The Other California: Land, Identity, and Politics on the Mexican Borderlands
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The Other California: Land, Identity, and Politics on the Mexican Borderlands
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| ISBN-13: | 9780520966727 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 11/15/2016 |
| Series: | Western Histories , #9 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
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The Other California
Land, Identity, and Politics on the Mexican Borderlands
By Verónica Castillo-Muñoz
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Copyright © 2017 The Regents of the University of CaliforniaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-96672-7
CHAPTER 1
Building the Mexican Borderlands
Lower California, as little known as Africa, is today the American frontier. If ever earth and sky and air joined in invitation, it is here.
International Mexican Company, "Lower California for Sale," 1883
Before the Mexican-American War of 1846, Baja California was a backwater. At the turn of the nineteenth century, about 12,500 people lived scattered across the peninsula, making Baja California one of the most sparsely populated areas in Mexico (see map 1). Between 1794 and 1808 Franciscan and Dominican missionaries in Baja California faced great resistance from Cocopah and Kumeyaay people, who rebelled against practices of forced labor and conversions at the San Pedro Mártir de Verona and Santa Catalina Missions. Indigenous peoples consistently attacked and destroyed churches and thus succeeded in preventing the missionization of the northern part of Baja California, leading to the abandonment of several missions during the nineteenth century. Even after independence jefes políticos (appointed military chiefs) reported violent attacks by the Yuma and Cocopah people against the former missions. In 1836 Cocopah and Yuma people from Jacume attacked the San Diego Mission, forcing its families to flee in ships. A year later 400 Yumas attacked Guadalupe and destroyed the missions of Guadalupe and Santa Catalina, forcing the missionized indigenous population to move to Santo Domingo.
In an attempt to assert better control over Baja California, Mexican president José Joaquín de Herrera issued a decree in 1849 that divided the peninsula into two districts, the Northern Territory and the Southern Territory (Partido Norte and Partido Sur). Approximately 70 percent of the population lived in the Southern Territory in the six municipalities of San José del Cabo, Todos Santos, Comondu, San Antonio, Mulegé, and La Paz. The town of La Paz, located near the southern tip of the peninsula, was the administrative center of the whole peninsula. A subjefe político (assistant to the military chief) was appointed to oversee the Northern Territory, which was inhabited mainly by indigenous people. Between 1849 and 1870 Baja California's small population made it susceptible to potential filibusters and vulnerable to Anglo-Americans who wanted Baja California for the United States.
Developing northern Mexico became an important goal of Mexican president Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada (1872–76). He granted numerous land concessions and subsidies to both European and Mexican investors in an attempt to attract migrant workers to the Mexican side of the border. These land concessions continued under President Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911), who provided further incentives to foreign investors by expanding the Law of Terrenos Baldíos (vacant public lands) and by increasing subsidies to foreign investors. These subsidies facilitated the expansion of investments by U.S. nationals beyond the U.S. Southwest. Between 1860 and 191o U.S. investors purchased over two hundred million acres of land in Mexico, most of it in northern Mexico.
The Baja California borderlands became an arena of conquest, migration, and people's settlement. During the 1860s a few families of Mexican heritage from California (known as Californios), who had lost political and economic influence in California after the United States took control, resettled on former Baja California missions near the coast. They established successful cattle ranchos (ranches), as they had done in the past in California (known to Mexicans as Alta California). In 1887 the International Mexican Company, a U.S.-owned investment company, purchased 186 million acres of land from the Mexican government, which included almost half of the Baja California peninsula. The Colorado River Land Company, based in Southern California, purchased eight hundred thousand acres of land near the Colorado River. Thus, in less than twenty years U.S. investors transformed Baja California from a Mexican backwater territory to one of the most prosperous cotton-producing centers along the U.S.-Mexico border. This boom coincided with the development of the Imperial Valley in California and the construction of dams along the Colorado River.
Thousands of indigenous people found themselves caught in the middle of these economic and political changes that divided their communities and threatened their way of life. For example, indigenous families who had lived in the Colorado Desert near the Colorado River for many generations faced displacement after the Mexican government sold the land to Mexican and U.S. investors. This chapter examines the origins of land speculation in Baja California, how indigenous peoples employed various strategies to both resist and adapt to land displacements, the incursion of agribusinesses, and the migration of European Americans and Californios to Baja California.
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND OTHERS
During the second half of the nineteenth century, indigenous peoples outnumbered those of European descent in the Northern Territory. Only 184 creoles lived scattered in small ranchos of 4 to 10 people near the former missions of Santo Domingo, San Telmo, San Ramón, La Grulla, and La Calentura. Jefe político Feliciano Esparza described them as the descendants of Spanish soldiers who came to the Baja California missions at the beginning of nineteenth century. Approximately 16 to 40 nonindigenous people lived in the towns of Santo Tomás, San Vicente, Ensenada, and El Rosario (see map 2). Life was difficult for creoles living in this arid environment. Some raised cattle and cultivated beans, corn, and vegetables for daily sustenance. At times they abandoned their ranchos and pueblos to seek temporary work in Alta California. Subjefes políticos from the Northern Territory lamented the continuous migration of creoles to Alta California.
