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CHAPTER 1
The Barrio de Arriba and the Barrio de Abajo
A Tale of Two Cities in Porfirian Juchitán
On November 7, 1911, as federal forces in Juchitán worked to pick up the pieces of a city in ruins, Juan Sánchez wrote President Francisco Madero, hoping to shed light on the inequalities that had led to the city's destruction. "Half of Juchitán has lined-up streets," wrote Sánchez, "the straw huts have completely disappeared and the blocks are well laid out, existing in this part of town the best buildings and as a result all government offices." The other half of town, he continued, "does not have streets, they live like a tribe and all the houses are made of very primitive palm." This spatial division carried important social implications: "in the first live all of the thinking people [gentes pensantes], almost all of whom know how to read and write and whose party ... has always dominated public affairs [la cosa pública]"; while in the other half, "the people are in their majority illiterate, resistant to all progress and have always opposed material improvements which they reject at first glance." Juchitán emerges from Sánchez's letter as two cities in one, divided between the wealthy and the poor — the "barrio de arriba" and the "barrio de abajo," respectively — and organized into two competing political factions. In the midst of a popular revolution, the dangers of such stark contrasts seemed so self-evident that one could have easily forgotten that only a short time before, Juchitán — despite its disparities — had been considered a thriving rural metropolis and a reflection of the successes of Mexico's rapid economic development: one of Porfirio Díaz's modest "monuments of progress."
Beginning in the 1880s, as new roads and railroads connected Juchitán to surrounding markets and transformed the city into a regional transportation hub, the city center was reordered to "stage" modernity, while relegating the remnants of Old Mexico to the physical margins. Ostentatious government buildings, foreign businesses, new technologies, and rectangular blocks lined with houses of brick and adobe marked the barrio de arriba, which bled up the mountainside to the north, while scattered huts dominated the descending landscape of the barrio de abajo, where the roads simply did not go. The material wealth of the barrio de arriba was matched by an increasingly educated, professional, and white population, while the impoverished barrio de abajo was inhabited almost exclusively by illiterate indígenas, who worked the fields outside of town and spoke Zapotec as their preferred language. By separating the middle and upper classes from the poor and indigenous population, Porfirian urban planners hoped to preserve the modern aspects of city life for the gente bien, while containing the social degeneracy of the popular classes, and by registering, regulating, and monitoring them, gradually transforming them into modern citizens through the regime's distinct brand of redemptive discipline. On the eve of the Revolution, Juchitán stood as a symbol not only of modernity (with all of its disparities) but also of national redemption.
Between 1876 and 1911, under the authoritarian rule of Porfirio Díaz, Mexico lifted itself from the morass of political instability and economic depression that characterized its first fifty years as a nation, and achieved prolonged political stability and consistent economic growth. By building a strong, effective state, subsidized by foreign investment, the Pax Porfiriana was heralded as the end of Mexico's "age of chaos," when political outcomes were determined by force and endemic warfare and rebellion led the nation down the path of disintegration. Increasingly, Mexico's bourgeoisie blamed the nation's chronic instability on the imposition of imported concepts of natural rights and popular sovereignty — citizenship — in a society still predominantly governed by "premodern" forms of sociability: corporate loyalties, collective solidarities, personal relations, and dense webs of patronage. With the emergence of a strong, centralizing state, the fetish of material progress submerged that of citizenship, and faith in the state supplanted social unity as the key to national redemption. In place of "metaphysical" ideals, technocratic state builders offered order, administered by a progressive state and an enlightened elite who would gradually instill the poor and indigenous population with the civic virtue necessary to unlock their potential as autonomous individuals and rational, responsible citizens. Often, however, Porfirian state builders eschewed political modernization in the face of material progress, leaving the popular classes isolated, their "redemption" incomplete. This form of social order had critical implications for political development in Juchitán.
Economic development during the Porfiriato introduced unprecedented socioeconomic stratification and ethnic distinction to Juchitán, transforming the city's social and spatial structure. Rather than dissolve the corporate identities of Juchitán's barrio de abajo and inculcate its inhabitants in "modern" forms of sociability, social segregation and ethnic distinction actually collapsed and hardened "premodern," sub-local identities and solidarities, bound by ethnicity, class, and residential proximity, and reinforced personalist forms of sociability that "modernity" was supposed to supersede. During the Porfiriato, the gente bien of the barrio de arriba lived in a world apart from the gente de abajo, who established a "domain of sovereignty" separate from the material world of the gente bien and held together by a shared sense of alienation. The development of separate identities and political consciousnesses produced competing forms of cultural mediation: that based on solidarity with and the public articulation of the demands of the poor and indigenous majority, and that of regional power brokers, whose mediating position stemmed from their influence in political administration or control of economic resources. These competing forms of mediation were embodied in the formation of two informal political factions: the partido verde and the partido rojo. State patronage during the Porfiriato favored the latter, and the partido rojo dominated access to political authority and economic resources through an extensive network of personal and economic ties to the Díaz regime. As such, the rojos became the regime's primary agents of surveillance in Juchitán, and enforcers of the status quo, while the partido verde and its poor and indigenous constituents were proscribed from participation in public political life.
