried out with machetes, knives, clubs, axes, and hoes. Generally these riots burned themselves out with little intervention from the outside once they had achieved their immediate goal such as driving out a hated figure, freeing a prisoner, or getting a promise of action on a particular issue. Sometimes, after particularly severe outbursts, residents would abandon a town for a time to prevent retaliation.
Increased conflict in the late colonial period reflected demographic change. As the Indian population began to increase, conflicts erupted over land. If Indians wanted to put additional land under cultivation, they had to confront the hacienda, and when haciendas expanded to meet new market opportunities, they threatened Indian interests.111
Cultural and linguistic diversity and Indians’ identity with village rather than with a wide-ranging cultural group, such as the Totonacs, led most rebellions to be highly localized. The Spanish prohibition on Indians owning firearms, swords, or daggers diminished their ability to resist government force. In addition, the lack of a vigorous, surviving indigenous elite to lead rebellions, as occurred in Peru, reduced the severity of uprisings.112
Authorities usually took a conciliatory stance toward such revolts, since they had limited ability to carry out counter-insurgency, sought taxes, and feared the spread of local revolts. These local revolts did not pose a major threat. Anthropologist William Taylor commented on such rebels, “They did not want to take power outside the local district, and, if they had, I suspect they would not have known what to do with it.”113
More serious rebellions generally occurred after a miraculous occurrence, such as the claim that God had ordered the rejection of Spanish control and had promised mystical power and the establishment of a new, divinely mandated order. A charismatic leader, often a witness to the miracle, then transmitted the message. These movements often became regionalized, and their suppression involved heavy loss of life.114
In 1540, the Mixton Rebellion erupted to the west of Mexico City, forcing the relocation of Guadalajara. This rebellion sought the elimination of any vestige of Christianity, the expulsion of Spaniards from Indian land, and the restoration of Indian religion and customs. Insurgents burned monasteries, churches, and crosses. They profaned religious objects, made sacrifices, and performed pagan dances. Many Spaniards, including conquistador Pedro de Alvarado, lost their lives suppressing this revolt. Thirty thousand Aztecs and Tlaxcalans assisted the Spanish in reasserting control.115
Conquest-era uprisings generally sought to eliminate everything Spanish, from Catholicism to orange trees. Their leaders promised a return to the old way of life. Spaniards repeatedly relied on other Indian groups to repress these uprisings. Since “Indian” was a European concept, Indian groups willingly participated in the suppression of other Indians. Such service could lead to booty, provide a chance to attack a traditional rival, or ingratiate a group to the Spanish.116
After the sixteenth century, millenarian movements indicated the degree to which Spanish culture had permeated Indian society. Rather than simply demanding a return to dimly remembered earlier beliefs, their leaders called for the replacement of Spaniards with Indian leaders who would oversee a new order that embraced many Spanish elements, such as worship of the Virgin.117
In 1712, a classical case of a millenarian rebellion occurred in Chiapas. There, a young Indian woman, Maria de la Candelaria, reported that the Virgin Mary had appeared to her and told her to build a chapel in her honor. When Spanish authorities attempted to suppress the cult that sprang up to honor the Virgin’s appearance, Indians rebelled. The rebels organized their own political system and priesthood, which they reserved exclusively for Indians. They declared the Virgin to be supreme over God and heaven and that Spaniards were “Jews” who persecuted her. Members of their 5,000-man army referred themselves as “Soldiers of the Virgin.” For three months, Indians sacked Catholic churches and Spanish estates, killing Spaniards and mestizos. Colonial authorities were only able to suppress the rebellion after heavily armed Spanish troops arrived from Guatemala.118
In 1761, another millenarian movement erupted in Yucatan, when Jacinto Canek led a rebellion brought on by forced labor, heavy taxes, tribute, and flogging. Canek established himself in a church, moved the silver crown from a statue of the Virgin Mary to his own head, and conducted religious ceremonies using the vestments and chalice of the Catholic clergy. A force of 500 wellarmed Spanish finally defeated the 1,500-man Indian force led by Canek. After restoring control, the Spanish executed Canek. Spaniards publicly whipped other participants and cut off one of their ears. They leveled Canek’s hometown of Quisteil so thoroughly that today no one knows its precise location.119
Spanish settlement slowly expanded northwards, largely as a result of mining operations. This led to a process that in some ways resembled the expansion of the U. S. frontier toward the west. In both cases, European settlement gradually eliminated independent Indian groups and channeled wealth into non-Indian hands. The Mexican experience differed from the U. S. experience in its emphasis on settling Indian groups and incorporating them into colonial life. The Spanish gave a major role in this process to other Indian groups that they had already dominated. Another contrast with the U. S. experience was that Spanish colonial exploration was carefully planned by the state. The 1573 Ordenanzas (statutes) even stipulated the death penalty for unauthorized exploration.120
As the Spaniards moved north to exploit mines in Zacatecas, warfare broke out with Indians known as Chichimeca, an Aztec term that translates roughly as “barbarian.” Both the Spanish and the Aztecs used the term Chichimeca to refer to more than half a dozen distinct groups of nomadic people between San Juan del Rio, Durango, Guadalajara, and Saltillo. Each group spoke, but did not write, a distinctive language. The Aztecs had never occupied the desert area the Chichimeca inhabited. The Chichimeca soon acquired horses and became expert riders. They mastered the ambush and established effective spy networks in Spanish-dominated villages, where they took advantage of the Spaniards’ inability to distinguish them from other Indians.121
By the end of 1561, the Chichimeca had killed roughly 200 Spaniards and more than 2,000 of their Indian allies. In addition Chichimeca destroyed farms and robbed pack trains. In 1576, church officials in Guadalajara wrote the King:
The damage and the murders done by the Chichimeca raiders daily—they are more daring and
Bloodthirsty than ever before—is causing the depopulation of many mines, cultivated lands, and
Estancias [ranches], and the highways are in the greatest danger.122
The wars with the Chichimeca dragged on for fifty years and provided the colonial administration with one of its greatest problems. As hunter-gatherers, the Chichimeca did not occupy a fixed location, making control extremely difficult. Before their domination, the Chichimeca cost the Spaniards more expense and lives than the conquest of the Aztecs. Peace with the Chichimeca came after Viceroy Alvaro Manrique de Zuniga, who served from 1585 to 1590, realized that the soldiers responsible for pacifying Indians in fact exacerbated conflict. Soldiers would capture Indians and sell them into slavery. This served as the main source of income for many soldiers, who became more diligent at slaving than peacemaking.123
Viceroy Manrique de Zuniga initiated a program called “peace by purchase.” He provided the Chichimeca with food and clothes and encouraged them to form permanent settlements. To provide an example of settled Indians, the Spanish persuaded many Indians from Tlaxcala to settle in the Chichimeca area. Before the Tlaxcalans agreed to move, they demanded and received extensive land grants, freedom from personal tribute, and the right to carry arms and ride a horse with a saddle. As a result of the new Spanish policies, the Chichimeca and the Spanish coexisted peacefully after 1600.124
Peace with the Chichimeca did not end conflict with indigenous people. In 1687, an alliance led by the Toboso people embraced thirty indigenous groups resisting Spanish intrusion. This alliance threatened security (as defined by the Spanish) in broad areas of northeastern Mexico. In 1754, the bishop of Durango lamented to the king, “I have. . . heard much about uprisings of Indians and very little about new conversions.”125
World History