In contrast, over 5,000 indigenous people lived in semisedentary communities in the Colorado Delta, which extended from the Sonora Desert to the Mexicali Valley on the Mexican side and to the Imperial and Coachella Valleys on the U.S. side of the border. The region had mild winters with sparse rainfall, followed by long summers with temperatures of up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The Colorado River constantly shifted and flooded the delta, making the soil rich for cultivation. In contrast to the semidesert landscapes of the Mexicali Valley, green willow brush and cottonwood trees lined the banks of the Colorado River, where most indigenous lived in sedentary and seminomadic communities. In 1870 the secretary of interior in La Paz recorded 3,420 Cocopahs living in Baja California in semisedentary communities with more than 2,000 others residing on indigenous settlements, or rancherías.
Cocopah life revolved around the family unit. Cocopah families worked and migrated in groups that usually included immediate and extended family members, known as shamules. Households usually formed along patrilineal lines and were typically extended and multigenerational. Annual ceremonies and celebrations in sacred sites facilitated social contact with other Cocopah families living in the desert. A temporary chief led the ceremonies and served as a council and mediator of disputes.
The gendered division of labor among Cocopah communities shared many similarities with other indigenous communities in the desert, where women cultivated the land while men hunted, fished, and raised horses. Once a year Cocopah families temporarily settled along the banks of the Colorado River to fish and cultivate crops. Families built rectangular homes measuring approximately fifteen feet wide by six feet high, made out of willow brush to protect them from the extreme heat in summer. They depended on the yearly high waters of the river that naturally irrigated the land they cultivated in corn, beans, squash, and watermelons. Women collected wild plants and fruits along the riverbank in July and August. They wove large willow baskets used to store seeds and staples on the roofs. Women also made pottery for cooking and built underground storage structures to keep fruits and vegetables from spoiling.
Cocopah men spent long hours crafting fishing nets. They fished every day at the river, and fish was a significant part of their personal daily diet. All family members weeded during the growing season. After the fishing and harvest seasons ended, Cocopah families moved away from the Colorado River and came back after the yearly overflow of the river subsided. Some Cocopah families lived part of the year near Yuma, while others moved to higher ground in Baja California.
Intermarriage and cohabitation between different indigenous groups occurred. These tribal communities encouraged marriage outside familial units. Even at the turn of the twentieth century, anthropologist Carl Lumholtz encountered mixed indigenous households of Cocopah and Apache families living near the Colorado River. But food shortages threatened peaceful relations among indigenous communities in the Colorado Desert. Cocopah people had a close relationship with the Maricopa, Pima, and Papago (Tohono O'odham) communities in Arizona, and at times they joined forces with them to attack the Yuma and Mohave people on the U.S. side of the border. Other times they joined the Yuma people from Baja California to attack mestizo families from San Diego.
Mexican officials viewed the constant movement of indigenous peoples with suspicion and questioned their loyalty toward the government. Officials often misunderstood intertribal relations in the U.S.-Mexico border area. Mexican consuls based in San Diego and jefes políticos from Baja California often expressed their fear of losing the Baja California territory to the United States due to fluid relations between indigenous communities in the borderlands. José María Villagrana, subjefe político of the Northern Territory, wrote a letter to the central Mexican government, pleading for a stronger military presence. He expressed his fears that these disagreements among indigenous people in the frontier may lead to war. If this would happen, he was certain that Mexico was going to lose the Baja California peninsula. He called on the Mexican government for protection on the border, which, he reminded them, they had completely "abandoned."
Villagrana saw indigenous people as a liability to the Mexican nation and assumed that if another war erupted between the United States and Mexico, indigenous people would side with the United States, not with Mexico. His views resonated with Mexican politicians and intellectuals from Mexico City who viewed the indigenous people's lack of incorporation as citizens as an "Indian problem" that undermined the nation. Intellectuals and politicians also attributed Mexico's slow progress to its large indigenous population and the low migration of European immigrants to the countryside. Academics such as Alfonso Luis Velasco lamented the fact that there were more "brazos" (arms for working the fields) than heads in the countryside, preventing Mexico from becoming an industrialized nation. This assessment of indigenous people was reflected in the government's interest in increasing land-colonization programs near the border by attracting national and foreign investments. Such programs had already proven successful in the border regions of Sonora, Chihuahua, and Matamoros.