Ultimately, despite the Porfiristas' commitment to replacing traditional politics of personalism and patronage with rational administration, the Porfirian state remained dependent on informal networks of clientelage to maintain political order and prolonged peace. That it did so without resorting to mass violence was one of the regime's proudest achievements. Despite the lack of bloodshed, however, the Pax Porfiriana did not transcend the politics of force, at least not in Juchitán. The inequality between the partido rojo and the partido verde required the constant vigilance of the state's streamlined disciplinary apparatus. By augmenting the powers of state-appointed local authorities, the jefes políticos, and increasing the efficiency and coverage of the federal army, the Díaz regime maintained Juchitán's delicate political equilibrium, while bringing the region into its increasingly vast purview. While the bulk of the Pax Porfiriana passed in Juchitán without recourse to violence, it was still characterized by force without consent.
After Spanish Rule: The "Second Conquest" of the Isthmus?
After three centuries of colonial rule, independence from Spain left the formation of the Mexican state in the hands of a political elite deeply divided by economic and regional interests as well as political ideology. Of the two main coalitions, the centralists saw themselves as preservers of the colonial order and defended the system of corporate rights and privileges (fueros) for the church, the army, and indigenous villages established by the Spanish Crown. Their opposing coalition, the federalists, saw themselves as heirs of the insurgents who broke with the Crown, and sought to dismantle the corporate order by increasing participation in sovereignty and expanding individual rights. Over time a more coherent liberal program absorbed the federalist coalition and called for a full-scale repudiation of the colonial system, including the subordination of the church to the state, the abolition of corporate privileges, freedom of trade, and the "rationalization" of property held in common. The struggle between these two competing factions to determine who would control the direction of the nation's political and economic development engulfed the nation in fifty years of prolonged political instability and economic depression, as the state's expenditures grew to accommodate a swollen military budget at the same time constant warfare disrupted mineral and agricultural production in the countryside, reducing state revenues.
As federalist governments came to power in the provinces, liberal principles increasingly came to guide state-building projects, bringing the state into increased conflict with the indigenous pueblos. While Spanish colonials (and some conservatives) saw indigenous society, organized into far-flung, autarchic communities, as something to be overseen, the dominant liberal ideology of the mid-nineteenth century construed it as "something to be overcome." In order to resolve the burgeoning "Indian problem," liberal state builders sought to transform indigenous villagers from protected wards of the state into autonomous individual citizens by removing the corporate privileges of the colonial repúblicas de indios, while increasing state revenues by selling off communal and unused resources to private citizens, who could take advantage of reduced trade restrictions to maximize production. This imposition of "equality" reduced the autonomy of the pueblos, integrated them into the state tax structure, and divested them of their communal landholdings while denying them usufruct access to natural resources, thereby representing what some historians have called a "second conquest" of indigenous Mexico.
The history of Juchitán, and of Oaxaca in general, during the first fifty years of Independence tells a different story. While Oaxaca's liberal elite was surely interested in eliminating corporate identities and increasing the commercial exploitation of natural resources, it seems that the indigenous pueblos, particularly on the Isthmus, wielded considerable power vis-à-vis the weak Oaxacan state. As the conflict between liberals and conservatives extended to the Isthmus, the people of Juchitán took up arms in support of one or another of Mexico's warring factions to defend traditional forms of natural resource exploitation. The state's chronic economic shortfalls, limited enforcement apparatus, lack of transportation infrastructure, and constant need of the political and military support of the popular classes all combined to temper the "modernization" of the Isthmus and ensured a modicum of political and economic autonomy in the pueblos. Nowhere on the Isthmus, nor in Oaxaca, was the response to encroaching liberalization more powerful than in Juchitán, where, despite the privatization of natural resources, there was little the state could do to abrogate communal patterns of resource allocation and exploitation in the face of armed collective action.
During the colonial period the Crown's protection of Indian lands and the fluctuating nature of the agricultural economy inhibited the development of haciendas and plantations on the Isthmus. Following the conquest of Mexico the Crown granted conquistador Hernán Cortés personal sovereignty over the Marquesado del Valle de Oaxaca, a massive network of livestock haciendas that encompassed the southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec. However, the demographic decline of the indigenous population due to foreign disease and fluctuations in the silver economy prevented sustained commercial development of the Marquesado and rendered large landholding on the Isthmus too risky. Moreover, the Crown granted indigenous communities legal title to their original lands and allowed them to receive additional land, and the Isthmus Zapotecs consistently used colonial courts to defend their land and labor rights. As a result, the Oaxacan elite shifted to a mercantile system of exploiting the indigenous populations — exporting the products of indigenous villages rather than monopolizing land and directly exploiting indigenous labor. Even as a boom in the international dye market increased the production and exportation of cochineal and indigo on the Isthmus in the mid- eighteenth century, it did not require the expropriation of indigenous land, but rather the seasonal and supplemental labor of indigenous villagers. By the end of the colonial period, indigenous communities continued to be, by far, the largest landowners on the Isthmus (and Oaxaca), and the Spanish presence in the region remained low, particularly outside of the district cabecera, Tehuantepec.
Independence from Spain brought to the Isthmus the first sustained threats to the economic base of the region's indigenous inhabitants. The first state constitution of Oaxaca called for the privatization of all natural resources within the state, challenging communal access to salt flats and pastures that the indigenous communities of the Isthmus had enjoyed "from time immemorial." Salt had always been a critical part of the Isthmus Zapotec diet, both as a condiment and a preservative, but by the late colonial period it had also become integral to the region's commercial economy, as Isthmus Zapotec villagers traded salt illegally to Guatemala in exchange for British and French textiles. In part to stem the tide of contraband trade, in 1825 the state government declared its intention to privatize the salt flats of the district of Tehuantepec (which, at the time, included Juchitán), ostensibly to put them in the hands of "an individual who would be able to exploit the salt more economically than the Indians." However, rather than sell to a private investor, in the early 1830s the state government monopolized profits from the salt deposits, adding approximately 25,000 pesos annually to its coffers. The state government's "centralization" of salt profits sparked resistance in Juchitán and drew the attention of the federal government, itself in desperate need of revenue. In 1843 the federal government contravened the state's monopoly and sold Juchitán's salt deposits to a powerful merchant from Veracruz, Francisco Javier Echeverría, for 250,000 pesos. The federal government's intervention did not sit well in Juchitán or in the state capital.
Meanwhile, the Marquesado del Valle, now known as the Haciendas Marquesanas, was also changing hands, spurred by the drive to increase agricultural production and a major decline in the international dye market. The increased production of cochineal in Guatemala and indigo in India created a glut in the dye market, driving down international prices. With the collapse of the Isthmus's export economy the owner of the Marquesanas, the Duke of Monteleone, looked to sell his Oaxacan properties. In 1836, two Europeans, Frenchman Juan José Guergué and Italian Esteban Maqueo, purchased the Marquesanas, intent on restoring them to profitability. However, they would quickly learn, as would Echeverría, that on the Isthmus purchasing property and asserting one's claim to it were two different things entirely.
The privatization of natural resources sparked resistance from the indigenous population of the Isthmus, who defended their natural right to exploit the salt deposits and graze their livestock on the pastures of the Marquesanas, as they had under Spanish rule. Led by José Gregorio Meléndez, in 1834 the people of Juchitán joined Juan Álvarez's Plan de Texca — a widespread indigenous rebellion that stretched from the state of Guerrero to the Isthmus — and took up arms in rejection of the state government's appropriation of the salt flats. Meléndez, born in 1793 on a ranch just outside of Juchitán, had joined the insurgent army during the Wars of Independence and earned his stripes helping to defeat the Spanish royal army on the Isthmus. A mestizo of "dashing demeanor" with a "natural intuition," Meléndez parlayed his success in battle into a prosperous career as a rancher, and by 1834 he had become "the undisputed leader of the indigenous peoples of the Isthmus," to whom he was known as Che Gorio Melendre. While the rebellion of 1834 was short-lived and resulted in a brief jail stint for Meléndez, in its wake the villagers of Juchitán continued to illegally graze their livestock on Marquesana lands and extract salt without paying taxes on it, establishing a pattern of conflict with the region's landowners that would hold for years.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A Revolution Unfinished"
by .
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