Indigenous groups recognized their tense relationship with the Mexican government and formed alliances with other indigenous groups to protect their communities. In i860 the Diegueño, Yuma, and Cocopah people selected Marto de la Cruz as their leader to communicate the needs and concerns of indigenous people to the Mexican government. A charismatic, multilingual natural leader and a diplomat, he spoke Yuman, Spanish, and intermediate English. He was also literate in Spanish. Mexican officials commented on his relentless determination. He would travel by horse the 850 miles from the Mexicali Valley to La Paz to meet with Mexican officials if subjefes políticos from the Northern Territory ignored his demands.
In the decade from i860 to 1870, the boom in steamboat traffic traveling on the Colorado River also increased tensions among the Mexican government, U.S. entrepreneurs, and indigenous groups. In 1870 Marto de la Cruz traveled to La Paz to report that U.S. merchants had illegally cut trees near indigenous settlements to meet the steamboat's high demand for firewood as they traveled from Fort Yuma to San Francisco:
The subscriber, Captain General Marto de La Cruz, who represents close to five thousand souls [people] who live in the Colorado [River]. These Yuma, Diegueño, and Cocopah [people], who are the defenders of the dividing line between Baja California and that part of the United States ... request the attention [of the government] to manifest the mission that brought me to the port of La Paz, Baja California Sur.
By strategically describing indigenous people as "defenders" of the Mexican border, de la Cruz asserted indigenous peoples loyalty toward the Mexican government. De la Cruz reported that the indigenous peoples he represented were becoming increasingly "resentful" toward U.S. nationals, who intentionally excluded them in the trade of woodcutting and cattle grazing and hired them only when they needed temporary assistance. De la Cruz proposed taxing the merchants and ranchers who benefited from the indigenous people living near the river.
According to de la Cruz, a tax on timber and cattle would help build schools for indigenous children. "Even a small taxation on Americans is going to improve the quality of life in our communities," explained de la Cruz in his letter to Pablo María Castro, secretary of the interior. In exchange for this authorization, he promised alliance and loyalty toward the Mexican government. De la Cruz's propositions of opening schools in indigenous communities signaled their loyalty to the Mexican government, as schools were used for cultural assimilation. De la Cruz did not leave La Paz until the government approved his petition. In 1870 de la Cruz was officially recognized as "Tribal Captain" by the Mexican government. His responsibilities included promoting good behavior and hard work among native people, while maintaining a peaceful relationship with travelers and merchants. He was authorized to collect a small tax from Anglo-Americans engaged in timber cutting, while at the same time he regulated this practice. De la Cruz also received authorization to charge a small tax to cowboys who crossed the border from Arizona to graze cattle.
Clemente Rojo, subjefe politico from the Northern Territory, objected to de la Cruz's new position, since it undermined his own authority. Rojo immediately wrote a letter to Pablo Maria Castro to ask him to revoke de la Cruz's title as well as his authority to collect taxes at the border. In his letter Rojo attempted to discredit de la Cruz's reputation by casting him as an "impostor" mestizo whose real name was Chino Cobarrubias. According to Rojo, Cobarrubias had previously worked as a cowboy for the Bandini family ranch in Guadalupe, where he learned to speak different indigenous languages from his coworkers. He questioned de la Cruz's loyalty to the indigenous groups he represented by insinuating that he was an opportunist. Rojo told Castro that de la Cruz took advantage of the indios in the Northern Territory by selling them goods and staples provided by the Mexican government rather than giving them away, as the government had intended.
It is unclear what de la Cruz's background was. Rojo's allegations do not prove that he was an impostor mestizo from Guadalupe. Rojo's story is not corroborated by other sources. Perhaps de la Cruz was a displaced Diegueno who arrived in Baja California from San Diego to work as a cowboy for Juan Bandini at Rancho Guadalupe in the 1850s. Although de la Cruz's background remains uncertain, it is clear that indigenous people from the Colorado Desert selected him because he could effectively communicate with indigenous, Anglos, and Mexicans. In spite of the effort to discredit de la Cruz, he continued to work as a liaison. Government reports show that de la Cruz continued his periodic trips to La Paz and Ensenada as a representative of the allied Yuma, Diegueno, and Cocopah peoples.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Other California by Verónica Castillo-Muñoz. Copyright © 2017 The Regents of the University of California. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
List of IllustrationsList of Tables and Maps
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Mexican Borderlands
1. Building the Mexican Borderlands
2. The Making of Baja California’s Multicultural Society
3. Revolution, Labor Unions, and Land Reform in Baja California
4. Conflict, Land Reform, and Repatriation in the Mexicali Valley
5. Mexicali’s Exceptionalism
conclusion: the “All-Mexican” Train
Notes
Bibliography
Index